Times New Viking - Rip It Off

Coming straight out of art school, Times New Viking have been surfing a wave of “critical acclaim” big enough to drown Holland this year. Part of their selling-point seems to have been their intentionally poor recording technique. Because of their methods, ‘Rip It Off’ sounds quite a bit like it’s been fed through a distortion pedal and a phone speaker. Of course, many other bands have used home-recording to make albums nowhere this abjectly noisy, so the question must be asked - is the DIY thing affected? It’s hard to see another way of explaining it off. The fuzz acts like a built-in excuse, a buffer between the band and the listener. It even makes listening to them slightly painful.So it can get annoying.

Luckily, there is an excellent album somewhere underneath. They make a very American brand of guitar-driven indie pop, as it sounded circa 1994. Names like Yo La Tengo and Guided By Voices spring to mind throughout, and while Times New Viking aren’t necessarily breaking new ground, they’ve made a really endearing album here. Every song is short and to the point, with unschooled male and female vocals bellowing hooks and unpretentious everything else backing them up. It would be eminently listenable, if it wasn’t for the dense layer of obfuscating fuzz.

Songs like My Head and Drop-Out are insistently catchy, and they can switch gears with more sprawled (though still short) tracks such as The Wait. The highlight overall, however, is probably the last twenty seconds of End Of All Things. Fourteen tracks into the album and two minutes into the song, the fuzz drops for the first and only time, leaving two voices and a guitar. It’s like a revelation, a first glimpse of something that’s been on the cusp of appearing for forty minutes. It may take a little more time to get to the rest of the music, but it’s worth it.

Some songs on MySpace. Out now on Matador Records in a record store near you.

Gablé - 7 Guitars With A Cloud Of Milk

7 Guitars With A Cloud Of Milk is the puzzlingly titled sophomore effort from slightly cracked French trio Gablé. On a self-proclaimed “luxury DIY” label from London called LOAF, Gablé’s effort doesn’t really allow itself to be judged by regular album review criteria. It is best described as a sort of lo-fi pop cabaret, with different approaches and textures flying out of the speakers briefly and then being replaced straight away with new ideas. About half of the time, the songs are sung by a man and a woman, both with French accents. Nothing surprising there. But the rest of the time, someone with a vaguely comical English accent recounts stories over the music. These are generally quite funny.

The opening track, Noone Knows Why, tells of a group of people that depopulates gradually due to unlikely methods of suicide. The only track that beats this is the closer, Drunk Fox In London, which is a dialogue between someone extolling the virtues of the fox, and a fox planning to get drunk and eat people. It ends with a glitchy electro wig-out. There are a few of those over the course of the album. Apart from electro, retro French vinyl loops and elementary piano make appearances as musical backing.

It would be an overstatement to say that 7 Guitars With A Cloud of Milk is actually good. More reasonably, it should be called “interesting”, because it is undeniably that. Around every corner is a different reason to laugh or furrow the brow. A singular way to spend an hour.

Check out some tracks here. Album’s out on the 19th May, buy it in a shop.

‘In Rainbows’ Model = A Once-Off

It seems that giving away an album for free isn’t really viable going forward, as business types say. In an interview with the Hollywood Reporter, Thom ‘Winky’ Yorke says that:

“I think it was a one-off response to a particular situation… It was a one-off in terms of a story. It was one of those things where we were in the position of everyone asking us what we were going to do. I don’t think it would have the same significance now anyway, if we chose to give something away again. It was a moment in time.”

Which is, one would suppose, a more diplomatic way of saying that they were unhappy with their record company.

If and when more artists release media gratis, they’d do well to look to this media-savvy plot fan-based promotion.

Its Japanese ambient experimental electronica-esque jazz, man.

I downloaded the excellent Tronika mini-album from Sketch Show there the other day, and was totally blown away by it. But, and here lies evidence of my total inability to work the googlemachine, I couldn’t find out anything about them in English. Gradually I looked closer and specifically to the excellently named NipPop, an internet resource on Japanese music.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E7XqkmtXnoE]

It turns out that the two main guys are former members of Yellow Magic Orchestra, the giants of experimental electro, kind of a Japanese Kraftwerk. The music they do now is reminiscent of a more accessible Aphex Twin, from his ambient period, and the collaboration with Cornelius really tells through, with playful flashes layering unto the beautifully crafted aural textures and chanted lyrics, in both Japanese and English.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6guTXe0bzP8&feature=related]

I am utterly enchanted by this little piece of brilliance and am now planning to buy the live dvd. The clip above is from it, the two guys in question are the bass player and drummer, called Haruomi Hosono and Yukihiro Takahashi respectively. They even look utterly brilliant. Love the hat.

Oh and if anyone has any of the other albums by these guys, or more infomation, please let me know or comment on this posting. Thanks.

Oh Child, Live in Anseo

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T36sMv0JST4]

Last Wednesday I had the very great pleasure of heading to see a band a couple of friends of mine have put together. ‘Oh Child’ fuse folk pop lyricism, calypso melodies and the instrumentation and complex drum lines of a jazz act. That’s my best effort at explaining their sound, which is fluid, fresh and warmly musical. The video, filmed on my camera turned out dark as shit, but the sound’s OK. Oh Child should be recording their debut single in the near future.

A Difficult Decision

[youtube:http://ie.youtube.com/watch?v=pACePi441ds]

If I was a cooler person, I’d be at Hospital in Wax. But I’m not. Tonight I am babysitting. This evening, you can either watch Bjork’s Dancer in the Dark, or the less cerebral, but probably more entertaining AVP: Alien Vs Predator . They’re on at the same time - 9pm. It’s hardly Sophie’s Choice I know, but I am genuinely torn.

Jandek, live in Dublin

Heads up hipsters. Eyes out lovers of the distorted underground. Jandek is to Sonic Youth as Daniel Johnston is to the Beach Boys, and Jandek’s playing Dublin. The legendary rock recluse will be appearing at Trinity’s Douglas Hyde Gallery Gallery on the 13th of June. Tickets go on sale May 1st, priced €20. More info available from the gallery.

Jandeks music is mediative, tuned down, ‘difficult‘. But it generously rewards the dedicated listener. Expect this..

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U2Fts1IEU98]

Jape Live: Crawdaddy, April 21st

As Richie Egan likes to point out one day he’ll be nothing more than a dead man who played the bass from Crumlin. For this tongue-in-cheek down-to-earth attitude I admire him. But there’s no need for him to be so humble, for with Jape’s current electro-rock sound he has ascended to the throne and become King of the Irish Underground.

It may be dubious to claim that Egan is still part of the underground, after all he has been around the Dublin music scene for almost a decade now, playing with Jape and The Redneck Manifesto. But whereas contemporaries such as Glen Hansard, Damien Rice and David Kitt have all moved on to bigger things following popular interest, Egan, bar the ‘Floating’ phenomenon, has never experienced international popular acclaim.

Maybe it’s because of the type of music he creates. The Redneck Manifesto, which he leads with his bass and freewheeling aplomb, are all about instrumental barrages of riffs and tight rhythms, a sound they’ve developed over the years and which has very much become their own. In contrast Jape began as a ’stoner-folk’ side profect, acoustica tinged with electronica. Hardly then the most popular of genres. Furthermore both groups have also suffered from a wildly exuberant live sound that has failed to translate well onto record.

If you’ve ever seen The Redneck Manifesto or Jape live you’ll understand. Their shows are intense high energy affairs, which Egan directs with ineffable charm. However their albums, although technically perfect, seem flat and austere in comparison. But has the time come to address these wrongs? On June 6th (or 9th, Egan wasn’t sure) Jape will release their third full length album Ritual. With any luck it will right Egan’s track record of underperforming albums. If the show at Crawdaddy last monday is anything to go by the new material is gold.

Support was provided by Robotnik who on first appearances seemed to be a karaoke act, however his set quickly developed into a boisterous electro-folk medley. Despite obvious resemblances to the headliner, Robotnik’s crowd invasion antics and his musical tale of an affair he had in prison: ‘I Found Jesus in the Year 2027′, won over most.

Jape launched straight into ‘Chirstopher and Anthony’ before steaming ahead into a set mostly made up of new material that hinged around the monumental ‘Floating’. Their sound was heavy, with a lot more electronics and rubbling bass than The Monkeys In The Zoo Have More Fun Than Me, despite the fact that Egan shunned his trademark instrument in favour of a guitar. ‘I Was a Man’ and the crowd pleasing ‘Phil Lynott’ especially stood out as future singalong favourites. The night was wrapped up with an acoustic two song encore culminating in a repeat performance of his self-professed favourite ‘Technology’.

If anything this show proved that they’ve still got the live appeal in buckets and spades. After an appearance at SXSW in 2007 Jape made some international waves for themselves. One year on hopefully Ritual will capitalise on on the recent momentum they’ve built up through shows at home and abroad. Let’s just hope that this time they can nail the album too.

Jape - myspace

Trinity Ball Preview - Kavinsky

As the man with the best myspace background in history, Kavinsky has a lot to be smug about. But not that much. He’s tried to build up a tongue-in-cheek myth about himself, but his ramblings about zombies, Ferrari’s and the 1980’s make him sound like a delusional fool. But none of this is important.

What is, is how he sounds. He more often gigs with SebastiAn, who’s more muscular take on French dance seems to off set Kavinsky’s more cartoonish approach. As with many others from the ED Banger Records stable, Kavinsky sticks to the mould of sample repeat, add beat, repeat original sample louder, middle bit with only beat then first half of song looped. Make any sense? Basically he sticks rigidly to the model that has proved so successful for Daft Punk and Mr Ozio.

Live, and on his own, Kavinsky is fun, without any of the transience that better dj’s can provide. His sound is intentionally retro- often seeming like the intro to a bad 80’s film with one of the Sheen’s and a Douglas. This is both a good thing, in the short term, and a bad thing in the longer- it gets old fast.

Still if you’re horsing down drugs, I’m sure he’ll sound great.

Whats all this?

Apparently, we’re meant to have some kind of integrity and our reviews legitimacy. Its not okay to review albums on the basis of a quick skip through the tracks and a look over the press release: WTF?

As the only album I’ve reviewed, for this publication, I listened to over and over again before I knew I was doing the review I can’t really comment directly, but I know damn rightly when I first get an album I can pretty much get it enough to report it fairly accurately. Yes there are grower albums, which are often the most rewarding eventually, but if you’re listening to an album professionally then you ought to be able to get it done soon. If it sounds like horror, then you write that down and skip on…

Or rather not. If you’re doing it, then its your job. We’re meant to be professional about it. Listen through it, a couple of times. I’m sure we’ll all get a good enough ear that we can hear the opening note, divine the rest of the song instantly and probably have the review written mentally before you’ve pealed the plastic off. But not yet. Well not me, anyway.

I can’t believe the Guardian thought there was a debate here.

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