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.

PETER WYNGARDE - PETER WYNGARDE

It's Sunday and I still haven't got dressed. The windows in our compact and bijou London bolt-hole are wide open and the traffic sounds like it's in the living room, police cars and the occasional horn of an irate driver who doesn't understand the concept of a cycle lane. Anyway, I decided to sprinkle a little bit of fairy dust on this otherwise dull but sunny day with this...

It's rare for 'celebrity' records to warrant the amount of hype that can surround them but in the case of Peter Wyngarde's effort I can happily say that most of it is justified.

Putting out an album was hardly an unusual step for an early 70s television or film icon, with this Wyngarde joined the ranks of William Shatner, David McCallum, Richard Harris and many others. What was odd was the subject choice. We knew it was going to be saucy, the man's Jason King character was the blue-print for Mike Myers' Austin Powers persona after all. What the world hadn't prepared itself for was 'Rape' the song that owns the first side of the album.

Many reviews cite this as a social commentary on different types of rape across the world. I have a different take on it: The track comes after 'You Wonder How These Things Happen' (She was asking for it?) and the albums seductive opener in which Peter invites us in to his bachelor bad, asks us to sit down and pours us a drink, it's a first person narrative. I think the second track 'Rape' is also from Wyngarde's POV and it tells of a series of events that follows whatever was dropped in the opener's drink.

Well that's pretty shocking. Yes in 2011 it is, but then what isn't? You have to remember that this came very roughly around the same time that Jones and Moon were cavorting about in SS uniforms. The world was a very different place, one where terrorism was sexy, where children didn't go missing at the hands of paedophiles but rather 'ran off to join the circus'. I doubt very much that it even an eyebrow was raised back in 1970 when it appeared.

Years later though you don't need to wonder why it was never re-issued as is. The album is available in it's complete form as part of the Wyngarde compilation 'When Sex Leeers it's Inquisitive Head' where it is re-contextualized minus the above artwork.

Talking of the artwork, I imagine that just below the shot on the front sleeve our man is holding up a prisoner number and slimy moustache and bouffant comb forward is about to be dressed not in leather pants or a stylish safari number but prison blues marked with a nonce-wing ident.

The problem is that with an absolute juggernaut of a song like 'Rape' on it is that the rest of the album rarely gets a look in. I went through a period of putting the song on whenever anybody (potential girlfriends withstanding) came over. Never once did it receive anything less than a

'What the fuck?'

I first heard about this in the mid 90's and was lucky enough to come across a copy around then. The rest of the album is surprisingly well orchestrated and in places very catchy. 'Hippie And The Skinhead' is a standout as is 'Neville Thumbcatch' and in amongst the songs are a couple of breaks that would sit perfectly on 'Ill Communication' era Beastie Boys tracks.

Anyway, whether this is the worlds first and only 'date rape' concept album or not it's incredibly catchy and well worth a look.

ZOLA JESUS - STRIDULUM II

I am reviewing this because it's been on my work desk and staring at me for the best part of 5 months. Also because I am not entirely sure that the fawning and in-depth write up I want to give Deftones 'White Pony' would be appreciated by anybody apart from me (Just to say it's in my top 50 albums and if you don't own a copy get over that Nu-metal labeling and treat yourself).

I've had this in and out of the CD player (also on my desk) since around Christmas and it's really grown on me. To be honest I hadn't been sure what to expect. The personnel listing wasn't exactly inspiring: One person (Nika Rosa Danilova) with a keyboard. It could quite easily have fallen flat like a Jamie Lidell gig with a broken sequencer. But it doesn't. Given the lack of other instrumentation it's a surprisingly dense piece. It's brooding, dark, haunting, it's all of those other words that appeared in reviews of the record when it came out in the middle of last year.

The whole album is like an elongated study of This Mortal Coil's version of 'Song to a Siren', and if you ever saw that track used in the trailer for the remake of Texas Chainsaw Massacre then those visuals add even more credence to that line of thinking. It comes from a very black and pained place, somewhere close to death.

Another thing that undoubtedly every review of this so far will have pointed out is how close her Nika's vocal range is to that of Siouxsie Sioux. At first her delivery was massively grating but like the music that accompanies it, in time you find yourself immersed.

Despite all of this and my repeat listening at work, I am trying to think of circumstances where I might choose this as a soundtrack and I am coming up short. You can't really have sex to it unless that sex involves ropes and potentially knives. I wouldn't want to drive to it, unless my driving culminated with a high-speed and slow motion chase resulting in my untimely and messy crash based death. It's not ironing music unless I am contemplating ironing my hand and or face. You get the picture - It's very emotional, borderline wallowing music or like I said, maybe something you play when you are having knife sex.

So given I don't intend for copious amounts of blood to feature in any love making in which I might partake I will leave this on my desk, safe in the knowledge that it's a suitable accompaniment to putting together elongated and over-styled Power Point presentations.

SALEM - KING NIGHT

I'm a bit late to the party with this one but given it's been on what can only be described as 'heavy rotation' for the past couple of months I felt I should do it the justice of at least a few column inches. I narrowly missed seeing them play at the weekend (sold out) and I was so gutted that the fine mexican food and cans of PBR at the Motor City Lounge that took a poor second place lost all of their taste.

I asked a few people what would make the top album's of 2010 list and aside of the long drawn out bouts of silence peppered with 'fuck me it was a shit year for music' the only other common denominator was this 'King Night' by Salem.

Personally I had managed to avoid all of the fuss surrounding this, mainly because I thought it was by Z-list metal band Salem but also because the people telling me to go listen to it couldn't really explain why I should or what it sounded like.

In time cool monikers for the genre apparently championed by Salem came along.

'It's Witch House'

'It's Rape-gaze'

Well what to say other than 'You had me at hello'.

I wasn't exactly sure what to expect other than some really dense, mid-fi beat based music and the first couple of times I played it that's exactly what I got. Kind of like sorry for it's self trip-hop (ugh) fed through the Kevin Shields machine. Then I started using it to calm number one son when he wouldn't stop crying, well okay mostly it was to calm me but as I did I started to get into it.

To say the sound is dense is an understatement, Salem have succeeded in packing so much into their sound it plays like the needle is being dragged through a dirty old suitcase stuffed with shit-stained clothes salvaged from a hospital incinerator and I mean that in the nicest way possible. Its music that's so dirty that it smells. Really though, it does, of beer, of sex, of heroin shit on stone-washed denim.

High pitched keyboard squeals layered over budget drum machines with a voice at the back of the mix so smacked out and slowed down that if the singer needed a Black Metal name he would be called Mogadon. There's some orchestration in there as well and surprisingly, the entire thing managed in part at least to come across as anthemic. Something that despite of itself you could imagine a room full of people dancing to.

I now find myself in the same position that my much hipper friends found themselves in last year: Trying to recommend something to people without really being able to label the sound or explain the musical motive, but that's okay because it's about fucking time.