October Reviews

Cerberus Shoal ~ And Farewell To Hightide (Rosewood Union)

Somehow, Cerberus Shoal's mini-classic 97 album on Tree/Stickfigure managed to be completely overlooked by just about everyone. Justifiably getting a release via Rosewood Union, maybe this time around And Farewell To Hightide will get the attention and acclaim it deserves. There are only 5 tracks here, but they average 10 minutes each, and there's not a bad one among them.
Opener Falling To Pieces Part One begins with sober organ, then morose vocals and atmospheric guitars work their way in before gradually coming together. It's how I imagine the Maine coastline to be, and the guitar even manages to sound like a seagull at one point.
The instrumental Broken Springs Spring Forth From Broken Clocks is nothing short of stunning. Mogwai, Tortoise, Billy Mahonie and all other pretenders don't come close to this. Rather like a train journey, it starts out with gentle feedback and Durutti Column style delay loops, before a second guitar and percussion gradually fades in. After a couple of minutes the drums and guitar begin to come to the fore, and the journey starts off.
The mood never gets samey though, as it goes through changes of mood and pace. After 6 minutes the whole thing shudders to a halt, a feedback soundscape takes over and, gradually, congas pick up the train like rhythm and, eventually all the instruments come crashing back in, picking up the pace but more urgent than before. After nearly 10 minutes everything comes to an abrupt finish. This track is worth the price of entry alone.
Following that is going to be difficult, and J.B.O vs. Blin is a total change of mood. Vocals and trumpet combine with guitar to give a rather morose effect, offset by beautiful melodic passages, although this too might have worked better as an instrumental. Make Winter A Driving Song is almost as good as Broken Springs, again combining guitar and trumpet to great effect. After about 7 minutes a piano part is added, eventually some extra guitar riffage and, finally, another guitar part looping over the top.
Falling To Pieces Part Two closes the album with another change in mood, as gentle piano and flute parts provide a backdrop to a spoken vocals section. After the story is over, orchestral style tunings rise to a climax , everything stops and a piano part plays alone for the final 3 minutes. It seems extraordinary this album had so little acknowledgement first time around, it really deserves to be heard this time.

V/Vm ~ AuralOffalWaffle10PintsOfBitterAndABagOfPorkScratchings (V/Vm Test Recordings)

The nineties have seen just about every genre of music once considered too naff, uncool, or just plain crap reclaimed by the hipster cognoscenti. Easy listening, The Carpenters, exotica, Gary Glitter, Bacharach, electro-pop, even Tom Jones all have postmodernism to thank for their rehabilitation into the world of cool. Thrift stores and charity shops have been cleaned out by bargain hunters in search of anything from the Ray Coniff Singers to Switched On Bach to porn soundtracks to Lenny Dee (no, not the techno one). All that's left unclaimed in the left luggage department of pop is the flotsam, the remains, the records that are either so crap or so obvious that nobody's touched them...yet.
This is where V/Vm, and fellow sonic pranksters, have set up base camp. Collecting up the crap left behind, V/Vm have started the colonisation of detritus. AuralOffalWaffle is subtitled 'A true celebration of the Mouldy Old Dough', and that it certainly is, featuring marching records, Agadoo, rag and bone music, brass bands, Russ Abbott's Atmosfear, beef advertising jingles, Wham's Last Christmas pillaged across 52 tracks of sonic illness.
Most of these tracks fall into one of two categories. Debasement and defilement of a popular hit/old record, or a blast of Merzbow style white noise, sometimes both simultaneously. A bit of pruning, and the inclusion of Turkey, could have made this a great single cd set, but there is just a bit much here. Standout tracks are the gunky funk of Rasherford and Binson's Solid and the stomach churning rollercoaster music of Mad Mouse From Morecambe's Big Dipper, theme park music with nasty flange type effects applied to it. Meanwhile, CV[ev]'s adsf is an errie collection of Oval style clicks and phases. V/Vm Live At Stockport Town Hall 1997 is supremely funny, and strangely moving. At the same time. And the music from Dirty Dancing gets the treatment on Andy Medley and James Warnes Owe It All To You
Context is all in this game, and a number of these old songs take on an odd and moving pathos in this situation. As to whether this is music, well, since when did that matter?

Stereolab ~ Cobra and Phases Group Play Voltage in the Milky Night (Duophonic)

Great title again for Stereolab's eleventh (!) album, evoking the kind of retro-futurism that has become de rigeur among the left-field cognoscenti since Gane, Sadier & co ascended to the position of 'world coolest band', while the album itself is a continuation of the sound of Dots & Loops rather than a return to the heavier motorik sound of yore. So, Cobra and Phases Group is very shiny, clever, and rather cold.
Fuses starts the album off promisingly with squalls of free-jazz trumpet and frantic percussion, a bit like tour single Iron Man. People Do It All The Time, and recent single The Free Design take up the baton, and are fairly impressive, in an 'easy' kind of way.
But from then on, it all tends to merge together, and many of the tracks are pretty indistinguishable. Blue Milk, the best track here, is a notable exception though, sounding like an outtake from Ralf & Florian on a riviera weekend break.
A number of the tracks bear the unmistakable signature of Sean O'Hagan, particularly the bouncy Brian Wilson pianos of The Spiracles and Puncture in the Radax Permutation, and Cobra often sounds more like a High Llamas album than a Stereolab album. The main problem being that The High Llamas themselves do this style better.
Cobra and Phases Group is obviously highly influenced by Brazilian, Italian and jazz style, but ultimately, like Dots & Loops, ends up a little too sterile.

Bardo Pond ~ Set and Setting (Matador)

Set And Setting is markedly more cohesive than previous Bardo Pond efforts but still lacks the consistency that would make this a great album, rather than an album with some great tracks on it. Opener Walking Stick Man is 11 minutes of bluesy stone-age riffs, combined with Isobel Sollenberger's frazzled 'under the influence' vocals. Sounding as thought it might collapse under it's own weight at any moment, This Time is as perfect an illustration of the Bardo Pond aesthetic as they have made, descending bass, Mogadon heavy riffage and spirally looping guitar that makes lethargy seem like too much effort.
Datura is an unfocused sonic trawl (in a good way, though), Again is the only song that can be bothered to get out of first gear, but only proves that the slower Bardo Pond get, the better. Lull gets the album back on track before the excellent Cross Current, another song staggering under its own monolithic weight. Perhaps not the classic album they're capable of, but pretty damn fine all the same.

DMX Krew ~ We Are DMX (Rephlex)

4th Album from Rephlex's electro grandmaster Ed DMX, closer to last years Nu Romantix than the superb Ffreessshhh!, this is another installment of 80's style electro-pop. Listening to the vocoders, casio beats and purposely dodgy lyrics, you have to wonder if he really means this, or if it's just a joke. Perhaps he doesn't even really know himself. We Are DMX shifts the realm of retro-futurism away from the likes of Pierre Henry and Dick Hyman towards the shimmering pop of The Human League and early Depeche Mode. So, it's rather like Les Rhythms Digitales if they were, like, any good.
Standout tracks are the super-authentically eighties Street Boys, which is almost the lost twin of Duran Duran's Wild Boys. Honey is schmaltzy quite affecting casio pop, recent single Good Time Girl is a bittersweet early Depeche Mode take off. Release My Dub has a voice synthesiser effect similar to Mel and Kim's Respectable. The AOR tinged emo-soul of Twenty Minute Affair, complete with facepulling guitar solo by Jones, suggests a new direction ripe for plundering, while Get With You sounds oddly out of place, coming on rather like a budget New Order.
At first I wasn't sure if this was a step too far, but after a couple of listens I've started to really get into this album. You might think that, really, you can't handle this but you know it makes sense.

Fuschimuschi ~ Super Sexy Lady / My Number One (Rephlex)

Supremely oddball gubbins from Rephlex. Super Sexy Lady sounds like a no-fi Prince. My Number One is better, still sounds like Prince though. Bogdan Raczynski turns up on remix duty, but to no great effect. It has a certain charm, but I kind of missed the point on this one.

Ovuca ~ Lactavent (Rephlex)

Lactavent is a rough and ready collection of abrasive electronica from Rephlex's new Finnish signing. Like a midpoint between D'Arcangelo and Bogdan Raczynski, combining the abstract electro of the former with the cluttered percussive assault of the latter as 22 tracks race by in 39 minutes. First half works pretty well as a cohesive piece and there's some top tracks, but it loses it's way a bit in the second half.

Junkboy ~ Kraut-Hop (Ya Don't Stop) (Enraptured)

Motorikdisco-postrock, there's a lot of it going about these days. Can't really see what the fuss about this 12" is though. I mean, it's...ok. 4 tracks, sounds a bit like that Daa 7". Ducky Fell Into His French Horn is probably the best of the tracks courtesy of a Brian Wilson - Wonderful style harpsichord. Then, however, the obligatory analogue squiggles and post-rock beats come in. It is ok, but that's all really.

Position Normal ~ Stop Your Nonsense (Mind Horizon)

The sampladelic speech snippet stew of Stop Your Nonsense is the work of the man formerly known as Bugger Sod. Trying to find something to compare this too in the music world is pretty difficult. In fact it's closest relation is probably Chris Morris's radio program Blue Jam. Most of the tracks are similarly based around snippets of odd speech. The final track Bedside Manners shows this best, and eerie guitar backdrop provides the setting for unsettling vocals from someone masquerading as a GP.
There are only a couple of tracks that could be described as even approaching actual songs. Jimmy Had Jane could almost be early Disco Inferno. For the most part though, the album is bits of speech woven together, and any character in the pieces comes from the qualities inherent in the voices themselves. Interesting but not really anything more.

Plone ~ For Beginner Piano (Warp)

Long awaited debut album from Birmingham's foremost practitioners of 'Timeless Electronic Melodies', for the most part For Beginner Piano forsakes the cheery style of Simple Song and for a surprisingly melancholic and downbeat style. Much of the album is fairly Morricone-esque, and there is a sense of mini-grandeur throughout. Often, this downbeat sound is what lets the album down, making it too serious sounding, even reminiscent of a toybox Portishead at times.
For Beginner Piano works best on the cheery jaunty Prozac-muzak style tracks. Marbles, Bibi Plone and the bittersweet Be Rude To Your School are the best here, and these lighter pieces, along with previous single Plock have a innocent pathos which the more morose tracks lack. With an emphasis on the airier pieces, For Beginner Piano could have been a great album. As it is, there's about a half a really good album here.

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