Starring
Dot Allison, 86TVs, Hania Rani, Kiasmos, Lucy Railton. PMXPER, Travis
Under Starter's Orders
86TVs : 86TVs
86 TVs have emerged from the ashes of The Maccabees, who disbanded in 2015. This collection of indie rock is well worth the nine year wait.
They’re making up for lost time, as they’re giving us 15 tracks in little more than 45 minutes. And there’s a real sense that these songs are erupting forth fully formed and the real deal.There’s no feeling their way to see how they land.
Given that Felix and Hugo White were mainstays of the Maccabbees it’s inevitable that comparisons will be made between the two. 86TVs, as tracks like ‘Worn Out Buildings’ illustrate, are clearly from the same mould. In fact 86TVs feel like they’re on an extendable lead, able to roam more freely but tethered to the same spot that the Maccabees filled.
It’s interesting also to compare 86TVs with the path taken by another former Maccabee, Orlando Weeks. Where he’s travelled a more sensitive introspective route to the corner of the room, 86 TVs have decided they are going to be heard. Even on the break up song ‘Dreaming’ they’re speaking directly to their partner, not continuously turning their emotions over internally.
It’s a much more muscular sound. ‘Modern Life’ is a great opening track, an anthem in waiting with a great tune too. Songs like ‘Tambourine’ that provide short bursts of barely contained energy.
There’s much more to this album than loud guitars though. They’re exercising control and restraint. On ‘Spinning World’ the bass, piano and bird song combine to slow things down without losing any power. They’re like Olympic show jumpers who know how to control their horse to get all the steps right before some big fences.
86TVs may not be creating new boundaries but they certainly own their existing territory.
Taster Track : Modern Life
Front Runners
Consciousology : Dot Allison
This is a lovely acoustic album of nu-folk, but with a feeling of timelessness stretching back centuries.
Inevitably, there’s a tendency to seek points of reference to help orientate yourself with music that’s new to you. My references quickly latched onto Saint Saviour or Lavender Diamond. Coming up behind those though, was an unexpected one - Guinevere, King Arthur’s bride. Not that there’s anything remotely Saxon about the music. It’s more the sense of a woman apart from the modern world, a complicated character.
If it’s the first few seconds that sell an album, then the busy but gentle trickling notes of ‘Shyness of Crowns’ perform their role well. Along with ‘Unchanged’ they lead you by the hand into her world, a blend of pastoral and chamber pop.
It’s an album that constantly delights through songs like ‘Bleached By The Sun’, in the quiet finger clicks of ‘Unchanged’ and in the evocation of Milk, honey Summer mead, ambrosia” in ‘Milk and Honey’.
There’s the faintest dusting of psychedelica throughout. That may be what gives the sense of this not being music from the present day. It’s as if a treasure trove of songs from days gone by has suddenly been recovered. It’s magical, like a double rainbow.
These are songs that reward patience. Hear them like glimpses through clouds, shape shifting out of sight and suddenly becoming clear as the clouds part to reveal the beauty they’ve been concealing.
Consciousology - it’s a subject you’ll wish you had studied at school!
Taster Track : Unchanged
Ghosts : Hania Rani
Hania Rani is making some of the most beguiling and attractive music around at the moment.
Her palate combines electronica, jazz, chill out to make a heady mix of emotional pop. She messes with time signatures like a jazz maestro, touches the soul like a classical pianist and lifts your spirits like the best pop practitioners. She’ll transport you to a different place, even in the melancholy moments of, say, ‘The Boat’
It’s easy to describe this as a haunting album, but it’s the only word that will do. It’s not just its themes, it’s how the music lingers with you well after it has finished.
Her songs feel huge while remaining gentle and giddy. Take ‘24.03’. Like much of the album it relies on hypnotic repetition. It’s a whirling mass of synths, looping round like an ever changing murmuration. You can’t take your ears off it. It’s the kind of track that brings a room to silence.
Her vocals - more prevalent than before - are infused with the joy and excitement in the music. ‘Thin Line’ highlights her similarity to Emiliana Torrini - fragile, vulnerable yet containing hope and optimism at the same time. Her vocals and music are adaptable to her collaborators allowing them to shine while not diminishing her own contribution. And her collaborators here - Duncan Bellamy of Portico Quartet, Patrick Watson and Olafur Arnalds - serve her equally well.
The burbles and drones of ‘Oltre Terra’ set up the album, like an orchestra tuning up. It heightens anticipation. ‘Home’ is simply one of the finest songs of the last 12 months, free falling and tumbling forth in an exhilarating display of competing time signatures. ‘Don’t Break My Heart’ is her torch song, a torch song with discreet jazz and gospel tones. ‘Utrata’ highlights the power of her melancholy, but sit back and enjoy ‘Komeda’ as it disappears quietly over the horizon.
Throughout, the songs are grounded by her piano. It anchors the pieces like a falcon handler’s outstretched arm, allowing the main event to have purpose ,discipline and control.
Hania Rani is at the peak of her career. Now is the time to listen to her.
Taster Track : Hello
The Chasing Pack
ll : Kiasmos
Gentle and pleasant. They’re the words best placed to introduce the electronic dance infused soundscapes of Kiasmos.
Kiasmos is one of the guises of nu classical artist Olafur Arnalds, this time in collaboration with producer Janus Ranusson. It’s not their first time working together. A previous Kiasmos album came out in 2017, and their debut ambled into the shops in 2014. They’re an act that takes their time. No rush, slow down, take it easy. It will be ready when it’s ready. That’s a pretty good indication of their sound too.
I liked this. It floats and drifts pleasantly between genres. There are touches from the East, a splash of mild techno, a couple of forays into new age and nu classical. It achieves the same ‘we’ll be here in the background if you need us’ feel of ambient. I’m not sure that’s intentional, but it soothes and relaxes nicely.
For many, including me, that may be enough. It grew on me, this unhurried and meandering path through various musical styles, often in the same tune. Take ‘Bound’. It rouses itself with some warm up techno, comes to a drop which is less of a cliff edge and more of a soft sand dune and switches to lushly orchestrated strings.
What it doesn’t do is stir the senses or trigger a strong reaction. It’s the kind of music you might put on after a long, noisy car ride to settle yourself for sleep. It’s almost like hearing someone make music who’s not aware you’re listening. They’re trying things out for their own pleasure and, if you’re lucky, it will bring you pleasure too.
Kiasmos will restore you, not stir you. It’s nice to have around.
Taster Track : Bound
Corner Dancer : Lucy Railton
This is art, an album of electro-acoustic sound that is hard to review in musical terms. It is one of the most difficult and challenging records I’ve listened to in a considerable while.
For the uninitiated it feels like a brave move to open your album with ‘Corner Dancer’ an eleven minute sequence of slowly struck strings backed by lengthy sustain. The sounds are phenomenal, as they are throughout the album. They’re fractured, broken and apart. It’s an unsettling ambience. You’re placed on guard and you’re nowhere near relaxed.
If only you knew what lay in wait.
‘Not A Word From Me’ sounds like the choked back, strangled sobs of someone unable to communicate. You need to judge it as art. It’s creating a whole, increasingly disturbing experience.
Railton conjures sound from her instruments that sound like they’re teetering on a tightrope, held in place by the tightest control. There are next to no rhythms, beats, vocals or melodies. ‘Held In Paradise’ sounds like the sound that may have prompted Edvard Munch’s painting ‘The Scream’. As the album progresses, it becomes increasingly visceral, music to accompany the ripping of flesh and the dismemberment of a living body. It takes you beyond difficult and challenging and into the realms of pain. THeir emotions are embodied in the whimpers that can be heard in ‘Standing Cadence’.
It can’t last. That’s your one consolation. The darkness becomes less nightmarish with the hypnotic ‘Something In The Heavens’ which tolls a respite for thee. It leads into the only musical piece here ‘Blush Study’. It’s still a challenging piece, but only a challenging piece.
There is no compromise allowed here. The album conjures up a world where all the rules have broken down. It’s immensely powerful and will live with you. It’s not party music though.
Taster Track : Something In The Heavens
PMXPER : PMXPER
Sparse, dark, unnerving and rather good electronica characterises this brief 28 minute album.
Sometimes I wonder if songs are written to be sampled. If so, this could be one of them. It sounds amazing. One example is the clarity of the occasional woodwind. Another, is the seriously heavy duty guitar that carries ‘Turn 23’. It’s heavy like the Chemical Brothers, capable of blowing you out of the crowd.
This is film noir electronica, a future dust bowl, post apocalyptic sound that will mess with your head. It’s Mad Max forty years on and it’s massive on atmosphere but not at the expense of musicality.
The vocals are the sound of the Orb’s ‘Little Fluffy Clouds’ on a bad trip. In ‘Quiet Night’ the vocal lines intertwine and come to you as if through a dream or via a general anaesthetic. The vocals of ‘Irrigation’ are that nightmare where you’re hiding from evil at the back of a wardrobe.
There are flutters of film noir jazz flavouring the album. It’s in the skittering drums of ‘Irrigation’, the woodwind of ‘Sweat Asphalt' and the underlying drone that provides a requisite dose of menace.
‘Lavender Milk’ is the stand out track, encompassing everything that is good in this album. It’s gripping, musical and would make an excellent instrumental.
This is an album for pump-priming your imagination from the safety of your own home.
Taster Track : Lavender Milk
L.A. Times : Travis
It’s a Travis album, so you know what to expect. It’s a good one though that should keep fans and casual listeners very happy.
Travis release an album about once every four years. That’s frequently enough to keep them in our minds and infrequently enough to keep them from sounding stale and outstaying their welcome. And the thing is, no one does this perfectly played, undemanding music better. If this is what you want - daytime radio friendly, guitar based pop - Travis are still one of the bands to beat.
America is all over this album. With one and half exceptions, there’s not much of Scotland left in the band, Those exceptions are ‘The River’ which is a softer version of what Big Country have done so well and, confusingly, L.A.Times. I doubt there’s a clean version of this song available. It’s an ‘in for a penny, in for a pound’ Irvine Welsh perspective on L.A. drenched in Glaswegian profanity in a kind of rap. It’s a breath of fresh air cutting through the diesel fumes.
Elsewhere, they’re writing for a global, corporate market. Crucially, they continue to deliver. They're not sitting back on their laurels. Fran Healey’s quality control remains firmly in place.
‘Naked In New York City’ follows countless American singer songwriters trying to follow in the footsteps of Christopher Cross or Billy Joel if he had played guitar. ‘Gaslight’ offers faint glimmers of their rockier past. ‘Bus’ is immediately familiar. It’s easy but unfair to take it for granted, like a mirror on a wall that you only notice when it’s temporarily removed. It’s so transparent in its intentions that you can forgive a line from ‘Raze The Bar’ such as “It’s just another night on a one way street’ and just enjoy it.
Travis - old friends on a leap year visit. Roll on 2028.
Taster Track : L.A. Times
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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