New music in tonight’s show included Stephan Mathieu:
https://soundcloud.com/deform-store/03-stephan-mathieu-eglise
…Lower Plenty:
…and King Ayisoba:
Here is the full playlist:
Itch – ‘Diplomat’ (EP – Manifesto Pt. 2: We’re All In The Gutter) (Red Bull)
Stephan Mathieu – ‘Église’ (LP – Un CÅ“ur Simple) (Baskaru)
Thao & The Get Down Stay Down – ‘City’ (LP – We The Common) (Ribbon)
Atoms For Peace – ‘Before Your Very Eyes…’ (LP – Amok) (XL)
Sweet Baboo – ‘If I Died…’ (single) (Moshi Moshi)
Autechre – ‘prac-f’ (LP – Exai) (Warp)
Serafina Steer – ‘Disco Compilation’ (single and LP – The Moths Are Real) (Stolen)
David Bowie – ‘Breaking Glass’ (LP – Low) (RCA) (this week’s Brief Candle)
Darkstar – ‘A Day’s Pay For A Day’s Work) (single and LP – News From Nowhere) (Warp)
Lower Plenty – ‘Strange Beast’ (single) (Fire)
Liars – ‘WIXIW’ (single and LP – WIXIW) (Mute)
Lloyd Cole / Hans-Joachim Roedelius – ‘Fehmarn’ (LP – Selected Studies Vol. 1) (Bureau B)
Iron & Wine – ‘Grace For Saints And Ramblers’ (single) (4AD)
King Ayisoba – ‘Baaba Poore’ (LP – Modern Ghanaians) (Makkum)
Not only do rats spread disease, they also saved TVam, which was far worse.
Having avoided fully referring to BCB’s Studio 4 as a sea-faring vessel I now find that the metaphor would be rather useful not in only that, as a committed land-lubber (again in not in literal terms, though I can’t pretend I’m especially taken with sailing), I’m set to leg it from the aforementioned craft but also because a water rodent theme briefly developed on this week’s Selection Box. Whilst I am not a rat, and indeed Studio 4 is presumably built upon sound foundations and therefore I’m unlikely to disappear into a sink hole like that poor fellow in America, there does seem to be a varmint of a metaphor just sat there waiting to be smacked by my rolled-up newspaper.
Anyway, I appear to be drowning in metaphors. Metaphorically. As featured on this week’s programme, here’s some actual Rats, but not actual rats, courtesy of that there YouTube what all the kids are talking about now whilst they play with their yo-yos and trade Garbage Pail Kids cards.
New music in tonight’s show included Purling Hiss:
https://soundcloud.com/drag-city/purling-hiss-mercury
…Julia Kent:
…Blank Realm:
…and Jasper TX. The tune from the new album I played tonight was its opener. The closing tune on the new album is just as worthy, if not even more so, so here it is in full:
Listen back to the full show if you desire. Â Here is the full show playlist:
Mark Templeton – ‘Matinee’ (LP – Jealous Heart) (Under The Spire)
Purling Hiss – ‘Mercury Retrograde’ (LP – Water On Mars) (Drag City)
Vision – ‘The Phuture Makes Beats’ (Life EP) (Big Dada)
Night Moves – ‘Country Queen’ (single and LP – Colored Emotions) (Domino)
RM74 – ‘Bees And Ghosts’ (LP – Two Sides Of A Triangle) (Utech)
Steve Mason – ‘Oh My Lord’ (single and LP – Monkey Minds In The Devil’s Time) (Double Six)
Autechre – ‘jatevee C’ (LP – Exai) (Warp)
Dawn McCarthy & Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy – ‘Breakdown’ (LP – What The Brothers Sang) (Domino)
Blank Realm – ‘Acting Strange’ (LP – Go Easy) (Fire)
Duane Eddy – ‘Some Kinda Earthquake’ (2xCD – Rockin’ Guitar Man 1955-1960) (Smith & Co) (this week’s Brief Candle, nominated by Phil Cope)
King Ayisoba – ‘Modern Ghanaians’ (LP – Modern Ghanaians) (Makkum)
Julia Kent – ‘Tourbillon’ (LP – Character) (The Leaf Label)
Troumaca – ‘My Love’ (Virgin Island EP) (Brownswood)
Jasper TX – ‘Abandon’ (LP – An Index Of Failure) (Handmade Birds)
Clinic – ‘Seamless Boogie Woogie (Free Reign II Version)’ (LP – Free Reign II) (Domino)
For reasons far too dull and footling for even me to remember, this week’s Selection Box was recorded in Studio 4 of BCB instead of it’s regular home two doors away in Studio 2. Much like its Thunderbird of the same numeral, Studio 4 is something of a minor player in the BCB cannon compared to the all-important live broadcast hypersonic variable-sweep wing rocket plane of Studio 1, the heavy supersonic VTOL carrier lifting body aircraft that is Studio 2 and the re-usable, vertically-launched single-stage-to-orbit spacecraft we affectionately know as Studio 3. It’d be a stretch of an already tenuous metaphor to suggest it is a small utility submersible for underwater rescue, but, to flick to a barely more relevant simile, using Studio 4 instead of one of the other recording holes is like suddenly trying to use a Commodore 64 joystick to play Fifa when you’re used to the Duashock 3 controller.
In basic terms, the controls are different. In basic terms, it’s basic. Whilst to a novice the myriad of fiddly knobs, light-emitting diodes and push-me-pull-you faders may look more daunting than a desk with an abacus and a twisty crank, when you are used to the former you know how it works and, more to the point, how to correct something if it goes wrong. If you have nothing more than an on / off switch and a big red button that says, “DO NOT PRESS” on it then finding a way of piloting the vessel away from the big broadcasting black hole you’re about to get sucked into is more problematic. And thus it was that I fully expected disaster to befall the programme this week with every given push of a button or slide of a fader. Save for an odd moment a few records in, where my voice seems to appear mid-sentence for reasons I’m still not entirely clear of, I seem to have come out of my Studio 4 journey unscathed, which makes me blase for next week when I am in there again and will, therefore, no doubt end up die screaming as I plough the ruddy thing at full pelt into the hot burning sun.
Anyway, a quick bit of housekeeping is required on here before I get onto the weighty subject of the playlist, namely that the show this week began with Local Natives and you can still hear the interview I conducted with them at Leeds Festival on this ‘ere Soundcloud wotsit here. You can even download it should you be so very inclined – simply click on the arrow on the player and save it as you feel appropriate.
Ugh. Every now and again a show ends up being an unmitigated disaster for no readily apparent reason. The brain fails in basic cogent thought and even when there is a flicker of something approaching intelligent air-filler the lip-enhanced hole in the middle of my face fails to express this appropriately and it just comes out as bibblebibblebibblebibblebibblebibblebibble.
Sadly, this week’s Selection Box was one such show. I can only apologise. Oh, and boil my neck in pot of heated fat as a form of self-flaggelation.
Thankfully there was the usual helping of delicious musical morcels to punctuate the flailing jibbering idiot, including a Thanking Your Kind Indulgence from Kraftwerk – who completed their residency at Tate Modern this week. What better antidote to an incoherent disc jockey could there be than a 7-minute display of minimalist German efficiency.
Here be the full playlist. I’m off to cry big wet tears until next week’s show.
In this week’s show, the new music included Veronica Falls:
…Jamie Lidell:
…and Lycoriscoris:
Feel free to listen back to the show. This is what you would hear:
Thao & The Get Down Stay Down – ‘We The Common’ (single) (Ribbon)
Ty Segall – ‘Would you Be My Love’ (single) (Drag City)
Dobie – ‘Stan Lee Is A Hero Of Mine’ (LP – We Will Not Harm You) (Big Dada)
Caitlin Rose – ‘Only A Clown’ (single)
David Fenech – ‘Grand Huit’ (LP – Grand Huit) (Gagarin)
Bleached – ‘Next Stop’ (single)
RdeÄa Raketa – ‘andere Menschen (part 1)’ (LP – Wir weden) (Godrec)
Smashing Pumpkins – ‘Sweet Sweet’ (LP – Siamese Dream) (Virgin) (this week’s Brief Candle, nominated by David Craig)
Veronica Falls – ‘Teenage’ (LP – Waiting For Something To Happen) (Bella Union)
Pulled Apart By Horses – ‘Heartsink’ (split single with Blood Red Shoes)
Jamie Lidell – ‘You Naked’ (single) (Warp)
PVT – ‘Nghtfall’ (LP – Homosapien) (Felte)
Frightened Rabbit – ‘Escape Route’ (LP – Pedestrian Verse) (Atlantic)
Major Lance – ‘Investigate’ (CD – The Northern Soul Story Vol.2: The Golden Torch) (Sony BMG)
Lycoriscoris – ‘Oar’ (LP – From Beyond The Horizon) (Moph)
My Bloody Valentine – ‘Wonder 2’ (LP – MBV) (self-released)
As many a dull, spawn-of-their-loins-obsessed parent will tell you, having a child can present a different perspective on the ways in which the World works from time to time. This has a peculiar way of manifesting itself now and again, such as, just for example, discovering that those irritating adverts on YouTube can serve a genuinely beneficial sociological function.
Of course it serves us ruddy well right for trying to watch something for nothing that we have to sit through up to a whole five seconds of an advertisement before we can view whatever 5-minute load of pelt we’re wanting to stream, but this does not stop us finding the 8%-of-a-minute commercial for arse hair removal something of an irritant. However, when your choice of viewing is an episode of Fireman Sam, selected by your 3 year old son, and the advert is for the new album by Villagers there is clearly something of a benefit to them. This is particularly true when 24 hours later said child expects to see the same advert again and asks for it, and then spends much of the week singing Villagers around the house.
Thus it was that we added Villagers to the list of Good Things that he has now shown a genuine postive interest in, which includes Talking Heads, Jonathan Richman & The Modern Lovers, Spirit of Eden period Talk Talk and Diana Rigg-era episodes of The Avengers. Parenting isn’t a competition, but I’ve definitely won.
Enough of this Look At Me I Procreated guff, here’s what I went and gone done played this week:
Nothing says Folk more than a set of welding goggles
Last Wednesday was a good evening for Kris Drever. Â At virtually the same moment he was stood on stage, towering over his Lau bandmates Martin Green and Aidan O’Rourke as they picked up the Radio 2 Folk Award for Band of the Year, he was also treated to an even more thrilling achievement in that his solo recording of Harvest Gypsies, from the album Blackwater, was the opening track to Selection Box. Â I dare say that life will never quite be so exciting for him again.
I did suffix the track by saying that it was one of my favourite records of the last five years, then suggested that it may well be older than that. In doing so I have made myself right and wrong simultaneously as it is in fact an astonishing 7 years since said offering was released. Â No matter, though, because I’ll just readjust my hypothetical lists and declare that it is one of the best records of the last seven years.