Tuesday, December 21, 2010

A Love Supreme



[picture: dorset, summer 2010]

And you thought we'd been thorough in our archive raid when we dug out about 30 MR reviews, and the Kosmonaut one. Not to mention our most recent hymn of praise to the label. Well, here are another seventeen snapshots of our Matinée idolatory. Starting with a *gem* (the record, not the review)...

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razorcuts "r is for razorcuts" (matinée recordings)

banda favorita ? probablemente los razorcuts...

on the boy's sixteenth birthday, when he lived sufficiently far from autogeddon to be able to find himself in tidily mown fields within five minutes' walk of home, he took his fragile person, beige anorak and chunky walkperson out west of mountnessing road and spent a cool but bright winter's afternoon listening to his favourite band - luton's razorcuts - music that more than any other seemed to dovetail with his discovery, at that age, of the sheer wonder of nature - torn inside by the notion that the "beauty they're busy killing" all around us had to be savoured, enjoyed, when he still could, and somewhat presciently realising that there was a lifetime beyond it to spend dodging accusations of "are you looking at my pint ?" in smoky pubs. razorcuts (they seemed to hate the "the" with a passion) were the soundtrack to those tender moments of self-discovery, as twelve string guitars strummed out the passion and wonder of the wide world beyond our schools and shops and factories.

slightly scuffed copies of the razorcuts' two albums, "storyteller" and "the world keeps turning", both released to a cavalcade of critical indifference (from the mainstream press) and fawning, sincere empathy (from the fanzine massive) are as we write sat in record & tape exchange notting hill for the best part of twenty quid each. this, combined with the fact that the creation retrospective cd "patterns on the water" missed off many of their best loved tunes (including the gorgeous "sorry to embarrass you" from which its title came), means that matinée recordings are, not for the first time, providing an important public service in tenderly crafting this "tru" greatest hits package and better balancing the early, scrawny, bambino indie pop songs with the later, more refined, pseudo-anthemic releases. in doing so they roll back the years to when every time you did a compilation tape you would put on buzzcocks' "love you more" ("and after this love there'll be no other / until the razor cuts" - stop dead) and then you would just shoehorn in whichever webster / vass composition was giving you goose pimples at that particular time. if you were particularly deft with the pause and rec buttons, it was as if pete shelley was introducing those magnificent first few bars of "sorry to embarrass you" or whatever other poison you'd selected.

as you'll have gathered, it's so difficult listening to this record not to personalise the review - getting "summer in your heart" on to the tape deck at the youth club, being in a band that tried an extremely noisy version of the sublime "mary day" in a vain effort to recapture its very real anger, having a fellow napalm death / joy division obsessive proclaiming that "across the meadow" was "f***ing brilliant", spending a holiday in sunny minehead marvelling at "the world keeps turning" itself, confusing a bloke from down the football by insisting on taping him "i heard you the first time", getting worked up as sounds' ron rom, who harboured an almost pathological hatred of the band, laid into everything they ever did, reserving special opprobrium for "brighter now"... well as you'll have guessed, each of those tunes surface here. the point is that every razorcuts fan from that first time round harbours their own memories, that will be rekindled by the fabulously titled, and it must be added, beautifully packaged, "r is for razorcuts".

the key to whether or not they unlock your heart will, for all the chiming minor chords and roving, melody-led bass, probably be gregory webster's distinctive voice, usually high in the mix (although sportique arrivistes will be disappointed to know that "r is for razorcuts" is free of situationist hollering). his singing seemed so often to fit the sentiments like a glove - phrases like "don't search the sky for rain" delivered in a quivering voice that SO meant it, and that's what put all imitators in their shade. theirs was a noise bred of growing up in an english town, but that sought its ultimate inspiration from the countryside with its endless vistas and possibilities.

and save for some tweaking to ensure that the track listing proper kicks off with razor anthem "i'll still be there" and closes with john a. rivers' flow (sorry) of hammond organ on "the last picture show", things are chronological, neatly following the subway 7" and EP, the single on flying nun and then the two creation albums (with the emphasis very heavily on their full-length début "storyteller" at the expense of swansong "the world keeps turning" ). we want to start with the fresh-faced 1st subway single "big pink cake", which judging from everett true's contribution to the copious sleeve notes, is hugely underrated now; in this should-be karaoke staple, the way that tim vass's effervescent bass and david swift's as ever impressive drums gambol and then brake and then crash in again make it power pop at its very best, guaranteed to make you smile inside, gregory's unrestrainable vocal being the inevitable icing on top. while bona fide classic "sorry to embarrass you", although less rough and more focused, also takes no prisoners with its unabashed sentiments and unapologetic melodies - a fair stab at eighties alternative pop perfection (perhaps this is the place to mention that "indie top 20 volume 1" - 1986, obv - via which it also featured on a nation's cassette players, along with the likes of "throwaway" and "i could be in heaven", was the album that "NME C86" probably should have been....)

while in the earlier songs, the pace means that the interaction of bass and drums invariably shape the sound, later on - by the time that they were spending alan mcgee's money on being produced by the aforesaid mr rivers at leamington spa - the 12-string takes centre place and a variety of other variables - strings, trumpet, female backing vocals - are fed into the equation. sometimes the lyrics get a little too rustic even for our tastes ("sitting by the fireside / strumming my guitar", sings gregory on "jade") but they soon redeem themselves ("as we talked about someone we knew / the way friends do"). if we do have a whispered criticism of the track listing it's that the mere 3 selections from "t.w.k.t." are not perhaps the best ones. while ten of these tracks also appeared on "patterns on the water", many of the omissions recur - so it seems that "mile high towers" (it's about us! not in a good way!), the feral "steps to the sea", and the organtastic "flowers for abigail" are destined not to be released on cd again (well, except in the case of the original version of the latter by the television personalities). on the other hand, to be fair our only genuine gripe is aimed at the evil forces of industry, for having invented a format that only fits 70 odd minutes.

for once the coyly entitled "bonus tracks" are a genuine bonus. "sad kaleidoscope" is a bustling, buzzing capture from a fizzing flexi shared with talulah gosh in '86, a song that cartwheels along to those frantic bass and drums before morphing into a pure POP chorus prolonged to the point of delight. we still think there's a case for it being the best song here. "the horror of party beach", meanwhile, is the 'previously unreleased' titbit so beloved of greatest hits compilers: it shows that in 1985 the razorcuts were plying a creation-heavy melange of slaughter joe / meat whiplash / early mary chain (the latter especially when gregory sings "gonna get my gun" (!)). while it may not bear sustained rotation, it's a genuinely intriguing catch. finally, to bring us full circle, we are treated to "i'll still be there" (the version that graced the b-side of "big pink cake", rather than the "remix" that appeared on "take the subway to your suburb"). again, it shimmers with the glory of the young razorcuts at their best, preserving the fearless "ba ba ba's" in particular that were excised from the later re-recording.

when we think of the razorcuts at their brilliant best, we always felt they were somehow part of the reaction against the complacency that crept through every aspect of our cultural lives under thatcherism, and that they owed at least as much to the buzzocks than the byrds. it doesn't matter whether that perception was right, or even forgivable - though it tells you the angle we're coming from - what matters is that's the feeling their records gave us. we do really think you might find them just as enchanting.

(r is for razorcuts, we wrote the words ourselves)

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razorcuts "a is for alphabet ep" (matinée recordings)

we honestly meant to start with something else this month, but it's impossible to look past this ep. there is of course as always a debate to be had about randomly re-releasing 5 classic tracks on a cd single (although to be fair old gold used to do it all the time), especially as we would have had all of them on the recent and humblingly great compilation "r is for razorcuts" anyway. but still we go weak-kneed and swoony again, oddly enough not so much for the re-released john a. rivers-produced jewels "a is for alphabet" (alone of these songs taken from "r is for"), "first day" (which accompanied "alphabet" on their guest ep for new zealand's flying nun label) and "snowbound" (the helplessly romantic wilderness cry from their second and last creation album), but for the two final tracks, "sometimes i worry about you" and "for always" which are unbelievably fragile and beautiful, and which although pre-dating their subway days we believe were premièred courtesy of bob stanley's caff corporation as recently as a mere 10 years ago. "sometimes i worry" is the kind of the thing the bmx bandits were doing a couple of years later, if with less finesse - nervous, perfect, feydom: and "for always" is a soft, restrained, plaintive ballad of winsome force, a lost galleon raised from the ocean bed. when, in the latter gregory webster sings "i think i like you", it's the kind of cuteness that crumples you to tears of joy, and set against the sleeve art of bare branches in the winter forest it's all a reminder of why you fell in love with this band in the first place.

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simpatico "postal museum" ep (matinee); slipslide "four day weekend" ep (matinee); melodie group "raincoat" ep (matinee); the windmills "when it was winter" ep (matinee)

four new four-track cd-eps from matinee recordings, the current home of softly strummed guitars and unashamed melodies, which between them go a little further towards cementing its reputation as the best of the north american post-sarah labels. pick of the 16 songs neatly arrayed within these is simpatico's "union station", which uses to best effect the field mice-ish stylings of sequencer, rolling, humming bass, charmingly obvious drum machine, and sweet guitars as jason sweeney hangs his moral - "life is cruel to boys like [us]" - on a single tale of lost love. the other tracks aren't too bad either, even if they don't exactly mess with the template: especially "pheromone stars" as it annexes a sweet belle & sebastian stream of consciousness to the drum pattern from the field mice's "sensitive".

the windmills next. roy thirlwall's vocal is a joy - a kind of syphon which sprinkles wry, deep lyrics to taste over the group's neat, stylish (think milan '94) backing in four more inoffensive, gently affecting pop constructions. "when it was winter", to me, benefits from sounding more like [his alter ego the] melodie group's laid back, laconic songwriting rather than the shallower glaze of the windmills' last effort, the "drug autumn" ep, on the same label. most suited to thirlwall's almost casually acerbic tone is the final song "good riddance to bad rubbish", a hymn of hate which, like the best such paeans, relies not on distortion or noise but guitars melodic and timid enough that even lines as hackneyed as "i never really liked you anyway" can emerge with unusual clarity.

after this, four new tracks from melodie group themselves may seem like overload; and it's true that the aforesaid laid back style makes for some very syrupy stuff, the pattern being of repeated lyrics cutting a swathe through more chiming guitars. ironically, lead tune "you've got the whole of the world in your mouth" probably suffers most from being a little too kitsch - in doing so it shares the problems of the windmills' "everything is new each day" (see january review). nevertheless, each track is petite enough not to outstay its welcome, and i grow particularly fond of "raincoat", a delicate homily to effective outdoor wear, perfect for when you've locked yourself out (on the other hand i may have misread the metaphors here).

last, and probably least, although in this company that's not a 100% dis, are slipslide, the latest band persona of graeme elston (quick career resume: the love parade were jangly / ok, pure a brief but compelling pop diversion, eva luna acceptable on both the ballad and rocking out fronts, astronaut pretty terrible and over-wrought). it's best to skip tracks 1 and 3 and head instead to the more promising "unlucky charm" (sort of the lightning seeds doing new order) and "waiting for the call" which, while they would actually profit from slightly less production and instrumentation, show graeme hasn't totally lost his knack of producing effortless, 2:1 level indie pop (the latter features verse chords which confusingly recall billy bragg's "waiting for the great leap forward"). in the company of labelmates as super soaraway as harper lee, "four day weekend" is a game showing and an encouraging start.

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pipas "a cat escaped" (matinée recordings)

"all i see is grey / makes me want to emigrate"

out the same day [as napalm death's "order of the leech"] and similarly good and also in a digipak sleeve, "a cat escaped" is ten songs, twenty minutes of coy lovable pop which could as easily have come from the sultry southern european likes of elefant records as the recently-relocated west coast american matinée recordings. pipas are confounding and perplexing critters - the duo fire, in short bursts, droplets of wryness wrapped in cute basslines and drum machine dynamics and laconic strumming. these purr shyly, emitting fragments of lyric but never quite enough to surmise precisely what they're singing about. they also do that "pink flag" thing of being economical and concise in their expression to a tee, so much so that two of the songs ("the conversation" and "a cat escaped" itself) barely make sixty seconds. which is always a recommendation.

mostly the vocal is handled by lupe, a star of recent would-be-goods live sets, in a stupendously offhand way (which stops the likes of the hint-of-cranberry "old kent road" sounding too mainstreamish) - only towards the end, on "emblematic" does mark's voice (presumably) make a lead appearance following his slots on previous releases. but what we'd really like to hear is some proper duetting: we think they could bounce off each other in a way that hasn't been seen since sonny and cher, or at least since carolyn and caesar on the wake's "crush the flowers"... now onto the ilwtt picks. well, "the witches" features some of the greatest down-to-earth 'street' lyrics we can imagine hearing - "looking for the coffee shop / i couldn't find it / you said it was on the corner, next to the iceland / it was a lie". and "cruel and unusual" shone out from the matinée summer splash lo-price cd sampler (and yes, you should buy that compilation). but for us the stand-out tracks here are "rock and / or roll", which just screams "single!" with its spangly keyboards, and "old kent road" itself, which is so cleverly put together and documents the exigencies of a relationship (er, we think) in a really original way. mind you, there are also enough hooks in both "what nobody does" and "run run run", which bookend this petite treat, to drive you to distraction.

"you forgot so very fast / that you owed me twenty quid"

though there is a subtle "dance" influence throughout, it complements rather than defines the sound: pipas' music doesn't so much make you want to dance as, like the sugargliders sang, "just sway" (and actually, the sugargliders do come to mind at times - it's something about the easy rhythms and the plucked guitar lines). although the cat may have escaped (try looking on strathblaine road, sw11 - there are loads of them there), this is very feline music - bright, knowing, independent and graceful.

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melodie group "updownaround" (matinée): the guild league "private transport" (matinée)

"and they say a solo project makes you blind" - the wake, "solo project"

essex's "melodie group", as you will know by now, are the solo nom de plume of the windmills' honey and gravel voiced singer / guitarist, roy thirlwall, while the guild league are none other than the lucksmiths' tali white and a number of associès. while solo projects are too often urban disasters, as listeners to professor griff or eazy-e's efforts will testify, both da group and ver league have unleashed their own first full-length albums on the matinée roster, so we weren't overly worried that any overpretentious twaddle would have made it through their quality control department in santa barbara.melodie group announced themselves to us with the über-wry "seven songs" set in 2000, and have since seduced small corners of our nation with the "raincoat" cd-ep and last 7" "summerness" (which we had down as one of our singles of 2002 in the rose & crown the other day until a passing fanzine editor reminded us that, along with "sugar mummy" and "emmanuelle béart", it had actually come out in 2001 - we later duffed him up). never mind if you missed it, though, because "summerness" is on "updownaround" too, as its last, and still probably best track. nothing to do with summer but everything to do with autumn, "summerness" follows the melodie group's m.o. fairly well, which particularly from "raincoat" has been to concentrate on repeated musical and lyrical phrases rather than the fuller arrangements of the windmills, and to taper the guitars with a drum machine, usually resulting in shorter and more pared-down tunes. the rest of the album also reflects this pattern.

introducing itself with the slight trinkets of "everybody loves you" and the simpático-esque "hold", which ease us in to the melodie brew of sparse drum machine, dutiful semi-electric strumming and are-they-sarky vocals, it is with "bathtub full of water" that we start to revisit the picturesque territory of "summerness", guided by a curling guitar motif, a so-gentle rhythmic sway, a sudden sincerity and a certain sadness as thirlwall relays his "lonely thoughts" of "killed" love and a "silenced" heart. to follow it, he does a mike flowers and knocks out matt monro's distinctly un-sinister waltz "when love comes along", sadly only proving that being tongue-in-cheek does not equal being good. luckily, returning to his own compositions with "xiao", the situation is rescued as a bass-led tune, lightly caressed by a few electric guitar cries and thirlwall's deep voice, assembles a beautiful melodic darkness, even managing to detour into a swirling, spangly fairground attraction halfway through without losing its place. marvellous.

"tv is broken / i'll get another / to throw at the wall..." - "inner space 1971"

the second half of "updownaround" begins with what we were going to call a cover of music seen's "hairdresser in the sky" (last seen on a waaah! compilation cd of unremembered vintage), save that a glance at the songwriting credit suggests - and we should have known, really - that thirlwall was apparently behind that anyway, with erstwhile songwriting partner in crime abigail pain. the 2002 take is actually even better, being slightly sparklier (the spangly keyboard topping is almost harper lee) while still measured, and it remains a stately, maudlin modern folk tune which by rights should be much more of a standard than "when love comes along"... humph... next comes the louche wah-guitar spread of "inner space 1971", before "i do not not love you", premiered on the "summer splash!" various artists comp. it is a great mix of handclaps and paranoia, double negatives and a false ending (what more could one want) which would also seem rather short if it wasn't for the fact that it's followed by the 49 seconds of "butterfly: tart", which to be fair doesn't justify much longer. and then it's on to "summerness" to close and remind us why there is still a definite place for melodie group in their own right even as the windmills follow a separate yellow brick road to success. hopefully.

the guild league's album is very different in style from thirlwall's lower-key experimentation, featuring a cast of thousands creating a uniformly outward-looking concept album about international travel which immaculately blends strings, brass and a number of styles. in this respect, taster 45 "jet... set... go!", an uptempo indie-popper which attempts to circumnavigate the globe in three minutes and starts the album is not necessarily representative: elsewhere there is ample demonstration of tali white refining his talent for the blissed-out ballad (the handily breathy "dangerous safety", the kettle-led softness of "balham rise" or the lachrymose "what adults do"), a chance for a choral piece arranged for several mouths and strings ("a faraway place"), and even a tentative venture into the world of rapping - admittedly more mc john barnes than 2pac - in "siamese couplets", which delightfully seeks to capture the flavour of travelling in asia and tali's weakness for the "liquid horizon". but if you are going to force us to pick a special best favourite, well we mustn't look further than the fabulous "cosmetropolis (london swings)". not only is it a 24 carat jewel of bounding guitars, brass parts and piano, but it is a perfect example of white's lyrical dexterity - dozens of episodes, places and themes crammed into a song without interrupting the flow at all - and as good a summary of the city we all bore you about as we can imagine. the way he sang "hard voices ring out along tenement streets / that are harsher than hail and sharper than sleet" as we ventured east out of london bridge's dungeon station on a freezing night seemed to fit our surrounds perfectly... indeed the lyrics throughout are sleeping bag-snug to the songs, and are especially evocative when they deal with the cold of railway platforms or the unfulfilled dreams of autumn, as in the sublime (if cringingly entitled!) "a maze of greys"...

even aside from the words, we also need to mention that craig pilkington's trumpet on "balham rise", pete cohen's double bass on the luscious "the photographer" or tali's own piano playing amidst the strings on the terrific instrumental "baggage handling" (as cultured but somehow vulnerable as some of those fine blueboy instrumentals) are all pieces of art in themselves. an admirable way to start the new year.

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various artists "matinée 50" (matinée recordings): airport girl "do you dream in colour ?" ep (matinée recordings)

ooh, it's all good this month. although not wishing to reopen fruitless "is matinée the new sarah ?" debates, it is at least worth leaving the door ajar, for despite all the palpable differences between the labels (not least the fact that sarah was a punk label) one of the "givens" with sarah was demonstrable strength in depth, almost a kitemark of quality (in contrast to subway or creation where the sublime and ridiculous mingled without shame). matinée 50, a maxi-compilation of 20 matinée bands covering 20 others, brings home that in this respect they are treading similar ground to sarah - more or less every song, and artist, are gratifyingly recognisable, and if the idea is for listeners to this compilation, perhaps new to the territory, to become intrigued both with the covering artist and the original song, then the conceit works marvellously.

we are not exaggerating when we say that one in love with these times in spite of these times contributor fell off his chair when disclosed the tantalising tracklist to this record. suffice it to say that you will collectively be toppling from your bar stools no later than track one, for it is gregory webster giving the "razorcuts" treatment to the lucksmiths' mighty "untidy towns", and trust us it virtually justifies the admission alone. and yet there is more. of the bands that shed the kid gloves and decide to playfully duff the originals up a bit, the highlights are the snowdrops' deconstruction of melodie group's gorgeous "summerness" single, pale sunday's surprisingly convincing shoegaze reworking of sportique's jolly "just friends", the liberty ship's electro cover of kosmonaut's recent 45 "desert song" and kosmonaut returning the favour by taking the liberty ship's last single "northern angel" (btw please ignore the insane review of this record in the otherwise true-to-da-game tasty) and giving it a treatment equal parts my bloody valentine, revolving paint dream and big beat. if they could persuade dennis bovell or someone to turn up an orchestrate a dub version, we would all be rocking - perhaps a matinée dub album can be the next label project ?

on the other hand, there are tracks that are just, hey, great bands doing great songs - slipslide take melodie group's first ever number for the label, the irradescent "wildest dream" and enhance its classic credentials further, while just the sound of keris howard's voice leads harper lee into a near-perfect and slightly simpático (in all possible senses) rendition of monterey's old skool delight "motorway". it is a compliment to matinée that many of the bands find themselves taking on originals so stormin' that matching them is virtually impossible - sportique's skanked up "goldmining" could never compete with the visitors' sublime mesh of pop yearning (although when gregory shouts "version!" as if he thinks he's u-roy, that's entertainment), simpático's tender take of "train not stopping" could never be more than a valiant attempt to re-style harper lee's original and the visitors, no strangers to classic flexi-discs, confront themselves with an all-time generational classic in the razorcuts' "sad kaleidoscope". to whet your appetite further, we think we've just time to mention the fairways doing edson's "sunday lovely sunday" in the style of beaumont, the pines doing the fairways' "darling, don't you think" almost as a field mice song, which is intriguing in itself, and the would be goods come out smelling of roses too - both on the receiving end of melodie group's unabashedly glammed-up "emmanuelle béart" (another chance to savour the "salade niçoise" / "gauloises" rhyme) and in performing their own pulchitrudinous revival of the lucksmiths' "southernmost". if you have liked anything you've heard on the matinee roster, this release is absolutely compulsory.

after all that, the latest single release from matinée is airport girl's much-delayed "do you dream in colour" ep , memorable chiefly for the first two tunes - the title track, which acknowledges johann pachelbel's canon in D (despite its overexposure, still a triumph of classical arrangement) but which with rob price's homely voice comes across as a beauteous post-cinerama late night classic and one of the best modern treatments bestowed upon johann, and "when you fall" which mixes moments of high-octane motown homily with go-betweens hooks and, at times, almost bodines-like shimmering guitars, plus a terrific lyric which soars towards each chorus before landing with a telling "promises are things you keep". note also that the windmills do airport girl's "striking out on your own" on matinée 50, too, in a swap deal for the airportsters bravely embarking on the windmills' own "360º" - it's been too long since we last heard from airport girl, but perhaps the renaissance can start here.

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the liberty ship "tide" (matinée recordings): various artists "romantic and square is hip and aware" (matinée recordings)

another band we fondly fête are the liberty ship of nottingham england, one-half (alongside kosmonaut) of matinée's post-bulldozer crash phalanx. "tide" is their first full album, following a 7", a cd single and a mini-lp over the last couple of years, the latter on their former b.c. home of sunday records. while nobody in the sane world is going to doubt the liberty ship's songwriting abilities, the one worry we did have was whether over twelve tracks the dogged pursuit of melodic highs could transpire to make the record too one-dimensional. yet happily, despite its rather modest sleeve, "tide" has soundwaves of every description crashing against pure shores, from the great, powering swathes of guitars that wrap around "precious time" through the unabashed semi-acoustic eden of "chords drag you down" (a torch song cast around flickering electro beats which takes us back to the campfire analogies we drew about earlier tunes back in the day) to the bubbles of reverb that appropriately ensconce the final tune "yuri gagarin" - another "kosmonaut" link and best yuri-tune since saturn v's "red star" - as it serenely orbits our respective bachelor / spinster pads. plus, to be fair we had already been vastly encouraged by the preview of "baseball caps and novas", a cracking popsong that premièred on the increasingly seminal "matinée autumn assortment" collection and justifiably pours scorn on "right-on" snobs like us (we're afraid that lines like "thinking of all the times / you feared assault and petty crime" are a fairly accurate description of when we lived in the liberty ship's home town, but we are more than prepared to accept that was probably just horribly unrepresentative...) the other thing that strikes you very quickly is some superb arrangements. as revealed in this interview with a downmarket e-zine, the liberty ship are willing students of hallowed names from the beatles through to xtc and the smiths (see below!), and songs here like "finer feelings" and "cabin fever" have really developed from their initial demo versions, "finer feelings" transformed from being "just" an extra-strength jangler into a luscious and more layered confection (harmonica and extra melody in the chorus, great backing vocals from rachel eyres, guitars set at just the right level of mild distortion, and marc's voice racing away towards the end as the 'ship do their old trick of kite-chasing: then it all hits the three minute mark and graciously implodes). similarly, "cabin fever" assumes new proportions, with plenty of strata of guitar, the pulse rate quickening as drummer steve mietlinski ups the bpm for the chorus and in doing so completes its transition from amenable folk song into indie-pop classic. and you'll recognise "final kick" from the last ep: a chime-ridden janglethon led by rachel's warm voice: she also takes the lead elsewhere, markedly with the splendorous "stars above". so, while the production throughout is not always exactly dre, and there are a couple of songs we don't feel too guilty about skipping, the quality on show here means that "tide" can not only withstand the absence of that last tour de force single "northern angel" but also the non-appearance of the great "don't react", which you will need to buy matinée's "summer splash!" sampler to get hold of, but don't worry this should not prove to be too much of an ordeal. ooh, and one last thing - while it is hopefully not accidental, the last minute or so of this album is a ringer for joy division's "incubation". somewhat inevitably therefore, the liberty ship tear us apart.

...but still leading us nicely into our final item 2night, matinée records' "romantic and square is hip and aware" smiths tribute compilation. the title, we think, was morrissey's (deliberate) misappropriation of a john lennon quote, immortalised for our purposes by being scratched into the run-out groove of "william, it was really nothing" (god how we miss vinyl). and herein, matinée recordings ups the levels of heresy displayed by previous releases (the "a smile took over" sarah tribute and the cosily incestuous but indubitably toppermost "matinée 50" compilation) and decides to give us a cd of cover versions of what they rightly acknowledge as the greatest band of all time - for a tiny signal of our agreement check out our title page photo - more than twenty years after "hand in glove" first ran up and down our spines, giving us first-kiss shivers and tingles like no other group could. now nobody in this particular bitch is going to pretend that any of these songs are up to the originals. but but but those are not the standards by which albums like this should be judged (if they were, there would have been approximately no albums worth hearing since 1987) - any more than when you listen to discharge tribute albums (come on, we all do) any of the contributors can really hold a candle to the originals. inevitably some play it straight - the lucksmiths, after their own "there is a boy that never goes out" on last year's "naturaliste" lp, see fit to reinterpret "there is a light", fairly smoothly and with a helping hand on vocals from karen morcombe; slipslide unimpeachably crown "please please please let me get what i want" as the most uncynically bounteous of pop ballads; and the liberty ship's lively rendition of morrissey's comment on crime and punishment, "sweet and tender hooligan" is the rockiest effort on here, although there would still have been room for a little more feedback and perhaps turning the amps up to eleven: indeed, a shame that sportique weren't up for this particular jamboree, as they would no doubt have added a dash of abrasiveness and a little less reverence. in bravery corner, meanwhile, pale sunday open themselves up to all sorts of obloquy from smiths devotees by even daring to perform "i know it's over", but with luiz gustavo's cute almost-vocoder vocal, some snug bursts of shoegaze guitar and inexpensive drum machine bossanova, they just end up cuddling the song and taking you with them. and tali white's the guild league bound through a jovial, reasonably heretic and not unannoying "panic" as hopes continue to spiral up through the grasmeres. however, where things get really great for us is the hat-trick of tracks that starts with pipas subverting "this night has opened my eyes" and lovejoy taking on "girlfriend in a coma" (both rourke-tastically dub up the bass - perhaps reggae isn't so vile after all, eh, stephen ?) and then in not inconsiderable contrast sees the would-be-goods' jessica griffin delicately re-decorate "back to the old house": not far behind is the way that the pines rearrange "ask" to make it a delicately arranged mini symphony that is both less compact but also less cloying than the original, and in doing so create a strong companion piece to the would-be-goods' gentle prompting. it is in these tracks that the raison d'être of this particular vanity project becomes most apparent and its success most complete. this record is a present. it has been put together with love (unlike all those discharge tributes, they haven't just lobbed on any fourth-rate band that's ever sent them a track!) and yes it will also send you scurrying back to your smiths records and if you think that's a bad thing then there is little we can do for you. with valentine's day fast approaching, you may find once again that these songs will save your life.

* * * * *

simpático "club life" (matinée recordings): the liberty ship "northern angel" (matinée recordings)

so it's a single of the month face-off, with santa barbara's matinée providing the head to head: even at our age there is a joy in getting hold of records and then wanting to ensure you can listen to them without any distraction: unplug the phone, disable the doorbell and let focused melancholy wash over you...

ex-sweet william geezah jason sweeney reappears for the first time since "the difference between alone and lonely" album with a new ep detailing dysfunctional romance on the streets of melbourne, and whereas the album concentrated on the hanging thoughts and claustrophobia of the sweetest ache, "club life" owes its greatest debt to the field mice: meaning that while the depictions of the betrayal and fear that surround the heart of human relationships remain clinging and powerful, the music is dancier, even bouncier, if still lacking the echoing desperation of his magnificent matinée debut "postal museum". so there's the title track (scientific demonstration that emptiness inside translates well to simple major to minor guitar over sparse but paced beats, as jason asks "couldn't he see that i was upset ?" of a past amour); then "inseparable" spins a web of drum machine and sarah guitars halfway between "let's kiss and make up" and "white" before a spoken word segment, which may or may not be your jump-off, gives way to an unutterably field micey soundclash of tinny drum machine and swirling woolworths guitars - quite brilliant; "garden greene" again works up to a swirl of keyboards, echo and drum machine with the field mice (in "here comes everybody"-time wake tribute mode) as its nearest reference point; "your first and last warning" showcases more sweet aches and soft radiance as lines like "this kind of dream is not easy / for the likes of you and me" almost reprise the "life is cruel to boys like me...and you" of "union station"; and the last song, "self-conscious" takes its indubitable field miceness from the latter's "triangle", even down to the hummed "aa-aah" sounds that hover amidst the sequenced delays towards the back of the mix. over the twenty minutes of "club life", even though there are elements of electro frippery (carefully sequenced sounds flying in and out) it is still identifiably heartrending indie-pop. but the best thing about this ep is that, like the album, there is no padding whatsoever - if you like the sweeney thing, then every song will merit being put on yr headphones and listened to in bed while the night sky tries to fight off the street lamps and car headlights.

back in t' other hemisphere, "northern angel" is obviously not about london's deepest tube line or the islington station with unfeasibly broad platforms that stands upon it, but a hymn of sorts to antony gormley's imposing motorway-side sculpture "the angel of the north", which stands on a former colliery site acting as a gateway to gateshead, england. while it's true that the liberty ship are influenced by rubbish bands like the byrds, and the beatles (yet only ourselves and the magnificent tasty zine, much to singer marc elston's chagrin, appear to have the guts to point out that most bands on matinée would walk all over the beatles) "northern angel" is simply a great A side, full of shambling drums, harmonica and, in its chorus, warm go-betweens guitars: wide-eyed in admiration for its subject, packed with hooks that make it the natural successor to last year's freewheeling "don't react", and ending with a delicious coda, introduced by the subtlest touch of feedback. it is without doubt the standout track on the cd-ep, but if that wasn't enough, "final kick" sees rachel eyres lead a smiths-like, beautifully sung jangler that glows like the softer tunes off comet gain's "casino classics" before rounding off with a very bulldozer crash-style guitar line towards the end. and the closing "small lives" is unbearably sad, its lyrics and longing respectively reminding us of b.c. (again) and hood, but as the rain tracks the tear stains there is, one trusts, some hope somewhere. of course the liberty ship don't sound anything like simpático - since when did that have relevance to a joint review on in love with these times in spite of these times ? - so when it comes down to it, we find it hard to choose between these records. but at a few euros a throw, and with us still quite content after fifteen to twenty listens, isn't it worth taking the chance ?

* * * * *

the windmills - drug autumn ep (matinée)

the latest offering from the unlikely jangle-pop breeding ground of yes, southend, this kicks off with "everything is new each day", a faithful stab at the 'perfect pop song' which falls down on that front by being a little too cloying and a little too clinical. they've selected all the usual items from the "perfect pop song" drop-down menu - "la la la's", lyrical wide eyed wonderment and a soft landing after two minutes; the end result is very palatable but strangely unsatisfying. a neat little tiramisu of a song, then."drug autumn" itself swells into four and a half minutes of reminiscence - even though singing about drugs is usually even more boring than talking about drugs, the tone is nicely unspecific and self-conscious. "are we still where we were ? " chimes sweetly to no particular effect, so it falls on closer "want" to provide my favourite slice of the ep: apparently from the last album, it jangles and oozes a warm, laconic charm, much more in the mould of singer roy thirlwall's melodie group project.

* * * * *

pale sunday "a weekend with jane ep" (matinée recordings)

pale sunday's fatal but understandable faux pas is being from brazil in 2003 rather than bristol in 1986, but they overcome this gamely with our joint favourite single from this mass of 45s. their first outing for matinée is actually tight, focused, jangly indie, drawing much from the pristine international tradition of compatriots brincando de deus as well as the european likes of brideshead and aerospace, and bookended with the two best tunes, a title song that skips tunefully and daintily through sunlit streets before one of those great two-note closing guitar lines, and the final track "the girl with sunny smile" which is a storming indie pop number, made by the second guitar part which curves into the chorus and smilingly deployed "sha-la-las", turning this reviewer for its duration into the boy with sunny smile. if you're looking for something with a bit of edge, pale sunday may be unable to provide it, but otherwise you are unlikely to have any complaints to the management.

* * * * *

We still know - for sure - that there are other ancient in love with these times, in spite of these times reviews of this splendid little label out there. We'll post them up in due c., should we ever find them.

Thursday, August 19, 2010

Gang Starr: One Of The Best Yet

[we love g.s: here's the proof]



"Poetry comes from within / and will always win" - Gang Starr, "Beyond Comprehension"

"I'm ready to lose my mind / But instead I use my mind / Put down the knife / And take the bullets out my 9" - Gang Starr, "Moment Of Truth"

Earlier this year saw the death of Guru, from cancer, aged 43: all the more saddening given that we'd been spending a fair bit of time with our Gang Starr records even in the few months before that. And that we'd slept on the opportunity of seeing the man play in London, an opportunity that of course has now slipped away forever.

When Keith Elam (aka Keithy E the Guru and then, much more sensibly, just the Guru) hooked up with one Christopher Martin (no, not that one, but the artist also known as DJ Premier) it really took the hitherto unknown Gang Starr up the league table. Strange, in so many ways, that we like GS so much: after all, many describe or dismiss them as "jazz rap", and we are not renowned as jazzateers. But, in the same way (a few of you might want to close your ears here) that the most vital hip-hop took templates created by Parliament and James Brown and frankly improved on them, Premier's careful picking of jazz instrumentals, a genre beloved by both men, was the platform for original and high quality new music. As for Guru, while sadly better known for the unhinged lyric to "DWYCK" rather than the acres of fine rhymes that he did come up with, his style was measured, laid back (surely Rakim-influenced) but normally authoritative, his only overplayed thematic trait a seeming obsession with his height (5'8 or '9, depending on the tune), a penchant which Royce Da 5'9" of course continues to this day.

The first album featuring Premier, "No More Mr Nice Guy", is a little dated, we'll admit, and it's p'raps surprising that "Jazz Thing", for example, was a very minor UK hit at the time (er, 66 with a bullet). Mind you, it's an elpee worth copping for "Words I Manifest", "Knowledge" and especially the single "Positivity". (Early B-side "Here's The Proof", a bonus track on the CD, also well merits yr aural attention, being the most obvious bridge between their first and second LPs). But it was that second album, "Step In The Arena", which saw Gang Starr take off almost vertically, suddenly delivering track after track of single quality including, but hardly limited to, the actual singles. "Just To Get A Rep" is a lyrical idea that's been stolen a thousand times, but Guru plays it just right as he recounts with ultra-realism (and, refreshingly, a touch of analysis, rather than the old "jus' holding a mirror up to society" get-out) the sheer pointlessness of gang violence in the projects: and "Who's Gonna Take The Weight ?", also on the "Rep" 12", was astonishing, musically a PE-style killer with their signature brass / kettle mash-up thing going full pelt. It starts with a sample saying "KNOWLEDGE IS POWER" and finishes with a "kettle" solo to fade: matchless. The cutesy "Lovesick" was sadly not an Orange Juice cover, but *was* a relatively unclumsy crossover tune, with Guru even coming over as straightforward and sensitive, in bleak contrast to the depressing, testosterone sexism that counts for "romantic" hip-hop in the current capitalist rap free-for-all. In reaching a paltry no. 50 over here, it was to be their biggest UK "hit".

While "Step" proved perhaps to be the peak, the albums that followed in the 1990s, "Daily Operation", "Hard to Earn" and "Moment of Truth" are all pretty solid, flecked with prime cuts. Even many of the guest spots stand up to scrutiny today, such as the Wu's Inspectah Deck on "Above The Clouds", M.O.P assisting with "B.I. vs Friendship" and, especially, Scarface's turn on the maudlin but menacing "Betrayal". Great tracks like "Daily Operation"'s "Now You're Mine" - taken from the soundtrack of "White Men Can't Jump" - and the legendary "Soliloquoy of Chaos" found themselves somehow relegated to B-sides, but you couldn't gainsay their class, nor that of pointed political commentaries like "Hardcore Composer" and "Conspiracy". "Daily Operation" (its title taken from a line in "Just To Get A Rep") also gave us the excellent "2 Deep" single, which included Guru shedding more light on the memorable opening lyric ("I was raised like a Muslim") of "Take The Weight".

For its part "Hard To Earn" spawned "Mass Appeal", another of our favourite 45s: a fruitful 1994 saw the duo roll out that, "2 Deep" and the "Code To The Street" EP as singles. And even the maligned "Moment Of Truth" long player boasted not just an uplifting, thoughtful, title track but also "You Know My Steez", a song to come back to time after time, another 12" we can hardly bear to leave out of our sight, when Guru stormed out of the blocks and dropped effortless flow over Premo's luxuriously underplayed, rolling beats. (Guru also references PE's "Welcome To The Terrodome" early on, making this a great track to follow "Terrordome" on a mixtape). Our copy of the 12" was nearly physically wrestled from us once by a burly geezah who was convincingly deadpan in only letting us keep it because "it shows you got taste". And only the other day we managed to get hold of the Lady of Rage-featuring remix, tucked away on the B-side of another top single from the LP, "The Militia" (you know, "one of us / equals any of us / disrespect any of us / and you'll see plenty of us"... ooh, and the "Part 2" remix of that, which featured Rakim, no less, alongside our fellow Westside Connection member WC, was even better than the orig).

The double-album "Full Clip: A Decade Of Gang Starr" compilation in 1999 joined most of the hits with a few new tracks, such as the club-friendlier but still born-from-golden-era "Discipline", which was released as a single at the same time and in which Guru, this time abetted by sleek R&Bsters Total, continued to rhyme about the importance of keeping your head while all about you are wilding. It was only really with 2003's final suite, "The Ownerz", that Gang Starr dented their own reputation a little, for while it was easy to put Eminem and co in the shade - as they most assuredly did - we were judging them by their own rather higher standards, and aside from the title track it was a comeback they didn't quite nail despite appearances from Jadakiss, Fat Joe and Snoop Dogg, and the ever-durable "The Militia" franchise getting a Part 3.

In a way, the fact that "The Ownerz" was merely a very good hip-hop album was a sign that Gang Starr's moment had passed, and the OK but not-all-that "Skills" 12", the first single off it, would be the last of theirs that we rushed out to buy within nanoseconds of release. After "The Ownerz", Premo and Guru began to get all that post-break up stuff out of their systems, Morrissey / Marr style, with DJ P. cementing a reputation as producer of choice, Guru launching his "Jazzmatazz" sets and shows that fully indulged his love of those records he'd grown up with at home. And we'd found, thanks to our fanzine, that we were dipping our toes back into indie-pop more often, and after a while we stopped paying the pair the attention we'd once lavished on them.

But, just like the Smiths, a truly worthwhile legacy had already been created, one which we will always cherish. So believe this. There won't be any time soon when Guru's flow isn't bursting out of our speakers.

Peace.

* * * * *

postscript #1: in love with these times, in spite of these times recommended Gang Starr listening (with impressive restraint, we've narrowed this down to a mere thirty-three tracks from their 100+, although tunes from the first and last albums are included really so you can listen to their musical progression, while the second to fourth albums in particular probably deserve wall-to-wall attention):


from No More Mr Nice Guy: Words I Manifest, Positivity (remix), DJ Premier In Deep Concentration (old-school DJ cut a la Eric B's solo turns on early EB&R albums: also on the B side of the "Manifest" 12"), Knowledge, Here's The Proof (bonus track on the CD, and again on that "Manifest" 12");

from Step In The Arena: Step In The Arena, Execution Of A Chump, Who's Gonna Take The Weight ?, Check The Technique (there's a remix of this on the 12" version of the title track), Beyond Comprehension, Just To Get A Rep, As I Read My S-A, Precisely The Right Rhymes. We're well aware that's half of the whole record;

from Daily Operation: Soliloquoy of Chaos, Take It Personal, 2 Deep, Conspiracy, Hardcore Composer;

from Hard To Earn: Code Of The Streets, Tonz O'Gunz, Mass Appeal, Now You're Mine, Blowin' Up The Spot;

from Moment Of Truth: You Know My Steez, Moment Of Truth, Betrayal;

from Full Clip: Full Clip, Discipline, Gotta Get Over (Taking Loot) (an excellent single, also on the soundtrack to "Trespass", fondly remembered by us for the mere fact of 2 of our all time heroes and "wish they were uncles" Ice-T and Ice Cube teaming up on celluloid and, in retrospect, probably only for that);

from The Ownerz: "Sabotage", "Rite Where U Stand", "PLAYTAWIN", "The Ownerz".

postscript #2: in love with these times, in spite of these times [essential] essential Gang Starr listening (i.e. as an alternative, if you've only got seven minutes to live):

"Who's Gonna Take The Weight ?", "You Know My Steez".

Monday, August 02, 2010

555, you helped us get more alive



If you were a City lawyer with underground indiepop leanings in the late 1990s and early 2000s (in our experience not a terrifically oversubscribed club) then Tower Records on Piccadilly Circus was your new best friend (replacing all your conventional human friends, who still had lives but who you never saw any more). Not only did the store open until midnight - meaning that you could wander in there even if you didn't get out of the office until 10 or 11 in the evening, which was hardly uncommon then (as those of you who often saw us wander into gigs in full whistle and flute, usually just as the last chord rang out, will testify), or allowing you to salvage a corporate night out in the West End (usually full of unbearable private school braying and showboating in extremely terrible bars) by ducking out at closing time and sneaking down Regent Street to said record mecca - but it also had a comprehensive and up-to-date selection of v. obscure indieness. In particular, Tower Records seemed to have everything released on 555 Recordings. Many an otherwise unsatisfactory evening for this downcast, downtrodden twentysomething was therefore leavened mightily by being able to pounce on a new 7" or CD on the way home, and play them within the hour. Remember, this was in the days before you could just pay for and download music at will: indeed, purchasing records outside of office hours still felt both a privilege and a novelty. (The privilege now denied us, of course, is buying great records on small indie labels from actual shops, let alone chainstore megastores like Tower).

This mattered even more because 555 Recordings (first of Leeds, then Philadelphia, and late of Arizona) is one of the best labels of the last twenty years: as they themselves have it, they've been "banging our heads against the wall with conviction and style since 1995". You would have struggled to find enough love for them in the inkies, but 555 had a terrific roster and doled out a generous acreage of compilations, one-offs and genuinely classic singles / albums that spanned indiepop, experimental, electronica and ambient (often all at once). The factor that united all of these things was the talentspotting nous of all-round hero of ours Stewart Anderson, a man who always had an uncanny gift of being friends with most of the people in the world who were making great music at any particular time.

It did no harm that 555 could therefore call on the services of Stewart himself, including post-Sarah incarnations of the peerless Boyracer (see the opening archive reviews below) and his massively underrated solo work as Steward (*so* much you should check of that, but how about Cex's remix of "This Land Is Nervous" or the brilliant "The Last Wasps Of Summer", a single not actually on 555 but on kindred spirit Orgasm Records of France, frequent collaborators with several of our favourite Leeds-connection artists). Mr Anderson's schooldays links with fellow Spofforth Hill galacticos Hood - later documented in the marvellous Wetherbeat Scene package on 555 - also meant that that band, and glorious Hood-related projects such as the wonderful Famous Boyfriend, featured prominently on the release schedule.

555 continued to furnish some wonderful records in more recent, post-Tower Records years - "Your Cassette Pet" was a typical compilation flourish, while "Flickering B&W" was one of many examples of Boyracer's unfading charms.

But this post is really about an earlier phase of 555's history, and of our own history. As we approach retirement from this game, we wish that we had time to say more about all the ways that 555 touched us in those often difficult years, beyond inspiring us to write about many of their records at the time. But all we can do now is say that this post - and some extracts below from what we did write, tired but happy and at home, after those forays to Piccadilly Circus - are here to pay tribute to a label, and a label boss, who inspired us and helped us and made us stay young and angry and aware when the world was trying to make us old and jaded and complacent.

* * * * *

boyracer "boyfuckingracer" (555)

well at last. in terms of wall to wall quality, a compilation that is up there with the field mice's "where'd you kiss that way", big flame's "rigour", "this is heavenly" or even the smiths' "singles": full of songs we have loved to and lost to and drunk to and sung along to.

kicking off with "he gets me so hard" is not really fair on any other records released this year as that song, in 2 1/2 minutes, uses the medium of pop (hard, fast and beautiful and noisy but pop all the same) to storm every possible barricade. it was the moment that sarah records finally completed the journey to the punk ethic that they had always not-so-secretly coveted... the whole song is like riding a massive wave, from the taut bass intro through the boy/girl vocal collision to the last 20 or seconds of pure chaos, in which the cumulative effect of the frantic drumming and the earsplitting guitars is to stab you through the heart, not unlike the wonderful feedback romance of "you trip me up". definitely one of the most compelling love songs of the 20th century.

we'll all play the game of tracks we would have included that they haven't... my choices are "jesus suzanne christ", "no fuel", "david byrne", "doorframe" (a particularly gaping omission), "your dark secrets", "michael", "boyracer" (gaping to the point of unforgivable), "two", "boxing day"... but the whole point of that game is to demonstrate how brilliant boyracer were, in that 33 great tracks merely scratches the surface of their prolific, unstable, erratic and above all magnificent back catalogue. to prove the point, consider a mere handful of the tracks featured: "i've got it and it's not worth having", the top tune from the splendid "B is for Boyracer" set on sarah; "your secret desires", best of the superb "Racer 100" five-tracker; "west riding house" and "meadowhall", breakneck joyrides through the streets of west yorkshire; "friend", the acoustic tearjerking dalliance ("situations that suck... everything is shit... but when you need a friend, i'll be there") with even as we speak (but really, what's with the banjo ?) and tucked away as track 28 and justifying even the length of this sentence, the behemoth of a cover version that takes even as we speak's classic pop-pourri "one step forward" and transforms it into a massive, massive lo-fi distortion festival without losing any of the original's playful charm. godlike.

being able to cram verses, choruses and instrumentals galore into songs that frequently only just make the one minute mark is a gift that we haven't witnessed since the more one dimensional days of the rosehips. as with most truly great bands, the thing that lifts boyracer into the top drawer, however, is lyrics that were both original and easy to identify with, combining the ache of distant romance with the immediacy of english angst.

and to close ? a short, romantic interlude, recorded on a dictaphone. it's called "in love with these times". and it, not any other work of the same name, is why we are called what we are.

* * * * *

boyracer "to get a better hold you've got to loosen yr grip" (555)

ok. now the reformation of any once-quality combo is beset with dangers. symptoms in reviewers include wary expectation, eager anticipation, and in the case of returns of original punk icons, something akin to primal fear (mixed with a soupçon of cringing embarrassment). however, boyracer's new album is their most coherent work: they had after all been getting pretty close to the modern epitome of punk/pop fusion in the non-experimental half of their "in full colour" set before they kind of fizzled out with the unobtrusive "perfect tense" 7" in 1997. now that's been exposed as a false ending, the boy racer (stewart anderson aka steward) has decided to resurrect the group, with wife jen turrell on bass, and ara hacopian (lately the 5th member of the saturday people, we seem to recall) providing the extra layer of guitar on more raucous numbers.

to those of you who never really bought into the boyracer thing - possibly you remember their early flexis, and recall wondering what the hell they were doing signing to sarah, before you kind of got distracted by britpop or something - well for us, boyracer cemented their reputation with the sarah a sides "i've got it and it's not worth having" and "he gets me so hard", but their main attraction to us has always been that they had something to say (largely on the personal / political level), and they were prepared to say it with feedback. we guess it was possibly wire who first realised, with "pink flag", that there wasn't much point in playing songs that lasted 3 minutes unless you had 3 minutes' worth to say - best just dive in, say what you gotta say and wind proceedings up pretty smartly, and if you do that in 70 or 80 seconds, as boyracer often do, so much the better. it's a market in which boyracer have traded admirably with past classix like "small consolation", "west riding house" and "your secret desires", and there are plenty of golden nods to that tradition here in standouts like "sarah and sarah", "temper" (the alternate take at #21 being even better), "tell me where my hands should go" (an exemplary lust song) and "nostalgic for a time i hardly remember", during which not only does the phone appear to ring, but i'm damn sure that this time the screech at the end isn't feedback, but the sound of a kettle boiling. there's also a new and improved version of "razor", originally previewed on "boyfuckingracer". all the songs gleefully run into each other, too, one scratchy thrash bumper-to-bumper pranging into the next - no respectful radio 3 silences here.

"i lost a day / but gained so much more..."

there are a few necessary deviations from the boyracer formula, although none of the famous boyfriend collaborative experiments that perhaps unsettled the flow of "in full colour". of these, track 10 is the best answer phone track since the beatnik filmstars' "phone kids": let's just say it has the desired effect. and former b.f. andrew jarrett is indeed in the area, responsible for recording some of these tiny gems onto 8-track. occasional guitarist and "classic line up" member matt green also plays on his own composition, "matty's untitled song" (shades of "billy's third" ?) which does enough in its 45 seconds to keep his forthcoming solo album (as "the tall boy", in which guise he's already impressed us) firmly in mind. and there are a trio of covers to provide (a little) tone and contrast - the primitives' "nothing left" is done in fine style, with jen turrell's vocal recalling the cuteness of early tracy tracy; the marine girls' "in love" (such a shame when you think of tracey thorn now that aberration "missing" always sees to lodge in mind) is charmingly rendered, the best part being in the chorus with stewart saying "i hear you're..." and then as the guitar really kickstarts he adds / yelps "IN LOVE!!" - it's faithful to the childlike allure of the original. "come out 2 nite" is more an affectionate interpretation, not really being a patch on the original but at least reminding us how kenickie's potential was never realised... these cover versions, tending as they do to (gasp!) exceed the two-minute mark, seem quite epic, surrounded as they are by boyracer's homegrown short sharp shocks.

it's always a factor that stewart's lovelife - or at least certain episodes from it - is now an open canvas thanks to previous recorded confessionals. while this doesn't put boyracer quite in the league of j-lo, cris judd and puff daddy - thank goodness - like so many of those field mice and trembling blue stars songs, it adds an extra edge in listening to the records as you try and guess who they're about. listening to "priorities" (another office recommendation), following some of the harrowing revelations of steward's "horselaugh on my ex", you're in no doubt as to who the song is about; equally one would assume that "every day is christmas with you" ("don't let me become immune to such beauty ...") is aimed at jen: like any decent romantic cadeau, stewart is responsible for putting the whole thing together. you can almost imagine him presenting her the master tape, gift wrapped, with boyish pride. my favourite lyrics on the album are actually "grand rapids", but whenever boyracer slow down these days, comparisons with steward's solo material are bound to surface, and they can't always be flattering. you wonder what such touching, homely phrases ("sat outside in the freezing snow / in the dead of night / my coat on / my hood up / all alone...") could do to you if they were part of the steward montage of samples and fluffy electronica.

still relevant, then.

* * * * *

various artists "knowing we was right from da start" (555)

i know arrogance isn't becoming, but 555 records (now relocated from leeds, yorkshire, to philadelphia) have got much to be arrogant about and this summary of their roster is the usual tour of all that is innovative and meaningful in lo-fi pop and electronica, showing that they were indeed correct from da start - my own baptism was hood's fine "biochemistry revision can wait", which is included here and which i tracked down in my otherwise barren time in nottingham about '94/95. top tunes of many for me here are the other hood contribution, the single "(the) weight"; the aislers' set's "fire engine" - a fantastic, crackling homage to the shirelles as played by the mary chain; empress' "skills unknown", which I don't remember from their albums but which is the pick of their three cuts herein; hulaboy's kitchen sink drama "river of honey and mud"; beachbuggy's tempered fall tribute "ya just a little punk"; huon's utterly disarming and shambly "thunder"... as you'll have gathered, popular music pickers, 555 have what we premiership-haters enviously know as "strength in depth". more power to their cute electronica and lo-fi obsessed elbow.

* * * * *

Various Artists “These Are Testing Times” (555)
Various Artists “You Gotta Get More Alive” (555)


Two 20-track budget samplers packed with lo-fi; sometimes ideas and titles are more successful than the finished products; but the Empress and Steward compilation LPs which came out this year demonstrated that 4-track is still capable of evoking far from humdrum worlds. The CDs, too, showcase a fair breadth of talent. Famous Boyfriend have mutated from perfect post-Brighter indie (“We’re All Pretty Much Failures”) through basic skewed Steward-by-numbers (“The Last Drink Makes Me”) to their instrumental reincarnation as the Remote Viewer (witness the breakbeat-with-a-heart of “We Do What We Can”). Meanwhile, Kyoko continue to seep almost unnoticed out of speakers (the mysterious quiet-fi “t.a.m.s.”); Halkyn shine a flickery flame for bedroom acoustic angst, post-homework no doubt, with “Local Summit” and the superbly titled “I Tried So Hard, But I Was Already Mistaken”; Kid 606 transports his nervy mantras across the pond via the medium of beats n’ bleeps (“Nobody Wants To Be A Star Any More”); Clohydris Diepholz (track title unpronounceable) messes around with loops in a most satisfying manner (imagine the Third Eye Foundation’s remix of the Pastels' “On The Way” but on a very austere Weimar-style low-deutschmark budget). And then from around the world there are more traditional takes on indie from Amber#2 (a Belgian REM, except good), Ashland (stilted Amero-pop drawl) and Huon (scuzzy southern-hemispherettes who have a track on their album called “C86” which makes you want to buy it just for that, until you remember that the song “C86” by the BMX Bandits was one of their worst songs ever, not even counting the fiddle).

Anyway, what I’m trying to say is that 555 are much closer to my own musical credo, “if you can’t be good, be different”; in fact, they are frequently good too, which is a bonus. Shinkansen, on the other hand, is producing sub-Sarah indie from the days of, well, before Sarah, which makes you think the Sea Urchins died in vain (let me reiterate: I do like Cody and Monograph – but not with “every fibre of my being”)… and it is no coincidence, I am sure, that there was some comment on the Shinkansen website earlier this year appearing to “celebrate” the carnage of 26 May 1999. Despite now claiming to be an Orient fan, Mr Haynes clearly has no conception of the things that are actually helping to drive the O’s into the Conference this season. Man Utd are killing football, as usual, and in the same way that the Beatles ruined music (i.e. with mass public backing). The great Preston side of 1889 won the Double without losing a game (didn’t concede a goal in the FA Cup) and it’s fair to say they would have won the League Cup, Auto Windscreens, European Cup, World Club Championship, Super Cup and Intercontinental Cup in the same year if only some marketing persona [non grata] had thought of them at that stage. Same with Huddersfield in the 1920s, Arsenal in the 1930s, etc, etc, etc.

While I’m on this topic, you will have noticed that the FA are killing football, too. They get paid for killing football. I’m all for people getting paid to kill rugby, or cricket – I’d do it myself for free – but the FA’s twisted minds get their kicks from frying the small fry and letting the paper idols I mentioned above get away with anything. Just imagine if Robbie Fowler or Patrick Vieira had kicked Neil Lennon in the head – it would have been a ban some way into the third millennium, at least (and, incidentally, un-English as it might be, I’d rather be spat at than suffer the sort of two-footed leg-breaking challenges that Michael Owen and his mates from the diving club are coming up with). The FA enjoy it most of course when they’re destroying the FA Cup – letting games be played at every time possible, except 3 p.m. on a Saturday; moving the 3rd round to December (Please never let this experiment be repeated) for their mates at MUFC and then allowing them to jack in defending the trophy anyway (instead of expelling them) so that for the rest of all time their fans can claim they “would have won it” (in fact, they’d have played a bunch of kids and got pasted fair and square, like they did in the League Cup). I suppose hopeless optimism would also suggest we could go back to calling the top division the “First division”, etc, even numbering the players on the field with 1 to 11, but I’ve fair given up on this. Perhaps there’s a kill the FA website we could link to…

Difficult to link this article back to 555 after such a fantastic digression (that’s fantastic in its true sense, rather than the received wisdom that it means “really good”, I hasten to add), but I think I’ve found a way. I remember Boyracer’s “I’ve Got It And It’s Not Worth Having” (as do all fans of, well, pop music, I would hope); and Matt Rowson's comment that, although not quite up his particular street, it was pretty enjoyable all the same – ramshackle, energetic and (I always remember this) “like a non-league side getting through to the third round of the FA Cup”. That might have been damning with faint praise – I think Alexander Pope predated Boyracer – but what chance analogies like that even existing if the FA had their way ? (I should also mention that subsequent single “He Gets Me So Hard”, if I can extrapolate further – can I ? Many thanks – was like a non-league side getting to the final of the FA Cup and hammering Liverpool 5-0). Anyway, a few years on, the leading lights of the former Boyracer are now driving 555 forward, and to me that’s enough to restore daylight to my darkened mind.

* * * * *

the famous boyfriend (555 / orgasm)

a compilation of the two albums before famous boyfriend hatched into the remote viewer, and one which confuses by reversing the chronological order so that tracks 1-13 (the "making love all night wrong" outing on 555) showcase the evolution to near-instrumental samples and beats, while 14-25 (the eponymous debut lp on orgasm records of france) are much more melodic, with a strong lyrical thread - more in the vein of the fantastic, scratchy earlier pop moment "we're all pretty much failures".

although i prefer the second half of this cd then, it would have been a crime not to reissue "making love", of which only a painfully austere 120 copies were ever released. the grave, warm tones of loops like "it's not the way you kiss" and "septembernovember" are worth a far wider audience, and on one occasion ("your hearts not in it") there is even a discernible and world-weary vocal, aided and abetted by pretty keyboards, harking back to the early stuff.

nevertheless, i commend this cd to you chiefly for "the famous boyfriend" album, which despite being remastered from one of the 400 vinyl copies ever issued stands up well as a morose pop anthology rooted, as you would expect, in the pop vs. experimentation ideologies of (earlier) hood and steward. the famous boyfriend wrote songs about being sorry for oneself, messing up relationships and opportunities, often through saying the wrong things and drinking too much of the right things (think hood's "dismissed army brought us knives", but channelled into an arrangement and even some kind of - albeit lo-fi - production values). these graceful indie tunes impart a fairly deep-etched melancholy without departing too strongly from the home-recording blueprint, and the demise of the famous boyfriend, as this cd now evidences, is a tragedy at least on a par with the commissioning of big brother. a record to look after.

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steward "bang! there goes my youth" (555)

and talking of steward, a chance to appraise "bang! goes my youth", originally released in the states on blackbean & placenta, not that we ever got hold of it, but which now appears to have found its way to these shores on reissue - rather charmingly, our copy in fact reuses the cardboard sleeve from kyoko's "co-incidental music" set, turning it inside out and handprinting the steward moniker on the reverse - perhaps stewart had a load of unsold copies left over ?

the 8 tracks of the cd proper are a mixture of new vignettes and alt. takes from the "horselaugh on my ex" set that so impressed us in 2000... they start with "bad" (no relation to the fab flatmates number) which apes the formula of "horselaugh" opener "you can't fuck with nature" (beatbox thud, angular guitar riffs interspersed with breakbeats, although this time sans any jam sample) and then there's a boy/girl vocal thrash through "he is a genius with his hands", more in the vein of steward's collaborations with amy linton, though this time the girl vocal is a lot more in the punky, english mould...

"surely you know i'm trying my best... when your voice breaks up i'm half-relieved"

with such words, "dial tone collective" heralds a switch of pace to light percussion and bass keyboard tones, half-whispered voice and slices of acoustic guitar: for once, the absence of feedback is apt, suddenly ushering stewart's usual lovelorn selfconsciousness into the harsh light of the listener's concentration: the transformation smoothed by the subsequent near -instrumental "8.30 yr looking great".

it's back to indie junglist sampledom excess after that, as "i am the magnificent" mixes a treasure trove of loops, sounds and piano before crescending on the back of more guitar feedback to another plateau of white noise - but the prize in this respect is taken by a cover of the buzzcocks' "you say you don't love me" - which was a little plain in its original form. here it is given the full anderson makeover namely morse code-like cut-up bleeps, white feedback like breaking glass, shambling guitar buzz and a vocal that illiberally dollops large doses of angst all over the shop.

but it is "happy new years", the original of which jerked tears worldwide in its "horselaugh" incarnation, which remains the most sincere, affecting, heart-on-sleeve exposition of hurt that even steward has committed to public consumption: in this brittle and less noise-ridden take, fear and sexual jealousy congeal into 2m 51s of hurt, bitterness, melancholy, betrayal and resentment. it's a tranche of real-life, conveying open wounds with all the familiarity of kitchen sink drama, and is in itself the perfect closer.

however as this is steward there are then a host of hidden / "extra" cuts and, steward being steward, several of them actually bear critical analysis in their own right... they include, after the "netball" remix album's parting shot "bonus beatz", more copyright-defying escapades including a kid 606 / v/vm-ish take on "i feel love", aswell as a sumptuously-weighted acoustic plus violin sixty-second rendition of "something to crave". finally, if you mentioned to us the phrase "world weary and wise", it would strike us as rather encapsulating the timbre of the emotions which steward's lyrics have been exhibiting for the last ten years. it would also of course bring to mind yet another completely underrated janglethon from the undisputed kings of el records (depending on who you ask, of course) the james dean driving experience who, as coincidence have it, we were mentioning earlier. so you can appreciate our happiness on hearing steward's rather cheap keyboard cover of that very song. and he even whistles the violin part. how cool is that ? oh - and claire - it was recorded in melbourne.

so while there may be nothing here quite on the level of our past eulogies to "hey! leopard" or "the last wasps of summer", and the untitled nigh-on faultless closing track on "goodbye to everything you love", there remains much to admire in the ex-sarah records hearthrob, now prolific globetrotter and record label mogul, stewart anderson. word 2 his mother.

* * * * *

halkyn "winterhill" ep (555)

finally, well, more of a public service announcement than a review. according to the 555 site, the excellent "winterhill" single by the honey-scented welsh minimalists halkyn has sold less than a 100 copies to date. if so that is a national disgrace, hence this cri de coeur. worst of all this very british apathy is prompting 555 to "review" its policy of releasing 7" vinyl at all... that would mean joining shinkansen and others in just giving up... and the thing that really cuts is that you can hardly blame the labels, it's our fault for not bothering to go out and support the format... always remember that when you don't exercise your choices, they just get taken away. um, yes... for the record, while there's nothing quite up to the brilliance of "norway" from the "behind the snow" ep, "winterhill" is a spindly, echoey, ssshhh-fi ten-track delight - albeit so subtle at times as to be almost invisible - and "through snow" in particular is a top example of the genre.

* * * * *

kyoko “co-incidental music” (555)

....shhhh. quiet-fi.

a fine band, probably the best from bristol at the moment, with their eventually-pressed outing for 555. if you listen attentively to later beatnik filmstars outings, I swear you can hear in the evocative, quieter passages strong echoes of the fine band they were about to become.

“boats” kicks off proceedings proper, a warm and soft soliloquoy leading into the more drawn out, feeling-sorry-for-itself “reality dawns on a second rate sit-com actor”: though the show is then enlivened by a faithful take on the steward standard “he dispenses with timid afterthoughts” my own favourite, on which “co-incidental music” pivots, is the gangly, late night “P.E.T.S” – the sugargliders lounging at 33 rpm. after that, things scale down, with the flow of dark but beautiful songs interrupted by a space-age and unconvincing remix of “yellow” (the pick of debut album “mini: one”). “better days! coming now!” is also far from the happyfest its unlikely title promises, but another near-fatal dose of mellow introspection before closer “ex-filmstar” nods knowingly back to the halcyon days of the beatniks, in the days when they ruled the off-kilter indie-punk ridiculous-song title world. Apparently there is another album ready for release on mobstar: we will bring you news, soon.

* * * * *

fog and ocean "fog and ocean" (555 / red square)

while some may say that every record on 555 appears to feature special guest appearances from most of the other artists on the diverse roster, fog and ocean are pretty much the epitome of this being billed as a combo including personnel recruited from the likes of the cat's miaow, huon, hydroplane and new waver (so a few more heavyweights there from the fecund musical breeding ground of melbourne!!) as well as the more traditionally ubiquitous 555 head honchos jen turrell and steward.

nevertheless, it's probably fair to say that when listening to it, you do not detect a cast of thousands at work. indeed, the opposite: the main component parts are clean keyboards and kellie's butter-wouldn't-melt voice, supplemented at times by other vocal chords both male and female but never venturing from the f&o style, which appears to be a guitar-free, and, er, new wavey trip through the clouds - the pattern is set by casiotone keyboards (you know, the sort of thing where the bass notes sound like they're being played on a stylophone), with brisk electronic percussion lifting f&o from the realms of mere empty dreamers. imagine the sound of leaves swaying in a gentle breeze, soft ocean currents lapping on the foreshore, you know the kind of thing, but kind of duffed up by shyly def beats (f&o's weapon of choice being the trusty 808, rather than their neighbours the berzerker's 909). as such it is terrific, rewarding listening - cleanly produced, simply arranged, free of padding and more accessible for 555 virgins than much on the imprint. oh, and in the style of the first remote viewer album, the songs - none of which outstay their welcome nor stray into over-experimentation - don't have anything as earthbound as names. and to round off the effect, the record itself is coolly packaged, in a very pretty sleeve that gives nothing away - as well as no song titles, there is, we presume, no album title, hence the attribution of an eponymous one which we've settled for. eponymous and anonymous, ha.

the f&o tune billed as "wave and a sigh" on the recent 555 australian pop sampler (and also included as the sixth track here), will give you an idea of the affectionate and careful homage to all past forms of sweet, winsome electronic pop that you are being pampered with. much of the lyrics touch on pastoral or geographic themes or features too, especially the opening song (which for the purposes of this review we have radically christened "song 1": to make things easier for ourselves and to achieve vague consistency, we will apply numerical order to the track listing throughout this prose, in the absence of anything more tangible to use). at its poppiest, the album is vaguely reminiscent of retro-futurist US labelmates kanda (e.g. song 2) or perhaps even the real deal of visage or ultravox (songs 3 and 4): but we are most taken with song 7 - very huon, with we assume bloke from huon on vocals; song 5 - simply divine and unspeakably cute, eespecially the stuff about pelicans nesting which is thoroughly in keeping with its delightful gorgeousness; and song 8, which should be in the charts. now.

* * * * *

STEWARD: I Was The Only Boy In The Netball Team (Blackbean & Placenta)
STEWARD: Horselaugh On My Ex (555)


“Netball” is a sweet remix album the highlights of which are Steward’s own take on Japanese experimentalists Stadium, Downpour’s incendiary rampaging of “The Last Wasps” and Figurine’s incredibly slick construct on “Bit Part Actor Made Good”, which like all the best creative remixes, creates beauty and tone that wasn’t so evident in the original.

But “Horselaugh On My Ex” is the real McCoy. Six months in the making, a 20 song concept album – the concept being a whole CD about the dramatic end of a five-year relationship, in the haze of New Year. In its own way, it is just as moving as the Trembling Blue Stars’ impossibly brittle and beautiful “Her Handwriting” album on that same horrible theme – the knowing that for once, these songs were written about real events. Steward, of course, goes further lyrically – naming names and much more – but it’s the essential vulnerability of the lines we can all relate to - “While I was sleeping, seemingly so much happened” - that really tug on our unsuspecting heart strings. Opener “You Can’t F*** With Nature” even manages to make an amateurish sample of “This Is The Modern World” fit smoothly into the sombre mood of the album – but elsewhere, in amongst the insanity, the bleeps, the bizarre guest appearances and covers - and the odd barrages of screaming feedback – the highlight is the stunning “Hey! Leopard” which sounds like prime-era Pacific (former Creation artistes and occasional purveyors of shimmering majestic beauty), courtesy of the guitars, trumpet and vocals of labelmates the Cannanes. Stunning.

* * * * *

printed circuit "acrobotics" (555)

to continue this sequence of bamboozling and arguably recent albums there's printed circuit, aka claire broadley. you'll be sufficiently au fait here if you heard her take of "sex dwarf" on 555's "a tribute to soft cell" compilation: in a sense, that gave the game away, because hearing printed circuit resembles listening to a young dave ball doing a solo jam session, full of synth pulls, twisted melody curves and occasional vocoder vocals: an unholy 1982 mishmash of soft cell vs. the sinclair zx spectrum. "sex dwarf" remains the epitome of this, although it's run close by the hidden track 6 here, a sweet bootleg in which a ragga narcissist faces the wrath of ms broadley's full armoury of circuitry. as for the five tracks actually listed, we take maximum solace in "hard drive soft drink" and "robophobic", both of which are sufficiently bright and melodic that one feels that soft cell would gladly have written them circa "memorabilia". not profound, but could still likely have you dancing like your day depended on it.

* * * * *

cex "starship galactica" (555)

while not achieving the joy of "balls out" with its hip hop beats on orange vinyl, "starship" (surely battlestar?) is a joyous bundle of electronica, energised with humour as most electronica sorely needs to be. although the obvious reference points would be fellow 555ers lesser and ver mighty kid 606, cex often roams in nightmares on wax territory, and spins some mellow vibes on "get in your squads" (most n.o.w.-ish) and "your handwriting when you were a child in the winter" - wow. what's my favourite ? probably "cal and brady style", which mops up all the relevant reference points with aplomb. close second is the mighty title track, which is - really - one of the greatest pop songs of 2001, because it's fun and soooo easy to dig. yep, this music may yet be the future, which means we're in pretty capable hands.

* * * * *

Some other highs / heights of 555 included Sisterhood of Convoluted Thinkers' "Lunchdate EP": "kitchen pop which mixes scuzzy indie lo-fi guitars and female “ba-bas” with common or garden breakbeats and lackadaisical male vocals"; Kanda's "Dormitory Heartbreaks": "on the truly maverick 555 label, kanda revisit c96 - the flickery electro pop revival and all - with the curt "dormitory heartbreaks" - the boy / girl interface is not a million miles from pipas, but just a few years too early. sugar sugar kanda pop, natch"; Kid 606 and the Remote Viewer's split picture disc: "a gorgeous platter aesthetically; between the grooves a little more mundane although the Kid’s “When I Want A Gun, Yeah” is up there with most of the techno dabbling on his 2000 long players. The Remote Viewer, so recently the near-perfect Famous Boyfriend, continue to refine their dark breakbeat vision with “A Fielder""; Cex's "Get Your Badass On": "“Balls Out” is the pick, a hip-hop style backbone shot through with skewed beats and breaks. On violent yellow vinyl, too"; and Downpour's "Don’t Go Breaking My Art": "A world away from the apocalyptic remix of Steward’s “The Last Wasps Of Summer”, here we have four slices of electronica that rotate little ripples of noise in (ever decreasing) concentric circles."

And don't worry, we still have them all.

Thursday, July 01, 2010

That Sunderland Sound



Scrabbling around on our hands and knees in the basement dungeon we've retrieved a few more Matinée bits and pieces, following the fairly exhausting post not too long ago: they will all appear in this joint once we've fully scrubbed away the cobwebs. Anyway, while dusting off one such review - of Kosmonaut's undersung single - on said label supreme, we finally found a copy of the interview we did with yer man Stephen Maughan, which makes this post something of a Kosmonaut tribute. Rightly. (Since, of course, Stephen has set "This Almighty Pop!" on a revival tip: check it).

* * * * *

kosmonaut "desert song / bee song" (matinée)

the lucksmiths' labelmates kosmonaut are from the north east of england, as under represented in this fanzine as everywhere else, so we can but attempt to redress the balance by observing that following the anthemic firestation tower debut "days of ourlives", the spunky cd-r "in my head" and the welcome resurrection of "was it you ?" on the matinee summer sampler, "desert song" is a serene pop gem which laments how the years flow past with the same inevitability and indecent haste as the sandy landscape flies by the driver's near-side window. subtle and building carefully until the keyboards propel it into a particularly cracking fourth minute, it is probably their strongest outing yet. on the other side "bee song", again careful not to move too fast, sucks the listener in from its opening chords, again with keyboards that seem to slowly emerge, shimmering with longing, and an arrangement which recalls "life goes on"-era bmx bandits (not the first band to do so this month, we know) until it is slightly disfigured by an overbearing guitar line towards the end. like some of that bandits' stuff, the vocals on this two-track 7" occasionally give little hint of being british rather than american, but this is still road music at its finest, and the lingering sentiments of "desert song" in particular hang long in the mind.

* * * * *

Kosmonaut. Spring 2003.

"the less said about Sunderland at the moment the better, thank you..."

once upon a time there was a band called bulldozer crash. now there are two bands, called the liberty ship and kosmonaut. find out more about the former here and the latter below, because stephen kosmonaut generously answered our questionnaire about the band whose last release "desert song" was their clearest realisation yet of indie pop with a real "epic" sensibility. to explain our rather odd slant of questioning, we should mention that stephen in a previous incarnation was the author of a proper, readable paper zine called "this almighty pop!" in the days before charlatans like us came along... to check out their discography sensibly or fill in any gaps, it's probably worth checking out their website for the latest - and very excitingly you will read that there appear to be 2 or 3 projects in the pipeline (and an upcoming release of some bulldozer crash tunes...)

if you'll permit us to go deep into history, a few words on "this almighty pop!" - in terms of mixing enthusiasm with erudition (even now so many zines often seem more one or the other) it was certainly an inspiration to what we try and do... was starting the fanzine simply down to being inspired by the music of the time and wanting to evangelise ? and how do you look back on that venture now ?

I just wanted to do my own version of Are You Scared To Get Happy [best fanzine ever - ed.], it really inspired me the most, I used to love getting a new issue falling through the letter box with all those new songs to try and find and listen to. I look back on it with fondness, I made a lot of friends through the fanzine which was probably the best part, the worst part was all the bad records I got sent to review but I could never see the point in writing about songs I didn't like.

for our uninitiated readers, what is the kosmonaut line-up ?

Up until now in the studio it has just been me and Geoff Suggett, sharing all the recording duties, but since we've played live with Richard Patterson on drums, Karl Whitfield on lead guitar and Jonathan Whitfield on bass we would ideally like to exploit their skill and expertise in the studio aswell. So far though only Richard's dulcet tones have been utilised on our cover of the Liberty Ship's "Northern Angel" [slated hopefullly for a soon-ish matinée coverfest].

are you prepared to list your "previous convictions" i.e. former bands and / or other crimes ?

I was in Bulldozer Crash and Denver. My only other crime was stealing a 3 pack of Fox's Glacier Mints from the RedHouse when I was about 10 , I got caught and have lived with the shame of it until now, I feel like a weight has been lifted. Geoff was in the Lavender Faction and Montana Hood.

the 2 of you (stephen and geoff) known each other a long time ? when did you start properly recording / writing songs together ?


We've know each other for about 14- 15 years now, we met at work ... it went something like this... Geoff: What sort of music are you into ? Stephen: You probably won't have heard of them...the Jesus and Mary Chain, the Primitives ? That was it really. We first recorded a song together in about 1990 on an old Fostex X-15 4-track, it was called "She Walks Away", it was very Mary Chain-ish. I released it on a compilation tape I was putting together at the time called "Positively Teenage", we called ourselves Bulldozer Clarts, I'm going to stick it up on our website soon for anyone who might want to hear it. We then got together again in 2000 to have a go at writing and recording some new songs, everything went well and we are still at it.

is there any great significance to the name "kosmonaut" that we should be aware of ?

Not really no, we were going to call ourselves NovaScotia but then we were informed that there was already a band called that in the US, I was using the name Kosmonaut for my electronic side project so we just hi-jacked it. [nb stephen is too modest to mention his electronic side project is now northern_electrix - there is talk of an n_e release in the offing and the cd-r that we managed to get off a dealer in brixton last month isn't bad at all, you know...]

how did the first (fine) release ["was it you ?"] end up on a japanese label [Motorway] ?

We were quite out of touch with the "scene" at the time that we were ready to send out our first demos, so a friend gave us a list of possible labels and Motorway was at the top of the list, the same friend also told us not to bother with Matinée because we probably weren't polished enough for them! Charming. [Indeed, "Was it you ?" did eventually get a release on Matinée, on the "Summer splash!" cd which you probably need to buy]

next we think came "days of your lives", an anthem which we presume you still must be very proud of. this time the label was german... how did that end up coming out on firestation tower ?

A guy called Christian Steiner loved the Motorway 7" and recommended us to them, we sent them some demos which they liked and offered to stick out a single. Everyone at FST is incredibly patient, they asked us to record an L.P. over a year ago and we still haven't finished it, we will deliver it eventually, honest Uwe!

and you made the decision to put the latest tunes out on the rather esteemed (not least by us as you may have noticed) matinée label. how are people reacting to the new 7" ? is it helping you to reach a wider audience now ?

People seem to be enjoying the single, we've had some really nice reviews. People tell us they like to listen to it in the car. There does seem to be a lot of people signing up to our mailing list since the single came out on Matinée so maybe we are reaching a wider audience than before.

so as you have a full band together now for playing live, does that extend to any future studio projects ?

Yes, but we've only played two gigs so far, if all goes according to plan this will hopefully transfer over into the studio, although I don't know how I'm going to fit a full drum kit in my spare bedroom to record that.

can we assume from the name "porterfield 73" for your studio / cd-r label that you are sunderland fans (if so, here's to a significant upturn in their fortunes for 2003...)

Yes, me and Geoff are both Sunderland fans, the less said about them at the moment the better, thank you.

are there plans to release the likes of "superman", or to follow other more 'experimental' routes further, aswell as the classic pop lineage of the singles releases ?

I really like "Superman" but we are struggling to find anyone else who does! It is in fact just a slowed down loop from Was It You. I'd like to take a trip down that experimental avenue every now and again, but we might have to save that kind of thing for the one off projects that we do like the recent cover version of the Liberty Ship's Northern Angel, which sounds nothing at all like the original.

the ilwttisott take on kosmonaut is a kind of modern road music, full of longing... and with space to "let the music breathe", as they say. if you could had to choose one record to accompany you on a long drive, what would it be ?

At the moment it would be the new Go-Betweens l.p. "Bright Yellow, Bright Orange" or the Russian Futurists "Let's Get Ready To Crumble"...

and what do you think of that band called... the liberty ship ? is there any friendly rivalry in the grand pop tradition ? and who blew who offstage ?

;)Bunch of amateurs. They are not bad actually, some rather nice tunes that I often find breezing through my brain unexpectedly. It was our first gig when we played with them so I guess I have to say they blew us offstage, we really should have spent more time rehearsing.

resolutions and plans for the year ahead ?

Because we've taken so long to answer these questions it might seem a little late but the answer is still the same... to finish the L.P. for Firestation Tower Records.

and before you go, what is your FAVOURITE piece of pop trivia ?

My sister in law 's boyfriend's auntie's stepson used to go out with Zoe from Pop Idol!

thank you to stephen for taking time out to run through kosmonaut's recording career so far... one is hopeful that it is only the beginning. we s'pose that the first album will give us as good an idea as ever as to the directions in which kosmonaut choose to move... and guess what, we'll try and keep you "all" up to date. as for sunderland, let's just hope they can discover some self-respect next season. ILWTTISOTT

And if you want to read a more recent Stephen inter view from a more august source, may we commend this...

the lists of 2021

singles [home] 1. edit select “far north” (kontrafaktum, 12”) 2. gremlinz & jesta / overlook “infinity “ / “lone pine” (droogs, 12”) 3. ...