HAPPY NEW YEAR!

Record shop wise, the last thing I remember is leaving Edinburgh's Avalanche records after bidding farewell to the owner. We chatted, he was less than hopeful about the future and the volume of stock Vs available space told a similar story. Plastic carrier in hand I nodded cordially at the attractive girl behind the counter and stepped out into a wet Scottish Summers day spying my wife and pram bound Son sat on a bench across the road.

Fast forward to January 1st 2012 and what's changed?

A huge chunk of last year was spent rediscovering the delights of late 80's to mid 90's (specifically 1993) Indie music, started as a US only obsession but soon blossomed to include acts as diverse as Felt and Chapterhouse. Sounds awful doesn't it? Well it's kept me pretty chuffed and I've spent approximately 100th of what I was caning on records this time last year.

The rest of my time was taken up by a shed load of personal and geographical change. It would also appear that I have walked away from a habit that has defined me for the past two or three decades.

I have quit record shopping.

Yes I still buy music, CDs mostly but that overwhelming urge to spend days on end trawling dead and dying record stores is gone. Just before Christmas I passed by Rat Records (It appears to be my de facto local and I wondered what was on offer). I don't doubt that five years back it would have been well worth a bi-weekly visit but now? Sure there were a few choice pieces on the counter but 99% of the shop was dry.

Am I saying that the game is up? That it's all about the internet? No. You just have to look further a field. Get creative. Go to the source like these guys...

http://www.dustandgrooves.com/

(Great, no exceptional site by the way Elion. If you don't do this full time you should)

But that's only going to work if you get off on Geographically specific music, and even then you can bet somebody got there well and truly before you. Just discovered the 70s Lagos scene or Trinidadian Funk? Guess what, so did somebody else, somebody with the air-miles and fiscal means to take home small chunks of the country in question. Anyway, I'm rambling, it's not even about that. Rat Records had a copy of Ornette Coleman's 'Of Human Feelings', the one with 'Times Square' on it for four quid. I could have turned it the same day but the thought of it flapping against my leg on the walk home was too much for me. I'm just done with it.

I mean, will I still stop by the occasional record shop on my travels? Yes. Will I obsess to the extent I used to? I hope not. I get my pleasures in a far more simple way now, my album of the year is freely available to buy for less than a fiver and the thing that's making me happiest at the moment is Shack's 'HMS Fable'. Besides, I may have developed a soft furnishings habit.

So what for the blog? Who knows, I'm still trying to work that out.

XENO AND OAKLANDER - SENTINELLE

Dear Xeno and Oaklander, are you French? I notice your album 'Sentinelle' is recorded in New York but you either sing in Gallic or a type of English that suggests that the language is not your first. It's just that you don't look particularly French, not to say I am looking for a beret and a string of onions, but I've seen pictures and I wouldn't say you look any more French that I do and I'm not French.

It doesn't really matter it's just that I was going to compare you to Mathematiques Modernes but just incase you aren't French I won't. Just to be safe what I will say is:

Xeno and Oaklander, architects of a newly re-discovered bed-sit lo-fi electronic world originally given birth to by the likes of Soft Cell have taken the concept mysterious and miserable down-beat electronica and smashed it out of the proverbial park. I think the cool kids call it chill or dark wave nowadays. Back then it was just plain old electronic pop.

Not to say for a second that 'Sentinelle' is a classic or necessarily even a keeper but they have certainly done their best to stay true to the original battle plan.

The electronics which come courtesy of both parties are pretty competent and as you might expect for a minimal excursion into the world of analogue electronics. Nothing fancy, couple of nice hooks a distinct 80's feel and what I would describe as a methodical Germanic tinge.

My issue with the group is the vocals, not so much the French language pieces but the robotic English that fills at least half of the album. When such delivery was part of Kraftwerk's schtick they were let off the hook because they were pretending to be robots. When the same vocal sound was of the Belgian New Beat scene (Front 242 etc) it was annoying but somehow the punchy and plain Fascistic sounds made up for that. Now in 2011 it falls South of quaint or kitsch and just sounds a bit silly really.

Part of me would rather have the entire album sung in French, if they are French.

Anyway, to give you an idea of what to expect from the sound I asked a friend what he would recommend off the back of the fact that I was blown away by Sally Shapiro's 'Disco Romance' album and he wrote the name of this band on the back of a receipt and passed it to me. It was all very exciting and covert. Unfortunately I couldn't really read his handwriting so it took a while to track down.

Was it worth it?

Yeah, course it was. It's alright. Not going to set the world on fire or anything like that but there are worse things to listen to on a Sunday night. Although after the events of last night I feel like I should probably be listening to Bruce Springsteen's 'Born in the USA' happily ignoring the true meaning of the song and instead seeing it as a perfect meathead anthem to celebrate the fact that they 'aced' that modern day Fu Manchu Osama Bin Ladin yesterday.

Mixed emotions about that, either way, Ding-Dong the witch is well and truly dead...

BEACH BOYS - SUNFLOWER

I just caught the end of 'Gentlemen Prefer Blonds'. Jesus Christ Marilyn Monroe was a simpering idiot. Sure, she was an iconoclast and admittedly not unattractive but fuck me is she painful to watch 'act'. I would say 'I wonder how she got her big break' but I don't need to, I'd imagine those sculpted legs and sit up and beg chest defined the casting couch pre-req for an entire decade. What I will say is 'I wonder if those morgue slab rumors are true'.

It's interesting to see how certain ice-berg sized chunks of our cultural heritage seem alien in their uselessness here in 2011.

'Gentlemen Prefer Blonds' is perfect Saturday matinee fodder, brain-dead vintage pulp from a bygone era, a time of stuffy suits, airs and graces and plot-lines so contrived that they appear a parody.

Luckily for those of us stuck in the present, much of that popular culture flotsam of yesteryear does translate. We have the Rolling Stones, to a lesser extent The Beatles and other heavy hitters such as The Beach Boys. A funny group of chaps The Beach Boys. They didn't surf and they were grown men. What they did do was leave a hell of a cannon of work, one often hidden behind a deluge of very average tracks about cars, girls and surfing.

Amongst their more interesting work are the aft lorded 'Pet Sounds' (It's alright) and 'Smile' (we should get the final version at some point over the next couple of months). What they have two albums after 'Smile' (more accurately 'Smiley Smile' the unfinished 'Smile') is an unbroken run of three absolutely stellar albums: '20/20', 'Sunflower' and 'Surf's Up'.

Lets talk about 'Sunflower' because that's the album that I put on to drown out Marilyn's idiot voice. The title of the album and ever cheery sleeve are misleading. This isn't the seemingly sunny proposition that it presents itself as, the darkness that reverberates throughout the follow-up (Surf's Up) is also evident here. In fact the albums closing shot 'Cool Cool Water' dove-tails perfectly into the foreboding opener of 'Surf's Up'.

I inherited my copy of 'Sunflower' from my dad. Out of interest he bought it from 'Brierley's' (I would imagine of Brierley Hill near Birmingham England) for 62 1/2p in 1970. I don't remember him ever playing it but do recall it sitting tucked down the side of a silver Philips all in one surrounded by white shag-pile carpet.

That's not all that makes it special. The cover looks like an ill- rehearsed family portrait or team-shot and despite the great rainbow of colours and logo that frame it, this has to be contender for one of the most average album sleeves ever.

What saves it is the pictures on the gatefold. The group appear to have taken it upon themselves to don fancy-dress. Most interestingly of which are Alan Jardine's choice of dressing like a street peddling monkey grinder and more sinisterly Mike Love's decision to dress like some kind of bearded and potentially sinister deity surrounded by children. Anyway, rather than over analyzing this I will talk about the music.

'Slip on Through', 'This Whole World', 'Add Some Music to Your Day', 'Tears in the Morning' and 'Forever' are the standouts. What do they sound like? You know the drill: Vocal harmonies, considered slightly grandiose instrumentation and catchy as fuck. But 'Sunflower' has the added bonus of a slight twinkling of the darkness that reflected the often turbulent and fragile inner workings of the group at this time, one that would be fully realized on 1971's 'Surf's Up'.

They do not make them like they used to.

SIGUE SIGUE SPUTNIK - FLAUNT IT

I am going to make a claim now. I am going to stab my flag in the moon:

'In the next few years 'Flaunt It' will be re-evaluated by the music press and by the time they are done with it the album will be heralded as one of the greatest records of the 80s'.

To those under the impression that SSS were merely misguided teen-friendly electro-pop the above probably sounds like the talk of an utter fuck-puddle. But let me try and qualify my opening statement by furnishing you with some perspective: B.A.D (Big Audio Dynamite), that comedy project that your man from The Clash started with Don Letts is already being re-assesed. Apparently they were something new, fresh and dangerous, they fused 'hip-hop' beats with punk guitar chops. It seems to have escaped peoples attention that they did this very badly and that despite their multi-cultural barrier breaking facade they were harder to listen to than a dog turd with a pair of white ipod headphones dangling from it.

Add to this the fact that the dreary and bland idiot-hop of De La Soul is already being hailed in a similar manner, is it really that improbable?

I should probably clarify the above mark so that it doesn't come across as a lazy snipe. There was nothing exceptional about De La Soul, they have a sound like a hairdryer set on low accompanied by a drum machine made out of marshmallows. They were so fucking boring that '3 Feet High and Rising' could have been prescribed as a cure for insomnia.

The same however cannot be said for this Sony TV-glasses assisted glimpse into the future of music. 'Flaunt It' is still as exciting today as it was when I had a BASF cassette copy playing on my Walkman as I sat sulking in the back of the car on the way to visit my Grandparents.

Musically it's Elvis meets Suicide. Jet-fueled hi-tech Blade Runner inspired party music sung by a guy with three foot hair and a fishnet stocking on his face. What is not to like? I mean we are talking about the band who (at this stage) refused to be photographed unless it was at night, the band whose opening gambit was to blow up a helicopter in the video for their first single as they posed with an arsenal of automatic weapons.

So why the cultural cold shoulder?

It's obvious, they were aimed at the Smash Hits and No1 magazine readership, I even recall individual band member posters complete with profiles coming with one particular title. They were set on world domination from the get go, none of this standing in the shadows and waiting to be discovered business... And that's why WIRE magazine feature endless pean's to Martin Rev and not Martin Degville. Sigue Sigue Sputnik had already sold out before the second this album hit the shelves: The space between songs is used to advertise hair gel and style magazines, Tony James wears an Atari t-shirt. Unlike the two quirky New York misfits who got bottled off every time they tried to play CBGBs, SSS placed themselves as a product.

And this is what modern music is missing. The kids of today have those fucking retards The Arctic Monkeys et-al singing about drinking cheap cider and fingering the girl from the chippy when what they need is tight leather pants, fur coats, film samples and guitar's shaped like laser guns. It is quite possible that you have the cure for the inner-city stab-a-thons right here: Turn the rude boys and wanna be gangsta's on to this business and they'll be comparing lip-gloss and collections of vintage Japanese electronica rather than leaving each other to bleed to death in train stations.

If that sounds too much like fun, you can take off the high-heels, scrape away the eyeliner, wash out the pink hair dye and you are still left with a very solid collection of listenable songs. 'Love Missile F1-11', '21th Century Boy', 'Sex Bomb Boogie', 'Atari Baby'. Yes there are fillers but nothing to swing the balance or to detract from my opening statement.

I'd love to see this remixed, made even more relevant to 2011. It wouldn't take much, just the eradication of a few 'Yello-isms' and the keyboard stabs that sound more at home on the soundtrack to Ferris Bueller's Day Off (That 'comedy' film where he fucks over his best friend), maybe more of an emphasis on the twin drumming and a wash of feedback. But given that's unlikely to happen I'll just have to stick to playing this a lot more than I should, especially when I have pretty much everything Alan Vega and Suicide did right next to it on the shelf.

Anyway, ladies and gentlemen here's to the fifth generation of rock and roll...

PALACE BROTHERS - VIVA LAST BLUES

This was yanked at random from the racks earlier this morning. I've been giving a lot of time to all things Will Oldham of late, he's a tough cookie to keep up with and seems to shit out an album on an almost bi-monthly basis. To be honest this could be part of the appeal - Ooooh just think of all those spines staring out at you in date order. This is probably how James Last got so big, an obedient army of mindless completists just waiting for the latest moustachio sleeved album to hit the shelves.

I have no love for James Last and luckily that is where the similarities between him and the cuddliest man in music come to an end. I find something colossally wholesome about Will Oldham or Bonnie ' Prince' Billy - I don't like using that acronym as it sounds Scottish and consequently makes me think of Irn Bru and Big Issue sellers (Interestingly enough he does look like a Big Issue seller). I find listening to him is a bit like eating a couscous salad: I actually feel like it's doing you good as I eat it. Will Oldham is horses, rolling hills, he's a Powell and Pressburger film on Christmas Day. That's why I find myself playing it now, it's perfect Sunday morning music to sit my son in front of, his synapses firing ten to the dozen and taking in every off-kilter tone and wonderfully tuneless wail.

There's nothing controversial about WIll Oldham, nothing tasteless or difficult. The only thing remotely challenging about him is keeping up with that quick fire out-put. Yes he sings 'If I could fuck a mountain' in 'The Mountain Low' but he does so in such a nice beardy boy next door way that it's in impossible to take offense.

So, on to this 'Viva Last Blues'. It's more electric than much of his output - The opener on side 2 'Work Hard/Play Hard' comes as something of a shock, it's tempo and delivery a lot more ferocious than you might expect. There are other songs that share the former's mood but not it's perfect battered pitch and delivery. The rest of the album is as you might expect: The greatest voice in contemporary Americana accompanied sparingly with guitar and the occasional addition of rhythm.

I think a problem with Will Oldham might be that has such a prolific output and so much of it is totally listenable, completely enjoyable that it's hard to find exception in that body of work for better or worse. I have my favorites, the Tortoise collaboration comes to mind but there isn't much that's head and shoulders above. 'Viva Last Blues' is no exception.

'But it's Palace Brothers!'

Yes, but if you care to get out some paper and an HB1 and draw a graph plotting the boy Oldham's works casting aside any old skool indie allegiances any money this sits bang smack in the middle of that scatter graph along with 80% of his work.

This said it really isn't such a bad thing. It's good to have a constant in your life of some kind, somebody musically reliable and despite his turning up in the strangest of places - Jackass, a Kanye West video etc, someone who is for the most part at least thusfar, predictable.

I like it, and as he rocks back and forth on one of those bouncy chair things, so does the little man*.

NB* - Reading that back I feel it important to clarify that I am actually talking about my son and not my penis.

CLUSTER - CLUSTER '71

So this is actually the 1980 reissue of Cluster's first album. My defence for owning this particular beast? The sleeve of the original is massively shit. It looks like bad robot art. I mean not to say this is much better but it does have a certain DIY aesthetic that is an improvement on the first press. I picked this up in the US when I was going what I call 'Ebay crazy'. It was around the time that the GBP and the US Dollar were going two for one and despite being paid in US Dollars I talked myself into believing that everything everywhere in the US was in fact half price.

KRAFTWERK - COMPUTER WELD

The screaming kids have replaced this morning's drunk revelers and once again I am up and about. There should be a saying 'Dead like a German Sunday'. I will refrain from using this as a forum to go off on the German Church again but thanks to those guys (worship and kebab's aside) there really isn't anything at all to do here on the Sabbath. So once again I am faced to find entertainment by making some sense of the wall of records that dominates my sitting room. I pull out a copy of 'Computer Weld' and think about cleaning the kitchen.

COIL - SCATOLOGY

This record would appear to be massively apt for the current climate and matching mood. This morning it was minus 14, I opened my front door and was assaulted by the kind of cracking and concrete like air that says 'death if you wear the wrong hat'. I have been in colder but it has always been for positive 'happy happy' recreational reasons: Chicago - record shopping, New York - record shopping, Amsterdam - three guesses?

But to be face-raped by this kind of weather not through choice but necessity, fuck if that doesn't ever make me miserable. Not even the weekends spoils (VIP record fair - review to follow) can detract from the fact that right now I am at a psychic low of below-freezing. Right now I am not just questioning my buying habbits but my very leaving the house, nay my bed. The office is shit as ever, two thirds empty and utterly silent. I could be at home listening to 'Scatology' really loud.

So the sound of 'Scatology' is not exactly what you might call 'cheery'. Quite why I put it on last night when I knew I was having trouble raising even the most enigmatic of smiles I don't know, but I did. I suppose after a car journey to Berlin last week that saw Starship's 'We Built This City on Rock n' Roll' played three times I am pretty much impervious to anything.

'Scatology' is integral to Coil's mythology, an important part of their Crowleyesque quasi-non/religious poop and blood worshipping synthesiser based insanity due to it being somekind of beginning. When I first heard of the group it was in association with 'Wax Trax' (Ugh) records and in retrospect I don't know if their brief period with the label was a genuine attempt at selling themselves to the RevCo/Ministry crowd or not. I imagine they had every chance of having a fan base to rival that of Skinny Puppy (musically parallells can be drawn with all three previously mentioned bands) and conquering Canada but it didn't happen. Now was it something to do with releasing a concept album about shitting? About shitting and then playing with it? About squeezing it through your fingers and smearing it on your face? Now I don't know for sure but if ever I felt safe in an assumption it would be now...

Yes you can hear toilets, melancholy 80s keyboards and a very angry John Balance but it's never as base as you might expect. It stops a long way short of anything too toiletty and is wonderfully deadpan throughout. Now unlike their peers (Death in June, C93, NWW etc) Coil actually managed to build on their manifesto of muck rather than falling short in later years. Sonically they became more powerful and visually more exciting but as starting points go this is a good one.

Unrelated: I run the risk of incurring the wrath of Angela Merkel and the German tourist board in saying this but seriously, if you can avoid ever coming to Bavaria ever as long as you live, please do so. It is the black, black heart of a very ugly place and that in mind track one, side two: 'Solar Lodge' - 'Watch the black sun rise.'

Slightly more related: Sadly no, my copy does not have the 'anal staircase' post card pasted on the front sleeve.

UPDATE 20/4/2011: It does now.