Keep it in the family

Every time I take a loot at what search engine queries have led people to this site, it appears that somebody has visited in search of tales of incest between the Bedingfield siblings… as mentioned here. If my skin crawled while watching that appalling and extremely creepy Brit Awards performance it was nothing compared to what greeted me on CD:UK this Saturday morning.

Bedingfield (Daniel) doing a cover of The Killers’ ‘Somebody Told Me’. Accompanied by Spanish Guitar.

Thankfully I was not nursing a hangover, or I my guts may have found it too much to take. It was the most embarassingly awful thing I have seen on television since that footage of Boyzone dancing on The Late Late Show.

Who the hell told this bloke he should be a pop star?

Diabolus in Musica

This should wake you up if you’re struggling to recover from the bank holiday! If you’ve ever thought that thrash metal was for pussies, then this is for you. Ninja Tune’s Amon Tobin takes Slayer’s ‘Angel of Death’ and lays some ferocious beats over the top!

I’ve been after this for a while after seeing it on sale on ebay a few times. I believe it was limited to 300 copies though, so I don’t reckon i’ve got much hope of spotting it in the bargain bins! Finally the Lord Slsk fixed me up.

Now I will confess my knowledge of Slayer is slightly sketchy, however I had an immediate burst of recognition upon hearing this, since it’s the same track Soulwax opened their DJ set with at the Primavera festival last year. Class! I’ve got to buy some thrash metal to try mixing with.

I’ve always visualised dance and rock music as a bit of a circle, with both meeting up at the extremities. At one end thrash metal is not far removed from Gabba or Hardcore… at the other you have a lot of similarities between the likes of Slowdive and Ulrich Schnauss, or Eno and Em:t. My mate Steve slipped a bit of Metallica into an electro set at a party a while back, which fitted perfectly with something like Vitalic. Both sound best when you jump up & down and shake your head.

Amon Tobin has been recording for Ninja Tune for ages now… I’ve not actually heard any of his stuff apart from the track he did with Chris Morris (’Bad Sex’ - which was based on a sketch from Jam) and now this. I was surprised to discover that he’s Brazilian. Aren’t Slayer Brazilian? Or was that Sepultura? Maybe he should have remixed one of their tracks instead? Either way i’m glad he did this one. It rocks hard.

Be warned.. it’s one of those that starts quietly & tricks you into turning the stereo up. It should of course be played at maximum volume though!

PLAYER - ANGEL OF THEFT

Entertainment!

Sunny at Pollox Niner has posted up one of the Gang of Four’s finest moments.. ‘Damaged Goods’, which if you’ve not heard you should immediately investigate.

It’s not my favourite track of theirs though…that title belongs to ‘At Home He’s A Tourist’, also originally from the classic ‘Entertainment!‘ album. It should have been a massive hit for them, however Top of The Pops wouldn’t let them perform the line ‘The rubbers you hide, in your pocket’ and without this TV exposure it stalled just outside the Top 40. It seems incredible that such an inoffensive line could be censored as recently as 1979, but morality is a strange beast. I was reminded of Kenneth Tynan’s famous honour of being the first man to say ‘Fuck’ on television. He was smoking a fag at the time. If that show went out now, the fact he was smoking on television would cause outrage while the expletive would go unnoticed.

(Nice quote from Tynan: “A critic is a man who knows the way but can’t drive the car”)

Back to the track though, it’s incredible the tension created by the jerky bass & itchy guitar stabs. The riff in the chorus sounds like a massive release of all that tension, before reaching the 15 stabs at the climax, sounding to me like the embodiment of frustration. Despite all this the track does make me want to dance, although I’m not sure it’s possible without jerking around like Ian Curtis. Terrible danger of spillage on the dancefloor.

Strangely G of F didn’t have a great deal of recognition in their home town of Leeds when I was a student there. The Sisters of Mercy were more likely to be mentioned as part of the city’s musical heritage. I’m sure that would have changed now with the likes of Franz Ferdinand & Bloc Party paying well-publicised homage to the Gang of Four sound.

GANG OF FOUR - AT HOME HE’S A TOURIST


There are a couple of excellent articles on the Gang of Four here. Take a look.

The Sound of Young Chav Britain

Coldplay may be ‘The Biggest Band in the World’ according to every bloody newspaper and magazine published in the last fortnight, and ‘Speed of Sound’ may have been on the radio every 27 seconds for the last month…. however it seems this is not what the kids are listening to.

Who the fuck buys this? And why?

‘CRAZY FROG SET TO BEAT COLDPLAY TO NUMBER ONE

According to music retailer HMV, Crazy Frog’s ‘Axel F’ is outselling ’Speed Of Sound’ by a 4 to 1 margin in their stores.’

http://www.nme.com/news/112448.htm

If you think that’s ridiculous, check this out… The Killers are now favourites to be headlining Glastonbury. WTF?

Cracks appear

December 8th 1980.

After putting the final touches to a track in the studio, John Lennon & Yoko Ono set off from the studio to walk back to their apartment in The Dakota, Central Park.

Mark Chapman was waiting outside & shot Lennon dead.

I came across the track they had just completed, ‘Walking on Thin Ice’ thanks to Joey Negro’s amazing ‘Disco Not Disco’ compilation, however I had no idea about the significance of the record. I loved it for what it was.. a killer bassline and ska-like groove allowing Yoko full reign to yelp & generally go off on one over the top. It’s no surprise that it was a big favourite in The Loft, Paradise Garage and other legendary New York clubs.. the groove is inescapable.

The song becomes more astonishing though once you know what happened immediately after the recording. It’s even suggested that Lennon was holding the master tape when he was shot. The lyrics of the song and Yoko’s almost funereal vocals add an incredible amount of poignancy. It’s no wonder when it was released that the sleeve dedicated the record to John’s memory.

Walking on thin ice,
I’m paying the price
For throwing the dice in the air.
Why must we learn it the hard way
And play the game of life with your heart?

I gave you my knife,
You gave me my life
Like a gush of wind in my hair.
Why do we forget what’s been said
And play the game of life with our hearts?

I may cry some day,
But the tears will dry whichever way.
And when our hearts return to ashes,
It’ll be just a story,

I don’t claim to know that much about Yoko Ono, but I do believe she is a lot more talented than she’s ever been given credit for. She undeniably infuenced to a huge extent all of Lennon’s work in the 70s, as well as producing plenty of interesting art in her own right. I suspect the press would have been much happier had Lennon married some vacuous but beautiful model, and that much of the hostility towards her led from an incomprehension on the part of the media and public that he didn’t.

YOKO ONO - WALKING ON THIN ICE

When You Walk Through A Storm

What a great game tonight. I’ve always had a soft spot for the scousers, and I thoroughly enjoyed the stunning comeback this evening. Far from the mugging that ManUre gave Bayern Munich a few years back.

I have started to accept that Wycombe Wanderers will never lift the European Cup (at least not until I become a billionaire and buy Ronaldinho & Shevchenko for The Blues), so seeing Gerrard raise it to the sky this evening was a fine alternative.

Superb.

LES RHYTHMES DIGITALES - FROM DISCO TO: DISCO

Muddy Marys

According to the Holy Moly newsletter (think a more juvenile Popbitch. It’s great!), Scissor Sisters are replacing Kylie as Glastonbury headliners.

A bit disappointing if it’s true.. i’ve seen them touring their debut album 4 times. Not sure I can be arsed again. I was kind of secretly hoping it would be U2, since there’s no way in a million years i’d actually pay to go & see them… and they’re probably damn good live. Still, i’m sure i’ll find something else interesting going on. I’m not really one for the main stages anyway.

I’m also considering going to Lowlands in The Holland this year. Anyone been before? Is it as good as you’d imagine a Dutch festival would be?

New Wave Disco

It’s not all techno techno techno chez headphonesex.

I’ve been listening to this song all day after coming across it on Richard X’s ‘Back to Mine’ compliation. I recognised the unforgettable title ‘You’ll Always Find Me In the Kitchen at Parties’, but i’d never heard the song before.

Released on Stiff records (sometime home of Madness, Kirsty MacColl, The Pogues, Ian Dury, Yello and Elvis Costello to name just a few) in 1980, the single managed some chart success with the unlikely backing of Dave Lee Travis, after the hairy cunt cornflake overheard it in the radio 1 corridors and made it his single of the week.

It’s a tale of a man hanging round in kitchens at parties (no shit) attempting to score.

“Then I met this debutante I said I like new wave rock.
She was into french cuisine but I ain’t no cordon bleu.
This was at some do in palmers green

I had no luck with her.”

Perseverance pays off though! He who dares rodney, he who dares! Our hero finally has his way with a lass!

“At last I met a pretty girl she laughed and talked with me.
We both walked out of the kitchen and danced in a new way.

And now I’ve done my time in the kitchen at parties.”

It’s not clear what happens next though. Does he stop going to parties altogether, or just move into the lounge? Sadly the follow up single did not explain, but instead became an unlikely christmas smash hit. “Stop The Cavalry” is a standard on christmas compilations and I suspect that he now lives a fine life from the royalties a la Hugh Grant in ‘About a Boy’. (You’d know it if you heard it)

The whole track is done in a really jaunty synthpop style, with Kirsty MacColl on backing vocals singing his lines back to him. Matthew at Fluxblog would LOVE this. And so do I.

JONA LEWIE - YOU’LL ALWAYS FIND ME IN THE KITCHEN AT PARTIES

Sex With The Machines

The second part of Dave Clarke’s ‘World Service’ mix CD is out next week. Like the first installment there are two CDs - one given over to Electro & one to Techno. The techno CD in particular is superb… the best techno mix i’ve heard for a long time. (DJ Bone’s ‘Subject: Detroit Volume 2′ is the last outstanding one I can think of). Loads of cutting, scratching & all the stuff that brings looped techno to life.. combined with Clarke’s superb track selection of dirty grooves and jacking house.

The Electro disc isn’t quite as good, but does have a few killer tunes, including this one by Electro Commander Anthony Rother.

Rother was one of the first electro revivalists, and came to prominence back in around 1997/98 with superb releases such as ‘Sex With The Machines’, ‘Red Light District’ and particularly his cover of Kraftwerk’s Trans Europa Express. (the musical equivalent of Gus Van Saint’s ‘Psycho’ remake)

I’ve not heard much of his more recent stuff, but he seems to have been branching into new areas, with a couple of Ambient releases on Pete Namlook’s Fax label, and an electro-pop album called ‘Popkiller’. I saw this picture disc in a second hand shop not long ago, and thought i’d give it a whirl. A wise choice. This tune, ‘When The Sun Goes Down’ veres towards the poppier side of Rother’s output, but is no less devastating.

Starting with some fierce electro beats (that’s an 808, right?) before long a growling synth line appears, which gradually gets tweaked into an acid bath. Meanwhile Rother’s nice Kraftwerk-esque vocals keep things building until by the end you’re sure that whatever does happen when the sun goes down, it’s gonna be fun… if a little dangerous.

ANTHONY ROTHER - WHEN THE SUN GOES DOWN

Just make sure when you listen you listen LOUD.

Nothing Happens in My Town

The Maximo Park album is out this week. And it’s a killer.

I was a bit disappointed when I saw them live a few months ago (at the Camden Crawl). I think it was just the fact that the venue was slightly too big for them at that stage. There wasn’t a lot of enthusiasm from the crowd, so I was left singing along to ‘The Night I lost my Head’ and ‘The Coast is Changing’ alone. I suspect that will have changed by the time I see them at Glastonbury though. This record is going to win them a lot of fans.

I suspect some of the credit for the way the album’s turned out must go to producer Paul ‘Phones’ Epworth, who also produced the Futureheads and Bloc Party albums. Despite the punky feel there’s a really rich, clean sound. You can hear every word Paul Smith comes out with, and most of them are worth hearing. The rhythms take Route #1 straight into my brain and most of the choruses find me singing along in the car (or under my breath at work) a la Kaiser Chiefs - who they are also similar to by virtue of having keyboards and lots of Oooh-ing.

All the songs are short and to the point, which keeps an exhilarating pace going through the album. The only exception is slowish penultimate track ‘Acrobat’, which hopefully hints at a band who have greater things to come.

My favourite song at the moment is recent single ‘Grafiti’ - the video of which you can watch right here. I’m going to post up their ode to Brit beach & beer destination ‘Limassol’ however because I like the dirty keyboard sound it starts off with. I don’t think it’s got much to do with Cyprus though.

MAXIMO PARK - LIMASSOL

Buy this album.