Starring
Elskavon, Emiliana Torrini, Fer Franco, Moderna, Ride, Small Town Jones
The Show Horse
Miss Flower : Emiliana Torrini
Emiliana Torrini’s first album for ten years is a surprise, for lots of very good reasons.
There’s a concept behind the songs. They were inspired by a collection of letters written to her friend Zoe’s mother. Some are mundane tales of arrangements to meet up, but most are memories of a life lived with no small degree of mystery and no little passion. As you allow yourself to sink into the songs, they reveal a rare power and become a touching and evocative experience.
It’s not just the album cover that makes you think of 40s black and white films. She creates an atmosphere that allows her to portray a cross between a femme fatale and Bjork’s younger, poppier sister.
This is an inspired and refreshed Emiliana Torrini. She seems energised by the source of the songs, which are more accessible, more upbeat and less internalised than before.There are choruses drawn from the words that are carried away on a river of rhythm. In ‘Miss Flower’ and others she creates poetry out of the passion and words in the letters. The songs highlight the elfin qualities of Torrini’s voice. It’s alluring.
The album is an electro acoustic mix that allows for the atmosphere of ‘Love Poem’ and the indie pop dance of should be a hit ‘Black Lion Lane’. ‘Let’s Keep Dancing’ also slinks its light reggae tones towards the floor.
She’s managed to make an album that is excellent on its own merits but also pays a wonderful tribute to a woman we’ll only know through these songs.
Taster Track : Miss Flower
The Front Runners
Kintsugi : Small Town Jones
Here’s a collection of heart warming Americana from Devon. It’s heartwarming because of the evident pride and love invested in the music.
In the big, bad, dazzling world of corporate pop, Small Town Jones has found a mews with a cafe courtyard and his songs fit right in. They’re cappuccino to the brash double espresso you find elsewhere. It’s music for a quiet corner. With the exception of ‘Mr Kintsugi’ you can leave the retail park ambience of the real world behind.
Small Town - the songs have the feel that he wouldn’t mind being addressed on first name terms - is someone who knows how to write a song that caresses the inner ear leaving a warm feeling in your heart and soul. It’s perfect Radio 2 music, and that’s a compliment. There’s an honesty and sincerity in the songs that’s highly attractive. Take ‘Castaway’ as an example. You feel he’s giving of himself. He’s more a troubadour than a pop star.
You can let this music simply drift by, or you can listen carefully and appreciate its quiet delights. ‘Mist and the Light’ captures the sense of being on the brink of something that’s half seen and being revealed to you for the first time. ‘3:33’ is excellent. On the face of it a man and his guitar, but the discreetly added touches add delightful layers to the mix. ‘Better Days’ is a sublime pop song.
Realistically, Small Town is part of a stable with the likes of DG Solalris. They’re excellent songwriters destined to be supporting acts who keep the headliners on their toes. Music can’t remain strong without them.
This is an album that brings out the sun. And in the damp, overcast summer of 2024 that’s reason enough to love it.
Taster Track : 3:33
The Chasing Pack
The Future Is Among Us : Moderna
If the future is among us, and this electronic, hardcore club music is its soundtrack, it’s a clinical and cold place to be. Listening from the sidelines though provides much to admire and even enjoy.
Rock and roll told us that the 20th century was all about working for the man. This is a future where you’re working for the machine. It’s the difference between defiance and submission. This is music to be brainwashed by, a hardcore version of club music that doesn’t expect you to dance but requires you to dance like a cult in thrall to a dancing mania.
There’s nothing organic or natural about this. It’s a 100% processed sound but, fortunately, a lot more interesting than musical luncheon meat. ‘The Future Is Among Us’ is music to be accompanied by blinding and harsh strobes. It’s also music to play loud to batter the listener into submission.
The synthetic and minimalist opening track ‘DIE4U’ shows us what to expect. It’s menacing too with a pulse like an accelerating heartbeat. It’s a cold sound that feels like the short blast of unwarming hot hair that hits you on a freezing day as you pass an open shop doorway. It’s robotic and unemotional, and its interest lies in how it shifts and twists across its five minute running time.
Don’t despair though. There are enough moments taken from pop to keep you engaged. ‘Poppenheimer’ has enough beats, pulses and chants to keep an army of clubbers engaged. The final two tracks ‘Blades’ and ‘Lost At Heart’ have a warmer feel that suggests the music may have originated in the sound of Depeche Mode.
As an occasional foray away from the warmth of human music, this was great. Take it as a warning and ignore it at your peril.
Taster Track : Lost At Heart
Interplay : Ride
Here’s a gigantic album of shoegazey rock that makes a statement of its uncompromising commitment to its vision..
Ride are more than just Andy Bell, but his approach to managing his musical portfolio is helpful in understanding this album. He’s able to indulge his experimental side with Glok, his electronic alter ego. His solo work allows him to display his heartfelt, introspective side. Ride is Andy Bell’s chance to make a noise, and that’s evident from the opening sounds of ‘Peace Signs’.
It’s a dark maelstrom of rock, coloured with reverberating shoegaze and kept under perfect control. ‘I Came To See The Wreck’ encapsulates the wider album. In its understanding of light and shade, peaks and troughs and the need for ebb and flow. The bass throbs ominously throughout. Guitars aim to swamp and smother you with huge sound. It’s an impressive body of work, although it can seem intimidating and overwhelming at times.‘Stay Free’ is less of a positive exhortation and more of a warning.
They’re alert to the danger that music this huge, this loud can be too intense, causing subtleties to be lost and creative touches to be overlooked.On ‘Sunrise Chaser’ they allow their guitars to jangle their way to their heart rather than bludgeon you into submission. ‘Monaco’ has a chorus that soars like debris flung from the heart of an explosion. ‘Essaouira’ helps to settle you, a calmer aftermath of a song and ‘Yesterday Is Just A Song’ subsides into exhaustion, all energy spent by what has come before.
On holiday recently I found myself in the heart of real mountains, not steep hills. I’ve always known they are there, but encountering them up close is rather special. Ride have produced something that is their musical equivalent.
Interplay is an impressive album. There’s no doubt about that.
Taster Track : Monaco
Ritos de Paso : Fer Franco
Fer Franco offers dark, broken and damaged electronica that is, nevertheless, accessible and exciting.
Fer Franco is a Guatemalan composer and producer and there’s something of the wild jungle and chaotic city about his music. To suburban English ears it may, initially, come as a culture shock.
This is a constantly surprising record. It’s a mash of electronic effects, off kilter beats, party rhythms and sweet melodies. In places it’s broken, but it always makes a kind of mutant sense. It grows into a blend of the melodic and the noisy.
It’s a violent beginning. ‘Yo No Vivo Aqui’ is the sound of a beast barely under control, a wounded jaguar of a tune. This is harsh, a broadsword of a song not a rapier. You’ll sense that Fer Franco lives by the maxim ‘in for a penny, in for a pound’. ‘Otras Voces’ is the sound of a hostile environment in which you haven’t found your bearings, but containing possibilities for acceptance. Pieces like ‘Asumir Forma’ seem destined for the club but develop into something more akin to a soundtrack for dancing mania. It takes an indirect but circular tour.
The two extremes of this album are ‘Nunca Termina’ which is as mixed up and experimental as it comes, and ‘Tu Senal’ which marries vocal and melodic sweetness with an irregular off beat to become the closest thing to a pop song here.
Like a new big dipper rollercoaster, this album brings ups, downs and unexpected turns. It’s challenging but rewarding.
Taster Track : Tu Sensal
Origins : Elskavon
Origins is a blend of experimental electronica and nu classical. To reuse a phrase I’ve used before - it’s beautifully strange and strangely beautiful.
Elskavon (aka Chris Bartels) describes himself as a singer songwriter in his Spotify bio. Suffice to say that you won’t find lyric sheets in any language for the songs here!
You might say James Joyce’s ‘Ulysses’ is a novel and leave it at that. Technically that’s true, but it doesn’t prepare you for what follows. This is the musical equivalent of a modern art exhibition that you don’t understand, but you can feel its power.
It’s a surprise to find that Bartels is an American because his music as Elskavon has much in common with the Nordic sounds of Sigur Ros, Efterklang and Olafur Arnalds. There’s a sense in ‘Blossom and the Void’ of embarking on a big, important journey of self discovery. In ‘Vivid’ it’s clear that something wonderful, if not understood, is afoot.
The rhythm of ‘Origins’ works its magic straight away, even as it is broken by more experimental interludes. The vocals are jumbled into the mix. This is dance music from across the cosmos. ‘Coastline’ speeds by as you listen from the still point of a turning world. (And award yourself a cup of coffee now, if you recognise the classic piece of poetry I’ve lifted that from!). That nu classical parallel I mentioned earlier is heard most strongly in ‘North Sole’. With its stately beauty it would not be out of place nestled up to Nils Frahm in your record collection. ‘This Won’t Last Forever’ brings the album to a lovely, satisfying conclusion.
Treat this as one of those albums that you can allow to wash over you. You won’t be disappointed.
Taster Track : Origins
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
Comments