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August 28, 2007
Peder Clark Reviews Mathias Aguayo
From our correspondent:
"arrived about half eleven to what i assume was matias aguayo spinning some slow'n'wonky-techno'n'bass oddness before gui boratto stepped up for his live-set. flawless, crunchy four-four with just about the right dosage of euphoria to keep plastic people sweaty. finished with "a beautiful life" which converted all my non-techno loving friends with it's massive mbv-with-enourmous-bass-drum bombast. an "and now for something completely different" moment when matias aguayo returned to the decks, or should i say deck. apparently only one turntable was working, so he played some traditional chilean music which enjoyably subverted expectations for a kompakt night but also successfully cleared the venue in time for the 2am curfew...
Thanks Peder. Glad you had a good night!
August 07, 2007
Wednesday Night: Kompakt Freebie
I have two tickets of this up for grabs. I'd dearly love to go myself, I bought them myself, they're not PR freebies. I discovered Aguayo's music just last week and fell madly in love with it. In a deliciously synchronous moment I was walking down the street and found the flyer in the gutter, I got rather ahead of myself buying the tickets though cos we're off to France for three weeks (this flurry of activity will soon abate...)
The only stipulation is that whoever goes (with their +1) has to write a tiny wee review of it for WOEBOT. Drop me a line All gone!
August 06, 2007
Island Inners
When I was checking out my old copy of Marianne Faithfull's "Broken English" I was inevitably confronted by the 1980s inner-liner adverts for the budget Island classics series. It surprised me how large these records loomed.
Back in the day when pocket-money was tight they were very affordable ($6) and widely available. That's one things at which CDs have been good, there must be far less quality music which is deleted. It used to be very hard to get hold of even the most mundane old records.
A remarkably high number of these records have passed through my collection, the only ones which haven't being the Robert Palmer, Cat Stevens, Mott and Traffic releases. (sighs) Island, what a superb label!
August 05, 2007
Scruffy-vs-Tidy: Post Punk obscurities judged unfairly by the cover
Here's one for all the Graphic Designers out there. What these records share is that they're at the perimeter of the fringes of Post-Punk, although I suppose any band that cuts an entire LPs worth of material makes some kind of deliberate mark on posterity. However they fall into two camps which are demarcated with crystalline clarity by the record's cover art.
The Red Crayola: Micro-chips & Fish (1979)
Glaxo Babies: Nine Months to the Disco (1980)
The Lemon Kittens: The Big Dentist (1981)
These three could be crudely described as belonging to the hippy-end of Post-Punk. Red Crayola's Mayo Thompson is somewhat like Kim Fowley, a character who seems to transcend geography and history. He/They started off with 1966's "The Parable of Arable Land", signed to International Artists, the same label as The Thirteenth Floor Elevators. The Glaxo Babies, hairy Bristolian Pop Group-a-likes. The Lemon Kittens, perhaps owing to Karl Blake's Prog-inflected Jazz roots also have a shabby, unfocussed quality which makes me think they're closet hippies.
But look at the sleeves, you wouldn't have to listen to the records to guess. Danielle Dax's very amateur drawing of a shrine, the pig-Pollock splurge of "Nine Months to the Disco", Mayo's scruffy theory-heavy collage of postcards. I mean, they're all charming period-pieces but/and delightfully inept, pritt-sticked together on the table in the squat's kitchen. And this motif of the square "frame" on all their covers, s'like deconstruction innit, like a picture frame innit.
Bernard Szajner: Brute Reason (1983)
Paul Haig: Big Blue World (1984)
Eric Random: Time-Splice (1982)
Spherical Objects: Further Ellipses (1980)
Then look at this lot. Again, very peripheral, but kind of cool to boot. They're all resolutely "embracing the future", or at the least their immediate present. The Szajner is quite excellent, his best, tart cold-wave. Howard Devoto does the vocals but he doesn't sound so irritatingly mannered like he does on the Magazine records. Paul Haig, the Josef K guy solo on Disques de Crepuscule, is obliquely chasing the Human League's tail- I reckon they thought this could have been a hit, but b'jesus it's awful. Eric Random's "Time-Splice" must be one of the last attempts at the time to embrace PIL's legacy- to empty out the music rather than inflect it with New Wave Pop. There's a pre-echo of Acid House to the disc, the shots of the band on the rear even look like they're fresh from their own warehouse party. Spherical Object's "Further Ellipses", even though it hails from 1980, like the music of the Diagram Brothers is at that uncomfortable juncture at which Post-Punk bleeds into Indie. Next stop That Petrol Emotion and The Membranes. Notable for the disastrously bad vocals of Steve Solamar. Not hairy, "disciplined", not hippies.
The sleeves are like a parody of Factory's, but where Peter Saville made materials really count for Joy Division, the creamy almost fluffy hard-card of "Closer", the slickly micro-corrugation of the cover of "Unknown Pleasures"- whoever did these sleeves was definitely after the same look for cheap and we all know what Saville's sleeves cost Tony Wilson! But with just the poised font, a cropped photo (two video-stills here, tres moderne), flat colour and nothing else to back it up? It's certainly Minimal lads.
August 03, 2007
Etoile De Dakar
There isn't much in the way of Etoile De Dakar vinyl available. One of my formative vinyl experiences, and one I've recounted here before, is of having some of their material recorded from crackly disc onto tape at a store in the market in Dakar in 1993. You didn't buy the records from stores like this (well I did pick up a Fela disc but...) because otherwise yunnuh there wouldn't be any left to record for anyone else! That didn't stop collectors strip-mining the whole continent though did it?
"Absa Gueuye" I saw centuries ago in Paris but failed to pick up, but I stumbled upon it last weekend at the M&V: Hooray! "Xalis", dig the spectacles baby. "Ndiadiane Ndiaye" is yet more greatness. With the excellent Sterns series of CDs you have it all really (particularly Volumes 1 and 3). The one I've always yearned to find however is : "Tolou Badou Ndiaye", described by Stapleton and May in their landmark "African All Stars" as "Mbalax 1980-style: a minimal and spacy prelude to (Youssou N'Dour's) denser studio sounds of Immigres and Nelson Mandela"
On the turntable (part two)
A Night At the Tilehouse: Matias Aguayo
Forthcoming on Soul Jazz. Absolutely spell-binding, exquisite lolloping ambient post-disco.
Mala: Alicia
Lovers-rock Dubstep with startlingly convincing vocals, so good one's convinced they must be sampled.
Black Devil Disco Club: 28 After
Been sleeping on this but it's very special.
Rotten Johnny
Just couldn't resist posting this from the August edition of Uncut. I tried to hold myself back, but really it's too delightful. You'd give your pinkie to be attacked by Rotten wouldn't you?
Where Ben Marshall (nee Stud), the interviewer erred was to say that Simon was suggesting the Pistols were more "important". I don't think that he ever said that, more that they were more "innovative" than The Pistols. I believe for a while Lydon said as much as himself before shutting the whole episode down to concentrate on "TEH BIG MESSAGE". You only have 15 minutes in the spotlight after all. Would the nature TV programmers John works for these days want an experimental musician presenting for them or the anarchic firebrand of Celebrity Big Brother fame? It's quite like the way Macca has in recent years airbrushed his avant-garde past from the official history.
What was I doing reading Uncut? Er, my van broke down (the gear-stick snapped off) and I was stranded for 5 hours in North London waiting to be towed away. Actually it's OK. They had a rock lore pamphlet with this issue which was quite entertaining.
Slang Teacher
Luke Heronbone's (working) in Australia now, and how we miss the madly-talented, scrawny bastard. However at least he's in touch and writing up a storm.
A few folks were lucky enough to be emailed his work-in-progress for a new book, but for a short sharp fix Robert Love-Ecstasy-Crime from the Starfish has managed to secure some prose which you can check here. Just scroll on down.
Cutting Records Dump
Picking up from the Todd Terry Giggles record, when I picked it up I realised I had a bit of a crush on the Cutting Records output. I went through the racks at home and dug out these absolute beauts. Hippest of this lot would have to be Hashim's "Primrose Path" which Kodwo namechecks in the back of "More Brilliant Than The Sun", it rocks a similar vibe to Strafe's "Set It Off" with an electric guitar marooned amid the 808 beats. Actually that reminds me, the Cybotron records have lots of post-Hendrix (perhaps post-Pete Cosey?) guitar on them don't they. Rick Davis of Cybotron was a Vietnam vet and a thing for Hendrix is practically de rigeur if you served there in the Armed Forces isn't it? Funny how electric guitars in Electro don't sound like such a bad idea as they did ten years ago, sort trashy and a bit Shoreditch-ish.
Woah The Imperial Brothers! These two records are poised on the cusp between Rap and Electro with the effect that they come over like a deconstructed Hip-Hop: big, booming, sparse, dubbed-out. So it's no surprise then that James Lavelle gave them the nod in the early days of Mo' Wax. But what's going on with Lavelle and that guy from The Cult? I saw their thing at Glade and it was more baffling than awful, I mean since when did their vein of Toffler-ised Mondo-2000-rock have adherents? I suppose I may have answered that in the last paragraph? Perhaps, like Phil Collins, Ian Astbury has fans deep within "The Game"?
Oh and these two. The Coro a recent admission to the vault. I only regret I don't have copies of the Nitro Deluxe on Cutting, just sandwiched in on various compilations. I suppose I could simply pick 'em up online, but where's the fun in that? Network did very respectable reissues of these in the UK anyway, so I suspect there aren't many imports kicking around. The 2 In A Room LP I picked up in Greenpoint.
Oh and this one! Another one in the Todd pile which escaped inclusion in the Todd-a-thon. Enough already.