Thirty


Jason Forrest – Lady Fantasy E.P. (Sonig)

Forrest returns to the top 50, and I have placed the EP over his full-length. This is mainly because I prefer the crazier end of dancey music in short bursts, otherwise I fatigue off it. I don’t think I’m alone either; people often respond to Best Dance Album lists with ‘well, dance is about singles’. I agree, really. I mean, look at The Prodigy. ‘No Good’, ‘Poison’, ‘Firestarter’ and stuff. Great singles. But am I going to listen to their albums? Nope. And …Jilted Generation is one of the better dance albums out there.

I really like Underworld’s Second Toughest in the Infants, but I rarely listen to it. I can listen to singles like ‘Pearl’s Girl’ and ‘Dirty Epic’ anytime though. And so it is with this. Albums by Forrest, Kid606 or what have you are all well and good, but have more impact in single or EP form: every song can be different to the last, it’s more conducive to memory, and there is less danger of filler.

‘Sperry and Foil’ clocks in at the pretty epic length of eight minutes but, unlike the aforementioned Underworld did so often, it never quite feels truly epic. The key hook, a rather splendid little descending synth melody, spends its time battling the prevailing glitchizm, occasionally bubbling to the surface. The reason why this works a tad better than, say, General Patton vs. The X-Ecutioners, is because these melodic ‘hope spots’ last long enough to actually settle in and provide some form of dynamic counterpoint to the general bleeblaabloo stuff. I say it wasn’t particularly epic, but there is a magnificent sequence near the end where some proper noise builds up, and up, and up, until exploding into the melody, revitalised. Love it.

Shorter though the other three tracks are, they don’t let the side down. I think I have the track order wrong, but the eponymous song takes a leaf out of Prefuse73’s book, as the clipped loops recur as though it’s accidental record skipping. Rarely one to lean on a single idea too hard, some cartoon music reminiscent of the Fantômas record briefly punctuates the staccato. Essentially an extended intro, the main sample returns before the track ends.

So the primary form here is that ADD-simulating style with constant, and radical, changes. It’s the ilk that a lot of the Tigerbeat6 crew (as of about 2002, when I was last paying attention), Tobin and many Metallers – Soilent Green, Dillinger Escape Plan etc – espouse and, while it’s been going on for the last decade or so (obviously the Warpy likes of Aphex and Squarepusher predate this, but I feel this hi-def American strain is a particularly valid school of its own. It has a sense of dayglo fun, rather than some kind of smarmy ‘look what I can do’ delivery that some of the Brits have been guilty of at times), it is still a pretty major underground mode of musical currency.

Times do finally seem to be changing, both in the worlds of guitar and ‘electronica’. But until Dubstep really takes off (which it probably will, as it’s already got more mainstream press than Grime ever did. And Dizzee doesn’t count – the excitement over him served to divorce him from the context of Grime, if anything), and sunnO))) stop being The Metal Band For People Wot Don’t Like Metal, the slowness won’t quite render Zorn/Patton/tigerwarpcore all that dated. Maybe it’s because the constant changes within the music itself maintain the shock of the new, providing continuous stimuli, ergo preventing ageing. Or something. I suppose the nods to Krautrock (both by Forrest’s admission and the sampling of Neu!) capture something of a retro-zeitgeist, but I might be making things up at this point.

Speaking of Tigerbeat6, ‘The Lure of You’ sounds like something off a label sampler I got a few years ago, specifically ‘Interspecies Love’ by Kevin Blechdom. It’s a charming pop nugget, interspersed with acoustic guitar. I’ll have to check out Italian singer/songwriter Margareth Kammerer, who sung on and apparently co-wrote the song. It leads nicely (on my copy) into the quite exquisite ‘The Work Ahead of Us’, co-written with David Grubbs. Superficially comparable to Radiohead’s ‘Treefingers’ in its stretched-out languidity, it breathes beautiful tones into your ears. While the Kid A track is about the guitar tone being extended and played with, the motivating sonic on this track seems to be a female vocal (though who knows what it started out as). With keyboard textures adding an ominous air to the song, it is also more dramatic.

Perhaps Slo-core is where it’s at after all.

Thirty-one


Izzy Stradlin – Like a Dog (iTunes download)

Rock and roll. While often derided as a one-dimensional and tired genre, there can be few things to match it at its sleazy, life-affirming best. And rock ‘n’ roll is rarely better, or sleazier, than on that legendary debut album of Guns N’ Roses, Appetite for Destruction.

Depending on to whom one listens, the primary instrumental architect for that classic was one Izzy Stradlin. Stradlin who, due to the band’s infinite personal conflicts, was replaced by Gilby Clarke in 1991, has since embarked on a lengthy solo career.

The most recent chapter in this career is Like a Dog, recorded in 2003, though it didn’t see the light of day until a 2005 online petition resulted in internet availability. And, as one would expect from a rocker who was mainstream before Grunge was, this is the kind of good time rock ‘n’ roll that makes me wish I still drank whiskey. And not the proper, single malt stuff, either: this music is pure Jack Daniels.

So this is a workout in post-Punk (though obviously not Post Punk), pre-Grunge rock, wherein the songs have that pace and bite of any self-respecting rocker who grew up while The Ramones were doing the rounds. Granted, Stradlin was more on the traditional Stones/Led Zep/Alice Cooper side of things, but the Punk osmosis is clear from the attack of Appetite for Destruction.

Often, I criticise music for not pushing things forward enough, for being too retro-for-the-sake-of-it. Or, in the words of Maynard James Keenan, ‘fuck retro anything’. I dunno, though. I have a soft spot for Izzy.

Quite apart from being a primary cog in my favourite album of the 1980s, his style of rock is really quite ageless. Based in a time after the Punk explosion made most older rock sound positively prehistoric (though clearly not all of it – even bands the punks hated, like Led Zep and Sabbath, had punk-as-fuck ‘Communication Breakdown’s and ‘Paranoid’s), but before capturing the zeitgeist made you look silly a few years later (Ratt? Coal Chamber? Orgy?!), this is essentially distilled rock essence.

It’s not going to change my life anytime soon, nor am I going to declare Izzy the best thing ever. However, this album really entertains me for its duration and, in this age in which poseurs are more prevalent in rock than any time since at least the early 90s, there is something to be said for authenticity. Why is this above the High On Fire album? Doesn’t numb me like that one does by about track seven.

Thirty-two


CYNE – Evolution Fight (City Centre Offices)

For some reason, this had been described to me as a mix of electronica and HipHop. I don’t know if this was just due to the label that released it apparently being a ‘dance’ label, but I don’t know. It just sounds like HipHop to me.

It is a really good rap album, though. While not electronica in any way, shape or form (this is a bloody far cry from the genre-bending, and brilliant, likes of Anti Pop Consortium, that’s for sure), the backing is really intelligently put together. The mix is varied, the beats are solid, and some samples are truly emotive.

The lyrics, likewise, are of high quality, even if they fall into genre cliché once too often – are we really destined to hear of ‘niggaz’ on every rap album? It just suggests a dearth of vocabulary, which is odd coming from an otherwise perspicacious rapper.

Indeed, this is a great album all-round, with nothing in the way of filler and no skits. That said, this is not a classic, which is tough in a year filled with great, but not classic, HipHop.

Thirty-three

Fantômas – Suspended Animation (Ipecac)

Mike Patton’s supergroup returns, with their fourth album since 1999. After the seventy-four minute single track ambient experiment that was Delirium Cordia (2004), the band released the polar opposite – a thirty track ‘calendar’ based on the days in April full of ostensibly kids’ music. What’s more, it was apparently created at the same time as the ambient piece.

From ‘background music’ couldn’t come a more opposite concoction of completely complex composition. Influenced by the scattershot sound of the band’s debut, this offers forth numerous short, dynamic, aggressive pieces based on jazz, Death Metal and cartoons (including sound effects and Bugs Bunny samples).

What seems on the surface to be random noises and riffs has actually been meticulously crafted by Patton himself, then given to the musicians to play as only they know how (Dave Lombardo’s drumming is notable in its quality).

Filled with ideas and brilliance, there are two main issues, one haunting this album and the other, most Patton projects. Due to the intensity and density of this music, it can be a bit much by the end of the album. Fortunately this is somewhat offset by the fact the album is just over half an hour.

Which leads us to the more universal issue I have with the musical output of the great man. While there are myriad great ideas, they very rarely have a chance to flower before they are trampled by more of the same. It would be nice to have a Patton album which let its ideas develop, rather than being discarded like so many kid’s toys.

Wait a minute…