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.

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.

Two DIY and one skinny Wolves’ gig later

Last weekend was quite eventful for me, I managed to see a load of Irish acts and one from LA. Not bad for a weekend in the middle of January. The common thread running through all of the gigs was the way that they were organised and where they took place; downstairs in a regular Northside pub, in a shed and in an art gallery.

On Friday, I headed along to my first gig of the weekend in The Tap pub near Smithfield. My friend Aonghus is the “singer” in a noise band called Sex Bat (short for Sexual Battery). Aonghus has been in a plethora of noise, experimental and metal bands over the last few years but somehow I’ve never made it to any of his gigs. So I made an effort this time. The gig was in the basement and was a DIY jobby to celebrate some dudes birthday, Cian was his name I think. I didn’t know what to expect Sex Bat to be like. Noise is a pretty broad term afterall! I moved up to the front as they took to the stage – big mistake… Within 30 seconds of the gig starting, Aonghus’ flailing arms hard knocked a full pint out of my hand, all over me and those unlucky enough to nearby. Another 30 seconds later I got punched in the stomach as Aonghus screamed the most aggressive non-descript roars down the mic. The set went on like this for awhile as Aonghus launched himself into the crowd and sprawled out on the floor. The band jammed along all the while producing a dirty amalgamation of feedback heavy guitars, harmonics and sporadic drum bursts. Tommy from Estel visibly hammered also joined the jam, using a pint glass as a slide wave after wave of squealing distortion wailed from his direction. This was one of the most intense gigs I’ve been to in a long long while. Afterwards Aonghus explained that the aim of Sex Bat is “pure aggression” – I think they’ve got that down to a tee.

Photo by Maeve.

Saturday saw me standing in a creaky shed on South Circular Road soaking up the incredible sounds of Children Under Hoof. About 15 friends of the band gathered together for what was to be a trial run for a series of regular gigs in the Shed, aka the Box Social. The shed is usually used as a practice space but for the night, it was a particularly suiting venue. As the roof lifted with the wind, ghostly knocking noises were added to the mix while the band blazed their way through 5 lush ambient / experimental jams. Dead pan beats a la Neu!, synths galore, a variety of eccentric trinket sized instruments, sax, considered bass lines and yelpy washed-out vocals all contributed to create a somewhat epic soundscape throughout the whole set. I was enthralled for the whole thing and further convinced that Children Under Hoof at the vanguard of making interesting original music in Ireland. Luckily I had a WAV recorder with me on the night so you too can bask in the glow of the Children Under Hoof live experience.

Bonefire (live at the Box Social) mp3

Photo by Jamie, Skinny Wolves

Sunday is meant to be a day of rest and relaxation so it was fitting that LA’s Lucky Dragons were performing at the Joy Gallery. Fitting because of the positive and uplifting nature of the Lucky Dragons set. Support act Boys of Summer started proceeding with an extended drone wank that unfortunately had no climax. Some people seemed to appreciate it but it was completely lost on me. Next up was Sunken Foal, his album ‘Fallen Arches’ was one of the best Irish albums of 2008 so it was great to finally catch him live. I wasn’t sure how his sound would work live but being joined by his friend Rob really helped lead Foal Duncan Murphy find the right dynamic between the organic guitar sounds and the layers of synthetic beats / samples. Then came Lucky Dragons’ turn. Luke Fischbeck is the mysterious human being behind Lucky Dragons. Throughout the show, Fischbeck leads the audience through a collaborative experience of communication through sound. Contact mics on long cords were passed out into the audience and the only way sound could be generated is if people connect by holding hands. It was really cool to see complete strangers sitting on the floor connecting with each other to make music, albeit fairly trippy sounds. The whole experience was completely unique and even though I did personally contribute, I was left with a really positive feeling afterwards. It was like meditating or something. Even the three teenage girls who had talked incessantly through the other sets shut up for a few minutes. Apparently Lucky Dragons will be back later this year so if you get a chance, I totally recommend heading along.

Morning Ritual by Lucky Dragons from Jordan Dykstra on Vimeo.

We Have Band- Live Review 15th January

We Have Band- Live at Crawdaddy.

We Have Band romped through their half-hour set at a breakneck speed on Thursday night. Dede WP plays tambourine like an Egyptian and looks like Margot Tennenbaum, crossed with Edie Sedgwick. Husband Thomas WP sings not unlike Jemaine Clement. Percussionist Darren Bancroft brings 80’s buzz cuts and spot-on offbeats. Current single, ‘Oh’ is a frenetic Korg-fuelled battle call to the dancefloor, while ‘Hear it in the Cans’ is Human League crossed with a bored Neanderthal beat. The group form a triangle around a drum machine, exhorting a half-empty room to dance. The unexpected whistling in ‘You Came Out’ breaks through the hipster cool, exposing the pop song roots. The room dances. This is what Hot Chip wished they sounded like live. A cover of the Pet Shop Boys’ ‘West End Girls’ closes the show. It was a fitting note to end on- a clever, hooky, synthy pop song, both knowing and insouciant at the same time. We Have Band are, as yet, unsigned. If they keep up at this rate, I can’t see that lasting long, at all.

Support on the night came in the form of Dublin Duck Dispensary – Bobby Aherne’s homage to Phil Spektor and mic hiss. Like the kid at school who pulls your hair then kisses you and runs away, D.D.D’s songs are short noisy bursts of pop distortion, each no longer than 3 minutes long, each 3 minutes too short.

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.

Gang Gang Dance – St. Dymphna

Gang Gang Dance
St. Dymphna
Warp Records

On this their fourth album (and first on Warp) NYC’s third finest experimental group Gang Gang Dance refine their phantasmagorial charm beyond that of their patchy back catalogue. Like Black Dice, GGD have sometimes existed more comfortably as an idea, or flattered to deceive. St. Dymphna stands out as their first concise and representative statement.
The album opens with an orgiastic double header in “Bebey” and “First Communion”, segued gloriously together with a decimated synth attack and highlighting one of GGD’s two areas of expertise: multi-instrumental frantic rhythm-smithery.

The quartet’s second trump card is its textural adroitness, as highlighted by St. Dymphna’s second movement. An intertwined mesh of vocals make up “Blue Nile”’s sonic pallette, with instruments I can’t claim to know the names of adding in brief moments of melody, while “Vacuum’”manages to be both an exercise in easy-listening music and actually memorable – a feat in itself.

Never one to pander to expectations, Dymphna’s next technicolour drop is “Princes”, a bizarro dub-rap turn with some trance-like arpeggios surrounding the familiar delayed vocal stylings of Lizzi Bougatsos. Delayed drum samples, glitchy electronics, computerized brass riffs and a very definite Warp attitude make up the middle section of the album, before finishing off on the slow groove and ethereally Kate Bush-like “House Jam”, and the Outhud-styled guitars and accomplished polyrhythm of “Desert Storm” and “Dust” .
As with their most common (though sonically incompatible) reference points, Black Dice and Animal Collective, Gang Gang Dance thrive on indefinability. St. Dymphna, like the releases before it, is a conglomerate of the most diverse styles carried out with the least pretentious of intents. GGD have picked the wisest time to return, too: the wider indie-mainstream market has opened up to their sound, thanks to the diluted Kia Ora versions of the band’s freshly squeezed psychedelia courtesy of chorus-happy MGMT and Yeasayer. Unlike the contrived inclusion of world music influences in these crossover hit-merchants though, Gang Gang Dance’s stylistic experimentation translates more sincerely, making “First Communion” a guilt-free “Sunrise” to drop on the dancefloor. It’s finally time for one of NYC’s finest outfits to become more listened-to than name-dropped.

Fake Blood at the Twisted Pepper live review

Photo by Matthew Johnson

Bodytonic kicked off the grand opening weekend of their much-discussed new venue The Twisted Pepper in fabulous style by playing host to one of the most elusive producers and DJs around at the moment, Fake Blood. Attempts by yours truly to secure a tête-à-tête with this most mysterious of figures were fruitless; the man quite simply “doesn’t do interviews”.

This didn’t come as a surprise. Over the last eighteen months, Fake Blood has risen from obscurity to become one of the most talked-about remixers and producers on the electro scene without doing a single interview. The internet, and particularly the blogosphere, has worked itself into a flurry with theories abound as to who exactly the man behind the moniker is.

Why his face or identity matters so much is beyond anyone’s guess, though the more Fake Blood attempts to conceal his real persona the more the guessing intensifies. A simple browse across various blogs and forums reveals myriad of guesses: Diplo, Switch, Hervé, Sinden, Boy 8-Bit, Norman Cook and, bizarrely, Tiësto are among some of the speculations put forward by bloggers and dead-serious electro aficionados. A tongue-in-cheek blog even ran for a while.

Such rampant hype might lead to easy conclusions that Fake Blood is more style than substance, but his remixes have proven him to be an extremely adept and intelligent producer (perhaps the strongest argument that this is not a man who came out of nowhere and just started twiddling knobs and pressing buttons). His rhythmic preferences would definitely suggest a history somewhere in big beats; the drum loop in The Wiseguys’ 1998 hit Ooh La La is suspiciously similar to Fake Blood’s style. In fact, the theory that Fake Blood is, in fact, a DJ called Theo Keating, formerly of The Wiseguys and now of The Black Ghosts, is the strongest of the lot.

In each of Fake Blood’s remixes his name is uttered by the original artist, giving his works a tag or audio stamp; amazingly, this is done by cutting the original vocal part into tiny phonetic fragments (phragments?) and reslicing them to construct the words “fake blood”. This is careful, deliberate time in the studio; clearly he is spending a lot of time poring over his production, something backed up by the fact that his remix total from the last year-and-a-half has yet to hit the double digits. Yet even with this low output, he has successfully spread his gospel of “grindcore” far and wide.

With this kind of hype and anticipation, the atmosphere in The Twisted Pepper’s main room was already electric before Fake Blood had even stepped on stage. Dresses from an earlier NCAD exhibition were suspended from the ceiling at various positions, yet these additions could not distract the crowd as the man himself emerged and began dropping incredible bone-rattling tracks like pebbles in an extremely responsive pond.

This bone-rattling sensation wasn’t just thanks to the DJ. The Bodytonic guys are renowned for an incredible attention to detail, and doubtless they have spared no expense giving their newly-renovated jewel in the crown the most tinnitus-inducing audio configuration possible. Wobbly basslines pulsated and throbbed through the room, while Fake Blood’s extremely distinctive punchy bass drum, used in most of his remixes and definitely in his solo work, snapped through the room like a low-frequency whip.

Spoken/sung “fake blood”s were heard at least every thirty minutes; he incorporated most of his remixes into his two-and-a-half hour set, including the reworkings of Cheap and Cheerful by The Kills and Stuck on Repeat by Little Boots. There were also some remixes and re-edits that won’t be found on any blog or internet resource, including a version of Soulwax’s Teachers re-cut to say (surprise surprise) “Fake Blood is in the house” – unfortunately this results in the drums being sliced up as well, resulting in some messy rhythms and confused (but still extremely enthusiastic) dancing.

The last half-hour of his set saw the kind of incredible, potent, kinetically-charged atmosphere of mutual amazement and appreciation which is witnessed on the Dublin club scene once in a blue moon. Before you ask, there were very definitely no illegal substances flowing through my veins, nor was I under any significant alcohol-based influence. The tunes were simply that good. The robotic vocal lines from LFO’s Freak were combined with the manic snare attacks of Vitalic’s Valletta Fanfares, and thrown into a genre hot-pot that even saw Dr Dre make an appearance.

At 2.30 a.m. he finally played the track that many had been waiting for: his first solo effort, Mars, with its heavy, punchy drums and crunking bassline, though that organ sound definitely seems to be nicked from somewhere… *cough* 2 Unlimited’s Get Ready for This *cough*. This was followed by a track that’s still burning substantial holes in dancefloors everywhere – Soulwax’s remix of MGMT’s Kids. Suffice to say everyone present went completely insane, all the way till the song’s close. As the lights rose he dutifully played Blood Splashing (Fake Blood Theme), the B-side of his solo EP. Once again the room went nuts.

Upon retiring outside, a large majority of attendants found themselves covered in sweat, clothes firmly glued to selves, the product of a hectic set that had everyone dancing with little pause for over two hours. Crowds lingered, puffing on cigarettes and still beaming from ear to ear, knees still wobbling from the effect of being hit with so many crunchy basses and thumping drums. The verdict was unanimous. Who is Fake Blood? An incredible, incredible DJ, that’s who.

808s And Heartbreak review

Kanye West may not be the easiest artist in the world to endear yourself to, but you can’t deny that the man has talent. In his latest LP, Mr West has completely ditched rapping al-together, replacing it with beautiful melodies and AutoTune, a vocal-adjustment program that makes him sound like he’s channeling Cher.

The ‘808’ of the title is Roland’s TR-808 drum machine; a 1980s electro staple, and it comes to prominent effect in Kanye’s tribal rhythms on lead single Love Lockdown, and particularly the slow-but-powerful Say You Will.

The drum machine combined with lush analogue synths gives the entire album a warm, synth-pop feel, especially on tracks like Paranoid – without a doubt one of the strongest songs on the album, with an strong, incessant drum loop and gorgeous stabbing chords.

Certain die-hard fans will not be pleased with 808s and Heartbreak and Kanye’s radical change in direction. But for others, this will be a gladly-received slice of pop from one of the most talented producers around.

Au Revoir Simone: Reverse Migration

Au Revoir Simone
Reverse Migration
Our Secret Record Company

‘Reverse Migration’ is a track for track remix of Au Revoir Simone’s debut album- ‘The Bird of Music’. It’s always difficult to review a remix album without referring to the original. Like a teenager on holiday with their parents- should the remix stand awkwardly to one side and pretend that it has nothing to do with its begetter, or should it proudly flaunt its roots, and admire how much it’s grown?

Slow Club’s remix of ‘The Lucky One’ opens up the record. The track begins as a straightforward cover, and then descends into typical Slow Club kids-at-the-playground-eating-lots-of-sweets noisiness. ‘Sad Song’ is remixed twice- once by Pacific, and once by Hot Chip’s Alexis Taylor. Both mixes add in a male vocal near the end, turning a solo song of heartache into a Danny/Sandy duet for Brooklynites, and in doing so, kind of miss the point of the original track.

The remixes that work the best are ones that focus on the essence of the originals. Keith Murray destroys ‘Don’t See the Sorrow’- without the regulating drum machine of the original track, and coupled with Murray’s busker schtick, it becomes earnest, instead of sincere. Alexis Taylor’s eight minute remix of ‘Sad Song is detached and clinical, rather than fragile and downbeat. However, Matt Harding’s masterful remix of ‘Night Majestic’ is a sparse, post-punk rendering of one of the poppiest tracks on the original album, while Mark- Anthony Tieuku creates a jerky, disjointed track from ‘The Way to There’- one that Roisín Murphy wouldn’t say no to. The Darkel mix of ‘I Couldn’t Sleep’ is smashing. A heavy synthy bassline coupled with glitchy production, it’s slinky and seductive- a stone thrown at a window, asking for a late-night conversation.

While ‘Reverse Migration’ is not a filler album, per se; it serves as a neat reflection on Au Revoir Simone’s strengths and weaknesses as songwriters. It’s a photograph’s negative- not quite the real thing, only a shadow of it, through which the original can be made out, almost.

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