Falling Sky

Playing with fire

This morning's commute to work was made infinitely more exciting by listening to The Knife's Full of Fire. It's the first track to appear from their whopping new album, Shaking The Habitual, not due for another two months. In the meantime, this will do very nicely.

 

As you can see up yonder, Full Of Fire clocks in at 9:16 and immediately strikes a harder, more aggressive tone than their earlier work (think a more discordant We Share Our Mother's Health rolling downhill in a shopping trolley). Insistent beats yank you to the dancefloor, only for increasingly distorted voices to scare you off it. Throughout, things stay tense, wide-eyed and unpredictable. Background music it ain't, but playing this while doing anything instantly makes it an edgy thrill, like you're up to something shifty and sinister. Even if it's the washing up.

 
It took a few listens before it clicked with me, in doing so demonstrating the ongoing importance of a radio station like BBC 6Music. Marc Riley, in particular, has a real Peel-like knack for championing the more... challenging tracks that can take time to win you round, making use of having a four-nights-a-week show to persist bringing new music past that first what-the-hell-was-that phase. Much the same happened with We Want War by These New Puritans, a startlingly complex, unsettling and long piece of music that sounded like nothing else out there on its release. As with Full of Fire, We Want War did absolutely nothing for me the first couple of plays but, with Riley's persistent championing of the song, it eventually clicked to such an extent that it was one of my favourite songs that year. Instant gratification through Spotify, Soundcloud, iTunes and Emusic is all very well, but there's still very much a need for DJs like Marc Riley, Tom Ravenscroft, Mary Anne Hobbs (all to be found on 6Music) who know that sometimes the very best music doesn't always grab you by the lapels and give you a great big kiss. Sometimes music that on first listen leaves you cold needs time to slide under your skin and never let go.

Big in Japandroids

"Remember saying things like 'We'll sleep when we're dead'/ And thinking this feeling was never going to end?"
- Younger Us, Japandroids

Japandroids @ Crowbar 11.28.12 - photo by Nicole Kibert

I always enjoy Best Of lists on music blogs at the end of the year. While it can be tempting to get bogged down in arguing about who's placed where (for my money any list that didn't have The Seer as #1 was utterly utterly wrong) they're best approached as helpful spotlights on releases that passed you by the first time round. The first monthly Emusic sub after the lists go up is always a treat, as I follow up some of those recommendations and, more often than not, find a few to be my favourite albums of the passing year.

Last month was no exception, as I nerdishly studied the best ofs at The Quietus, BBC Music, Line of Best Fit, Pitchfork and Drowned in Sound, along with Emusic's own. One album that cropped up a couple of times was Celebration Rock by Japandroids, a two-man band I'd never heard or heard of before. Still, at 8 tracks it was a cheap buy (£3.36 on Emusic, £4.72 on Amazon), with an enticing review from the former promising:

"With just a guitar and a drum kit, meanwhile, the lifelong friends generate enough heat and momentum for an entire E Street band. Songs surge forward recklessly, explode, and then plow forward again."

Besides, any band that covers Mclusky can't be bad, right?

Thankfully Celebration Rock is an album that lives up both to the reviews and its own title. A million miles away from sneering indie, wistful shoegazing or detached dreampop, this is rowdy raucous rock, blazing with passion. It's way too heartfelt, too desperate to be mistaken for frat-boy rock - this is music for roaring in basement clubs, not stadiums, fists in the air, all sweat and smiles, hollered until hoarse - "we yell like hell to the heavens! HEY!"  

Track after track of breathless rock hits hard, like The Hold Steady at their loudest or The Replacements at their wildest. It's such a thrill to hear, to feel this music quicken the pulse and gladden the heart. Every song's a treat, with the opening salvo of tracks particularly blistering. Even so, the album's highlight is the penultimate track, The House That Heaven Built, exploding with affirmation, a sonic bearhug of support and belief - "When they love you and they will/ (And they will!)/ Tell 'em all they'll love in my shadow/ And if they try to slow you down/ (Slow you down!)/ Tell 'em all to go to hell!" YES! PUNCH THE SKY AND MAKE IT SHATTER!

Little wonder I've been playing it on a daily basis for the last week - it makes the dullest of domestic duties altogether more enjoyable. At 36 minutes it's over all too quickly, though any longer could've been downright exhausting. Not only that, it's the perfect length for my morning commute, the closing fireworks spluttering just as the train pulls into Waverley, giving the first working day of the year a much-needed kick up the arse. HEY!

 

"...But I quite like the songs"

You loved it as a kid / And now you need it more than you ever did

- Tracey Thorn, Joy

We have a problem. My calendar, and seemingly everyone elses, is clearly broken because it's stating that today is 24th December, or Christmas Eve, and that CAN'T be so. Even in the deep midthirties I can still remember as a child finding those weeks running up to the 25th the slowest, most frustrating time of the year, but now the days seem to vanish in a bleak blur of commuting in the dark (and, this year, general poorliness across the family). Are we sure it's not the 17th?

Well, regardless, I've got my priorities in order. While the tree was conspicuously lacking in wrapped goodies underneath until an hour ago (admittedly more to avoid Bagl from crawling up to them and soaking the wrapping paper in drool) I do have a suitably festive musical playlist fully assembled and ready to go. Here's three of the best.

Tracey Thorn, she of Everything But The Girl, released Tinsel and Lights a few weeks ago and straight off the bat it's pretty much a classic for this time of year. Most of the songs are covers, though not the usual - I was particularly delighted to hear Low's Taking Down The Tree covered so well, given the excellence of Low's Christmas EP. The opening track, Joy, is an original written by Thorn and it's probably the highlight of the album for me. It's a perfect Christmas song, but not in a Slade/Roy Wood/belted out with gusto at festive discos kind of way. It's made for those quiet moments you need at this time of year, curtains pulled tight against the cold and dark, and to my mind absolutely nails what Christmas is really all about (rather than that silly story). With every listen it hits harder, the lyrics startlingly real (while playing it back to write this post I was borderline blubbing by the last line). It's real, clear-eyed and genuine, managing the stonkingly rare feat of being neither cynical nor twee. If you play only one song from this post, make it this one.

While we're at it, do have a read of Tracey Thorn's enjoyable piece for The Quietus on Christmas music, on how "Christmas songs are all either overtly sad, or contain within them covert elements of sadness which are disguised by the surface trappings of fun and merriment."  I particularly liked the anxiety of Slade and the reference to Mrs Doyle's misery.

Despite being an atheist through and through, I still find much to love from the religious music. The words may often be absolute bunkum (Seven Joys of Mary still makes me splutter with indignation - I mean, honestly, "The next good joy that Mary had / It was the joy of six / To see her own son Jesus \ Upon the Crucifix"?  Some Mum!) but that doesn't diminish the impact of the music itself. Choirs in particular have the ability to make the heart soar and I do love a good candlelit choir service. This year I got hold of a choral album of Celtic and British songs and carols, Wolcum Yule, performed by Anonymous 4 (£6.49 on Amazon MP3, should you be tempted). It's a good-sized collection of music, some well-known, others not, spanning centuries and performed (often unaccompanied) by 4 female choral singers. The above is their version of John Tavener's The Lamb and is probably the most minor-key track on the album, but I think it fits nicely.

The thing about Tim Minchin is that he seemed to appear out of nowhere for me, as though I'd missed a memo or something. One day I'd never heard of the chap, the next I see him on the back of the Guardian Guide selling out arenas across the land. I've since become a huge fan of his work, but when White Wine In The Sun went viral amongst friends (and my lady wife) three years ago I admit it didn't move me much. Cut to now and it's one of my favourite festive songs, with lines that once seemed a bit overdone now ringing true, twanging my heartstrings mercilessly. I fear I may have grown up a bit.

A Second Coming

And so now we thrum our joyous tension in opposition to all of that. Things are not OK. Music should be about things that are not OK, or else shouldn't exist at all. The best songs ever are the songs that ride that line. We just try to get close to that perfection. We drive all night just to get closer to that perfect joyous noise, just to kiss the hem of that garment. We love music, we love people, we love the noise we make.
- Godspeed You! Black Emperor in interview.

I don't think there's another band or musician, alive or dead, that have the emotional and visceral impact on me that Montreal's mighty instrumental giga-group Godspeed You! Black Emperor. It's very, very, very difficult for me to put into words just what their music has meant to me since I first heard them in 1998, courtesy of the wonderful (and sadly no more) Road Records in Dublin. That first time I saw them in concert at the Temple Bar Music Centre (with support from Sigur Ros!) remains one of the most emotional and influential moments in my life, as close to a religious experience as a godless heathen like me could ever have.

Live photo by Eva Vermandel, via cstrecords.com

Up until now, they've only had three albums and one EP to their name (no, I'm not counting that first cassette), yet each recording is a thing of wonder and power. Unlike others, I thought their last release - Yanqui U.X.O. - was excellent, with the final track, the 30 minute Motherfucker=Redeemer, one of their best, ending on a heartracing roar of hope. If it was to be their last record, I felt, at least it was on a high.

That said, I was still absolutely, almost overwhelmingly delighted at news a few years back that they had reappeared on the live scene. Twice they went on to play Glasgow, twice I bought tickets... and twice I missed them, once due to snow, another due to family commitments. Gutted, but at least I'd seen them in the past, and in a time before ubiquitous mobile cameras and obscenely yappy bastards. Still, I wondered - what next? Would they remain a live-only proposition, like the reformed (and still magnificent) Pixies? Would they call it a day after another tour? Or might there, oh please, be a new recording one day, something that could stand alongside their existing masterworks? It seemed like wishful thinking, and short of getting out to an All Tomorrow's Parties again I figured all I had was their four recordings & those glowing memories. Which was enough.

But!

Two months ago, out of absolutely flipping nowhere, news online that a new GY!BE album had appeared on their merch stand at concerts, with an actual release coming a fortnight later. In an age of leaks and Twitter rumour storms, such a genuine surprise is a shocking novelty - the only band to come close were Radiohead's sudden release of In Rainbows. The new album, with a suitably wide-eyed exultation of a title - ALLELUIA! DON'T BEND, ASCEND! - duly appeared in mid-October, and I've been letting it sink in before burbling my thoughts. Intriguingly, on vinyl it's split across two records - two long tracks (20 mins each, roughly) each have a side of a 12" while an accompanying 7" contains two shorter droning pieces.

Godspeed You! Black Emperor - 'ALLELUJAH! DON'T BEND! ASCEND! by Constellation Records 

The first long 'un, Mladic, has been a stalwart at their gigs since the olden dayes, but this is the first time they've recorded it. It sounds incredibly fresh, tight and full of welly. And despite the number of Godspeed-like bands that have partially filled the void of the last decade, it is absolutely, unmistakably them - yet it's not predictable or samey. It feels like a continuation of where they left off, but one that's driving forward, not treading water. The building up of tension is exquisite, making every second count, gradually building momentum layer by layer, riff by riff, beat by beat, until you're lost in this wonderfully rich thunderous sound. As it rocks harder and harder it veers to a defiantly middle Eastern sound, like Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan writing for Mastodon. It's incredibly exciting and stands alongside Storm as their heaviest song so far. When they hit their stride and barrel into the music, heads down, lost in a blaze of sound and strobe, only Swans come close. It's a blistering return that picks up where they left off a decade ago and blazes ahead into new territory.

The second big 'un, We Drift Like Worried Fire, is less intense, but still incredibly thrilling. It starts gently and beautifully, almost on tiptoes, building on a melody as strings glide alongside, gradually escalating as the drums pound harder and jangling guitars shimmer and shriek. It's uplifting stuff - GY!BE's music has always been about hope and joy against a seemingly overwhelming doom - that makes your heart soar. There's still plenty more to follow, as they gradually piece together a taut, edge-of-your-seat atmosphere, a soundtrack to shadowy shenanigans, before finally exploding into fiery passion, punching the sky and making it shatter. Again, this is GY!BE doing what they do best -supremely confident, tight and as exultant as the album title suggests. It's a soundtrack that needs no film, possibly even more vital and contemporary than their work at the turn of the millennium, and increasingly rewarding with every listen.

A glorious return, then, and with reports that the band are now blasting out new material in the form of a 45 minute track (!!!) apparently called 'Behemoth' (!!!!!) I'm hopeful they're not going to drift away again just yet. We need - I need - this music that says so much without words, that stares reality in the face rather than retreat into the self, that demands of you and gives back so much.

(Tsk, I had this written over a month ago but been too flappy to actually finish it up & publish! Bad blog, no biscuit.)

Long Music For Short Times

The Seer took 30 years to make. It’s the culmination of every previous Swans album as well as any other music I’ve ever made, been involved in or imagined. But it’s unfinished, like the songs themselves. It’s one frame in a reel. The frames blur, blend and will eventually fade.  [...] Despite what you might have heard or presumed, my quest is to spread light and joy through the world. My friends in Swans are all stellar men. Without them I’m a kitten, an infant. Our goal is the same: ecstasy! - Michael Gira, Swans

There's been a generous fistful lately of great new music from well-established bands. Earlier this year saw Orbital return with Wonky (and one of my favourite music videos for a while), late summer saw the triumphant return of the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion (more on that in a later blogpost, perhaps) and it was just this week that Godspeed You! Black Emperor released their first new recording in a decade (more on that next week, most likely).

Swans Seer dvd trailer from Marco Porsia on Vimeo.

Outliving the lot of them so far, Swans reformed a few years ago and have already released an album of new material (2010's hefty My Father Will Guide Me Up A Rope To The Sky). It's taken me way, way, way too long to start listening to Swans (I really should've paid attention to Rob, but don't tell him I said that) but after lapping up that last album I was curious to see what they'd come back with next. The answer? A double album (triple on vinyl!) that seems to be the perfect expression of what Swans has been hammering away at for all these decades,  And it is incredible.

The Seer starts with the clanging chimes of Lunacy, the word repeated like a fervent choral mantra. It's an extraordinarily dramatic opening, appropriately so for an album so huge, so overwhelming. Jangling, howling, thundering. Then suddenly quiet, gentle repetition of "the child is over", vocals from Alan and Mimi from Low, a hushed tension punctured by a gapless switch to Mother of the World, all taut rhythm and guitar while the singer moans, keens, "dee dee dee" - a sudden break for air, then klang, a booming intonation "IN AND OUT AND IN AND OUT", band crashing in hard. Christ.

Each song is unpredictable, broken into numerous parts that can be startlingly different from each other yet absolutely right together. The result is as demanding as it is rewarding, at once exhausting and exhilarating, Total Music. There's SO MUCH going on, it demands your full attention, constantly wrong-footing you, sweetly melodic and jarringly discordant, forever on edge. It is, without doubt, the worst background music in the world (though I imagine painting to this would result in something quite special).

The Seer's title track stands proud as the centrepiece of the album, that one song longer than some complete albums. It builds, builds, driven by drum, doom and volume, nightmarishly hypnotic. A voice repeatedly mutters "I see it all / I've seen it all" while the tension becomes almost unbearable, going faster, higher, louder, higher still, until - SLAM! - it suddenly climaxes, all pounding drum, howling guitar and thunderous noise. Well, I say climax - there's another 18 minutes left. It reminds me of Godspeed You! Black Emperor's jaw-dropping Storm, peaking with a violent sonic roar then exploding, bursting open bit still ploughing on and grinding down like some monstrous beast/machine lurching wounded, spewing black fumes, raging as it dies.

There's still plenty of album to go, and it barely lets up. The Seer Returns takes the tempo from part of The Seer and makes another song with it, spoken lyrics talk of "a greasy beast" and light pouring in and out of mouths. 93 Ave B. Blues is the most challenging (and, if I'm honest, most skippable), an increasing wall of screeching noise and rattling noise. Song for a Warrior is a rare breather, featuring Karen O from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, exactly what you'd want to hear sung over a flaming. Avatar is all clanging chimes of doom before a sudden violent thrashing release. Then, to close, two massive tracks, each around 20 minutesA Piece of the Sky is downright lovely, like some mittelEuropean folk sung around a campfire, tired and bruised but controlled and warm. If the album finished here it would still be a classic, but there's still another whopper to come, The Apostate. It slowly burns, building tension and unease - then, six minutes in, it suddenly cranks up the volume and terror, like a soundtrack to something awful and huge. Hardly music made for popping up on 'shuffle' but in the context of the greater album it's profoundly powerful and thrilling. Michael Gira's vocals are the polar opposite of what they were a track earlier, now howling, shrieking, roaring, a bloodied face in the midst of battle. And suddenly, the music stops and there's nothing but the fast random battering of percussion, like fireworks or artillery.

the apostate (edit) from Marco Porsia on Vimeo.

All in all, The Seer is as perfect a complete album as I can think of. From start to finish it's a clear example of why albums matter, why they still matter, and that when done right they become more than the sum of their parts. It unashamedly demands so much of the listener, both in terms of time and attention, but it's an investment that absolutely pays off. It's intense, but it's no ordeal - like a doorstop novel or epic theatre, it has the time to reach heights and depths, to cast a spell, to reel you in. Much like seeing 'There Will Be Blood' for the first time, it feels as though this album stands apart from other contemporary releases, so much so that comparison seem pointless, unfair to all concerned. It's not music to be heard the way we hear music these days - even now I'm listening to it in half-hour fragments on my commute, when it so clearly deserves a good couple of uninterrupted hours to really dive into it. The Seer challenges you to find time, to put the effort in, to surrender yourself to something so much slower and greater than we're accustomed to. The result is a revelation.

 

An Antibalas Antidote to Autumn

I've been a subscriber to Emusic for as long as I've had a broadband connection, and it's been a gateway to so much great new music I would otherwise never get to hear. It's that much easier to try out something purely on the basis of a good review in the Quietus, the Line of Best Fit, Pitchfork or BBC Music - and it was one such review that sent me in the direction of Antibalas's eponymous release. I knew absolutely nothing about them, but those good words and the brief samples of tracks suggested joyous sonic sunshine - and so it proved. If ever there was music to counter the cold dreich greyness of a rainy October in Scotland, this is it.

 
Track one, Dirty Money (muppety video above), opens with some prime cowbell and righteous organ, before the horns take control, vocals punch the air, and the album doesn't let up from there. (6 tracks over 45 minutes) To these ears it's deliciously reminiscent of the Budos Band's sun-baked grooves, filtered through the African funk of the Ethiopiques compilations. These are upbeat, passionate Afrobeat jams, averaging 7-8 minutes, giving the band space to spread out, sometimes one player taking a turn in the spotlight, jazz-style. The interplay between the musicians is superb, somehow tight and relaxed at the same time.

It all wraps up with the 10 minute Sáré Kon Kon, my highlight of the album. It's incredibly energetic and despite its length not a second is wasted or indulgent. Much like Toy, this is music that sounds like a studio recording but feels live, whoops and hollers in the background as bongos get slammed and the brass blow hard, call and response vocals adding to the mental image of one big party. You can hear the smiles, feel the rhythm, and they're both infectious - if you're not so much as tapping your foot to this as the tempo steps up while the sax goes wiiiiiild and brings the whole shebang to a shrieking climax, check your pulse.

Ode to Toy!

You don't have to worry about your physical presence. You can forget everything... - Alejandra Diaz, Toy

It's been years since I was last at a gig, and to my surprise I'm not that fussed. I've very very fond memories of going to plenty of loud sweaty shows back in the day, crammed into King Tuts, the Barfly, the Barrowlands, but I don't miss it much. I remember getting more & more annoyed with audiences, the way some people would treat the performance as background noise to be constantly bellowed over, getting shoved out the way mid-song by thugs carrying pints of overpriced pissy lager, the increasing ubiquitousness of phones, cameras and iPads being held aloft for entire songs (or even the whole damn show). Watching this film of Bowie's last concert as Ziggy Stardust, I was surprised how remarkable it seemed to have an audience so totally focused on the stage, no sea of mobiles above their heads. (To be fair, I've taken my share of gig photos, but only for moments, not for recording whole songs or sets.) I found myself feeling less a part of the audience, that wonderful communal sense of being surrounded by like-minded strangers and everyone totally getting into it... just didn't seem to happen anymore. It's that much harder to lose yourself in the music & the moment (surely the whole point of gigs) when people are regularly barging past you with pints, shouting down their mobiles or yelling an entire gig-long conversation, or you can't see the band because there's a fucking iPad in the way. And, truth be told, as I got older I just got more and more uncomfortable at gigs, part of me just looking forward to the final song and being able to get back home again. So, honestly, I don't miss it much.

Except...

Every now & then I'll hear a group and think "by god, I would love to hear that live" - and not in a concert-recording way, in a right-in-front-of-me crowd-surging gut-thumping lights-strobing tinnitus-onsetting volume-you-can-feel sweat-goddamn-everywhere worth-every-discomfort absolute-abandon-to-the-music way. And when I first heard Toy - or possibly TOY - earlier this year, the only thing stopping me from hightailing over to King Tuts for their next gig was the forthcoming appearance of Bagl.

 
That first taste of Toy, Motoring, was well supported by BBC 6Music, particularly Marc Riley (who had them in for session - you can hear that here), and I played the single over & over, the kind of obsession with one song that I sometimes think I've grown out of but glad I hadn't, while waiting for their debut album to drop. It's an absolutely thrilling piece of music, a psychedelic thrill ride down a Krautrock autobahn driven by drums, as relentless as Leave Them All Behind by way of Popscene, the kind of song you wish would never end. But end it did, leaving me hungry for more - and while Left Myself Behind kept me happy for a while (the second half of that song is blinding) I couldn't wait to find out whether their eponymous debut album would live it up to that stunner of a start.

Months later, I'm delighted to report it does (and you can stream the whole thing via Soundcloud at the bottom of this post). For a debut it's remarkably assured, opening with the cracking Colours Running Out, all howling guitars swerving around the stereo. A couple of tracks later and you hit nearly 8 minutes of Dead & Gone, a highlight of the album that starts steady, then 5 minutes in cranks up to a whole new gear. You can practically hear the blinding lights suddenly burst from the stage as the audience (in my head) loses it in walls of beautiful noise.

There's not a bad song on the album, it's just some are drop-everything-that's-BRILLIANT, some just plain good. At first play it's reminiscent of The Horrors's second album, but not derivative - and the more I hear Toy, the less it sounds like anyone else. There's the frankly sweet My Heart Skips A Beat, which deserves to be the soundtrack to a million college kisses, followed by the spookily woozy Strange. Some tracks hit the ground galloping, others take their time, reeling you in. As Motoring demonstrated so well, they're a band confident enough to let a song keep going - there's way too many great songs out there that finish too soon (Radiohead and Arcade Fire are serial offenders in my book for this) but Toy know just when to keep on, that blissful building on repetition that the Wedding Present would do so fell (cf Kennedy). It all feels right, heartfelt, enthusiastic, even euphoric, free of the sneering too-cool-to-care of others. It's music that genuinely wants to move you and isn't afraid or ashamed to try.

And then there's the finale, Kopter. It's a WHOPPER, just shy of ten minutes and thrilling from the get-go, back on the autobahn, starting fast driven by bass and picking up speed until the momentum damn near falls over itself, yet it never loses control even when they push it faster, harder, more, full tilt all the way to ten, the steadiness of Motoring now careering wildly across the road, lights blazing. I defy anyone to listen to this without their heartrate jumping up a notch, or to not have the distinct urge to break out the air guitar and drums. Despite being a studio recording, the band got in strobes & a smoke machine while recording to try and capture that feeling of playing live - and by god it paid off, because Kopter has that raw power so often lacking in studio tapes. The physical energy of the musicians is so tangible in this song, you can almost see the hair flailing wildly, drumsticks a blur, sweat pouring - and you know it would make a shatteringly perfect last song of the night, worth every aching muscle and ringing ear that followed.

So, yeah, I'm resigned to the fact I won't be seeing Toy live any time soon. But by making an album that's so genuinely exciting, full of so much that's great about live music (even in a studio), it's almost as if I don't need to, because they've captured so much of what's good about a gig into a studio recording, while still being able to listen in your slippers. As good a guitar-group album as you could hope to hear this is, as you might have guessed, highly recommended.

 

This Week, I Have Been Mostly...

WATCHING: Hairy Bikers' Bakeation (BBC2/BBCHD/iPlayer). Normally I really dislike cookery programmes.  With cooking (like sport, or sex) it's usually much more fun to be an active participant than a passive observer - and after watching someone prepare some delicious food on such shows, you don't even get to taste it! Oddly, the rare few I have actually enjoyed enough to watch all the way through have all been focused on baking. I'm not entirely sure why that is - perhaps because I'm already comfortable with basic bread making, perhaps the relatively messy aspect of baking helps avoid the soft-focus tweeness of other shows?  Dunno.  Whatever it is, while I really enjoyed Rachel Allen's Bake! series (her visit to Falko led directly to our choice of wedding cake), I quickly lost interest with her Home Cooking series despite following a near-identical format. And while I normally wouldn't bother watching the Hairy Bikers cooking their merry away through a series & tie-in book, I've found myself cheerfully tuning in to the Hairy Bikers' Bakeation this month.

Two episodes in, it's an odd but generally endearing mix of a) yon Hairy Bikers baking a recipe available on the BBC website (and the tie-in book), b) a baker from whatever country they're in demonstrating how they make their own particular specialities, and c) general travelogue malarkey as they make their way around Europe. The first episode was cracking, focused on Norway, complete with oodles of beautiful vistas, quietly polite people, a jaw-dropping hotel and gorgeous bakeries, culminating in a bread that looked so good the inability to taste it was infuriating (where's my Wonkavision?). The cooking highlight was probably 95-year-old Nikka, a lovely old lady who looked like she'd been drawn by Sylvain Chomet, and her decades-old waffle iron - good luck getting one of those in Lakeland. The mix of travel show and cookery show isn't the smoothest, and the second episode (cramming in the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg) was very much travel show first, cookery second. Still, hopefully upcoming ones will spend a bit more time back in the bakery, particularly the episodes in Germany and Austria. And while the Hairy Bikers' schtick is laid on thicker the stodgiest wholemeal ever, somehow it's on just the very edge of the right side of cheery-daftness/downright-annoyingness. Now if only they didn't have such a propensity towards nudity... 

Anyway, you can get recipes from the show up on the BBC Food site, while the trans-European nature of the show has been picked up by the Open University who've produced a fascinating interactive map on the language of baking across Europe. And while there are clips available to view, there don't seem to be any embeddable ones - silly Beeb! - so we'll just have to make do with this not-safe-for-work spot of re-editing by Cassetteboy instead.

 

READING: For fans of all things Moominage and Moominish, I'd highly recommend this article that caught my eye, The Moomins, and their gift for tolerance written by Gordon Campbell over two years ago. It's a lovely piece of writing that captures the joy of the Moomins, the emotional heart, the depths, the things that have made the Moomins ring true for so many people over the last 60+ years.

What makes the Moomin stories so enjoyable – and so popular with parents as well as children – is the wit, compassion and energy present in such abundance. Adults and children respond alike to the same elements in these books, which is quite a rare event.

[...] One English boy wrote to her : ‘I enjoy the Moomins so much because they are so unreal in form, and so real in person.’ No author, Jansson wryly responded, could ask for a higher compliment.

It also links to this equally beautiful obituary for Tove Jansson by Shelley Jackson from 2002.

Melancholy, ambivalence, loss and disillusionment, yearning and disappointment are Tove Jansson's great themes; she is also really, really funny. The unnameable may be no farther away than the bottom of the garden, but it is also no closer. Moominland has floods, comets and tornadoes, but it also has Moominmamma, who can banish most terrors with weapons no stronger than a cup of coffee and a good spring cleaning. 

LISTENING: Just getting into the latest album from School of Seven Bells, Ghostory. It carries on the lovely jangly wall of sound from their previous records with a great pulsing relentlessness, like Cocteau Twins doing krautrock. The standout so far for me is the first track, which is rather scuppering the rest of the album because as soon as The Night finishes, more often than not I'll press |< and play it again (it's great for getting a fast walking pace going, particularly for marching up Leith Walk after work). 

BEING IMPRESSED BY: I'm at least a week behind the rest of the Internet on this, but stuff it - if you've not had the pleasure yet, do watch this five minute video of the Wrecking Crew Orchestra from Japan. It's thrilling stuff, using electro-techno like Daft Punk and Justice to soundtrack dancing in 'neon suits', said suits being turned on & off to give the boggling impression of video editing cuts happening in reality. Definitely one for watching in as HD as possible.

This Week, I Have Been Mostly...

SNIFFLING: After a sick-leave-free Winter, the first in recent memory, this week saw me drifting into the realm of the unwell thanks to a cold-carrying Wifey and a couple of hours shopping of Edinburgh, before which I felt fine, after which I felt blocked-up and boggin'. Head colds are no fun, especially with a nose as, er, striking as mine, but my main concern is to try and get shot of the bugger before it gets chesty, since that's kicked off asthma nastiness in the past. While it's not gone yet, I think the cold is on the way out and I should be back at work next week without fear of being labelled a walking talking piece of germ warfare.

LISTENING: More great new music shoved in my general direction by BBC 6Music - this time it's Sharon Van Etten's latest album, Tramp. It's a fantastic album, full of confidence and fire, somewhere between singer-songwriter, country and indie-rock. While there's a sadness in the lyrics, this isn't broken, desolate music - think somewhere between Laura Marling, the National and Beirut. Give Out is sparse, mainly voice and acoustic guitar, yet electric guitars play along in echoey reverb, while Serpents punches hard and urgent with a chorus of "serpents in my mind... everything changes," spitting out lyrics like "you enjoyed sucking on dreams" while relentless drums keep a sense of thrilling urgency while guitars keen and howl. It's already shaping up to be one of the songs of the year, and I'd expect to see the album on many an end-of-year list too, especially as it grows on you with every listen. Excellent stuff.

WATCHING: BBC4 celebrated its tenth birthday with a disco-themed weekend, complete with a hour-long documentary on The Joy Of Disco. Well worth a watch on the iPlayer (until Friday evening), it's an enjoyable and eye-opening potted history from 1969 to 1979, from the Stonewall riots to (this was news to me) the Disco Sucks riot, with lots inbetween. The soundtrack was, inevitably, absolutely wonderful, but there was plenty more to it - even though you wouldn't think of it as a niche subject, I still felt like I learned plenty from the documentary, while enjoying every minute (dig the surprise appearance from Truman Capote!). There's a couple of good short clips over here.

THIS WEEK'S TUMBLR OF CHOICE: Batman Running Away From Shit.

Sixty Feet Under

Burial - Loner from Miguel Bidarra on Vimeo.

I've spent the last 24 hours utterly smitten with the latest release from Burial, the Kindred EP. I could wax embarrassingly lyrically about this, but to be honest this post from The Quietus does a far better job of putting into words the feelings this music bring and is well worth reading the whole shebang - here's a taster:

[On track 3] Running to nearly twelve minutes, its first half evokes sensations of a train journey, rhythmic slippages lending it the slight back-and-forth rock of a locomotive carriage in motion. As he/she rides, the narrator-of-sorts draws residue from the surrounding environment. These are more tangible things - flickers of voice ("Alright, bye", from a girl on the phone, slogans from billboards, R&B leaking from someone else's over-loud headphones, a couple of schoolchildren a few seats away blasting music on their phone), percussion as the chug of the train itself, four-to-the-floor kickdrum as heartbeat. Halfway through the track, the narrator disembarks and walks on foot out of the station and into a new neighbourhood. Here the tone of the piece changes entirely. The tempo shifts, the rhythms flit like two-step and the music begins to decay, picking up on more less immediately obvious cues and associations - the arrangement of buildings, graffiti on the walls, rubbish on the street. Throughout, all of these elements that orbit the narrator are emotionally charged, and strongly imbued with the weight of their own history, even though they might only pass through his/her frame of view for brief - sometimes miniscule - periods of time.

It's all too easy to throw the thesauras at this music which lyrically says so little yet remains so evocative, so atmospheric - see The Quietus' subsequent 'Pseuds Corner' collection of quotes from Burial reviews. But when music's this good, you can't help but try to put into words why it's so potent, so powerful. The EP is, even by Burial's standards thus far, superb stuff. It consists of three tracks, notably longer than his previous releases, in total coming it at around 30 minutes. While all three tracks are unmistakably Burial, they go further, deeper than before, rich soundscapes that shift, soundtracking something dark, brooding, all concrete, rain and stuttering streetlights (ach - there's that waxing I was determined to avoid).

This is real headphone music - on the one hand it deserves silence around you to take it all in, yet it also seems at home on earbuds whilst travelling through the city where it becomes oddly hard to tell where the music ends and the outside world begins. All that, and it's darkly groovy too - check out the growlingly low bass running through Loner (above) and see if you can resist nodding your head to the taut beats and relentlessly repetitive keyboard while picturing sinister acts on runaway Tube trains. While this isn't uncomfortably fearful music in the way that KTL, Current 93 or The Haxan Cloak can be, this EP does capture a sense of urban subterranean menace that rather oddly reminds me of one of my favourite horror films of all time, Quatermass & The Pit, and its vision of a London brought to its bloody feral knees.

Anyway, this is wonderful new music that deserves to be heard (preferably at night) and, at £1.49 for the whole EP in MP3 format from Bleep, a sodding bargain to boot.