Plug Me In - Squarepusher - Shobaleader One: d’Demonstrator (2010, Warp)
Though most of it kind of sounds like a boring Daft Punk emulation with a splash of IDM, Squarepusher’s Shobaleader One: d’Demonstrator does have a couple of outstanding, haunting tracks on it; foremost this one, Plug Me In.
Comptine d’un autre été: L’après-midi - Yann Tiersen - Amélie (2001, Virgin)
A beautiful soundtrack to an awesome French film.
In a Beautiful Place Out in the Country - Boards of Canada - In a Beautiful Place Out in the Country (2000, Warp)
It’s not very often you find an EP as well constructed as Boards of Canada’s In a Beautiful Place Out in the Country. It came out in between the release of their first two albums, Music Has the Right to Children and Geogaddi, and as such ends up being an interesting stylistic and thematic ‘in between’. It retains the warm, gauzy synths of the first album, but the much darker themes that came through in the second album, Geogaddi, also start to become apparent in earnest.
The duo never officially described the EP as such, but it’s not much of a stretch to call In a Beautiful Place Out in the Country a concept album about Branch Davidianism. The Branch Davidians are a by now almost extinct protestant sect, that believe we are living in a time when Bible prophecies of a final divine judgement are coming to pass, as a prelude to the second coming of Jesus.
The group has had a notably dark and twisted history, most prominently involving a self-proclaimed leader of the sect, David Koresh. In 1989 Koresh stated he had been told by God to procreate with the women in the group to establish a “House of David” of his “Special People.” This involved married couples in the group dissolving their marriages and agreeing that only David Koresh could have sexual relations with the wives.
The Branch Davidians are most infamous for the 1993 Waco siege, which began when the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) attempted to execute a search warrant of the Koresh’s compound in Waco, Texas, due to reports of illegal weapon stockpiles, and reports of sexual abuse and misconduct. They were met with an intense gun battle, after which the FBI intervened and the siege began. It ended with a second assault 50 days later, causing a fire that destroyed the compound, resulting in the deaths of seventy-five of Koresh’s followers, including twenty children; and David Koresh himself.
The most obvious reference to the group is in the track title Amo Bishop Roden, the real name of a woman heavily involved in the sect’s murky history, but who parted ways with Koresh and his followers just before the infamous siege. But there are numerous references to the sect throughout the album, such as the title track’s mantra “come out and live in a religious community in a beautiful place out in the country”, a slogan used by Roden to proselyte for the sect.
On the surface, In a Beautiful Place Out in the Country displays all of the the warm, gauzy synth sounds from Music Has the Right to Children, even complete with the samples of laughing children in the background. But after knowing the story behind the EP, the music itself completely changes; the warmth become offset by a feeling of unease, of something a lot darker lurking under the surface of the deceptively innocent music.
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Idiologie - Sirisumo - Mosaik (2011, Monkeytown)
Acclaimed German producer Siriusmo just released his second LP, on Modeselektor’s new label Monkeytown. It’s a bit of a stylistic mash up, but mostly in a good way, echoing Modeselektor’s tendency to jump between dozens of genres in their work. And there are also some absolute gems on Mosaik. The album opener High Together begins with a great light-hearted intro before dropping some funky electro house beats. Bad Idea sports a deceptively laid-back intro before plunging into some deliciously dirty dubstep. Feromonikon and Sirimande are excellently produced electro bangers, in the style of his earlier work. Nights Off is another definite stand-out, with its gauzy synths and catchy, mellow melody line. And then theres Idiologie, which ends up sounding like an awesome, crazy mash up of irish folk music and hard-hitting electro.
No, the issue I have with Mosaik is the quality control— there are a few dull, lifeless tracks on the album, and worse still a couple are just plain awful (Peeved, for example). It’s a shame, because Siriusmo has a reputation for being a very talented, innovative producer, and for good reason. But with Mosaik he has watered down some really excellent work with some useless, at times detrimentally uninspired studio offcuts.
Moth - Burial & Four Tet - Moth / Wolf Cub (2009, Text Records)
Savoy Truffle - The Beatles - The Beatles (White Album) (1968, Apple)
Cool cherry cream, nice apple tart / I feel your taste all the time we’re apart
Apologies for the lack of over these few days, things are a little crazy at uni. But have this awesome Beatles track, one of my absolute favourites.
Homecoming - The Teenagers - Reality Check (2008, XL)
people who slag off the teenagers don’t realise they are a perfect blend of pretentious douchebaggery and trash. therefore making them like totally the best band ever.
Avril 14th - Aphex Twin - Drukqs (2001, Warp)
Although rumors of an impending new release have been going around for years, Drukqs is still the last studio album Aphex Twin released under that name. And it was was quite divisive, many critics thought that after stunning releases such as Selected Ambient Works and The Richard D. James Album, Drukqs just seemed something like “a Sunday afternoon’s trawl through his hard drive for files he hasn’t released before”. But although it does lack the vision, cohesion and innovation of such previous releases, there are some really excellent tracks on the album, such as Avril 14th. Nestled up the back of the double album’s first disc, it’s a short, hauntingly beautiful track written for solo piano; echoing French avant-garde composer Eric Satie.
It’s also the track that Kanye West samples to provide the piano line in Blame Game, off his latest album My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. Credit should definitely go to Kanye for finding such a great sample from an unlikely source such as Aphex Twin, and constructing a dark and thought-provoking track that excellently juxtaposes the beautiful sample. However, I don’t think there’s any denying that above anything else, it’s primarily Aphex Twin that makes Blame Game something special.
Lotus Flower - Radiohead - The King of Limbs (2011, Self Released)
As you have doubtless already heard or read, Radiohead released their latest album The King of Limbs today, as a £6 download from their website. And despite being yet another stylistic departure from their last release, it’s far from a disappointment.
Right from the foggy keyboards and off-kilter percussion of Bloom, it becomes apparent that the album finally sees Radiohead as a band embracing the electronic effects so favoured by Thom Yorke in his solo works. The feeling of open space in the clean production of In Rainbows is replaced by a slightly blurred, misty feeling that permeates The King of Limbs, accentuated by reverb and other electronic alterations.
The album is clearly influenced by electronic music of multiple genres, but after the amount of work Yorke has been doing in the field, this shouldn’t come as much of a surprise. The twitchy, off-kilter drums and gauzy looped keyboards from Bloom or Feral wouldn’t be out of place in a Flying Lotus track; of whom Yorke recently collaborated with on FlyLo’s acclaimed latest album Cosmogramma. And the use of reverb and other effects gives many tracks a distinctly shoegazey feel, a la M83.
But in many ways, The King of Limbs is a return to form for the band. Largely gone are the introverted, personal ballads from the last album, replaced with a more stereotypically Radiohead dystopian feel. The lush string arrangements and intimate fingered acoustic guitars of In Rainbows also hit a sharp demotion. If you listen closely, the strings are at times still present, but this time blurred, clipped and looped into the background to form part of the sonic fog. Also, despite the strong use of electronic effects, the basic instrumentation is a lot closer to their earlier work too— The King of Limbs features the band using a much more cohesive and traditional rock band set-up for many of the tracks. But having said that, this is definitely no rock album.
The band label the album as ‘alternative’, and it really is the kind of album that could only fit under such a broad term. The King of Limbs merges aspects of alternative and rock, electronica and ambient music, as well a nuances from other genres; but somehow the band have created a very cohesive sound and album out of it all.
All in all, it would be fair to say Radiohead have somehow yet again lived up to their reputation as one of the most acclaimed bands in recent history. The King of Limbs is close and engaging without being claustrophobic, moody and emotive without being downright depressing, and strikes just the right balance between old and new. And at £6 a pop, what have you got to lose?
And quite unfortunately it looks as if my worst fears may be realised: a Chemical Brothers/Plastikman clash. Fingers crossed the lineup order doesn’t completely reflect the times… Also, there are nine stages at this thing. That’s really a bit much, and guaranteed to cause some clashes.
In the mean time, The Presets recently announced that they’re debuting a completely new stage set-up at the festival, designed by the team behind the Daft Punk Alive pyramid. And since this is their first show after being holed up in the studio for the last year and a half, they’re going to be debuting a lot of tracks from their upcoming third album. As you can see below, their last tour was nothing short of awesome, so I can’t wait to see their new show. Here’s hoping the timetable is awesome and clash-free…
If I could have it back, all the time that we wasted, I’d only waste it again; If I could have it back, you know I’d love to waste it again, waste it again and again and again…
I Got A Woman - Nicolas Jaar - Space Is Only Noise (2011, Circus Company)
The much hyped Nicolas Jaar just dropped his debut album Space Is Only Noise. And although it took quite a few listens for me to really start to get it, I’m really starting to appreciate just how good it is. Born in New York, his family quickly relocated to Santiago, Chile, where Nicolas spent a large part of his childhood. His family ended up moving back to Manhattan, where Jaar finished his secondary education at a French school. But here’s the thing, he’s only a couple of years through a degree in Comparative Literature and History at Brown.
Though only 20 years old, the young musician has hundreds of productions under his belt already, not to mention his own record label. He cites influences ranging from hip hop to modern classical music, and especially jazz music; and has been hailed as one of the most forward-looking producers in dance music today. After a few runs through, Space Is Only Noise has really opened up to exhibit his jazz-soaked deep house electronica perfectly. You’d be hard pressed to find anything that sounds quite like it.
Radiohead just announced that they will be self-releasing their latest LP, The King of Limbs, via their website this Saturday, just as they famously released In Rainbows. But it was the successful self-release of In Rainbows that showed it was entirely possible to release music, and operate a band, without any record deal at all, and as such I don’t think the news of this album’s self-release really comes as much of a surprise.
After the band’s record deal with EMI was completed in 2003 with Hail to the Thief, Radiohead groundbreakingly decided to self-release In Rainbows via their website, as a “pay what you want” download. And despite the option to pay nothing (except for a negligible processing fee in this case), the band reportedly made $10 million in less than a week of it being online. But most importantly, none of that money goes to record companies, advertisers, distributors or any middle-men whatsoever. It all went straight to the band.
This time around, Radiohead are self-releasing The King of Limbs for £6, which roughly equates to $9.70. Yes, that’s definitely far from free, but I think there’s little doubt many will be willing to pay that much for the album. It may not generate as much buzz as a “pay what you want” system, but the first time was to prove a point— that, as Thom Yorke put it, record companies are a “decaying business model”. This time they mean business.
£6 is almost half the price that you’d expect to pay for the album were it released on a label, or via an online store such as iTunes. But of that £10 or so you’d expect to spend, typically only about 25% will actually make it back to the band, the rest will go to the record company, the online store and other numerous middle-men. So, as well as drastically undercutting the competition, by self-releasing their work Radiohead are potentially making more than double the profit they would have otherwise.
Add to this the fact the band now also have full creative and legal control over their music, at a time when declining record sales mean the big record companies are hedging their bets, and trying to ensure profit by effectively homogenising their releases; and you could easily begin to wonder why anyone signs for record deals anymore.
One could argue that the record companies provide professional promotion, something that isn’t really that important to Radiohead at this point in their career, but definitely is to a less-renowned band or artist. However, what is the main source that you, the reader, use to find the majority of your music? I’d bet eight out of ten of you would answer the internet; most probably on blogs such as this, or social networking services such as Facebook and MySpace. I’d also bet you too have a blog, Facebook or MySpace page— did you need to hire a professional to create that for you?
One could also argue that a traditional record deal will provide professional studios and equipment. But to be honest, these days anyone can save a bit of money and buy Pro-Tools, which is exactly what the recording studios would use themselves. You could even do it for free and download it illegally; which brings me to my next point.
Yorke’s statement that the record industry is decaying can be backed up by any number of sales figures. As an example, the sales of CDs in the US have dropped from $13.2 billion in 2000, to $5.5 billion in 2008, and they continue to fall sharply. There’s no doubt this is due to the rise of the internet, and in particular illegal file sharing. As physical profits fell, online music piracy increased dramatically, and by now up to 95% of downloads are illegal.
The recording industry had many opportunities to embrace the new technology, and use it to their advantage (indeed, right at the beginning Napster offered the major record companies a deal to use the service as a legal online store). But instead they chose to fight it with costly, and largely useless legal battles against file sharing companies. When that turned out to not have the desired effect, they started suing individuals as well, but this just ended up giving many another reason to boycott the industry and continue illegally sharing music. Although the big record companies have recently been making some legitimate efforts modernise, the damage has been done.
Artists now have easy, cost-effective alternatives to the services that big record industries offered as part of record deal, and the fact is that signing to a record deal just isn’t nearly as lucrative or important as it used to be. However, I’m not saying this is the death of the physical album. Although the trend of digital releases is doubtless just going to increase, there is always a market for a hard copy. The King of Limbs will be released in physical form later on in the year, just as In Rainbows ended up being. I’m just saying that it is nowhere near lucrative enough to support the big record companies anymore, and that their struggle to stay afloat in the business is quite possibly just doing damage.
As Radiohead proved with In Rainbows, the record industry is pretty much superfluous by now. The music industry as a whole has barely suffered from file sharing and the decrease in album sales, despite what some high-profile artists such as Lily Allen would have you believe. A majority of artists have simply turned to live performance as their main source of income. And realising that people will download their work regardless, many artists are these days releasing free material online, such as singles, remixes and promotional mixes. But still very few have made the leap to being fully self-released and record label free. Hopefully a successful release of The King of Limbs can convince them of the benefits of doing so, just as the successful release of In Rainbows showed it could be done.
