Zomby: Where were you in 92?

Zomby
Where were you in 92?
Werk

Where were you in ’92? Erstwhile chip-tune loving Dubstep producer Zomby has just released a remarkable album based around this rhetorical question. Of course, the implication is that ‘you’ were mashed out of you brain at 4am in the middle of a field in England while a churning hardcore piano motif melded impossibly with the rising sun. There is no doubt that Zomby’s album is meant to play as a homage to such halcyon reminiscences. But, thankfully, the title is disengenous. There is a lot more at work here than mere revivalism.

For sure, Zomby has grabbed the glowstick of early ‘90s hardcore and run with it to a demented chorus of klaxons. Even if we disregard for a minute the explicitly druggy titles of songs such as ‘Pillz’ and ‘Euphoria’, the overall gleeful, sinister and deranged throb is so reminiscent of the work of Joey Beltram and 2 Bad Mice that listening to parts of the album is like getting stuck in an episode of Doctor Who where the Tardis lands somewhere off one of those fabled M50 raves in 1992.

Yet, there is such a ridiculous abundance of other riches going on here. There is also enough quality drum’n’bass to qualify the album as more than just a doffed cap to A Guy Called Gerard circa ’95, and, on various later tracks, Zomby’s Dubstep day job comes to the fore, anchoring us to the present and cockily reminding us of his prodigious talents. Here is a rare thing, an intelligent producer exuberantly paying homage to dance music’s recent past whilst hinting at a potential way forward. Oh, and did I say? It is seriously fucking fun.

Live Review: Ladyhawke at the Academy

Ladyhawke at The Academy 5th February 2009

Wearing a man’s t-shirt with rolled up sleeves, men’s jeans, fuck-off biker boots and a bandana, Ladyhawke looks like Axl Rose. It’s a pity she hasn’t got his stage presence. Ladyhawke is literally the shiest pop star that ever was. Any time that she looks at the crowd, a glaze of terror and panic comes into her eyes. Deer in the headlights? Nah, more like being asked to do a quadratic equation in front of the class, when not only do you have no idea what’s going on, you’ve also wet your trousers. There’s no support band, and the set opens with ‘Professional Suicide’ which segues straight into ‘Manipulating Woman’. She does a fine line in pouting and power-chords (though, naturally, not at the audience, preferring to focus on the drummer instead), but when the backing track breaks mid-way through ‘Dusk Til Dawn’, she stalls, and her only banter with the crowd is a muttered ‘fucking technology’. The song is abandoned, for ‘Magic’ and ‘Another Runaway’. During the latter, it seems as if she wishes she was anywhere else but onstage at the Academy. The lines ‘it’s too late, it’s too late, I’m just another runaway’ take on an air of terror and desperation. A b-side- ‘Danny and Jenny’- is introduced, to a crowd who have no clue as to what a b-side is. She may as well have promoted her latest minidisc.
The set closes with ‘Paris is Burning’. The middle 8 is earnest, and Ladyhawke launches into another rock pout solo. But wait! What’s this? A smile? It’s the last song of her set and she manages to actually wink at a crowd member. Is she actually flirting? The last drum beat strikes, and she shuffles quickly and embarrassedly offstage, only to return 5 seconds later to play ‘Dusk Til Dawn’ once more, ‘because it didn’t work the first time’. Girl’s got the tunes, no doubt, but she needs some swagger, stat.

Groove Armada Share The Love

You might despise them for being vastly overplayed and selling their slowed-down-jazz souls to Marks and Spencer in exchange for some Extremely Chocolately Chocolate Chocolate Pudding (I don’t – I know people that do), but you can’t deny that the boys of Groove Armada have oodles of hi-energy musical talent.

Thus, you will all be delighted to hear that they’ve made their new EP available, pre-release, on the internet for the consumption of share-happy rum drinkers. Confused? Well basically it goes like this:

Mr Bacardi and Groove Armada sit down for a chat. Mr Bacardi explains that his company, the globally-renowned rum manufacturer Bacardi, is setting up B-Live Share, an online platform for people to share music and discover new artists. Or something. What Bacardi needs is a high-profile artist to launch the whole affair. An artist willing to allow their new material to be made available exclusively on B-Live Share, thus encouraging people to join the site and share it with as many of their friends as possible. The more friends they share it with, the more tracks they can download. Groove Armada eye the briefcase of money that Mr Bacardi has placed on the table and is now fondling delicately with a wee glint in his eye, and chime in unison, “Sign me uuuuuppp!”

Slight amount of artistic license there – in reality the main thing Groove Armada get out of this is publicity, as well as a way of having some kind of control over how their music is shared by people online. The mp3s are in DRM-free format however, so obviously some of the tracks have ended up on naughty bloggers’ sites. The divils!

There are four tracks on the EP (Go, El Padrino, Pull Up (Crank It Up), and Drop The Tough), with a tiered system determining how each track is shared. The hardest track to get is Drop The Tough (remixes by The Twelves and Van She are floating around on Hype Machine) which requires each B-Live Share user to share with 2,000 friends before he or she can access the song.

There’s some kind of staggering process as well, whereby people that you shared with who then share the track give points to you because you shared with them, then when the people that you shared with who then shared the track who share the track get points, they share the track and… points… umm… such as, North Korea… The staggering thing hurts my head a bit really. Share, get points. That’s it in a nutshell.

If any of you want to get your hands on the EP, you can access B-Live Share here and get your hands on the first track, Go. No prizes for guessing whose account you’ll be doing that through… I’m shameless, I know.

Wavves

Illustration by Amelia Braekke-Dfyer (also in a brilliant band, Pens).

“It’s the only way I knew how to record the songs basically. I liked the way it sounded when I first did it, so I just kept doing it.” Nathan Williams, aka Wavves, will not be drawn on the topic of a ‘lo-fi aesthetic’. Based in San Diego and aligned with the all-ages noise/punk scene out of LA’s The Smell venue (answerable for No Age and The Mae Shi amongst others), his music is of the blown-out speaker variety. The guitars and drums are as distorted as each other, and when the fuzzy vocals pop out of the mix for long enough to be audible, the words belie a particular type of skater/stoner nihilism. On Beach Demon, a recent 7” single, the chorus consists of the phrase “going nowhere” repeated. The flipside of that disc, Weed Demon, is much along the same lines, as the title suggests.

Not for him the sunny outlook of some of his fellow Californians either. “It’s actually all pretty depressing,” he says, “but that’s kind of what I wanted to do, write depressing pop songs”. That’s as good a description as you will ever hear of Wavves, skirting the line between the noise-pop of Times New Viking and other, gloomier reaches of the lo-fi world.

And, much the same as Times New Viking, Wavves are currently basking in the radiance of critical praise, in print media and on blogs alike. At times, the positivity has been effusive, even overblown. I ask if he has ever read anything particularly ridiculous about himself. “People say stupid shit all the time, that’s just what happens. I don’t really dwell on that stuff because you just gotta have fun, you know?”

Fun is something the twenty-two year old has down to a science on his singles, but on his self-titled debut LP, there is a surprising amount of breathing room between breakneck surf-punk lo-fi trash songs. “I think the songs connect in a really interesting way. It’s not what most people would expect, but if you actually listen to the album front to back, some of the atmospheric or spacey more textured tracks add so much to it.”
Even so, the album flies by almost in a blur. And there is another record due in March, bearing the same title as the first but with one extra v (‘Wavvves’). With a full-length cassette already in the catalogue and a whole bundle of 7” singles due, Williams is proving impressively prolific. Does he work very quickly? “It’s always different. I try and fool around with the guitar as much as possible because songs just come easier that way. Then when I actually record the song I kind of mould it a little more. “

Aside from being Wavves, Williams maintains a blog and a label under the name Ghost Ramp. Ghost Ramp the label was set up to release the music of Wavves and friends, but it has been discontinued due to being “a burden on relationships”. The blog, however, is alive and well, functioning both as a tour diary and news site for the band, as well as a place to collect YouTube videos of Sonic Youth, ECW wrestling, Billy Corgan and an ever-building amount of classic hip-hop. If an encyclopaedic knowledge of rap music is a something you would not expect to find in a purveyor of trashy lo-fi, maybe it should not be so surprising. The dusty, distorted aesthetic is something that has found much more mainstream acceptance in hip-hop circles than in guitar music. And, truth be told, it doesn’t seem like Nathan Williams puts a lot of thought into what he should and shouldn’t be doing. He just does it if it seems like he should.

One final question then. Why two Vs in Wavves? “Just because.” There you have it, ladies and gentlemen.

Wavves plays upstairs in Whelans on February 11th, Tickets €10 (+booking fee).

New Villagers video

The Meaning of the Ritual

http://www.myspace.com/wearevillagers

Estel, Steve Mackay and Mike Watt

Imagine for a minute that the Irish rock underground is a scary warren of tunnels. A bit like somewhere from the land of Mordor in Lord of the Rings except you can access it through a secret portal in the Lower Deck or the Boom Boom Room. It’s a cold, damp, labyrinthine place full of discordant, relentless, yet fascinating music. If bands like Adebisi Shank and Bats are the freshly-hatched spawn who guard the gates to this netherworld, chances are that Estel reside somewhere within it’s darkest vaults. They’d be a huge glowing maggot, or monstrous spider, an enigmatic creature that has resided beneath Dublin for ten years now, dreaming up dark, uncompromising instrumental music, oblivious to the fads and fashions of the world above.

The latest release to ooze forth (in keeping with the dodgy Lord of the Rings allegory) from camp Estel is an untitled album of tracks named after the four gospels, with a cover of The Stooges ‘Fun House’ thrown in for good measure. The album is a collaboration with Stooges saxophonist Steve Mackay and Mike Watt who played bass with practically every American hardcore band you can shake a stick at.

I know what some of you are thinking. “The four gospels? This stinks of self-important dreck.” I thought the same, until I saw the track-listing on my iTunes player. ‘Matthew’, ‘Mark’, ‘Luke’ and ‘John’ are punctuated, beautifully, hilariously and surely intentionally, by ‘Fun House’. This is apparently the gospel according to Estel. A reading where his great unholiness Iggy rubs shoulders with the four scribes.

The music itself was recorded in a short burst (perhaps because Watt and Mackay only had so much time on their hands), but as such, provides an engaging document of what happens when this sort of endeavour works. Rather than melting respectfully into the background, as others might do when working with their heroes, Estel are clearly the measure of the their collaborators. The first half of the album is more uneasy than the second. The band weave an urgent, undulating tapestry of sinister sonic matter on ‘Mark’ and maintain a remarkable piano refrain that not only supports Watt’s saxophone, but sounds like the product of months in the studio rather than an afternoon’s improvisation.

‘Luke’ and ‘John’, the two tracks that follow a respectful reading of ‘Fun House’, are lighter affairs. On ‘John’ in particular, the music seems to float endlessly upwards, and Mackay’s sax sounds like a balloon let loose from a net, drifting into rarefied spaces in the upper atmosphere. For an album recorded in such a short space of time, this is a remarkably expressive and coherent piece of work and testament to this band’s importance in the Irish underground.

Dent May

Illustration by Scalder.

Dent May is a bit like Truman Capote with a ukulele. Not only does the songwriter look like the American novelist (wispy blonde hair, oversized glasses and a penchant for formal evening wear), but he hails from America’s deep south and his droll lyrics reveal a sharp and literate mind. Dent’s first album ‘The Good Feeling Music of Dent May & his Magnificent Ukulele’ will be released on Animal Collective’s Paw Tracks label in February. Maybe the album title and my description of him already have you imagining what he sounds like? A slightly more exotic Jens Lekman perhaps? You’re not far off. Just mix in a strong dash of Stephen Merritt, a squirt of Morrisey (ooh matron) and shake the whole concoction to a Tropicalia beat before pouring into a chic glass. Nice.

As you may have guessed by now, the ukulele is central to Dent May’s sound (on this record at least; he also talks about an intriguing dance project called ‘Dent Sweat’). He explains why he chose this tiny toy-like instrument. “I chose the ukulele because it’s portable, and its tropical sound inspires lush, exotic soundscapes. It goes well with my other favorite instrument, the pedal steel guitar”.

Dent also has a connection with the instrument that goes back to his childhood. “I’ve known a few chords on ukulele since I was a little kid. My mother actually taught me ‘26 Miles’, which is on my album”. And of course there’s the practical side. He explains that he used to play guitar in a band but “got tired of lugging all the equipment around”.

I ask him if he ever worries about the ukulele thing being perceived gimmicky, that he might be pigeon holed as the ukulele guy? “I don’t mind if they see it as a gimmick”, he replies. “If the simple fact that I play the ukulele turns someone off, then I’m not really too concerned about it. I’ve heard a few people compare me to Tiny Tim as an insult, but I think Tiny Tim is amazing. For my next album, though, I’m burning my ukulele and going on tour with an iPod, some backup dancers, and a local community choir”. Having a limited grasp of American pop culture, I later look Tiny Tim up on the Internet to put Dent’s comment in context. I find him to be a frankly terrifying creature that appeared on US entertainment shows in the ‘60s and ‘70s, a sort of overgrown, ukulele-toting cross between Russell Brand, Lurch and Napoleon Dynamite.

While Dent is pretty far down the barmy spectrum that ends in Tiny Tim, he is definitely a bit of an oddity and cultivates the image. Not least in his music, which has elements of old show tunes, doo-wop, French pop and Tropicalia. On top of that, he came to the album after writing “a failed psychedelic country rock opera”.

What draws him to such diverse sounds? “Combining disparate elements to create a cohesive yet pleasant sound is definitely one of my goals as a musician”, he tells me. “I don’t want people to hear my records and be able to pinpoint when they came out or where I’m from. I do hope that the style of my songwriting helps tie things together, though”.

Animal Collective seemed to think so, signing him to their hip Paw Tracks label after running into him during the recording of ‘Merriweather Post Pavillion’. “I had just played a show in Oxford with my country western band Cowboy Maloney’s Electric City one night and there was a party at my house”, explains Dent. “I’m not really sure how they got there, but we became friends. A couple of weeks later I played my first show on ukulele with a band behind me, and they were able to check it out”. Hah, so maybe he is a bit like the Truman Capote of the American independent music scene, with the likes of Animal Collective turning up at his swanky parties.

I ask him if he really is the life and soul of the party, considering that one of his lyrics states ‘you can’t force a dance party/ but for you I’ll try’ and that his album is called ‘The Good Feeling Music of Dent May & his Magnificent Ukulele?’ “I think I’m super fun, but others might think I’m a grouch. There’s an aspect of my personality that throws lots of parties and also an aspect that wants to stay in my room forever”.

Unfortunately the part of Dent’s personality “that throws lots of parties” won’t be coming to Europe in the near future, but when he does he looks forward to singing his single “Oh Paris! in Paris for the first time”. He adds “I’ll probably fly over the crowd and cry like Garth Brooks”. Until that magical moment, anyone with a taste for sweet, sophisticated indie-pop could do a lot worse than check out Dent’s new album.

‘The Good Feeling Music of Dent May & his Magnificent Ukulele’ is out now.

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