nuttyxander

Tags: Blog

last.fm now does a kinda funky playlist feature on their beta site. I’d been moaning that the mixtape art was a tad dead in the age of mp3 the other day so it’s nice to have something that brings it back a bit.

On the downside, I can only add complete tracks that happen to be on the site, but I found five I rather like – so it’s hardly that tricky. Still, it’s 1000x better than myspace and you can download any of the first three tracks if you like them. Win supreme.

My tracklisting:

1. El Perro del Mar – God Knows(You Gotta Give To Get)
2. Jason Forrest – Stepping Off
3. GOLDEN SHOWER – Video Computer System
4. Jason Forrest – War Photographer
5. Aztec Camera – Oblivious

Tags: art, me, photo

Following on from my last post here’s some albums that various acts (one in revamped form) released following up on impressive debuts.

• The Futureheads – News & Tributes [myspace] [wikipedia] [official site] [metacritic]
  
  Obviously The Futureheads first album was pushed heavily thanks to their cover of The Hounds Of Love, fortunately Kate Bush liked enough to leave them a voice mail message. Unfortunately it leads a lot of folk to overlook everything else they’ve ever released (as the link shows). Which is bonkers. A bit like a lighter and more consistent version of XTC, the thing that always gets me with The Futureheads is their vocals, wordy songwriting (Excepting Yes/No maybe) and rhythm based arrangements. There’s no covers here but what you do get is a wonderful grab bag including the should-have-been-a-single Fallout which I love mainly for the echo-y fuzzed guitar, obvious and great single Skip To The End and best-sub-three-minute-love-song-of-2006 Favours For Favours which has fucking great lyrics and could also have been a single. Unfortunately they released Worry About It Later as the second single, which along with News & Tributes forms the lesser tracks of the album due to the forced nature of both songs. Still, a good record and worth it for Fallout or Skip To The End or Favours For Favours alone, and it helps me cope with the ongoing reality that XTC are unlikely to record much again.
• Ratatat – Classics [myspace] [official site] [wikipedia] [metacritic]
  
  Ratatat’s début was a strange record in many ways and a bit too much of a hipster fave. On the other hand though it’s the finest keyboard/guitar electronica I’ve had stuck in my head ever since it came out so I’d been awaiting the second album with baited breath. Sustaining an album without lyrics is always tricky and there was always a risk that they’d just repeat the sound of their first album, but they’ve avoided that well whilst at the same time only just coming up with a track that could top 17 Years, the explosion of RAWK which opened their first album. The first album lay low after the opener and was quite sombre, evoking lazy afternoons spent playing 8 and 16 bit computer games with those classic warm tonal sounds pouring forth from the TV. This album isn’t and is all the better for it. Bizarrely the effect of the second album is to render the first less listenable because you get addicted to Ratatat Version 2.

  The upgrade comes with a number of key new features:
  Lex not only comes close to being named after me but also attempts to outdo 17 Years in broken up song territory.
  Wildcat has the finest sample of a wildcat committed to a song in living memory and seems like the soundtrack to some forgotten 8 bit adventure of wonder. I had a master plan of making a video for it myself (somehow) which fell apart when I realised that Golden Shower had covered that idea years ago with Video Computer System’s immensely cool video. On the plus side, Wildcat rocks.
  Nostrand is also possibly the sweetest and coolest thing they’ve ever done.

• Islands – Return To The Sea [myspace] [official site] [wikipedia] [metacritic]
  
  I’m not counting this as a début cos the band is essentially a successor to The Unicorns. And I always wanted another record from them, so getting 2/3 of them to continue was good. Unfortunately now it’s 1/3 of them recording the next album! Anyway, as The Unicorns everything was about songs that changed on a whim, short and lo-fi numbers with structure thrown to the wind. The Islands sees much longer songs with longer gaps between the shifts but it’s still basically the same shtick. And I still love it. Opener Swans (Life After Death) lasts nearly ten minutes, but doesn’t out-stay it’s welcome for a second, honest. The rest of the album is a hodge-podge of tales of destruction and love with one mind-bendingly great instrumental stuck in the middle.
• The Emperor Machine – Vertical Tones & Horizontal Noise [myspace]
  
  Andy Meecham is a closet pop genius. As part of Bizarre Inc he had a hand in one of the 90s greatest girl-singer-warbles-whilst-two-second-rap-samples are played over synths records, I’m Gonna Get You. Nowadays he’s part of Chicken Lips, but more importantly he’s also The Emperor Machine. I first came accross this sparse bass heavy sci-fi electronica due to the first album but it all kicked off with a couple of 12 inch releases which I acquired along with the subsequent four volumes of Vertical Tones & Horizontal Noise in vinyl form (plus a turntable) in the middle of the year. In vinyl form (for home listening anyway) each song is much more of an experience and a number of the tracks gain from the added attention they get from being a whole side of listening.
  Anyway, this meant that when the second album finally appeared I didn’t come to it fresh and feared my familiarity with certain tracks might render the whole thing dead and sterile. Fat chance. Clearly the new album was a struggle (as the credit to synthrepair.com proves), but he succeeds in moving his sound on marvellously even sparing a track or two to experiment with vocals, which works best on No Sale No ID. My particular favourites are Monkey Overbite, which has a ludicrous opening leading to the soundtrack of a desolate post-holocaust wasteland and Fear Of Woman which combines a cool title with the kind of music Buck Rogers believed he could play.

I would say don’t ask me to pick any favourites but I think somehow the two mainly instrumental albums edge it with The Emperor Machine standing out best. Which kinda surprises me.

Tags: art, Blog, me, music, news, tv

I’m splitting up my posts on the past years listening this year, in an attempt to make them more readable (unlike last year). So to kick off, here’s some EPs I thought were rather good. Including links to youtube and myspace as necessary to let you enjoy in vision and sound, as Bowie would say if he got confused and put the lyrics the wrong way round.

• Vitalic – Bells [myspace] [wikipedia] [official site]
  
  Having originally made his name via a number of EPs it seems only fit that Vitalic return to releasing stonking EPs and Bells is almost good enough to put everything that came before in the shade. Almost a mini album given that it runs to six tracks the linda Lamb voiced title track is an addictive and pacy number. For me though the real highlight is Candy which takes a very disjointed beat played on a fuzzed up guitar, some very distorted lyrics and just lets rip.
• Misty’s Big Adventure – Fashion Parade [youtube] [myspace] [wikipedia] [official website]
  
  How I hadn’t come across the wonder of Misty’s Big Adventure until this EP started to get hyped by their fans is beyond me. Clearly I don’t dig deep enough, or indeed much at all. The title track is a brilliant tongue in cheek dig at a number of modern bands (but chiefly Franz Ferdinand, see the video). Fortunately Misty’s themselves are a brilliantly inspired band who do great gigs (Featuring your man with the hands above dancing through the crowd lots). The EP sadly lacks the amazing song they played when I saw them at the 100 Club (Something about taking the time back), but it does have the excellent Kids Are Radioactive which is clearly the best song about kids turning into zombies due to inappropriate mobile phone mast placement ever.
• Menomena – Wet & Rusting [youtube] [myspace] [wikipedia] [official site]
  
  I was kind of doomed to fall in love with this EP. Menomena constantly sit high in my list of bands that seem weirdly under-rated beyond certain blogs on the internet (perhaps because they’ve never played a gig in the UK). Anyway, we only got three tracks out of them in 2005 so to get a whole EP was a treat and a nice prelude for their difficult proper second album. And it has awesome Craig Thompson cover art. Anyway, enough fanboy-ish-ness and on with the praise. Wet And Rusting itself is a wonderful Menomena track developing their sound nicely and again showcasing their oddball sound expertly (especially with the remix and plain versions of the title track). At some point I’ll tire of their multi-layered voices, drums and guitars with plinky piano production, but there’s a good album of this worth pursuing first.
• Devotchka – Curse Your Little Heart [myspace] [wikipedia] [youtube] [official website]
  
  An interesting alternative American band doing soft but sweet covers of classics? No, it’s not Cake. Devotchka I stumbled across thanks to Beirut and though their albums are all some years old this EP of covers is fascinatingly fresh and beautiful. To describe Devotchka’s sound is tricky so just go to myspace and save me the hassle! It’s hard to pick a favourite track but their version of The Last Beat Of My Heart is really quite moving, but then they also bring something fresh to Somethin’ Stupid which takes talent. Oh, and as youtube proves that Venus in Furs cover live is something else. On the topic of youtube I really dig how incongruous the sousaphone looks on stage in this clip.
• Matson Jones – A Four Song EP [myspace]
  
  Matson Jones don’t exist on Wikipedia (at the moment), only sit on myspace thanks to fans and last I checked didn’t take being a band too seriously but just wanted to make good music. On this count they succeed marvellously and I’d kill for them to record another album. In the meantime this EP shall suffice and their particular brand of cello indie makes me very annoyed I gave up the instrument myself.
• Fog – Loss Leader EP [myspace] [official site]
  

Fog’s in a year of transition, and has finally packed away the turntables and other tools of his earlier sound. His final excursions on this EP showcase these changes. The EP is pretty good but doesn’t come close to capturing the live sound and how rocking Fog now is (no endless sparse birdsong). His myspace is now chock full of stuff that makes me very excited indeed about his next album, Your Beef Is Mine especially.

Now, don’t ask me to pick a favourite.

Tags: music, new music