I'm indebted to Jason Grishkoff at Indie Shuffle for getting me into this excellent remix of The Beatles' 'And I Love Her' by Allure. Described on his myspace as the creator of "sharp, elegant and lively" mixes:
A brief summary of Klaxons’s demolition of the British indie scene: “Atlantis to Interzone” and “Gravity’s Rainbow” demos circulated on the net, the songs became staples of student indie nights, and very soon after, debut album Myths of the Near Future won the Mercury Music Prize, a unique accolade given to British artists based solely on creative merit.
The band exuded cultural style, not just a surge in catchy electro indie. Between 2004 and 2007, successful British bands typically cultivated images as ordinary lads discussing ordinary things (Arctic Monkeys, The Wombats, Kaiser Chiefs and The View). The minutiae of awkward social encounters and bus stops were par for the course.
However, Klaxons stopped it with their fascination for fantasy, space, and abstraction. With this band, a new class of artists — Foals, Metronomy, Late of the Pier — flitted between fun energy and highbrow, intellectual philosophising. It wasn’t just the music that put Klaxons on the front cover of NME every week: it was the ambiguous concept of “nu rave” peddled by the music press that, led by Klaxons, kicked “I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor” into touch and made it look irrelevant, unsophisticated, and grey.
Klaxons never liked the in-vogue connotation that came with the “nu-rave” tag, and just as well because NME’s infatuation with Klaxons subsided after their album tour. Surfing the Void is an apt name for the following three years, due to this album’s protracted creation and the negative publicity associated with recent live shows. Fallouts with Polydor over new psychedelic songs deemed “too experimental for release” echo Geffen Records, who once tried to sue Neil Young for making music “unrepresentative of Neil Young.” In this environment, Klaxons went through three producers. For all the hype, very few critics have labelled this album a disappointment. Rather, there is a sense of foreboding in the mainly positive reviews. Telegraph writer Andrew Perry called Surfing the Void “a real victory from the jaws of defeat.
My own take on Surfing the Void is that by ditching the recordings rejected by Polydor, the LP stays true to Myths of the Near Future as far as vibrant choruses and lyrical escapism goes (“clouds of diamond dust,” “riding the timewave’s origin,” etc.)
However, Surfing the Void is less compact than its predecessor: it is unrestrained and distorted. The comparison is similar to the first two Arctic Monkeys records: the debut had clear production and the follow-up was fuzzy and industrial. As it creeps with caution and intrigue, the off-kilter tension and screaming guitars on “Extra Astronomica” could be a track by Bloc Party. “Flashover” is similarly dark, and sounds like the creative outcome of “Atlantis to Interzone” warped into something angry and demonic. The organs on “The Same Space” and unsettling synth melodies on “Valley of the Calm Trees” add to the overall impression that something otherworldly is afoot. That sci-fi concept unites the album and generates a defining atmosphere.
Klaxons typically offer up vague comments to puncture the promotional circus when doing interviews. In one with ITN, Jamie mocks the irritating arrogance of critics and fascination with his band, saying, “It’s an enigma; figure it all out.” Their tongue-in-cheek suggestions and the record’s overblown futurism always point to their philosophising songs being a parody. They like the pomp. “Future Memories” lyrics (“The future’s in our memories/the past is just a guess”) would be at home in the dialogue of a sci-fi b-movie, for instance. A cat inside an astronaut suit: that’s mental.
Overall, I like this album, and I like it because the grandeur of the tracks comes out in a really fun and adventurous way. As I’ve said, I don’t think Klaxons aimed to make a revolutionary concept record; some people just take the mystique they pump into every song too seriously. To me, these 10 songs stick on repeated listens, and as “Echoes” continues its strong stint of radio play, Klaxons enter a new chapter. Hopefully it won’t be as ridiculed or pored over as their last.
Springing off my previous post, I would like to post about something mellow. Lonnie Liston Smith is a pianist known for his blend of jazzy, soulful and funky love songs. During the 70s, he played with famous jazz artists like Miles Davis, but he went on to produce some excellent music of his own later in the decade and in the early 80s. While never reaching commercial acclaim like the artists he worked with, or those who went on to actually sample his music (see Jay-Z's 'Dead Presidents II'), Lonnie Liston Smith has a repertoire of atmospheric jazz that seems to have grown richer as the popular perception of late 70s/early 80s smooth funk has strengthened over the decades. If that sounds a bit remote and confusing, listen to any track from ‘Dreams of Tomorrow’, an LP that might just be described as 'Dreams of Yesterday' for all its deft keyboard and acid-jazz touches, which now ring out with nostalgia. Here is the last song of eight: if I may suggest that you pretend, while Youtube does its thing, that you are pre-internet, pre-compact disc and at the time when Lonnie Liston’s 1983 ‘Garden of Peace’ could be your soundtrack. A slow, special evening of low lighting, relaxing company and a tinkling piano.
In 2005, The Go! Team struck it lucky with their debut album 'Thunder, Lightning, Strike' and got nominated for the Mercury Music Prize. The album was a frenzy: a kaleidascopic fit of energy that split off in directions too many to count and too hurried a fashion to dwell on. To me, that was a great rebuttal of the idea that an album should be coherent.
Turning to Sleigh Bells, I see them as The Go! Team's American counterparts. From Brooklyn, not Brighton, they are loud, messy and chop normal principles of genre into paste. They are Go! Team going over the boil, and their debut album 'Treats' has attracted critical acclaim in the UK, as much as in the US where the band have played Pitchfork Music Festival and Coachella. Check out Drowned in Sound, which gave it 9/10, and The Observer, no less. 'Crown on the Ground' is feverishly fuzzy, and sounds like high-pitched guitars feeding from one full-volume amp to another. Sleigh Bells' raw punk approach gives them the instability of band of the moment- Wavves- at times, but their pallet is rich in style and variation. My personal highlight 'Rill Rill' is radio friendly, most closely resembling Go! Team by its colour by numbers feel-good beat and vocal. Sleigh Bells ride roughshod with deer power (ha!) on 'Kids' and 'Infinity Guitars', but are funky throughout. Whether riotous quasi-metal, break beats or pop melodies, Sleigh Bells seem to replicate the youthful exuberance found on Go! Team's debut.
I don't tend to listen to huge amounts of modern day hip-hop but if anything's going to hit you like a flashlight down a dark tunnel, it's a raucous hip-hop track. And BBU? Well, I heard this song for the first time only this morning. Obscuring their first moderately successfully 'Chi Don't Dance' by quite some way in my opinion, 'Jukin' On Landmines' is a trashy, fun, and- I hope- very successful dance track from 'Fear Of A Clear Channel Planet'. You can download the whole mixtape for FREE on their myspace. Move over Major Lazer.
Bits and bobs are slowly creeping out about Arcade Fire's upcoming material and shows. Right> is a trailer for their two Madison Square Gardens shows on 4th & 5th August. Much anticipated album 'The Suburbs' comes out on 2nd August in the UK and 3rd in the US. You can listen to two of its tracks here.
Bonobo’s album ‘Days to Come’ won Gilles Peterson’s Radio 1 listener’s prize when it released in 2006. A very quiet and steady orchestration of down tempo chillout, it occupied a similar musical space to The Cinematic Orchestra, Air and Zero 7. Sparse, gentle: the sort of thing that traditionally found interest among people listening to music all day long, and using sounds like this as a background canvas. Bonobo has featured on adverts, subtly lifting the mood without anyone knowing. Today, ‘Black Sands’ hovers in the ‘picks’ list of alternative download service Emusic, and has a featured position on the shelves in Fopp (that’s a popular music store in London for those of you who aren’t aware.)
So what makes ‘Black Sands’ different? And why have I featured it? Well in the saturated market of minimal mood music, ‘Black Sands’ comes across as actually very deep and complicated. As many people reviewing this album on the web have mentioned, ‘Prelude’ sets Bonobo’s pace with direct strings that strike a note of nostalgia. It is a strange song and lasts only 78 seconds. In that time though, it makes a serious, wilful stamp of authority before being joined by the electric beats of ‘Kiara’. The whole album is a giant soundscape of foggy things; things you might have heard in dreams if only you didn’t forget them. At worst, the work is intriguing and at best, hypnotic.
One: When ‘How I Got Over’ came out in my country (I don’t live in Kazakhstan; by that I mean England), it barely made a ripple of crap hitting a shitstream. Two: When ‘How I Got Over’ came out in the States, it debuted 6 in the Billboard 200 and 3 in the Rap Albums charts. Three: ‘How I Got Over’ is The Roots’ ninth studio record. How has it taken 16 years and eight previous albums for The Roots to produce what has critically been received as their best?
This is an ambitious hip-hop album. Where The Roots have always pushed the boundaries in contrast to their peers- the band play their own instruments, and do so live, for example- they never strayed beyond hip-hop and soul collaborations, until now. Album opener ‘A Peace of Light’ features harmonies from the girls from indie band Dirty Projectors- an unexpected collaboration, especially for The Roots. Later on? Joanna Newsom. That’s right, a woman with giant harp.
All credit to The Roots then, that this album carries no sniff of pretension. ‘How I Got Over’ is more heartfelt, soulful and classy than any other Roots album, and less disparate. John Legend features on ‘Doin it Again’ for instance, a cover of his own ‘Again’, and ‘The Day’ uses a laidback guitar melody under rolling rhymes. The Roots’ quasi-political tracks are similarly chilled; like ‘Now or Never’, with its relaxed keys.
But, if you think this is The Roots gone soft, it isn’t. They still look like remaining one of the most imaginative, talented and intelligent hip-hop acts of the next ten years as much as they have the last. It’s just that with the self-assurance of a band that have been around for 16 years, it’s unsurprising that everything sounds perfectly in its groove. Lyrically interesting as we have come to expect (‘Dear God’ and ‘Web 20/20’), and spotted with introspection (‘Right On’), The Roots are doing what they always have and filling voids for the subtly, soul and genius that are often missed about major-label hip-hop, and from where considered musical statesmen like Jurassic 5, Tribe Called Quest and J Dilla left them. ‘How I Got Over’ is worthy of the mantle bestowed on albums ‘Things Fall Apart’ and ‘Game Theory’ that came before it. A great Roots record.
Ohhhhee yes. Quick off the mark with this one. Precious few hours, and behold- Someone Still Loves You Boris- bloody Yeltsin. This is the second song leaked but this very day courtesy of Stereogum. From their upcoming album out 17 August, 'Banned (By the Man)' follows on from the inifintely catchy title track 'Let it Sway' that you can find for flippin bloody FREE on their website. Bloody free!
For those of you not suitably tripped up by SSLYBY during your walks along the righteous path to aural satisfaction in recent years, they have remained precariously absent in the UK. Little known in the US as it is, their likeable and easy to listen to indie pop has generated two very consistent and punishingly upbeat albums. The first, called 'Broom', was a home recording that was soon picked up and re-released by Polyvinyl. The rest, far from being 'history', has remained some modest exposure both here and back home in Springfield, Missouri. They kicked off 2008's End of the Road Festival for instance, on the Friday when most people were still pitching their tents. SSLYBY gave the impression that becoming commercially successful was fairly superfluous to them as a band. As long as people enjoyed the shows and they could return home to record some songs in Will's basement now and then, that's what they seemed most concerned with. Tracks about their local baseball team, 'Lower the Gas Prices, Howard Johnson' (accurate song name) and corny rockers about girls compose their charm and a brilliantly understated character.
While I hope this blog to be about ‘new’ and breaking artists, here is a brief little interlude. This is Richie Havens, a California-born folk singer who became famous for a short time after his appearance at Woodstock in 1969, with a- in my opinion- excellent cover of The Beatles’ ‘Here Comes the Sun’. Enjoy...
