With Love From The SC Estate – Garden City Project Dreamily unfurling into Springtime
‘You’ve seen the rap singers’ - Stewart Lee. Comedy as drone rock.
Sunday, 17 May 2009
A man who had read all the books published today…would be more stupid than a man who had read nothing. Fave Tunes March/April 2009
Monday, 11 May 2009
A Classic Education single release party, 9 May 2009 - Jamboree
A shout out to Jamboree at Cable Street Studios, all cosy and home-made bohemian. Creep through the curtained doorway and into a dimly lampplit old garage space that’s been done up with car boot furniture, handy shelves of books in the corner and v. splendidly crafted ‘future events’ booklets scattered on the bar. I often think that gigs would be improved if I could have a nice sit down, (if there’s no dancing to be had, legs just get achey and seize up) but still be at the front, and that’s exactly what I get here. A comfy chair, a bottle of beer and an entertaining array of bands. And just a short bus ride from home. Aces!
My Sad Captains play a sweet set of their cheery twisty country-psych tinged pop. They sound summery and chirpy, jangly and wibbly. The girl on keyboards seems to have had a head transplant, or maybe it’s a new girlonkeyboards – like on Australian soaps when a regular character comes back played by a completely different actor and nobody passes comment.
Gossamer Albatross are all rather young and rather posh, which of course isn’t a crime, but keeps us amused. Best bit of their set is the singer offering up “Mega props to my Mum” a ha ha ha ha! I cackle with hilarity for the whole of the next song. The songs are quite pleasant sea-shanty, swirlish dramatic thingies with cello and double violin attack, snorting nostrils and flashing eyes, but they sound a bit, um, samey. Still, megaprops to my mum, ah ha ha! Also, the cellist might want to invest in a longer skirt. Or wear some trousers. Just saying.
Jeremy Warmsley, producer of A Classic Education’s new single and thus integral to tonight’s proceedings, plays a brief set of viciously strummed acoustic guitar and tricksy lyrics sung in a gulping, gliding voice. He asks for requests, we get Abba sung as a sob-hearted ballad.
A Classic Education thrilled us at Indietracks and manage the same trick tonight. Their songs sound like stormy nights with racing clouds, lamps shining in windows, dark trees silhouetted on hilltops. They play with an urgency that makes the songs seem like a matter of life and death, the violinist sweeping and swooping, the guitarist singing with hands either side of his mouth like he has to communicate across vast distances, it’s exciting if you let yourself get carried along. They also play a beguiling English language version of ‘Toi’ from the Italian film “Io la Conoscevo Bene” . Its lilting loungeyness fits the surroundings brilliantly. There are plenty more thrilling tunes to be had; fireworks bursts of euphoria on ‘Stay Son’, the fluttering swell of ‘Wartimes’, and the new single ‘Best Regards’ which hurtles along fuelled by frantic guitar, is made ornate by luscious keyboard and violin, then topped off with staccato handclaps - exhilaratingly turbulent pop. We’re sold and get ourselves a copy of the 7 inch on the way out - nice cover too.
Projekt A-ko – Yoyodyne (Milk Pie Records)
‘A-ko seems to be near invulnerable with superhuman speed and strength.’ (Wikipedia article on anime character Eiko Magami).
Urusei Yatsura – they were so FAB! So let’s all cheer for the existence of Projekt A-ko – three quarters of Urusei who are maintaining the anime theme and still applying themselves to the art of teasing out cheerily discombobulating noise from guitars and things. Shout hip hip! and give a big scrabbly guitar squawk of joy at the arrival of Projekt Ako’s album - only two thousand years in the making but worth the wait.
‘Yoyodyne’ sounds like the electromagnetic field flexing and flipping out there in the cosmos, whipping across the universe to land jittering in your head with a Space Dust pop explosion. It’s robots with cracked hearts. Skullz and flowers. Gleefully tuneful turmoil. A big thrill. Attack, attack, attack!
Listen carefully and you can catch the sound of static, fizzling and squealing, fading in from another galaxy, getting closer…tune in and explode into ‘Hey Palooka!’ take a nosebleed nosedive into thrillingly crunchy fuzzpop. A good start.
‘Nothing Works Twice’ will have you reminiscing about dancing like a goon to ‘Kewpies Like Watermelon’ (and that time Fergus jumped into the crowd after a heckler git). Then it’ll have you dancing like a goon. ‘Supertriste Duxelle’ is a discordant sunshine pop wail, My Bloody Valentine doing bubblegum thrash. ‘Molten Hearts’ runs amok, a rollercoaster hijack, kicking up sparks of feedback, demanding you sing along with a thrill in your heart and mad eyes. ‘Otaku Blue’ very cutely plays around with ‘Union City Blue’, but with more squealing and squalling than Blondie ever managed, and with a mighty thunderousness that wraps rainbows round your heart and squeezes. Hard.
This album is crammed with manic pop spills that make me feel all energetic and effervescent and overexcited. It’s an electricity overload, delicious noise textured like years and years worth of paint built up in multi-hued blistered layers.
And then you come across ‘Yoyodyne (Scintilla II)’, twinkling up at you hidden amongst the mass of electric cables and distortion pedals. It’s all gentle and lilting, with strings and ‘ba da las’. Fergus’ and Elaine’s voices sweet and sincere and leaving you a little bit bereft at the end. It wrong-foots you, but is so very right.
“Here comes Kitten she’s vaguely smitten” – ‘Black Empire’
www.projektako.co.uk/yoyodyne
Monday, 4 May 2009
Je Suis Animal / Betty And The Werewolves / Hong Kong In The 60s – 24 April 2009, The Victoria
There are cupcakes on the door and Bobby McGees in the audience, which must mean we’re at Twee As Fuck. More importantly though, this gig is happening a short stroll from where we live – it’s genius! Je Suis Animal are in our ‘hood! We can look out the windows and see the familiar scummo streets but they’re sound-tracked by fantastical fairytale sounds.
First off, Hong Kong In The 60s cast soothing spells with a motley selection of keyboards. They offer up elegant swoons and toybox twists and play a smattering of songs from their debut E.P. ‘Willow Pattern Songs’ OUT SOON!! The tunes have delightful titles such as ‘Empty House, Lonely Mouse’, ‘The Organdy Snood’ and ‘Fox’s Wedding’. They swoosh and wash over us and are enchanting and wistful and twinkly and sumptuous.
Betty And The Werewolves are feeling a bit tipsy, thanks to drinking beer that ‘tastes like a cake’. The drummer has just vommed in the lavs, but he soldiers on anyway, battering away at the kit whilst the front of the stage is taken up by three smiling girls doing wee leaps and bounds and crunching out top tunes like the galloping ‘Tu Veux Jouer’ and new single ‘David Cassidy’ (old ‘Look-In’ annuals have got a lot to answer for). The music makes me think of The Rosehips being slightly less hardcore or maybe Bubblegum Splash! with added Girls In The Garage-ness. Fast, ramshackle, gleeful. Betty And The Werewolves seem to be about playing swingoriffic skiffley riffs, speeding through songs, jumping up and down, wearing ginchy frocks, hoooowwwwling like wolves and having a lot of fun. It’s nice to see a band enjoying themselves.
There’s a midnight curfew, so Je Suis Animal are playing against the clock – a slightly battered antique clock-face hanging on the wall above the stage, tocking down the minutes on big old roman numerals. This is appropriately story-bookish as Je Suis Animal sound like twisted nursery rhymes in haunted houses. They are here to launch their new single, ‘The Mystery Of Marie Roget’ – based on an Edgar Allen Poe tale. It’s a catchy wee number – tootling and fluttering around inside my head all day. Je Suis Animal are tuneful buggers in general – listen to the super soaring Lush-ness of ‘Painted In My Face’ or the chiming swallow-diving ‘Sparkle Spit’. Quickly now, because the songs are ricocheting past at a fair old lick. Look, there goes a twinkle-pop curiosity in the form of a cover of Joe Meek’s ‘Hobbies’. In their attempt to cram everything in before we all turn into pumpkins, Je Suis Animal’s set ends up sounding a tad perfunctory tonight. They’re still great, just not as wooshingly epic and cinemascopic as they can be.
Monday, 6 April 2009
Chrome Hoof / Cluster - 21 March 2009, Rich Mix Centre
Hmm, this isn’t the usual schmindie scene down the Buff bar. We’re at a um, Throwback! loft party. Near Brick Lane’s happenin’ Brick Lane, which means there are people here JUST BECAUSE it’s near Brick Lane. Luckily, the place isn’t just full of mongy disco kidz in eighties clobber, the audience is a mix of clubby types lookin’ to lose their shit to James Holden’s set later on, demented ‘Hoooof!’ shouting fans and faces familiar from Sonic Cathedral and Kosmische clubnights.
The latter are here because ye olde Krautrockers Cluster are playing. The rather groovy Throwback! idea is to have a band of original sonic envelope pushers doing their thing, i.e. Cluster, and then to have a nowtimes band showing off how they may have learnt a thing or too from those oldtimers i.e. Chrome Hoof.
Are Cluster playing now? Oh yes, onstage Hans-Joachim Roedelius and Dieter Moebius are absorbed in their sonic scientist work, pressing buttons and stuff, their physical presence obliterated by the backdrop film projected over them. As the bleeps and ticks of sound blend and swoosh, your eye is drawn to the backdrop – a locked down shot of a big stone house on a blustery Spring day. Every now and then the trees swish their branches in the breeze. It’s a soothing view. Twenty minutes of sound ebbs and flows, and then, look! a man has come out of the house and is pottering about!! Oh he’s gone again.
I’m listening carefully, trying to pick my way along the melancholy electronic trail being laid by Cluster, but my concentration keeps being broken by an endless stream of party kids making their way to the front looking for some action. It’s quite entertaining to watch them get there, clock the scene – which consists of two elderly geezers busying themselves behind tables of equipment – and then flounce off again.
Things liven up when Cluster are joined by Chrome Hoof (there’s not really anything that wouldn’t be livened up by Chrome Hoof joining it, is there?) A big gongggg is beaten. Monster riffage and murderous drumbeats slice in and crank everything up several gears. A Cluster/Hoof mashup ensues. It’s the best bit of the set and ends sadly soon. 
Green lasers rebound from sequins’ metallic shiver. Silvery alien gimps gyrate. A terrifying ten foot tall silvery ram-monster-god has processed into the crowd and is declaiming about "being addicted to failure" and the like. This isn't the ram-monster of past Chrome Hoof events. This is a futuristic terror, a thing of sleek shiney curves, including limbs that end in, yes, a chrome hooves. Aieee!
The ram-monster, having made its point to the befuddled clubsters, takes its stately leave. The music kicks back in. We go bonkers. It’s the techno you can head-bang to. It’s the heavy metal you can rave to. It’s the jazz-skronk you can boogaloo to. It’s the disco you can art-funk to. It is the nightmare pantomime of Chrome Hoof and the greatest show in town. Move your body to the beat. NOW, WEAKLINGS!
Monday, 30 March 2009
Tame Impala – 11 March 2009, The Lexington
This is all rather odd. We’re at a gig and there’s nobody here we know. Just lots of Australians. Oh hang on Delia’s doing the door. Hurrah! Seeing her familiar smiling face makes us feel less bewildered.
This is Tame Impala’s second UK gig (I overhear the drummer saying “This is my third day out of Australia” – bless) and it seems to be a sort of record company (Modular Records) showcase – no support bands, no advance tickets, an eager crowd who break all the London gig rules by being excited and enthusiastic, clapping and whooping and generally acting like they’re enjoying the band. Pretty shocking stuff, but the band ARE enjoyable. Tame Impala play prog jazz hippy wiggy wig outs but with TUNES and funkiness. They have a Crybaby wah wah pedal, shaggy hair and teenage prodigy guitar fingers. Their songs conjure flickery sunlight through dappled leaves and super nova sunspots. Dazed and confused psychedelia for metal kids with mellow smiles.
Tame Impala are usually three, but are supplemented live by an extra guitar pixie boy in a far out hippy top. He’s the only one wearing shoes, the rest of the band are in bare feet. As it says on their Myspace they ‘like to play gigs in paddocks and other large areas of grass in the sun’, which is all very well, but this is London in Feb, so respect to Tame Impala’s dedication to the hippy way.
The bass player does some excellent hair swinging and at one point rips into a deeply growly bass riff that’s almost as good as Dungen’s ‘Du E For Fin For Mig’ a track that always makes me laugh out loud so good is its bass crunch. Ah, Dungen. The mention of their name in a Tame Impala review is what initially piqued my interest, and there are some definite Dungen-y moments tonight, the swirling ‘Desire Be Desire Go’ being the most obvious example, as well as the space jazz blissed-outness, the expanding midsong thousand-yard-stare jams, and the flowery reverbing across the cosmos.
We get seven songs from Tame Impala (though they’re all pretty long, what with the wig-outs and the, gulp, drum solos and all – value for money, innit?) including, quite madly, a sunfried, stoned psychfunk version of Blue Boy’s ‘Remember Me’…gan gaga gaga gan gan ga gan etc. The set ends with what seems to be regarded by this audience as Tame Impala’s ‘hit’. ‘Half Full Glass Of Wine’, a hip swinging chunk of riffalong catchiness, swoops all before it into an eight armed multi-coloured embrace of crunchy psych-rock. Num!
Sunday, 29 March 2009
London Popfest Alldayer - 28 February 2009, The MacBeth
London Popfest is a skillz idea – four days of indiepop fun brightening up dull old Feb. So big cheers to Spiral Scratch, Fortuna Pop! And WIAIWYA for putting the whole shebang together.
Fearing we might come over all unnecessary if we overindulge in the pop, we confine ourselves to attending the centrepiece event, The London Popfest Alldayer. We’re in The MacBeth, The Pete Green Corporate Juggernaut have just kicked things off, playing at least two songs that feature the bassline from ‘Never Understand’. We are surrounded by familiar faces with nary a Hoxton twat in sight (that comes much later when we have to negotiate the Sat nite streets of Shoreditch. The buggers are even spilling down Bethnal Green Road now!) There’s a (yum!) record stall and a mix tape CD swap and up on the smoking roof The Loves are trying to recreate a Monty Python photo.
Ahh, The Loves. They’re on tip top form today, maybe because this is bassist Danielle’s (sob!) last gig, going out with a krang! blamm! sprang!! not a whimper. These Loves are goddamn nasty, crunching out a v. rock ‘n’ roll set sprinkled with Simon’s amusingly offensive banter. They start with a two song mash-up: ‘The Sound We Make Is…Little Girl Blues’ and crash through a popart set: ‘Ode To Coca Cola’, ‘Xs and Os’, ‘Bubblegum’. Simon slathers on the geetar, pulling his finest, windmillingest rock moves all over The Loves’ delirious freakbeat psych out mod pop topping it all off with Os Mutantes’ ‘Bat Macumba’. Yeah!
Prior to this we are rocked in a very bubblegum punk way by Town Bike. The key to Town Bike is the ‘High School Musical’ sticker on Janey’s bass and the fact that they have a song that is an ode to Dougie from McFly. They are the essence of pop encapsulated in its simplest form; fast and fun. They even have a song pointing this out, “Three chords, three notes. That’s all we wrote.” At one point drummer Gabby is called upon to perform a drum-roll. She looks most surprised to have carried it off and it makes us feel good to have witnessed it – twice! Town Bike are tumultuous and gleeful and you can either let yourself get swept along in their enthusiasm, or you pretty much have to fuck off.
Action Biker has laptop probs for ages, but eventually gets things going. She stands alone centre stage looking gorgeous in a fab dress, swaying and dancing to her blippy beats, singing sweetly along to the pattering, twinkly, glowing songs. After a while we have to go for a bit of a sit down. It’s tiring work all this Popfesting.
The Smittens aren’t afraid to call their music ‘tweepop’. And Goddamn they’re twee. Twee enough to turn one into Steven Wells, or at least make a shy bald Buddhist reflect and plan a mass murder. Today The Smittens are just three-strong, and incredibly smiley. In fact they’re insanely happy to the point of being sinister. I find their hyper saccharine playgroup pop a little hard to stomach, but there are two boys at the front of the crowd jumping about, hugging each other and singing along soo ecstatically that it would be churlish to begrudge them their pop joy. And slowly, I’m won round, especially when 6 ft 4 Max gets on the mic and sings in a bottom of yer boots voice. There are some intriguing pop gems to be found amongst the candyfloss here, and by the end I’m singing along merrily with The Smittens’ cover of Beat Happening’s ‘Cast A Shadow’. 
Help Stamp Out Loneliness provide us with a big pop rush. I’ve only seen the band once before, so I’m surprised to find their songs bounding up to me like long lost friends. Cor, they’re catchy. Big, shiny tunes that recall the best kinds of eighties pop. The kinds of tunes that are ubiquitous and eternal and crucially still cool, like stuff by Blondie or The Pretenders. There’s also a bittersweet yearning to the songs that recalls The Organ and by extension The Smiths. Singer D.C. Lucille radiates fuck you poise and glamour and is wearing an excellent pink mini dress that even the Sounds XP fashion correspondent couldn’t object to. There should be a legion of teenage girls styling themselves on Ms Lucille, in the same way that lots of mini Kate Jacksons erupted in the wake of The Long Blondes. Meanwhile, the rest of the band hammer out the songs with gusto. So much so that the drummer nearly dislodges the fake stone wall (MacBeth – castle, see?) behind him. Sterling work.Milky Wimpshake generate a crazy popkid moshpit with their songs. A band of boys and girls all babble the lyrics, fluff the words, punch the air and land heavily but happily. It’s sweet and communal and makes The MacBeth feel even more of a tiny indiepop microcosm swirling in an unlovely world.
Comet Gain are a beautiful chandelier in our hearts. At least that’s what David Feck would like us to think. He says as much as his band’s set rapidly crumbles around our ears. And in a way they are, albeit that chandelier on ‘Only Fools and Horses’ that crashes to the floor and breaks into smithereens because Rodney’s holding the blanket to catch it under the wrong one.The band have brought a wee bloke with an oil slide projector with them who busies himself in a corner dropping ink onto the slides to little effect as the projection is kind of blotted out by the band. It’s the thought that counts though. The first time I saw an oil slide projector in action was when Pink Floyd, I mean Felt played the Doin’ It For The Kids Alldayer, their track ‘Ballad of the Band’ being one of the highlights on the accompanying compilation LP. Spookily, Comet Gain start their set with a rather fab cover of ‘Ballad Of The Band’, “Sometimes I feel like giving in” sings Feck, perhaps ominously.
A few tatty but happy songs later, things is going wrong, but Comet Gain don’t give in. They plough on through a set that rapidly becomes an insane car crash shambles even by their standards. And we can’t look away. In my notebook I have written “Slade’s look of surprise”. I can’t remember what this was referring to now, but really it could have been any one of a host of things, not least his guitar packing in. Meanwhile Rachel in best show-must-go-on style, dances and claps, hauling the crumpled wrecks of songs along in her indie testifying wake. She is a star shining amidst the rubble.
Towards the end, with any hope of playing actual songs with notes in the right order gone, Feck is just going wherever his shellshocked ‘muse’ takes him, wittering out indie savant bollocks, “I can go on singing like this all night… I know lots of records…Godstar, Godstar, uh oh oh oh…And that’s just Psychic TV’. This is clearly poetic licence of a genius kind and certainly a memorable end to an oddball day.
Monday, 2 March 2009
You Leave Me No Choice But To Plot My Revenge – Fave Tunes Jan/Feb 2009
Half Full Glass Of Wine – Tame Impala Twangling geetars ‘n’ head banging in the desert heat
Gentle Sons - The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart Cavernous drums, feedback wailing perfectly. Turn it up!
Summertime Clothes - Animal Collective Sounds squidgy and sweaty like a sweltering summer night
Path Through The Forest – Factory Chocolate Soup humming with electricity
Up Against The Wall – The Young Sinclairs Pretty much everything this band does is swirlingly wonderful, but this is especially dreamy
Jervington Jig – Wyrdstone Soothing, circling Watch With Mother folkiness
Pregnancy Scene - Shrag Poptastic droning undertow gets blitzkrieged with agitated SHOUTING
Young Adult Friction - The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart What if My Bloody Valentine had gone to a nice college instead of living in a Kentish Town squat with broken bannisters? Nice to hear a shout-out to microfiche in a pop song, too
When Tomorrow Hits – Spectrum Excellent fun to sing in an especially doomy voice whilst washing up
Sunday, 1 March 2009
Spectrum – 27 February 2009, Sonic Cathedral at The Dome
Last summer we were cruelly tantalised by two Spectrum shows which promised to be amazing had equipment problems not cruelly eaten into set time and cut the band off in their prime. Tonight we get our reward. Spectrum are gobsmackingly fabulous. There are no problems, indeed the sound here in The Dome (where one thousand years of indie discos are engrained into the school-hall-tastic fabric of the room) is dashed excellent.
Sonic Boom looks pretty much the same as ever – the same as last year, the same as ten years ago, the same as the Spacemen 3 years – boyish, skeletal. He is the lightning rod at the centre of an electrical storm, calmly conducting the ebb and flow of noise from behind a keyboard and guitar. The songs build and burst into beautiful chaos -all meticulously controlled – no fret-board wankery here, the band drilled in the pureness of repetition driven by relentless drums.
K, D and I form a grand (old) ladies of drone-rock cabal in the corner – like the old ladies who sit in their special corner of a pub – seen it all before, but still game for some hair shaking.
Spectrum’s set is chock full of crowd pleasing ‘hits’ – all sounding MIGHTY. ‘How You Satisfy Me’ is less farfisa jaunty than on record and more borehole to your brain ferocious, ‘Transparent Radiation’ utterly luxuriant. ‘When Tomorrow Hits’ booms doomily, a narco thunderclap. Of course the set ends with ‘Revolution’, drawn out and teasing, before finally kicking into that angry white out of scrubbed guitar strings. And then there's an encore. A twenty minute encore of 'Suicide'. A pummelling, heart-seizing 'Suicide'. Half-way through the song, its machinery set to his satisfaction, Sonic strolls off to collect his 'special guests' MGMT. They seem a bit terrified. One of them (I don't what MGMT's names are do I?) is given a drum mallet which he uses to tickle a cymbal in a hilariously mimsy manner. The other is guided to the keyboard where Sonic, an avuncular sorcerer to a shaggy haired apprentice, shows him how to twiddle knobs, set phasers to stun, etc.
We bask in the fearsome squall eating up the entire room and inveigling our senses. It's heavenly. And Kevin Shields is nearby looking on. Just like the old days, eh? I said JUST LIKE THE OLD DAYS. Yes.
Crystal Stilts – 13 February 2009, Brixton Windmill
We all know there are too many ‘Crystal…’ bands at the mo. I especially get Crystal Stilts and Crystal Antlers confused because both involve appendages to the body, albeit at opposite ends. Crystal STILTS are the ones we’re concerned with here. The Mary Chainy, Velvetsy ones. You can put them in a little box tied with a bow (probably fashioned from a scraggy old Ramones tee-shirt) along with The Vivian Girls and The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart. All hail from New York bearing fuzzy, buzzy indie pop gifts. All of them make me go a bit nostalgic for late eighties feedbackery. Crystal Stilts are at the more garagey end of the fuzzpop spectrum and tonight I discover they’re a darn sight more POP! than I was expecting, not to mention irresistibly danceable. Hair swinging, Chelsea boot stamping danceable - the only dance it’s really possible to do in the confined space of a packed Windmill, although a couple of girls nearby do their utmost to really irritate everyone by doing ‘ooh look at me, I’m so free!’ arm wavey dancing.
The star of the show has to be Crystal Stilts’ cute (ex-Vivian Girl) stand up drummer Frankie Rose. She manages to be the most engaging member of the band despite being positioned in the far back corner of the stage, bashing away at a three piece kit providing the crashing backbeat that makes you move. Also she has a tiny dress on. Meanwhile, up front singer Brad seems to be having one long seizure, eyes three quarters closed and rolled back mumbling out the words in a sub-sonic rumble beneath the clattering cacophony of guitars ‘n’ swivelly sixties organ (played by Steph from Shrag).
Live, the ghost train reverb of Crystal Stilts album is less apparent, the Velvet Underground clackety groove bursting forth. To prove the point there’s an encore of ‘Temptation Inside Of Your Heart' which cranks along sweetly, tracing a forty year old trail of sticky footprints from Manhattan to Brooklyn.
