Starring
Ayala & Abrao, Immersion, King Creosote, Mike Lindsay and Anna B Savage, X Marks The Pedwalk
New Horse Under Starter's Orders
Nanocluster Vol 2 (EP 1 & 2) : Immersion
Colin Newman, formerly of Wire, finds ways of delivering a manifesto for life through electronic music.
His new Immersions album is released as two EPs. The first is a collaboration with Thor Harris, the second is with Cubzoa. Both are strange and highly accessible at the same time. When you press play on this you’re entering something that feels like the territory of cults and sects.
It’s an odd blend, a world of accessible melody luring you into a kind of didactic dystopia. ‘As Long As’ ticks along nicely, growing to fill the space around it. There’s a baroque electronica feel to it. The trouble is, it strikes an unsettling, worrying tone. Proceed with care to ‘Just Close Your Eyes’. It’s a mix of genuine prettiness and mild dystopia. You might obey the title, but you’re unlike to settle into a relaxed state while doing so.
There’s much to enjoy though. ‘The House of Thor’ is a kind of electronic Penguin Cafe Orchestra, a bouncy tune that’s the sound of a closed community cult enjoying themselves. ‘At The Wizard’s House’ is absorbing, in an attractive way. ‘In Snow’ is calmly and inevitable, relentless like a carefully calibrated machine never missing a beat.
On to EP2, and you’ll find it a softer approach, the sound of a headmaster addressing the sixth form in the perfect confidence that he’s right. Dub underpins ‘Not About Me’, ‘In The Universe’ is bouncy without the threat of the first EP. ‘Other Ways’ is as poppily self help as it gets.
EP2 may be expounding a manifesto or philosophy. That may be the price you pay for the tunes, and I’m prepared to pay it. In the end it’s the echoes of bands such as Belbury Poly and Pye Corner Audio that win me over.
There aren’t many albums that leave you with a vague sense of unease. This is a good one.
Taster Track : Other Ways
The Front Runners
I Des : King Creosote
Wow. This feels like a life’s work in Scottish 21st century folk, written towards the end of life and culminating in a 36 minute drone. It’s immensely powerful, emotional and moving.
It’s hard to know where to start, so I’ll take King Creosote’s own words from ‘Burial Bleak’
“Easily I shall fail thee
No matter how hard I try….
…. I’m thinking that maybe dying’s just not for me
You’ll see how hard I cling to my life”
This is music for a day of reckoning, for holding oneself to account, for trying to make amends long after it’s possible to do so. King Creosote has epitomised the beta male in song for years. We’ve sympathised, smiled and ached with him. There’s a moment though when he has to question if that life is enough, and that’s the moment covered by these songs.
Music about approaching death may seem a bleak subject for an album. It’s true that the songs like ‘It’s Sin That’s Got Its Hold Upon Us’ and ‘Please Come Back I Will listen I Will Behave I Will Toe The Line’ contain failure and despair, but they’re off-set by the youthful chants and frantic pace of ‘Susie Mullen’ and the joyful acceptance in ‘Blue Marbled Elm Trees’ that :
“No, I shan't complain
I had the best time laughing with my girls”
These are songs buoyed by orchestral strings to sound almost heavenly, and I’ve chosen that word carefully. They’re some of the most beautiful, heart wrenching yet life affirming songs you’ll hear. You’ll be brought to the brink, and maybe beyond, of a mix of happy and bitter tears. Being sung in a plaintive Scottish accent - as always - only adds to their impact.
A quick word about the closing 36 minute ‘Drone in B#’. I found the prospect daunting but I found the experience soothing like watching the sea change from the deck of a ferry. You can lose yourself in it. Yes, it’s a drone, but it contains passages of lovely music too.
As I said at the start, this feels like a life’s work in Scottish 21st century folk, written at the end of life and culminating in a 36 minute drone. Think that’s not for you? Think again.
Taster Track : Burial Bleak
The Chasing Pack
O Que Pode Sera : Ayala & Abrao
One is an Italian DJ, the other is a Brazilian singer. Together they make some authentically chilled and atmospheric electronica for both good and worried times.
Anything Italian or Brazilian is going to be a great accompaniment to a burst of English heatwave, and that’s how this album starts. It’s a procession of half a dozen chilled delights summoning up half snoozes on sun loungers with a permanently cold drink within easy reach, and memories of holiday romances floating through your head. ‘Quando Quando’ sums these up while ‘Deusas’ gently grooves by your side. ‘Toda Parte’ muscles up the beat, just a notch. It’s a switch from out and out chill to something a little more energetic. ‘Shining Away’ is a throwback to that glorious period when a field became your club, the sun was always rising with the Beloved, and Jose Padilla bid a continuous adios to Ayer.
This is marked out as an electronic album with genuine warmth. It’s a lovely sound and sometimes that’s the only thing that will do.
That’s how it starts, but there are 13 tracks on this album, not half a dozen. The electronic blues of ‘Lonely and Quiet Places’ comes as an unexpected downer on things and from here on in there’s a sense of mild unease beneath the surface.
Don’t worry. It doesn’t spoil the album, but it does change it. There’s no crisis at the heart of these songs. It’s more a vague prickle that no matter how much you can enjoy the moment, real life is just around the corner. It’s that point where the chilled evening has become a dark night and you’re not entirely sure how to get back to your hotel. Think Groove Armada in the quieter sounds of, say ‘Chicago’.
The transition is handled well. This is a record with a lovely balanced sound. It’s a little more urban and less of a holiday. Throbbing guitars come more to the fore on ‘O Que Pode Sera’ and they work brilliantly against the chilled electronica. Abrao’s vocals and Ayala’s DJ production skills complement each other nicely.
This darker half can’t suppress the good times altogether. Even when singing about hard times in, ‘Struggle’ a mild reggae feel creeps through with its irrepressible reminder of sunshine at its heart.
It’s rare to get an album that takes such a rounded approach to life and leisure. The strength of this album is that reality and escape are balanced so well within it.
Taster Track : Shining Away
Supershapes Volume 1 : Mike Lindsay and Anna B Savage
Interesting. There’s plenty in this collection of possibly improvised pieces to ponder, and even enjoy.
Mike Lindsay was a founder member of acid folk outfit Tunng, a collaborator with Laura Marling in Lump and a producer of some renown for acts that were not seeking commercial success as a first priority. Anna B Savage is a singer songwriter with a sparse blend of guitar and vocals. Together they make repetitive, fragmentary collages of sound and words that is always interesting.
Categorising it is tricky, but you’d have to acknowledge a bit of electronica, a dash of folk and a healthy dollop of woodwind infused jazz. If you want to enjoy this mix you’d do well to heed the advice in ‘Kachumber’ to “let the flavours blend”.
These are pieces that have the same relation to music as a partly constructed building at the point that it first resembles a dwelling. It sounds improvised like street theatre. They take an idea and run with it, tasting the words in their mouths and savouring their sounds as you might seek out the separate flavours in a new dish or wine. ‘Pretender To Surrender’ sounds as close to vocal warm up exercises as it does to a song.
There are some strange obsessions here, cucumbers for one. They make their appearance in ‘Pretender To Surrender’ and spill over into ‘Kachumber’ as part of a recipe set to music but, potentially, with deeper meanings for life. ‘Tables’, one of the best tracks here, is a history based around a table, and seen or heard sometimes from the table’s point of view.
There are consistent factors across all tracks. Irregular metres and skipping beats underpin repetitive, fragmentary, collages (‘Lie Down’). ‘Content’ is the most tuneful, accessible and complete track here and it oozes charm.
And tracks are played with. ‘Two Blues’ merges into ‘It’s All For You’, blurring boundaries with their overlapping lyrics. ’I Was the Thing’ completes the loop of the album by re-introducing the refrain of opening track ‘Lie Down’.
It’s a clever and perpetually interesting record, but it will take some determination on your part to get the most from it.
Taster Track : Table
Superstition : X Marks The Pedwalk
Here’s an enjoyable synth pop album that belies X Marks The Pedwalk’s industrial past and avoids the trap of falling into synth pomp along the way.
I gulped when I saw the band’s past in industrial rock. I quailed when I saw their legacy so far included albums with titles such as ‘Abbatoir’, ‘Human Desolation’ and ‘The Killing Had Begun’. I closed my eyes and tried to block out images of nine inch nails being driven into drum kits with sledgehammers.
I should have remembered that just as you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, neither should you judge a performer by their past. I sense that the band are proud of that, but not ashamed to make synth pop that sidesteps the harsh, abrasive sounds of before.
It’s not a complete break. These songs retain the same mechanistic nature, relying on a steady and consistent pulse to drive the songs. The influences go back to Depeche Mode at the time of ‘Violator’, to Ultravox under the guidance of John Foxx and to a Gary Numan that has woken up in a good, calm mood
Perhaps the biggest surprise comes from songs such as ‘No More Lies’ with lines like:
“I’m gonna cry for you. I’m gonna cry for us.”
Human emotions amid machine music? Whatever next? It’s the album’s saving grace.
If there’s a weakness it’s that the songs have such an even, consistent tone that, after the first two or three songs, there are no real surprises in store. They’re by no means the only band you could level that accusation at, and it’s undeniable that they’ve made a strong album with great melody lines in the dual vocals.
X may mark the pedwalk, but it also hits the spot.
Taster Track : Die With Me
Playlists
As ever this week's Taster Track playlists can be accessed at https://open.spotify.com/playlist/7cSveL7NpVp1xgrKxPe4av?si=SkFlSnvySeuYFpgG0WJFmA or via the Spotify link on the Home Page.
The link to the Youtube playlist is https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwV-OogHy7Eh_sy55y6i18Qj7w_Z3CQft
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