Radiohead's camera-free video for House of Cards went live this week, and by golly it's a treat, like the Matrix seen through a pinpression board:
There's a full page up at Google Code about this, including a genuinely interesting Making Of and details on how the data generated in the scanning-as-filming can be download for your own creative thrills. Now if I could just put that data into Manic Miner...
Friday is Nick Cave day! Hooray! Sadly it's not an official national day (yet), but BBC4 are showing just under three hours of the great man with and without his Bad Seeds. Working backwards, at 11:20pm there's Nick Cave on Later with Jools Holland, a compilation of his eight different appearances on said show between 1992 and 2008. Before that, a programme I've wanted to see again ever since it was originally shown a decade or so ago - Songwriter's Circle with Cave, Cale and Hynde (that's Nick, John and Chrissie). This blew me away when I saw it in the late 90's, yet it's simplicity itself - Nick Cave, John Cale and Chrissie Hynde playing some of their best songs in a small, intimate setting, the music at times burning with power. Check out John Cale's performance of Fear, or when Nick Cave does West Country Girl from The Boatman's Call, the languid melody replaced with piano-pounding venom.
And before that, at 9:30pm, a brand new hour-long session set of Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds with the set-list given in advance - those last three tracks should be nigh-on devastating. There's three songs not included in the broadcast that the Beeb have plonked up online - Tupelo, Moonland and, below, Into My Arms, the most perfectest wedding song if we weren't both godless heathens. Still, it's one of the most beautiful songs ever recorded and it's always a treat to hear it performed live - the percussion surprised me at first, but it works fine. This one's for you, missus.
Radiohead (well, two of 'em) cover Portishead's The Rip. Just the ticket for a worn-down Monday.
Not that this'll be much use to anyone who wants one, what with them having sold out weeks back, but the Portishead vinyl box set that I was looking forward to in March has been in my clammy paws for the last couple of months. The album, Third, was included in the set both in 2xLP and USB stick formats, the former perfect for the record player in the workroom, the latter just right for plugging into the DVD player in the living room. The USB stick is a sturdy little thing, shown to the right, and also contains a bunch of AVI files, but by containing the full album as 320kbps MP3s it handily gets passed the problem of wanting an album on vinyl but also wishing to listen to it digitally. Plus it looks nifty.
Still, the album sounds at its best on those two thick slabs of vinyl, clarity in the sound even when it's deliberately distorted. It's an excellent album, far more uncompromising and experimental than you might expect, possibly my favourite of Portishead's three studio albums so far. We Carry On is a particular treat, a wonderfully relentless beat pounding the song forward, urgent vocals bordering on the desperate, strangely ethereal backing voices cooing as percussion clatters furiously into taut guitars. Lovely stuff, it's definitely one of the highlights of this year thus far.
Also included in the box-set was a 12" of the Machine Gun single - one side contains the song itself, while the other looks like, well, look to the right. It's an intriguing etching - unlike that on the Low and Mono records, it's very linear, certainly not sourced from any scratching by hand but instead based on what looks like a photograph of a watchtower, taken between two rows of fencing. It's a suitably chilly, tense and almost mechanical image that fits the electronically distorted percussion driving the single it's backing like a glove. As with Radiohead's superb In Rainbows box-set last year, it's an excellent way to present an album yet, crucially, the presentation never overshadows the quality of the music they contain.
On a smaller scale, but still much appreciated, is Sub Pop's system of including a 'voucher' with every new LP they sell. This voucher allows the customer to download the entire album that they've just bought on vinyl as MP3s, so audio nerds like myself can listen the album on MP3 players (and burned onto CD) while still being able to enjoy it as a record and all the good points that brings, both sonically and visually. A few weeks back I bought the debut albums from Flight of the Conchords and Foals through Sub Pop (bizarrely, despite Foals being based in the UK and having a British label, it was actually cheaper to order their LP from America than through a UK store) and they both look and sound great. Flight of the Conchords have been wibbled about here before and produce the kind of comedy music that's genuinely funny and musically enjoyable (no mean feat), while Foals play a tight indie sound somewhere between Battles and Bloc Party, first catching my lugholes with the punchy Cassius earlier in the year. You can hear MP3s from both bands below c/o the Sub Pop media page, plus a suitably groovy video from the Conchords to tempt your eyes and ears. Vinyl and digital in one fell swoop - it's the best of both worlds, innit? Now if every other record company out there would follow suit...
Foals - Balloons (MP3)
Flight of the Conchords - Business Time (MP3)
Flight of the Conchords - Ladies of the World (MPEG)
And while we're on the subject of quality tunage, there's a brand new Sigur Ros track up for free in advance of their new album, Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust. You need to pop your email address in first to get the MP3, while the video for the song can be watched by anyone... but beware! The video is nothing but naked types cavorting around nature - well, some of them have got socks on, but that's about it. Both sexes are there, in all their wobbly glory, so there's something for everyone, and it's all rather Health & Efficiency if you can stop worrying about people getting caught on thorny branches in the worst way. Still, they seem happy enough, it's thoroughly exuberant and although I couldn't get into the rhythm at first, initially feeling off-kilter, once I'd latched onto it I really liked the song. Boding well for that fifth album, it's as cheerful and energetic a soundtrack as you'd want for scampering around your local nature reserve.
Very light posting lately due solely to being a busy little bee, but as I'm on an unplanned day's leave to look after a poorly Burd now seems a good enough time to catch up a bit. Soooo, what to tell?
Lungs! They seem to have calmed down nicely after last month's nastiness, helped no doubt by the twice-daily use of a steroid inhaler. Whether this'll be an ongoing thing or not isn't clear, I'm hoping that it'll be back to normal, so it's back to the doctor's in a month to review how things are going. Daily doses of traffic fumes on the way to work aren't helping, but the clean air further out where we live, especially in the park and along the canal, helps balance things out. Still, it's one more reason to move away from cities over the next few years. Whether finances, employment, property prices and mortgage rates will ever allow us to is another matter.
Tom Waits for no man... well, no man who doesn't have £80-100 to spare. Last week I was in what will surely be a once-in-a-lifetime position - to have tickets to see the mighty Tom Waits playing in the city I live in going on sale, the only show he'll be doing in the UK this year. He's pretty much the only one of my favourite living musicians who I still haven't seen in concert yet and the initial news made my eyes bulge and heart leap with startled joy. This quickly changed to immense guttedness and much soul/wallet-searching after I saw the ticket prices - £75 and £95 (plus a chunky booking fee, no doubt). Readers with elephantine memories will remember this post from 2006 when I questioned whether £35 was too much to pay for a ticket to see Nick Cave live (in retrospect, the conclusion I came to was staggeringly wrong). In the end, I couldn't justify paying £75+ for one concert, no matter how rare, no matter how special, no matter how incredibly good it might be (and for that price, you'd expect the Second ruddy Coming). It's not just a question of whether I have the money to pay for it - with a wedding in the next 12 months, what do you think? - but whether I could feel comfortable spending that much on what ultimately amounts to three hours entertainment, and I don't think I could. Hell, the total cost of seeing Portishead, Radiohead and Melt Banana in concert this year would come to less than that one ticket. And by comparison, a ticket to see him on the same tour in America costs $85 - less than £45. That, I would pay. Inevitably, it sold out and, equally inevitably, tickets are now turning up on Ebay for stupid fucking prices despite the anti-tout overkill measures that would make it impossible to sell the ticket on if you happened to be horribly ill come the day of the gig (it happens). But it's gutting to know that he'll be in town, this town, and I won't be there simply because of prices that really can't be justified. Damn damn damn damn damn.
Still, happy thoughts. The wedding! Content is now starting to appear on our dedicated ding-dong-the-bells-aren't-going-to-chime website, 230509.co.uk, useful for anyone who reckons they'll be invited or just wants to see what planning shenanigans we're up to. There's only a couple of posts so far, but expect more over the next few months, with password-protected pages giving detailed information for guests once invites have been sent out (anything to avoid the paparazzi). There's even an RSS feed to subscribe to, or you can just stare at the countdown as it cheerfully ticks away the seconds - 30675231 to go!
Saw Bob Mould in concert a couple of weeks back with the Brothers Grim of illustration, Rob and Gordon. It was a good gig, quite intimate in the snazzy setting of ABC2, thankfully finishing with plenty of time for me to scamper back to Queen St and get the train back to Edinburgh. Unlike last time, he had a full band behind him, the sound big and heavy, enough to leave my poor lugholes ringing for about 24 hours after. The Sugar and Husker Dü numbers were blistering, taking me back to seeing Sugar at Brixton Academy in the early 1990's (oh, I was so young!), and although the set sagged in the middle, it picked up speed nicely and the final third was pounding. Setlist here, and there's a couple of photos of the big man here.
Having come to the conclusion that I need more potential forms of employment than just artwork (no sales since last November) and The Law if I'm to hope to leave the city behind and live far away (and still pay a mortgage), coupled with that oh-so-distinctive surname, I am semi-seriously thinking about the potential of Nagl's Bagels (incorporating Jon's Scones). Not that I've ever fancied being a baker before, but with that surname what else can I do? Nagl's Ladles? So, with the thought of opening a bakery/gallery/record shop in some distant countryside village in the far flung future, I've started dipping my big toe into the world of baking, committing myself to one new baked goodie every week. Last week, using a recipe from Jock & Muriel at Thisselcockrig Farm, I made some raisin flapjacks, slightly crunchier than planned but with a surprisingly effective salty undertaste that counterbalanced the sweetness very nicely. Yesterday, thanks to the National Trust Traditional Recipes book, I had a go at Erddig Apple Scones (so called because, says here, this recipe comes from Erdigg, a National Trust house and estate in North Wales). They turned out well, using Gala apples grated and chopped, improvising a tad by adding a touch of cinnamon. A really pleasant taste, and the smell of baking wafted warmly through the flat like a cosy blanket.So far I haven't thought to take photos of the process or the results, but starting next week I will - it'll be good to keep a record of what works and what fails spectacularly. I'm not giving up on the art or the law, but there's no harm in adding another daydream to the collection. And who on Earth could resist the allure of a little bakery called Nagl's Bagels? Try saying it out loud, it's incredibly satisfying.
Oh, have you seen the GraphJam website? Finally a worthwhile use for the Charts function in Microsoft Office. They can be a bit hit-and-miss, but when they're good, they're good. Meanwhile, highlights from I Can Has Cheezburger, one two three and a glorious four.
I'm pleased to report that last night's Portishead concert was as good as hoped. So, what's to tell? Well, getting the downers out of the way first:
- The venue was as drab as predicted, a flat-floored hall with no apparent concession towards acoustics - with sloped floor and better sonics, Glasgow's ABC or Academy would've been far more suitable.
- The audience, as feared, contained a fair number of chuntering dipshits who use live music as a backing track for their bellowed conversations. Sadly this wasn't confined to the fringes of the bars, with berks in the 'main' audience blethering throughout both support and headline acts, including inane yapping about "this is my favourite song, oh I can't wait to get home and listen to it" while the song is still being performed. Are some people unable to think without automatically yelping said thought to their fellow schmuck? The performance of Wandering Stars was sublime and delicate, yet there was a tangible wall of background noise from all the many people who'd paid £30+ quid for a ticket to this concert, only to spend it talking shit. It was all horribly reminiscent of the infamous José Gonzales gig of two years back and is enough to make me swear off Edinburgh audiences, but this review of Portishead's London show suggests a similar problem there, with one dipshit interviewed - 'Owen Raven, banker' presumably being rhyming slang - saying "[s]he was just dreary. But then, I've only listened to them a couple of times before. It didn't bother me when they had to go off for the technical problems. It was an excuse to go to the bar." I'd thought the relatively high ticket price would keep away all but committed fans, yet that complete & utter banker represents a notable number of people who seem to buy tickets on a vague whim - 'oh, Portishead, I heard them on This Life a couple of times, yeah why not'. Fuck that mentality and fuck them.
- Lowlight of the night was surely the two student twats in front of us shouting the stupidest, dumbest conversation I've ever had the immense misfortune to hear while we were trying to listen to Hawk & A Hacksaw, made all the worse by the fact that we'd got a good location about 10 rows from the stage. We'd been standing there for a few songs and greatly enjoying it, at which point these two lagered-up cocks lurched through the audience and staggered to a stop in front of the Lass before bellowing away at each other constantly about girls, foreplay, football - christ, I wish I was making this up. Everyone within a metre of them was clearly getting increasingly fecked off but, naturally, no-one said a thing until the Burd (oh, how I love her) asked them to be quiet or take their conversation over to the bar. A normal human being would feel suitably chastised, apologise and gone off to the bar to continue said chuntering, but these immature, irredeemable fuckwads stopped for a second as the feeble neurons in their skulls briefly sparked, then bellowed "FUCKIN STAND IN FRONT OF US THEN!" and would not stop no matter how many times we emphasised they were ruining the music. We gave up and moved back a few 'rows' where quite a few people sympathised with us. It was profoundly depressing for me - when you love music so much, when you connect with others over bands, you (perhaps naively) imagine that fellow fans will be good people, like-minded souls - and at many gigs that's been the case. To find you share a beloved band with foul idiots is strangely disappointing.
- This'll be hugely hypocritical of me, having taken many pictures at concerts myself, but the huge number of cameras/phones in use at this gig was maddening. If you're in the first few rows (as I suspect the photographer of the good photograph above was) you're likely to get a decent snap, so fair play, but the number of people I saw holding up cameras further back in the audience and no doubt coming away with blurred, nonsensical images was ridiculous, not to mention the many others filming entire songs on their phones. When you can't see the stage for all the glowing LCD displays on cameras and phones held aloft, something seems screwy. It's as though for some people an event is only real if they've got some digital record of it, no matter how blurred or bland, yet many were clearly spending time trying to compose shots or change functions when they could've just enjoyed the show - it just seems like a barrier, a filter between the music and the person. I dunno, maybe I'm just a crotchety old bastard...
Rants over. Now, GOOD STUFF!
- I'd heard the support act, A Hawk And A Hacksaw, a few times beforehand and never really paid much attention - while slightly reminiscent of Beirut or bits of Neutral Milk Hotel, it just didn't connect. Live, however, their music worked really well, excellent musicianship and some energised rhythms backed with strings, accordian, clarinet, trumpet and a couple of other intriguing instruments. Mostly instrumental, it felt as though initially the audience viewed them as a novelty but the first song won most people over. I missed most of the second half of their set due to the aforementioned pair of pricks, but that first half was grand, the music conjuring images of Eastern European villages and Mexican mariachis.
- Then, of course, the main act. Portishead played as a six-piece, with lead guitar, bass guitar, two sets of percussion, keyboard and vocals. Ah, the vocals. Beth's voice is, if anything, even more versatile and affecting than that last time in 1997, able to go from cooing like a theremin to shrieking like a death metallist possessed and everything inbetween. She's an incredible performer, seemingly pouring herself into the microphone with agony at points, but between songs was clearly loving the gig - even from a distance we could see her beaming as the audience roared approval for every song. Machine Gun, in particular, went down an absolute storm - and with good reason, the sound of that percussion battering around the hall was stunning - and to see something so (relatively) harsh cheered by an audience that could've just been there to hear Sour Times was really quite heartening.
- Talking of which, to counterpoint the above frothy rantings, much of the audience was great and clearly well into the music. The fact it was on a Saturday might've meant a lot of people had been drinking since the afternoon but it also seemed to loosen up the audience as well. While not always a good thing - clapping along to songs really should be left to Dire Straits gigs - it was great to see so many people reacting to the new music so well, and it felt like the band thought the same.
- The black-clad band as a whole was on top form and did their recorded work justice. Burrow's guitar playing was especially good, at one point conjuring up Joy Division, later veering into drone-metal territory, a very good place to be. While Portishead aren't a band for on-stage theatrics - much like Radiohead, they pretty much stand where they are and make this amazing music - it was thrilling to watch them playing.
- The visuals were well chosen, blending between live footage of the band shot from fixed cameras and various pieces of film depending on the song. A strange animation of forests and beasts, children playing on Super-8 film, electrical lines stuttering, even something as simple as the [P] logo being distorted to fuck, suited the music well.
- All the same, I quite happily spent much of the concert with my eyes closed. Partly because I was bored of all the LCD screens but mainly because, with some live acts (Pelican, Isis, Sigur Ros) the music being played is so rich, so deep that it's a pleasure to just shut your eyes and focus utterly on the sounds. There were so many points in this show when I could do this, the first coming to mind being when Mysterons kicked in, theremin sounds curling around taut percussion and Beth's plaintive singing. Absolutely gorgeous, the sonic equivalent of tasting something so good that you want to briefly shut off all other four senses and give it the focus it deserves.
- For the curious, the setlist is here.
- Oh aye, on arriving at the gig we were given a little lanyard with a littler USB stick attached, suitably P-branded. Popped it into the Precious after getting home and up popped a brief but enjoyable staccato of images and sound, as though someone were skipping through a DVD of the making of their new album. I might pop it up on here sometime for any fans of the band who didn't get to see them live, and as free promo items go it beats postcards.
In summary? Fucking marvellous, well worth the wait, even if I came away just that little bit more misanthropic than before. And while I've been tapping away furiously like a berk, the missus-to-be has started, finished and published her own account of the gig, which no doubt makes more sense than my wibblings. Next up - Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds, Glasgow Academy. Expect fire, brimstone and facial hair.
Dearie me. It's been intolerably quiet in this little corner of the interweb over the last fortnight and the more days that go by without posting the harder it gets to actually sit down and bloody write something. Simply enough, I've been jolly knackered thanks to a wodge of extra hours I've been working, so that by the time I've got home and dinner's out of the way there's just no joie de blog left in me. I dunno, life just seems to fly by in a blur of work-sleep-work-sleep-work-sleep-WEEKEND!-sleep-work repeated ad nauseum. Quite feeble really. Goodness knows how anyone has the energy to work a full-time job and raise a family without any help from robotic servants or magical powers.
So, what's been going on in Naglville lately? Aside from the aforementioned increased work, not much at all. Tonight the fiancée and me are off to a concert together for the first time since, bloody hell, October 2006, to see our beloved Portishead blow the roof off the Edinburgh Corn Exchange just down the road. Having already heard the new album and been suitably impressed by it (proper write-up once released, but it's a heavier, chillier beast than their previous albums and is likely to be a right ear-clobberer live) I'm exceedingly excited about tonight. I last saw them live at the Southampton Guildhall in, oh god, November 1997 (the ticket's in my college cuttings book) and that was stunning, one of my favourite gigs ever, with me particularly bewitched by Beth Gibbons giving the sort of heartfelt performance that made by 20 year old indiekid heart leap. Going by the glimpses of live footage from ATP, they've still got it in spades - a seven-track performance went up online late last night, but I'm not watching it until tomorrow, just to make tonight that little bit fresher and surprising.
Haven't worked on any artwork for the last few weeks either which, like blogging or going to the gym, becomes more intimidating and infuriating the longer I leave it. Bloody ridiculous, but I'll get something done tomorrow or fall asleep trying. Until Thursday I'd not been to the gym for over a fortnight either, but have got back into the swing of that in the last two days. A particular highpoint in exercising occured yesterday on the treadmill when a rather long Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan track came on the iPod shuffle and I went into some kind of zen-like state of bliss, running for double the time I'd normally do (or manage). I thought that fast relentless chuggy metal (System of a Down, Torche - not Melt Banana, that'd induce a hernia) or fast electronica (Orbital at their technoist, particularly Rewind) made the best workout music, but turns out it's a bunch of blokes clapping and singing lyrics I cannot possibly understand. If I ever do a proper run, I'm filling the shuffle with Qawwali chanting.
What else? Saw [Rec] yesterday which really deserves its own post, so hopefully I can manage that in the next 24 hours, but in summary - brutal, brief, claustrophobic, genuinely terrifying finale, bloody good horror. Currently reading Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene which is as good as it's modern-classic status suggests, managing to be both scientifically thorough yet accessible to a lumbering berk like meself. The only problem I have is that it's taking time to read - as with Brian Greene's wonderful superstring books, you can't just nip in & out of the text like a lightweight fiction - and I'm desperate to finish. Not because it's not enjoyable - far from it, it's a cracking read and I'd recommend it to every one of you - but the book I read before it was Master and Commander, the first of the Aubrey/Maturin novels, and it was such a joy that I'm now gagging to get into the second one, Post Captain. I got hold of it a couple of days back and it now sits on the table like a wicked temptress, calling me away from the joys of genes with the promise of 19th century shenanigans. But nay! I shall be strong!
Hurrahs and huzzahs to the BBC this week for enabling the BBC iPlayer for use on the Wii Internet browser. It's all very well using said player on computers, but as the Wii is hooked up to the television this basically allows you to watch iPlayer shows on the telly rather than a monitor, just as it should be. We had a go at this on Wednesday - Doctor Who Confidential kept pausing every five minutes or so, most likely due to too many people on the neighbourhood broadband line at the time (6:30pm) but when we had a second go an hour later with Transatlantic Sessions the entire programme streamed without a pause. Picture quality is inevitably sub-broadcast but still finer than YouTube, while the sound quality sounded good to these ears. Good to see they're not averse to putting full-length features up - Danny Boyle's Millions is up for another day - and we'll probably pop Later with Jools Holland on sometime next week, what with it featuring Glen Hansard & Markéta Irglova playing music from the wonderful soundtrack of the wonderful soundtrack for the adorable Once, and Goldfrapp playing from the spookily dreamy Seventh Tree, the perfect soundtrack for a nice sunny Spring, if only there were one rather the rerun of Autumn we're currently experiencing.
Anything else? We're now onto the second series of Jeeves And Wooster and it continues to be a sublime pleasure, even better than I thought back in - gulp - 1991. It's incredibly comforting to watch, for reasons I can't quite explain, but it's all so cosy and makes one wistful for a world of politeness, decorum, tailoring and omnipotent manservants. Following on from that, the third of Stephen Fry's podcasts - sorry, podgrams - is up and waiting for you on iTunes (don't fear, they're still free). Very nice too - such is the loveliness of Fry that it could be half an hour of him reading the ingredients for Frosties and it would still be charming. Of course, his writing is far more interesting than the ingredients for Frosties, so it's a class act all round - I particularly enjoyed his previous piece on dancing and the inability to do so, being similarly hapless at cutting a groove. No doubt I'll end up quoting it verbatim when people start asking about there being a First Dance after the wedding...
I'm still waiting for Mario Kart Wii and my vinyl copy of R.E.M.s thrilling Accelerate to come through the post, the former of which undoubtedly leading to hours, days, weeks flying by in our little flat as the Lass & I challenge each other to tournament after tournament of wheely madness. I still remember just how much time during my study in Dublin was spent on Mario Kart 64 with my housemates - I would regret it and wonder wistfully that if I'd spent all that time animating I might be a better artist now, but to be honest it was a bloody good time and therefore jolly well spent. Though goodness knows what kind of driver I'll make when I inevitably learn to drive one day and go tearing down roads, looking for mushrooms and checking the rear view mirror for blue spiky shells.
Oh, and I baked some raisin flapjacks last Saturday. They were lovely. Go me!
I can remember first hearing Elbow a decade ago, god help my elderly slipper-wearing soul. It was December 1998, a few months after I'd started studying in Dublin, and I flew home for a few days over Christmas, during which I diligently taped the entire Festive 50 on John Peel - I couldn't pick up Radio 1 to hear his show normally (though I could get Radio 4 on LW and found listening to Home Truths incredibly comforting). Back in Dublin, I listened to those tapes obsessively for the next two months compiling a shopping list of fabulous new music to go a-hunting for - mostly in Road Records, Ireland's finest music emporium. 1998's F50 was a hell of a list (but you could probably argue they all were), turning me on to Boards of Canada, Melt Banana (for which I will be forever grateful), Half Man Half Biscuit, Evolution Control Committee, Solex, Cinerama, Daniel Johnston, the Cuban Boys, Gorky's Zygotic Mynci, Ten Benson and, there at number 34, a band called Elbow with an utterly spellbinding track called Powder Blue. I was hooked, but had to wait until 2001 for their first album to get a release. Asleep in the Back wasn't consistently great, but there were enough good songs on there - particularly Newborn (ignore the shortened single version that stops just as it gets going), Bitten by the Tailfly and aforementioned Powder Blue - to make it worth owning. Their second album never really caught me, aside from the rather lovely Fugitive Motel, but their third one was stronger, opening with the excellent Station Approach (recently covered by Belgian choral group Scala, fact fans).
Now their fourth album is out - it's only been available for a few days and already I've listened to it more than I ever have to Cast of Thousands or Leaders of the Free World combined. It feels like they've finally nailed down all the elements of brilliance found in their earlier albums, resulting in good song after good song after good song, flowing sweetly together. It's a mature and confident album, lyrically managing to be emotionally affecting and true without ever sounding trite or clichéd, touching on bittersweet romance, divorce, hopes of escape. There's stories to be told in these songs, most notably in The Fix, an enjoyable tale of gambling schemes and Mediterranean dreams sung in a duet with the Bard of Sheffied, Richard Hawley. The band is on the ball as always, while Guy Garvey has really progressed as a singer - even back on Powder Blue his vocals were one of the most distinctive elements of the song, but hearing his voice now leap and dip so gracefully yet still retain that unique character is a pleasure for the ears. So too are the backing strings that gently swoop in on tracks like the swoonsome Mirrorball, while there's some good subtle uses of electronica in there too, keeping things fresh Without a single duff track to be found, this is definitely Elbow's finest album so far and comes recommended to pretty much anyone.
1. Mono, Gone, Side F, 2. Low, Things We Lost In The Fire, Side D, XCU, 3. 'Shades of the Swarm' Cover Art Detail, 4. Detail of Panoptican Lyrics
My new-found obsession for 12 inches of vinyl goodness has snowballed since I first wibbled about getting a record player a couple of months back. As well as revisiting all my old records - in particular marvelling at the lyrics carved into the second B-side of Low's wonderful double LP Things We Lost in the Fire - I've finally been able to hear Shellac's blistering 1993 EP The Rude Gesture (A Pictoral History), a gift from Mr Rob a few years back that's been waiting to be heard ever since, and shelling out on new records - even if they are albums I already have on CD or MP3.
Now, there'll be those who think "Whit?! You're buying albums you already own?! Are you really as stupid as you look? Here, I've got this tartan paint I'd like to sell you..." and hopefully the odd one or two who think "Too right pal, too right." Or so I hope. Because it is worth it, for all those reasons I twittered about beforehand. Although I already have OK Computer, Mezzanine and Mono's Gone: a Collection of Eps 2000-2007, there's a huge pleasure in seeing those sleeves at full LP size. Mezzanine looks particularly juicy, that monochrome biomechanic beetle that much larger, shinier and sinister than its CD counterpart. The Mono 3LP is gorgeously packaged, folding out to reveal the three 12" records, one of which has the B-side taken up by an etching illustration fitting in with the design of the sleeves - I wasn't even expecting to see that and made a little yelp of gleeful surprise when I first slid the record out and saw those strange markings shining up at me like an alien response to Voyager.
Sonically these double-ups are also worthwhile, the bass on Mezzanine rumbling that much deeper and richer (though the deliberate crackles on Teardrop had me staring wildly at the disc and stylus for marks or dust, relaxing only after compared it with the CD recording of the same) - Group Four seems to swallow up the room when it plays, and that's at a sensible neighbour-friendly volume, so the thought of one day being able to crank it up in a completely detached home is really quite thrilling. The melee of sounds on parts of OK Computer is that much easier to untangle when played back on vinyl, the various layers of instruments and noise working gloriously - you can genuinely sit back, close your eyes and lose yourself in the richness of Airbag, Subterranean Homesick Alien or Lucky. Well, I can. And do. So nyerhe.
Other albums that I'd been planning on getting on CD are now in my clammy paws in vinyl format instead. The reissue of Killing Joke's furious Extremities Dirt and Various Repressed Emotions comes on a range of colours in vinyl from Plastichead - I went for a lovely blue. The sleeve is pretty startling at LP size and the music sounds excellent, those first two tracks like a double-punch to the head and heart, enraged and thrilling. I finally picked up Shellac's by-now-classic At Action Park on LP as well as their most recent, Excellent Italian Greyhound - and just to sweeten the deal, the latter LP includes a CD of the album as well for any of us nerds who want the music on an iPod as well as a turntable. I'd heard a leak of Goldfrapp's Seventh Tree before release and felt that the music, a welcome shift from their last couple of albums, strangely evocative of English fields, Nick Drake and the Wicker Man, would be well suited to vinyl, and so it is - I look forward to one day playing it while looking out over a Skye springtime, sunlight streaming through windows, passing birdsong mingling with the gently spooky music.
And then there's the two box-sets. Sigur Ros's In A Frozen Sea, which I blethered about on my birthday, is a glorious piece of work that's worth every penny it cost, and then some. Yes, I already owned the albums. It doesn't matter. It's the difference between having a paperback of a favourite book from decades or centuries back, and then acquiring a rare first-edition hardback of the book. You still have the paperback for travelling, for casual reading on the move - but the hardback is there for special reading, a tangible symbol of just how important the story it contains is to you. In a roundabout way, it's the same with these records - I can still pop on the Takk CD while we're relaxing in the living room, and I've got it converted to AAC for everyday iPod listening. But there'll be those special times when I want to sit by the record player, carefully remove the records from the beautifully packaged 'book' and place them on the turntable, then sit back and let the sound wash over me. Like I said before, there's a ceremonial side to all this, taking time to appreciate the music, and in this disposable consumerist society we're living in that takes music, stories, films, art for granted, that's no bad thing.
Likewise for the Isis boxset, an absolutely remarkable piece of work that I jibber-jabbered about after ordering it last month. It arrived a couple of days ago, having required an extra £40 in import duty alone on top of the super-high cost of UPS priority delivery, and despite the eye-watering final total of obtaining it I can confidently say it lives up to the hype, the hope and the undeniably whopping price tag. Containing every LP by Isis, who I've loved since seeing them at ATP 2004, Shades of the Swarm is a box-set produced to celebrate 10 years of their existence, eight albums remastered on vinyl with newly designed sleeves, contained in an absolutely beautiful box. I already owned four of their albums on CD and had been planning to get them as LPs anyway, so this came around at just the right time. It's an incredibly lavish object of desire that's clearly had a huge amount of work put into it, assembled by hand, as luxurious as experimental post-metal music could ever get. There's clearer photos of the whole set on Aaron Turner's site, but I took this picture detailing the divine gold printing on the cover, based on this tour poster, and this photo of the lyric sheet - black ink on shiny black paper (none more black!) - which looks more like writing carved on a stone monument than anything else. Once I stopped geeking out over the box, sleeves and lyric sheet and actually got round to playing the music, I knew it had been worth buying. The remastered albums had a damn sight more punch behind them than they had previously, again leaving me wistfully imagining playing them in a detached dwelling rather than a terraced flat, but even at neighbour-friendly levels the music sounds powerful, deep, roaring out of the speakers. As with Sigur Ros, this is music you can lose yourself in if you want to, conjuring up images of landscapes and myths, though while Sigur Ros may summon up thoughts of glaciers gliding across icy lakes and silent ridges of volcanic rock stretching into the horizon, Isis bring images of violent landscapes, fire and smoke, plates colliding and skies falling. Surely you can see the attraction.
Anyway, I'll probably be laying off the spending for a bit now. Orkney - and the engagement ring that awaits us there - is just a couple of months away, so pennies need to be put aside for that, and I don't want the missus-to-be thinking I'm a complete lunatic when it comes to money (after the Isis box set, who could blame her?). Besides, between all my old stuff, the new purchases and the wodge of old records I bought off Rob the other week, I've plenty of music to be getting on with. Mind you, I bet Burial's sublime Untrue would sound luscious on LP - and that new Silver Mt Zion album sounds awfully nice...
Thirty one! Good grief, where are the days, weeks, months and years going? Yep, it's that wonderful day of the year when billions across the globe (okay, about seven people) celebrate my appearance on this bitter earth all those years ago. While it's customary to bemoan one's increasing age, I'm actually rather enjoying it, easing nicely into comfortable slippers (I recommend the memory foam ones, very nice), listening to Radio 4 (well, within reason - their plays continue to make me spit venomous blood at the radio whenever I have the misfortune to hear one) and constantly bemoaning the state of the planet, nation, younger people and the increasingly dull shite that passes for music these days. Of course it was completely different when I was a lad, what with, er, New Kids on the Block, Debbie Gibson, Rick Astley, Vanilla Ice, the Reynolds Girls... oh well. Bellowing at the television becomes evermore necessary, as though I somehow believe it's a two-way connection and that Tiscali will actually hear me when I bellow "OH, FUCK OFF! FUCK OFF! OH YES, ADULTERY'S SO FUCKING FUNNY ISN'T IT! HA FUCKING HA! I WOULDN'T TOUCH YOUR PIECE-OF-SHIT PRODUCTS IF THEY WERE THE LAST BROADBAND ON EARTH, YOU SOULLESS COKED-UP TWATS! BAH!" by which point their vile advert has already finished and some other godawful piece of commercial toss is being spewed out onto the telly screen.
What? Oh yes, my birthday. It's been very nice thus far, what with it a) being a day off work and b) spend in the company of Little Miss Fiancée. Thanks to the Amazon wishlist, I've received a mighty bundle of goodies from my folks, our bookcase now home to every English-language Studio Ghibli Art Of book available, which please me greatly - the Nausicaa Watercolours book is especially impressive, containing nothing but watercolour artwork and makes an ideal companion piece to Miyazaki's own original manga. What's left me giddiest of all though is that, with birthday moneys from my Lass, Mum and Grandad, I've been able to scamper over to Avalanche Records and finally buy myself this long-lusted-after Sigur Ros limited edition box-set. Produced by Artist in Residence, it's gorgeously designed, with every Sigur Ros album thus far included in 12" LP format, spreading over seven records in total. Right now I've got Hoppolalia from Takk playing loud and it sounds incredible. Buying this just a few days after shelling an even more chunky amount of virtual cash for the Isis set probably sounds ludicrous, irresponsible and downright stupid for someone who's not rolling in readies, but in my defence both are limited editions (5000 of the Sigur Ros set, 600 of Isis), I've been doing overtime with the intention of building up cash to buy them, and really it's my last bit of over-indulgent spending for, well, a very long time. And you're only 31 once.
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