An assortment of things that have pleased me greatly: part 1

As an old, old man (ish), I’m liberated from the societal pressure to keep up with the modern world. A shameful admission for a part-time music journalist, perhaps, but I mostly find myself listening to a lot of old(er) stuff. This year, as well as the daily Cardiacs fix (over the past decade or so they’ve become my favourite band. I consider the genius of Tim Smith to have few, if any, musical peers. And I will fight with clubs and spittle those who say otherwise), there’s been lots of Toru Takemtisu, Pierre Boulez, Zakir Hussain, Chet Baker, Ustad Ali Akbar Khan, Strapping Young Lad, Art Blakey, Naif Agby, Melvins, Arvo Pärt, Sammy Davis Jr, Circle, Tool, Philip Glass, Ravi Shankar, Olivier Messiaen, Alim Qasmiov and Oum Kalthoum – and a considerable amount of time spent with 2008’s Who Killed Amanda Palmer? (of whom, possibly, more anon).

However, in amongst all that, I have heard some new things. Not in strict order, but roughly numerical (the first three are my clear highlights), here’s the first ten of my favourite new albums of 2011. More to follow next week. Maybe.

Handy-dandy accompanying Spotify playlist: Onions for Eyeballs' Best of 2011.

Unless otherwise indicated, all reviews originally appeared in Rock-a-Rolla magazine.

THE BOOK OF KNOTS – GARDEN OF FAINTING STARS

(IPECAC)

After maritime travel and mid-western industry, the third loosely conceptual album from The Book of Knots deals with the endgame of space travel and the death of dream. Here, the band’s somewhat abstracted, subconscious art rock is more focused and fully realised than ever before. ‘Microgravity’, with an appropriate launchpad chorus from Carla Kihlstedt, even feels like a loose approximation of a pop song, albeit built from misshapen power chords and jury-rigged electronics. As ever, myriad guest vocalists and musicians colour the core members’ compositions. Blixa Bargeld offers a queasy narrative full of entomological nausea and jet lag. Elyas Khan and Mike Patton turn in two of the highlights, the former offering lysergic quasi-qawwali to the ether, the latter heading skyward over the album’s sludgiest sounds. Redolent of one of the Flaming Lips’ more cosmically outré moments, ‘Lissajous Orbit’ is a hyper-dramatic realisation of the terrors of intergalactic isolation. ‘Obituary for the Future’, which beautifully offsets Kihlstedt’s bitter-honeyed voice against a palm-muted metal chug, forms a final, tragic lament for humanity’s interstellar aspirations.

KILLL – LIVE

(FYSISK FORMAT)

Comprising members of JR Ewing, Jaga Jazzist and No Place to Hide, Norway’s KILLL have been in existence since 2003, but solely as a live entity, never releasing anything until this live CD & DVD. Their self-described oeuvre consists of ‘stroboscopic avant-metal’, which is about as perfect and succinct a description as it gets. It’s at once maximal and minimal – ultra-lethal no-flab precision riffs, massive barbed sonics, cybernetic pummel and maddening repetition result in something quite shockingly intense, even for the most jaded of aural masochists. Factor in the DVD’s seizure-inducing op-art visuals, the effect of which is like using a heavy machine gun to fire every Bridget Riley print that ever existed directly into your optic nerve, and you’ve got a blueprint for total sensory overload. Absolutely stunning, in both the superlative and concussive senses.

TATTIE TOES
– TURNIP FAMINE

(PICKLED EGG)

Glasgow’s Tattie Toes are one of the more idiosyncratic bands to inhabit this flimsy plane of existence. In theory, their blending of elements makes little sense – a stridently proggy post-punk rhythm section, a richly mournful or exuberant violin, and an outrageously chameleonic Basque Country chanteuse, as adept at soaring operatics as she is mellifluous melodies and caustic animalistic shrieks. Imagine Yma Sumac and Lajko Felix jamming with the Dog-faced Hermans and you’re a quarter of the way there. Yet there’s nothing forced about this collision of styles – rather, it sounds like a respectfully edgy update of the centuries-old traditional music of an as-yet undiscovered Mediterranean island nation. Compared to the wayward raucousness and visual drama of Tattie Toes’ live set, their debut album is relatively spare and airy, but no less bold and sumptuous. By turns boisterous, sensuous, explosive and delicate, this is a unique and joyful experience from start to finish.

ASVA – PRESENCES OF ABSENCES

(IMPORTANT)

Asva III turns out to be both simpler and far more complex than its predecessors. Lineup and sound alike are pared back, the former doomy crunch largely supplanted by an emphasis on organs, texture and shifting modes. ‘A Bomb in that Suitcase’ features ecclesiastical reeds, sustained bass tones, vocals alternately liminal and choral. As the drone becomes all-enveloping, drums kick in, the chorale ascends, shapes are hewn from solid bass, dissonant horns join the fray and it unfurls like an embittered rose.

Continuing the bicameral Asvic tradition of offsetting impervious music against a vulnerable human voice, the delicate spell of ‘Birds’ is woven from Toby Driver’s withered, anguished falsetto. The 24-minute centrepiece, ‘Presences of Absences’ is built from organ drones so thick you could race rhinos on them, with intermittent doom stabs that recall Asva’s previous outings. Driver appears again at his most ethereal, floating above the music, harmonising with his own ghosts. The closer, the delicate, labyrinthine ‘New World Order Rising’, finds Asva at their most liturgical, ambiguous emotions ebbing and flowing as it inches towards a dynamic climax with all the haste of a glacier. Intricate, thoughtful and muscular, Presences of Absences is a pivotal album for Asva, one that sees them shedding some of their armour, but all the stronger for it.

MASTER MUSICIANS OF BUKKAKE – TOTEM THREE

(IMPORTANT)

The final instalment of MMOB’s triptych of ersatz ethno-drone is less oppressive than part I, not as pretty as part II, but the most immediate of them all. ‘Bardo Sidpa’ may consist of great washes of truculent gamelan-tinted doom, but this belligerent hum segues into ‘In the Twilight of Kali Yuga’, a beautifully bright, spry and wiry piece of virtuoso raga slink. With its New Age flutery and pineal-gland-caressing cultish chant, you might expect to find ‘Illuminating the Ten Directions’ playing as you stock up on Nitraj and crystal woo, were it not for the crushing guitars. ‘Prophecy of the White Camel’ hits a hypnotic Saharan blues groove – a welcome non-surprise to find Alan Bishop wailing here – and the sweet, quasi-medieval melodies of ‘6000 Years of Darkness’ are contrasted with ‘Reign of Quantity’s robovoices and bubbling body horror. Alas, this glorious and ambitious trilogy ends with ‘Failed Future’ – a miniature John Carpenter homage that’s little more than a throwaway gag. But then, as their name suggests, and as with their spiritual forbears Sun City Girls, self-defeating humour is part of the package, and doesn’t diminish their essential beauty.

MIKE PATTON – THE SOLITUDE OF PRIME NUMBERS

(IPECAC)

After A Perfect Place and Crank: High Voltage, Patton returns with his third solo soundtrack project. Far closer in spirit and tone to the elegant, atmospheric former than the gonzoid latter, this score accompanies both Saverio Cotanzo’s film and the source novel by Paolo Giordano. Devoid of their cinematic and literary context, these 16 prime-numbered tracks – some melodic and beautiful, others murderously chilling – make for a subtle, impressionistic experience. There are certainly elements here that can be readily identified – a Mediterranean feel for melody that’s redolent of Mondo Cane’s source material, a Herrmann approach to lavish string arrangements, Penderecki-inspired looming discord, Carpenter synth pulses… But, as ever, it’s the way in which he draws on, manipulates and recontextualises his influences that makes Patton a distinctive musician in his own right.

What’s interesting about The Solitude of Prime Numbers is the way that a man known for his vocal abilities is gaining confidence in his other voice, as an instrumental composer. Where A Perfect Place was very much in the ‘main theme plus variations’ school of soundtrack composition, this is a more subtly woven work, in which narrative elements that recur do so by stealth. That makes for a less immediate work than his other two soundtracks, but at the same time a more accomplished and rewarding one.

MOMBU – MOMBU

(SUBSOUND)

Mombu: being the fusing of Zu’s Gondorian sax behemoth Luca Mai with serial drum abuser Antonio Zitarelli of avant-jazz types Neo. As you’d expect, it’s supremely heavy and outrageously adept stuff, mainly occupying the bowel-battering end of the spectrum. OK, so there’s no getting away from the fact that it can sometimes sound pretty close to Zu’s manic, jazz-infused prog-hardcore with the bass removed. However, here, Mai’s sax is often double-, even triple-tracked or more, giving Mombu more than enough dynamism, depth and sheer sonic muscle. And the duo are at their most distinctive and effective when their Ethiopian influence comes to the fore – present most explicitly in Zitarelli’s hand drums and other percussive varieties, but also in Mai’s forays into melodic lines redolent of Getachew Mekuria or Mulatu Astatqé. If Mombu’s self-description as ‘Afro-grind’ doesn’t make this connection explicitly and irresistibly clear, then the brain-hugging polyrhythmic assault of ‘Regla De Ocha’ will.

MOGWAI – HARDCORE WILL NEVER DIE, BUT YOU WILL

(ROCK ACTION)

Mogwai’s seventh album finds them both delving deeper into familiar modes and exploring fresh ideas with inspiring confidence. The more traditional stuff is as big and beautiful as ever: ‘Death Rays’ is utterly lovely but comfortable, a sombre, yearning instrumental of the type that they can pull off while unconscious, while the sparse piano and mournful violin of ‘Too Raging To Cheers’ collapse into a vast, cascading riff worthy of Harvey Milk. But there’s a new energy here too. ‘Mexican Grand Prix’ is highly atypical, a dreamy Stereolab pulse with heavily processed robo-whispers. ‘How to be a Werewolf’ and the optimistic ‘George Square Thatcher Death Party’ also share this spry, motorik vibe, while ‘San Pedro’s entwined guitars rack up more BPMs than any other song in the band’s history. But the clear highlight is ‘Rano Pano’. It starts loud, gets louder, and has a peculiar melodic, pseudo-mystical charge, its fuzzy central riff a sublime, extended mantra that could have been lifted from a gamelan session. Mogwai albums usually end well, and this is no exception, as ‘You're Lionel Richie’ swells into a monolithic doom dirge that ends about 30 minutes too soon.

REMEMBER REMEMBER – THE QUICKENING

(ROCK ACTION)

Formerly one man called Graeme, a loop pedal, a guitar, a glockenspiel and a box full of toys and trinkets, Remember Remember is now a seven-piece band. It’s not just the line-up that’s grown, but the breadth and depth of the music too. The Quickening builds on the debut’s strengths (grand melodic statements, lavish sonics, carefully woven patterns, slow-burn dynamics) and adds big live-band arrangements and considerable emotional weight. ‘Ocean Potion’ is the most perfect realisation of the new sound, a darkly magical nine-minute epic that blossoms into an unexpectedly proggy, rhythmically askew long-form riff. Elsewhere, the solo piano piece ‘A Larger Demon’ stands out by virtue of daunting bare-bones simplicity, while the achingly sad ‘One Happier’ culminates in some unbearably poignant flamenco-style strumming from acoustic virtuoso RM Hubbert. Wonderful, instantly appealing stuff, but for all its elevated ambition, still unmistakably the work of a guy who finds delight in overlaying sweet melodies with the utterances of a squeaky shark.

COLIN STETSON – NEW HISTORY WARFARE VOL. 2: JUDGES

(CONSTELLATION)

Exactly how Colin Stetson does what he does is a mystery for seasoned sax detectives. He proudly proclaims that his tunes are one-take live recordings, with no overdubs or similar studio shenanigans. Yet this one man and his horn are capable of sounding like a polyphonic analogue synth, a wailing vocalist, a bassist and a drummer, all at the same time. Percussive, multi-layered and supremely dense, his sound is utterly compelling – his perpetual motion breath control alone is enough to induce hypoxia in the listener. But it’s no mere technical flashfest. His compositions are as captivating as his playing, by turns aggressive, playful, sombre and exhilarating. The unforgiving wall of brass is occasionally accompanied by the larynxes of Laurie Anderson and My Brightest Diamond’s Shara Woden – the former, authoritative, lyrical and imposing; the latter, wounded and crystalline. Stetson has created a uniquely involving sound world here, one that reconfigures elements of jazz, gospel, art-rock, heavy drone and even vintage electronica with just a single instrument and a herculean pair of lungs.

PERPETUAL MOTION

Some music can be an endurance test for the listener, some for the players. Mick Barr’s is both.

For his part: “It can get exhausting. Having to warm up for a half hour before every show and not taking breaks while on stage can be a bit daunting at times. Every now and then I’ll have bouts of weakness in my left arm, but not too much else. There’s more of a mental toll.”

For ours: Hundreds of hyper-speed geometric guitar compositions, both vast and microscopic, scorch our synapses as we try to keep pace. Emotional resonances are bleached by inhuman technicality. Dialogue becomes impossible in the face of a horrifying clarity of vision. The only sane reaction is to let go, be dragged along, eyes wide, mouth gaping.

[A personal note: Several years ago, soon after I contracted RSI in my wrist, I saw Orthrelm play in London. Mick Barr’s relentless performance, displaying the kind of precision, speed and stamina of which only machines should be capable, caused a vivid and painful psychosomatic reaction in my already-tender tendons that still makes itself unpleasantly felt today whenever I hear him play. Talk about a visceral response. Pavlov has nothing on Orthrelm.]

Aside from an early appearance on cassette as Or Rathol Nok, Barr first surfaced in the mid-90s as half of Washington DC’s Crom-Tech, playing the screeching foil to the skitter and batter of drummer Malcolm McDuffie. Over a decade later, Crom-Tech’s two albums of jazz-inflected hyper-prog miniatures remain singularly harsh, thanks to their combination of frenetic velocity, a minuscule attention span, and shrill, treble-intensive attack. Never rest, never repeat.

Taken from a short story written by Barr, Crom-Tech was a prototype for language games to come. Titles such as Norildivoth Crallos-Lomrixth Urthiln, Asristir Vieldriox and Uppragan Srilimia Ixioor Ocrilim Nollfithes Mrithixyl signify a mind obsessed with making startling and complex new patterns out of old material – be it vowels and consonants or snatches of metal guitar-solo climaxes.

“For a long time I didn’t feel comfortable expressing anything artistically with English,” says Barr. “But words are necessary in the presentation, so I made up words that fit the mood to me. I attempted at one point to construct a language, but that seemed stupid right at the start. But having a lot of band names is kind of a fluke. I liked the word ‘or’, so I used that in Or Rathol Nok. Then I needed a name to continue the legacy of that band, so I used Or:12r3. In 2000, Octis came about, which was a Voivodian word to me – but more insectish, which fit the project. Ocrilim came as an extension of that, but with more meaning attached to it. Orthrelm is kind of a fusing of Tolkein's word ‘Orthanc’ and ‘realm’.”

Following the dissolution of Crom-Tech, Barr hooked up with a drum machine to form Octis, and the drafting of drummer Josh Blair completed Orthrelm. (Although, in truth, it’s never that simple, and the boundaries are often blurred.) Both perpetuated, exaggerated and refined the ideas birthed in Crom-Tech – the rudimentary, superfluous vocals were discarded, the brevity surpassed even Naked City levels (Orthrelm’s 2002 EP Asristir Vieldriox easily contains its 99 tracks within 13 minutes), and Barr’s already astonishing playing reached deep into the realms of the absurd. Though his skills are undeniably amazing on a technical level, virtuosic complexity is not the point – this ain’t no Guitar World onanistic fantasy, it’s just the way in which his imagination manifests itself: “There is no philosophy behind playing fast. To me, it just feels comfortable. But my life is not very speedy. Maybe my thoughts are speedy, but I am a calm human.”

In at the deep end: Orthrelm’s OV. Where their previous work exploited the microscopic scale naturally suggested by Barr’s refusal to repeat any phrase or hang on to a note for more than a tenth of a second, OV is Orthrelm writ large – 45 minutes of maddening repetition, minute variation, and dramatic statements that illustrate just how ridiculously micro-composed this stuff is. Think Terry Riley filtered through a grind aesthetic with a shredder’s dexterity. Fractal guitar patterns from the gut end of the fretboard, spiralling outwards into infinity, minute variations highlighting unexpected facets. Every detail is mirrored, anticipated and given physical form by Blair’s knackering dash around his kit. It’s both annoying and delirious, like having a desperate wasp inside your skull, constantly stinging your pleasure centres in its attempts to escape.

Barr’s assessment of his own work is as understated as his music is excessive: “It’s not really experimental…maybe a little. Extreme, sure, but I prefer the word ‘intense’.” But for all his quietude and humility, he has made his presence felt among speedfreaks everywhere. He’s there in the ecstatic math-pop of Marnie Stern, the thrash miniatures of Fantômas, and in every impossible time twist and audacious run by tech-metalcore outfits like Behold the Arctopus, Dillinger Escape Plan and Psyopus. He has also found time to collaborate with the likes of Nondor Nevaï, Quix*o*tic and the Flying Luttenbachers, and to record two improv albums with irrepressible Hella/Marnie drummer Zach Hill. These sessions with Hill have all the energy of Orthrelm, but less of the steely self-control. Both players perfectly complement each other – Hill’s freeform brutalist approach causing Barr to run along the very edge of hungry precipices; Barr’s desperate attempts to rein in the drummer adding a note of beautifully crisp tension. “Zach Hill is one of the only people I have felt comfortable improvising with,” says Barr. “It clicked really well. I prefer not to improvise very often. However, I do like to jam. Improvising and jamming are very different things to me.”

Speed remains the core, even as Barr is multi-tracking himself, weaving warm, welcoming and melodic abstracts. Whereas Orthrelm and Octis were all about shape, about carving tiny figures in sound, Ocrilim uses headlong motion to create texture, wearing it like chain mail. Move fast enough and the blur effect kicks in; you’re no longer a bullet, but a laser beam. Ocrilim is seemingly custom-designed for those who wish Glenn Branca’s music were faster, more varied, more intricate. It represents a considerable shift in the Barr aesthetic, though he himself is unsure how, when and why this happened. “I wasn’t paying attention. Honestly, I don’t really have the best handle on what I’m doing, and why I do it. It’s all very intuitive these days. Perfection is never a priority. Intuition is more of a priority. But Ocrilim’s Annwn is the music I am most proud of at this point.”

Barr’s latest incarnation is Krallice, an obscenely powerful and oddly poignant black-metal collaboration with Behold the Arctopus’s Colin Marston. “It just kind of came together,” he says. “Me and Colin were making some songs for a possible black-metal recording, but then it snowballed into an actual album and band. I was into metal right off the bat. I listen to tons of different musics, but my heart has always been with metal. I've always played music that I consider to be very metal-sounding.” Krallice is more obviously tied in to broader, more recognisable genre conventions than anything he’s ever done. But atop the corpse-painted bludgeon, the pointillist flood of sour sound, made from cascading specks of cold light, is all Barr.

For a man given to prolific and idiosyncratic artistic expression, Barr is somewhat reticent when it comes to exploring what he does in public. The vivid obsessions present in all his work, from the early days right through to Krallice, form a single concept that is very much alive and evolving – and to dissect something that still draws breath is to kill it. “It is much more emotional to me than intellectual,” he says. “However, I can’t really say what the content is, as it’s all pretty subconscious. But it’s also cold and technical, which invokes its own emotions. No one ever misses the point, as the point is all relative to the one thinking it.”

(originally published in Plan B, September 2008)

MOGWAI: A REVIEWMINISCENCE (REVIEWTROSPECTIVE?)

MOGWAI

HARDCORE WILL NEVER DIE, BUT YOU WILL

(ROCK ACTION)

It's tough for me to be objective about Mogwai. It was they who almost singlehandedly* reignited my passion for music, which had been wilting severely amid the doldrums of the mid-to-late ’90s. (Turns out that sufficient ambient exposure to Oasis and Ocean Colour Scene is enough to make you lose faith in an entire art form.) The first I heard of Mogwai was John Mulvey’s review of Young Team in the NME, October 1997. It spoke of “sprawling, reckless music” that was “intensely beautiful” yet contained “searing riff-madness any self-respecting death metal band would kill for”. Who could resist such a prospect? It was alluring enough that, for the first time in my life, I shelled out for a record (on double vinyl, even) without tasting a note. The opener was tantalising enough, warm drones humming as a voice hesitatingly describes the band in almost absurdly glowing terms. Then the ominous rumble of ‘Like Herod’ loomed into earview, and before I knew it that ungainly, incongruous, bastard surprise of a RIFF punched my face right off of my head. Twice in a row. How could something so vicious be so gorgeous? Deep, instant love.

Over the next few years, many a live experience cemented our relationship. Their headline slot at the Astoria in 1999 was a seminal experience. They were beautiful, of course. But even after many years of metal gigs, the volume levels here were revelatory. Mogwai were unfeasibly, ridiculously vast, so much so that for a while everything just went… white… as my brain reeled from the sensory overload. The air itself seemed to be on the verge of friction-induced ignition. It felt like hot pink rain on my skin. Young kids next to me huddled on the floor, their hands over their ears (one of them threw up on my shoe). It was pure visceral pleasure from all-consuming sound – it was the first time I’d experienced this level of blissful sonic extremity, and it ensured that I’d later fall for the likes of Merzbow, Sunn o))) and MBV. And yet, even amid the extremity and brutality, Mogwai were unashamedly, nakedly emotional – romantic, even. Years later, my (now, still) wife and I used ‘Helicon 1’ at the start of our wedding ceremony.

But over the years, they changed. Or, rather, I did. In truth, Mogwai failed to be what they never were, but what my inner teenage metalhead wanted them to be: ALL THE LOUD BITS, ALL THE TIME. With every album, the gnarly passages were scaled back more and more. I kept up, but didn’t really understand any more. Their power seemed diluted by their countless inferior imitators. The words ‘Rock Action’ began to seem like a cruel tease. It was only with The Hawk is Howling, specifically with the way that ‘I’m Jim Morrison’ so subtly and inexorably blossoms, that I finally grasped what they’d been doing all along – striving for a certain form of nameless, profound human beauty, and doing so with increasing eloquence, even if they often whispered about it when the younger me wanted them to yell themselves hoarse.

After the slavish fanboy devotion and a period of mild disappointment/ambivalence, I’ve now entered a more mature and appreciative phase. The most recent encounter was at the Grand Ole Opry on their home turf. Turns out they’re older too. Whodathunkit? More assured and confident. Technically impeccable. Funny as fuck. It was wondrous, but still… they seemed smaller. The loud bits don’t seem to convey quite the same absurd world-ending/creating power that they used to. Have they smoothed out the ultra-dynamics? Or am I comparing the actual experience before me with an impossibly exaggerated memory? In all fairness, the unabated yen they gave me for extreme volume has probably left my gig-ravaged ears in no fit state to judge.

The prospect of a new Mogwai album is therefore a source of both quivering excitement and queasy trepidation. Hardcore… begins with a grandiose mid-paced opener a la ‘Jim Morrison’ or ‘Auto Rock’ – piano, broad dramatic strokes, slow evolution and stratospheric guitar climax, the main guitar line in polyrhythmic relief to the main pulse. Perhaps not 100% satisfying in itself, but an effective, if wrong-footing introduction. ‘Mexican Grand Prix is the first of several surprises – a lithe, sombre pop song with a krautrock pulse and android vocals. Blindfolded and handcuffed, you’d never guess this was Mogwai. Stereolab, maybe? Quickspace?

‘Rano Pano’ is extraordinary, one of their finest tunes yet. The hugely fuzzy central riff is at once alien and familiar, eternal but indefinable, complex but natural, somewhere between a lost Gallic folk melody and South-East Asian temple chant. It has the feel of a sculpture unlocked from marble, something that’s always been there but no one noticed it before.

The downbeat ‘Death Rays’ and ‘Letters to the Metro’ are typical of much of the band’s work since CODY. A sense of melancholy, expressed through pianos, guitars and measured restraint. Melodically beautiful and sonically rich, but ultimately Mogwai at a stroll. The pace hastens with ‘San Pedro’ – an uncharacteristically speedy instrumental rocker, zippier and less brutal than its precursors ‘Batcat’ and ‘Glasgow Mega Snake’, more wiry and sinewy, strewn with intricate guitar patterns. The most optimistic tune here, and not just in terms of its celebratory epithet (the first rule of Mogwai: the titles mean nothing), ‘George Square Thatcher Death Party’ revisits the motorik pulse with vibing synths and processed vocals. ‘How to be a Werewolf’ is softer, but no less redolent of the spirit of Dinger that courses through much of this album. Very pretty, very cheerfully sad, climaxing in some lavish, wibbly Robert Fripp phrasings and a pleasingly incongruous big arena-rock key shift towards the end.

The last two tracks are the most old-school. They pull the tricks that those who don’t really listen to Mogwai usually associate with them – quiet intros exploding into plesiosaur-bruising riffs. But they’re great examples of the form. ‘Too Raging to Cheers’ has a brilliantly ugly and brutal cascading payoff, while ‘You’re Lionel Richie’ is simpler, its melody extending into a glorious climactic, low-end assault. Both are over way, way too soon. But I would say that.

2011 finds Mogwai in undeniably great shape, exploring plenty of bold new ideas and refining old ones, with enough familiar territory to not scare away the faithful. They’re smarter, more proficient, certainly more subtle… in virtually all of the ways that count, they’re better, more fully realised than ever. The only downside is that I hold them to an impossible standard. At one time they saved my life with sound. But fourteen years on, they’re still enriching it – I can’t ask for more than that.

* See also The Monsoon Bassoon.

(unpublished)

obligatory fin-de-siècle list-making behaviour

Here be my top 10 albums of the past 12 months, most of which I reviewed in print (reproduced below). Big thanks to Rock-a-Rolla for letting me splurge my nonsense in their pages on a regular basis.

Tracks from many of the albums below, plus some other bits’n’bobs, are featured on this here Spotify playlist.

10) Kayo Dot – Coyote

Some bands really do defy easy encapsulation. Kayo Dot make music of a perpetually shifting kind, a writhing, transfiguring sound that possesses elements of prog and jazz and avant-garde composition and art-rock, but inhabits none of them and all of them at once. Their fourth album, Coyote, is a single five-part composition, the lyrics and narrative arc of which were written by artist and close friend Yuko Sueta in the final stages of terminal breast cancer. Given that, lines such as ‘Help me, I’m disappearing’, delivered via Toby Driver’s brittle howl, carry a night-unbearable weight.

Though micro-composed to the point of OCD, Coyote is remarkable not only for its complexity, but for its breathtaking fluidity, the way the wildly disparate moods and methods metamorphose into each other imperceptibly. KD’s former metal leanings have been utterly expunged these days, but it’s notable that they’re just as forceful without them. A greater emphasis on brass adds gravitas and shimmer to the jazzier passages, at times redolent of ’70s Miles, which at any second may flow into doomy, neo-gothic ambience, bursts of kaleidoscopic prog that blossom like fireworks, or an agonising trawl through clattering shaped chaos. More powerful, both sonically and emotionally, than its wonderful but nebulous predecessor, Blue Lambency Downward, this is a unique, draining experience, as immersive as it is ineffable.

(from Rock-a-Rolla magazine)

9) The Ex – Catch My Shoe

As this year’s 30 compilation showed, The Ex’s creativity shows no signs of fizzling out as they enter their fourth decade. Catch My Shoe is their first album sans founding vocalist GW Sok, but new guy Arnold de Boer makes for a painless transition. First single ‘Maybe I was the Pilot’, with exuberant squalls from incomparable trumpetfiend Roy Paci, is a brash opener – its long-form build typical of this band in 2010: jagged, angular riff builds via repetitive drive into an ecstatic frenzy. ‘Bicycle Illusion’ is similarly exceptional, the melodies reminiscent of the band’s infatuation with Ethiopian sounds circa Moa Anbessa, the climax swollen with rambunctiousness. Drummer Kat voices ‘Eolyeo’, an Eastern European folk ditty that weaves together the celebratory and the sombre in an exquisite way. The blazing first half gives way to a simmering third quarter, but ‘Life Whining’ and the uneasy, discordant ‘24 Problems’ constitute a volatile finale.

(from Rock-a-Rolla magazine)

8) Killing Joke – Absolute Dissent

Their 14th album finds Killing Joke both reinvigorated and somewhat nostalgic – understandably so, as this is the first reappearance of the original Jaz/Geordie/Youth/Ferguson lineup since 1982. The title track is 100% classic Joke, barging straight in with a chorus like an unexpected quarry, guitars like mating bulldozers, talk of chemtrails and mind control – a call to arms with disco hi-hats. The heavier tunes perpetuate the metallic bent of the last two albums, especially ‘This World Hell’s brutal, mechanical one-note riff, chorus fuelled by double-bass rolls and flamethrower vocal. No one else sings like Jaz Coleman. His apocalyptic roar sounds like a man vomiting up a radiator, or the last drop of life being squeezed out of the last mammoth. The super-heavy ‘The Great Cull’ finds him giving full vent as he predicts and revels in Armageddon over sublimely chunky riffs. Anthemic, filthy and uncompromising, ‘Endgame’ is an instant classic, with almost a touch of boogie to its shuffling extinction lilt.

It’s not all brutality: ‘European Super State’, a celebration of the EU project, is a return to KJ’s dancier/more electronic side, sidelined since the mid-’90s. Though still noisy and awkward, ‘In Excelsis’s arena-filling chorus is extravagantly poppy, while ‘The Raven King’, a song for late bassist Paul Raven, is comparatively delicate and beautiful. Given KJ’s clear influence on Broadrick, it’s pleasing that the soaring ‘Honour the Fire’ sounds exactly like a faster Jesu, complete with surprisingly vulnerable streak.

Elsewhere, the choppy riff and skipping beats of ‘Fresh Fever from the Skies’ seem to come straight from What’s THIS For…!; the rough, aggressive ‘Depthcharge’ recalls the Extremities era; and ‘Here Comes the Singularity’s lean and wiry riff summons the early days by deliberately invoking ‘Eighties’ (or Nirvana’s ‘Come as You Are’ if you prefer…). In a final bit of broken nostalgia, ‘Ghosts of Ladbroke Grove’ harks back not only to the band’s geographic origins, but also the dub sound of their first EP. Absolute Dissent feels like a definitive Joke document, an encapsulation of (almost) all of their eras and manifestations in one handy, crushing package. Undeniably strong and vital in its own right, but also a great place for dawdlers to jump on board.

(from Rock-a-Rolla magazine)

7) Master Musicians of Bukkake – Totem Two

Part two of the trilogy from the finest band of exploratory musicians ever to be regrettably and incongruously named after a degrading act of group misogyny. Anyway… Totem Two bathes in much the same scrying pool as its predecessor – long-form quasi-mystical and texturally sumptuous ethno-dronescapes with a doom-derived aesthetic – but is blessed with greater dramatic power. Opener ‘Bardo Chonyid/Master of All Visible Shapes’ rises out of dust devils; plague bells chime, a warning horn sounds, guitars strike and slither. ‘Perde Kaldirma’ brings the dubious gift of panpipes, but does so in an instinctive way that complements its hypnotic funereal dirge. But it’s ‘Coincidental Oppositorum’ and ‘Patmos’ that are the most radical and captivating, built on sweeping, time-lost melodies, epic in scale, atavistic in their beauty, reminiscent of Eyvind Kang’s boldest, most sensuous work. It’s here that MMB’s curtain of darkness falls away and they embrace the purity of the sublime.

(from Rock-a-Rolla magazine)

6) Melvins – The Bride Screamed Murder

The third manifestation of the Nth incarnation of the thing known as Melvins brings mostly refinement, but hints of revolution. Half of the tracks continue to build on the principles established by the Big Business-enhanced line-up on (A) Senile Animal and Nude With Boots. For virgin ears, that means knotty, reptilian guitar lines; muscle-bound twin drum attack by Dale and Coady; and refreshingly inviting harmony-saturated vocals from Buzz and Jared. The average tempo and pop saturation of Melvins has increased significantly since the Big Business boys came to town. Buzz’s crispy latterday guitar sound is even more sharp and sprightly, especially on the spiralling, companion pieces ‘Electric Flower’ and ‘Lighten Up’, the latter soaring oddly like Jane’s Addiction if Perry Farrell were two burly men.

However, the strongest tracks are the most anomalous and experimental. Irresistible opener ‘The Water Glass’ starts out in a tangle of suitably crushing riffage, but gives way to few minutes’ Full Metal Jacket-style drill sergeant call and response. Layered vocals and cavernous effects give super-heavy crawl ‘I'll Finish You Off’ a curious high church feel, an impression cemented by queasy, high-pitched vocals from menacing altar boys.

The highlight is arguably the treacle-paced version of The Who’s ‘My Generation’, seemingly sung by a gang of Muppet weasels in an Anderson shelter. Where the original was fuelled by brash hedonism, this sinister dirge resembles a recruitment anthem for sociopaths. As the riff cycles, ever slower and more distant, enveloped by muffled noise, it’s difficult to shake the feeling that your bathysphere has been cut loose and you’re heading for the ocean floor. The closing ‘P.G. x 3’ is one of this band’s strangest works – a surreal collage of suffocating drones, funereal a cappella folk, sensuous guitar resonance, and a lonely child reciting numbers in a hyperbaric chamber. Beautifully balanced between the anticipated and the aberrant, The Bride Screamed Murder is the sound of Melvins continuing to ignore your idea of what they’re supposed to be.

(from Rock-a-Rolla magazine)

5) Zs – New Slaves

It might sound odd, given that this is at no.5, but I’m still uncertain as to whether, as a cohesive album, New Slaves is really that good. For the most part, it’s an interesting enough bit of rumbling cacophony and improv and drone. But. But. It more than earns its place here on the basis of one piece at its centre, the truly astonishing 20-minute title track – a relentless, clanking, genre-dodging atonal grind that smudges the borders between freeform improvisation, ultra-tight, complex pre-composition and dogged, maddening repetition in a way that’s thoroughly unsettling and cortex-shatteringly brilliant.

4) Mike Patton – Mondo Cane

It’s easy to see why Mike Patton was drawn to these 1960s Italian pop tunes. Most share the same heightened, almost cartoonish sense of drama that has characterised the best of his own work, from the sculpted ultra-dynamics of Fantômas to the bombastic power of Faith No More. And of course, their octave-bounding melodies allow him to administer a good seeing-to to those fans who’ve been yearning for him to really cut loose and sing.

‘Il Cielo in Una Stanza’, which eagle-eared cinephiles may spot lurking in the background of Goodfellas, is a simmering opener, bubbling up out of storm clouds and syncopated ‘la la la’s and blossoming into lavish histrionics. ‘Ore d'Amore’s swooping melodrama features fuzzy guitars and sublime moments of swelling rallentando – this one really pushes the larynx too, the verse starting deep in the belly and soaring straight to the stratosphere. Accompanied only by an acoustic guitar, Patton excels himself on ‘Scalinatella’, a sombre heartquake whose strength lies in its understatement. Probably the strongest vocal performance here, though easily the least flashy.

It’s mostly a relatively down-tempo, explicitly seductive collection, though there are exceptions. ‘Urlo Negro’ is a frankly ridiculous song consisting of a stomping riff and a whole lot of throat shredding. Patton plays the sleazy carnival barker on ‘Che Notte!’, a storming bit of Mediterranean swing driven by Roy Paci’s voluptuous trumpet.

Regular touchstone Morricone is represented by ‘Deep Down’, one of his pop outings, though it feels relatively lightweight, both within the context of this album and in relation to his other work. ‘Senza Fine’ brings things to a suitably grandiose close, its delicate sentiment and rich melodies leading to a huge, emotive climax.

These songs are essentially orchestral live recordings tweaked in the studio, with mixed results. The electronics and overdubs and effects are mostly well-woven and subtle, but can at times be excessive – the multi-layered vocals on ‘Urlo Negro’ and the ‘singing in a tin cupboard’ effect on ‘Senza Fine’, for example, are obtrusive and distracting. It also feels a little slight, clocking in at just over 35 minutes. But these are minor quibbles, and shouldn’t detract from a lush, bold, hugely entertaining and often genuinely moving labour of love.

(from Rock-a-Rolla magazine)

NB: Having been familiar with the Mondo Cane live bootlegs, I found the production a little much at first. I’ve since revised my opinion, and now think it’s a beautifully rendered and insanely detailed production job that reveals more and more with every listen.

3) Cleric – Regressions

As statements of intent go, starting your debut album with a 20-minute splurge of vile noise, unsettling sound sculpture and around 50 insanely intricate riffs entwined in an orgy of bones and blood is a pretty bold one. ‘Allotriophagy’ may just be the least welcoming opening track of all time – but it sets the tone. Aside from a handful of ambient interludes and field recordings, Regressions offers unceasingly confrontational, staggeringly dense avant-grind death-thrash and patchwork brutality from start to finish. It’s relentless yet restless – any given moment may bring precise low-end polymetrics, mathematic speedfreakery, doom battery or sheets of rancid guitar noise.

Cleric are pushing extremes of both invention and intensity, but this is no mere mosaic of Guitar Institute exercises. It flows seamlessly and hints at a coherent but impressionistic narrative thread, a painful backstory that the ever-shifting barrage consistently tries and fails to obliterate via extreme, futile catharsis. It’s not until the haunting piano-led coda of the final track that the splenetic rage subsides and a kind of stoic acceptance is reached. Stunning, on all levels.

(from Rock-a-Rolla magazine)

2) Shining – Blackjazz

While 2007’s Grindstone was a wildly eclectic genre splurge, Blackjazz (despite the title) is very definitely a rock album – albeit a supremely heavy, unceasingly brutal and forward-looking one. ‘The Madness & the Damage Done’ establishes the new paradigm of maximum intensity with buzz-ravaged, digitally tooled stop-start riffs, avant-math-thrash beats and distorted vocal rage. Then ‘Fisheye’, ‘Exit Sun’ and ‘HEALTER SKELTER’ each take turns to hit new heights of dextrous, off-balance bludgeon. But it’s with the total system detonation of ‘Blackjazz Deathtrance’ that Shining really outdo themselves (and everyone else) – 11 minutes of perilously exciting hyper-speed 22nd-century industrial technoprog chaos metal that sounds increasingly unfeasible with every listen. At album’s end, Enslaved’s Grutle Kjellson rends his throat during a charred, mutilated version of King Crimson’s ‘21st-century Schizoid Man’, the fuzzed-out bass notes of which could arouse humpback whales. Astonishingly focused and potent, Blackjazz is what it sounds like when a tirelessly questing band finally finds its identity – and it turns out to be a shark-eyed killing machine from an impossible future.

(from Rock-a-Rolla magazine)

see also: http://thequietus.com/articles/03754-shining-blackjazz-album-review

1) Marina & the Diamonds – The Family Jewels

So here we are. Much as I’d love to gain hardcore metal/experimental/noise points by putting something truly crushing and brutal at no.1, the truth is that by far my most listened-to, scrutinised and adored album of the year was a collection of eccentric and super-catchy British pop.

Marina was first brought to my attention in 2009 by Alistair Crosbie, who posted a YouTube link for ‘Mowgli’s Road’ on Twitter. I was at first intrigued and then entranced by this strange but urgent tune, a stomping, bizarre paean to the difficulties of self-realisation, delivered by a brash, idiosyncratic voice. Though no Beyonce-style vocal virtuoso, Marina clearly revels in exploring the limits of her distinctive, expressive voice. It’s a versatile instrument, mahogany in its resonant depths, shimmering at its apex, punctuated by odd ticks and purrs and bleats and yelps and a restless (rootless) accent.

The album came out in February this year, and never left my ears for long. It packs some pretty bizarre, unlikely and incongruous ideas and huge amounts of detail into irresistible three-minute pop songs in a way that’s utterly fascinating. Every single song here sounds like a colossal hit single, but no two sound remotely alike. Yet The Family Jewels also has an indefinably cohesive character. Every tune, be it the Moroder bass rumble and arena-rock chorus of ‘Shampain’, the Sparks-esque giddy absurdities of ‘Hermit the Frog’, the heartbreakingly empowered vulnerability of ‘I am not a Robot’ or the pained elegance of ‘Numb’, clearly springs from a single imagination.

One attribute that sets Marina apart from those to whom she’s most often lazily compared (Florence, La Roux, etc. (’cause female musicians must only ever be compared to other female musicians. IT’S THE LAW)) is her lack of self-consciousness. Where others convey lofty insouciance and a need to attain gravitas, she’s not afraid to be silly (‘Mowgli’s Road’, ‘Hermit the Frog’), almost embarrassingly frank (‘Guilty’, ‘Obsessions’) or avowedly ruthless in her pursuit of success (‘Oh No’, ‘Numb’). At times she’s even kind of crass and obnoxious (‘Hollywood’, ‘Girls’), but this only serves to ground her songs, to establish them as rounded whole. The first lines of the first song of her debut album (‘Are You Satisfied?’) talk about signing her record deal, creating an infinite self-referential loop that suggests she didn’t even exist prior to the recording process. Hollowing yourself is hardly the most ingratiating way to announce yourself to the world, but with hindsight, it makes perfect sense and introduces a creative spirit in a state of flux. Though clearly aimed squarely at the mainstream, this is no bland, glossy product assembled by committee, but a peculiarly charismatic warts-and-all patchwork.

Who knows where Marina will go from here? On the one hand, I hope she’ll disregard the need to maintain the success she’s already achieved and do something really way out, unfettered and uncommercial – yet it’s exactly the tension between her wild imagination and the pop format that makes so many facets of The Family Jewels so captivating.

Finally, some other goodnesses from this year, in no particular order, almost any of which could have been in the top 10:

Swans – My Father will Guide Me up a Rope to the Sky

Foetus – Hide

Sun City Girls – Funeral Mariachi

Extra Life – Made Flesh

Marnie Stern – Marnie Stern

Carla Kihlstedt/Matthias Bossi/Shahzad Ismaily – Causing a Tiger

Prince Rama – Shadow Temple

Richard Youngs – Inceptor

Watain – Lawless Darkness

Janelle Monae – Archandroid

Bardo Pond – Bardo Pond

Black Sun – Twilight of the Gods

The Ex – 30

Andrew Paine – Chapel of Stars

Hey Colossus & the Van Halen Time Capsule – Eurogrumble

Alistair Crosbie – Sad Faces of the Moon

Rashomon – The Finishing Line

Acid Mothers Temple & Stearica – AMT invade Stearica

Richard Youngs/Andrew Paine – Robot

Harvey Milk – A Small Turn of Human Kindness

Mogwai – Special Moves

John Zorn – Ipsissimus