Happy new year all….so the adventure into the unknown continues with this broad mix of sounds & styles, past & present…
There’s lots of highlights this month, including the welcome return of Good Looking Records, who have been out of the scene for a long long time – They’ve definitely come back fighting, with a superb Technicolour Remix of LTJ Bukem’s seminal jungle classic Music, which brings it bang up to date, and is tastefully executed.
There’s also a look back to my formative student years with a few classics from the vaults, namely an instrumental from the Verve that I was always fond of, plus a cut from the Miles Davis & Bill Laswell album Panthalassa, which I discovered through my local library’s excellent CD lending service.
1. Simian Ghost – Youth (Taken from the album Youth) – Heist Or Hit Records – Buy
2. Jazz Juice – Detroit – Precious Materials – Buy
3. Synkro – Recognition (taken from the Acceptance EP) – R&S – Buy
4. Stray – When It Rains – BMT Music – Buy
5. Instra:Mental – Photograph (Taken from the Sepia Tones EP) – Darkestral Recordings – Buy
6. ASC & Ulrich Schnauss – 77 (Taken from the 77 EP) – Auxilary Recordings – Buy
7. LTJ Bukem – Music (Technicolour Remix) – Good Looking Records – Buy
8. Aimee Mann – Wise Up (Taken from the Magnolia OST) – Reprise – Buy
9. John Brion – Bookstore (Taken from the Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind OST – Hollywood Records – Buy
10. The Depreciation Guild – Butterfly Kisses – Taken from the album In Her Gentle Jaws (Self Released) – Buy
11. Simian Ghost – Sparrow (Taken from the album Youth) – Heist Or Hit Records – Buy
12. The Verve – MSG (Taken from the Lucky Man Single) – Hut Recordings – Buy
13. Miles Davis & Bill Laswell – In A Silent Way / Shhh Peaceful / It’s About That Time (Bill Laswell Mix) (Taken from the album Panthalassa: The Music Of Miles Davis 1969-1974) – Columbia Records – Buy
14. Floating Points – Arp3 (Taken from the Shadows EP) – Eglo Records – Buy
Ok well here is the last podcast of 2012… This month sees us cover a lot of ground musically, from the bossa nova rhythms of Antônio Carlos Jobim, to the latest dubstep sounds from Grenier & Midland.
There’s a particular focus on the label Aus, which I highly recommend for it’s excellent range of deep house, techno and dubstep – It’s rare these days to find a label which so regularly delivers, but Aus is definitely one to watch.
This month, I’ve included a buy link next to each track, should you wish to support the artists and purchase the tracks that you like…
Tracklisting 1. Matthew Halsall – Sailing Out To Sea (Taken from the album Fletcher Moss Park) – Godwana Records – Buy
2. KGB Lawyer – Cut Me Into Pieces (Taken from the forthcoming album Songs Of Paranoia & Contentment, release date 01.12.2012) – Goodluckbadluck – Buy 3. Beck – Deadweight (Single) – Geffen Records –Buy
4. Antônio Carlos Jobim – Brazil (Taken from the album Stoneflower) – Legacy Records – Buy
5. Antônio Carlos Jobim – Insensatez (How Insensitive) (Taken from the album The Composer Of Desafinado Plays) – Verve Records – Buy
6. Alexey Arkhipovskiy – Doroga domoi (Cantoma Remix) – Ketama Records – Buy
7. Grenier – Say Something – Photek Productions – Buy
8. Midland – Placement (Lone Remix) – Aus – Buy
9. Lee Jones – Moment (George Fitzgerald Remix) – Aus – Buy
10. George Fitzgerald – Lights Out (Taken from the Child EP) – Aus – Buy
11. Brian Eno – Lesser Heaven (Taken from the album Small Craft On A Milk Sea)- Warp – Buy
12. Helios – In Everything Was Given (Taken from the album Moiety) – Free Download
13. En – Elysia (Taken from the album Already Gone) – Students Of Decay – Buy
14. Twin Shadow – Slow (Taken from the album Forget) – 4AD – Buy
15. Mint Julep – To The Sea (Taken from the album Save Your Season) – Village Green – Buy
16. Blouse – Into Black – Captured Tracks – Buy
September’s edition of the sessions podcast featured a new track by KGB Lawyer, titled Old Berlin…
KGB Lawyer is a new project from singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Christopher Matule, the mastermind behind numerous music projects, including Badmammal, The Gimps, and Suicider.
The inspiration for Songs of Paranoia and Contentmentcomes directly from the cold-war era; a time of extreme paranoia; this theme gives the album and fun and humerous edge, with tracks like Cut Me Into Pieces, which actually has an almost lounge like quality, whilst the lyrics, which explain that they wanna lock me up for twelve years / cut me into pieces, would make anyone nervous!
Don’t Run Away, with it’s slap bass and funky guitar, is almost perfect love-making music, in which the narrator unnerving tells his lady to stop trying to run away !!
The closing track, Old Berlin, which originally started life as a song from Chris’ side project The Gimps, is like a vintage David Bowie track that never was, with an excellent piano & guitar melody that sticks in your mind, accompanied by nice, subtle horns.
Overall, this is an engaging, and impressive debut album from KGB Lawyer.
You can check out a preview of the entire album, below:
This month, I’ve received some exciting new music from Karen Cinema, and an exclusive track from KGB Lawyer, who’s new album will be released later this year.
This month’s episode also includes a couple of tracks released exclusively for Record Store Day 2012, from Foster The People, and Sigur Ros, which I picked up at Acorn Music in Yeovil, where I used to buy all of my excellent vinyl.
It’s also worth mentioning that this podcast contains tracks from Helios‘ new album Moeity, which he very kindly gave away for free. I highly recommend checking it out, here.
1. Peter Broderick – Human Eyeballs On Toast
2. Twin Shadow – Run My Heart
3. The Drums – Money
4. Karen Cinema – Flicker
5. Helios – Your Zenith / Camera Obscura – You Told A Lie (Overdubs)
6. Camera Obscura – Away With Murder
7. Helios – Nature People
8. Robin Guthrie & Harold Budd – How Close Your Soul
9. Karen Cinema – Fallen So Far
10. Peter Broderick – Guilt’s Tune
11. Bibio – Mr & Mrs Compost
12. Luke Vibert – Sharp A2
13. Sigur Ros – Ekki Mukk
14. M83 – You, Appearing
15. KGB Lawyer – Old Berlin
16. Foster The People – Ruby
Following on from my recent write up of the Karen Cinema‘s Debut album Into The Moon, you can now download a sublime reworking of the track It’s a Cruel World from the Karen Cinema via this link: http://bit.ly/freeKCtrack
Into The Moon is the debut album by London based singer-songwriter Karen Cinema. This is an album swamped in atmosphere and tension, amidst lush melodies and textures, topped off by Karen’s excellent vocal harmonies.
The opening song Drifting sounds like a modern-day Cocteau Twins piece, with Karen’s complex vocal arrangements complimented by luscious guitars, saxophone and subtle synthesizers drenched in bucket-loads of shimmering reverb.
The song Flicker is a master-class in film-score atmospherics; with it’s mournful pads, double bass, piano, and some outstanding saxophone playing, it immediately calls to mind the scores of Thomas Newman or even Angelo Badalamenti; The choice of synthesizers are reminiscent of the closing chapters of Photek’s ground-breaking Solaris album.
The song Fallen So Far sounds like it could have come from a Fleetwood Mac album, with it’s driving bassline and beautiful, lilting guitar riffs, which blend effortlessly with Karen’s unusual and enchanting vocal harmonies.
Later tracks such as the more poppy and upbeat It’s a Cruel World reflect the artist’s diverse range of influences, and gives the album itself a nice lift from it’s more sombre moments.
The album Into The Moon by Karen Cinema was released on 25th June 2012, and is available to buy via itunes and most other online music retailers.
1. Young Holt Unlimited – Light My Fire
2. Money Mark – Crowns
3. Beastie Boys – Song For Junior
4. Metronomy – Everything Goes My Way
5. Kathleen Edwards – Change The Sheets
6. The Drums – Days
7. M83 – Midnight City
8. Ulrich Schnauss & Mark Peters – Balcony Sunset
9. The Cure – Sinking
10. Keith Jarrett – Rio Part XI
11. DJ Krush – Jugoya
12. Helios – Nothing It Can
13. En – Elysia
14. Chairlift – I Belong In Your Arms
15. Mint Julep – Why Don’t We
1. SCB – Loss
2. Lana Del Rey – Videogames (Joy Orbison Remix)
3. Midland – Through Motion
4. Arkist – Rendezvous
5. George Fitzgerald – Reset
6. Synkro – Viewpoint
7. SBTRKT – Hold On
8. Little Dragon – Twice
9. Beach Boys – Surf’s Up (Instrumental Overdub)
10. Emerson, Lake & Palmer – From The Beginning
11. Bon Ivor – Lisbon, OH
12. Metronomy – We Broke Free
13. Oak – Bedroom Community
14. Floating Points – Sais
15. SBTRKT – Pharoahs
16. Barry Manilow – Could It Be Magic
17. The Greg Foat Group – Dark Is The Sun Part 3 (Reprise)
As another year passes, once more I compile my ten musical highlights of the year…For previous lists, see 2009 and 2010‘s respective selections…
10. SCB – Loss – Aus (2011)
House music is always something I’ve dipped in & out of – certainly in the last couple of years I’ve been back into it as a couple of mates are also really into it. However, it’s a massively over-crowded genre, and finding anything that you can really call fresh is rare…
It often takes an outsider to come in and flip the script, and dubstep’s very own Scuba (under the pseudonym SCB) executes this with precision in his track Loss for the Aus label, who seem to have done the unthinkable, and released dubstep, house & techno all on the same label without alienating anyone – quite a feat in today’s highly segregated electronic music scene.
I think what appeals to me the most about this record, is that it sounds like the kind of thing that would have influenced early drum & bass….The melodies, pads & vocal patterns are straight out of something you would have heard on Good Looking Records in the 90s….
It’s always a great joy to randomly stumble across a piece of music which has the potential to become an all-time-favourite record – for me, Loss ticks all the right boxes; This is without the doubt the best house/techno track I’ve uncovered this year bar none.
Audio: “Loss” by SCB, from the single “Loss/FutureUnknown”
9. The Greg Foat Group – Dark Is The Sun – Jazzman (2011)
Unlike most people I know, I like a bit of jazz, now & again. I especially like a good pianist, and Greg Foat is a good pianist, which, I think, is why I find this album so appealing. It’s a very retro-sounding album – at times it’s like classic Serge Gainsbourg or Air during their Moon Safari hey-day.
I especially like the four-part title-track, which sees essentially the same song being interpreted across a variety of tempos, with a variety of instruments, my favourite take being part three, which uses an accordian and a bit of whisting to great effect. Part four goes for some serious harpsichord, which I don’t think I’ve heard played with such gusto since UFO’s classic collaboration with Dee Dee Bridgewater, “Friends”.
Audio: “Black Is The Sun Part 3 (reprise)” by The Greg Foat Group, from the album “Dark Is The Sun”
8. London Elektricity – Yikes! – Hospital Records (2011)
It’s been a patchy year for drum & bass, and I have to say that there’s been very little that I have really connected with…. However, I’m glad I gave the LE album a chance, because it totally exceeded my expectations….
Historically, drum & bass albums have always left me a little cold, because they rarely seem to hang together well as an actual album. Often, they’ll stray into some other genre like deep house or some sort of downtempo thing halfway through – I always find this really grating in a drum & bass album – people who buy these albums want drum & bass – if they wanted deep house they’d buy an album written by someone who writes deep house. If it’s not the genre hopping, then it’s just that the album sounds a collection of singles – not an album.
Thankfully, LE seems to know something about writing an album, and he executes the task with an unprecedented level of skill & precision – working closely with vocalist Elsa Esmerelda, who featured on the excellent Just One Second – they seem to have managed to craft actual songs, something which you rarely hear in drum & bass.
Audio: “Meteorites” by London Elektricity, from the album “Yikes”
2011 saw the welcome return of drum & bass legend Photek aka Rupert Parkes, after a 5 year hiatus. It’s been ten years since his breath-taking techno album Solaris was released, and news that he was going to return with new material this year was both exciting and terrifying. Could he ever live up to his previous material, which is pretty much universally loved by the electronic music community?
Benji B was the man to put us out of our misery when he revealed 101, Photek’s first foray into electronic music in some time, and thankfully it didn’t dissapoint.
The quality of the new material was confirmed a week later, when This City, an experimental reverse-vocal led deep house track confirmed everything we had hoped – that Photek was alive & well, and still making the most cutting edge electronic music imaginable.
As someone who historically has listened to a lot of electronic music, anything as musically rich as Bon Iver is always going to be a mind blowing revelation.These ten tracks, all seemingly named after places such as Perth, Minnesota, and Lisbon, are rich in melody and texture.The additional horns & sax are a subtle part of the music, without turning into cheesy Baker Street style solos.
This is the kind of album that makes you question why you write music, which I think is always a sign of a very high quality product.
I don’t think if you told me two years ago, that a dubstep album would be appearing in my 2011 best of list, I would have believed you….However, here we are, and here it is.
The debut album by Sbtrkt moves dubstep into another level; He’s made the smart move, in employing some truly talented vocalists; this elevates the album’s appeal far beyond your average dubstep album, without sounding tacky or compromised….Hold On is probably my favourite track of the year, with it’s excellent XX-esque xylophone melody and soulful vocals courtesy of Sampha.
This album is yet another example of how artists who are making really interesting music are very unfortunately being labelled as dubstep, alongside all those wobble-fest Ministry Of Sound sawtooth bassline dubstep compilations that essentially no-one likes….this is so much better than that – it’s soulful, it’s poppy in places, and most importantly, it hangs together well as an album, undoubtedly helped by the inclusion of some excellent vocal contributions from the aforementioned Sampha, Jessie Ware, and the rapidly growing Swedish group Little Dragon.
The track Pharoahs is pretty much a pop hit that never was, with all the elements of a classic late-90s 2-step garage track, and excellent vocals from guest vocalist Roses Gabor.
4. Foster The People – Torches – Sony Music (2011)
It’s fair to say that, musically speaking, it’s not often that I back a winning horse, so it’s been delightful to hear a song that I genuinely liked, Pumped Up Kicks, get a serious amount of airplay on both television & radio.
Torches is a pretty safe, feel good indie-pop album with some great singles. It’s also not often that I listen to music that isn’t dreadfully dreary and miserable, so Torches really has been a revelation for me, as it’s totally the opposite to what I would normally listen to. It’s really very cheerful AND I don’t hate it – an interesting combination.
3. Metronomy – The English Riviera – Because Music (2011)
The English Riviera is the third album from this Devon-based band. Sometimes in a band, you don’t really notice the bass player particularly, but with this band, you do, because he (Gbenga Adelekan) appears to be immensely talented, and his basslines really stand out in the tracks, particularly in the very funky single The Bay.
The album is broad and covers a range of styles; I also like the fact that vocal duties on the track Everything Goes My Way are shared between Joseph Mount & a guest vocalist Roxanne Clifford.
I can imagine that the album’s mix of pretty wacky 80s synths and funky basslines has probably divided critics, but I welcome this kind of album because it stands out in a sea of ultra-bland guitar bands that churn out dull landfill year-after-year.
When I first listened to this album in full, on a train, coming back from London, I remember thinking that the audio file was corrupt, and that, as a result, it was unlistenable.
After a repeat playing, it dawned on me that the stuttering vocals, performed by the band’s newest member, James Buttery, were in fact processed to sound that way.
Once you’ve adjusted to this technique, it’s the broad range of styles on display here that make this album so fascinating, from the electro-pop of the first single Aidy’s Girl’s a Computer, to the more sombre Cure-esque Deadness, right through to the title track North, which has a hint of Portishead’s excellent Machine Gun track.
A couple of years ago, I was indecisive about buying the third Bibio album Vignetting The Compost, a collection of acoustic guitar instrumentals which sound like they’ve been recorded from a cassette that’s been found buried under the compost in someone’s back garden (I did eventually track down this album and it’s brilliant).
Since this time, he’s made three more albums, and this is the latest – and his third for Warp Records – It’s clear that his sound has vastly developed since I last checked him out.
Mind Bokeh has an incredible dream-like quality about it, it’s colourful, dusty, dirty and magical in the way that it sounds. The opening track, Excuses has a sombre, vocoded vocal over a bossa nova rhythm, and the most sombre guitar melodies ever committed to a sound recording. It’s an absolutely dazzling opener to what emerges to be a mind-bogglingly incredible album.
Light Seep falls somewhere between the funkiest prince track you’ve never heard, and Badly Drawn Boy‘s finest wah-wah guitar playing.
Take Off Your Shirt totally flips the script, turning into some kind of 80s rock anthem, with a cowbell rhythm that is reminicent of classic Free material.
K is For Kelson sounds like a piece written specifically for an animated Sesame Street sequence (and I mean this as a compliment) – it’s incredibly upbeat, and has an excellent Stevie Wonder-esque Synth workout.
Even skipping through the tracks now has reminded me just how many times this year I’ve put this on and listened to it from start to finish. It’s a very entertaining and musically-rich album that I think I will be revisiting for many years to come
Last month saw the release of the first single of 2011 from Blu Mar Ten, which featured the tracks Five Summers, and Still The One, a collaboration with Inside Info.
These tracks are taken from their forthcoming album, Love Is The Devil, the follow up to 2009’s excellent Natural History.
The next single is going to be Problem Child /Sweet Little Supernova, which features the vocals of Rochelle Parker, who also featured on the massive Nobody Here.
The Sessions Podcast 