Stuff wot I got sent
(This entry has had a re-edit owing to a severe case of oeuf-sur-le-visage.)
In a year in which I've bitterly complained about the reduction in horizons for music there has been a considerable amount of good stuff to listen to. It's almost as though auteurs thrive in those times when a central drift, the absence of which I'm lamenting, is not apparent. We've had notable long-playing wax from Ghostface Killah, Matmos, Hot Chip, Scritti, Scott, Various, Johnny Dark, Villalobos, Luciano, Burial, Lily Allen, Devandra Banhart and The Arctic Monkeys, but they've all been distinguished by their distance from each-other, working apart in different scenes. It's been a year for the Neo-Rockist Pop picker.
It's been a good year for re-issues as well. Floating my boat have been the two exquisitely packaged Music Box records, fully-endorsed and taken directly from Ron Hardy's stash of reel-to-reels, great stuff on the Trunk label, the second No-Wave Sampler on Soul Jazz (hold tight for Argabright's Vol.3), the Broadcast collection of rarities and Martin's "Roots of Dubstep" compilation.
There have been other interesting records as well, and I just happened to have been sent them in my capacity as hob-knobbing blogger. I get tied-up in knots over the promotional stuff I recieve, and let me assure you this is the merest fraction of it. I do listen to everything, but I'm super-conscious about being co-opted or steered (making me the publicist's worst nightmare) so rest assured if I say it's interesting I believe it to be.**
Ike Yard: 1980-1982 Collected
Massive respect to Dan at Acute for making this stuff available once more. I suppose I was a bit-player in the story of the reissue of this material a fact which I find pretty blimmin exciting. Given that the Ike Yard stuff is so spectacularly moribund and bleak, frothing up with enthusiasm about it seems like a direly misplaced reaction. Yet froth I do, even when I could be accused of already having said quite enough on the subject. My feelings about Ike Yard in a nutshell? This was the real No Wave. I get the argument about No Wave desecrating Rock by mimicking it, but had Lunch and Chance jacked into JA dub and NDW they'd have been far more menacing and threatening to the corpus rockisticus. Also I'd like to go on the record to say that New Order quite obviously copped Argabright's moves. This is an essential purchase for 2006.
Tazartes: Check Point Charlie
Morlu's reissue of Ghedalia Tazartes's thrillingly obtuse 1990 record splices in two recently recorded tracks. It is fair, I think, to say CPC is not quite as madly-errant as "Diasporas" "Transports" and "Une Eclipse Totale de Soleil" all classics, but given that Tazartes discography over the past thirty years only amounts to these four and 1997's "Voyage A L'Ombre" well you'd probably ought to check it out. Anyway if you like Tazartes it's all gravy. The drum-machine/accordian/mumbling bits here are brilliant.....
The Beauty Room
Ha! I've always kept faith in Kirk Degiorgio and this utterly bizarre Soft Rock mini-opus sees my stock soar. Yunnuh if it's like okay to use a metaphor borrowed from finance around all you pseudo-commie cunts? I'm gonna fall back on the references game just because this a record you really need to get a handle on and this may be the best way. Here goes: Bee Gees with the tiniest flava of Van Der Graf Generator (honestly!), Nazz, CSN, Donald Fagen and a whole heap of Steely Dan, 10cc, Sergio Mendes "Togetherness", that hinterland between Chicago/Peter Cetera and Soft Soul with commercial ambition aka Withers/Womack/Earth, Wind and Fire, also nuff British klassik loser-MOR with soul-boy ambitions ie Level 42. Suffice to say to make a record like this is a stroke of genius, especially when it's done without even the slightest irony and real class. The chutzpah of the man!
Grizzly Bear: Yellow House
This is nice enough I guess in a breezy Van-Dyke-Parkian/Feelies-Good-Earth sort of way. If there's one record this year that it seems people are desperate for me to like, to tow the line on, it must be this one. I'll admit that kinda made me stick my donkey hooves in the dirt. But it is nice and an improvement on Grizzly Bear's last stuff which man like Derek Walmsley very kindly sent me last year. I think there's some elliptical connection to Animal Collective here, though I can't quite remember what it is, something to do with the producer or summat. Anyway if I'm wrong who gives a fuck anyway? It's a poorly-researched, badly-punctuated weblog and I reserve the right not to read the press info sheets and searching Google for information just bores the shit out of me.
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* Outdoor sleeve photos taken in my local park which has been redesigned by my neighbor and acquaintance Peter Saville!
** I'm still eagerly awaiting the completed Focus Groop's LP dropping and Xylitol's latest offering.