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PREVIOUS PLAYLISTS:
MARCH - 2007
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PLAYLIST (JUNE/JULY 2005) Note : This playlist hopes to periodically introduce people who like Piano Magic to music the band themselves enjoy. If we don’t like a record, we don’t review it. There’s enough negativity in the music press, as it is. Piano Magic generally buy their records from www.roughtrade.com and www.smallfish.co.uk Bathed In Blue EP – Trembling Blue Stars (Elefant) Unequivocally recommended for anyone, like me, still curled up deep inside 1986 between Felt’s ‘Primitive Painters’ and Cocteau Twins’ ‘Treasure.’ It’s the highest compliment I can pay to say this record could’ve been made back when music meant something, touched you, moved you and you liked what you liked and not what you were goose-fed by marketing and the “popular” press. The polar opposite of post-modern ironic ringtone filth, this is 30 minutes of spangly guitars, brittle acoustics, December rain, hope, love, romanticism, classicism. ‘The Sea Is So Quiet’ is Trembling Blue Stars’ finest moment and though, like Piano Magic, they sound better in the darker months, you’d be missing out to wait until Winter before you hear this record. Information : www.elefant.com
These days, there are exactly 3 artists I excitedly anticipate new records by. Colder is one of those 3. ‘Heat’ is the natural extension of 2003’s wonderful, ‘Alone’ - Marc Nguyen-Tan choosing not to deviate too much from a winning formula – sexy, warm analogue, retro-futurist music you can dance frantically, robotically to and not feel at all stupid. Opener, “Wrong Baby” is the point at which Joy Division and Kraftwerk clash head-on, on the dancefloor, in matching transparent, plastic macs. Colder do, indeed, make me contemplate textures and surfaces in a non-too-platonic way. Should I worry? This is wipe-off music in a wipe-off digipak. It looks and sounds like a new Porsche, Vienna. Buy it. Info
: www.outputrecordings.com
Like Hood, Epic45 do a neat line in tracing the dreamy, twilight wisp of Disco Inferno’s “Summer’s Last Sound.’ Pastoral, quintessentially English neo-psychedelic fare that evokes dusky rural landscapes punctuated by weather-veined church spires, pylons, telegraph poles, passed by on a lazy train. Just the ticket for anyone who, like me, is sick to the backteeth of battling the over-populated, stinking, noisy capital. This EP clears away all the mess of England and lies down on a freshly rolled bale, staring at the moon. A new album is just over the horizon. Information : www.epic45.com or www.makeminemusic.co.uk
This music sounds like stalactites melting at dawn on the day you finally got over your broken heart. Anyone with a whisper of love for the likes of Colleen or the films of Krzysztof Kieslowski, should come running, arms wide. Information
: www.aminamusick.com
or www.workersinstitute.com
There are few British labels left that you can take a chance with your pound on but Static Caravan is that rare, rare thing. Each and every release is never anything less than fascinating. Quite how this tiny West Midlands label has survived these past few years is anyone’s guess – particularly when it’s production runs are often limited to a mere 500 and until recently, it’s most favoured format was the record store-unfriendly 7” vinyl. Even so, Static Caravan is arguably the closest thing we’ve got to a spiritual heir to Wurlitzer Jukebox – the remarkable 90’s independent that discovered and gently kick-started the careers of wonderful units like ISAN, Broadcast and Plone. Geoff Dolman, the ‘van’s A&R filter has no less a talent for panning gold in a river of copyist shit. Bronnt Industries Kapital are, therefore, the most recent in a long line of intriguing discoveries. What’s most interesting here for me is the juxtaposition of some incredibly grave, often intense keyboard and loop work with off-kilter, downright fearsome, machinated rhythms. And though that description might bring to mind, perhaps Aphex Twin, this is considerably less polished; gritty; coughed up. Indeed, though BIK’s production smacks of weed-aided, late night home recording, there’s a wealth of tone and texture here – mainly greys and blacks/browns in tool steel and bromide. Information : www.silentagerecords.co.uk/bronnt or www.staticcaravan.org
Music made for being alone with, in a sunny park, headphones on, taking a step back from the hustle and bustle, making your mind up about something or someone. This electro-acoustic finery is so brittle and intimate but paradoxically, embracing, warm. The voices are often mixed so low you have to unpluck them from the notes to make sense of the words. All the best records are made at home these days. Information : www.moteerrecords.co.uk or www.city-centre-offices.de
First
in a wonderfully-packaged series dedicated to exposing the talents
of new, international female artists with fantastic names, working
loosely within the realm of lo-fidelity, electro-acoustic music.
Information
: www.monika-enterprise.de
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