John Kennedy would be proud

The kind of track you can imagine hearing driving down an empty motorway at 11:34 pm with John Kennedy‘s sweet sweet voice saying gently over the top, “What a great sound, destined for greatness…” and secretly hoping you’re the only one listening.

Pariah – ‘Orpheus’

Lovely (Funk/Soul Beats)

Lots and lots of lovely new music around these days. I’ve been absent listening to it all – these are some of the best tracks I’ve recently come across… they also happen to be some of the best tracks I’ve ever come across.

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Fantastic Mr Fox – ‘Fool Me’. His EP Evelyn is an incredible mix of funk/soul mood and Gold Panda-esque electronica.

Wolf People – ‘Morning Born’. From their album Steeple. Buy it here.

Star Slinger – ‘Gimme’. This isn’t particularly new but it’s SO EFFING GOOD, please turn it up LOUD. He basically takes old 60s funk/soul tracks (can you spot a theme?) and turns them into modern electronic dancefloor masterpieces.

Pariah – ‘Detroit Falls’ & ‘Railroad’. The first one’s also a funk/soul mashup. Different style, still excellent. The second sounds really familiar to me and I’m not sure why… but maybe because it’s got a kind of early 2000s sound. Reminds me of early Moby or something.

As luck would have it, all the above are playing at a music festival in Yorkshire that everyone should go to – Beacons Festival.

ThisIsNotAboutTheKingOfLimbs

In all this Radiohead apocalypse-for-music-journalism madness, I’m not going to write anything about The King of Limbs until I’ve listened to it about 23 times. In the meantime, Lykke Li has just released another single and it’s moody, dark, gorgeous. The previous single, ‘I Follow Rivers’, from the new album, Wounded Rhymes, is also good, but not as good.

“We will live longer than I will. We will be better than I was.”

Avant Garde Snow

I’m wary of using this term, ‘avant garde’, for anything. Everything is stolen, everything borrowed; no good art can ever be original. However, this guy seems to be doing something kind of surprising, kind of different, if not at all unique. What does seem to be kind of unique is his ability to control and shape the difference, the surprise, into something that can actually be listened to – something I, at least, really want to listen to.

What’s also quite unique and very, very clever, is that his tracks are never quite long enough. Unlike a lot of experimental electronic music, you don’t have time to get bored – you actually don’t quite have time to enjoy it, so you want to listen to it again, and again, and again…

I urge you to listen to this with headphones; it will sound like a mess on laptop speakers. But then, Mozart’s most crafted concerto would sound like a mess on laptop speakers. I won’t get started, but listening to music on laptop speakers is a bit like having a baby and then putting it into a blender before showing it to the world and enjoying its childhood and development. Anyway, with this track, I don’t even think good speakers would do it justice. You need to be enveloped by the sound, choked by it… there’s a moment, about halfway through, when you feel like the whole world is crumbling apart around you. It’s not often that listening to a piece of music makes my heart noticeably race.

Enjoy

My My it’s Monday

Something to brighten up a Monday morning. Not the greatest ever lyrics but a gorgeous chord progression and one of those guitar riffs that every musician will always wish they’d come up with – it’s played sketchily on an acoustic which wouldn’t be an obvious choice but it works so well.

Menomena - ‘My My’.

From their 2007 album ‘Friend and Foe‘. Their new album, ‘Mines‘, is excellent and won’t disappoint.

Ghibli, Dead Princess

I want to share a track because I just came across it and listened to it 5 times in a row, which says something about how much inertia I am experiencing these days at least. It kind of follows on from my last post about poorly- and well-applied strings sections in popular music tracks. It’s by a guy from Edmonton, Canada who used to go by the name ‘Jaded Hipster Choir‘ but now ‘Ghibli‘. I’m not going to describe the kind of music it is because I can’t do it justice. It’s electronic and it’s cool.

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Pooey strings and an album called Ring

Hello there. It’s bloody freezing in Leeds today and I walked home as quickly as I could, but as I passed a student house on the way home I had to stop, because I heard a strangely familiar yet also very difficult-to-place song dripping down from the open window. I waited a moment, until I recognised the dulcet LANDAAAAN tones of Kate Nash’s not-at-all-put-on singing voice. And – honestly – it was from her second album. Yes, ladies and gentleman, she has a second album. And someone was actually playing it. And it’s about as memorable and exciting as having a poo. But with less relief.

However, the over-arching complaint I’ve always had with that little-known piece of circular shiny plastic is that it has too many instruments. Kate Nash’s charm (yes I do think she had charm, on her first album) was always the simplicity, the childishness, even the rawness at times – cf. her entire lyrics to ‘Play’: “I like to play” x ONE MILLION. But on this second album, she only went and whacked on a bloody strings section. And the thing is, it almost certainly wasn’t her idea. It was almost certainly some producer’s idea – some producer who should know better. Strings sections, 9 times out of 10, ruin an otherwise quite interesting indie/pop song – they add nothing, they take away all the intimacy… Orchestras are big for a reason, female singer-songwriters play backstreet bars for a reason. One offers grand, sweeping melodrama, the other, beautiful, fragile intimacy – and it is very hard to make the two mix.

But – but – it can be done. And this woman has done it:

‘Home’, by Glasser, from her album ‘Ring‘

Something to read for 5 minutes

Just this, a poem which really grabbed me with its uniqueness… I don’t know any other poetry that’s like it. Thanks to RenegadeOboe for bringing it to my attention.

“My father once broke a man’s hand
Over the exhaust pipe of a John Deere tractor…

“And, for a moment, the light held still
On those vines…

Oh, and something to listen to while you’re reading it.

This is an instrumental, demo-ish version of Owen Pallett‘s ‘Midnight Directives’, and, in my humble opinion, much more betterer.

Technological Wilderness

In these days of technocentric rapidity, a space devoid of infinite communication is hard to find. The north half of the Yorkshire Dales is one such place… no mobile network, no broadband, no mains gas even. It’s eerily refreshing to be utterly cut off from anything more than shouting distance from you. It’s also rather nice to look at. (Click on them for bigger versions)

It gets me thinking, though – which is better? Would I get bored after a week? Maybe. Once knowledge is gained it is hard to relinquish it. Has the countryside become merely a playground for the urban, inhabited by a rapidly shrinking population of old-fashioned, small-minded people? Perhaps, but who am I to say that my way of life is any more valid than theirs?

The lyrics to a recent folk song seem appropriate. The song is by Drever, McCusker and Woomble, a collaboration of well-known Scottish folk artists (Roddy Woomble is also the singer from Idlewild).

‘There are hills beyond these hills, where the air is still grey in its mystery that, thankfully, will always remain a mystery to me.’

‘Into the Blue’, by Drever, McCusker & Woomble

Guess who’s Back(yards)

After almost a year of absence I’ve decided to resurrect this faded, difficult-to-read masterpiece of a blog for very little reason other than to give me something productive to do while I’m staring blankly at my screen doing battle with the evil nightmare dragon they call Youknowyouwanttogoonfacebookyouweakwilledhuman-oth. I might also attempt to offer some reference to music/film/art/information I may have found interesting recently. To start off, a quotation:

Problems of information overload tend to re-emerge with the devices that become essential to information management themselves producing too much information. (Tim Jordan, ‘Technopower and its Cyberfutures’, 2002)

i.e. – blogs are pointless.

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So just 2 things this time, because the white wash beckons.

1: This -

It’s a remix by Will Weisenfeld (Baths) of a track by Will Weisenfeld ([Post-foetus]). It’s called ‘Felix and the Mural’. It’s beautiful and is guaranteed to brighten up anyone’s day.

2: If you’re reading this, you may know that I’m in a band called Backyards, but you may not know that we’re playing at Milo in Leeds city centre on Saturday 5th February 2011. Shameless plug but it’s my blog so there. Here’s one of our better songs, ‘Useless Things II’:

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Well that’s all for now folks, thanks for popping in. Check back soon, I promise to keep this updated. I promise.