Vico

Beirut

Beirut
Gulag Orkestar
(2006)

Rating: 7.2

I was very excited the first few times I listened to this album because it had all the raw materials for a fiesty indie longplayer - there was the dinky techno balladry of the Magnetic Fields, the brash Black Rider divilment of Tom Waits and it was all held together by the inventive pop hands of Andrew Bird. In fact, I'm still not sure that the lead singer is not some sort of Andrew Bird doppelganger. It was not difficult to shut the eyes and imagine I was listening to all my favourite head-the-balls banging out a giant, gypsy, million dollar bash in the style of The Travelling Wilburys. Maybe Roy Orbison might even steal in with a chillingly sad: Where Is My Old Europe Gone? between choruses.

The trouble is that with repeated listening, all of my giddy illusions were cruelly dispelled. Roy never appeared. The Magnetic Fields downed casio-tools and Tom left a few half assed sea shantys in the hands of uncertain studio hands. It all fell apart. The only person left was an Andrew Bird impersonator and the studio hands just resorted to pushing all the dials up to 10 whenever they were unsure of what to do.

I'm being too harsh here. I was just listening to this album on the way home and it made me feel ill. Every song swells to an almighty chorus and there seems to be very little restraint exercised in recording the songs. I got so tired of Zach Condon wailing mournfully in both my ears that I pulled out my earphones and stumbled along muttering Just Shut Up, Shut Up Will You Just Shut Up....

But its a good album. There is a wonderful variety of instruments and even if there are plenty of precedents for whats been done, Zach Condon demonstrates a keen enough talent to warrant a few hurrahs and yahoos. Unfortunately there are about 57 Shut Ups as well.

Ellen Allien

Ellen Allien
Berlinette
(2003)

Rating: 8.2

This is a lovely German Techno album with gorgeous splashy pop hooks and I'm going to do my best to avoid doing it a disservice by mentioning things like motorways, nihilism and cutting off Johnsons. Berlinette is pure electro-pleasure and I was sold on it right from the first listen so I'm not going to delve too deep into it's technical brilliance in my recommendation. It's lovely. Absolutely lovely. And nice.

Actually calling the album nice is doing Ellen Allien a huge disservice. This album is considerably more inventive and interesting than any of those of her peers that I have come across. Miss Kitten is hardly worth mentioning in comparision and she makes Felix da Housecat sound like a complete cheesecake.

A song like Sehnsucht for example, trucks along with all the business intent of a floor filler but manages to accommodate a slow spiralling synth loop half-way through before continuing on its way. Augenblick swings sounding both screechy clean and pleasant at the same time and you can appreciate the crafty attention to detail with an immaculately timed guitar riff in Open. You could even describe opening track Alles Sehen as elegant. "Oh that's it!", I hear you say,"I'm fucking sick of the wankpot way he describes things. He described an Electro song as Elegant for fucks sake!" But give it a go. There will be a word on the tip of your tongue for most of the song and in the end, with grinding terror and absolute remorse, you'll realise that word is Elegant. I'll probably still be a terrible prick though.

This is a special album and I'd highly recommend it to electro fans and non-fans alike. So there it is. All done without even a mention of nihilism and how exhausting it can be.

Isolée

Isolée
Wearemonster
(2005)

Rating: 8.0


The anal fixations and ridiculous specifications that you get on Electronic review sites don't do the music any favours. I discovered that I have been a fan of Drill’n’Bass but also that I have a taste for what’s considered by most to be cheap and tacky (no surprise there). A lot of what I like came under the horrible classification of Intelligent Dance Music (IDM), as if music in clubs is stupid because it has to appeal to more than one person. As far as I’m concerned, there are three genres of Electronic Music. Going to Sleep Electronica (Brian Eno), A Bit of Dancing Electronica (Vitalic) and I Have My Headphones On Electronica (Squarepusher). This superb album by Isolée falls into the last category.

The good people at Almostcool tell me that this album comes under the heading of Micro-House and although I’m reluctant to use any of the going lingo, that seems like a very appropriate title. Most of what’s happening is subtle and localised. There are no huge throbbing passages or wild electro jiggery-pokery. The songs rely on a few playfully simple elements and they trip along without much of a fuss or eagerness to please.

There are a few warm propulsive numbers (Pictureloved, Madchen Mit Hase) and some superbly paced guitar tracks (Schrapnell, Today). The wonderful My Hi-Matic zips along with some lovely synths and motorized blipology. The songs sit very well together and there is enough intrigue and diversity to warrant a complete run though each time. If you like I Have My Headphones On Electronica, then this is the perfect album for you.

The Knife

The Knife
Silent Shout
(2006)

Rating: 7.2


This album is getting superb reviews at the moment and is already being touted as a contender for album of the year. The Knife offer a gothic take on Techno, blending ethereal vocals with Trance and Euro-Disco. It’s a unique sound and there’s even talk of it spawning a new genre: Haunted House. I like that name.

The Haunted House sound is dominated by warped sampling of the lead singer. The vocals of Karin Dreijer suffer an array of treatments over the course of the album, pitching from a masculine computer drone to a childish alien-chant on some of the more up-tempo numbers. I suppose the intention was for the listener to be feel jilted by the mixed treatments as the album plays through, but I can’t help feeling irritated by the unnecessary “let’s make it sound fucked up” attitude of the high pitched tracks.

Much more successful are the low throbbing Neverland, the Felt Mountain-tinged Na Na Na and very excellent opener, Silent Shout. The vocal treatments are well suited to what’s going on around them and the songs benefit from simple arrangements.

There is one absolute standout track on the album. Like a Pen’s rhythm emerges from a superb alternating sample of water drops and bounces along at a good pace. The old water-drop sample may be a tired trick but they manage to make it sound fresh here and I find myself nodding along to it each time.

I have to say that some of the sounds on the album are a little dated. You could certainly see Marble House or The Captain fitting comfortably onto an early Classic Chillout album. Maybe a volume where the singers have been strangled a little. Autoerotic Asphyxia-Chillout. Although I don’t think that would make for a very pleasant TV ad.

There are enough enjoyable tracks on this album to give it a solid recommendation and I can see it being successful in seducing Techno-sceptics into clubs. Personally, I find it hard to stomach some of the eerie-helium elements but it should appeal to fans of Cocteau Twins, Bjork and Depeche Mode.

The Flaming Lips

The Flaming Lips
At War With the Mystics
(2006)

Rating: 6.2

It is impossible not to be charmed by the Galactic antics of The Flaming Lips. Car radio symphonies, homemade science fiction movies about Christmas on Mars and world-conquering tours populated by daffy, blood soaked animals; their's is a boundlessly enthusiastic approach to engaging an audience. If The Flaming Lips were a cult and Wayne Coyne demanded a collective suicide in Space, you'd have to battle through bunny-costumed crowds to get onto the shuttle.

I've been lucky enough to catch them twice in concert over the last few years and each occasion defied the other in terms of crowd participation and onstage hilarity. You know you're at a Flaming Lips concert when 40,000 beaming fans, punch the air and sing: "Everyone You Know, Someday, Will Die".

There was only one real way for them to go after scaling those giddy heights. The band, to their credit, are seeking out a new direction and the album adopts a more terestrial approach in its delivery. There are no spectral melodies. No childish sense of wonder. Its a huge disappointment. Even repeated listening on Alex Conway's (Leinster Road, Rathmines) pirate copy of the album over the last week has not yielded any hidden qualities.

Its hard to fathom such an unprecedented loss of form in the bands career. My suspicion is that Joe Meek grew tired of Wayne Coyne stealing his M.O. and decided to engage in a little bit of mind-gangsterism. But even discounting Joe's intervention, the album seems to be dominated by what can only be called Bad Ideas. From the Prince-being-Political schtick of Free Radicals to the uninspiring samples that litter almost every song, the album doesn't seem to have been conducted with any enthusiasm. Its hard to see how the appalling Yeah Yeah Yeah song was ever a good idea.

The best I can say of the album is that Pompeii Am Gotterdamnerung manages a decent fist at Space-krautrock. The throbbing bass that drives the song is one of the few elements that I can actually identify as being enjoyable on the album. Vein of Stars starts out with a sweetly unhinged vocal melody but by the time it comes back around towards the end of the song, there is the sinking feeling that the album is fresh out of ideas.

There is nothing here to stoke the imagination of ravenously expectant Flaming Lips fans. The change of direction is understandable if a little misjudged. Actually, make that completely misjudged. It seems like the lights on Wayne's space ship have dimmed and his only company is a radio channel that plays inoffensive, drive-friendly psychedelic rock.

Aphex Twin

Aphex Twin
Richard D. James Album
(1996)

Rating: 8.0

In the past, the experience of absorbing an Aphex Twin album has caused unspecified disruption to some of my normal brain functions. The problem with Selected Ambient Works for example, was that it was difficult to suppress the idea that I was being lulled into a false sense of security so that Richard James could plant disgustingly unhealthy sounds in my brain. I remember Neil wearily recommending the album to me: Be careful, I think it fucks with your head.

For this reason, I spent the first couple of run throughs of this album bracing myself for an extremely inhumane burst of wiry electrodes. It took until the third listen before I was confident I wouldn't be assaulted with anything indecent.

But there was never any real need to worry. This album is about as close as Aphex Twin will ever get to easy listening electronica. Songs like Corn Mouth, Goon Gumpas and Logan Rock Witch trip along with a childlike innocence and despite some of the synapse tearing divilment at the lower levels of the songs, you should actually get through this without any significant brain-offense. In fact, the lovely Fingerbib actually makes my head feel cleaner after each listen.

There are a couple of definite standouts. On Girl/Boy Song and opener 4, the meshing of drum'n'bass and classical orchestration comes to full fruition . It might seem like a bit of a gamble to mix these two, but the genius of these songs is that the orchestration only serves as a backdrop to the evil inventiveness of the drum and bass. He actually manages to make unhinged and scrambled drumming sound more beautiful than violins. That sounds rediculous, but its true. This is a great album. And its lovely. I think. I hope.

Sparks

Sparks
Hello Young Lovers
(2006)

Rating: 7.8

Just when you thought you'd had enough of hysterical mini-operas with sleazy innuendo, the brothers Mael serve up yet another hilariously inventive album for our delectation. I'm not going to spoil any of the jokes or musical surprises by mentioning them here but if you know anything about Sparks then you'll expect rediculously dramatic orchestration, ominous chanting, dubious rhyming schemes and solid-gold irony.

Its biologically impossible not to be charmed by songs like Dick Around, Waterproof and Perfume. Each one makes me do a little dance under my desk and I'm really not sure what stops me from punching the air in public when they sing:

"But all I do now is Dick Around!
the sun goes up, the moon comes down,
All I do now is dick around. Dick Around!"

I don't want to spoil any more of the jokes so I'll just finish by saying that the glorious (Baby, Baby) Can I Invade Your Country? made me Monty Python-trot around Temple Bar and Metaphor gave me renewed confidence in tired chat up techniques. Its just a bit of fun really.

Favourite Albums: Tom Waits

Tom Waits
Bone Machine
(1993)

Rating: 9.6

I'm going to start of a series of reviews of favourite albums in the laziest way possible by stealing from Mark Prindle :

I'm not sure if I mentioned this, but each time you read one of my album reviews, your credit card is automatically charged $4.99. A few cheapskates who want everything done for them and delivered for free (I call them the "thieving MP3 generation") have asked for leniency, so I'm going to do you a favor and let me wife review Boner Machine. She only charges $1.75, so read all you want! She's heard the CD more times than I have anyway. I made her sell it years ago when I thought Tom Waits was a boring old bluesman like Eric Clapton. I just hope that she mentions (a) a lot of the lyrics have to do with death, (b) it has "I Don't Wanna Grow Up," the ONLY Tom Waits song that could have conceivably been covered by the Ramones (and it WAS! On their 1976 debut album Acid Eaters), (c) it's a very loose album with percussion that sounds like people beating slaves with chains and/or a guy taped a microphone to a horse's underbelly to record its cute little shoes walking around, yet (d) it does a terrific job of combining really great melodic songwriting and stylistic variation with the "banging on crap I found in the garage" feel of his last few albums (especially in the Johnny Cash-style C/W "Black Wings," the tremolo-driven Cramps-soundalike "Goin' Out West," the lovely piano bbbbballad "Whistle Down The Wind" and the NORMAL pop ballad filled with a hundred thousand guitars and basses playing with and over each other "Who Are You," which was neither written by Pete Townshend nor inclusive of the ass-stupid lyric "I stepped back and I hiccuped!") I should also rave about Tom's diversity re: the prisoner negro chant "All Stripped Down," jazzy "Earth Died Screaming," desolate out-of-tune gospel "Jesus Gonna Be Here" and disturbing as ALL HELL "The Ocean Doesn't Want Me" (and it is VERY sinister, if you're into sinister). Do not, however, ask me to remark about "Such A Scream," because the bass line is stolen from Jimi Hendrix's "Fire." And although that song IS in fact a scream, the whole idea of some white guy born on December 7, 1949 in Pomona, CA who wrote a song that was covered by The EAGLES ("Ol' 55," not "Teenage Jail" -- I wrote "Teenage Jail"! But when I wrote it, it didn't have shitty lyrics and boring music, and it wasn't called "Teenage Jail") stealing a bass line from the flamingest-guitar guy with an afro ever "Born In Seattle" -- AND I DON'T MEAN THE CAMPAIGN FOR JAPANESE AMERICAN REDRESS!!! I think the slanty-eyed Pearl Harbor murderer bastards look perfectly nice in their little suits, picking my cotton. In short, my opinion of Bone Machine is that it is one hell of a Pixies song. But I'm not going to review it. I'm going to leave that to my wife. These next words will be by my wife. But be kind in your assessment of her, because she can't read or write. Also, please note that, because I wrote such a long introduction, you're still going to be charged $4.99 for this review.

I like mallards -- Brenda.

That was it, readers! Now you all have to give me a blow job!!!
What? Don't you remember our "deal"?