My review of The Libertines documentary DVD release for Cinevue can be read here. Hmm… maybe I was expecting too much? Still, there’s some great live footage and nice pictures of the band by their main photographer (and director of this film). I am giving this a ‘meh’ out of five.
Posted in Film, Music, Photography
Here’s an article I wrote for Flux magazine on rock stars and hot beverages. Has anybody tried Bonnie Prince Billy’s coffee yet? Any good?
The above image is from a 60′s cutlery advert.
Summer Camp and Frankie and the Heartstrings, The Lexington Arms, 8th October 2010
Oh Summer Camp… it’s hard for me to be subjective about a band whose debut album Young has been on repeat for the best part of my last two weeks. I am obsessed, by their sound as much as by their perfectly crafted, mysteriously awkward retro aesthetic. I stalk their website regularly (www.summercampband.blogspot.com) for my weekly fix of gloriously awkward 70’s family photos, and lurid prom couples with excessive facial hair and neon purple taffeta wedding gowns. ‘Round The Moon’ (their first single from Young and latest release on the label Moshi Moshi) is my current Youtube favourite: two preteen Swedish kids from some long-lost foreign B-movie hug, smoke and make out to the gentle pop twinkle of Summer Camp’s lyrics: “as we danced all night/ and we held each other tight/ ‘til the morning light”. So the expectations for my new indie pop heroes are pretty high. Thankfully, then, the gig was a treat, though not without its awkward moments.
The problem with Summer Camp is that they are arguably more of a recorded band than a live one, and as such, the production value of their recording sound is somewhat lost in the live performances. Elizabeth Sankey (the female member of the duo) often goes slightly out of tune or hits a bum note on a couple of the tracks, and their interaction with the audience sometimes falls a bit flat (like when they rather ham-fistedly compared themselves to Oasis!). This isn’t necessarily a bad thing; if anything, it adds to their awkward stage persona, and comes across as somewhat endearing. This is clearly a band who is honing their live performance style, and they are very nearly there.
Don’t get me wrong, the Summer Camp sound is still there, and the transition from music to sampled dialogues from films was very smooth. The stage is adorned by a huge projector of constantly changing retro photos of geeks and freaks and super-bad haircuts. This works beautifully, because as you zone out to their brand of surfer-rock/lo-fi summer pop, the constantly changing backdrop tells a story in itself, and of course, works perfectly with the music. Most of the songs they play are from their debut album, with some B-sides, and other songs I haven’t heard before. For a new band, they certainly have enough material to fill the time. They end on their new single ‘Round the Moon’ –arguably the most perfectly crafted pop song around, and one that seems to summarise their sound and look-. Actually, I felt a bit sad when the projector got turned off. A Summer Camp gig, it seems, is less about dancing around and getting sweaty than it is about losing yourself in their world of prom discos, first kisses and fags behind the school yard.
Posted in Music, Photography
The new Rolling Stones documentary film, Stones In Exile is a sanitised but entertaining look at the making of the Stones’ seminal album Exile on Main St. Mick Jagger, who produced the film, travels with Charlie Watts to revisit the locations that influenced their 1972 album. The resulting film is a seamless blend of super 8 footage of their move to LA, interviews with musicians and the circle at the time, and stills of Dominique Tarlé and Robert Frank’s photography of the band.
The film visits important places and people that influenced the making of the album. The most important of these is the Villa Nellcôte, which became their studio during exile. The band were facing a 93% income tax if they stayed in the country, and so, after suggestion from their financial advisor, Prince Rupert Lowenstein, they performed a short farewell tour of England, before going into tax exile in 1971.
The album was made in the basement of the Villa Nellcôte, the residence of Stones guitarist Keith Richards, his partner, model, It girl and actress Anita Pallenberg, and their son Marlon. Tarlé’s photography of the sprawling chateau captures the hedonistic glory of the place, as well as the inconvenience it presented for the musicians. The damp basement of the Villa Nellcôte was not the most ideal of recording studios, to say the least. Whether it was power failures or water leaks, molding guitars, or bad sound quality, the basement was an impractical but nevertheless instrumental location for their music sound. “It’s got a raw sound quality, and the reason for that is that the basement was very dingy and very damp,” says Mick Taylor, lead guitarist of the Stones between 1969 and 1974. Not only was the basement a molding dump, but the Villa was a haven for some of the period’s most decadent individuals. Groupies, dealers, musicians and kids hung drifted in and out of the house, until late evening when the basement became the happening place to be – a mix of music, drink and drugs. The house got burgled, and several guitars were stolen. Heavy drug use remained rife among several of the inhabitants, including the producer meant to be in charge of affairs. Then there was a drugs bust, which led to the Stones leaving for America, editing the tapes, and regaining control of the band.
In terms of Stones films, this is neither the best nor the worse. It’s obviously nothing on Performance (one of my favourite films of all time!), and avoids the goddawful pretentiousness of Jean-Luc Godard’s Sympathy for The Devil. Even as far as rock docs go, it’s not amazing. Stones in Exile is a pretty uncontroversial film, thats entertaining for fans and novices alike because of the soundtrack, great shots of the band, and rare recordings and interviews. If you’re looking for heavy rock and roll, look elsewhere, as anything really saucy is avoided, although Mick does admit that Keith and Anita’s kid would roll joints for their parents’ friends during their wild parties. Still, its definitely worth a watch.
I’ve been doing bits of reviewing for Soundblab and Bearded, and had the opportunity to go to Hop Farm festival to see none other than Bob Dylan, Blondie, Van Morrison, Mumford & Sons, Laura Marling, Tunng, Johnny Flynn, the Magic Numbers, Ray Davies, the list was ridiculous. One of my highlights was a set by Tunng, an electro-folk band whose latest album and then they saw land is one of the most faultless albums I’ve heard in years. I wrote a review of their gig for Soundblab, below:
Tunng gig, Hop Farm Festival, Kent, Saturday 3rd July
With over a two hour delay on the line-up bill, guitarist and singer Mike Lindsay walks on stage sporting a rather dodgy turban, a glazed expression and an understandably pissed off scowl. From not-so great beginnings, Tunng go on to perform a gloriously euphoric masterpiece of a live set. In fact, their show was my highlight of the Hop Farm festival – which is no mean feat given the prestigious line-up of old rock legends like Bob Dylan, Van Morrison, Ray Davies (who was on at the same time as Tunng, no less) and Blondie, combined with popular acts like Mumford & Sons, Pete Doherty, and Laura Marling. Tunng’s set, by the sounds of the response, was the highlight of many people’s festival experience. Their brand of electro folk, full of rollicking guitars, dreamy lyrics, and trippy electronic soundscapes, was the perfect soundtrack to the sweltering Kent festival.
The band played the majority of tracks from their latest album And Then We Saw Land. ‘October’, ‘With Whiskey’, and ‘By Dusk They Were In The City’ were notably good, though the whole experience for me melted into one gloriously happy bopping around. ‘Hustle’, their latest single, couldn’t help but be the pinnacle of their set. That song is catchy as hell, infectious as an STI, and so damn breezy and beautiful, you’d have to have a heart of stone and a liver of soot not to dance. The band have a great dynamic, but the main focus on stage lies in the lead vocalist and melodica player Becky Jacobs, whose understated performance – she gently swishes her skirt flamenco-style, while looking alarmingly like a young Bjork- is nothing less than charming. Mike Lindsay is the same. Humourously blaming the ethnic turban on a heavy earlier night, he seizes the moment mid-song to don a spectacular pair of only-Primark-could-make-them-they’re-that-bad comedy glasses, and lunges towards the audience with a foot propped on a speaker, to deliver a guitar solo of embarrassingly Guitar Hero-like proportions.
The set ended perfectly with ‘Bullets’, the stand-out track of their third album Good Arrows. Audience and band alike belted out the catchy chorus, “And now we don’t remember”. The song built up layer upon layer, from sad, dreamy melodies to rhythmic beats, as Jacobs’s vocals became clearer through the sound; the blue and red lights, and the sweaty audience, including a surprising number of young kids (one of whom heckled Lindsay when he put on his glasses) created a euphoric soaring sensation that ended all too soon. Walking out of the big tent, grinning ear to ear, we go off to the next artists. Who are they? Oh yeah, Ray Davies and Bob Dylan. Tunng are very aware of this: ‘We’re so honoured to be in Dylan’s back garden’ says Jacobs, to which an audience member heckles, ‘But Dylan’s in your back garden!’. I couldn’t agree more.
I also saw folk singer Seth Lakeman at the Jazz Cafe in Camden, which I was reviewing for Soundblab – the gig review is here. Other than that, I’ve been listening to Larkin Poe’s new album Spring. Check them out at www.larkinpoe.com.
Posted in Music
Maniac Meat drips like a bag of onion rings –it’s an album of sleaze, synth and sweat, which follows up Tobacco’s 2006 album Fucked Up Friends. Tobacco is the solo project of Pittsburgh-based, psychedelic pop project Black Moth Super Rainbow’s frontman Tom Fec. From the cover art, which shows a Hieronymus Bosch-like hench surfer dude vomming in front of an apocalyptical tub of KFC greasy meat, to the songs, which have titles like ‘TV all greasy’, ‘Motherlicker’, ‘Sweatmother’ and ‘Lick The Witch’- the emphasis here is on grease, sweat, and any other number of bodily fluids. Like a night out that ends in Chicken Cottage, listening to Maniac Meat is vaguely inpenetrable in the cold light of day, heavily improved by the taking of substances, and, afterwards, you might, just might, need to take a shower.
Tobacco’s aesthetic has stepped up from Fucked Up Friends, but don’t expect a drastic change of direction. His brand of nauseating psychedelic electronic remains the same – dirty synths combine with hip-grooves, cut up with videogame sounds, , and all sorts of lo-fi melodic fuzz. The first song on the album –‘Constellation Dirtbike Head’ – is a banging psychedelic tour de force, with catchy beats and Tobacco’s trademark dizzying synths.
The lyrics are violent and nauseating –clearly the effect Tobacco wants to put out with this album. Take ‘Overheater’, where a dislocated vocoder voice repeats the refrain: “Put me into your milkshake/ Smash my eyes out/ Flush my head out.” The lyrics turn your stomach, but the music gently lures you back in.
For a sixteen-track album, Maniac Meat is bound to have some misses, but there are some treats there too. ‘New Juices From The Hot Tub Freaks’ has a good sound, but can get a bit repetitive. The same goes for ‘Unholy Demon Rhythm’, a track which melts together beatbox samples with eery synth trips and a heavy bass rhythm, but still falls flat on your ears after the first minute. ‘Heavy Makeup’ is definitely a treat – an up-beat electro track banger with yet more whirring synths, which lasts slightly longer than most of the other tracks. Though there are plenty of songs, many of them could have benefited from being a little longer – as soon as your sucked into a particular riff, the track is over. The shame it’s the better songs that are often also the shortest – especially Beck’s two contributions to the album – ‘Fresh Hex’ and ‘Grape Aerosmith’. “Fresh Hex” is one of my favourite tracks on the album. Here, Tobacco features Beck’s alliterative, free-association rap (with such nonsensical lyrics as “colour-coordinated cowboy catchphrase”) and chops it over whirring distorted synths, creating a dizzying cacophony of words and sound. ‘Grape Aerosmith’ can summon up a bad trip in the purest of listeners. The nauseating music combines with Beck’s trippy chanting creates a gentle but suitable psychedelic end to the album. Nonetheless, there are plenty of short and beautiful tracks. ‘Stretch Your Face’, for example, is enchanting – trippy, delicate, with repetitive driving riffs.
Tobacco’s sound, like that of Black Moth Super Rainbow, is characterised by an intentionally retro production aesthetic, which uses old-fashioned electronic sounds (like the beginning of ‘Fresh Hex’) created by vintage analogue synths and tape players. Maniac Meat combines the lo-fi sounds of purposefully damaged production with hi-fi, industrial-tinged hiphop beats. Tobacco does all this while still keeping the mysterious aura around his musical persona – rumour has it this album was recorded in the deep dark recesses of a forest in Pittsburgh. This clearly seems to be the trend for musicians at the moment, as bands like Summer Camp and Cults are keeping their identities shrouded in mystery. For Tobacco, this isn’t a bid for twee – Maniac Meat is abrasive, demonic, and in-your-face sleazy. It’s also the kind of album that you’ll know already if you’re going to like or not. Beck’s vocal contributions on ‘Fresh Hex’ and ‘Grape Aerosmith’ will likely gain some new ears, but to be honest, this album isn’t a friendly first listen.
Release date: 28thJune 2010
Label: Anticon
This review is up on the Soundblab website. It’s also Album of the Month over at Rough Trade.
Posted in Music
Tadanori Yokoo is one of Japan’s most successful and internationally recognized graphic designers and artists, who has designed film and music posters for some of the greatest bands of the 60′s and 70′s.
Yokoo’s film poster for Roger Corman’s lo-fi cult film The Trip (1967)
Alternate film poster for The Trip (1968)
Emerson, Lake and Palmer concert poster (1972)
Beatles, ‘Star Club’, (1977)
Holst, ‘The Planets’, (1979)
Earth, Wind and Fire, (1976).
Born in the Hyōgo Prefecture, Japan, in 1936, Yokoo began his career in stage design for an avant garde theatre in Tokyo. His early work shows the influence of the New York based Push Pin Studio (Milton Glaser and Seymour Chwast in particular) but Yokoo himself cites filmmaker Akira Kurosawa and writer Yukio Mishima as two of his most formative influences.
In the late 1960s he became interested in mysticism and psychedelia, deepened by travels in India. Because his work was so attuned to 1960s pop culture, he has often been described as the “Japanese Andy Warhol” or likened to psychedelic poster artist Peter Max, but Yokoo’s complex and multi-layered imagery is intensely autobiographical and entirely original. By the late 60s he had already achieved international recognition for his work and was included in the 1968 “Word Image” exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in New York.
Isn’t he fabulous?
Here’s my gig review on CocoRosie for Soundblab.com. Read here.
If you haven’t got into CocoRosie, then give them a go now. The new album Grey Oceans has come out, and its brilliant. My favourite is still The Adventures of Ghosthorse and Stillborn. They’re an acquired taste, but if you like freaky folk of the Joanna Newsome variety, but trippier and with beatboxing, then give them a try.
The robot – a man-made, automatically guided machine – is an unlikely but enduring musical icon, for bands like Kraftwerk, Daft Punk, or They Might Be Giants, as well as more mainstream acts. The proliferation of auto-tune and vocal sampling in mainstream pop is astonishing, from Lady Gaga’s voice in ‘Telephone’ to Britney Spears voice in ‘Piece of Me’. The singer’s voice becomes a digitally-enhanced, mechanical object in itself, removed of its natural emotion, its soul. Kraftwerk have been creating robotic voices since the late 70’s, by singing through a vocoder or utilising computer-speech software. Kraftwerk are a prime example of robotronic pop, both in their lyrics and their performance style; they often use, as in “The Robots”, replica mannequins of themselves performing onstage. Lady Gaga seems to have followed Kraftwerk’s example with her robotic stage persona, which consists of a wardrobe of futuristic outfits and an aesthetic perfection that make her look more cyborg than human. Beyonce has also adopted robotic fashion with her signature “Roboglove”, a metal glove that indicates her alternate identity as Sasha Fierce.
In The Flaming Lips’ quasi-concept album “Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots”, the robots represent the “evil” which Yoshimi must fight, but they are also inherently human – ‘One More Robot/Sympathy 3000-21’ is a sad tale about robots developing human emotions. Compare this to Radiohead’s “OK Computer”, where the songs lament the dehumanization of society as a result of the rise of technology; “Yoshimi” instead celebrates the humanity in technology (“One more robot starts to feel…”), and the possibility of overcoming the technology we have created. The robot in popular music is generally used as a symbol for the alienation and monotony of modern life, providing us with an alternate vision of our futures; in the words of Kraftwerk: “we are the robots”.
This article is appearing in the forthcoming publication of Garageland Magazine, which is future-themed.
