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PLAYLIST (JANUARY 2005)

Everyone Alive Wants Answers - Colleen (Leaf)
For me, what's most incredible about this album is that I have no idea where it's coming from. That is, I can't pinpoint ant reference points for Cecile Schott's music. She seems to be completely out on her own - some achievement when modern society consistently blinds you with trends and role models. Schott sounds like she's been shut up in her Parisiennes apartment with the radio off for several years and her happy ignorance has resulted in one of the most sublime records (un)imaginable. Though Everyone Alive Wants Answers' is (mostly) clearly constructed from loops, it's not so easy to ascertain what these loops are made from. Time-stretched, reversed, effected, they could actually be the sound of old 78rpm records when you spin them with your finger. (Vinyl crackle peppers several songs). But they appear otherworldy, subliminal, asexual. Indeed, often, listening to Colleen's music is akin to watching bacteria under a microscope; trying to establish a pattern, a "sense."
The surface noise of these recordings would suggest they were recorded on very basic equipment at home but this only adds to the warm, antiquarian ambience. This music should be kept under glass.
I only wish that more artists took a leaf from Schott's book and attempted to make music unlike anything that has gone before it. It's blinkered vision and sonic alchemy makes it one of the most rewarding records I've ever heard.
Information : www.theleaflabel.com

Kompilation - Various Artists (Kranky)
Second, two CD, low-priced introduction to past, recent and forthcoming emissions from the two-man, low-budget Chicago label best known (I would imagine) for it's work with Low (who aren't featured here). History might have Kranky down as merely a drop-in centre for space-rock droners and post-rockers but there, history would be ancient.
Things start extremely well with Stars Of The Lid's stirring 'Even If You're Never Awake' - the kind of melancholy ambient music that induces silent crying and nostalgia for your parents backyard, snowing, January 1982. It is, indeed, a beautiful, beautiful thing. From there, you never know what's around the corner.
Keith Fullerton Whitman's 'Stereo Music For Serge Modular Synthesizer (excerpt)' reminds me of the brick-cutting tool from the building site adjacent to my flat which wakes me up at 8am each morning. I hate him for this but admire his name.
As with Stars Of The Lid, Pan American make beat-less, bleeding-heart electronica albeit with a more ghostly, iced-lake luminescence. I actually worried about myself during 'What Do They Dream?'
The contributions of Greg Davis, Growing, The Dead Texan and Tom Carter are equally contemplative, hypnotic. Whereas some ambient music lies flat to the wall, little more than supermarket muzak, the artists here are producing the antithesis - music that makes you "feel" something, that has the power to induce emotions, memories.
Though side one of this compilation veers strongly towards glacial electronica, side two keeps the mood for the most part whilst letting a little more diverse instrumentation in. Charalambides are a much less wired Hugo Largo with some fantastically elaborate fretwork. Brent Gutzeit plays a remote train station. Strategy filter Kraftwerk at halfspeed. Clear Horizon are, in turns, beautiful and hurtful.
Out Hud stick out like a sore thumb, of course. They have beats, they have a skull-wrecking distortion, they groove like ACR, they have "da funk," they have actually taken the time to throw in a mix.
Fontanelle are the closest you get to the ancient "post-rock" preconception of Kranky, though there are worse bands to take a leaf from than Tortoise. The track here is loose, fun, explorative.
Stars Of The Lid close the proceedings as they opened them. The title, "Requiem For Dying Mothers Part 2" should tell you all you need. Offer your shoulder.
It is a rare, rare thing indeed to find a label compilation as virtually flawless as this. Even though a mere one or two tracks weren't to my taste, it's hard not to acknowledge the overall quality and innovation of Kompilation. I came out of it with at least 7 new bands to check out further. Amazing, really.
Information : www.kranky.net

Eve Future/Eve Future Recall - Kreidler (Wonder)
There appear to be 3 or 4 Kreidlers in operation. At least, the handful of records I have by this German group bear little resemblance to each other beyond the utilisation of electronic instruments. Eve Future and it's subsequent sisterwork, Eve Future Recall, are certainly the most fascinating. This is essential soundtrack music composed of strings, keyboards, percussion, woodwind, harps, bells, choral voices and yet there's a sinister plasticity to the sounds. They appear to be generated by a GM/GS sound module - that is, a fairly basic multi-timbre MIDI sequencer. This gives the tracks a perverse, almost musical-box aesthetic. 'Toy soundtracks,' if you like and yet the composition is far from naÔve. There's an earnest though dreamy, often fantastical ambience to the music, not dissimilar to Bjork's own music-box experiments on 'Vespertine.'
Information : www.kreidler.de

Dif Juz - Extractions (4AD)
Probably not fair to include this in a current playlist as it's regularly been on and off my stereo since 1986. Still, Dif Juz were undervalued then and virtually forgotten now. Someone has to keep the flame alive.
Essentially an instrumental group, of brothers Alan and David Curtis plus Gary Bromley and Richard Thomas (the latter also played with AR Kane and The Jesus & Mary Chain amongst others), Dif Juz were, by design, always destined to be a 4AD also-ran. The closest they got to anything resembling "fame" was a support slot on the Cocteau Twins tour of the time. Still, the tour bore fruit. Robin Guthrie produced 'Extractions' and Elizabeth Frazer contributes vocals to 'Love Insane.'
To the uninitiated, Dif Juz are difficult to precisely explain. Their music is a peculiar hybrid of freeform jazz, ECM New Age, Talk Talk, dub reggae and even the earlier guitar-flecked work of Dead Can Dance. It's multi-layered, complexly arranged, dynamic and often, seemingly random. No doubt subconsciously aided by titles like "Crosswinds' and 'Two Fine Days (And A Thunderstorm),' I've always seen 'Extractions' as being a more a force of nature than music as such. It meanders, swoops, cracks and flows. The aforementioned 'Love Insane' pours like mercury into a rockpool - Elizabeth Frazer at her most constrained, contemplative, to delicate piano and Richard Thomas' swooning cor anglais.
In 1987, 4AD father, Ivo Watts-Russell, gave the Curtis brothers money to buy home recording equipment and never heard from them again. A retrospective album, 'Soundpool,' featuring arguably their finest moment, 'No Motion,' was released on 4AD in 1999.
Information : www.difjuz.freeserve.co.uk


Des Courbes De Choses Invisibles - TÈlÈfax (Dora Dorovitch)
Having visited TÈlÈfax at home last Autumn, I was convinced the group couldn't be truly influenced by the ways and whiles of, well, anything. See, TÈlÈfax live in the middle of nowhere, someway up a country lane where, come Winter, time stops still. And from this absolute disconnection comes an intense, dynamic, often worrying introspective sound. Insistent drums, cablewire bass, wrought, overdriven guitars overlay a wealth of rhythmic samples. Vocals range from midnight whispering to lung-bursting screams - always intense, always moving. Everything is carefully pieced together with respect for space and innovation; the production is intelligent, algorithmic.
Of course, there is a history of grievous rock music in France and TÈlÈfax are living proof of the legacy of such revered powerhouses as Bastard, Diablogum and Sloy. Though, if you're not up on your French rock history, try to picture a much more wired Slint.
Information : www.doradorovitch.com

Pop Ambient 2005 - Various Artists (Kompakt)
Sonic hypnotism. An annual compilation for which Koln's Kompakt artists mute the beats and instead explore the infinite beauty of the reverbed loop. By it's nature - soundtracks to afternoon naps, wistful pondering and BBC2 plantlife documentaries - ambient music doesn't have to "do much" and these tracks don't do much very gracefully, Gas' 'Pop' sounds suspiciously like 7 seconds of a This Mortal Coil track gently rolled over and over but that's certainly no bad thing. And although Klimek appear to wear their influences on their sleeve by naming their track after Felt's 'Let The Snakes Crinkle Their Heads To Death' album, it's gorgeous codeine drowsiness betrays little of the inspiration beyond a fractured splinter of Deebank's guitar.
Information : www.kompakt-net.de

The Golden Hour Of The Future - Recordings By The Future And The Human League (Black Melody)
In the early 80's, as a synth-obsessed youth, regular trips to Sheffield were compulsory - not just to breathe in the same steely air as my heroes but also to look in the window of a particular secondhand musical instrument shop where, it was rumoured, they would trade in their little black boxes. Actual electronic instruments were expensive back then so it was often standard practice to construct your own drum-machines and synths from kits. This was absolute punk DIY - you had to build your own instrument before you could play it! These primitive, logo-less oscillators. LFOs and rhythm boxes are showcased to great effect on this album, a compilation of pre-Virgin Records experiments and oddities. The Human League were then a filthier, urban, comic-book cousin of Kraftwerk. The music soundtracks a depressing, concrete and towerblock, monochrome, futuristic Sheffield but the lyrics and taped samples are a bizarre mixture of dark sci-fi and Martian sales pitches. And though the recordings are lo-fi, melodically basic, there's a wonderful warmth and to them, courtesy of the cluttered analogue equipment and tape. The Human League were, of course, later to streamline and add gravity to their sound on their first albums proper, 'Reproduction' and 'Travelogue' but this is a fascinating document of their rudimentary beginnings.
"We are the Human League. There are no guitars or drums played on this record," boasts Phil Oakey, realising that, they are actual the punkest band in the country at that moment.
Information : Black Melody Ltd, PO Box 28057, London, SE27 OYB.

Rejoicing In The Hands - Devendra Banhart (XL Recordings)
There's no two ways about it : you're either gonna love or hate Devendra Banhart. There's no middle ground when you're faced with a man who plays like Phil Ochs, sings with a Danielle Dax-like trill and dresses like the hippier, more sensitive cousin of A.R.E. Weapons. And yet, this is the surface. Break through that to the songs and you're going to be greatly rewarded. Banhart has a wonderful way with a lean, sparsely arranged blues coloured with a myriad of fantastical observations. "Because my teeth don't bite, I could take them out dancing∑" should give you a fair idea. He is essentially, a porch singer though, from this porch, the moon may be drunk, the stars readily joined up. It's this penchant for twisting and stretching things ever so slightly that make him fascinating to me, though his guitar-playing, too, is astonishing. The peculiar tone is fairly consistent throughout but for his touching duet with Vashti Bunyan on the title track. Recorded an ocean apart, it's surprisingly intimate - the creak of Bunyan's home floorboards to be heard as she reaches for the stop button.
Banhart's records so far may not change your life but they do survive repeated plays in your lazier moments. Those who find him rather affected now may eat their hats with time.
Information : www.xlrecordings.com


Tilbury On Cloves - Tilbury On Cloves (Bloated Sasquatch Beer Theatre Audio)
haven't heard music like this for a long time. Were it 1983, Tilbury On Cloves quite possibly might be signed to 4AD and rubbing shoulders with their closest sonic peers - This Mortal Coil, Dead Can Dance but even more precisely, Richenel. Aside from contributing to This Mortal Coil's seminal "Filigree & Shadow" album, the latter only released a solitary 12" on the aforementioned label - a desolate, romantic lullaby called "L'Eslave Endormi" - so I would imagine that he may have passed this young Greek band by. Utilising vocals, guitars, drum machine and samples, this is a cavernous, elegiac sound with the power to envelope and ultimately, hypnotise the listener. Those who like their music swathed in cathedral reverb and perhaps with a hint of small "g" gothicism, should visit : www.bsbta.dk

Here Comes Everybody + Singles - The Wake (LTM)
The Wake could've easily been dismissed as a New Order "coat-tails" band in that their sound, governed by resemblant technology, appears ostensibly similar to that of their more successful labelmates. And yet there's a warmth to The Wake that New Order (with whom they toured) either denied themselves or simply did not know how to achieve. Listening to this now, that warmth could be attributed partly to the reverb-smothered production. But a greater debt is owed to the wonderful synthesizers of the day which sympathetically embellish every song with a golden glow.
'Here Comes Everybody' (1985) is a gentle pop record full of chiming guitars, lush synths, wonderful bass, spare percussion, thoughtful arrangements and longing harmonies, though the introspective lyrics stop it from toppling over into saccharine Prefab Sprout territory. That came later with the borderline-awful John Leckie produced, 'Something That No-one Else Could Bring.'
That Bobby Gillespie was once a member of The Wake and plays on this record should be neither here nor there. Nor should Vini Reilly's rather buried piano on a couple of tracks. The real achievement is an album which, though panned by critics at the time and forgotten ever since, perfectly combines human emotion and cold machinery.
LTM is championing the Factory also-ran with releases by, amongst others, Crispy Ambulance, The Stockholm Monsters, Section 25, as well as long-lost treasures by Berntholer and Tuxedomoon.
LTM information : www.ltmpub.freeserve.co.uk/ltmhome.html

LCM contact : jnice@ltmpub.freeserve.co.uk

Twine - Twine (Ghostly International)
I bought this record for the sleeve. Exceptionally beautiful photographs that shame the depressingly clinical science of downloading. That the record perfectly mirrors the exterior delighted me too. Twine is the soundtrack to a sprawling dream of the last night of your life, filtered through a ghostly cone. It is, as the sleeve suggests, the shadow of the corn, the heavenly aura of streetlights viewed from a distance, a beautiful body asleep in ivy. The voices of Shelly Gracon and Alison Scola float on the tide or are psychotically spliced like Super 8mm. If you liked Piano Magic's "A Trick Of The Sea," you could do worse than check this out.
Information : www.twinesound.com or www.ghostly.com