Sunken Foal - Fallen Arches

Sunken Foal
Fallen Arches
Planet Mu

Fallen Arches is the new album from Sunken Foal, aka Dublin producer Duncan Murphy from the duo Ambulance. The first time I heard Sunken Foal he was supporting Plaid, which is a pretty good indicator of the type of sound that he evokes when you first listen to him on this album. Unlike his work with Ambulance, this album sees him explore a more organic sound. Acoustic guitars and domineering pianos take the place of overpowering electronics.

Like Plaid, he weaves in some atonal melodies but he does it in such a way that it retains its warmth, something which can be lost with seemingly aimless sounds. Instead he adorns his tracks with oriental tones and echoing vocals making tracks like “A Bear in the Hermitage” sound like “Moonlight Sonata” played out as hollow twinkles on a music box. This album is for fans of the more acoustic side of electronic music. Sunken Foal shares his affinity for unusual instrumentation with artists like Colleen, while his take on the electronic side veers more towards the more expressive sound of Chris Clark. This is a good thing.

R.S.A.G. - Organic Sampler

The first time I saw R.S.A.G (Jeremy Hickey) play live I was unexpectedly impressed by his frenetic percussive barrages and the set-up of his one-man performances. Against a backdrop of silhouetted band members all played by Hickey himself, he galloped throughout his performance seemingly uninhibited by fatigue and in fact building up to an energetic peak of an arms all-a-blur climax to his set.
So when I got his new release, Organic Sampler I was a little apprehensive as to whether I would find it as good without the visual spectacle of Hickey’s energetic performances to accompany the sound.

Hickey is at his best in this album when he is indulging in a heavy bass and dominant percussion tripping over it in the foreground. This is nicely complimented by his sometimes guttural voice which rather then acting as the leading melody in the track instead forms another layer within the song, much in the same vein as Damo Suzuki’s outlandish vocals complimented the music of Can rather then overpowering it.
This is best showed on tracks such as Bad Seed, Days Go By and Stick to your Line which unsurprisingly are the ones recognisable from his live sets. But thankfully, it’s also been instilled into a good number of the other tracks on the album.
Tracks like Its Over and The Climb though seemed to lack this subversive edge that Hickey is so great at gilding his tracks with and scooped a small lull in the album for me.
But compensation comes in the form of the two last songs on the album, building to form a great finale.
The album also comes with a bonus disc (R.S.A.G’s previous album) which although not reaching the heights of Organic Sampler, has one of my favourite tracks Moon Movin’ The Oceans on it among others that are well worth a listen.

And a look…

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vl_SZL4UGoM&feature=related]

Punk’d

Recently saw this on LaughingSquid and thought it worth posting to have a bit of a laugh to.

The first is the Punk episode of Quincy in which he confronts the music scene’s violent and overly made-up audience to find the victim who has recently taken to ‘burning cigarette holes in her arm, shredding her clothes to bits, taking pills and locking herself in her room listening to that violence orientated punk rock music that does nothing but reinforce those bad feelings’… Hmmm sounds like a punk conspiracy to me.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DpYd7bOn52M]

The punks again take another hit from an 80’s cop show in CHiPs. This time it’s concerned with a band called Pain, whose members include an oddly happy go lucky smiley drummer, an aggressive singer who has a penchant for kicking audience members in the face and stealing guitars and a bassist who wields it in the faces of oncoming victims. The inevitable outbreak in mayhem ensues.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3y4PFCpoOw]

Also mentioned is the 90210 drug-rave episode whose episode synopsis is just as ridiculous as the clip.
With all this subversive music it’s nice to see that some people are still promoting some good clean fun…

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1iUU6jTqB6k]
…as heard on phantom fm.

Bunch of Mockers

Thanks to a link that I foolishly followed from the ever interesting boingboing blog I have become obsessed with WFMU’s search for the best Fake Beatles bands. Compiled partly of bands with monikers aimed at duping fans into purchasing what they think is the genuine article, names such as ‘Beatlerama’, ‘the Beatle Buddies’, and ‘John and Paul’ are amply present. The most intriguing appearances though are from the more alternative fakes.

One of my favourites and coming in at No. 11 on WFMU’s countdown is a cartoon subtly called the Beagles which followed the misadventures of the canine duo and their Scotty manager. The show featured original songs in the Beatle vein of sound which tied in with the plot.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJB4sel2xA4&feature=related]

Other additions to the list include songs that have been mistaken as the Beatles, one of which ‘Peace of Mind/The Candle Burns’ is being claimed not only as a lost Beatles recording but also as a forgotten relic of Pink Floyd circa Syd Barrett era.
Although the BeeGee’s contribution to the ‘did they/didn’t they record it’ debate has deservedly been prioritised to the top spot.

The Rutles are abundantly mentioned with regards to parodies of the Fab Four but Dudley Moore and Peter Cook deservedly get a mention for their brilliant sketch on the band in their performance of L.S. Bumble Bee which ends with a cameo by John Lennon looking all dapper as some sort of exclusive toilet doorman.

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

Dead Dogs

I posted up a little something about my love for lo-fi music videos a while back and in it I included a link to a half finished video by a fan for Clouddead’s Dead Dogs 2 song remixed by Boards of Canada. I thought it was really impressive…the first 45 seconds of it anyway. But at last it has been completed and I thought the finished product was worth posting up as a nice conclusion.

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

See! You can still have a decent video without spending a million dollars or having Pam Anderson in it!

Musical Tables

I have been meaning to post something up about the Reactable since I first heard rumour of its use throughout Bjork’s ‘Volta’ tour. I guess now is as good a time as any though, seeing as the team behind it are due to pick up an award in September at the ARS Electronica Festival for its production.

The instrument is according to it’s developers a ‘tabletop tangible multi-touch interface’ onto which a variety of objects can be placed in different orientations to produce sounds and loops. A projector below the table allows you to visually relate the sound to its tempo, pitch or one of the many other characteristics which you can alter, on your own or as part of a collaborative ensemble, as shown below -

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

It has been used by LFO’s Mark Bell while he was touring with Bjork and has been doing the rounds at a variety of music festivals around the world. One of these, Barcelona’s Sonar Festival in 2007 was where Kieran Hebden of Fourtet first got a chance to play around on it.
Robert Moog (inventor of the Moog synthesizer) also got a chance to try out an early prototype of the Reactable a year before his death at the NIME conference in Japan in 2004. Interestingly this prototype was developed in Dublin 8, in the Europe Media Lab, home to research and innovation in the digital field until its closure in January 2005 due to disputes over funding.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V6Ulsu67Oog]

Most of the Reactable’s demonstrations seem pretty intricate and difficult to source out patterns behind the sounds, but if you watch a few of the more simple demonstrations you can see that it’s a lot more accessible and a lot more fun than you would think. And the best thing is it doesn’t come with a manual or instructions so you’re forced to learn as you go along.
Apparently it will be brought forth to the market at the end of this year.
Just think of all the hours and hours of incredibly expensive fun you could be having this Christmas!

Digitalism - Kitsune Tabloid

Digitalism, having enjoyed the success with their last album, appear to be taking full advantage of the wave their riding with this release. When asked to create a mix that would tell a story, Hamburg duo produced this compilation of tracks, hence the tabloid reference.
Within these appearances are tracks that have inspired the duo and it is impressive that they have acknowledged recent releases among peers along side their retrospective influences such as the Human League. Amongst these peers are Hot Chip, Calvin Harris and Holy Ghost.
With Digitalism themselves being apart of the growing popularity of the disco-rock movement, it is to be expected that the tracks included are going to have this similar slant to them.

Tracks by Midnight Juggernauts tread the middle ground between Siriusmo’s electro flood and The Kills garage dance off. In this way the compilation is a good album to play if this middle ground needs to be pleased and should succeed in bridging a happy compromise between most listeners. Perfect for throwing on during a party without much risk of someone taking an excessive dislike towards. However the middle ground often looses its charm after the first listen and this is no exception. Besides the highlights of Hercules and Love Affair, Human League and Midnight Juggernauts the album descends into a bland array no matter how they much it’s sensationalised with its tabloid headline.

Delia Who?

I was recently sent this link to an article which I thought some people may find interesting; the recent discovery of 267 recordings by electronic sound pioneer Delia Derbyshire. Apparently these as of yet unheard recordings were found in her attic 30 years after their production. Delia Derbyshire is probably best known for her work in the BBC’s Radiophonic Workshop during the 60’s, which through its staff’s resourceful endeavours produced many of the sounds effects and themes on shows such as Dr Who, The Goon Show, Hitch-Hikers Guide to the Galaxy and Blake’s Seven.
One of her most popular and widely recognised works was her treatment of Ron Grainer’s Dr Who Theme in 1963 (a year before the invention of the Moog synthesizer). Rendering it almost unrecognisable from the original score with her inventive techniques she provoked Grainer into questioning if this was in fact the score he had composed.
“Most of it”, was her response.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LF2x5IKxmAQ&feature=related]

Derbyshire also contributed to the album ‘An Electric Storm’ released by the electronic band ‘The White Noise’, formed by bassist David Vorhaus and featuring Derbyshire’s Radiophonic colleague Brian Hodgson. It used many of the tape manipulation techniques employed by Derbyshire in her work for the Radiophonic Workshop. The track ‘Love without Sound’ used tape edits of a double bass sped up to raise the pitch and ‘Here come the Fleas’ contains countless samples tumbling over each other.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6pTdzt7BiI]

Delia Derbyshire (although the most frequently referenced) wasn’t the only pioneering musician labouring behind the scenes in the BBC though and I think it’s worth quickly mentioning a few others while we’re on the subject.

Daphne Oram, who began working there at the age of 18 was the person whose determined petitioning convinced the BBC to open the Radiophonic Workshop in the first place. Although she eventually left the workshop to pursue her own projects her enthusiasm for electronic music was by no means curbed and she is renowned for developing a system for changing ‘pictures into sounds’. This involved drawing on 10 strips of 35mm film, which were then converted into different sounds, a technique referred to as Oramics.

Another composer, Brian Hodgson is credited with creating the sound of the Tardis by scraping his keys along an old piano wire. In fact most of the sounds that they produced were the result of various domestic objects being distorted into something more fantastic to the ear. Champagne corks being popped and doors creaking were among these. Delia Derbyshire is noted for her particular affinity for a green metal lampshade and counted air raid sirens which she heard growing up in Coventry during World War II among her influences. These sounds would then have been inducted into a painstaking process of manipulation (speeding up or slowing down) and then cut at specific parts with razor blades and then finally pieced back together.

Dick Mills, a member of the workshop highlighted the tedious nature of the process in his description of his work on the Dr. Who theme with Derbyshire. When describing how she made the bassline of the theme out of two or three lines of tape he remarked how he would be “scrabbling around the floor saying ‘Where’s that half-inch of tape I wanted to play on the foot of that note”.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NDX_CS3NsTk]

Another member of the radiophonic team was Maddalena Fagandini who provided many of the sounds to the production of Cocteau’s ‘Orphee’. Commenting on the lengths that they went through to get the right sounds she described how for a track called ‘Going through the mirror’ they used the sound of breaking glass playing backwards which they obtained from her crashing against it.

It’s a shame that a lot of these significant talents who created new ways to portray musical scores through electronic techniques remain predominantly unheard of, perhaps due to an unfair dismissal of their input as ‘mere’ technicians rather than artists.
Bebe Barron’s death earlier this year went largely unnoticed although she along with her husband Louis are credited with writing the first electronic music for magnetic tape and first entirely electronic film score for the movie Forbidden Planet in 1956, before the convenience of samplers and synthesizers was around.

A quick revision of Russian History:

I don’t know whether it was the spectacle of playboy peasants being harassed by Stalin zombies or the sight of a stripped down – balsam saturated Mikhail Gorbachev shooting lasers from his eyes, but I felt compelled to post this music video from the metal band ANJ.

According to the director Tom Stern it’s a ‘half Russian History allegory as told through an old zombie movie made in the Soviet Union, and half animated Soviet Propaganda posters.’

Enjoy!

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ew9YQVRSlHE&feature=related]

Noisy Reading

Just finished reading two books from the lesser trodden ends of the musical spectrum which are definitely worth a look:

‘Noise/Music – A History’ by UCC’s Paul Hegarty details the dissonant journey music has made from John Cage and Pauline Oliveros (who will be performing at the Quiet Festival in Cork at the end of this month) to the Boredoms and Autechre. Included also is the mandatory chapter dedicated to ‘the paragon of noise’, Merzbow. Hegarty does his best to pack in as much as possible and chapters on free jazz are correlated to subsequent chapters on industrial and punk music making for a varied narrative on the subject of noise music.

The second book which has provoked an obsessive reaction to the music dealt within it is ‘Japrocksampler’. Written by Julian Cope (who also brought us ‘Krautrocksampler’) it is a detailed account of the mayhem incited by the arrival of Western music and the effect its collision with 1960’s Japan had, from it’s avant-garde foundations to its culmination into a psychedelic mutiny of the ‘long-haired teenage futens’. Cope, while providing a historical background to Japan’s musical landscape also goes into detail on the central bands that paved the lysergic pathway for the rest to follow, the controversial ‘Les Rallizes Denudes’, ‘Speed, Glue and Shinki’ and the naked bikers gracing the books cover, ‘Flower Travellin’ Band’ seen performing in the clip below.
Well worth a look.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDBdMnkcx0E]

Next Page »