Category Archives: Reviews

I have Battles in my life. And Flying Lotus. And Nice Nice

Flying Lotus - apologies for not having my proper camera with me

Flying Lotus - apologies for not having my proper camera with me

Monday was another of this years Warped days.  The albums I’d listened to during the day comprised of two by Aphex Twin (twice each) and one by Squarepusher.  Then I went over to Manchester to a sold out Warp Records triple-decker at the Academy 2 – Battles / Flying Lotus / Nice Nice.  I was right down at the front from the start, so got a perfect view of all the on-stage trickery employed to produce the amazing sounds of the night.  At first I regretted not having my camera, as I could have got some great close ups, but by the end of the night I was very glad I didn’t have it.

Nice Nice are a duo who create live loops using all manner of instruments and gadgets.  One of their songs broke down, but in a way that was one of the best points in their set, showing as it did that all they were doing was live.  One of the most interesting tricks they employed was shouting into the guitar pickups through a megaphone.

I wasn’t too sure what to make of Flying Lotus at first. He seemed a little too keen to make sure we all noticed he was swigging vodka straight from the bottle.  And seeing as how the tools of his trade were fewer than those of Nice Nice – a laptop and a couple of control surfaces – there wasn’t much more visually to focus on. However, the big grin on his face, as he clearly enjoys what he does, and the strength of his music, more than compensated for his drinking antics.  The horripilating bass and ethereal vocal samples gel brilliantly with sometimes frenetic, and sometimes lilting beats.  I was not the only person who had been won over, and the crowd were loving it.  I can’t remember the last time I saw a support act summoned back on stage for an encore, but Flying Lotus and his grin were brought back on for more.

I’d seen Battles before, at the ATP Festival in 2008, so I already knew I was in for a treat.  But being right at the front meant I got a better look at how they worked together.  The drummer would occasionally leave his stage-front position to adjust the controls on one of the guitar amps, or to even change the jack lead into it.  As with Nice Nice, much of their set was built upon live loops, and they’ve clearly worked very hard and are really in sync with one another.  Their set closer, Atlas, not surprisingly caused a bit of a mêlée down the front, and I’ve not been in a moshpit like that for nearly 20 years!  My camera might have suffered some damage had it been with me, so by this point I was glad I’d left it in Bradford.  The trailing leg of a stage diver caught my head though, relieving me of an earplug, so I retreated to a safer position at the back of the room for the encore.  This was a new song that will feature on the next album, and it bodes well.

Monday wasn’t my first Warp-dominated day this year – the Warp20 day I spent in Sheffield, or the day I bought the Warp20 Box Set being two others of note.  But it’s nicely nicely rounded off a year when being a fan of Warp almost became fanaticism!

STOP press, User does not know everything.

If I do not appear in photographic form in a blog post then it is important that I put my name in the title, or the old ego will begin to suffer. Anyhow beyond that I would like to draw your attention to an album that slipped past my radar. Back from June now. I am taking the view that if this is news to me, then it might be news to other people.

Album Art - Obligatory blog post accompaniment

Album Art - Obligatory blog post accompaniment

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Archive Interview: Martha Wainwright on Selection Box, 30 July 2008

Proof that smoking IS cool. (The opinions expressed by this writer are not necessarily the opinions of this writer.)

Proof that smoking IS cool. (The opinions expressed by this writer are not necessarily the opinions of this writer.)

Last Summer, a short time after the release of her second album I Know You’re Married But I’ve Got Feelings Too, I was rather excited by the opportunity to speak to Martha Wainwright.  For “rather excited” also see “so giddy a bit of wee came out.”

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3 days: 3 gigs; 1 session

DAY 1 – GRIZZLY BEAR & ST VINCENT @ LEEDS MET STUDENTS UNION

St Vincent at Leeds Met

St Vincent at Leeds Met Students Union

Drowned in Sound absolutely adore St Vincent, and having seen a clip of her in soundcheck on said website a few weeks ago I was intrigued to learn that her support slot on the Grizzly Bear tour was solo. Apart from supplementary guitar on one song by Grizzly Bear’s Daniel Rossen, it was just Annie Clark, a looping pedal, and some sequenced backing. I must say I was surprised by how diverse she could be within those limitations. As Sam commented to me after The Strangers, she somehow managed to go seamlessly from 40s jazz guitar to an onslaught reminiscent of Joe Satriani in just 30 seconds. Songs such as Save Me From What I Want worked really well with her looping backing vocals along with herself, and during the more frenetic passages of Marrow she had the appearance of a manikin suffering a seizure. Her cover of The Beatles’ Dig A Pony was a pleasant surprise too. I was very impressed, and would like to know how these songs come across with a full band.

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Podcast Special – Selection Box v Speech Debelle

Yon editor seems to have got all a-giddy and presented this as some kind of huge new exciting podcast brew ha ha type behaviour. It seems a bit over excited, considering that I announced that this interview would appear on these pages a few weeks ago, but if someone wants to trump for my corner, who I am to complain? So long as it doesn’t smell.

Speaking of corners, it also seems that young Adam – for he is the aforementioned editor in question – has titled this interview as either some sort of pugilist pagga betwixt myself and my subject. Either that or that we’re indulging in one of those terpsichorean mash-ups, which is not the case either. It’s just two people having a chinwag, one of them (me) duty-bound to be far nosier than the other.

So, here’s the obligatory photo for visual stimulus, and then you can listen to the interview, by jiminy.

The wind was a South Easterly that day

The wind was a South Easterly that day

[podcast]https://www.bcbradio.co.uk/musicblog/wp-content/uploads/SinglesClub_03.mp3[/podcast]

Half Man Half Biscuit – Leeds University – Stylus – 15th October 2009

If you bumped in to British radio stalwart Andy Kershaw and asked him about Half Man Half Biscuit, he’d tell you that they are “our greatest folk band”

While this is probably a reference to the way in which Nigel Blackwell’s lyrics concern themselves with the minutiae of everyday life, the thought of a 24th Century version of Cecil Sharp House staffed with legions of reverent, bearded men in tweed jackets, brows furrowed in concentration, trying to divine the historical significance of lines like “There’s a man with a mullet going mad with a mallet in Millets” (from “National Shite Day “) or “Neil Morrisey’s a nobhead” (from “Bottleneck at Capel Curig”) is a warming one.

Half Man Half Biscuit at Leeds Stylus

Half Man Half Biscuit at Leeds Stylus

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Greatest LPs of the Noughties (draft – to publish in 2011)

Fuck Buttons - Tarot Sport

Fuck Buttons - Tarot Sport

In the early summer of 2009 Pitchfork started to list its favourite tunes of the decade, and now we’re into the autumn numerous music magazines are feeding us with their lists of the decade’s best albums.  It’s not just a couple of months too soon for such lists, but A COUPLE OF YEARS TOO SOON!  I’m not naive, I know why they’re doing these lists now – it’s because there are so many such lists produced in the Web 2.0 age that they want to get theirs out before List Fatigue sets in among readers.  But really…we haven’t even heard all the decade’s albums yet, never mind had time to fully digest them.  Fuck Buttons have just released their fantastic second album Tarot Sport.   I’m not saying this is one of my favourite LPs of the decade, but neither am I saying that it isn’t.  I won’t know how I properly feel about this album until the thrill of listening to it has worn off and I can look back on it subjectively.   And I won’t know how I feel about this decade’s music as a whole until the dust has settled and we’re well into the teenies or whatever the next 10 years becomes known as.

As much as I think the concept of a Best Albums Of All Time Made In The Western World! list is flawed, the compilers do usually at least have the courtesy to exclude anything released in the previous 2 or 3 years because of the above mentioned factors.  And the same principles should be applied here.  There should be a Music Critics’ Charter drawn up that states any editor will be flogged at dawn if their publication is seen printing a list of the Greatest Albums Of the Noughties before 2011.

Richard Hawley – For Your Lover Give Some Time

Journalists seem determined to make lists about everything these days.  It’s a simple and really rather lazy way to fill column inches whilst kicking off a debate amongst readers and self-appointed authorities on everything down the  pub.  There’s even a bloody magazine now which is based on what’s the best this that and the other.  Writers used to write and leave the countdown to Fluff Freeman.

In many ways, music is the most important art form there is.  It’s more accessible to the punter than any other means of expression, and our reactions to it are arbitrary, reactive and formed largely without the need for learned or knowing discourse on the form.  The award of Best This That And The Other is, therefore, a meaningless – if occasionally entertaining – distraction.

So, to wade onto these pages and declare that Richard’s Hawley’s new single – the first to be taken from the Truelove’s Gutter album – is the record of the year is effectively an opinionated and personal objective opinion without actual true bearing.  But it very probably is.  Fact. Continue reading →

For your pleasure #2: Joan As Police Woman

Tomorrow night (Sunday) Leeds’ burgeoning live music venue the  Brudenell Social Club will be graced – for the second time within a year – with the presence of Joan Wasser, aka Joan As Police Woman.

I don’t expect this to cause huge ripples among the majority of readers here, but if my words here have any weight whatsoever then I shall see you amongst the crowd there tomorrow, as this is an artist who should not be missed when she swoops into town.

Beginning her musical career as an undergraduate at Boston University – where she was taken on as an early admittance student – Wasser played with various Boston bands whilst holding a place as violinist with the university’s symphony orchestra.

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For your pleasure #1: Roxy Music

Every now and again it occurs to me that a band or artist I love and cannot help but immerse myself in on a regular basis are not necessarily known by everyone else in anything other than name.

One such occurrence took place when I attempted to delve into a fawning discussion about the works of Roxy Music, and found that such an endeavour was fruitless, as I was the only person there au fait with their oeuvre.

And so, thunks I, why not spazz my adulatory musings on such matters onto the blog and start a series of You Should Like This, Actually postings which will hopefully enrich yours lives and mark me out as a veritable paragon of taste into the bargain.

And so, where better to start with the series than with the band which, in a strange roundabout sort of way, spawned the monster; Roxy Music.

Phwoar, you would.

Phwoar, you would.

Formed in 1970 by Bryan Ferry, the general perception of the band by Joe Public seems to be overwhelmingly weighted towards their latter work and much of Ferry’s solo career wherein he crafted the image and sound of something of a lounge lizard.  It was the 1980s, y’know.

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