missive 137
25-09-2007
Singled Out
Missive 137

For Kelly and Mark

Singled Out - putting musical tastes to right.

Hello……..

They came from the stars I saw them ‘it’s always boom time’ (Onomatopoeia). The return of our favourite cosmic jesters They came from the Stars I saw them for what seems like a busy period of activity. Currently basking in the acclaim of their ’Vs. Reality’ full length - (a set of recordings from the start of the decade that mysteriously went a miss) with the promise of some spanking brand new album of hot off press material due to rendezvous at a hi-fi near you sometime year end and in between all that a special ’Emperor Mixes’ single - for a collective who’ve never really been known for being on the ball with record output this phase in their new found enthusiasm must appear like several Christmas’ backing up at once for their long suffering fans. Nuzzling quietly with all the expectations of a child on pocket money day clutching a Saturday morning things to do / things to buy list ’it’s always boom time (part one)’ taken from their deliriously daft ’vs. reality’ set is a barking wildly wicked and wired cosmic cruising funky stew spiked with drop dead chorus threads ripped straight from the siren calls found in the Kirk (Douglas) ’n’ Tony (Curtis)’s epic ’Vikings’ and found swimming against the tide in a swirling whirlpool of head pounding effervescent mantras as though an impish Animal Collective had invaded and taken hostage of the sessions committed to hard copy by those rascals of feel good vibes the Polyphonic Spree and mainlined it to some sort of strange Sun Ra-esque mutation. Crooked, kooky and rampant but ever so loveable. Getting another limited opportunity to play out with all the other records the edited version of ‘the unstoppable kite’ features over on the flip - you may well remember it being released earlier this year via a 12 inch for this is not an exit (see missive 120) - yep this is the one with the sampled buzzer sound from ‘family fortunes’ - still manages to re-arrange fringes at distance, a dizzying outer body aural experience replete with interweaving psyche, kraut jazz spiked funk and deceptively engaging pastoral montages all liberally sprinkled with high grade space dust - indeed we still think it sounds like an acid dropping soundtrack to watch Disney’s ‘Fantasia’ by. I don’t think you need telling its essential but just in case you do, it is.

MEBA ‘Betcha’ (Freon Rig). Don’t you just love press releases and records that arrive and write the reviews for you. Monterria Ellis and Bru Amey are collectively known as duo MEBA - okay fair dues the name mightn’t mean anything at the moment but give these two a few months and I guarantee that on the evidence of this debut they’ll be household among the club land cognoscenti. With an album in the can - ‘Involution’ awaiting a tentative release pencilled in for early next year ‘betcha’ marks their debut venture into the cauldron of pop. Rightly identifying the obvious as the nose on your face reference points - Massive Attack and Morcheeba - the press release stops short of passing comment on the way it seductively mainlines into the realms of Heather Duby and Natasha Atlas - the former in the way the melodies and vocals coalesce attractively as though skipping and fluttering like heaven sent apparitions to enchant - the latter for the hypnotic cocooning that they seek to shroud the beats and rhythms within. Indelibly chic in design, ‘betcha’ wraps the listener in a romantic haze of alluring orbiting sophistication made up of the spectral resonance as applied by Andy Gray to Gary Numan’s ‘A prayer for the unborn’ moulded onto scrumptious beats and lushly arcing cosmic swirls that exude a degree of stately ambition and lashings of after lights out down tempo smooze. Flip the disc for the more intimately realised side to MEBA’s nature on ’loop’ - with its push / pull rhythms and skittering trip hop beats this glowing baby succulently hugs the lay lines of pristinely turned out 90’s inclined Bristollian club pop draped as it is in sheens of sugar rushing crests of nuzzling euphoria. Does it for us anyway.

DJ Methodist ’Other Worlds’ (Post Office). With the ’seven nights’ full length looming large on the horizon and due for impact early next year, ’other worlds’ is the third outing from DJ Methodist (better known to acquaintances as Post Office records head honcho David Handford) and follows the much loved visitations to these pages of his re-drill of Joy Divisions ’Digital’ and ’Sirens’ releases. ’Outer worlds’ available in a limited download and CD format is a simple but effective sounding buzzing sugar laced cosmic corker cut through with lunatic swirls, pining stratospheric signatures and stuttering cool as f*** zig zagging rhythms which to these ears sound not so dissimilar in texture, delivery and overall design as a marriage of convenience between J Xaverre and Tex La Homa convened over by Magoo (which I’m sure you’ll agree is no mean feat) dispatching lovelorn odes from the stars from decoded messages received from Fireball XL5’s Steve Zodiac ’Daddyhole’ over on the flip sounds like its made a break for freedom and fell off the working bench of electronic sounds pioneer Raymond Scott and escaped the confines of the Manhattan Research Inc either that or found sounds from some kind of enchanted underground ice kingdom - you decide - night time playroom lullaby enthusiasts and Plone fans will swoon. ’Gunga’ changes the mood and vibe, an oddly off road booty shaking wired to the teeth shadowy mooching minimalist frazzled hip hop driven electro nugget of sorts that barring what I’ve just said had me recalling some post punk styled fractured take on the New York street scene of the day as viewed by a studio free for all featuring Cabaret Voltaire, A Certain Ratio and the Raincoats - must add that its strangely addictive. ‘Estuary life’ rounds up what has been a mighty set with a spot of strangeness by way of some unsettling sound manipulations which to these ears sounds like a plague of tap tapping sub mariner locusts at feeding time though I’d be interested to hear your thoughts - answers / ideas / possible outcomes on a postcard to the usual address. Go buy. www.postofficeecords.com

Four Letter Friend ‘Four and Twenty Blackbirds’ EP (Self released). Okay apologies time I believe (and not for the first time in this missive you’ll be unrelieved to hear). We haven’t a clue how long this release has been around, we’ve managed to lose the press release - that is assuming there was a press release with it - there’s a copyright date on the back stating 2006 which we’d be horrified to find that we’d actually had it that long (we doubt it). Anyhow the band have probably long retired and become tax exiles resulting from the shed loads of cash they’ve no doubt generated. Three tracks feature here - well that’s what it says on the sleeve though in reality there’s four - the more the merrier we say - opening with ‘your money and your life’ - sadly not a homage of sorts to the pantomime punk one with the white stripe of ‘Stand and Deliver’ fame but an unrelenting take no prisoners 3 minute holocaust of walls caving in fast gruesome swamp fest like gnarled grinding boogie very much in the style of the Melvins and Shellac with flashbacks of Big Black that’s riddled throughout with a festering sickly edge like words through a stick of rock. Darker still are the trio of tracks that sit on the flip, dragged, near drowned and drip dried in an inescapable and impenetrable skin peeling claustrophobia and wired and nailed upon a thunderous tar lifting bass underpin swiped from under the noses of Queens of the Stone Age. The ominously titled ‘children should not play with dead things’ is a doctrine I wholeheartedly agree with and if they must then at least don’t try to make mud sandwiches out of them. Replete with a grizzled snake charming groove this tension gathering bruiser blisters, burns and scars in equal measures wrapped in a twisted psychosis that prowls menacingly assuming mass of black hole proportions, while ’hangman’s hymn’ has a more measured approach about itself, not a million miles it has to be said from the Domes of Silence, this babe proving to be a darkly swept epic of brooding intent that recoils in a thickly enclosing bleakness where hopes are dashed and only the grim inevitable end game looms - a kind of Radiohead abandoned on the dark side if you like. Last up the aforementioned ’untitled’ cut is pitted with an anxiety ridden exterior replete with stop / start dynamics which if we didn’t know any better we’d have said it had fallen off the end of a session take for Nirvana’s ’In Utero’. www.fourletterfriend.com

Lowstar ’alphabet blues’ (self released). Again another CD which we must hold our hands up in a apologetic manner and admit we’ve had for a fair while is the second outing from London based quartet Lowstar. With its needle like wiring frontal assaulting riffs ’alphabet blues’ sounds like old school Jetplane Landing, a potent fusion of bleakly dulled ambition and blister erupting brooding demeanour set alight to a fractious and restless wasteland of quiet / loud / slow / fast dynamics and bolted to the spot by a grizzled but catchy as f*ck terrace styled chorus whilst not forgetting the all important up yours scald like angst that pierces throughout. ’drone’ is lighter in mood terms, still rages and kicks like a mule but this time shrouded in phased vocals and spiked strut like riffs that coalesce and erupt into sheen like freewheeling formations of classically driven kick botty rock that frankly in our view has MTV stamped all over its backside as though some bugger had branded it. Last up the bliss fuelled ’connected’ which if I’m being truthful here is our favourite cut of the three - effects laden atmospherics comprising of bespoke cloud hugging reverbs and tenderly coaxed with a side winding wide screen presence that opens up to reveal the ensembles more romantically inclined and sensitive side. Does it for us anyway. www.lowstar.co.uk

Wojtek Godzisz ’the moon and the yew tree’ (tiger trap). Okay the first of three releases that’ll be featured in these pages before the weeks out from those loveable dudes at Tiger trap / Smalltown America (the other two being killer debut full lengths from the Clone Quartet and the Untitled Music Project). The man with the scrabble winning name Wojtek Godziesz (who will be referred to as Mr G from now on in) was one time Symposium main man for those of you who like to keep tabs on indie heroes of the recent past. Following his ’burning ideals’ set released earlier this year the thunderous sinew snapping ’the moon and the yew tree’ is a richly bountiful gem in the making, a vividly conceived pop powerhouse operette of sorts deceptively peppered with impishly bracing moments of delicately woven idyllic slices of prickly tip toe like twinkle some rustic willowy ness that contrasts markedly against the driving backdrop of raging storm gathering calling to arms crusade like fervour - though why we keep hearing the distant ghosts of Ultravox’s ’reap the wild wind’ is quie frankly beyond us and indeed worrying. ‘time of the wolf’ over on the flip is a no nonsense spit ’n’ polish strutting bastard of a cut lacerated with a scorched combination of cut off in their prime jabbing spiked riffs and a soaring psychotically charged head butting clawing to the edge by the fingertips anxiety. Stunning in a word. www.tigertrap.co.uk

The Human Value ‘Hold of Me’ (Big Deal). With a pretty smart debut long player imminent any day now which we’ve had a very brief peak of entitled ‘push and pull’. ’hold on me’ culled from that set is a rather neat taster as to what’s to come and is one of those records that albeit having been ferried in from the States underground scene and equipped with an aloof 80‘s glare manages to admirably set itself apart from the usual Yeah Yeah Yeah‘s copycats whilst simultaneously drip drying itself in the in vogue austere textures and yet curiously refusing to sound cold, clinical and beset with bleakness. Instead this fuck you honey hooks itself into your psyche with insidious and unnatural ease bedded upon a blankly playful angular electro rhythm that‘s peppered with monochrome shades of bubblegum pop that have been rendered void of their bitter sweetness over which grazes the wearily nonchalant delivery of the sassy and dominatrix sounding Turu with her hybrid Hazel O’Connor meets Lene Lovich meets Lydia Lunch vocal. Infectious stuff. Flip side features the same cut extended, re-drilled and decoded into a sparsely minimalist mutant techno groove as the ‘whitebeard remix’, a furious BPM bouncing beaut that sheens the original template into a numbingly fractured uber groove. That’s sure to get the coolest club floors n states of collective panic. www.thehumanvalue.com

The Bubble Project / Jennie and the Bets ‘She wears green’ / ’stolen kisses’ (Vortex Pop / Fake Indie Label). Okay we promised there would be more from this lot a missive or two ago following their corking ’EP’ which we swooned for in Missive 135. Lo-fi Sunderland based cosmic superheroes do it again on this frankly killer buzz popping twin set 7 inch that they share with Jennie and the Bets which unless I’m very much mistaken appears to have first seen the light of day some time last year, still you can’t hold a damn good ditty or two down. ’She wears green’ is a cosmic pop carnival that orbit’s the quadrants of somewhere else sounds as the likes of Magoo, Fonda 500, Beatnik Filmstars and Nectarine No.9 - wired, crooked and exhaustibly infectious to a tee, this star hopping honey takes its cue from Wire’s ’In Vivo’ applies harmonies pilfered wholesale from ‘drums and wires’ era XTC and wraps it in the kind of day-glo effervescence that was once the forte of the Apples in Stereo while braiding the spectacle in lashings of psyched out fuzzy logic. It’s a tough call asking anyone to match that but Jennie and the Bets do it - and do it with much aplomb. Based in Newcastle this feisty foursome have to date released a bunch of well heeled 7”’s via their own This is Fake Indie imprint - all of which we are horrified to find we’ve missed out on - still until we can nail them as our own we’ll happily console ourselves with ’stolen kisses’. Think sumptuous slices of shimmering 80’s girl led indie pop - for arguments sake say - the Bangles rewired with the Primitives mindset - arm them with a Shangri-La’s type bittersweet bubblegum pop prowess and lace up the package with an audaciously fizzy side serving seductively flirty radiant girl / girl interweaving harmonies with lashings of sherbety New Order-ish strumming that buoys and bobs with the distracted affection of Another Sunny Day that culminates in a punchy perky platter of some measure. More please. www.myspace.com/jennieandthebets / www.thebubbleproject.moonfruit.com

The Loungs ‘Googly Moogly’ (Akoustik Anarkhy). They make it seem so easy these whippersnappers from St Helens that frankly you’d be forgiven for thinking they were taking the piss. Culled from their debut full length ’We are the Champ’ - ’googly moogly’ their third single is a potent two and a half minute mainlining of frighteningly happy sun drenched smile pop that manages in the blink of an eye to shoe horn warming wafts of west coast montages, mid 60’s Beach Boys styled harmonies, chorus’ of angels, 50’s bubblegum wraps and heap loads of nuzzling effervescence the type of which fills your insides with an unmistakable fuzzy glow. If I was more mercenary in these kind of things I’d suggest a business partnership whereby they bottle up the stuff and sell it over the counter at high street chemists - my idea of course - we could wipe out depression, misery and Morrissey over night - how about it lads 50/50 split we could retire in a week. Rooted with a smoky jazz joint 30’s styled Chicago mindset the frantic ‘Jimmy Two Shoes’ over on the flip is a previously unreleased nugget that makes for a skanking big band sounding spot of quick on the feet toe tapping bar room boogie. Well tasty if you ask me.
www.akoustikanarkhy.co.uk

That’s your lot for this seemingly truncated and quickly upended Singled Out - back before the end of the week with more of the same - well I say the same - I mean there’ll be different records obviously but nevertheless the same crap fumbling of the English language in which to describe - if you get my drift.

As usual thanks to all who’ve made these mumblings possible - you know who you are - address’ and stuff for submissions, death threats and offers of blank cheques - for snail - 105 shaldon drive, morden, surrey, sm4 4bq, UK - email mark@osingtoday.com or alternatively drop by pull up a pew, have a brew and say hello at www.myspace.com/thesundayexperience

Till whenever - take care of yourselves….

Mark
X

Singled Out is a ‘there’s no accounting for taste’ production.