QUARTET: 4 ALBUM REVIEWS
Return of the Spouse
“Are you Being Serious???”
The latest heavylight effort from local Indie legend JP Baron comes in strong with the enigmatic opener “Dirt and Cellophane” complete with lulling vocal harmonies like a bedroom pop Brian Wilson. The repeated chorus line “are you being serious” echoes the album title making it kind of a title track. Lyrically it offers much intrigue with lines such as “scrambled my veins with dirt and cellophane” which leave you guessing what the image might mean and how literally to take it as the author’s voice, or perhaps a fictional speaker… like we learned on gcse Eng Lit. The drum machine underneath everything provides a foundation and also serves to propel the pieces forward. The guitar work, as you might expect given the years JP has been at this, is confident and playful in a hooky melodic sort of Dinosaur Jr way. If you’ve ever had sparkling red wine, it’s at once lively and soporific, and this is the image comes to mind for this record. Full bodied, but with pizazz and gentle verve, reminiscent of Graham Coxon in his quieter solo moments. It packs a wistful sorrowful punch while remaining amiable and fun.
Listen here:
The Cool Greenhouse
“S/T”
Repetition, repetition, repetition. Literate post punk bands are always welcome round here. Perhaps reasonable given the jarring guitars and even the vocal delivery to suggest a large debt to the late Mark E Smith and The Fall circa Hex Enduction Hour or Grotesque. But given we’re not going to have any more albums from Mark himself, these particularly well assembled and competently throwaway songs with droll, satirical lyrics, that altogether circle and build like some kind of electric tornado full of jagged building blocks, are most welcome and come more under the bracket of expert homage than being accusable of say being derivative or copyists. I write this just to deflect any such accusations and say I’ve considered it and this vital work is great recorded and would be a great live experience no doubt, one in which I hope to catch soon.
Listen ‘ere:
Lovely Giraffe
“Will this do? (No – Ed)”
Joseph Turvey AKA Lovely Giraffe set himself a mission of covering as many songs as he could in his sophisticated and playful (mostly) MIDI style all in (mostly) one day. In fact he admits he started a couple of covers and finished them to put them on the album but nobody is calling him lazy. It seems in fact an amazing feat, and incidentally it’s quite listenable too! The only two covers I recognised were the anomalous acoustic number “Love You” (Syd Barrett) and “My Sharona” which weirdly sounded to me like early Joy Division via a 16 BIT overhaul. Lovely Giraffe have been persisting in their computer music for many years and by now have gathered a few followers and crystalised a distinctive sound. The titles can be sardonic, but this is music made in earnest surely even if it “fails to take itself seriously” by LG’s own admission. The context to read this music in is complex and sophisticated as it is simultaneously straightforwardly just what it is. It’s very hard to review, I’d suggest you get yourself a cup drink and listen to the back catalogue, but “Will this do? (No – Ed)” is a fun way in and I’m told contains a Bob Dylan number (license to kill) from the 80s when of course after his 60s Hayday and the 70s creative peak but before his 90s revival fewer people were listening. This take on Dylan reminds me of lofi king Magnetic Fields. I’m pretty sure a few of them are metal covers done with programmed drums and synths with effects on. The addition of vocals is most welcome to me. There’s a lot of lesser heard music from obscure artists that deserves attention and this is one such artist. If you like veering off the beaten track into more unusual terrain, it’s one for you.
Listen. Hear.
Procrastinatrix
Contra indications
Toby Godden AKA Procrastinatrix was good enough to send me this review copy through the post. I suppose I was in a worn out, defeated kind of mood when I played it because it didn’t speak to me on first listen, and I got in a pickle about whether I ought to review it at all. This was maybe two months ago, during which time I lost the CD and its hand drawn case. I suppose its appropriate for a project based on the concept of procrastination that I have taken this long to review the CD. I had been going through ideas of getting someone else to review it who might have something more inspiring to say about it.
Anyway, thankfully I am in a more receptive frame of mind, and the slow paced octaving pulse of opening track “Wherefore” is putting me in a gentle trance and making the words flow. The jazzy guitar samples (maybe played live?) contrast with the shamanic type beat, yet gel well and make a crazy kinda sense. Five minutes in and some new textures are shimmeing in the background. It’s a very chilled sort of music, and there’s an admirable degree of restraint in the arrangements. If I ever make electronic music I tend to add more and more things including the kitchen sink until its just a hot mess. This track holds back from that, with pleasing repetition but enough variety. I wonder if “wherefore” is a lovesong? The title suggests Shakespeare’s most well known love story. I think this is electroacoustic music you’d call it, with samples from IRL recorded with a mic and looped and filtered and arranged on the computer.
I’m listening to this in real time but I don’t want to do a track by track review for risk of raising the spoiler alert. This home produced record offers to my waxy ears a pretty decent standard of production and overall has a chillout room or late night after party vibe, sounding in places like “My angel rocks back and forth” era four tet, or bringing to mind moments of Susumu Yokota. Procrastinatrix is ironically very productive (if this is a procrastination project then he’s stealing serious time from some other activity) and I gave his last effort a good review, hence probably why I was sent this. It would be shitty to write a bad review of a local artist who is still gaining attention, but thank heavens the clouds have lifted enough for me to hear this intelligent electronic music properly. It veers from the cerebral end of Detroit techno to electronic minimalism. The perfect soundtrack to post pub physics chats about applied time travel over a herbal cigarette or tea or something. The album is planned to be released by end of day today (wednesday 30 august), and as with all these artists there's more material to explore on their bandcamp pages.
https://procrastinatrix.bandcamp.com/album/contraindications