Analogue Episode 1

Analogue Episode 1 from Analogue on Vimeo.

Analogue is proud to announce the launch of Episode 1 of a new bi-monthly web series featuring interviews, music videos, short documentaries and live performances.
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Episode 1 running order:
Kronos Quartet & Wu Man interview
Interlude: Music vid for ‘Finds you’ by Patrick Kelleher
So Cow interview and performance of ‘Bat Toes’
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Directed by Graham Seely & Tim Gannon and produced by Brendan McGuirk
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All feedback welcome.

Album swap - So Cow vs. Estel

In this album swap, Tuam’s So Cow was paired up with Aonghus McEvoy, a member of Dublin bands Estel and Drainland.

Love Visions
No Bunny
1-2-3-4 Go! Records (2008)

So Cow on why he chose this album to swap:
The dumbest, saddest, jumpiest party album in the world. Nobunny is 80% man 20% rabbit mask. Goofy power pop from a yearning preacher. Chuck Berry Holiday is the best pop song this decade. Nobunny loves you and should be in Europe sometime this year.

Aonghus (Estel) says:
No Bunny? With a name like that I was a little worried I’d have to sit through thirty minutes of ironic, yelpy, casio-worshipping horseshit. Thankfully on ‘Love Visions’, No Bunny fire through twelve fuzzed-out songs that bring bands like The Ramones to mind (I guess the reference on the cover gave that away). However, this doesn’t fall into the retro camp; weird little effects and drum machine parts dotted around the album give it a more modern sound, creating the kind of spazzy, naive atmosphere that treads just on the right side of insincerity. Consciously writing songs with this kind of feel usually makes me view bands as snot-nosed, too smart for their own good hipsters that need to fuck off back to 1998 and leave their in-jokes there, but it really works on ‘Love Visions’. Maybe this is because a sense of fun pervades throughout the record, the songs are well constructed, catchy, and most importantly, a sense of enthusiasm is present.

Although this wouldn’t be the kind of record I’d usually pick up, any listener will immediately notice the focused song writing within. Very few tracks hit the three minute mark, no riffs are overplayed, anything that’s present works, and functions well within the overall structure of the album. The problem with many straight ahead albums is that they can be repetitive and lacking ideas, by the fourth or fifth song your mind starts to wander and you begin to look around for another record. Keeping the length of ‘Love Visions’ to a bare minimum has served No Bunny well, the album can be easily digested as a whole and leaves you wanting more rather than forcing the listener to file it away for another six months. ‘Love Visions’ isn’t a life changer, but still worth giving a listen if you’re lacking some really fun music. The guy also wears a rabbit mask, cool.

Bright Surroundings Dark Beginnings
Sun City Girls
Majora (1993)

Aonghus on why he chose this album to swap:
‘Bright Surroundings Dark Beginnings’ first tore my mind apart at the tender age of seventeen. In hindsight I might describe this Lp as a punk rock take on the master musicians of Joujouka but I don’t know if that comes close to the mark, or even does either party any justice. This is totally primitive psychedelica that will drill a hole into your skull and blast further and further into your confused little brain.

So Cow says:
A few facts. I’ve just finished listening to this right through for the third time. I’ve had two previous brushes with Sun City Girls. I met one of them on the street in Galway in 2003. He was bearded wildly and wearing a WFMU shirt. The second time was in Montreal last year. We played the same festival, Suoni Per Il Popolo, at the same time on the same night, across the road from each other. I can’t claim to know their stuff at all. That’s the state of play going in to this.

Side A is one track, 22 minutes of what is called ‘The Venerable Song (The Meaning Of Which Is No Longer Known)’. We’re two minutes in and, due to experiences at the coalface of early-millennium instrumental rock, I’m all expectations of build. The riff is steady. Percussion fills out the stereo field. The cymbals and clicks remind me of traditional Far Eastern music I’ve encountered. I base that on nothing but obvious similarities. There’s plenty chanting and gurgling, in a language I’m going to assume is made-up bollocks. A number of times there is build and force and my Pavlovian Slintnipples harden but SCG pull the rug pretty quick. 10 minutes in, Sun City Girls-drummer-dude starts going for the toms and it feels like all manner of hell is about to break loose. It doesn’t. Glockenspiel and a recorder enter the fray. The made-up bollocks gets more frenzied at times, like a particularly dramatic episode of a Korean period drama.

Side B is two tracks, both titles of which are going to eat into my word count. Things on this side are gloomier and more exotic, middle eastern guitar flourishes, awesome percussion and, on ‘Omani Red Light’, what sounds like a bagpipe being played through a tin whistle. Things get quiet, track titles change and ‘Multiple Hallucinations Of An Assassin’ starts with some routine stretching before chugging and tripping its way to an end, the last three minutes of which are particularly ace.

The mp3 player plays on. ‘Paperhouse’ by Can starts up, which a more articulate man or woman could wrap up with the previous two paragraphs in a fanciful description, using the word continuum at some point. But I’m a bit thick like that, so I’ll just say I enjoyed the listen a lot.

So Cow Greatest Hits committed to wax.

This is directly from the horse’s mouth, and all very thin on details at the moment, but it has come to Analogue’s attention that genuine national treasure So Cow is about to release a compilation featuring the best of his work to date.

The LP is going to print in Brooklyn as we speak, and looks to be for the benefit of America, where These Truly Are End Times and I’m Siding My Captors were only available through mail order. So Cow’s reception in America has been reasonably warm to date, with a successful WFMU session and Nobunny tour this year potentially acting as precursors to a longer (semi-permanent) sojourn there in 2009.

Here’s the tracklist:

A

Casablanca
Moon Guen Young
Greetings
So Cow Vs. The Future
League of Impressionable Teens
Outskirts
One Hundred Helens
Halcyon Days
Oh, For Fuck’s Sake*

B

Exclamation Mark
Shackleton
Ja Ju Ah Pa Yo
Normalcy
Bat Toes*
Choh Ah!
Ping Pong Rock
I’m Siding With My Captors
To Do List

*Re-recorded from original, pre-These Truly Are End Times demos.

Peek! An earful of Irish Underground

Side A
The High Life - Ugly Megan
Ballet Shoes - Grand Pocket Orchestra
Capogg - Supernova Scotia
The Last Bottle in the World - Dublin Duck Dispensary
Outskirts - So Cow
Glock Rock - Gran Casino
To Where is Alright - Nouveau Noise

Side B
Coat to Wear - Patrick Kelleher
Radio - Katie Kim
Breaking The Waves - Children Under Hoof
Left For Dead - Hunter-Gatherer
Typers &Trains - Colours Move

Download it.

About the bands / songs:

Side A
Ugly Megan - The High Life
Located at the confluence of gangster rap and homemade lo-fi pop, this song sees the erstwhile twee-pop duo swapping cocaine for blowjobs and living the superstar lifestyle. Who said they were sweeter than sweet? Ugly Megan are Kathi and Orlando, recently exiled from Waterford to Dublin, and The High Life is from their second release, The Gavin, Megan and Oisín EP.

Grand Pocket Orchestra - Ballet Shoes
This contribution from Dublin’s most colourful band manages to be insidiously catchy and suprisingly touching at the same time. The four-piece make their way in life peddling frantically energetic toy-pop infused with some of the innocence of childhood and most of the fun. Ballet Shoes is the lead track off their upcoming Make Happy War EP.

Supernova Scotia - Capogg
Capogg is a fresh amble through a sweet musical syrup of bubbling keyboards, lazy-day guitar and sauntering bass. Kilkenny’s Supernova Scotia manage the perfect balance of 1980s “play-at-home” Casios and general awareness of the current climate to come up with something as original as Ireland has to offer these days.

Dublin Duck Dispensary - The Last Bottle In The World
Fuzzier than a bag of chicks, this track from Dublin Duck Dispensary’s He Do The Police In Different Voices EP is as close to a single as he is likely to get. This is a two-minute dip into the strange and wonderful world of DDD’s prolific bedroom-fi recordings. There are dozens and dozens more where this came from (free on the Rack and Ruin Records site) but few are this life-affirming.

So Cow - Outskirts
“I’m not near ingenious, yeah I’m pretty much just a stomach and penis”. So Cow, Tuam’s one contribution to world culture (with “an American accent I didn’t see coming”), possesses an unusual and startling talent for describing that modern feeling of inadequacy and boredom. He also has an ear for killer garage/surf/indie-rock guitar riffs, and this one is one of the finest. Taken from the potentially never-to-be-released Wackity Schmackity Doo album.

Gran Casino - Glock Rock
This elegant, layered baroque track is a perfect introduction to one of Dublin’s more complex propositions, the twelve-piece collective that is Gran Casino. Subjects of Analogue’s first live show documentary (search for it on the website if you haven’t seen it), they bring a chemistry and communal energy to everything they play, and Glock Rock, from the Sun Music EP, is a fitting example.

Nouveau noise - To Where Is Alright
Blissed out in a way that nods to both American indie loop-merchants and European electronic artists, Nouveaunoise’s track manages to employ an accordion and what sounds like a guitar sampled off an old 78rpm record while still sounding brand new. The West of Ireland duo’s style is intricate and unique, and they do a nice line in remixing on the side.

Side B
Patrick Kelleher - Coat To Wear
Patrick Kelleher makes cold, quiet, simple songs with frozen, empty backings. And then he attacks himself with electronics, like tormented voices shooting across the song and distracting. If you cut the tension in this song with the proverbial knife, it would probably snap up at you and cut you like a string wound too tight. Coat To Wear comes from the You Look Cold EP.

Katie Kim - Radio
“Perfect swellings, slowburns, sedated distorting chaos and tickling”. Quoted from her MySpace, it’s difficult to say it better than she says it herself. Waterford’s Katie Kim sings effortlessly treacly vocals over an almost retro, swollen noir backing. But it’s the lyrics that take this beyond chill-out. “Can I be your emotional wreck?” she half-whispers on this track, and it’s hard not to let it get you.

Children Under Hoof - Breaking The Waves
Funereally paced, carefully layered and drenched in reverb, Breaking the Waves is as refined a sensory experience as you are likely to find. Nothing happens here that doesn’t sound considered, and the amalgam is lush and full, the late-summer to member Patrick Kelleher’s solo winter. A tip: give it the volume it deserves, and sit back as the ebbs and flows wash over you.

Hunter-Gatherer - Left For Dead
Starting with a peal of thunder and the sound of heavy rain, Left For Dead is a narcoleptic electronica track from the Dublin-based Hunter-Gatherer. Building gradually over the course of almost five minutes from a haunting synth pattern to a euphoric swell, the song is a dark, ambient piece from another Children Under Hoof member. Several of his EPs are available for free on last.fm.

Colours Move - Typers & Trains
This one is a banger.

Hard Working Class Heroes: Saturday and Sunday

In fairness, I ought to call this post ‘Hard Working Class Heroes: Wot Darragh saw wot wasn’t that much’. So for that reason, after chewing the cud for a few days I’ve decided to regurgitate and conveniently roll Saturday and Sunday into a small, easily digestable blob of a blog for you to enjoy. If you want to blame somebody for the vile and sputumish metaphor above, email Canadian hardcore band Fucked Up whose bodily function-erific EP ‘The Year of the Pig’ is on my stereo a lot and messing with my head.

Day 2

Grand Pocket Orchestra: Andrews Lane Theatre

Grand Pocket Orchestra remind me of one of those little rubber dinosaurs that you put into a bucket of water so it grows quicky to, err, one and half times its usual size. Actually scrap that, those toys are disappointing. GPO are not. They are like one of those toys actually working. In the space of a truncated set tonight, they completely dazzle. Lead singer Paddy is a wild presence on stage, a loopy, jerky bundle of magnetic oddness. Throw in flourescent Bronwyn, who looks like a hilighter pen crossed with a girl, and drummer Peter’s spectacular mohawk, and you have the most visually arresting band around.

Old favourites are banged out with the usual vigour, as are a few songs from soon to be released EP, ‘Make Happy War’. After one listen to some of it live, and on the strength of previous singles, I’m going to throw my hat into the ring and say it’s likely to be the best Irish album this year.

Bats: Meeting House Square

Bats’ rhythmic, multifaceted take on post punk and metal is another casualty of the disastorous sound in Meeting House Square. Despite looking a little unhappy from time to time, Rupert and co. rock out as hard as the setting allows. A few people in the audience are perplexed when Rupert lets rip with some proper growling vocals. Others seem to totally get it. Catch them in a smaller venue around town if you like your music taut, intelligent, hard and fast. Yet another fine example of the Irish music scene let down by the sound system.

Halves: Meeting House Square

Another band. Another set of sound problems. Halves are annoyed because they can hear the house music playing. They soldier on, playing a set of their (wonderful in any other venue) sweeping, tripped-out post rock, that doesn’t quite fill the air, and for those near the back, the Saturday night shouts from Temple Bar are easily the match of the 80 decibel volume. Super Extra Bonus Party, Bats and Halves would all have succeeded a hundred times better in Andrew’s Lane in my humble opinion.

The Vinny Club: Andrew’s Lane Theatre

Easily the most fun gig of the weekend. The Vinny club is raucous. He appears dressed as Bono, but the wig is too long, so he’s more of a Bob Marley/Bono hybrid. He’s playing a guitar hero guitar. Because that’s what Bob Marley/Bono hybrid’s naturally do in Vinny’s dreams. A few months back I wrote I had mixed feelings about some of the early computer chip style compositions he posted on his myspace page. Tonight’s gig makes me reassess that criticism. Everything Vinny plays tonight has enough bounding energy and verve to power a small town, but also has a bit of backbone. A lot of it is really solid stuff. Don’t let the humour fool you. Vinny is no joke. And when he rules the world, fuck Tesco’s ‘computers for school’ vouchers because every child in Ireland will get their own commodore 64 on the day they are born.

Day 3

Armoured Bear: Meeting House Square

Well boy is it pissing down in Meeting House Square. A few sodden heads clump randomly together under umbrellas, to bravely watch Armoured Bear gamely try to cheer things up with some Teenage Fanclubesque rock. It was like watching someone piddle on a watercolour of a sunny day. Quite dispiriting.

New Amusement: Meeting House Square

It’s still raining. The random clumps have grown in number, so things are not completely desolate for New Amusement. These guys are unfurling quickly into being a signficant band with every gig they play. Hopefully, they won’t be fast tracked into that false ’success’, that quickly sours into last month’s spat out leftovers, which seems to befall so many promising Irish rock outfits. Tonight, there is clear and confident demonstration of an insistent twinkling songcraft starting to mature that will need more time to blossom more fully. ‘Cos I can hear echoes of the Smiths, Orange Juice, and all sorts of sweet indie. Heirs to the Immediate’s sound and hopefully not their short career span.

The rest of Sunday melts into a tired fug. But The Ambience Affair seem to be quickly sprouting into a Dodos style guitar/drums combo to watch, and So Cow, according to others, was absolutely excellent. I do not doubt it for a minute. Dude’s got tunes. Probably wrote ten since I started this blog.

So it’s with a celebratory ‘Moo!’ I leave you ’til next year, when I will be running this festival. It will be compeered by Brush Shields in a community centre in Coolock and called ‘Irish Unsigned Bands go Spring Break Wild’. There will be an Afghan invasion and The Vinny Club will be curating the photo exhibition (selected snap shots from his favourite 8 Bit computer games). Sign up now.

Day one available here.