Mount Kimbie Maybes

Hello friends!

Today’s song comes from Mount Kimbie, who were featured in my ‘top 10 heard in 2010’ list (see post 2/1/11). This track isn’t on their debut album, but comes from the Maybes EP, released in January 2009, 18 months before Crooks & Lovers. The LP and Maybes are now both out-of-print on vinyl, which is a great shame because the richness of both of them sounds superb on record- but nevertheless, a lot of the crackling warmth still comes through on mp3.

Maybes had a slightly more ambient feel than 2010’s output. It wasn’t a low-key work, though. Listening to any of its four tracks, one can hear why Mount Kimbie have become a recognised force in UK dubstep. A precursor to the album, yes- but carrying no less gravitas.


Mount Kimbie- William

Arctic Monkeys Suck It and See

Czjeck it out. For those of you who don’t know what 'Suck It And See' might refer to, it’s either the dirty thing that goes on in local parks, shopping centres, public spaces and occasionally at home, or it’s a reference to the once widely-championed British independent music store Fopp that shut its doors some four years ago now, before being re-opened as part of the HMV chain. Its very slogan used to be: “suck it and see” (a fun but oblique reference to their returns policy). I don’t know if it’s still there like that.

Anyway, that’s not the point. Big news people: and this blog is only 10 days late in bringing it to you, so you probably already know about it. The Arctic Monkeys have a new song, called ‘Brick by Brick’, to be followed by an album calllled….Suck It and See. Personally I lost track (and admittedly interest), after Favourite Worst Nightmare in 2007. But, with what will be now three albums in four years, whatever this record is like, that is good going- and a damn fine example too for all those bands taking time- damn them- over writing, recording and releasing albums.

Apparently Josh Homme did NOT have a hand in producing this album, which is thankfully a marked break. But, clearly, with that statement in mind, shouldn’t the release lack Homme’s influence? Obviously yes. But perhaps, evidently, not. Check out 'Brick by Brick'. It’s ok, I’ll wait…



…can you guess what it is yet? Yes, I know- I thought it too. This is QOTSA. Rockin' guitar solo in check with the same Homme-style distortion; that dank, driving rhythm. This very confuzzles brain machine. Anywho, let’s not get bogged down with production semantics. What do you think of the song? I think it’s awesome. Exciting. Alex Turner has lost his Sheffield drawl (not that there was anything wrong with it, but this sees him explore a new identity and demeanour maybe), and he has thrown some meat on those musical bones. Just look at the video. Wowee, they’re so comfortable they don’t even use a proper video.

Ok, so a bit of sarcasm there.

The album is out 6th June in the UK and 7th in the US.

Polock Getting Down From the Trees

Polock are Spanish but write the kind of indie that became endemic in England between about 2004 and 2008: vocal-led; about the pub, about chips; lots of jangly guitars: real guys, having a lark. There’s no NME-suited stuff going on here anymore…generally, but coming from a different geographical place entirely anyway, Polock were unlikely to have ever been party to it.

I write about ‘Fireworks’ today, simply because it is a gorgeous day here in London. The sun is out and its mild warmth brightens the trees and city skyscrapers. Specifically, if you go around listening to ‘Fireworks’ in that sort of primed environment, it will be hard (rest assured) to break into a contented smile, or at the very teeniest, a strutting step to the melody. There is an excellent melody to this song you see, even if you can’t tell what the Valencian dude is saying, which I’m sure most people can’t.

Oddly, it is difficult to find much about the band, which is a great shame. Their album ‘Getting Down From the Trees’ is a stomping straight indie number. Much like The Wombats, much like Vampire Weekend (check out ‘Nightshot’ and ‘Sometimes’ for the obvious comparison), much like Sweden’s Shout Out Louds, the songs creep under your nails, into your tissue and through your system, sounding so clearly inoffensive that it would rarely be noticed.

The interesting question is where we stand now with music like this. Where is mainstream indie? Perhaps I am out of touch, but are people out there still listening to the radio? Has anything happened to the commercial centre ground?

Polock - Fireworks by Mushroom Pillow

Star Slinger

The new J Dilla I’m not so sure of exactly, but Star Slinger (Darren Williams) has picked up that very impressive title by rigorously working samples into re-invented modern hip-hop/soul. 24 and from Manchester, he says he trawls second-hand record shops endlessly for the best samples. They are mainly 1980s, although span the genres: alt-rock (Prefab Sprout) or perhaps snippets of Musical Youth. There is a rich cultural tapestry; the material being difficult to spot, typical of obsessives like Slinger. ‘Who Sampled?’ anyone?

Anyway, the musical heritage at play is merely the stage. The sum of the parts is a variety of dreamy imaginings, rooted by funky loops. Slinger occasionally uses that fuzzy drift between samples like Dilla did. The one that makes it sound like you’re moving back and forth between radio stations.

Teams vs. Star Slinger - Punch Drunk Love *Part of 12" EP on MEXICAN SUMMER.* by Star Slinger

Star Slinger - Slow 'N' Wet by Star Slinger

Memory Cassette Asleep At A Party

There is a song that’s sat quietly but consistently in my music library for perhaps a year now, which I listen to maybe every few days. The act that spawned it has since snowballed into a slightly bigger thing- Memory Tapes- but nonetheless ‘Asleep at a Party’ by Memory Cassette remains, in my view at least, the best output by one relatively quiet Dayve Hawk, the creator of both ‘Memory’ incarnations. Overall, what I love about this song is that it is a dreamily surreal, even tired- in the sense of lethargy- take on an excellent melody. In one of my previous posts, I mentioned that in my view Washed Out created one of the albums of 2010. Their drowsy stupor was hypnotising, and so it is with ‘Asleep at a Party’. Memory Tapes, like Washed Out, since fell under the beguiling but annoyingly termed and media-constructed combination of matter: ‘chillwave’, when Hawk released his first album, Seek Magic. (We have since of course heard the phrase, ‘illwave’- trumpeted I have noticed by The Guardian’s Music blog for the likes of Perfume Genius and HTDW.)

But I digest. I have really found that I can listen to ‘Asleep at a Party’ without ever getting bored. Fuzzy, enigmatic but continually alluring, I hope Dayve Hawk’s brief preceding period as Memory Cassette was part of the reason for blogs such as Gorilla vs Bear, Pitchfork and later even titans of the British print press to pay attention: both blogs posted the song when it went online. More recently, Memory Tapes have posted a new track and announced a second album. You can find their blog here and newbie song here. Or just lower your chin a bit. That’s it.

Memory Tapes- Today is Our Life

Gang Gang Dance Glass Jar

I’ve been wondering about this: the follow-up LP to Gang Gang Dance’s Saint Dymphna. New material has been two and a half years in the making, but finally some new output from Eye Contact (due 9th May) has leaked. Gang Gang Dance were always a band I thought- on gut-instinct- were wilfully inaccessible to radio-listening audiences. Their music appeared to run creative process through a bleakly mechanical avant-garde play-doh machine and inject eccentricity into their sound and writing to just such a perfectly superficial and sufficient extent that the result was in fact balance: a sort of ordered chaos. There was something of a pre-meditated calculation going on, like the pop re-brandings of Madonna, Britney Spears and others that carefully constructed unconventionality.

Saint Dymphna was certainly varied; indeed it seemed to be deliberately as unpredictable as possible. ‘House Jam’ stomped encouragingly with gall and flair, and ‘Princes’, featuring the then breaking Tinchy Stryder was just one of the most surreal collaborations of hip-hop and...something, I ever heard. Other parts though- most parts in my view, fell short: dank, grey and dutifully pretentious. An acquired taste certainly. Even then the LP was less ultra-unconventional than the band’s many preceding EPs.

So ‘Glass Jar’ (or whatever first track that was going to be leaked) was never going to be something you could play your Mum. The track begins with a male voiceover: “I can hear everything. It’s everything time”, which is the cue for a gentle 11-minute journey that begins with ambient synths and the sound of running streams, and builds gradually to encompass electro beats and steel drums. Singer Lizzi Bougatsos (imagine what it might sound like to sing with your mouth permanently in a whistling shape, and that’ll be her) then joins in halfway through.

For a song that’s this long and uses so many psychedelic aural knick-knacks, ‘Glass Jar’ is light and doesn’t gorge on the mawkish toffee apple of experimental flirtation that characterised Saint Dymphna. Nor, to me, does it push any other button, however. So what, exactly, is it? Where Gang Gang Dance will go on the new LP is endlessly fun speculation, but an answer is enigmatic, much like the band. Perhaps the fact that this a massive track that's full of all the bombastic gadgetry that would be necessary to qualify the new record as extremely ambitious, but that it fails to leave an impression, indicates that nothing much has changed.

Mazes Most Days

Fat Cat Records have been one of Britain's most exciting independent labels for a very long time, with a knack of taking on no-frills rockers from around the UK like The Twilight Sad and Frightened Rabbit. With Mazes, they have set another ball running.

Currently touring with the Dum Dum Girls, the band reflect that return to wholesome rock values. Occasional drifts into Beach Boys-esque melodies on their new song 'Most Days' are diced up and over-clocked with driving guitars and drums. If this packed 108 seconds doesn't set your feet off- in short- I question your existence. A real bang for your buck Fat Cat.

Out on April 11th

Mazes - Most Days by FatCat Records

Even New-er James Blake!

Well I'm acutely aware this is being focused on disproportionately but as an example of an album not being everything in this digital world, three unreleased songs from James Blake have surfaced recently.

'Love What Happened Here' featured on a mix by the suitably named Fantastic Mr Fox last year (just to demonstrated the link between these two young UK producers a little more). You can listen to it below, courtesy of The Up Turn. (For more on Fantastic Mr Fox, check out my other posts).

And in other JB news, Some Kind of Awesome have posted 'You Know Your Youth'. This is a scatty b-side that features as a bonus track on the vinyl version of the album, as if hearing the rest of it on the warmth of record wasn't enough. LISTEN BELOW! Post-Dubstep have posted another (!_) vinyl-only bonus track, 'Tep And The Logic', which iiiiiiiss, HERE. What a lovely bunch!

The Strokes- Under Cover of Darkness

The terminal question about The Strokes that is asked repeatedly ever since Room on Fire is whether they are just a band who suffered too much hype, encouraged a resurgence of indie guitar music in the mid 00s nonetheless and then collapsed in a pool of their own image-too-chilled out-to-even-care musical undoing. Every flipping article seems to start with a mighty great pretext and sets The Strokes up for a fall. So I won’t, only so far as mentioning it.

For five years since their last outing, First Impressions of Earth has brought a new day and many new dawns have since passed. The Strokes know that more than anyone, right?

And their new single was officially put online this week. ‘Under Cover Of Darkness’ is a characteristically jangly number, swaggering along with Julian Casablancas’ slurring, an inoffensive solo and catchy rhythm. It will be interesting to see how the band step out from life as solo artists (…well at least for Casablancas and Albert Hammond Jr.) and regain the attitude, character and energy of life as one of the world’s biggest straight indie rock ‘n’ roll groups. An album, Angles, is in the pipeline for March we are told.

James Blake- James Blake LP, The Much Anticipated Debut

When the final moment of James Blake’s meteoric rise to fame took place, newspapers, magazines and websites looked back together on five months in which a 22 year old music student from London went from a virtual unknown- a barely featured artist on the national dubstep scene- to the darling of Radio 1, cleared from the shelves, wonder producer. When playing a set on Zane Lowe's Radio 1 show, Lowe treated him like near-messianic pop royalty, inquiring after the album in such a way as it had already set as a classic. Check your local store for CMYK. You won't find it. Then check Ebay. Try and buy a ticket for his upcoming London shows. Then check Ebay. Appetites gorged on opportunities to see and hear him like the first hour of the Sales. Blake saw, or perhaps more accurately, he was seen, and he conquered, beyond all recognition.

Since shedding the petals of a first bloom, James Blake- the LP- picked up the mantle a few days ago from the 2 EPs that clearly spoke to music lovers for much longer than their 15 minute run times. Here the big posturing, media work and endless London Underground adverts really took over. Atlas, owned by Polydor released it in the UK. An expected immediate entry into the UK top 10. Universal in the US. Tours on both sides of the Atlantic. There really is no overstating the change that took place, nor the intensity and focus of our interest.

To that reception, a quiet animal arises. James Blake is a brooding and discordant record such that one would expect a well-known and already seasoned creative artist to make to compliment their work. This is Neil Young jumping straight to the digi-stuff on Trans without years of classic rock and traditional songsmanship. It is ambitious, does away with CMYK and Klavierwerke to a large extent and forgets what everyone might expect James Blake, a young cool producer, to be and sound like. If you’ve already read a review of this album, you have almost certainly seen a comparison with Bon Iver and that is a view I take too. As incomprehensible as it seems, the minimal dubstep of CMYK and piano/vocal combination of Klavierwerke are smashed together and toned down about three notches on the scale of druggy dance. The result is, oddly enough, down-tempo slow-building laments that stew in a pickle of electronics, clicks and auto-tuned vocals a la Blood Bank more than For Emma, Forever Ago. If that sounds horrible, James Blake’s Feist cover ‘Limit To Your Love’ (which features on this album) showed four months ago that Blake is versatile, adaptable and brimming with ideas. The core of this album is at ‘Lindesfarne I’ and ‘Lindesfarne II’- one song really, but split into the bit that’s almost completely vocal-only (yes, that’s right), and the bit that’s almost completely vocal-only with a few rhythmic flicks of a guitar here and there. Busy it is not. Silent moments on these and other tracks such as ‘I Never Learnt To Share’ (again, very much devoid of instrumentation) and ‘Why Don’t You Call Me’ serve as nervy seconds of reflection to stress and package the real sound that is carefully dotted around. Is it complicated? No, I wouldn’t say so either. The creations are just excellently crafted- like ‘I Mind’, perhaps the closest thing to Blake’s CMYK with its pitch-altering and dizzying sample, rarely places more than a chord and a carefully selected sound effect in any one place, breaking them up intermittently and unexpectedly for a new, sparing but deliberate ration of sound.

The lack of general confusion here, every action seemingly precision-engineered, makes for a focused and seriously engaging record. As though it were a dance of electronic hypnosis, each apparently immaterial singular blip or background chord hits a deeper place than it ought to. This is James Blake’s real crowning achievement. If ‘Limit To Your Love’ was its show piece, there might have been a sense of disappointment among keen followers, asking why a producer with a seemingly natural ear for choreographed minimalism and general creativity would conform to neat song structure or allow an excellent radio smash to take control of the record musically. But ‘Wilhelms Scream’, ‘Lindesfarne’ and seven other tracks do thrust Blake into an excellent direction, and, most promisingly, nothing sounds like it was a labour of pain or self-conscious worry. For a man on top of the world right now, Blake has a lot to be pleased about, and hopefully, a long career to look forward to.

Stream the album HERE courtesy of eminently lovely 'Pretty Much Amazing'