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.
* * * * *
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.
