Starring
Cliff Hills and Dennis Schocket, JoBartlett, The Montgolfier Brothers, The Radio Field, Ron Geesin, Sedibus, TheThe
Under Starter's Orders
Ensoulment : The The
The The return with a demonstration of controlled excellence in their new album ‘Ensoulment’
I lost touch with The The around 1993’s ‘Dusk’ so I was surprised to see that they had been making music available frequently over the years since then. Several releases were, perhaps, projects rather than albums. I guess I was lucky though. Not knowing that al that music was out there meant that I felt a sense of anticipation was high and intense.
With Ensoulment, Matt Johnson does not disappoint. The songs are a mix of pop, poetry and his take on the blues. He’s smoothed away the anguish of, say, 1989’s ‘Mind Bomb’ but that brings his scathing observations into sharper focus. In ‘Linoleum Smooth To The Stockinged Feet’, the darkness is there but shorn of bitterness. If anything the almost pastoral feel to ‘Some Days I Drink My Coffee By The Grave Of William Blake’ is almost elegiac These are songs that have been given time to mature, allowed to ferment until they’re ready.
His spoken voice is gravelly; his sung voice is still youthful. He has the lyrical dexterity of early Elvis Costello in the voice of Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe. He asks and answers the big questions -’Where Do We Go When We Die?’ - and he tells stories.
Musically he builds atmospheres to accompany the songs. It’s a complete package that sounds so good.
It’s good to reconnect with The The. They’ve made an album that is excellent in execution and easy to admire.
Taster Track : ‘Some Days I Drink My Coffee By The Grave Of William Blake’ (but it could so easily have been ‘Cognitive Dissonance’.
The Front Runners
Ghost Tapes 1-9 : Jo Bartlett
Jo Bartlett lives and breathes indie music. She’s brought all her knowledge and experience from the last 40 years, and love for the genre to bear on her latest record.
She’s been writing songs since she was a teenager and performing in bands since C86 was on the scene. She’s promoted bands and hosted club nights to showcase all the music you and I probably love. And she’s the power behind the blog ‘Indie Through The Looking Glass’ (https://indiethroughthelookingglass.com/), one of the best, most informed and genuinely interesting music websites I’ve found. In short, she belongs in the box marked unsung musical heroes and for that alone she’s earned the right to claim 33 minutes of your time to listen to her latest record.
And the thing is, that’s not going to be a hardship because it’s very good indeed. If John Peel were still with us he’d be playing her music on every show, just as he championed Young Marble Giants and the early material of The Cure. These songs are different, without being difficult.
This is music that is sparse but always intriguing, quiet and thoughtful about her innermost feelings. They’re the thoughts that come in the middle of the night without disturbing you but help you to understand who you really are and what you stand for. Listen to ‘Drawing The Line (Ghost Tape No 2)’ or ‘I Don’t Want To Hear Any More Music’ and know that you’re listening to something special.
The bass is the foundation of the songs, heavy but not quite dub. It gives the freedom to beckon in other elements - the sound and rhythm of the guitars, the little background synth touches, the swirling and evolving presence of ‘Floating Through’. These are the little touches that make a record great.
It would have been so easy for this album to pass most people by. Don’t let that happen. Reach out for it and give thanks that such records can still be made by people who care about music.
Taster Track : Drawing A Line (Ghost Tape No 2)
Seventeen Stars : The Montgolfier Brothers
This record is full of unfulfilled dreams, disappointments and defeats. It’s gorgeous.
Tranmer and Quigley may sound like a market town firm of solicitors, but they have a strong, if often unheard. musical pedigree. This album first came out in 1999. Roger Quigley sadly passed away in 2020. In his obituary, The Guardian described him as a much loved musician and songwriter. Mark Tranmer performs solo as Gnac. Together they have hit on the formula for musical magic.
Describe the content of these songs and pieces, and you may feel you’re in for a downbeat experience. They’re songs about being stood up, a belief that even if dreams could come true they wouldn’t last. They’re full of lyrics such as these from ‘Between Two Points’:
“Just let them walk all over you
Laugh through the punches and the pain
Let the life blood drain away from you
They’re right, you’re wrong”
I promise you, abject defeat has never sounded so sweet. (Pink Floyd’s Nick Mason probably agrees - he’s just covered this song on his new album, believing it to be well known!)
Tranmer and Quigley are well meaning innocents in life, clinging to faint possibilities and hoping for dreams to come true. They’re sweetly helpless and on the brink of becoming hopeless in the sense of being bereft of hope.
If you come to the Montgolfier Brothers through Gnac, the vocals will come as a surprise. Don’t worry though, Quigley’s vocals are the perfect accompaniment for the Gnac sound. They’re impossible to dislike while containing all the expectation that he will never be heard. They’re gorgeous and sad, laying bare feelings through song that would otherwise remain buttoned up.
Your heart will go out to these songs.
Taster Track : Even If My Mind Can’t Tell You
Seti : Sedibus
Here’s something a little leftfield from Alex Paterson from the Orb and his former band mate Andy Faulkner. It’s on the cusp of ambient electronica and come down rave music and it’s given added oomph by the narrative that binds it together.
S.E.T.I. stands for the search for extra terrestrial intelligence. The project comes complete with barmy moments, conspiracy theories and moments of darker paranoia. These are all reflected in the music.
From the off you have a sense of travelling through space, buffeted by radio waves that bring you broken and distorted moments of coherence enlightened by flares of occasional beauty. ‘Paradise’ - the song not the concept - is an eleven minute introduction that settles you in for what follows.
And what follows is electronic music on a grand scale, full of imagination. It needs to be listened to as a whole and in sequence, rather than on shuffle.The snippets of broadcast radio and overheard radio communications provide a context that draws you in. If ‘Paradise’ is loosely ambient, ‘Purgatory’ and ‘Seti 1’ draw you into something completely absorbing. It’s like cruising a hundred TV channels and stumbling across something completely unexpected but engrossing. It’s close to the approach of Public Service Broadcasting, but venturing into areas where the truth is not known, and the narrative is unwritten.
The music is haunting, propelled as much by drones as by keyboards. You can’t pin it down easily. One passage may not be to your taste but before long it switches abruptly into something you may not be able, or want, to shake off.
‘Seti - Pt2’ brings together all the elements into something more musical and tuneful. It’s come down music following a bizarre trip.
All this music is out there somewhere. Listen to it. It may change your life.
Taster Track : Seti - Pt 2
The Chasing Pack
Pop Girls Etc : Cliff Hills and Dennis Schocket
Here are six timeless, radio friendly songs that celebrate the essence of pop through the ages.
On their Bandcamp blurb for this EP, Hills and Schocket say that they got together to make this record for fun. I’d suggest too that it was through a shared love for their music. That’s why you’re unlikely to find such a warmhearted collection anywhere else this year. It’s music with a perpetual smile on its face.
It’s a record full of irresistible charm and innocence. These are timeless, three minute pop gems. They carry the pop sensibility of the early 60s and the C86 jangle of, say, The Las ‘There She Goes’.
‘Carrie, The One’ displays a relish for the sound of words. It contains more mathematical terms than an ‘A’ Level crammer class. ‘For Everly’ highlights their way with immediate and swayable melodies. If you wonder where Summer went this year, you’ll find it trapped in ‘Funny Girl’. They wear their musical leathers for ‘The Girls Are Back In Town’ but it’s safe to say that they’re more likely to have been borrowed from ‘Happy Days’ than Thin Lizzy.
The thing about the sixties is it set out the elements that make a perfect pop song. You can embellish it, rough it up or twist it into different shapes and sizes but you can’t improve it. Hills and Schocket understand that. They keep it simple and distil the sound of Buddy Holly, Burt Bacharach and the Hollies into something that sounds as fresh as the day it was first set down in sheet music.
Hills and Schuster capture the feel of a perpetual adolescence down the youth club, of times when you could place a girl on a pedestal and dream of a happy, perfect future. We all need some of that.
Taster Track : Funny Girl
Don’ts and Dos : The Radio Field
If you loved the sound of 80s indie guitar pop, you’re in for an enjoyable 30 minutes or so with The Radio Field.
80s indie guitar pop - it’s a broad palette. The Radio Dept draw on everything from the boyish pop of Aztec Camera’s debut to the squalling distortion of the Jesus and Mary Chain. Look one way and you’ll find the twee jangle pop of ‘Other One’, and ‘The Version’ complete with Orange Juice brass. Turn around and you’ll find the guitar laden monsters of ‘She Needs Therapy’ or ‘Disorder’. Just as you sink into the nihilistic despair of ‘Valhalla’, you’ll be lifted up by the joyous singalong album closer of ‘Love’.
Sonically it’s a mixed bag, not so much a random scattergun approach as the effect of playing an album of lost 80s songs on shuffle. The fuzzy album mix of ‘She Needs Therapy’ is a good guide to the sound of the noisier tracks but it’s also an album where the jangling approaches the secret of perpetual motion, and where the cheery tones of ‘Valhalla’ can rest easily against its despairing lyrics.
They’re from Dusseldorf, and the lightly accented vocals give the songs a different and appealing feel. On ‘Disorder’ and elsewhere they fight their way through a wall of sound. Fortunately they’re not swamped by the music. Instead they have an urgency to be heard.
The Radio Field give you everything you need to relive the evening show sounds of pre-John Peel Radio 1. Celebrate that.
Taster Track : Other One
Basic Maths : Ron Geesin
Ron Geesin was commissioned to write this accompanying soundtrack for a children’s Maths programme back in 1980. It’s just been released for public consumption. - 30 electronic noodles in 45 minutes
Geesin seems to be a character and a half. He’s the only non vocalist and non band member to have a partial songwriting credit on a Pink Floyd album, for the title track of ‘Atom Heart Mother’. He has a collection of more than 3000 adjustable spanners. And he seems to have a twinkle in his eye and a giggle about to break out in his music. He also, possibly, could be styled the mad scientist of 21st century pop music.
This is music that maxes out its curiosity value. Even before you know its history you can tell it’s made to accompany video demonstrations, or music from slightly weird CBeebie programmes such as ‘In The Night Garden’.
Much of it sounds as if it was composed on a BonTempi keyboard at the end of the pier. There’s little that strikes as sophisticated. You could describe it as music full of naive oom pah melodies. They’re abstract and fleeting.
‘Composite Cookbook’, the longest track on the album at 4’18, is a mass of jumbled effects more than music. On ‘Clocking The Day’ we hear someone’s voice ticking off the hours of the day like a grandfather playing with an infant. Sometimes it’s just silly. ‘Accelerating Athletes’ is probably there to offer some light relief to the kids grappling with long division and basic geometry.
It’s the few tracks that sound played rather than noodled that grab attention momentarily. ‘Jumping Pyramids’ is one example. The jaunty ‘Old Seagull and Chips’ and ‘ Seaside Romp’ are others.
In the end, it’s simply hard to see who this is for. It’s not catchy in a way that might appeal to children. It’s too insubstantial for grown ups. Perhaps it’s aimed at studio technicians and musical archivists. If so, that’s a niche market indeed.
Listen to this, but be prepared to drop any thoughts of musical appreciation and gamely try to join in the jollity
Here’s a review on Boomkat that may help to make more sense of it.
Taster Track : Old Seagull and Chips
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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