Review: DJ Harvey Presents Locussolus / Locussolus

I woke up far too early so I thought I’d try and get through this growing pile of releases that I promised to review. As I’ve said I’m not a journalist so I won’t try to be this Harvey album has had the whole – what is it called??? nu-disco? balearic? – let’s settle for disco at this hour… Anyway, it’s had the whole disco crew with money in hand. The 12’s released to date have been ‘Gunship’/’Little Boots’, ‘Tan Sedan’/’Throwdown’ and ‘I Want It’/’Next To You’.

The CD has the following tracklisting according to the press release:

1. Gunship
2. Little Boots
3. Gunship (Andrew Weatherall Remix)
4. I Want It
5. Throwdown
6. Bloodbath
7. Tan Sedan
8. Next To You
9. I Want It (Lindstrøm & Prins Thomas Remix)
10. Throwdown (Harvey’s Dub)
11. Little Boots (An Emperor Machine Special Edit Version)

So in essence this is a collection of the 12’s with additional versions from the massively good Emperor Machine (their version of ‘Little Boots’ being the perfect track to go out on), Weatherall, Harvey himself, and a new track in the form of ‘Bloodbath’ which I don’t think has been out before. I have to hold my hands up here and say I might have that massively wrong as it’s early but I think I’m right. Anyway, ‘Bloodbath’ is good. It’s a slow burner with a dubbed out guitar riff and fat synths that rolls along. Think soundtrack to a good f&cked up psyche movie. One of my favourite versions on the album is Harvey’s own dub of ‘Throwdown’. He drops the vocal and twists it all up dubbing it out and playing with the drums. According to the press release there will also be a hand stamped, Harvey designed white label (how do you design a white label?) of the alternate vocal Weatherall Remix of ‘Thickums’ and ‘Bloodbath’.

What can I say, you all know what this is all about. He takes disco in its various forms, sends it sideways through the f&ck machine and brings it our the other side via an Echoplex. And it works. It’s a good album. And one I hope that will take this music as a sound out to a wider audience as it got legs. I could imagine it sitting happily on Ze if it was still going which is high praise.

DJ Harvey Presents Locussolus / Locussolus is released on 13th June on International Feel.

[Apiento]

Review: The Revenge / Reekin’ Structions

Quick review of the new Revenge record which I said I’d review weeks ago (sorry Melissa!). I like the Revenge, also known as Graeme Clark, as he takes it out there in a bit more of a ‘Greg Wilson music for the masses’ kind of way. You know… There is no snobbery – just take it to the dancefloor and lets have some fun.

This is released on Dave Lee’s Z Records, someone I also massively admire for his ability to take it to the masses when deep down you know he’d rather be sat at home playing super rare disco records with his mates making bad jokes. Anyway, here’s the tracklisting as my review below won’t help you much with that and if you want an album that everyone can have fun too then get this.

Mid-Air: Ease Out (Revenge Edit)
Johnny Adams: Feel The Beat (Revenge Edit)
Sargeant & Malone: Love Message (Revenge Edit)
Velvet Hammer: Party Down (Revenge Edit)
The Joneses: Summer Groove (Revenge Edit)
Chapter Three: Smurk Trek (Revenge Edit)
Electric Smoke: Freak It Out (Revenge Edit)
Letta Mbulu: Kilimajiro (Revenge Edit)
Vance & Suzanne: I Can’t Get Along Without You (Revenge Edit)
Nel Oliver: Dream On (Revenge Edit)

Reekin’ Structions is in the shops now (I think).

[Apiento]

Review: Nicolas Jaar – Space Is Only Noise

I love a good electronic album and ‘Space Is Only Noise’ is quite a grower. Alongside the recent Isolee album it hasn’t left the CD player and stands up to the ‘lets play it all the time at work and see if people love it or hate it’ test. It gets love and questions on what it is. So it’s slow, glitchy – well you can see from the scale below what it’s made up of.

I like it a lot and can see it being liked for a long time. If I rated things out of ten I’d give it a really good seven or an eight. It’s a great piece of work. I’d love to see what he was capable of if he sat on it for a bit and refined his output. Jaar is clearly a very very talented producer who isn’t afraid to bend the rules. Highly recommended.

I’m not sure when this is out as I lost the press release but it’s very soon if not in the shops as we speak.

[Apiento]

Review: John Stammers – John Stammers (Wonderful Sound)

I have had this one for a few weeks now so apologies to the chaps at Wonderful Sound (the label) for not getting round to posting this until now. I am really really fond of this album. It has been a hectic few weeks (moving job etc) so when I finally got round to putting it on, well, it hasn’t been off. Stammers reminds me of a northern Nick Drake in style. A gentle voice and lovely acoustic guitars only added to with other instrumentation where need be. One of my favourite moments in the album comes late on with ‘Baby Dea’ as soft brushed drums push the track along. It sort of feels like some of Michael Head’s work with The Strands. It’s a lovely album for mellow Sundays and evenings with friends and fine wine. You can find out more and buy it here. It’s out now.

(Note: The original idea of the scale below was to give you a very quick idea of how the album sounds so please don’t read it as being scales or scores of 0 – 10 it’s just there to show you that there are no glitchy AFX noises etc. Word.)

[Apiento]

New Release: James Blake ‘James Blake’

I like James Blake. I guess I’ve always been into a spread of music but when ‘CMYK’ came out R&S it sounded new and fresh. I know it’s a long way away from what we normally cover but hey it would be boring if we wrote about the same stuff all the time. So James Blake went from this twisted bass-heavy garage-business to appearing with a lovely slow beat based number called ‘Limit To Your Love’ with him showing his voice. It was a nice surprise. Anyway, I was at my mate Emma Warren’s house the other day (check her blog if you’ve not read it) and she had the new album.

Emma is a long-time journalist who wrote for Jockey Slut from the early days and then The Face and other influential types of things. Anyway, point is she got lost in a world of dubwise stuff a while back and hasn’t been out of it since. Oh and she’s got a show on NME radio that we mentioned before that runs form pure soul to the best in house with nigh on 100,000 listeners which is pretty tidy. So, she posted a review on her site which I’ve ripped wholesale here. Not to blow too much smoke, but she could write a review far better than I ever could so here you go.

My friend came round yesterday while I was playing James Blake’s debut album through the speakers in my front room. “It’s Erykah Badu with white noise,” he said, turning it up.

I’d been looking for the right R&B reference when I posted about this album yesterday but I couldn’t quite find the right one. It wasn’t quite D’Angelo and it wasn’t Curtis Mayfield, but there was definitely a specific R&B influence underneath the 11 songs on the self-titled release. And Badu’s the right reference: Blake’s voice sits over rim shots and slowed down snares on the opening track ‘Unluck’ in a way that reminds me of ‘Rimshot‘. It’s a powerful opening shot, and one that sets the scene beautifully for the rest of the record.

“Wilhelm’s Scream’ is the second single, and it’s more soulful and straightforward than ‘Limit To Your Love’, although straightforward, Blake-style, still means mournful organs hanging halfway on the horizon and submarine-depth bass implosions over circular lyrics that fall in and out of the music, which by the end of the track sounds almost like a gospel house record – albeit in about five million little pieces.

James Blake ‘James Blake’ is a properly good album. It’s strong, cohesive, and powerful. You still want more when you get to the end, and it stands up to repeated listening. I reckon that most of my music friends will like it (though there’ll always be people who either like to hate on whatever’s hot or who who find Blake’s style a touch too emo). But I think my other friends, who work normal jobs and hang out at home with their families, will like it too. But that’s because Blake has brought genuinely interesting, soulful material into his pop songs. Take ‘I Never Learnt To Share’ with it’s repeated lyric ‘My brother and my sister don’t talk to me/ But I don’t blame them’. It’s totally odd and definitely shouldn’t work (one lyric repeated ad infinitum, over restrained CMYK beats isn’t the usual recipe for a memorable pop song) but it does. And that’s one of the marks of actual genius as executed by the likes of Aphex Twin or OutKast; doing things that shouldn’t work… and making them sound brilliant.

The middle section of the album is the Bon Iver patch. I can imagine Justin Vernon listening to consecutive tracks Lindesfarne I and II and going ‘yes! that’s exactly what I meant!’. And it’s the range of this record that makes it so appealing. After riffing on Bon Iver’s themes, we get Blake and his piano, with a short, sweet folk song ‘Give Me My Month’ that Crosby, Stills and Nash would have been perfectly happy with. It sits next to ‘To Care (Like You)’ which you could easily imagine hearing at FWD>>, despite the fact that it’s gospel-tinged, falsetto R&B-goes-techno at minus eight. The album is packed with compressed silences, the kind of sonic drop-out that few people would attempt (there’s at least seven seconds of silence at one point in ‘Limit To Your Love’), and which I know makes radio engineers panic because that silence sounds a hell of a lot like dead air. John Cage would be extremely proud.

Any downsides? None that hit me straight away. It’s cool and clever, emotional not emo and packed full of sophisticated sideways soul and deconstructed songs that still feel bizarrely memorable. It’s not as in your face as ‘CMYK’ and it’s more substantial than the barely-there threads of ‘Klavierwerke’ EP. I guess the only downside is that you’ll eventually be sick of hearing it everywhere, but only in the way that Portishead or Massive Attack were momentarily diminished by being so heavily overplayed. And that’s hardly a bad thing. One lovely record.

Emma Warren’s blog can be found here and the radio shows here.

[Emma Warren/Apiento]

New Album: The Orb & Youth Present Impossible Oddities

The early 90s seem to be making a bit of a return at the moment; Primal Scream are playing Screamadelica live again (and are on the Cornflakes ad (you always had the feeling Gillespie was fake)), some of that lovely deep house from then is sounding great, loafers are back, and The Orb and Youth are releasing ‘Impossible Oddities – The Story Of WAU! Mr Modo’. Alright that doesn’t join up quite as it should (excuse – I have flu), but the point is stuff from then is starting to sound and look good again. I guess it always happens across generations. Perhaps its nostalgia, perhaps the fact that some of it was flipping great.

Back then I was working for Guerilla Records. I lost a load of records one day when out and about so called Wau! Mr Modo to see if they could send me another copy of The Orb’s ‘A Huge Ever Growing Pulsating Brain…’ as I couldn’t find the one I’d lost. The next day a whole box of 12’s turned up via courier full of white labels and versions I’d never seen before. Tons of records. That care and ‘being kind where you can’ attitude was something that I tried to take on as it was a great thing to be on the receiving end of. Point is, I liked WAU! Mr Modo for life. So buy this album. You need it.

Also on top of that, The Orb soundtracked our lives (or quite a large part of it) for sometime there. It was perfect to get stoned to and perfect for the car on the way home from the club. It was a soundtrack we could all agree on. Around the early 90s The Orb did a few all nighters at the Brixton Academy which coincided with our lot really getting into acid – a good fit. They had the sound wired all around so speeches would come from the back left, bass from the right and generally it all went down as you’d hope it would when feeling slightly out of it. In the next few years they did a benefit for the miners in Sheffield (where the label was based) with Primal Scream which we traveled to and popped in to say hello to Adam Modo (the other part of the label alongside Youth and Alex Patterson). All I remember through the haze is that he was a big bloke and the gig was great.

So the music itself… They always knew what they were doing as a label. It was always pretty out there, still is I guess, and even the pop moments like Zoe’s ‘Sunshine On A Rainy Day’ started off being pretty cool before going off to hit the charts. Then you had the early Orb releases which are getting better and better with age – a UK take on the German cosmic scene for the acid house generation. The compilation brings various releases together with the first track on the album being the demo of ‘Little Fluffy Clouds’. It sounds more like a 90s cut and paste record in this version. There’s lots of early mid-tempo house tracks (piano riff and weird noises) that sound good and Sun Electric’s underground sleeper ‘O’Locco’ appears. Shame there isn’t more actual Orb recordings but I guess Big Life own the rights to it and something happened along the way. To round-up, as a look at the eclecticism that was around before the likes of Mo’ Wax took it jazz this is a good place to start. Space is the place and all that…

‘The Orb and Youth Present Impossible Opportunities: from underground to overground: the story of WAU! Mr Modo’ is out soon on Year Zero. CD1 and 2 come unmixed with the the third being an Orb mix.

[Apiento]

Review: Coati Mundi – Dancing For The Cabana Code In The Land Of Boo-Hoo

I am guessing if you are reading this you know who Coati Mundi, a.k.a Andy Hernandez, is. Not only the comedy sidekick to the great Kid Creole but also a Latin disco star in his own right with records of the calibre of his cult-classic ‘Que Pasa/Me No Pop I’ for ZE Records. For a man three decades into his career he’s done totally the right thing and hooked up with NYC’s Rong Music crew who knew how to have fun with him in the current setting.

The album has been produced by E-Love with additional bits and pieces by Lee Douglas (who has recently been creating some great music as well as the above sleeve) and ranges from slow rolling Latin grooves through to clean electronic disco beats all topped with Mundi’s tales of life on top. It’s an entertaining ride as an album and it sounds like it was a good time in the studio. It’s also good to see a real character within those disco grooves. Check it.

Dancing For The Cabana Code In The Land Of Boo-Hoo is released on Rong Music on October 14th

Coati Mundi At Rong Music Online

[Apiento]

Review: Twin Sister – Vampires With Dreaming Kids / Color My Life

I invented the Test Pressing review scale to avoid writing about albums, but if I had to describe this one it would be as a very mellow dreamy indie sound with a bit of life in places – soft American male and female voices playing around the layers of sound. This is a 2 CD set combining their first two EPs. If you liked that melodic indie indie sound from days gone by then take a listen to Twin Sister as there’s a couple of really lovely moments here.

Twin Sister Vampires With Dreaming Kids / Color My Life is out now (I think!)

[Apiento]

Tokyo Weekender: A Song For Guy – DJ Harvey at Eleven

All the smart people said they were going late.

I’d been having conversations with people all week about the best time to go to see Harvey at Eleven. The last gig of his current Japanese tour. The queues would be horrendous at 10. It would be rammed until all the “non-music” club kids went home at 4. Harvey would save the most interesting music until the end (which was rumoured to be somewhere between 9 and 12 AM). All the smart people were going to bed Saturday night and then getting the first train in on Sunday morning. I even got a call from The Lowrider while I was taking tea with the original Disco Child in Shimokitazawa, questioning me on my plans. Informing me of DJ schedules (Garth was on til 2). “So what time you going then?” The Lowrider, he wasn’t going at all.

I was going early. I figured if the evening was gonna move from the edgy and uncomfortable to the ecstatic then I was along for the whole ride. Ease and convenience have never brought me anything of lasting value.

Waiting in Bar Jam at 10PM sharp with Sir Bruce. Wondering where the fuck everyone else is. Watches were supposed to have been synchronized. Continually having to go back upstairs to pick up reception and apologetic missed calls regarding re-visited ETAs. Joking, that with everyone being smart, the queues would be at 4AM and not 10PM. Obviously, getting a bit anxious to leave.

11:35 outside Eleven and there’s 10 of us standing there. Basking smugly in the wisdom of our decision I walk through the doors of the club to greet a queue of about 100 on the stairs. Not so bad.

1AM and the club is packed to what must be beyond capacity. Garth’s set is being pumped upstairs and it’s classic content causing some discussion in some quarters (Tamiko Jones?). Once we’ve actually moved downstairs though Garth plays an edit of an 80s track and you can feel the energy in the room step up a level. Me and Spacey compete to try to work out what it is. It’s Japan.

5 to 2 Harvey appears. No one can move. Even enthusiastic head-nodding is likely to butt your neighbour. 2AM and the club fills with the sound of monkeys chanting, then the voice of a very stoned god attempts to tutor the crowd on the path to enlightenment and unity. In English. Then it’s a re-edit of the Black Cock edit of The Dells. At the “No Way Back” chorus the volume is dropped but there is only a muffled response and I wonder if it might be a bit ambitious even for Harvey to attempt a sing-a-long on his first tune proper. I wonder if it’s all gonna go pear-shaped. Three records in 30 minutes, unable to do more than a vague bounce, I know I need more drink.

On my way across the dancefloor to the bar a young Japanese guy bumps into me, takes the slice of lemon out of his mouth, puts it in what’s left of my existing drink, and then stares at me. I don’t feel particularly threatened but I am surprised. Last time I was here, around a year ago, when the Idjuts played the closing week of Yellow, I could never have imagined this happening.

The crowd is younger tonight. My experiences have made me think that if I’m having a splendid time it is only natural for me to turn round and either hug or vigorously shake the hand of the complete stranger next to me. The people here tonight aren’t old or stupid enough to have such behaviour within their frame of reference. From their point of view, I guess I might not be too happy about an old bloke I’d never seen before currently suffering from a rather unpleasant eye-infection and who can barely string a (Japanese) sentence together, beam at me and attempt to perform some alien introduction. The crowd are younger and I ain’t getting any. Maybe I shouldn’t have cut my hair.

Casualties line the entire run of the narrow stairs as I make a move back to the lounge. Heads hung in their laps. In the lounge you still can’t move. And still with only nostalgia as my guide I’m reminded of that space that used to be at the back of the Soho Theatre. A real buzz about the place. Endless excited conversations. A who’s who of Tokyo`s surprisingly small House scene.

The red-head that makes geishas look tanned says “if he played the Birdy Song, then everyone’d still go nuts”, but that’s not true. The only people in those Stussy tour t-shirts are staff. What is true is that there is an awful lot of love for the man. And I think that’s purely because people genuinely feel that they get that love back. I don’t think anybody has come to hear the most amazing DJ set of their lives. They are here to show support for someone they consider a friend. It’s a welcome back lets have a party, not an arms folded waiting blow me away.

5AM and I’ve got to give downstairs another shot. Macho’s cover of The Spencer Davis Group gets chopped and teased for at least 20 minutes. This time the sing-a-long trick works and when the volume is dropped the whole of the dancefloor screams “I’m a man, yes I am, and I can’t help but love you so”. All I can see is Harvey’s smile. All teeth. Tuesday morning and I’m still stuck singing this. And humming the Dells.

From the camp euphoria of Macho the room is dropped immediately into dubbed out ambience. Sounds like Basic Channel to me. A more up-to-date guess might be Intrusion. It sounds huge. Immense. There’s apparently been a lot of on-line discussion, none of which I’ve read, on how Eleven’s sound system compares to the original Yellow one, which was unfortunately fragmented across lucky clubs and bars when Yellow was forced to close. The Yellow system having been based on that of the Paradise Garage. I can’t make any comparisons, but if you do go to Eleven, make sure you get over to the right-hand side of the dancefloor. The sound is about 100x better over there.

Thirteen odd minutes of Jimi Hendrix’s ‘1983 A Merman I Should Turn To Be’ through deep delay and I seem to have drunk myself sober. The beautiful woman my imagination had my good eye on is in the arms of one of my best friends. I have to find and check out of my hotel in three hours. I figure it’s time to go.

On my way out I bump into Nick The Record on his way in.

The queue still coming down the stairs.

The smart people, they never made it.

Download
Harvey’s re-edit of Macho ‘I’m A Man’ (hacked from a mix)

[Dr Rob]

Review: Various Artists – Elektronische Musik

Tim Hayter takes a look at the new Soul Jazz ‘cosmiche’ compilation.

Oddly, there has never been a definitive Krautrock compilation. This isn’t it, but it’s close. There is some phenomenal music contained herein. Many of the usual suspects – Harmonia, Faust, Can and Neu! – make an appearance. What always amazes me about Soul Jazz comps, though, is that alongside the classic there is always a healthy chunk of stuff you’ve never heard of before. As in: ‘Rambo Zambo’ by Kollektiv, a monster kraut freak-out: classic flutes & bongos material.

If I have a criticism it’s that, in going up to the 80s for track selections, it gets into the synth-based material of people like Conrad Schnizler. All good, except that the sequencing of the CDs veers from wailing guitar madness to cold synths and back again with no discernable pattern.

That said, the quality is top-notch throughout. Well worth checking.

Elektronische Musik – Experimental German Rock And Electronic Music 1972 – 83 is released by Soul Jazz on the 5th of April

[Tim Hayter]

Review: Various – Todd Terje’s Remasters Of The Universe

We like this. Sounded nice in the car on a long journey and as a round-up of Terje’s remixes and re-edits it works. I hope to never hear the cover of Ace of Base in my life again but other than that this is well worth getting. Recommended.

Remasters of the Universe is released on the 24th May 2010 on Permanent Vacation.

[Apiento]

Review: Mock & Toof – Tuning Echoes

I really like this record the more I listen to it. Recommended for those who like their disco with a bit more wobble. Reminds me of the good end of Will To Powers. Get it.

Mock & Toof’s ace ‘Tuning Echoes’ is released 24th May 2010 on Tiny Sticks.

[Apiento]

Review: Various Artists – Down To The Sea & Back: The Continuing Story Of Balearic Beat – Volume One

New style of review for you all. Albums will be marked on how balearic they are (The Alfredo Scale), how kooky they are (The Kate Bush Scale), Psychedelic (Animal Collective), Jazz (Miles Davis), Disco (FK) etc etc. First up we have ‘Down To The Sea & Back’, a new set compiled by Balearic Mike and Kelvin Andrews.

Down To The Sea & Back: The Continuing Story Of Balearic Beat is released on 24th May 2010 on Wonk Music.

[Apiento]

Review: Four Tet – There Is Love In You (Domino)

Quick review on the new Four Tet album, ‘There Is Love In You’ (nice hippie title!) here. There are some fantastic tracks ranging from mellow electronica through to some quite uptempo 4/4 business all very much in the chopped and fx’d mould of music that Kieran Hebden specialises in. My favourite track is the rolling ‘Circling’ which builds, stops, then builds again. Think it could be a grower as an album and another quality release on the Domino label who along with XL are ticking the ‘doing it right’ box at a major label level.

[Apiento]

Review: Coyote ‘Harlyn Bay’

Coyote have been releasing records for a little while now. We got sent their new album ‘Harlyn Bay’ to review so rather than one of us doing it, I thought it would be good to sit down and play it to my eleven year-old Danny to see what he thought. Current bangers for Danny include N-Dubz and ‘Pretender’ by The Foo Fighters.

‘Pacific Breeze’
It’s a good title. (Nods approvingly when track starts). It sounds good but I think by the end of this track I’ll know what the album will sound like. They all seem quite long and it might all be the same thing which I am not so sure I’ll really like. (Nice bass sound comes in). I like that. I like the little sound on the top that sounds like a scratching record thing. I think I would like it more if it was shorter.

‘Wildness’
I think this will sound the same as the other one… (Pad starts) I was right. I’d like to listen to this music when I was sleepy. It’s good.

‘Love Handle’
I don’t like the name. (Has no idea what a love handle is). Definitely more lively than the other ones. It’s got more stuff happening and I like the sounds more. They are more interesting. If it was a computer game it would be Electro Plankton.

‘California’
I think this one will sound energetic. This is confusing. I don’t know what they are saying. It sounds like someone is playing an alien noise through a funny sound system. I like the drums. They are cool and not bombarding the rest of the song.

‘Boat Trip’
This one sounds funny. It’s a bit like a funeral song. It’s the guitar bit. Now it’s more like a song that you would play at the beach on a sunny day. It doesn’t sound like a normal singing voice – it’s been really tampered with.

‘Electric Sunburst’
This sounds like a good title. It should be a bit more energetic and lively. (Track starts). It’s not as lively as the title. I really like the whoooo whoooo (phased noise). Everything on this album is backwards. Like I thought Love Handle would be really slow and it was the most energetic track yet.

‘Rootsy Stew’
This sounds like an animal one. It sounds like it’s on a farm. Sounds like a very deserted bird sanctuary. ‘Rootsy Steeeew’. ‘Rootsy get back here! – Rootsy stew’. It’s like a farmhouse song. (Sings). I like the bongo bits too. I didn’t think this would be a favourite but it’s one of my favourites so far and I didn’t think it would be. See – everything is the opposite.

‘The Beach’
I like the little kiddie speaking at the beginning. All the tracks are a bit too long for me really. Even an old man – really, really old man that never get’s bored of anything – he might get bored of it. I really like this one. This is cool and fun. The end bit was good then.

‘Poyote Sunset’
They basically have one name and they have changed it (Electric Sunburst to Poyote Sunset). I don’t really like this one so much.

‘Live This Life’
I like this one. This one rules. It sounds techno-ey. Overally I would give the album seven out of ten. All the songs are good but they are all a little too long and they do a lot of the same thing. I don’t think I would listen to this album too much but I am an eleven year old kid so what do you expect.

::

So there we go. I think he liked it though I am not sure that sunset sounds are really the key to an eleven year-olds musical heart. For me it was a very pleasant hour of nice bass lines, spot-on drums and some lovely melodies. You can hear the old dub-style basslines of 1990 and other subtle bits of history in the mix of the album. It’s the sound of two men enjoying their music and dreaming of the golden hours.

‘Harlyn Bay’ is released in June on Is It Balearic Recordings.

[Apiento]