[Review] Lone- Galaxy Garden [Published in Now Then Issue 50 May 2012]

Why do all Blink 182 songs sound the same? Why did michael jackson keep banging on about the colours black and white? Why in the name of all that is good in the world do people keep listening to Skrillex?

Its all about artists ‘doing a Glenn Miller’ and finding their sound. 

You can spot a Lone track a mile off. Any time you drift off and start to imagine a nightclub themed bonus stage on Ecco the dolphin, or start seeing colours like aquamarine or fuschia you’re most likely listening to Lone. Either that or you ate the ‘funny’ fruit pastille your flat mate left on his windowsill when he moved out. 

Lone’s use of scattered chords and notes akin to that of an autistic child playing Chopin, are all his own. His Leitmotif if you will. Like the 9th chord progression at the end of a blues song, or when Switch has to put his name in every bloody remix he does because he managed to find a sample that sounded vaguely like his moniker.

I’m a massive advocate of Lone’s signature sonics, so when I say all his songs sound the same it’s both informed and perfectly acceptable. It’s the same principal as me getting away with talking Patois on account of my ex girlfriend being black.

You know where you stand with Lone. You know it’s going to sound like someone playing a  Mega Drive at a warehouse party.

Like freshly washed bed sheets, his new offering is suitably familiar and yet different enough to pique interest.

The two collaborations with Sepalcure’s Machinedrum are stand out efforts. The output of both artists seemingly made for partnership, with tracks packed to the gills with big 808’s, lush pads and haunted vocals.

Floaty, early 90’s rave culture is the order of the day for tracks like Raindance and the absurdly good Crystal Caverns 1991 and everything else is smattered with a healthy doses of Boards Of Canada and Chicago house.

Frenetic yet perfectly under control. Verging on intense but always subdued and above all produced and mastered to the brink of perfection. 

This album is most definitely a progression from previous efforts, just not in the grandiose way you’d expect from a fifth album.

So fixed is Lone in the idea of his own sound, he can obsess on fine tuning it to make sure it will always stay familiar.

[Preview] Jazzy Jeff- Live at Lakota Bristol (Published in Fear Of Fiction May 2012 Issue)

I was always a sickly child. 

I used to blame it on the diet of John West and Philidelphia cheese spread upon which I was raised.

I spent most of my free time in my school playground relaxing and occasionally playing basketball.

One fateful day two older boys decided to cause a ruckus in my local community. Not standing for a breach of the peace on my watch I ended up in a little scrap.

Upon hearing of this my mother became concerned with my well being and insisted I stayed with her sister Viv and her husband.

Whether that’s true or just the intro to ‘The Fresh Prince of Bel Air’ isn’t important. You’d be hard pressed to find anyone who doesn’t know of the man like Jazzy Jeff and his light hearted contributions to the world of hip hop.

He’s been around for a few centuries short of an aeon and although he’s never quite topped the work he did with Bill Smith in terms of popularity, he’s kept his head above water with some fantastic scratch heavy collaborations with Slum Village, Talib Kweli, Little Brother and The Roots to name but a few.

Speaking from wonderfully rose tinted experience, he always knows how to bring the party and with the Futureboogie DJs sweetening the deal in the form a 90’s inspired rinse out, there’s no excuse. 

Bristol is his kingdom and he’s finally here. So whistle for a cab and get to Lakota.

[Preview] Daedelus- Live at Lakota Bristol (Published in Fear Of Fiction April 2012 Issue)

It is with a heavy heart that I inform you, I’ve lost the screenshot of the Facebook chat Daedelus and I once had.

As inconsequential as it may seem, that PNG file was as prized a possession as the massive yellow balloon I caught and spent three minutes deflating at Fatboy Slim’s final set at Bestival. 

I’ve been an enormous fan of the disco dandy for 7 solid years and have witnessed his amazing frenetic live shows countless times, each time blown away with his fresh approach to live performance. I’ve never had the opportunity to see his Archimedes light show until now. Rest assured I’ll be at the front flapping my hands like a remedial.

The visual array it provides is fantastic. Swiveling banks of mirrors, lasers and strobes make the perfect accompaniment to Daedelus’ own brand of high energy, on the fly, twisted bootlegs.

The man is all about the visuals. He performs using a homemade trigger pad angled toward the audience offering a glimpse of his complex techniques.

Standing 6 feet high dressed as an 1800’s dapper in a crushed velvet suit and waistcoat thrashing his arms with every MIDI trigger, both sweating and smiling profusely. One of the politest men you’ll ever meet and a master of making you feel as though your brain is melting.

Everyone should know what it feels like to have your senses assaulted by a damp victorian gentleman.

I believe I just wrote my epitaph.

[Review] Justice- Live at the o2 Academy Bristol (Published at Fearoffiction.com Feb 2012)

Over the past few hundred years the French have given us many things.

They provided us with a bafflingly large selection of foul smelling dairy products, aptly introduced words like abandon, quit and surrender into our language and even let Walt Disney gain a posthumous stranglehold on Europe.

As far as I’m concerned all of these things pale in comparison to the glorious gift they bestowed upon the world in 1996.

The release of Daft Punk’s first album Homework was a catalyst for a French dance music scene that was up until that point fairly insular. Their manager Pedro ‘Busy P’ Winter was the man who capitalised on the boom, and after managing everyone under the sun went on to form the now worldwide phenomenon that is Ed Banger records.

Ed Banger’s second release was the infamous Never Be Alone by a couple of Parisian remix 

competition winners calling themselves Justice.

And the rest, as they say, is your mother’s brother.

Considering the worldwide phenomenon that was their 2007 debut album ‘†’, Justice haven’t really been hogging the limelight of late and they’d be forgiven for misplacing their enthusiasm like we’d be excused for feigning ours. The sheer amount of makeshift, glow stick crucifixes on show at Bristol’s o2 Academy showed otherwise. Sporadic shouts of “Justice” reminded me of that horribly messy court case my uncle had to endure recently and when the sea of people below me started jumping and swaying I thought someone had slipped me a Mickey.

From the opening gambit of ‘Genesis’ you knew it was going to be big. The massive synth laden orchestra of it’s intro ringing out like a giant mechanised Godzilla was preparing to terrorise the room. After an almost mandatory hiatus of the drop a truly epic light display lit up a thousand beaming grins and the ground started shaking under the whim of two thousand ecstatic feet. 

Tracks like ‘Stress’ and Justice’s own remix of ‘D.A.N.C.E’ went off like a block of Camembert left in the sun, and the football chant accompaniment to ‘Phantom Pt. 2’s bass line was just glorious.

The music being a given, the highlight of the evening’s entertainment had to be watching  a rack of Marshall amps I scoffed about not being plugged in to anything suddenly light up to form a huge video display with loads and loads of pretty colours on it.

After orchestrating a final, wonderfully shouty chorus of “We are your friends…” as the summation of a twenty minute encore, the pompous facade finally crumbled and the leather clad pair set about shaking hands with their adoring crowd absolutely beaming and genuinely humbled.

It may not have been the biggest gig they’ve played but it had to be one of the warmest receptions,  

and although they’ve been off the radar a little as of late, anyone watching a show as monumentally impressive as that will have them at the forefront of their minds for some time.

Cheese, words, Euro Disney, Daft Punk and Justice.

Yeah, I reckon that just about covers it.

[Review] Burial- Kindred EP (Published in Now Then issue 48 Feb 2012)

I’d be quite happy if Four Tet rubbed off on me. For the purposes of inspiration of course. I’m not keen on sharing a bed with Kieran Hebden and his abnormally large head. I’d like to spend an evening taking his plug-ins. You know, bear a mutual brainchild. What I mean is he uses a lot of defunct analogue instruments and I’d like to go round to his and work really hard before backing up onto a floppy.

In 2009 William Bevan or, as he’s known to his mum, ‘Burial’ collaborated with Hebden on what I genuinely considered to be “the best tune I’ve ever heard”. Now don’t get me wrong, Burial is a right royal virtuoso as it is, but when he and Four Tet collaborated on ‘Moth’ something very special happened. Bevan’s trademark counterpoint of dusty clicks and wooshy noises were reigned in with the dance music staple of a 4/4 time signature. They say beauty is repetition and it’s the beautiful repetition of a beautifully repetitive hook that repeatedly makes me think that ‘Moth’ is beautiful.

Last year’s Street Halo was arguably Burial’s best yet due to its prevalent 4/4 theme and his new release tops it for the same reasons. The title track ‘Kindred’ is old school Burial fare - an enormous droning bass line, 2-step rhythm and a huge suspended vocal hook.

Second track ‘Loner’ is where things get interesting. A primitive Casio house beat and a huge rave inspired arpeggio sit atop Burial’s trademark crackles, snaps and pops, giving the track the feel of listening to a happy hardcore mix on a gramophone.

But my money is on ‘Ashtray Wasp’. The track actually starts off with a pitched down sample of the synth hook from 2007’s album track ‘Endorphin’ before a mystery female vocal clip uttering the words “Alright, bye” slices through the ambience. Bidding farewell to his previous style of production couldn’t be more apt. A swinging house beat, a floating fairground arpeggio, nods to AFX’s acid house twiddlings, 90s vocal stabs, and an outro who’s desperate screams of “FOUR TET!” are masked under low fidelity clicks, crumbling samples and demi-octaved field recordings.

400 words isn’t enough to go into as much depth as I would like. This release is exquisite. I’m not saying collaborating with Four Tet has made Burial a better musician. I just feel it made him appreciate the beauty of repetition and if you can repeatedly make something beautiful then I will dutifully pay for the opportunity to play something beautiful... on repeat.

[Review] Pinch- Fabriclive.61 (Published in Now Then Issue 46 Jan 2012)

I’ve never been to Fabric. It’s not like I didn’t want to or anything. Who wouldn’t want to stand on a dancefloor that vibrates the music through your bones? Your bones, for Pete’s sake! The closest I ever got to that were those lollipops that played the radio through your teeth.

I just never got around to it is all. I knew exactly what it sounded like in there though. I’ve been an advocate of the Fabriclive mix range since I first heard Jacques Lu Cont expertly weave together Fabriclive.09.

After that Adam Freeland beat the grey stuff out of my head with his heavy electro and breaks driven Fabriclive.16, Aim hugged me through every quiet night shift with Fabriclive.17, Evil Nine made me feel a bit funny in the trousers with Fabriclive.28 and Justice made me appreciate camp French disco with the very different and frankly brilliant Fabriclive.37, which was rejected in favour of Caspa & Rusko.

For a long time these mixes were a platform for carefully selected DJs to entertain you with their ideal night out. They were always fun and never took themselves as seriously as their sister ‘Fabric’ mixes - all apart from No. 23, which we don’t talk about because it doesn’t fit in with what I just said and I don’t want to look like an idiot.

It’s pretty hard to extract artistic merit from a varied selection of songs that come from a varied selection of musicians, unless of course they’re embarrassingly well mixed, or if the artist does what I like to call a ‘Kalkbrenner’ and just plays their own tracks for an hour and a half.

Neither of those things has happened here. Nor is it in the least bit fun. The tone of the release is dark and sparse, packed to the gills with a style of under-produced bass music that is somehow still popular. There’s even a bit of ‘wob’ in the form of ‘Blue Meanie’ by Distance, which sounds even more out of place on this mix than that particular brand of noise does within the nation’s collective psyche.

Having said all that, this is the only place you’ll be able to get a full three minutes of Boddika & Joy O’s ‘Swims’ for quite a while. Every cloud, and all that.

I’ve no doubt there are people out there who will thoroughly enjoy this mix. Unfortunately I just didn’t have enough ketamine on me to really get the most out of it.

[Article] Portable Music (Published in NOW THEN issue 45 Dec 2011)

I have absolutely no qualms in admitting I dance to car alarms.

I’ve been known to ‘box some beat’ to an assortment of birdsong and have hummed away merrily to the drone of the fruit juicer at work.

I spent the run up to my formative years being referred to as “Biffer” Re: my penchant for drumming on tables/ pets/ family members with a squeaky blue hammer and I 100% agree that baked beans are “the musical fruit”. I do believe “the cacophonous legume” would be more apt but Heinz have been ignoring my emails.

If, like myself, you have a constant 4/4 beat running through your head you can hear music wherever you are and it’s that idea of providing a soundtrack to everyday life that everyone finds so tantalising and subsequently why there are over 300 million Apple brand music players sitting in peoples pockets quietly waiting to break one day after your warranty expires.

I remember my first Walkman clear as day. It was my step dad’s and it lived in the shed.
The Walkman that is, not Alan.
It was covered in sawdust and the pause button didn’t work properly but it was systematically placed in my possession and subsequently returned to the shed until it eventually became mine... and I loved it like the fat kid loves cake.

The thrill of taking music wherever I wanted never wore thin.
Unfortunately the thrill of only having one tape waned fairly sharpish.

After that I was utterly hooked and over the next 12 years accumulated what can only be described as a gaggle of assorted portable media solution devices:

3 portable cassette players
2 Discmans/men/persons

3 Minidisc players

2 nondescript Mpeg Layer 3 devices

2 boomboxes

And a grand total of 4 iPod’s.

I’ve fallen foul many a time to the ‘charms’ of my laptop’s speakers instead of taking that 3 foot stretch to plug her in to a set of lovely Yamaha’s and it’s because of that ease of use provided by a portable medium that we find more and more music geared towards al fresco listening. People are now even able to create music in the great outdoors by utilising entire production suites that fit in the palm of your hand. Admittedly it has to be an abnormally large hand but who are you to judge? At some point the ability to hold 3 ruby red grapefruit in one span is going to come in really useful and the cries of ‘Big Mitts Belshaw’ will fall on deaf ears.

Being able to purchase music from iTunes while out and about was something that always irked me though. Mainly because the adverts propagated the idea of buying Jack Johnson and Norah Jones on the fly. No one should be given the opportunity to do that. It’s a matter of ethics. Also, allowing a major corporation access to your listening habits and inviting them to provide you with inspiration is only going to end in tears.

It pains me that people like tubby hipster James ‘LCD Soundsystem’ Murphy can conscientiously decide to produce an album (2006’s- “45:33”) in collaboration with a major footwear company that’s single purpose is to provide the soundtrack to a perfect workout.

The excitement that surrounds portable tunage is that you can take the music from home out of it’s domain. Drown out the mundane diegetic sounds of life and score your own as you see fit. Create exquisite juxtaposition’s of clamour and serene vista’s and provide yourself with a level of escapism the confines of your home could not see fit to loan you.

Not run through your town centre’s mandatory fountain complex quaffing a Starbucks while you consume the bastard love child of corporate idiocy and trend humping in which a podgy sell out merchant paradoxically tells you the best way to shed a few pounds.

Like a bomb in a bookshop, certain people just want to destroy something novel.

It makes no real odds to me though. I’m totally under the influence.

I now can’t imagine being without music on my person. There is a generation emerging that were practically born with an iPod in their hands and the phenomenon knows no class boundaries. It provides to all and sundry. One and all. And eventually people will begin to take it all for granted.

But, if you can remember the time you left your girlfriend and her mates at the campsite, took a 30 minute walk through sharp bushes and winding rock paths, perched yourself in a throne of boulders and watched the sun set into the sea with ‘Narayan’ by the Prodigy as your soundtrack...

Then you remember why you got so excited the first time you blew the sawdust away and pressed play for the first time.