http://thequietus.com/articles/02982-vic-chesnutt-interview-at-the-cut-skitter-on-take-off
Listen to one of the album's highlights here:
Tuesday, 29 December 2009
Feature: Vic Chesnutt (The Quietus)
http://thequietus.com/articles/02982-vic-chesnutt-interview-at-the-cut-skitter-on-take-off
Listen to one of the album's highlights here:
Monday, 14 December 2009
Live Review: Them Crooked Vultures (The Quietus)
My full review is available here: http://thequietus.com/articles/03418-them-crooked-vultures-live-in-berlin-what-a-carrion
Saturday, 12 December 2009
Artwork for Cortney Tidwell
Cortney Tidwell's latest album is called 'Boys', and for the artwork we wanted to use some of the photographs that I have taken of her and her kids over the last couple of years. Canada's The Cardboard Box Project were drafted in as designers, and what they were able to do made me very proud indeed. Here's the front cover for the album:
The first single was 'Watusii':
The first single was 'Watusii':
This was followed by the release of 'So We Sing':
The 'Boys' done good...
Friday, 4 December 2009
Feature: Yello (The Quietus)
See further evidence of Swiss cheese here:
Tuesday, 1 December 2009
Album review: The Antlers - Hospice (Uncut)
4/5
If the subject of terminal illness and lines like “Sylvia, get your head out of the oven” seem unappealing then Hospice might appear an unlikely candidate for praise. But Brooklyn-based Peter Silberman’s first work with a band is a remarkable, lyrically dense album full of delicately executed crescendos, unexpected anthems and passages of ambient beauty. ‘Bear’ recalls Loney, Dear’s breathless sensitivity, while ‘Two’ tells a multicoloured shaggy dog story of a disintegrating relationship and death. Best is ‘Sylvia’, where Bon Iver’s intimacy, Arcade Fire’s ambition, Sigur Ros’ otherworldly reach and Flaming Lips’ psychedelic experimentalism collide.
Album Review: Betty Davis - Nasty Gal / Is It Love Or Desire (Uncut)
Third and fourth mid-70s albums from the filthy queen of funk
Until recently best known for romantic liaisons with Miles Davis (who she married), Eric Clapton and Robert Palmer, Betty Davis is arguably history’s most influential unrecognised funk / soul artist. Such was her defiantly sexual and powerful persona that it overwhelmed the music – Is It Love Or Desire was shelved by Island for over thirty years, no doubt for songs like ‘Whorey Angel’ and ‘It’s So Good’, where she moans “Any questions you got, my body will answer”. As funky as Funkadelic, these lovingly assembled reissues offer a rich, occasionally over-spiced stew that demands long overdue attention.
Album Review: Various Artists - D-Funk: Funk, Disco & Boogie Grooves from Germany 1972-2002 (Uncut)
3/5
Everybody Tanz now: Germans always knew how to party
If all Boney M means to you is ‘Mary’s Boy Child’ then this latest in Marina Records’ ongoing attempt to reclaim Germany’s musical past is a must. ‘Dancing In The Streets’, previously buried on its flipside, is a slick blast of anthemic funk, and it’s matched here by a mass of similarly styled teutonic discoveries. The fabulously named Cheeseslider’s ‘Sweatmajor’ sports forgivable slap bass, The Poets Of Rhythm get down and dirty, and Fehlfarben’s playfully epic ’14 Tage’ steals shamelessly from Chic. Even James Last gets in on the action with a funked up ‘Bolero ‘75’. Geil!
Saturday, 28 November 2009
Feature: Fridge (Comes With A Smile)
Another one from the archives: an interview with Fridge, the band that features / featured Keiran Hebden aka Fourtet and Adem Ilhan aka Adem (alongside Sam Jeffers, who these days designs websites). This story ran in the Summer 1998 issue of the late, lamented Comes With A Smile. "If you do the least sensible thing possible, eventually it will start to make some kind of sense. Fridge seem to have based every decision they have made in their short career around this short maxim..."
http://cwas.hinah.com/interview/?id=46
Sunday, 22 November 2009
Feature: Godspeed You Black Emperor! (Comes With A Smile)
Once upon a time there was an independent magazine called Comes With A Smile. It was beautifully written, beautifully photographed, and beautifully laid out. Despite this, they still let me contribute, and you can read my feature about God Speed You Black Emperor! at the link below. "If Godspeed You Black Emperor! never make another record it will be our fault..."
http://cwas.hinah.com/interview/?id=6.
Friday, 23 October 2009
Live Review: Sonic Youth (The Quietus)
Most people never forget the first time they heard Sonic Youth's 'Daydream Nation', but over twenty years later they're still out there, cranking out their oft imitated, rarely matched atonal 'rock' (for want of a better word). "It's still their genre, copyright Sonic Youth." Or so I wrote for The Quietus:
http://thequietus.com/articles/03042-eternally-yours-sonic-youth-grow-old-gracefully-live-in-berlin
Thursday, 1 October 2009
Feature: The Schipper Forecast - A Portrait of director Sebastian Schipper (German Films Quarterly)
Sebastian Schipper's third film is a significant departure for the director...
“I think the challenge for films is that you want to fly and still touch the ground at the same time,” 41 year old director, scriptwriter and actor Sebastian Schipper says of the motivation behind his work. “You want a miracle but you want to believe in it.”
Although his work as a director has yet to reach a substantial worldwide audience, it’s fair to say that over the last ten years Schipper’s trademark mixture of understated surrealism, offbeat humour and a perceptive insight into human pyschology have carved him a significant niche in his German homeland. Despite starting out as an actor – including a role in Anthony Minghella’s multiple Oscar winning The English Patient – it’s as the screenwriter and director behind three defiantly German films that he has earned a reputation as one of the country’s most promising cinematic talents.
Gigantic (Absolut Giganten, 1999) came first, a witty and touching story about three friends enjoying their last night together in Hamburg before one of them moves to Cape Town. Initially the movie sank with little trace, but its DVD release provided a second opportunity for it to reach its audience. “For the first half a year after the film came out,” Schipper reminisces, “it was a disaster. Nobody really knew the actors, it was obviously a small budget film, and Germans just didn’t trust it. Then it got nominated for a German film prize, and then it won a silver German film prize, and about a year after it got distributed I realised a lot of people got a kick when I said, “Yeah, I directed that film”. They’d say, “Really? I saw that film eleven times!” I never saw any film eleven times!”
The film’s strengths lie in the relationship between its three central characters and Schipper’s exploration of what unites and separates them as much as it does in its memorable set pieces. Amidst the unlikely tension of a table football game, a clash with drag-racing Elvis impersonators and hours spent drinking in empty bars or kicking heels in parking garages emerges a lingering portrait of urban German life and camaraderie that reaches far beyond its geographical roots.
Schipper is sanguine about its initial lack of success, however. “It wasn’t an obvious comedy: three guys, one last night, a German film, especially in those days. German hit films are comedies or they’re people marching. Whether they’re marching for Hitler or East German, there’s not a big difference. The Germans must march or they’ve got to be funny. But Giganten was what the French call a comedie humaine. You don’t laugh your arse off.”
Its subsequent growing cult status, however, paved the way for his second film, A Friend Of Mine (Ein Freund Von Mir, 2006). Once again Schipper immerses himself in the minutiae of human relationships, singling out a short period in his protagonists’ lives and zooming in on little details that have significant repercussions. Karl, played by Daniel Brühl, is an unfulfilled twenty something who steps out of the comfort zone of his job in car insurance to spy on a rental company. There he meets Hans (Jurgen Vogel), a worker whose easygoing approach to life simultaneously infuriates and liberates Karl, and once again an unusual friendship provides the foundation for a series of bizarre incidents that help to shake Karl out of his torpor. Schipper’s growing confidence as a director and scriptwriter makes for a series of quietly provocative scenes, not least a beautifully filmed car race along a rainy autobahn, but instead of upping the pace once more for his latest film he chose to move in the opposite direction.
Sometime In August (Mitte Ende August, 2009) was inspired by a Goethe short story, Elective Affinities (Wahlverwandtschaften), and is a refreshingly intimate tale of a couple’s intentions to enjoy weeks alone renovating a summer house outside Berlin. Their peace is disturbed by the arrival of two more guests who inadvertently reveal the fractures within Hanna (Marie Bäumer) and Thomas (Milan Peschel)’s relationship. Its gentle pace has led some to dismiss it as whimsical but repeated viewings reveal its depth and a profound understanding of human nature at that point in people’s lives where they need to take responsibility for their actions and work out where they really belong.
“It’s amazing the attention the old master pays to the very beginnings, the very seeds, the things invisible to the naked eye. I think this is how things change between people, constantly,” Schipper explains of his attraction to a writer who he admits he was at first far from keen to read. “My films so far are about an inner monologue,” he continues, elaborating on the connections between this and his former work. “My ‘Bermuda Triangle’, the place where I’ve been paddling around for ten years of filmmaking, is marked by Catcher In The Rye, Truffaut’s 400 Blows and Hamlet. Those are my biggest ‘buoys’. And of course Hamlet is so absolutely amazing because it is about that inner monologue: a guy being portrayed as interesting who doesn’t know what to do.”
One of the more unusual things about Schipper’s films is that they rarely offer closure in the traditional cinematic fashion. He allows his audience only to imagine a life before the cameras started rolling, and a future thereafter without a defined ending, happy or otherwise. Within each film, however, we experience the intricately plotted and subtle growth of his central characters. Another hallmark of his three features has been their use of music, often at the expense of all other incidental sound during a scene. A Friend Of Mine was notable for being one of the first films cleared to use a song by the legendary 1980’s band Talk Talk, and Mitte Ende August features a specially commissioned soundtrack by cult US singer songwriter Vic Chesnutt.
“Music and images, they just dance,” the music fan grins. “They tango, they’re like two sex addicts who can’t keep their fingers off one another! My deepest connection with films is that I really like to read and I really like listening to music. When you read you’re a director, you picture what you’re reading and you start to cast people. A lot of books that I’ve read have taken place in my grandmother’s house. Music is the same: you really listen and you go somewhere. I think the most important thing about filmmaking and directing is that you have this daydream thing.”
A huge fan of Jim Jarmusch’s black and white films – “he tells a story in such a laconic way,” the director effuses – Schipper was first singled out by Tom Tykwer, the director and composer behind Run Lola Run (Lola Rennt) in which Schipper also appeared. “I got to know him as an actor when we did Wintersleepers (Winterschläfer),” Schipper recalls. “Already I knew I didn’t really want to be an actor. I’ve known Tom now fourteen years and he produced two of my three films, and he was the biggest help in getting my third film financed. He’s really like a big brother of mine.”
Tykwer is also producing Schipper’s next film, a thriller set in Germany that looks set to be as huge a stylistic leap from Sometime In August as that was in turn from A Friend Of Mine. Odysseus, Schipper confides, is “a journey into darkness, into violence, into fear, for a very average German who works as an editor in a publishing house. It’s set perfectly in Germany because we’re so secure, so cushioned in a way.” He’s clearly excited by the prospect. “When Tom was asked at the last Berlinale what he was up to next, his answer was that he would do Cloud Atlas with the Wachowski Brothers and then he’ll produce my new film. That felt awesome!”
Furthermore, Tykwer is responsible for putting Schipper back in front of the camera, giving him a starring role in Drei, which shoots this autumn . Although he prefers to write and direct, the Berlin resident couldn’t resist the offer. “I’m not a very good actor,” he laughs, “though I would have loved to be a great actor. But it’s a part that’s really close to me: I’m just a guy that has relationship things going on. I think that might be one of my strongest assets for directing, however. The actors realise how much I admire them.”
With Schipper’s career shaping up to be a slow burner much like his movies, international success can’t be too far behind. His films have already travelled abroad with successful screenings in the US and a potential UK based DVD release for A Friend Of Mine on the horizon. Asked if he has an international audience in mind for his work, he smiles. “I’ve thought about making a movie in English. Actually I have a couple of projects in mind. When I travel to foreign screenings I think that people understand my humour, which means a lot to me. But for now I am trying to tell German stories that people can relate to. I think that, if I may be allowed to pat myself on the shoulder here, I have a feeling that I speak the language that people understand universally in some way, of humour, of romance. Mitte Ende August recently won the first prize at the French Romantic Film Festival (Festival De Carbourg). A French film festival that only shows love movies, films about love, and the German wins the prize!”
It is almost, as Schipper himself would most likely humbly admit, a miracle of sorts, but it’s one based as firmly in reality as it is in his original daydreams...
BIOGRAPHY
Sebastian Schipper was born in Hannover on 8 May, 1968. After studying to be an actor at the Falckenberg Schule in Munich he shot his first short film in 1994 entitled Wunderhell. His second short film, Heldensommer, followed a year later and in 1996 he appeared in Anthony Mingella’s The English Patient. He has played roles in, amongst others, Maja (1996), Wintersleepers (Winterschläfer, 1997), Run Lola Run (Lola Rennt, 1998), Eine Ungehorsame Frau (TV, 1998), Der Koenig Von St Pauli (TV, 1998) and Nightsongs (Die Nacht Singt Ihre Lieder, 2004). He has scripted and directed three feature films: Gigantic (Absolut Giganten, 1999), A Friend Of Mine (Ein Freund Von Mir, 2006) and Sometime In August (Mitte Ende August). He is currently completing work on the script for his fourth feature Odysseus and is about to star in Tom Tykwer’s forthcoming feature Drei.
Monday, 28 September 2009
Album Review: Moose's '...xyz' (The Quietus)
The video for 'Little Bird' is also below, conveniently taped off MTV in the kind of high quality that would make Guided By Voices very proud indeed:
Saturday, 5 September 2009
Photos: The Kids Are United
"I believe that children are our future," wailed Whitney Houston for what seemed like a lifetime, but she'd never seen an iPhone. Still, it wasn't really necessary for her to break the news to us (and not just because George Benson had already delivered the lines ten years earlier). Nevertheless these words of wisdom linger, most probably because she hammered them home with the subtlety of a shot of Jägermeister. So, since iPhones remain expensive, let us explore Whitney's vision of the future...
Tuesday, 1 September 2009
Feature: World Domination Enterprises (The Quietus)
I managed to track down main man Keith Dobson for The Quietus. We also reminisced about our mutual childhoods within military families, but you won't read that here: http://thequietus.com/articles/02622-world-domination-enterprises-interview
http://thequietus.com/articles/02622-world-domination-enterprises-interview
You can, however, get a taste of their filth and their fury here. Brace yourself:
Wednesday, 26 August 2009
Live Review: Radiohead (The Quietus)
Feature: The Music Industry Is Dumb Part 37,573 (The Quietus)
Record labels are dying, they say. But whose fault is that?
"You know that sensation when you've spent ten minutes leafing through a menu choosing which of the delectable items is worth your cash, only to be told by a disdainful waiter that, sorry, it's not actually available? That's the feeling I get every time I read about a new record and then discover I can't buy it for months..." Ah, well. It's probably leaked anyway. No wonder people don't buy records anymore.
Read my full rant here: http://thequietus.com/articles/02447-radiohead-versus-the-release-schedule
Saturday, 1 August 2009
Album Review: It's Immaterial - Song (Uncut)
Criminally overlooked literate synthpop classic
Four years after ‘Driving Away From Home’ pegged them as one hit wonders, Liverpool duo John Campbell and Jarvis Whitehead’s second album was greeted by universal apathy. Much like The Blue Nile’s Hats the previous year – which shared producer Calum Malcom – its lush electronic sounds oozed vulnerability, but whereas Paul Buchanan crooned soulfully of twilight romance Campbell’s melancholic delivery focussed on “the sound of ordinary lives”. Haunting portrayals of Thatcherite suburbia – where “Sunday means ‘wash the car down’“ – linger in the imagination, and the frustrations of unemployment may never have been so sympathetically evoked as on ‘Endless Holiday’. Indispensable.
Album Review: Jacques Dutronc - Et Moi Et Moi Et Moi (Uncut)
French legend’s late ‘60s output mined
Celebrated in Cornershop’s ‘Brimful Of Asha’, Dutronc won over French audiences by mixing rock ‘n’ roll, French chanson and lyrical cynicism. A former arranger at Vogue Records – he also wrote for future wife Francoise Hardy – he released his debut single ‘Et Moi…' in 1966, its garage rock leaning on ‘Subterranean Homesick Blues’ while brutally mocking contemporary self-righteous narcissism. With twenty two tracks sourced from his first three albums, including the psychedelic ‘Hippie Hippie Hourah’, the thunderous ‘Les Cactus’ and dancefloor classic ‘Le Responsable’, this compilation easily and belatedly justifies Dutronc’s place alongside Gainsbourg in French culture.
Friday, 26 June 2009
Album Review: Staff Benda Bilili's Tres Tres Fort" (Wayango)
AIM FOR THE STAFF
You couldn't make it up. "Their line up consists largely of paraplegic musicians, some in their fifties, whose mobility depends upon customised tricycles. They’re joined by a 17 year old street kid playing a homemade instrument called a satongé constructed from a tin can, a wooden bow and a piece of electrical cable, and if these circumstances don’t seem enough to hold an act back, they call the grounds of Kinshasa Zoo home." But what a record. Oh, what a record! More at this link: http://www.wayango.com/staff-benda-bilili-tres-tres-fort-album/reviews/aim-for-the-staff/.
Make sure you also check out the recording of 'Polio' live in the grounds of the zoo they call home...
Album Review: Tears For Fears' 'Songs From The Big Chair' (Wayango)
BIG SONGS, BIG CHAIR
Some people call it a guilty pleasure. They're wrong. "What really sets this record head and shoulders above its contemporaries – despite its massive success in the UK and US rendering the band hugely unfashionable amongst the musical elite – is both its refusal to confine itself to commercial pop and Chris Hughes’ production..." It's all here: http://www.wayango.com/tears-for-fears-songs-from-the-big-chair-album/reviews/big-songs-big-chair/
Album Review: Talk Talk's 'Spirit Of Eden' (Wayango)
A PEACEFUL SPIRIT
Talk Talk's 'Spirit Of Eden' is not only "a suite of interlinking songs, perfectly paced, dramatically poised and whoozily intoxicating", but it's also probably my favourite album of all time. Find out why: http://www.wayango.com/talk-talk-spirit-of-eden-album/reviews/a-peaceful-spirit/
Album Review: David Crosby's 'If I Could Only Remember My Name' (Wayango)
BEING CROSBY
"Soaked in well meaning spirituality and an enviable sense of camaraderie", David Crosby's 1971 debut is a gem. Read my Wayango review here: http://www.wayango.com/david-crosby-if-i-could-only-remember-my-name-album/reviews/being-crosby/
Album Review: Propaganda's 'A Secret Wish' (Wayango)
WISHFUL THINKING
Recently added to the pages of Wayango is my review of Propaganda's 'A Secret Wish', a record that manages to be not only one of the greatest German albums of all time but also one of the 1980s' more underrated debuts. In fact, it's "an almost solitary testament to one of the decade’s most interesting acts". Read on: http://www.wayango.com/propaganda-a-secret-wish-album/reviews/wishful-thinking/
Monday, 15 June 2009
Photos: Line Up For The Lucky Dip...
Friday, 1 May 2009
Album Review: The Soundcarriers - Harmonium (Uncut)
Spaced out retro futurism. From the Midlands.
When the inevitable Midnight Cowboy remake is commissioned, book The Soundcarriers for the soundtrack. Though Nottingham isn’t an obvious place for a 60’s baroque pop revival, such is The Soundcarriers’ attention to detail – split stereo, Joe Meek reverb – you’d be forgiven for thinking their debut was an elaborate prank. Harmonium updates lava lamp pyschedelic freakouts, David Axelrod’s jazzy grooves and the feathery female harmonies of The Free Design, whose Chris Dedrick provides sleevenotes for the vinyl. ‘Uncertainty’ consequently recalls Broadcast, albeit less aloof, while ‘Let It Ride’ sounds like Portishead if they’d jammed harder on Third.
Album Review: Akron/Family - Set ‘Em Wild, Set ‘Em Free (Uncut)
Former freak-folkers kick out the jams
On their fifth album this East Coast trio – now without founding member Ryan Vanderhood – make it patently clear this is not the band whose 2005 debut placed them in the rustic shadows of former Young God Records labelmate Devendra Banhart. ‘Everyone Is Guilty’ picks up where Yeasayer left off, jamming Fela Kuti afrobeat and Family Stone funk into six jubilant minutes. But in case anyone suggests they’re jumping on Vampire Weekend’s bandwagon, they throw dub into ‘Creatures’, fingerpick their way through the melancholy ‘The Alps & Their Orange Evergreen’, while ‘MBF’ deafens with its skronk thrash.
Album Review: Freda Payne - How Do You Say I Don’t Love You Anymore (Uncut)
Band Of Gold star’s 1966 second album reissued
Long consigned to the same easy listening charity racks as Nancy Wilson – their gutsy soulful deliveries overshadowed by big band arrangements – How Do You Say… proves Payne’s 60’s output is worth revisiting. The title track, extensively sampled by J-Walk’s ‘Soul Vibration’, should be instantly familiar, while a brassy ‘On Easy Street’ set the template for ‘Band Of Gold’. Her sultry take on ‘Feeling Good’ also proves she’d have done better providing theme tunes for Cubby Broccoli rather than appearing in front of the camera in the likes of The Nutty Professor II.
Wednesday, 1 April 2009
Album Review: Mono - Hymn To The Immortal Wind (Uncut)
Not the trip hop Mono. Not even close.
Three and a half minutes into Mono’s Steve Albini-produced fifth album the softly chiming guitars and tinkling timpani are interrupted by a barrage of noise so colossal it sounds like the end of the world. For the next hour the Japanese four piece map out an instrumental landscape imbued with the same sense of magical mysticism as a Murakami novel, massive walls of noise reinforced by heartrending orchestral arrangements and interspersed with more meditative passages worthy of a Morricone soundtrack. Frankly, it makes Explosions In The Sky sound like the pop of a packet of crisps.
Album Review: It Hugs Back - Inside Your Guitar (Uncut)
Childhood friends roll back the years
It starts, continues and ends like Yo La Tengo, but It Hugs Back have chosen the rich seam of turn-of-the-century YLT albums that saw the Hoboken trio all dreamy-eyed and loving. So for once imitation is more than flattery, this understated blend of hushed vocals, jangling guitars and sweetly soporific organ tones delivered as though it’s the Kent quartet’s own. Despite lengthy droning passages that recall labelmates Stereolab, little more than the prodding keyboards in ‘Don’t Know’ and early Kevin Shields mannerisms throughout threaten to disturb the warm fuzzy restraint that make this eminently likeable.
Sunday, 1 March 2009
Album Review: Staff Benda Bilili - Tres Tres Fort" (Uncut)
4/5
Homeless Congolese paraplegics defeat the odds
Comprising four senior citizens in homemade wheelchairs, a disciplined younger rhythm section and a teenager shredding solos on a contraption constructed from a single electric cable and tin can, Staff Benda Bilili may be stranded in one of the world’s most war-torn countries, but their debut’s as miraculous as their story. Recorded by Vincent Kenis (Konono N°1) in the grounds of Kinshasa Zoo – hear frogs croaking behind the rich harmonies of ‘Poliomyelite’, an ode to vaccination - this improbable collective combines reggae, rumba, soul and funk with traditional African rhythms as accessibly and joyously as Bob Marley. Inspirational.
Album Review: Fever Ray - Fever Ray (Uncut)
The Knife’s female half cuts loose
Few ‘80s revivalists – asides, perhaps, from M83 – have attempted to emulate Trevor Horn’s luxurious production values, but Karin Dreijer Andersson takes a well-aimed stab at them, though her studio team - Christoffer Berg (The Knife’s engineer) and Swedish house producers Van Rivers & The Subliminal Kid – tends more towards Propaganda than Dollar. This sombre solo debut indicates an earnest love for the decade’s more intense performers: the multi-tracked eccentricities of Kate Bush’s Hounds Of Love are everywhere, ‘If I Had A Heart’s lush gothicism recalls Floodland-era Sisters of Mercy, and ‘When I Grow Up’ nods towards Japan. On ‘Seven’, the album’s most upbeat track, she even seems to mimic Cyndi Lauper, something excused by engagingly enigmatic lyrics like “We talk about love, we talk about dishwasher tablets”. But, despite these obvious debts, this is a disconcerting exercise in brooding, extravagant claustrophobia rather than nostalgia.
Saturday, 28 February 2009
Photos & Feature: Nashville Skyline
Thanks to my work with Cortney Tidwell and before that Lambchop, I've been lucky enough to visit Nashville a number of times over the years. The Guardian commissioned me to write about the city in 2009 - view the article here http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/2009/feb/28/nashville-guide-music-shopping-bars?page=all - and see what happens when hundreds of folk gather for a pillow fight here:
Saturday, 21 February 2009
Live Review: Hanne Hukkelberg (by:Larm News)
HOOKED ON A FEELING
Three albums in, and Hanne Hukkelberg just keeps getting darker…
TYPE CASTING: In Trondheim two years ago, the last By:Larm to take place outside of Oslo, Hanne Hukkelberg bewitched an audience with a performance of exquisite fragility that gathered together strands of smoky late night jazz, sweet Scandinavian pop and the avant-garde. Her schtick was not only a magical voice but the presence on stage of both a bicycle and a typewriter, employed gainfully as sources of percussion during the show. She’d just completed her second album, Rykestrasse 68, and the fact that it was recorded in Berlin perhaps inspired this Einsturzende Neubauten Lite behaviour.
She’s back now with her third record, Blood From a Stone, written over seven months in a village on an island in the Arctic. You’d think that this solitude and peace would have inspired a music of similar incline, but in fact it seems to have provoked in her a need to do exactly the opposite. Instead of dropping the Einsturzende Neubauten references in favour of the twittering of birds - hell, Kate Bush managed to build a record around such things so it’s not impossible – Hukkelberg has upped the ante. She’s dropped the bicycle and the typewriter, but in its place she has a band which at times – and deliberately, it must be added – make a noise that feels like the sinews of one’s arms are slowly being shredded.
VOICING HER OPINION: Hukkelberg has one hell of a voice, that’s for sure. It swoops and glides gracefully, evocative and full of yearning. But it’s as though she’s so scared of being pigeonholed as another cutesy Scandinavian female in the mould of Stina Nordenstam, Anja Garbarek and Bjork that she’s gone running and screaming like a banshee in the opposite direction. And what she’s found at the other end of the line are her old PJ Harvey and Sonic Youth records.
For this reason, despite the fact that at times tonight there are curious reminders of last year’s By:Larm sensation Lykke Li, most of the kookiness that she might be in danger of exhibiting is buried beneath the clatter of dustbin lid percussion and the clang of detuned guitars. There’s a depth and complexity wholly absent from the synthetic pop of Li, and within this context Hukkelberg sounds more and more like Siouxsie Sioux or perhaps Polly Harvey, the strum of her guitar imbued with a threatening menace, the shadowy figures behind her lending her music an almost gothic mysticism.
SKIN & BONES: Hidden in the cracks of these gnarly, skeletal arrangements are unexpected hints of melody, and this stripped down but oddly metallic approach has brought out a new confidence in Hukkelberg’s delivery. The catch is, however, that while it’s enormously easy to admire the aesthetic it’s not so easy to enjoy the reality. This is less music, more intricately plotted art: determined and uncompromising, quietly but indefinably charismatic. It’s a puzzle that needs to be pieced together and, as the show progresses, it clearly baffles members of an audience that half way through begins to thin out. Those left behind, however, display a reverent devotion for Hukkelberg’s performance, and while she’s unlikely to be the name on everyone’s lips when they retire from By:Larm at the end of the week, she’s considerably more likely to keep on coming back with fresh and challenging music than most of the acts in attendance this week. It won’t be easy to listen to, one suspects, but it will always be hard to ignore.
Live Review: Simon Says No (by:Larm News)
Songs beginning with droning one note guitars: check. Obligatory smoke machine rendering band mere silhouettes on stage: you bet. Vocalist singing with Sonic Boom’s ‘can’t really give a fuck” tuning skills while leaning over his microphone so he can see his boots better: uh-huh. Welcome to the world of shoegazing, 21st century style. Hold on. Doesn’t that song start just like a Chapterhouse song? I think it does. Isn’t that the same ‘glide guitar’ sound that Kevin Shields made his own? It just might be. Could that be the sound of an early Ride single? Hell, don’t ask me, but it certainly sounds familiar. (Could it be the janitor? Could be. Oh, shit. That was Hong Kong Fooey.) Simon Says No have clearly studied their homework very, very carefully indeed, so carefully that they even raise the ghost of shoegazing outsiders, Loop, but therein lies the rub: this is shoegazing 20th century style. All the right musical themes are in place but there’s little new here, little that isn’t instantly identifiable. When they pick up the pace on “Give Me Good Vibrations” they threaten to take off, as they do again at the show’s close, but they need to find a way of doing more than replicating – albeit very well indeed – their heroes. Perhaps they should spend a little more time gazing at the stars rather than their feet.
(Reviewed at Sub Scene)
Friday, 20 February 2009
Live Review: Ólafur Arnalds (by:Larm News)
A CLASSIC ICELANDER
Ólafur Arnalds turns in the most unexpected but undeniably beautiful performance By:Larm will see this year…
They say you shouldn’t use the first person when you work as a critic, but how can you not when faced by music this intimate and personal? In the interests of professionalism I will endeavour to maintain the high journalistic standards set by other writers on the By:Larm News, but trust me: it’s going to be hard. Tonight Ólafur Arnalds could have played until the polar caps melted and it wouldn’t have been long enough. Save the planet, kids! Don’t let him stop! ‘Cos when the shit goes down the only refuge is going to be in the music of people like this.
PACKING THEM IN: Only 21 years old, Arnalds has already cut his teeth opening for Sigur Ros and sold out London’s Barbican Hall. With two albums to his name, but both on obscure UK label Erased Tapes, it’s an extraordinary achievement, but this near faultless performance provided more than ample evidence of how he’s succeeded in capturing the imaginations of those who seek music of sentiment and subtlety missing from almost every other act not only here in Oslo but throughout the world.
It’s impossible to write about music of such exquisite refinement without the use of clichés, so brace yourself. Arnalds’ work is as soft as pillows, as soft as pillow talk. Seated behind a grand piano, a Mac by his side and an effects rack discreetly hidden nearby, he summons gentle melodies from the keys like a magician, allowing them to float like summer mist over the stage. Accompanied only by a four piece string section whose embellishments were elegantly poised and never obtrusive, this modest Icelander ensorcelled a packed and fortunately seated audience with the thirty most peaceful, meditative minutes of the week. At times the auditorium was so silent that the bass thudding from the room next door threatened to overwhelm him, but it remained impossible to tear one’s ears away from the majesty of this understated but unforgettable performance.
PAY ATTENTION: He is of course completely out of place amidst the clamour of By:Larm, where the standard approach of new artists is to make as much noise in as sensational fashion as possible. But such is the contrast from the madness around the city this weekend that he stood out from his peers by virtue of his utter refusal to concede to such attention-seeking behaviour. Drawing upon a wide range of influences – from the glacial soundscapes of Harold Budd to the classical minimalism of Arvo Pärt and on to the simple charms of Erik Satie – he allows his ‘songs’ to swell gently until they blossom magnificently, gentle percussive twitches like ice melting in the background.
EVERYTHING ELSE IS JUST TALK: When he rolls the beats out with more force – and force is a relative term here – a colleague whispers that there’s a danger he may slip into Enigma territory, but for the most part he avoids the pitfalls of mixing electronica and classical tendencies with grace and panache, largely due to the muted quality of his programming. William Orbit this is not. Instead it is perhaps closer to the far-reaching ambitions of Talk Talk’s Spirit of Eden, stripped of its fundamental rock and pop traditions until only the fragile details of that masterpiece remain. Much like fellow Icelander Johann Johansson – from whom he has perhaps borrowed a couple of tricks, such as the computerised voice behind his closing piece – Arnalds creates an inexplicable emotional resonance that ensures that his Oslo debut will remain one of the most enduring memories of 2009. Believe me.
Live Review: El Cuero (by:Larm News)
LEATHER BE ROCK!
Their name means ‘the leather’, and these monumental rockers could tear the skin from your back…
Beer Here Now: The problem with events like By:Larm – if there is a problem, and it’s perhaps unfair to suggest there might be – is that they put more emphasis on the provenance of a band and its music than is arguably strictly necessary. If one stumbled upon El Cuero in a dingy neon-lit roadhouse in the southern states of the US, its pool table stained with cigarette ash and sticky cheap beer, one might be forgiven for believing that one had located the very heart of America. The conviction with which they perform is such that they could be mistaken for any number of legitimately American classic rock bands.
But somehow, for a short while, a question mark lingers in the air above the stage as to whether a band from Oslo and Kristiansund have the right to pull these moves. Fortunately, and with relative ease, El Cuero make their point with such ferocity that by the end of their thirty minute showcase that question mark lies at the back of the stage, the shit kicked out of it relentlessly and unforgivingly.
For Those Ready To Rock, We Salute You: They start with a wall of noise, a deafening roar that drags their audience forcefully to the front of the stage. Guitarist Øyvind Blomstrøm wields a Flying V guitar like a battle trophy, singer and guitarist Brynjar Takle Ohr puffs out his chest beneath his T-shirt, bearded face hidden beneath a standard issue baseball cap. And then they rock. They rock like bastards.
The words Crazy Horse get thrown around a great deal when talking about El Cuero, and with good reason, but to begin with they crank out riffs as though they took lessons from AC/DC during their Oslo show earlier this week. It’s only when they break off into a frenzy of soloing that the crunching of guitar chords recedes, replaced instead by the kind of hurricane squalls that Crazy Horse have made their own. And though, from this point on, Neil Young’s legendary backing band remain a constant point of reference it’s nothing that detracts from the power of El Cuero’s performance. As they stagger through a second slower but still monstrous tune the ghost of The Jayhawks – albeit on a diet of Budweiser, nachos and beer nuts – is brought into focus by immaculate harmonies, but by the song’s climax they’re not so much dragging their heels as booting the face of the front row with size 12 Timberlands.
I Cuero Because You Cuero: Blomstrøm, Ohr and bassist Tommy Reite – pudding bowl haircut hanging down to his mouth – repeatedly face off with one another for a series of guitar duels, while drummer Håvard Takle Ohr beats his kit with the power of Mike Tyson. They strike Guitar Hero poses, wheel out a pedal steel to prove they’re still in touch with their ‘sensitive side’, but through it all they churn out the kind of anthemic rock whose lineage can be traced from Lynard Synard all the way to the jam band antics of My Morning Jacket. Little Steven, one can be sure, would approve.
They finish with another wall of terrifying noise, amps turned up to 12, so loud that it would scare the baby fluff from the Kings Of Leon’s chins. They may not come from Tennessee, but at this volume you could almost certainly hear them in Nashville...
Live Review: by:Larm Opening Night (by:Larm News)
AND THEY'RE OFF
By:Larm 2009 kicked off in a suitably controversial style in the Dagbladet Tent on Wednesday night with Ida Maria inexplicably storming off stage after only 16 minutes of the convention’s first show. A year ago, on the same stage, the band were announced winners of the inaugural StatoilHydro Grant, an 800,000 Norwegian Krone prize designed to further the international career of one Norwegian act each year. In the subsequent 12 months since their by:Larm breakthrough the band have toured relentlessly, making significant inroads into the UK market in particular, and this free show could have been their moment of homecoming glory.
Of course it was also designed to launch proceedings for By:Larm and highlight the benefits of the exposure that the event can offer, but inadvertently this brief appearance perhaps also spotlighted the pressures that bands face on the road to success. Whether the band’s premature departure from the stage was due to their rumoured exhaustion, the subdued response of an early evening crowd or an out of tune guitar – “that’s not a reason to leave the stage,” Oslo’s current Number 1 celebrity Little Steven was overheard to say, “it’s a reason not to go on stage” – is hard to say. It certainly ensured, however, that the band continue to provoke, confuse and excite in equal measures and confirms that acceptance of money from the petroleum industry does not have to mean the loss of one’s rock ‘n’ roll attitude.
It was left to Cocktail Slippers to get the party started, but they had the added benefit of an introduction from the boss of their label, the afore-mentioned Little Steven Van Zandt, who one suspects is going to be seen a lot in the coming days. Slouching on stage in an unusual fur print jacket and his trademark bandana, the round-shouldered Springsteen comrade and star of The Sopranos welcomed us to “the first By:Larm of the rest of your life” before his latest signings charmed a crowd, by now beginning to flesh out, with their rock ‘n’ roll revivalism and carefully cultivated polka-dot wardrobe.
As local musical luminaries and hopefuls circulated side by side through the tent Lukestar tore through a storming set, followed by one of the acts shortlisted for this year’s Statoil Hydro Grant, Harry’s Gym. They provided a more sombre but intense half hour of electronic indie rock, the ghosts of New Order and PJ Harvey just about visible amidst the dry ice.
There was no doubt that, after this, the instantly palatable sounds of one of Norway’s top dance producers and yet another emerging international success story, Lindstrom, were a welcome excuse for the crowd to cut loose. From behind his Macbook he took advantage of a room of well-oiled individuals by cranking up the beats and giving them a soulful twist.
Events were then brought to a rousing close with one of Annie’s eclectic DJ sets, a welcome reminder of the breadth and depth of a Scandinavian music scene that this opening night sought to celebrate. If this is how things get started one can’t help but be excited about how on earth they’re going to end this Saturday…
Thursday, 19 February 2009
Feature: It's by:Larm Again! (by:Larm News)
IT'S BY:LARM AGAIN!
By:Larm is back in Oslo for the second year running. Whose idea was that?
For over a decade ByLarm has left a trail of destruction in its wake across Norway. For those ten years Scandinavia’s leading musical showcase has trampled city after city in its search for the finest in local music: Stavanger, Bergen, Tromsø, Trondheim and Kristiansand all hosted what people – well, me, anyway – referred to as ‘South By South West in the Snow’. Artists and execs flew in from miles around – it would be a bit stupid to fly in from less, after all, though perhaps not beyond the bounds of the music industry when you think about the mess it’s in right now – and found themselves seduced by Norway’s grand beauty, its people’s generosity and its hedonist culture.
But the news that ByLarm was no longer going to travel around Norway like a carnival – complete with attendant freaks and sideshows – came at me like a truck with headlights on full beam and snowplough sharpened. How would people like me ever be able to experience Norway if the existence of a music convention in the furthest reaches of the Arctic wasn’t there to justify the expense? What else was I going to look forward to in the grey month of February that could drag me from the grubby pile of CDs on my desk – most of which sounded like they’d been recorded in the sewers beneath Camden – and instead deposit me in a pale moonlit landscape filled with warped electronica, physically threatening mutant-metal, the sallow caresses of whispering voices and hip-hop in which references to snow had nothing to do with cocaine? Though I could hardly call myself a veteran of this fine event I felt slighted that they hadn’t at least discussed the decision with me.
As A&R for a now deceased (or barely breathing) little label with big ambitions I exercised a fascination with Scandinavian music, in which I recognised the kind of inventiveness that can turn rotten fish into an edible delicacy. I considered myself lucky when this growing obsession led to my first ByLarm after I stumbled on a band that insisted I travel to the event’s 2006 manifestation in Tromsø to see them play. But nothing had prepared me for the adventures that would follow when I stepped off the plane upon arrival in that northern city. No one had informed me that the streets are so icy that I wouldn’t even make it from the bus to the hotel lobby without falling flat on my arse. Nobody thought to tell me that the sight of grown men engaged in a bollocks-kicking wrestling match at 3am is a cause for celebration rather than pant-wetting fear. And the water bottle that was passed to me after I’d soaked in a hot tub in the snowy hills outside the city limits definitely offered no warning that it contained 95% proof moonshine. That weekend was a one of endless surprises, and ByLarm was etched into my diary for life. Oh, and I signed the band.
I travelled to Trondheim the next year, another city smothered in snowdrifts where I ate reindeer steaks and enjoyed the riches of the Scandinavian music scene in the confines of a former Nazi U-Boat factory, one whose foundations were so strong that the explosives necessary to destroy it would demolish the city itself before they even took out the building’s supporting walls. I can barely remember where I stayed that year: possibly I didn’t go to bed the whole weekend. Loney Dear were astonishing, though.
And yet, when the ByLarm authorities told me that I’d be travelling to Oslo for 2008, I wasn’t sure I wanted to bother. Oslo’s got its strengths, don’t get me wrong. The crayfish sandwiches in the Bristol Hotel justify its existence alone. Then there’s the existence of a 7 Eleven on every corner, the music policy of Mono, and the most beautiful specimens of humanity everywhere you look. But it wasn’t like I was going to end up huskie-sledging by night, or skating from one venue to the next in my rush to discover another absurdly named ska-country combo. I was going to have to focus on the music, and as any fool in this business knows, no one cares about music anymore. Not unless you’re listening to it somewhere like a wooden tee-pee with snow falling through a chimney out of which smoke curls from a log fire on which coffee is brewing.
Those same ByLarm authorities admitted soon afterwards that their plan for the future was to make Oslo ByLarm’s home. I tapped my head to indicate that they were lunatics, though their English is so perfect I suspect that was unnecessary. I begged them to send us to Kautokeino instead: I’d never been to Finnmark and wanted to drive snowmobiles. What about Bodø? We could take a boat ride out to the Lofoten Islands and catch cod in their breeding grounds. Or wouldn’t Bergen be nice, with its wooden houses, fish market, and the promise of trips into the fjords? But Oslo? Where was the adventure in that?
SEEING THE WOOD FOR THE TREES
It didn’t take long to forgive them. That first night in Oslo I watched Truls & The Trees, a ramshackle nine piece fronted by a peculiarly angel-voiced overgrown boy scout. I’d already spent the afternoon being charmed by the sweetly French sounds of Maria Due and the minimal Kate Bush-isms of Maose, before stopping off at Rockefeller, where All That And A Bag of Chips had at least proven that a terrible name didn’t mean terrible music (though they were pushing their luck none the less). From the other side of the city I received an excitable text message from a friend who’d just witnessed a band who’d blown his mind: he thought they were called Kaka Motherfucker, though they later turned out to sport an only slightly more commercially friendly name, Kakkmaddafakka. But Truls & The Trees awoke in me a fresh excitement that normally I could only have expected from an oily massage in the Arctic snow. They also reminded me of the most important thing I learned that weekend: that there’s more to ByLarm than illegal moonshine, top quality fish and twenty hours of darkness a day. By Gum, ByLarm, there’s the music!
I realised, as Truls’ falstetto cuckooed through what I soon learned was an album highlight called Upside Journey, that amidst the madness of the North and beneath the midday moon I’d forgotten what first took me to Tromsø for ByLarm: music by one of the most inspirational and unusual bands I had ever heard. I’d only come across them after falling for another Norwegian act, whose shoegazing revivalism was scuffed up magically by an obsession with avant-garde noise. They in turn had only been brought to my attention after a colleague introduced me to a swathe of exciting bands that had all emerged from her home town of Bergen, forcing me to concede that Abba, Aha and Aqua were not the be-all and end-all of Scandinavian music. Truls, I recognised, brought on that rush that only flourishes when you discover something truly special. He took me back to Tromsø, to seeing the band I later signed perform for the first time, and maybe even further, to the day I first experienced the magic of their album. From there he helped me trace a line back to the reason I first looked to Scandinavia: it’s a source of music as pure as a bottle of Voss. Scandinavia pumps out great acts like America pumps out ozone depleting toxins.
HAT’S ENERTAINMENT
Luckily for us, wherever ByLarm lays its woollen hat, that’s its home. Because that’s what ByLarm is about: the music. And only a fool forgets about the music, right? While none of us here really know how we’re going to keep our jobs much longer than the end of next month, and many of us wonder what we’ll do if we can no longer work with the one thing that’s filled our every waking hour since we first turned on a radio, we all know that music is going to be around for ever, and as fans, first and foremost, we’re driven to find that music. It doesn’t matter where we see it. It simply matters that it’s good.
As it happens, ByLarm in Oslo was as memorable as every ByLarm I’ve so far attended, and I expect this to be the same in 2009. I’ve already taken those shadowy ByLarm authorities to one side and apologised that I could ever have doubted them. (As punishment they’ve banished me to a remote Arctic island during the summer, but since it turns out to be the home of the Træna Festival I think I’m quids in.) In 2008 I might not have rolled naked down a frozen hillside or sucked the marrow from reindeer bones, but I did see Lykke Li on the top floor of a tower block overlooking the city centre, and I surprised everyone by discovering a hitherto-undetected love of Faroese garage rock. That’s why I’m confident that this weekend promises more surprises than Britney’s friend Amy, because within the borders of the Nordic countries there are whole packs of satan-worshipping metalheads, pitifully-shaven country revivalists, mad-eyed electronic scientists and doe-eyed bed-headed blonde guitarists looking to expand our musical minds until they burst.
So call me a ByLarm bore, if you like, as I regale you with stories of the good old days, and you can even question why the apparently wonderful artists I’ve championed haven’t sailed into international waters with their flags flapping proudly in the breeze – you’ve only got yourselves to blame, if you ask me. But don’t expect me to claim that ByLarm isn’t like it used to be. Because it is. It’s a little bit warmer here in Oslo, perhaps, and it’s definitely a little bit bigger, but it’s always been the home of everything that’s great about Scandinavian music. It proves that it’s not about where you’re at, and only a little about where you’re from. What it’s really about is where you’re coming from, and where you’re going. Frankly, I don’t care where I am as long as what I’m hearing has the ability take me away from it. After all, as the old saying goes back in what was once known as Great Britain: why look at the mantelpiece when you’re poking the fire?
Wyndham Wallace is a debonair freelance journalist who is also available for naked hot-tubbing, karsk-fuelled pagan rituals and sledge-racing down the Svartisen Glacier. He is currently single and quite likes music, food and travel.
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