Mark Lanegan, formerly of the Screaming Trees and Queens of the Stone Age is in danger of becoming a classic performer. No, that doesn't sound right. We're the ones in danger. We're not supposed to like this sort of stuff. Here's this gravel-throated guy who sounds like he's singing from the barstool he hasn't left in years giving it chorus and verse. The Gravedigger's Song is taken from his brand new album Blues Funeral , and it is full of delicious menace. Take it from someone who wanted to dislike it, [...]
The fife isn't exactly the most noble of instruments. It's used by Orangemen on their annual anti-Catholic marches and by American military enthusiasts and re-enacters. It's an instrument for people who like following orders, a shrill little flute whose principle merit is that it can fit in a pocket. Bizarrely, it also has a double life as the lead instrument in a particular blues tradition of the American south. One of its few practitioners was Ed Young, who is recorded here with the Appalachian banjo player Hobart Smith. This version of the blues tune [...]
You know what people mean when they say that something is an exquisite sonic sculpture? They mean it doesn't have a tune. Quite right too. Tunes are just messy things that get in the way, and after too long they just become annoying. Your exquisite sonic sculpture, well that stays fresh for ever. It's like UHT milk only not disgusting. 16g is the title track of a recent album by Tatsuro Kojima, where he weaves - or indeed sculpts - his music from a variety of sources. It's mostly [...]
You have to admire Dennis Báthory-Kitsz. Here's a classical composer who lives away from major metropolitan centres, who works largely without much support from the musical establishment, and who has still managed to have his cutting edge music performed for 35 years. He's not had the patronage of fashionable ensembles or the favour of celebrity critics. He's done it the hard way, and has produced some extraordinary music in the process. Csárdás may be one of his more conventional pieces. It's a based on Hungarian dance music. If you're familiar [...]
Listening to Pye Corner Audio Transcription Services is the musical equivalent of wandering into a second-hand bookshop full of Pelican books. Sedate, understated, and surprisingly erudite. Readers old enough to remember Open University lectures on BBC2 will know precisely what I mean. The electronic sounds of Transmission Six: Sunken Village are just as much a part of our cultural heritage as all of these things, even though they're only a few years old. Cofiwch Dryweryn! Pye Corner Audio - Transmission Six: Sunken Village [...]
This is what you want on your headphones these cold and misty days. Imagine the scene: you're walking along listening to a jazz trio play minimalist funk for five minutes, and then everything goes cuts out. A second's silence, and then every starts again, darker and more mysterious. The piano is playing right at the top of its range, using those keys you remember playing with in the school music room but have never heard used since. Best of all, there are these distant percussive explosions and rumblings. Maybe it's a flock of geese taking [...]
Really shouldn't like this, but I do. Look at that band name for a start, with all of its dreadful sixth form pretentious provocations. It's embarrassing. But Janne Perttula's music is something else again. Imagine post-apocalyptic surf guitar played with a Barry Adamson-esque noir sensibility. It's dark, it's moody and it's hopelessly in love with its own sense of romance. While that irritates, the sheer cultural weight of this music is enough to impress. Here's a filmic track from Perttula's 2007 debut album Dead People's Trails . Imagine you're in a [...]
A fantastic protest song from 1969, Is It Because I'm Black? is a slow-burning soul groove. This might not be the most original track ever cut, but Johnson's anguished vocals and the steady minor key walk is just perfectly judged. You will love this. Syl was already known for his poppier, funkier pieces, which makes this 7 minute song all the more extraordinary. I don't know if there's anything else in his canon that matches this, but then there aren't that many songs that match this full stop. [...]
pussy_riot have been all over the press today. That's what happens when you perform a guerilla gig on a platform in Red Square outside the Kremlin. The Pussy Riot modus operandi is to perform in spaces outside the musical mainstream. You get the impression that the location is as important as the music. Unsanctioned performances, occupations of luxury cars, fashion shows, boutique hotels and rooftops overlooking prisons. If you thought music had lost its power to scare the authorities, think again. There is no band more likely to have [...]
Don't say you've heard everything until you've heard this. Brandt Brauer Frick are a German trio who play jazz-tinged house music using mostly acoustic instruments. Sure, there's an analogue synth buried somewhere in there, but it's truly amazing that the sound they create is made this way. Partly it's masterly production techniques, and partly it's really careful listening. Plenty to admire in the endlessly busy Bop , but my own favourite part is the piano/prepared piano section. It's from their 2010 album You Make Me Real . File this one under orchestral [...]
Composer Michael Gordon's 2004 album Light Is Calling has become something of a favourite over recent years. Tracks like Idle are the reason why. It's full of demented glee, spiral scratch violins and badass funk guitar from Bang on a Can's Mark Stewart. A fantastic combination of sounds and a neurotic delight. Michael Gordon - Idle (alternate download)
Chiwoniso Maraire was born in the US but throughout her career she's been identified with the Zimbabwean music scene. Rebel Woman is a protest song that mixes a great mbira groove with soul vocals. I like it and I think you will too. Chiwoniso - Rebel Woman (alternate download)
Is it ages since we listened to some James Blackshaw together? I don't know, but it seems like it. Here's something from his 2006 album O True Believers . I guess this is pretty much the start of his attempt to blend together folk music, minimalism and mysticism. Spiralling Skeleton Memorial is a fluid, shimmering thing. It spins blindfolded with only the warmth of the sun to keep it oriented. Don't claim to see the connection between all of Blackshaw's odd Christian references and 12-string guitar playing, but I'm sure churches [...]
Can't tell you much about Portuguese bassist Carlos Bica, but I can tell you that D.C. is GRATE. Starts off with a horse-riding guitar line straight out of a moody Texas western, and keeps the lid on tight for the best part of 10 minutes. Sometimes Bica's bowed double-bass comes surging through from underground, sometimes it's a heavy psych Farfisa. Either way his band are mining some deep groove here. That's Doklands' favourite Matthias Schriefl on trumpet, by the way. A live gem from the 2010 album Carlos Bica + Matéria-Prima [...]
It's a useful language, is English. Got a huge vocabulary, words for pretty much everything you want. But that feeling you get when you return to a place that was once familiar, but has now changed beyond recognition? Nothing. I mean, it's not just that some of the buildings have changed, the people have too. They're walking the streets - your streets - and everything seems to mean something completely different to what it used to. There's no word for that. That's why Ralph Stanley sang the bluegrass classic Rank Stranger . [...]
Henry Cowell was one of the leading figures of 20th century avant-garde music. He's remembered as much for his life as his work: he was a teacher and a catalyst for large parts of his career. It's easy to feel an affinity with the man, as Cowell seemed to love music in a particularly modern way, omnivorously and with a huge appetite. The Harp of Life is one of the works he wrote during the 1910s and '20s that were influenced by Celtic myth. In some of them you can hear what [...]
Back in Black is one of the most famous songs ever. To make it sound brand new again, that's a remarkable talent. Talent is not something that Wing is often accused of. Born in Hong Kong and living in New Zealand, she started singing in retirement homes despite any natural aptitude for the task. She couldn't hit a note, couldn't carry a tune, and had only the most rudimentary familiarity with rhythm. And despite this, she kept on singing. Here's a frankly unrecognisable version of AC/DC's classic, featuring the twin delights of tinny [...]
Having listened to some Polish jazzcore last week, it's now time to hear how they do things in Belarus. If the evidence of their mini album Jazz TV is anything to go by, that involves hokeyness, math rock, screamed vocals and frequently misleading song titles. Come on, if you lived in Minsk you'd be doing it too. This is my pick of their tracks; while it's the least jazzy piece there, it's perhaps the most interesting. There's such a richness of musical textures and styles here, and I [...]
Here's something unashamedly populist, and also an interest question about music ownership. Ellie Goulding wrote and performed Lights . Then, Bassnectar mixed a dubstep version of the track. And then The Mad Violinist performed on top of all that. Whose song is this? I mean, it started out as a pretty piece of electronic pop, got turned into something a little harder, and then finally was completely mullered by some massively over-the-top electric violin. It's full of power-ballad emotions, grotesque and tasteless, and quite marvellous with it. [...]
What a life it is being a young classical composer, living in a world where your music is TOO EXCITING for people to listen to. Nobody went up to Rossini and told him that his new overture was too dramatic, and that everyone would have to pretend it never happened. Nobody made sure Ravel kept quiet about his strangely pulsing and erotic dance music. And to be fair, it's likely that no-one did anything similar to Anna Meredith either, although it would explain why so few people have heard of her or her music. [...]
Doklands
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Hardwell Bootleg Pack 2012
James Blake – Live Album
