deep Diving for oysters and Pearls

Starring

Bogdan Raczynski, Bullion, Green-House, The High Llamas, Immersion and SUSS, Office Culture, Primal Scream, The Silver Abduction

The Front Runners

You’re Only Young Once, But You Can Be Stupid Forever : Bogdan Raczynski

I liked this odd compendium of electronic half pieces that’s light without being lightweight, fast paced without suggesting it will be here today and gone tomorrow.

Raczynski is a modern day musician. He’s built a background in video and computer games music. He also claims an association and, by extension, an affinity with Aphes Twin. Both those bio points make sense in the context of this album.

There are 18 tracks here, but with a total running time of just 35 minutes. Tracks do not outstay their welcome. They flash by, sometimes before you’ve had the chance to properly appreciate them fully.

Inevitably, some of them sound and feel like snippets and fragments. Some feel like leftover ideas he didn’t want to throw away. They’re, perhaps, clippings from the video suite floor, digital recycling after a housekeeping clearance. Where they come from isn’t important. Beautiful clothes can be made out of remnants, and repurposing material. For Raczynski, there’s the joy of rediscovering something almost forgotten. For us, this brings the pleasure of sampling his style or flitting through an introductory mixtape and finding a portal to his musical imagination.

Upfront, ‘gearee’ and ‘newdiv’ reassure you that you can expect proper tunes from this collection. The slow, rhythmic, heavy beats of ‘bangsaft’ snag your attention. They’re not just percussive, they pulsate like an overworked heartbeat. The sounds and textures carry this album, Sometimes they turn eerie, as on ‘bowgh’, the sound of ro-bots taking over. Elsewhere, as on ‘deweyedair’ they’re jaunty and smiling.

This is an album that quickly builds anticipation for what comes next. Like the QR code on the cover or the ‘What 3 Words’ feel of the titles, it’s a different way of communicating ideas

This is a delightfully intriguing work.

Taster Track : deweyedair

Affection : Bullion

This collection of excellent and sweet songs is more than synth pop but lighter than electronica. 

This is the spectrum I’m using in making that judgement

Dark Electronica Preventing Sleep

The Sweet Spot

Irritating Synth Pop, Very

Affection is a good title for this album. There’s no atmospheric chill, but a likeable degree of warmth. There’s no intense passion, good or bad, but a welcoming friendliness that checks bad and negative feelings at the door.

This is perky electronica that would be as much at home if you classified it as a singer songwriter album. At the risk of making my old English teachers turn in their graves who told me never to use this word, it’s a genuinely and sincerely nice record. 

To illustrate, the feel of the train in  ‘World_Train’ is jolly. It’s more likely to be brightly coloured and blowing bubbles than herding grey commuters to joyless jobs in places they don’t want to go. It bounces and it has fun while avoiding silliness and remaining great pop.

Some electronica finds its theme and explores every nook and cranny of it. This doesn’t. It takes an idea, tests it out, presents it and moves on. It’s all the better for that.

In songs like ‘Affection’, ‘Once In A Borrowed Car’ and elsewhere, there’s a strong hint of China Crisis. You can hear Westerman’s least in retrospective songs, particularly in the gentle melodies he uses. There’s even a dash of Bibio’s sunny pastoral electronic moments too.

How I feel about this album is how I imagine any teacher would feel at seeing their favourite class pupil achieve or exceed their potential. It’s warmly satisfying and makes everything right in the world.

Taster Track : Your Father

The Chasing Pack

A Host For All Kinds Of Life : Green-House

Green-House invite us to join them in a foray around new age mindfulness music.

There’s always a place for music that provides a space and pause for mindfulness. The question here is whether that makes for a meaningful and pleasurable listening experience. Well, bearing in mind the purpose of this is not to be obtrusive, it’s hard to dislike it.

This is an album of measured, beatless drifting. It’s gentle and calming tranquil loveliness with bird song, something like gentle rain, soothing drones. The opening track is a faintly curious hybrid of mildly medieval flutes and lutes (probably harps but that wasn’t as sonorous) with synthesised electronica. It has the loosely unstructured noodling of ambient and New Age music. There are occasionally tentative forays into something more musical on ‘Desire Path’ and ‘ Far More Other’,  like the first steps of a junior roller skater

You’re as likely to find this reviewed in a magazine called something like ‘Meditative Mindfulness Today’ as you are to find it in the music press or your favourite blog. But as an aid to meditation, it works dammit! It can sooth my mind and soul, although it struggled with my hayfever cough.

Albums such as these encourage you to appreciate with reverential wonder the whole cosmos and your role in it. There’s a synthetic wedding bell trill that comes in towards the end of ‘A Host For All Kinds Of Life’. That’s indicative of the commitment needed to get the most from this album.

This is what it is and it does what it does. Pick any track and add it to your meditation playlist or yoga soundtrack.

Taster Track : Desire Path

Hey Panda : The High Llamas.

If you’re not familiar with The High Llamas, prepare yourself for something very different, if not unique.

It’s difficult to know where to begin. I could tell you that it’s a kind of warped lounge pop that’s both quirky and addictive. Songs feel spontaneous and improvised, while hitting their mark every single time. It’s an ultra vivid take on music : occasionally sleepy, sometimes fragmentary, never orthodox. There’s something fresh in every half line. However I describe it, the results are liberating and inspirational.

In some ways Sean O’Hagan is like the Avalanches, but all the samples he uses come from inside his head. Perhaps he’s tapped into the mindset of the lounge pianist who plays the same songs in the same way every single night as he battles with his creative frustration. Alternatively, his music is a dance where you work out the moves and the rules as you go.

Sometimes it’s a confused or glorious mess that works. ‘How The Best Was Won’ sounds like two songs, or two parts of a song playing at the same time. ‘Yoga Goat’ breaks into something like the soundtrack to a CBeebies show. The Teletubbies are his soulmates in creating a parallel reality.

‘Hey Panda’ is one of the most infectiously catchy songs you will ever hear. It will worm its way into your life and never leave. ‘Toriafan’ swings and rolls as it nags at your heart and mind. The music feels totally organic, and even as a vocoder makes an appearance it’s to add, not disguise, something.

This is an album of undeniable charm, with many moments of pure loveliness.

Taster Track : Hey Panda

Nanocluster Vol 3 : Immersion (with SUSS)

Immersion are back with their individual take on wellbeing focused electronica. This time they’ve collaborated with SUSS, an ambient country trio. The partnership makes for their strongest and most accessible album yet.

You won’t find much of their self improvement advice on this album. It features in ‘In The Far Away’ and it’s always welcome to know that someone has your back and you can turn to them when needed.

This is a more instrumental album than previously. It will still boost your sense of wellbeing though, through its calm melodicism and its knack of creating a space for reflection. It’s music to bring perspective, for sitting on hilltops watching the world spread out beneath you. 

‘Khamsin’ is beautifully eerie and there’s something extra terrestrial about ‘The Nameless’ too. There’s something in this music that you may not understand but you will instinctively feel you can trust.

This is music that barely needs performers. It doesn’t need a lot of substance. It can be something you sense rather than need to have spelled out for you. If you were watching Immersion live, you would want them to remain still. Better still they could perform from behind a screen. That’s only because this is something to listen to free from distraction.

This is exceptionally pretty music, music for early mornings when you’re up to see the world rising. This is music for an awakening. ‘Cross Pollination’ burbles gently and attractively.

There’s one track that twangs with more controlled energy than you will find elsewhere on the album. That’s ‘State Of Motion’,It offers a clue to the main influence at play here. Think of the quieter moments of U2’s ‘The Joshua Tree’ - the one with Daniel Lanois and U2 on production duties. That’s the feel you’ll get from ‘Nanocluster Vol 3’ too.

This is one of those albums you need to counteract the business of the day. 

Taster Track : Khamsin 

Enough : Office Culture

This is odd. It’s as if all the elements that make up a great record have been taken apart and reassembled into something that doesn’t quite work as it should.

For a long while on the sixteen track double album I wasn’t sure what to make of it. It’s clearly clever. You need a keen musical brain to make it work, both as the performer / composer and the listener. Songs don’t follow fixed structures. They often unwind, unlike straightforward pop which typically keeps it tight. 

This is pop with jazz feelings. It’s often more concerned with mood than immediacy. There’s definitely a pop sensibility at work, but it’s stretched out and twisted into new, difficult shapes. It always sounds dreamily polite, but it is hard to keep tabs on. On first encounter, I wasn’t sure there was enough to tempt me back for further listening. If I was feeling uncharitable I’d describe it as music for hipsters who secretly like the mainstream but are compelled to reach for the alternative.

There are precedents for this. Anohni, Nicholas Krgovice, Steely Dan, even Father John Misty - they all flirt  with this approach, hinting at pop magic but alchemising it into something more difficult to grasp. It can be frustrating.

And yet… I don’t want to dismiss this out of hand. This kind of music is characterised by always holding out the promise that the elements could suddenly align into something completely magical.

I had to take an enforced break towards the end and when I returned it all made more sense. Like a large piece of bequeathed furniture that I liked, but which didn’t fit with anything else in the house, I suddenly worked out how to accommodate it.

Although there were few hooks or memorable melodies, there were glimpses of them on tracks such as ‘Was I Cruel’ and the piano of ‘Counting Game’. ‘Appetite’ has an undeniably

catchy outro. The gem at the tail end of this album was ‘Where I Can’t Follow’. It’s a melodic, soothing masterpiece of a song, as cool as it is chilled. It redeems and helps to make sense of what’s happening elsewhere.

It was a close run thing but, in the end, this is a record that redeems itself.

Taster Track : Where I Can’t Follow

Come Ahead : Primal Scream

This is one that the history books will record as Primal Scream's gospel, disco blues album. It’s ambitious in scope, and successful in execution.

One thing we can say from this album is that Primal Scream are now Bobby Gillespie. Obviously they were always his band but now, more than ever, there’s no pretence that this is anything but his vision, his experiences. This is his musical autobiography, personal and even confessional.

Gillespie goes so far as to testify on ‘Heal Yourself’. ‘Love Is Not Enough’ is born of his learning. ‘False Flags’ is his story as history. It’s the kind of record that only the coolest kid in town could pull off successfully and with a straight face. It could be the album he was, literally, born to make.

Musically this covers many bases, starting with four tracks of disco and gospel funk. It’s a dirtier, messier version of disco than Nile Rogers ever discovered. If the devil has all the best tunes, Gillespie is singing these to Jesus. The blues kick in with the gorgeous and emotional ‘Melancholy Man’. ‘Love Is Not Enough’ pounds itself home. ‘Circus Of Life’ is relentless. Having grabbed you by the lapels, it’s not letting go anytime soon. This is an album that sounds less retro, and more dated, but appealingly so like a newly discovered lost classic.

In their early days, Primal Scream were plagued by gibes of being nothing but Rolling Stones copyists. Gillespie has evolved now, into Mick Jagger, an upgrade to the Jagger on ‘Midnight Rambler’ and of Black and Blue days. It also sounds as if he’s set his sights on becoming the new Prince. Perhaps he’s taken a leaf out of Nick Cave’s book too, especially in the sprawling history of ‘Settlers Blues’.

When you’re as big and established as Primal Scream, your records have to be big statements if they are to avoid the slide into corporate nothingness. Bobby Gillespie has made one such record here.

Taster Track : Melancholy Man

The Silver Abduction : The Silver Abduction

This album deserves to be commended for its ambition, but it fell a little short as a listening experience.

If you remember ‘Blue States’ from the turn of the millennium, it’s likely to be for the song ‘Your Girl’, which was a gem included on many period chillout compilations, and the cinematic qualities of tunes such as ‘Diamante’. Andy Dragazis of the band has teamed up here with Alison Brice to make an album that preserves some of Blue States’ qualities.

It certainly has cinematic qualities, sounding like a film from the swinging sixties. It’s as if Ennio Morricone had written the music after a prolonged period of listening to contemporary French pop. On that score, I should like it a lot more than I do. There are several places where I felt I was in a fairy tale both sweet and strange, tempted into dark going ons in the local castle. Alison Brice’s vocals capture the helplessness of an imprisoned princess, or a mistreated serving girl.

Unfortunately though, the songs never break through the sense of the unreal. This is music - ‘Underground’ is typical -  that recreates a film set, not something from real life. It paints too bright a picture, something that glares rather than shines. The orchestration could sound lush but, instead, the music sounds thin and brittle. Strings are stretched too thin. The bass is lightweight and fails to bring depth to the music. Quiet percussion sounds as if the recording volume was set too low. 

There’s a lot going on, and the vocals and melodies are a little lost. Surprisingly, if you don’t listen too carefully s,omething will reach out to you as the music courses by in a hurry. In some ways that’s the hallmark of a good song, that it can break through distractions to lodge in your memory.

There’s no denying that the retro sound is attractive but, ultimately, the promise of the imprisoned princess has turned out to be not that special.

Taster Track : Remember My Heart

As ever this week's Taster Track playlists can be accessed at https://open.spotify.com/playlist/42qDXrw3nLMlCSg45kCnRy?si=4499207642034207 or via the Spotify link on the Home Page.

The link to the Youtube playlist is https://music.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLwV-OogHy7EjHZr5_M3m0Zn5LEu_F3fMm&si=OhQF-ZPaBjUn4VMT