THE WEEKND - HOUSE OF BALLOONS

To say this isn't my usual fayre would be something of an understatement. With the exception of R Kelly's unfathomably brilliant 'Trapped in the Closet' and an inexplicable soft spot for Cisco's 'Thong Song' Swing-Beat is not an genre for which I have professed any kind of love.

There are I'm sure millions who still insist on calling the likes of Bobby Brown, Bel Biv Divoe et al R N'B much to the char-grin of an army of 60 somethings keen to point out that this modern 'soul' music has absolutely nothing to do with the 'rhythm' and or 'blues'. Regardless I digress.

I also need to make an amendment to that opening comment. If memory serves there was a brief period during my tenure at college in the woefully dull northern town of Warrington when I acquired and played with some vigor some swing beat compilation tape or other. The reason for this, I have to admit is that I was under the impression that it would somehow make me more desirable to 'the ladies'. Did that clear perspex C90 TDK cassette of magic have it's desired effect? For me no, but I have friends who have a countless bedpost notches no small thanks to having wank taste in music such as the 'swing beat'.

And now following that foggily remembered admission I need to again eat my words and profess a new found love for said genre for after much umming that is squarely where The Weeknd's 'House of Balloons (Official Mix Tape' falls.

To say it is good is an understatement. The only thing stopping this of falling short of album of the year is the fact that it doesn't strictly exist. There is currently no CD, no vinyl album, no cassette (sorry Dan). I don't know the exact reason for this but can only imagine it has to do with copyright clearance. The album uses a few snippets of other peoples work and this could be reason for it's virtual only existence and the albums 'Official Mix Tape' monika. I should check... But I won't.

Instead I shall try and describe how glorious this album is.

I've had a number of conversations about it with friends and fellow music-nazis and as of yet I've not heard a bad thing said about it.

It's like the music they play at the end of a party when everybody is too high and too tired to leave. It's the soundtrack to dawn rising on a room full of fucked up people, broken furniture and blood stains. It's what you might play on your stereo if you were a date-rape magician, tapping a veil of ro-ho into a glass of cheap sparkling wine. It's the songs that might be playing when a gang of gate crashers turn up at the party from the start of this paragraph, force you to perform unnatural sex acts on them that may or may not involve two girls and one cup before stealing the still playing hi-fi, your wallet and your sex tired girlfriend.

'House of Balloons' is Bobby Brown with his hand up Whitney Houston's ass trying to clear the way with his crap caked fingers because she hasn't shit for days. It's Bobby and Whitney sharing a lovers pipe, huffing milky white rocks as a new day rises over tinsel town, kidnapped dolphins trying to escape from the pairs dirty and piss filled swimming pool.

The first track sets the mood suggesting 'You're gonna wanna be high for this'. High for what? Well if it's not rape then I don't know what it is. Catchy as fuck, production so dirty and blissed out that it falls somewhere between Salem and Destiny's Child. Add to that the kind of voice that would, if it weren't so fraught be at home as part of Dru Hill and 'House of Balloons' is cooking with the gas from a mobile home meth-lab bunsen burner.

I could go through track by track lamenting the numerous merits but will instead just say that highlights include 'Wicked Games' and 'The Party and The After Party'. (The one with the Beach House sample)

Not even the wrong-foot' at the start of track four 'The Morning', a Clapton like guitar lick is enough to stop this working completely, it's that fucking good.

Given this is a habit breaking review and that you cant 'buy' 'House of Balloons' I will also utter the words I never thought I would say: Download this album... Now.

The Weeknd are from Toronto, Canada and despite this uncharacteristically glowing write-up I do know and have never met them. By the sounds of this they are having way too much fun scraping silk clad hookers up off the floor and drinking Mandrax power shakes to go out and meet people.

EARTH - PENTASTAR: IN THE STYLE OF DEMONS

If I said this was Earth's best album would you hold it against me?

I can almost sense a hoard of 'Earth 2: Special Low Frequency Version' fans battering down my door and demanding some kind of redaction.

Truth is, as painfully unhip as it is to say. 'Earth 2' is a fucking tough listen. Yes it's instrumental in the state of modern metal. Sunn(o))) would not be without it. In retrospect it could be that had Dylan Carson not made us all sit through a 73 minute double album of tiresomely slow guitar chuggery that our metal brothers might have gone the way of Yngwie Malmsteen or other Dragonforce like widdly-diddly idiots. And I suppose that 'slowest band in the world' would make a nice addition to anyone's resume.

So on to the album at hand. The opener lay's out the bands game-play from the outset. It's faster than anything they have done before - Which is to say it is still very slow, but at least within the realms of listenability. I'm being harsh, it's better than that. It's solid, down-tempo Sabbath type riffage. Hypnotic and ever so slightly bluesy.

'High Command' treats us to more of the same but with the added treat of lyrics, actual words!

The third track 'Crooked Axis For String Quartet' is something else entirely. When I first heard this back in 1997 I thought it was just one chord. I put this down to my shitty stereo. Listening to it today it's as if some of Steve Reich's 'Phases' era work has bled through from the other side of the tape. It's actually very pretty, not a word you often associate these son's of Seattle with.

'Tallahassee' is pretty much the blue-print for where the band would see themselves just under a decade later. The twang of Americana bathed in the kind of fuzzy distortion with which they are synonymous. It kills and is the only track they did that ever made it onto a mix tape for a girl. (NB despite my best efforts the relationship did not go very far)

There is something of a far Eastern feel to 'Charioteer (Temple Song)' and were it not for the inescapable metallic sheen that Earth produce it could almost find a home on something by Popol Vuh.

The last 1/3rd of the album's a bit of a miss, it smarts of the group desperately trying to stretch the proceedings from EP to LP territory, there's a pretty 'by numbers' Hendrix cover, an instantly forgettable piano excursion and a reprise of the opening track to end with. Were it not for the fact that the last song on the album takes the theme somewhere else completely you might feel a bit short changed but as it is it's a solid pillar to end on.

I got this from Relay records in Bristol during my final year at college, sold it about ten years back, re-bought the CD from Everyday Music in Portland OR and then got a new copy of the LP from Music and Video Exchange in Camden about three months back.

Which reminds me. Tomorrow is 'Record Shop Day', so go out, join the lines, buy a load of limited shit by bands you don't really like and put it on Ebay... Then with the money you make, buy three copies of this and play then simultaneously and at slightly different speeds because that would be fucking awesome.

SIMPLE MINDS - REEL TO REEL CACOPHONY

Not sure why the song 'Changeling' came into my head while I was on nappy duty but it did. It got me thinking about the power of early 80's Simple Minds, the clinical majesty of their original unfettered vision and I felt compelled to commit my thoughts to pen and paper (virtual pen and paper).

The album 'Reel to Reel Cacophony' was one of the first I ever owned. I bought it on cassette whilst on a caravanning holiday with a former school friend in Bridlington. Given that by this point Scotland's finest had already released 'Once Upon a Time' starting with their second album might come across as ambitious. Given Jim Kerr's haircut on the back of the prior album 'Life in a Day' it could even be considered brave and or bold.

Unfortunately it was none of the above. It was however £3.49 from Woolworths, a whole pound cheaper than any of their later albums. This might seem paltry but back in the heady days of 1985 and aged 11 a crisp and green pound note was a fuck lot of money, a veritable kings ransom.

Anyway, I bought it, played it in the caravan and came away a bit non-plussed. This wasn't the Simple Minds of Top of the Pops, It certainly wasn't the band I had been hyping the fuck out of to my friend. At one point during playback I decided it must be faulty, but no. Over the following weeks I found myself revisiting the album drawing a similar conclusion each time - I should have ponied up the extra quid and bought 'Sparkle in the Rain'. I kept playing it though because at that stage in my music based habit, owning circa ten albums and about the same amount of pre-recorded cassettes every inch of music counted.

Eventually, thanks to the arrival of newer predominantly 'metal', specifically Kiss records I could afford to give up on it. In time I forgot about the album, or at least I thought I had.

I re-bought it for a couple of Euros in Germany a few years back and put it on to see how it faired. 'Reel to Reel Cacophony' came before the critically re-assessed period of the groups history, it's prior to 'I Travel' and 'Theme For Great Cities', no electronic anthems or obvious Hoxton floor fillers here. Anyway, needle goes on record and fuck me if I didn't remember almost every word, every single change and beat. I still have no idea what any of the songs are about but that 'Reel to Reel Cacophony's' content has spent the last 25 plus years sat in my head waiting to be called into action is no mean feat. And just when I think it's over, that I'm done with that mysterious album with it's plain blue textured sleeve it pops up again without warning.

Beyond being a reminder of days gone by, of a cramped caravanning holiday, a friend who turned out to be an utter dick and his mum who I think I wanted to fuck, this is a killer album. Well not killer, that's the wrong word. It is however solidly built, unusual, well balanced and totally under-rated.

GAL COSTA - GAL

The thing I like most about Tropicalia stalwart Gal Costa is that she has not just one but two eponymously titled albums, 'Gal Costa' and 'Gal' (as in Costa). That is the kind of nihilistic behaviour that can only be matched by calling your first studio album 'The Best of: Double Live'. 

I will skip the politics and the revolution, the imprisoned musicians and the giant tea cup Rogerio Duprat is holding on the front of the scene setting 'Tropicalia' compilation album and instead go for Brazilian music's neck, stabbing it repeatedly with my blue Biro pen...

Much of what came from the Tropicalia scene is below average. There I said it: At times it is little more than badly disguised Bossa Nova music wrapped up in third rate outsider art.