Starring
Kinobe, Hauschka, Noonday Underground, Orcas, Taylor Swift
Under Starter's Orders
Out of the Blue : Kinobe
Kinobe, leading lights in the turn of the millennium chillout phenomenon, have lost none of their gifts for melody or downtempo beats. Twenty five years later, this may be exactly what the world needs or the last thing it needs.
First things first. This is an excellent Kinobe album. ‘Gold Run’ sets the tone. It’s lush and cinematic with full moon, hotel balcony strings and big screen romantic melodies. ‘It’s Only A Dream’ wears a smile on its face, resting on a perky bassline. ‘Streets of Yesterday’ is one of several tunes with a ridiculously sweet melody. It’s instantly familiar and must have been written a hundred times before. But no. It’s new. It’s the kind of tune that some bands would kill for to fade out the epic ballad that closes out their latest album.
Kinobe’s calling card was the 2000 tune ‘Slip Into Something More Comfortable.’ With this album they’ve certainly done that, and it fits them very well.
The nagging concern though is that Kinobe are a completely grit free zone. They provide the soundtrack to a fantasy world untainted by sadness or real life. Being stuck in a sun soaked chill out place is both its great strength and off putting weakness. Whilst we all have our dreams of escape we eventually have to face a world again that is overheating, rioting, slaughtering and repressing folk into poverty. It’s music for averting your eyes.
There’s a danger for the band too. Midway through, sated by the relaxed euphoria that all is well with the world, ‘Golden Dreams’ slips towards lounge elevator music. Too much of this and it becomes ambient - test card music for those who remember a time when TV wasn’t available 24/7. A little espresso with the martinis would go a long way.
I liked this album a lot, but it’s the kind of musical place to visit for a while but not live in all the time. Handle it with care, but enjoy it for a while.
Taster Track : Streets of Yesterday
The Front Runners
Philanthropy : Hauschka
Oh, the joys of discovering a new artist who is wonderful, wearing their evident qualifications as a classically trained, film score composing marvel lightly on their sleeve.
There are elements of the training and composing across each song here.What marks Hauschka out as special is the balance he strikes between the rhythms and melodies of intelligent and enjoyable pop of ‘Diversity’ and ‘Inventions’, and the more challenging but just as rewarding sounds of ‘Science’ and ‘Noise’. It has the feeling of a benevolent, mad professor.
Hauschka’s calling card is the prepared piano. As a layman’s oversimplified description, that’s a piano with nuts, bolts and other objects dropped down the back to alter the sound.
It’s a carnival of different sounds. Take the squelchy bullfrog sounds that suddenly appear in ‘Nature’. As in music as in real life - just lie back and enjoy. ‘Detached’ is more atmospheric, underpinned by a high pitched, ambient drone. But he’s given it a texture that is all its own with a mix of almost ticking clocks and nearly creaking floorboards.
There are rhythms in ‘Inventions’ that will bring a smile to your face. That doesn’t happen very often in any branch of music. ‘Limitation of Lifetime’ on the other hand is gentle, melancholic, simple and gorgeous.
You’ll wait eagerly for whatever comes next. This is like re-watching a classic film, having forgotten how good it really is. It’s an album full of the kind of music that makes you put down your book and give it your full attention.
I’m listening to it for the second time as I write this, and I’ve decided I love it. It hits the sweet spot also occupied by Sweet Baboo, Group Listening, Gnac and the Penguin Cafe Orchestra.
This is an excellent illustration of how pop can surprise, entertain and enrich in under an hour.
Taster Track : Diversity
Sing It From The Mountain : Noonday Underground
here is more energy and pure joy in this album than you’ll find in ten years of crate digging for vinyl from the vaults.
The album title calls to mind the hymn ‘Go Tell It On The Mountain’. There are no religious moments here, but there is an evangelical desire to share the power of pop. If they sing and play this from the top of the mountain, you’ll hear and feel it from basecamp.
A lot of that is due to the accent on Mod. Helpfully, there’s ‘Mod Is A State Of Mind’ narrated by Mel Blank to explain what it means to be part of the movement. It’s individuality, pride in what you are and a celebration of all you believe in. That’s as good a description of this album as you’ll find anywhere.
This is an album that bounces with electro jazz funk pop appeal. It swings through the crowd of wannabe floor fillers with an abundance of joyful energy. It’s as bright as a Hawaiian shirt. It’s a record that proclaims the future's so bright, you’ve gotta wear shades!
There’s an all encompassing retro sound that permeates every element of the album. It calls to mind songs from the turn of the millennium that were themselves retro looking back to the Soho cafes and clubs of the 50s. Think of the glorious breakdown towards the end of Lemon Jelly’s ‘Nice Weather For Ducks’ and how that feels. You’ll get that feeling from all the tracks here. Another point of reference is the Avalanches' first album, and it’s probably no coincidence that Simon Dine is a DJ by trade
There are moments in songs such as ‘One By One’, Crystal Ball’ and ‘Too Lucky’ that urge you to simmer down before the next big explosion of danceable music, but what you’ll take away from this album is the irrepressibility of songs like ‘Strange’ and ‘I Felt Gold’
I love Kate O’Malley’s voice on ‘Piece of the Pie’. It’s husky and youthful. She’s from the world of Country music. That’s the other thing about this album. It’s a record that brings everything together from whoever you are, for whoever you are.
Don’t miss out.
Taster Track : Strange
The Chasing Pack
How To Color A Thousand Mistakes : Orcas
Here’s an album grown from shoegaze and dream pop roots, that slowly becomes a fully immersive listening experience.
When you name yourself after killer whales, you’re pitching expectations pretty high. Listeners will be prepared for something big, something with beauty, grandeur and even grace. They’ll be taken aback by the quiet and meandering tinkling of opening track of ‘Sidereal’. I’ll be honest. I spent most of its 1’07” running time fiddling with my headphones to see if they had malfunctioned. It’s more of a sprat than a whale. Be patient. The follow up ‘ Wrong Way To Fall’ delivers on a more epic scale.
This isn’t an album that is light on its feet. They claim musical influences from British New Wave, but there are times when it seems their main influence is closer to prog rock, lacking the melodies that would allow the songs to soar. Continue to be patient because that’s not how this album works.
‘Next Life’ moves with a grace and a beauty that trumps the need for a big, big sound. ‘Swells’ is the closest I’ve heard to a shoegaze dance. ‘Bruise’ kicks off with a lightly shuffling and very appealing beat.
It works slowly, but by the end you’ll be fully immersed in the sounds, as if listening to them while suspended in very deep water. The music of ‘Umbra’ is all around you. It’s truly and deeply ambient. Across the album swirling elements provide plenty to enjoy and lose yourself in. You’ll realise that this is where music reaches out to massage you.
So, not an album for instant gratification but definitely an album to bring enduring pleasure.
Taster Track : Bruise
The Tortured Poets Department : Taylor Swift
Taylor Swift’s life seems to feed her a number of things to write and sing about, all of it unhappy but dressed up in a hyper glossy pop sheen. It’s almost beyond criticism.
There were a few minutes at the beginning of this record - during ‘Fortnight’ and a wander through ‘The Tortured Poets Department - when I thought I may be becoming a surprise Swifty. (And to be honest, a surprised one too!)
The numbers for Taylor are ridiculous and scary. She’s a billionaire. She has more than twice the followers of Madonna on Spotify. In fact she has more than Madonna and the Beatles together. And you’d have been in total isolation recently not to have been aware of the following she has built for her live shows.
She gives the fans what they want, confessional and confiding lyrics coated in a colourful pop sheen. It’s not quite real. It’s too perfect, almost as if they’re her atavar’s autobiography not her own. And her fans lap it up. It’s hard to think that they’re relating to the life of a Christian girl who’s had global successes beyond imagination and a sequence of heartbreaking relationships that leave her vulnerable, defiant and damaged. It’s even harder to think of her impact on pre-teens. Perhaps they see her music as an early and safer form of rebellion - all those ‘F’ words in ‘Down Bad’ mark something rather different from the recently given up Frozen costumes.
She certainly sings a good tale. ‘So Long, London’ and ‘I Can Fix Him (No Really, I Can)’ may be essentially the same story, but they’re engagingly full of mystery. She delivers a creative line in invective at past partners.
The flaw in this album is that she’s simply too generous with her offering. Sixteen songs in 65 minutes that are essentially variations on the same theme, sung in the same style. Will she ever be happy again? It will be interesting to hear how she processes her feelings if that day comes.
There are, of course, a handful of songs that position her for the Grammys and are contenders for Song of the Year Accolades. My money is on ‘Fortnight’, ‘The Tortured Poets Department’ and ‘So Long, London’ being among them.
In the end, there’s nothing to touch the Taylor Swift phenomenon. The fact that her music could draw together someone like me, and someone young enough to be my great granddaughter - yes it was hard typing that - may yet be her crowning achievement.
Taster Track : Fortnight
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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