Seabound, "Scorch the Ground (Forma Tadre remix)"

I've always quite liked Seabound, their style of synthpop has always seemed more thoughtful and emotive then many of their contemporaries for lack of a better description. They've also always maintained a pretty high degree of quality in their releases. The band has just released a b-sides and rarities comp When Black Beats Blue which is a bit disappointing, coming as it does on the heels of a live record, but does have a few gems for those folks who are waiting on the next album length platter of original music. Of specific note are a version of their club classic "Hooked" with a distinctly different vocal and a nice live version of "Watching Over You" that Reagan Jones of Iris lends his vocals to. The real exciting bit for me though is a Forma Tadre remix of "Scorch the Ground", leveraging as it does DiJ's general FT stannery and specifically my love of his remixes (especially the ones for Assemblage 23's "Document" and haujobb's "Penetration".)

On a side note, I would very much have liked to see Seabound's "Day of the Century" make the cut for the disk, due it being a b-side that is in serious contention for the group's best song. I guess since Metropolis decided to tack it on to their rerelease of No Sleep Demon that it didn't need to appear again. But hey, at least that gives me a reason to mention that that record along with most of Metro's catalogue has been uploaded to eMusic, my own personal favorite digital music retailer.


Seabound, "Scorch the Ground (Forma Tadre remix)"

Zentriert ins Antlitz

I dashed into the DJ booth, demanded to know what was playing, scribbled the name down and hit up Google as soon as I got home. The cause of this flurry of activity? Zentriert ins Antlitz, a dark electro band heavy on the ambient side.

If "Frames"/"Solutions For A Small Planet" era Haujobb floats yr boat then you need to check this stuff out. Thankfully, they've made that painfully simple by offering up their 2007 full-length, "Diametral", for download under a Creative Commons license, as well as assorted EPs and side project releases. Their actual CD releases often include access to entire discs' worth of remixes and bonus tracks. In short, they're on top of getting the goods to you quickly and with panache.

I haven't become so quickly obsessed with tracking down all of a dark electro band's releases in years. Sometimes it takes hearing true innovation and complexity to make you realise how lacking so much of the other material in a genre is. ZiA's music is a transmission from a wondrous alternate universe in which the 90s expeditions made by Haujobb into the coldest reaches of electro (as well as Forma Tadre's symphonic work, Klinik's dalliances with psy-trance, and Mentallo & The Fixer's sheer sonic overload) were acknowledged as the great leaps forward that they were and embraced, rather than being shunned for the sake of stale arpeggios and safe-as-houses club mixes.

-Zentriert ins Antlitz, "Der Zorn des Lammes"
-Zentriert ins Antlitz, "Jahr Fuer Jahr"

Reductio ad Hitlerum

Hey there, loyal DIJ reader! Have you, like us, been roundly disappointed by just about everything Apoptygma Berzerk has put out since 2000's "Welcome To Earth" (their Kim Wilde cover being a notable exception)? Would you say that yr disappoinment has been rooted not so much in the band's desire to explore new territory (believe me when I say that I want EBM bands to succeed when they branch out) but by the sheer mediocrity of the limp ballads and uninspired rockers that the outfit churned out on "You And Me Against The World"? Have you ever made those thoughts public? Are you getting tired of me shoving words in yr mouth?

If the answer to the above questions is "yes", then congratulations: Stephen Groth just called you a Nazi. Yep, that's right: in an interview with Side-Line, El Grotho tries to set the record straight on Apop's stylistic shifts, but ends up whinging about how harsh fans of Apop's earlier material have been in their critiques of the band's newer efforts, a hardship which Groth equates with Nazi censorship:

I get this kind of nazi war feeling when reading some of them. It's just like the Nazi's 'Berufsverbot', Jews, artists, thinkers and politicians were not allowed to do what they were doing because they had different opinions on things. The Nazi's decided what was good music, good books and good art, and then burned the rest. They burned everything that they didn't like, remember the Kristallnacht or the Night of Broken Glass in Nazi Germany. If you can not enjoy and accept that people think different and have other views, then thats really sad. Reading some of these comments does gives me that very bad taste in my mouth...

Y'know what leaves a bad taste in my mouth, Steve-o? Punks who wanna play Big Rock Star and then act as though they don't understand the plot of "Ziggy Stardust". I accept that people have different views: you think the last nine years of Apop material are great, I think they're trite pablum - no need to drag Hitler into the debate, dick. If your ego is so big that it can be wounded by a bunch of online rivetheads who call your bid for mainstream success as they see it to the point that you feel the need to not only violate Godwin's Law but compare yourself to victims of the Nazis, then you haven't just failed at Using The Internet 101, you've also failed at being a rock star. The pretty boy guitar hero that you've fancied yrself for some time should be above such petty grievances. Shit like this just goes to show those of us who've slagged you in the past that not only do you lack musical chops, Groth, but that you lack the promotional skills to succeed in the big league you've been striving in vain to make a mark in for nearly ten years now.

Oh yeah: Groth also goes on some weird tangents about how "some" media coverage of the moon landing may have been faked, that while he's not a 9/11 Truther, "the official explanation of 9/11 is bullshit", and may or may not favourably compared Apop to The Beatles. Draw yr own conclusions.

Hot Chip, "Transmission (Joy Division cover)"

I've personally heard more Joy Division tributes and cover versions than most music bloggers have had hot lunches. It's a crowded field with few standout selections, people tend to either go way faithful (boring!) or single out one element or lyric to hammer away on ad nauseum, like The Killer's enormous flail on "Shadowplay". Aside from my fondness for The Swans' fantastic cover of "Love Will Tear Us Apart" (I like the Gira vocal version a bit better) and Moby's version of "New Dawn Fades" (which might actually just be due to my associations with Heat) I wouldn't give a toss for most reinterpretations of JD's material. I do however quite like Hot Chip, mostly because they're clearly influencd by a lot of bands I like without ever sounding slavish. Indeed, the kind of indie electropop they ply wouldn't have sounded out of place on any number of Factory releases, which is I guess why this cover of "Transmission" works for me so well. Actually, what I keep thinking of when I hear the weird vocal treatment and the piano is the Bowie/Eno Berlin trilogy, which itself was a pretty enormous influence on Curtis and company. It's a pleasant little surprise courtesy of a forthcoming War Child covers compilation which will also feature Franz Ferdinand covering Blondie (!) The Yeah Yeah Yeahs covering the Ramones and TV on the Radio covering David Bowie. It's enough to pique my interest, and I fucking hate covers compilations.

Hot Chip, "Transmission (Joy Division cover)"

Freedom Highway

You may know that we love The Boss here at DIJ. We also love Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger. And on a day like today, goddamn if we don't love America.

Kommando XY, "Genesis Does (What Nintendon't)"

OH RAD! Old school EBM stylists Kommando XY have a track on their debut album Welcome to Gestrikland that sings the vocoded praises of the Sega Genesis! Named for one of Sega's delighful slogans from the early nineties (pre-dating the release of the SNES I think) the track shouts out numerous beloved Sega franchises like Alex Kidd, Wonderboy and Golden Axe. It's pretty silly, but for the faithful like yours truly it's also a loving tribute to one of the great consoles of yesteryear. The rest of the album is pretty hot, it delivers on the promise of old school DAF style EBM that bands like Spetsnaz have largely squandered.

Kommando XY, "Genesis Does (What Nintendon't)"

Cinematic Rehabilitation

There are countless songs which become inextricably linked with a moment in film or television they're set to: "In Dreams" in Blue Velvet, "Ride of the Valkyries" in Apocalypse Now, hell, even "Born Slippy" in Trainspotting. In those and other cases, a bit of music we'd always enjoyed or had never heard was simply given a new context - more reasons to appreciate it. But what happens when the context of a film is so powerful that it alters the way you feel about a song you previously loathed? Here are a few songs which were rehabilitated forever for me via "the magic of pheelm":

"Paper Planes" in Slumdog Millionaire
If you've hung out in as many record stores as I have over the past three or so years, yr probably just as sick of M.I.A. as I am. Her beats are decent but too tinny for non club listening for my taste, and her near-monotone delivery drives me batty. But it's the fact that Arular and Kala are played just about non-stop in just about every sort of record store imaginable, presumably due to her supposed cross-over appeal, which pushed her from an otherwise unremarkable musician I'd have quickly forgotten about into a ubiquitous force of annoyance. How many times have you heard "Boyz" while trying to buy some jeans or renew yr driver's license? (how many, how many?) In any case, I've been content to grimace whenever any of her stuff came on and leave it at that, and "Paper Planes" was simply another Pavlovian stimulus (in all likelihood - I don't remember ever really paying attention to it, apart from possibly being irritated that she was jacking one of my favourite Clash tracks).

I watched Slumdog Millionaire while going through my second run of The Wire, which might've helped open my ears when "Paper Planes" began to lazily slide overtop of a montage of brothers Jamal and Salim hustling on the trains of Mumbai. The similarities between the brothers and the corner kids of Baltimore were obvious, which made me think about "Paper Planes" in relation to the innumerable hip-hop tracks which could score Bodie or Wallace's lives. Suddenly, "Paper Planes" didn't sound like another club track of the month so much as it did an anthem to the camaraderie that arises out of desperate necessity during the hustle, whether it's taking place in India or the US. Hell, you could tie it all back in with Dickens' cockney urchins as well: "Paper Planes" would suit the Artful Dodger just right. The grind may be different, but the game stays the same.

"Lookin' Out My Back Door" in The Big Lebowski
I'd never given much thought to CCR before watching The Big Lebowski. In all honesty, I tend to tar most country/folk tinged rock mega-groups from their period with the same brush: lazy stoner shit which didn't realise how quickly it would become irrelevant. Their political differences and feud aside, Neil Young and Lynard Skynard sound just about the same to me: boring.

It isn't so much the particular scene in which "Lookin' Out My Back Door" is playing that quelled my distaste for CCR, and it's not even about the song itself. More than anything, CCR seemed to fit not just the character of the Dude, but his entire ethos so well that the stunted nature of his taste became part and parcel of what made him such a lovable and memorable film character. At least he hates the fuckin' Eagles, man.

"Don't Stop Believing" in The Sopranos
Let's be honest, to anyone under forty with an iota of taste, Journey are a fucking joke: one to be trotted out at drunken karaoke, a ritual which itself becomes ripe for parody. I don't think I need to stress just how low the cultural capital of this arena rock cheesefest was before the final episode of The Sopranos aired.

David Chase knew all of this when he picked "Don't Stop Believing" (rather than, say, "Thunder Road" or anything else by the patron saint of Jersey): "in the location van, with the crew, I was saying, 'What do you think?' When I said, 'Don't Stop Believin',' people went, 'What? Oh my god!' I said, 'I know, I know, just give a listen,' and little by little, people started coming around."

Chase accomplished a miracle far above and beyond his accomplishments with The Sopranos itself: he forced millions of people to think about the lyrics to a Journey song. Does Tony delusionally imagine himself and Carm to be the hard luck couple in the song? If the movie goes on and on and on, does that mean the stunted, betrayed and warped American dream we breathlessly bore witness to for six seasons will simply repeat, with Tony always forced to look over his shoulder whenever a mook in a Members Only jacket gives him the hairy eyeball?

However you choose to interpret it, David Chase undid decades of associations between "Don't Stop Believing" and unfortunate hair and even more unfortunate decisions made in the back seats of Trans Ams, and replaced them with a fresh batch of far more provocative ones: family, doubt, alienation, and onion rings. Always the onion rings.

"Layla" in Goodfellas
Growing up when I did, Eric Clapton was never the inspired, wild-eyed shredder he was in his youth. He was that old blues man wannabe boomer who desperately sought credibility by leeching off of older, more talented bluesmen (seriously, Clapton, did you have to use both known pictures of Robert Johnson to establish your worship of him?). I'd listened to a couple of my dad's Cream records and liked them enough, but there was no way those records could overpower the AOR juggernaut of "Tears In Heaven", or the blues adaptation of "Layla" from Clapton's "Unplugged" disc, with audience members mewing their approval at Slow Hand the whole way through.

I might've heard the original version of "Layla" at some point previous to watching Goodfellas, but that's besides the point. Eschewing the "main" portion of the song completely, Scorsese jumps straight to the clarion piano chords (which might be playing on the radio of that bullet-ridden pink Caddy). Bittersweet, the refrain repeats and repeats as body after body is found, as Henry realises that his friendship with Jimmy is the only thing keeping him from the dumpster. Years later, it's impossible to hear the song and not imagine Carbone's body in the meat locker.

Hey, whaddaya know? Some quick research indicates that Clapton had nothing to do with the piano coda portion of "Layla", which was actually composed by Derek and The Dominoes' drummer, Jim Gordon. I guess in closing and with a clear conscience I can say: fuck Eric Clapton.

The Prodigy, "Omen"

Oh my... well, the verdict is in: The Prodigy are trying to be Pendulum. If you thought the first single from the forthcoming album 'Invaders Must Die' sounded like Howlett and company trying to jack the mighty Australian D&B juggernauts' steez (which, I certainly did), peep the new single "Omen". Moreso even!

The Prodigy, "Omen"


Also, sampling horror movie themes? Not a good look in 2009. I expect that sort of rich, smelly gouda from someone like Combichrist, whose new album is also pretty lacklustre by the way.

At the very least The Omen single offers a fun remix of "Invaders Must Die" by UK Dubsteppers Chases & Status.

The Prodigy, "Invaders Must Die (Chase & Status remix)"

Are we Human, or are we Dancers?

The Killers have released their fourth album titled "Day & Age", which I picked up at London Drugs, since I was there to get my Cold FX for this lovely disease-filled holiday season. I popped the little disc into my computer and dragged my sick ass under the covers to listen to the new CD and close my eyes.

After the first listen, I wasn't overly thrilled about the CD, as it didn't really have anything of substance that jumped out at me. I had been anticipating a disc from them that was reminiscent of their debut album "Hot Fuss", which was filled with stand-out songs that were danceable rock tracks - meaning I could drop them in a DJ set at the club and not fear an empty dance floor, while still providing an alternative track list.

The opening track on the CD "Losing Touch" pretty much sets the tempo and style of the disc. It has a steady beat with an 80's sound to it that each song on the disc adopts in its own way. Even though the only standout is the title track of the CD, "Spaceman" (which totally rocks my world), the CD still has enough songs on it that make you want to listen from start to finish. What I am saying is, just because 99% of the songs that make it onto the charts these days are pop songs with a rock/hip hop/country appeal, doesn't mean songs that don't have an annoying chorus can't be on best selling albums.

Another track I really enjoyed on this CD was "Joyride" - and it wasn't a Roxette cover either! It did bring me back to "Rio" by Duran Duran with its sax solo in the middle of it, and I was hoping that I would open my eyes to a phone being delivered to me in a pool while I lay in the sun, but of course it was just the Vapo rub on my feet mixed with the electric blanket that was giving me the tropical fever. Mix that with the Caribbean drum beat in "I Can't Stay", and maybe if I took a bit more cold medication I really would have thought I was on a deserted island.

Of course if you are a Rock Band freak, you will also be excited to know that "Spaceman" is available for download, and I am happy to say it was one of the best $2 I spent this year. Remember, we are only 12 days into this year, and most of the money I have spent has been to keep myself from coughing up everything inside of me.

I voted this as one of my top five albums of 2008, because I do judge my albums on how much of the CD I actually listen to, and in this case, it's the whole thing!

"I caught a glimpse, now it haunts me."

Fever Ray, self-titled
Immediately after completing a stunning set of live shows, the first they'd ever undertaken (thankfully captured for posterity on the shoddily-titled An Audio-Visual Experience), The Knife announced in 2006 that they were going on a lengthy hiatus, with no activity on the horizon until 2010. It seemed like a rest was well-deserved: Silent Shout wasn't just the record of the year, for me and many others it felt like the event of the year. We'd been treated to something truly special, and waiting until siblings Karin and Olof felt the time was right to return to their decks would give us time to continue to absorb the work they'd already put out. So, the announcement of a single and video from Karin's solo project, Fever Ray, and an almost immediate digital album release thereafter, had the element of surprise well on its side. We'd hardly wrapped our heads around the possibility of more creepy electro from everyone's favourite pitchshift-happy chanteuse, let alone had the chance to have our expectations ramped up with preemptive Silent Shout comparisons, before the record was upon us.

While skin-crawling lead single and track "If I Had A Heart" suggested that we'd be treated to an impenetrably dark and menacing record, beatless tracks shrouded in veils of mist thick enough to make Silent Shout seem like a walk in the park, that's not quite the case. This record is indeed informed by the quantum leap that the siblings made between Deep Cuts and Silent Shout, but it also bears the influence of all three records they made together. The clean synthpop geometry of The Knife's self-titled debut is in effect on "Dry And Dusty" and "Triangle Walks", and there are also hints of mellower moments from the Deep Cuts era, like "She's Having A Baby" and "This Is Now" scattered throughout. While Fever Ray could pass for a Knife album if we were none the wiser, knowing that Olof isn't on board this time does yield some subtle distinctions between this record and Karin's previous work.

Fever Ray is sparser than The Knife's output, and eschews most semblances of dance music for the sake of evocative synth landscapes. I could just be hearing what I want to, but I can almost detect some hints of YMO's electronic exotica. Melodies are understated, but rise through repeat listens with hypnotic certainty. It's nothing if not an atmospheric record, but we shouldn't take that term to simply be shorthand for "the unsettling mood of Silent Shout" or even the funereal gloom which borders on being black metalesque in the case of "If I Had A Heart". The closing track uses a processional rhythm as the basis for a vocal performance by Andersson which can only be described as hymnal, but given that the track's called "Coconut", I'm sure as hell not going to hazard a guess as to what it's a hymn to.

Fever Ray is an album for homes and for forests, but perhaps not the haunted marble houses and chthonian woods which Silent Shout cast us spiraling into. There are hints of nostalgia and warmth to the strangeness, almost as though we're revisiting spaces from childhood at night, seeing them through a glass darkly but rediscovering lost moods and moments, even if full understanding remains occluded.

Bonus tidbits:
-The album art was done by none other than Charles Burns, author of the crap-yr-pants awesome Black Hole comics, which were the inspiration for the hella creepy "Silent Shout" video.
-The contact page of the Fever Ray site has booking contact info, so we might be lucky enough to see Karin take this album on the road.

Fever Ray, "Triangle Walks"

Alex's Fashionably Late Top 10 of 2008 pt. 2

The home stretch!

5. Cut Copy, "In Ghost Colours"
No better album has come out in this flavor since the groundwork was laid out in the late eighties by New Order and the Happy Mondays. Far from limply replicating the work of those bands, CC expertly incorporate the intervening twenty years of indie rock and the rise, fall and institutionaliation of house music. Which would be impressive enough, if it wasn't easy to just ignore that stuff and get sweaty on the dancefloor or in your bedroom like it's not even a basic thing whenever you hear "Hearts on Fire" or "Lights and Music". Dance music and rock music needn't have ever had an artificial wall erected between them, and listening to these mop topped Australians do their thing, it's kind of hard to imagine there ever was such a division.

4. Portishead, "Third"
"So we haven't put out a record in eleven years or so. I was thinking that instead of what made us massively popular in the nineties, what we might do instead is jettison any traces of trip-hop (which was kind of a made up genre anyway) and reinvent ourselves as a weird, seventies Krautrock band. And instead of our meticulous studio sound, let's dirty things up a lot, have lots of loose ends and oddball choices and generally make a record that sounds like we kinda jammed it out direct to tape. Oh and the first single will be an abrasive sea change on the order of Radiohead's 'Idioteque'*, and will be fucking genius. Does that sound like fun guys? It does? Okay good, you set up the echoplex and the Moog, I'll get Beth on the phone."

* Music writers of previous generations would likely have used Dylan plugging in as their point of reference here. You have permission to stab me to death and bury me in a shallow grave if I ever reference that largely aprocryphal nonsense.

3. Disfear, "Live the Storm"
I would give anything to live in a world where the meeting of Heavy Metal and Punk Fucking Rock sounded like this and not like hardcore, which is largely BORING. This record is a monster, it sounds like the greasy biker album that Lycanthropic Motorhead would make in between burning down your village, pillaging your livestock and drinking all the whiskey available to them regardless of vintage, pick sliding and basement show chanting all the way. Actually, regular Motorhead might do that stuff, but you get the idea. Featuring At the Gates vocalist Tomas Lindberg and production work from Converge's Kurt Ballou (him again!), "Live the Storm" can't be bargained with, can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear, and it absolutely will not stop. It is the most energizing album I have heard in ages and is the perfect soundtrack to basically any violently anti-social activity imaginable.

2. Fuck Buttons, "Street Horrrsing"
I'm sure somebody must have tried to do a pop noise record before, but chances are it was someone like the Boredoms and kind of sucked. Not so this gem, which happily marries the seemingly disparate worlds of fun catchy loop based music electronic music and hard, unforgiving white noise. Toss in some Portion Control style industrial and the occasional touch of oozy ambience and you have the album that I have returned to most over the past year, the one which demands constantly to be put on in any context, and to be listened to for it's entirety. I have hard time putting a finger on what makes it so compelling, devoid as it is of quaint ideas like songwriting and even "songs" themselves. Maybe it's the idea that pop music needn't be burdened with those concepts or silly qualities like accessibility or approachability. Maybe I just like having some british guy shout at me through a children's toy such that his voice distorts, while his buddy plays a toy piano through a fuzz pedal. Maybe I won't even understand. A number one record any other year if not for....

1. m83, "Saturdays = Youth"
Well would you look at that, Bruce I agree on the number one for the first time ever. I am way too personally invested in this album to EVER be able to be objective about it. I was listening to it at the exact moment my life fell apart in 2008. I was listening to it at the exact moment I finally realized that no matter what I was going to be okay. It has been a companion to me this year, the feelings I have for it are akin to those you might have for a beloved pet. I am incapable of not viewing it through that lens, so I tend to get gushy and sentimental when discussing it. It's hard to think of where to begin given that. It's a big record, open and warm, enveloping without smothering. It's atmosphere is omnipresent, whether you're hearing it loud over a PA or in tinny headphones. It sound like an album you know back to front from the first moment you hear it, I swear I knew the choruses to before getting thirty seconds into any given song. It sparkles like distant stars, soft and immeasurably far away. It's a timeless fantasy of what the eighties were, a platonic representation of what someone who might have never heard Kate Bush, This Mortal Coil and the Cure might imagine them to sound like. It's the sound of the first time you ever thought you were in love. It's the score to the moment when you realized that life is hard and confusing but mostly eventually turns out okay. It's a friend you haven't met yet.

I don't have anything to say about 'Saturdays = Youth' that will convince you of why it's the best album of 2008. I guess a lot of people don't feel the way I do about it. That's okay.

It's something special.

A brief interlude

Okay, I got like half a dozen half-written posts and still haven't put up the second half of my best of 2008 (12 more hours before the 15th yo!) but seriously, you gotta peep the new single from my personal pick for biggest crossover potential in first quarter 2009:

White Lies, "To Lose My Life"


Their catalogue is only three singles deep, but I effing love everything I've heard and the full length is due next week. Very exciting! I've described them as The Killers from an alternate reality where they ape Echo & the Bunnymen instead of New Order, and I think that's pretty god damn apt personally.

Alex's Fashionably Late Top 10 of 2008 pt. 1

As always, I am late to the party, holding a bottle of cheap fortified wine and bringing with me uninvited guests of dubious character. In all fairness, I am abiding by my rule that the Top 10 of the previous year can be posted any time up to the middle of January, or the release of the first great album of the following year. And since I haven't heard anything yet so far in 2009, I'm fucking golden.

As always, these opinions overlap somewhat with those of my colleagues, after all if we didn't share a sensibility we likely wouldn't be writing a music blog together. Also, my opinions are clearly always correct and dissenting opinions will be dealt with swiftly and in the most harsh fashion possible.

10. Nine Inch Nails, "Ghosts I-IV"
I remember hating on the noodly instrumental bits on "The Fragile" when it was released some 10 years ago now. As history has gradually shown that record to be flawed but much more substantial then my young brain was willing to accept, I've come to appreciate Trent's skill with short pieces of incidental music, little soundtracks divorced from his still occasionally adolescent lyrical themes. Ghosts is a pretty pure expression of that side of his work, marrying the man's undeniable ear for a catchy riff or synth patch with his studio virtuosity. Of course it's not much of a listen from beginning to end as it lacks continuity or album craft, but there are more than enough gems spread across two disks or one download to make it a memorable and notable release.

9. Genghis Tron, "Board up the House"
A testament to the spirit of experimentation that seems to have sprung up in the traditionally conservative world of metal. The fact that a group consisting of guitar, vocals, keyboards and drum programming can make one of the most blistering and dynamic metal records this year would certainly seem to suggest that the winds of change have not passed over that most brutal of genres without effect. Nominally a post-metal/IDM (that's "Intelligent Dance Music" a term which is almost as meaningless as it is dumb, natch) crossover, 'The Tron' have managed to marry the spastic energy of their previous releases with a newfound sense of structure and songwriting chops I wouldn't have expected from them. Perhaps it's the influence of producer Kurt Ballou of Converge fame, who's track record for 2008 is pretty impressive. Regardless, I don't own any records that sound like "Board up the House" which is notable in and of itself. It's the best and likely only sonic outing of it's kind in 2008.

8. Memmaker, "How to Enlist in a Robot Uprising"
A side project from Iszoloscope mainman Yann, Memmaker is way less complex Ant Zen noise, and way more banging club techno/electro with an ear for a bit of dancefloor distortion. Although there's plenty of DJ candy on the album, it's the breakdowns and less dancey pieces that really highlight the attention to craft that went into making the record. Big leads, more complex then you might expect beats and cute sample work make for a memorable and substantial album for the dancefloor, the headphones and even for a little high energy housework.

7. Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, "Dig, Lazarus, Dig!"
For the last couple of years I was starting to suspect that as a fan of Nick Cave I was likely occupy that special hell reserved for fans of once great artists, the circle where you don't actually enjoy any of their latter day output but still buy it and struggle to derive some kind of value from it. That's probably why "Dig Lazarus, Dig" is such a welcome surprise. Allegedly revitalized by the departure of Blixa Bargeld who vehemently opposed the writing or performance of anything lighthearted, fun, or rock n' roll like (or so Cave would have us believe in numerous toss-Blixa-under-a-bus type interviews) DGD is everything I want from a Bad Seeds album. Upbeat and blackly humorous, weird and atmospheric and stuffed with gutter intellective, it offers the strongest songwriting from Nick and company since "Murder Ballads". If he can keep the momentum from this and his Grinderman project rolling, we might have a string of good records from everyone's favorite Evil Elvis.

6. The Presets, "Apocalypso"
I don't have much to offer on this one that my fellow contributors haven't already covered, and better than I would have to boot. So suffice to say that "Apocalypso" is the sound of a band obliterating the softmore slump barrier and delivering on all the potential and expectations promised by their debut. "This Boy's In Love", "My People" and "Talk Like That" are amongst the greatest club bangers of the year in any genre, but the album is listenable and enjoyable in any context.

Numbers 5-10 tomorrow!

The Return of The Return of the Durutti Column

Vini Reilly of The Durutti Column's never been a showboat, either in his musical style or in the promotion of his craft. Remaining loyal to Factory long after Bernard and the gang had jumped ship, and even returning to the fold for Tony Wilson's brief revival of the brand as Factory Too, Reilly seems to have always taken the path of least resistance, even if it's cost him sales-wise. Durutti Column releases seem to have been directed by a sense of willful obtuseness: low circulation, reissues quickly going out of print. Debut album (cheekily titled "The Return of the Durutti Column") came in a sandpaper sleeve, forcing the buyer to keep it separate from their collection lest other covers get scratched. Obviously a label like Factory attracted those motivated by a desire for unlimited expression, not exposure, but if I'd written the lion's share of an album as well known and loved as "Viva Hate" I'd be reminding people of that constantly while promoting my own material, not to mention putting the smooth on girls in the disco by pointing out that they're dancing to my guitar playing whenever "Suedehead" gets spun.

If I may wax a tad romantic, for me the Durutti Column's music has always been inextricably connected with images of Reilly's face, which has become a favourite subject of Natalie Curtis' photography (yes, that Natalie Curtis). Always gaunt, always topped by an unmanageable mop, Reilly seems the sort who wants nothing more than to be left in peace and to make his music. And his music itself is so free, so expressive, so content to simply explore whatever pastoral soundscapes it comes across (cheap comparison: The Durutti Column sounds like what would've happened if Erik Satie had been born in 1950s Manchester and had picked up a guitar and echo pedal) that it seems a shame that so few have had the chance to hear it, when it's so inviting, unassuming and rewarding.

All of this has been a preamble to reporting that, prompted by the rediscovery of a cache of old master tapes, a box set consisting of the first four Durutti Column albums with two bonus discs to boot will be seeing the light of day sometime this year. This is fantastic news for die-hard Factory heads like yours truly, as well as young'uns just beginning to look beyond the Joy Division/New Order monolith and discover what was so special about that time, that label, that city.

The Durutti Column, "Sketch For Summer"

Ice MC, "Scream"

When I was about ten a (rather well off) friend of mine went on an exchange trip to Germany. When he came back he played me a few mix tapes he'd made by recording songs off the local pop radio stations. Given the time period and the location, it's no surprise that the majority of the tunes were eurodance, although I certainly had never heard of the term at the time. I remember hours of D&D sessions which used those tapes as a soundtrack, but what sticks in my mind more than anything is a track by a British bloke named Ice MC. While Ice MC never made much impact on this side of the pond until his "Think About The Way" was featured in Trainspotting (it's the BONG-DIGGY-DIGGY-DIGGY-BONG-DIGGY-BONG" cut in case you need a refresher), he won my ten year-old heart with a bit of horror-themed silliness called "Scream". See if you can figure out the reason why:



No idea? Wind it back to 2:46. The man breaks the track full-stop to announce that the terror inspired by simply listing a ream of horror movie characters has been sufficient cause for him to lose control of his bowels. The sheer nerve of this, coupled with the inherent hilarity of the word "plopping" to a ten year-old (plus the cutting of the word immediately afterward), was enough to send my friend and I into unstoppable paroxysms of laughter. That small portion of the mix tape was rewound and replayed ad nauseum. Neither of our parents could get us to stop insisting at the dinner table that we, too, were plopping in our pants.

I hadn't thought about the song for years until just now. Was it still as hysterical as I remembered, I wondered? Was the idea of a eurodance song which prominently featured the word "plopping" still the funniest thing I could ever imagine? Yes. Yes it was.

Slept On: Vampire Rodents

In this and further Slept On installments, we'll be shouting out bands past and present (but mostly the former) who never received their due.

Vampire Rodents were a sample-based outfit who released five albums over the course of the 90s. A far cry from the quirky synth-gurgles of fellow sample-fiends Severed Heads, core members Daniel Vahnke and Victor Wulf (50 points for not needing stage names to sound industrial as fuck) turned to musique concrete and other abrasive forms of recent classical music for their inspiration, while their DIY ethic (pictured at left: custom notation for sample orchestration) led them to collaborate with Dan Gatto of Babyland infamy on several tracks. Jarring string sections were thickly layered overtop of rackety, Foetus-like percussion, with occasional forays into funk and disco breaks. It's what we wanky critics like to call "difficult" music, and chronic problems with record labels prevented much more than a cult following from ever emerging. I can't help but think that had Nettwerk maintained its initial commitment to legitimately underground music (rather than selling short their foundational artists once Sarah McLachlan broke in the US), they could've helped turn Skinny Puppy's fanbase on to Vampire Rodents.

Items of interest:

-Official MySpace page with unreleased archival pieces.
-An entertaining and caustic interview from 1996 in which Vahnke holds forth on sampling, the record industry and the like.
-The eBay account where Vahnke sells old VR records from time to time, although contacting him through MySpace might be a better gamble.

Vampire Rodents, "Trilobite"

Evilyn's Top 5 albums of '08

In no particular order, here are a few of my favourite CDs from this year that you should check out.

MSI - “If”
Not only does this band put on an entertaining live show but they also actually make music worth paying for, which I know, has become so passé this decade. This is usually the part of the review where I tell you which songs on the CD to check out and why they rock, however with this particular album ALL OF THE SONGS RULE, so just get this CD and TURN IT THE FUCK UP!

Bloc Party- “Intimacy”
The first track on this CD is going to remind you of the Chemical Brothers “Setting Sun” because of the way the song opens and the drum beats that follow. This is another CD that you can pretty much listen to front to back; it has a great mixture of sound, from slow songs to fast dancey tunes that make you wanna shake yo’ moneymaker.

The Killers- “Day & Age”
It wasn’t quite what I expected from the Killers this time around, a little less dance-floor friendly, but nonetheless an excellent CD filled with a wicked selection of tunes. The track “Spaceman” is so awesome it’s even featured on Rockband 2, so you can pretend you are Brandon Flowers, and who doesn’t dress up like the people they impersonate in Rockband anyway?

Cut Copy- “In Ghost Colours”
As I mentioned in a previous post on Def In June, this CD pretty much rules, and after seeing them perform a live show at the Commodore it only reassured my love for this band. Get out your keffiyeh and your skin tight tapered pants and dance like a queer to this album, its worth it.

The Raveonettes- “Lust Lust Lust”
The combo of doo-wop and pop rock that this band creates make you want to wear a poodle skirt and a bouffant, only the poodle skirt will be of a skeleton dog and your hair will be pink. A few of my favourite tracks on this CD are “You want the Candy” and “Dead Sound”