Those Mountains

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[thosemountains]

Long-playing

[thosemountains]

Really enjoyed playing a short ambient set at Union Chapel, Islington last Saturday, in support of the Wayside & Woodland Recordings showcase. A stunning place for early afternoon sets by My Autumn Empire, a band led by epic45's Ben Holton, E.L. Heath and P.Manasseh.

Next Friday we celebrate the launch of My Autumn Empire's incredible classic pop project II at Ikon Gallery, Birmingham, with the same line-up.

Tracklist:

1 Introduction / Field Recording 2 MAE VS The Nature Table - BBC Cannock Chase 3 Belbury Poly and Moon Wiring Club - Portals and Parallels 4 Candy Claws - Warm Forest Floor 5 Julia Holter - In The Same Room 6 (Field Recording) 7 Geotic - Unwind 8 epic45 - Ghosts I Have Known (Reworked by The Toy Library) 9 (Field Recording) 10 Bibio - St Christopher 11 Charles Vaughan - Norfolk Branchline 12 Max Richter - A Song For H _ Far Away 13 The Caretaker - Tiny Gradiations of Loss

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Grandaddy - Fentry The Broken Down Comforter Collection | 1999 | Out of Print (Buy Used)

Bands just don't split up like they used to, do they? Today Pitchfork announced that Grandaddy will play together live for the first time in 7 years. The only UK date so far is a headline slot at End of the Road Festival. This reconvening makes a lot of sense - the band originally broke up due to the difficulty of making a living from touring. The indie rock audience that held them dear, if they're anything like me, is likely to be more nostalgia prone and willing to pay good money to see them.

I've been listening to the charming, scrappy The Broken Down Comforter Collection a lot lately. The instrumental 'Fentry' comes off as a slacker take on G-funk. As I've mentioned before, the older I get, the more this band resonate with me.

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Real Estate - Suburban Beverage Live on the Radio | Underwater Peoples, 2010

Off to see Kurt Vile/ Sonic Boom/ Real Estate tomorrow night at Koko in London. It's an NME thing, which I've never really read - I thought it was more of an outlet for landfill indie than American exports.

Anyway, I've been listening to Live on the Radio a lot lately, which sees Real Estate strip back songs from their first album for a campfire singalong vibe. 'Suburban Beverage's' "Budweiser, Sprite, do you feel alright" becomes a beautiful mantra for slacking off, a feel that extends throughout this easygoing set. 

The record is out of print, but you can find the MP3s in the darker corners of the internet.

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Modest Mouse - Dramanine This Is A Long Drive For Someone With Nothing To Think About (1996)

One of the most exciting musical journeys is one in reverse, through the back catalogue of a great band. One of my favourites was working back from Modest Mouse's Good News For People Who Love Bad News, realising this skewed pop album was born out of something more chaotic and unhinged that united '80s hardcore, Built to Spill riffing, cheap speed and trailer trash wisdom. 'Dramanine' kicks off their second full album and feels like the beginning of Modest Mouse proper, where their scrappy early experiments coalesced into a sound as bracing as a toothache, giving urgency to Isaac Brock's barked, pithy philosophy: "we kiss on the mouth but still cough down our sleeves".

'Dramanine' is a kind of anti-road song, a further perversion of the classic rock imagery Modest Mouse draw on and subvert. I imagine some punchdrunk dude weaving across the road popping anti-sickness pills, churning over a nasty row - "I've said what I'd said and you know what I mean / But I still can't focus on anything".

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You Will Miss Me When I Burn

This time next month (27 February), Domino will reissue the five albums Will Oldham recorded between '93 and '97 under the Palace alias he used before Bonnie 'Prince' Billy. All five, including mini album Hope, will be out on vinyl and record sleeve-style digipack CD, featuring new artwork and liner notes.

I came to Oldham's Palace work via his later, more refined albums under the Bonnie name and was astounded by their raw, ragged intimacy and the way they revel in their lo-fi settings. Can't wait to drop the needle on 'The Brute Choir' from Viva Last Blues in particular.

Below, a Palace session recorded for John Peel, 5 June 1994:

The Houseboat Trudy Dies The Cross The Idol On The Bar Stable Will

MP3 Download (.zip)

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Belated Best Albums of 2011

Click above for the whole thing.

THE WAR ON DRUGS - SLAVE AMBIENT | Come To The City (MP3) Secretly Canadian | Buy

BILL CALLAHAN - APOCALYPSE  | America (MP3) Drag City | Buy

BON IVER - BON IVER  | Calgary (MP3) Jagjaguwar | Buy

EPIC45 - WEATHERING | Summer Message (MP3) Make Mine Music | Buy  

REAL ESTATE - DAYS | Easy (Youtube) Domino | Buy

KURT VILE - SMOKE RING FOR MY HALO Jesus Fever (MP3) | Matador | Buy

A. A. BONDY - BELIEVERS | The Heart Is Willing (Youtube) Fat Possum | Buy

JULIAN LYNCH - TERRA | Terra (MP3) Underwater Peoples | Buy

JULIANNA BARWICK - THE MAGIC PLACE | The Magic Place (MP3) Asthmatic Kitty | Buy

GRUFF RHYS - HOTEL SHAMPOO | Sensations In the Dark (Youtube) Turnstile | Buy

KING CREOSOTE AND JON HOPKINS - DIAMOND MINE | John Taylor's Month Away (Youtube) Domino | Buy

THE SEA AND CAKE - THE MOONLIGHT BUTTERFLY | Up On The North Shore (MP3 via Epitonic) Thrill Jockey | Buy

STEPHEN MALKMUS AND THE JICKS - MIRROR TRAFFIC | Tigers (MP3) Matador | Buy

MEGAFAUN - MEGAFAUN | Get Right (MP3 via Pitchfork) Hometapes | Buy

CASS MCCOMBS - WIT'S END | County Line (MP3 via Epitonic) Domino |Buy

  DIRTY BEACHES - BADLANDS | Lord Knows Best ONEOHTRIX POINT NEVER - REPLICA | Replica THE MOUNTAIN GOATS - ALL ETERNALS DECK | Damn These Vampires CENTRO-MATIC - CANDIDATE WALTZ | Only In My Double Mind MOUNT MORIAH - MOUNT MORIAH WOODS - SUN AND SHADE | Pushing Onlys THURSTON MOORE - DEMOLISHED THOUGHTS | Benediction CASS MCCOMBS - HUMOR RISK | The Same Thing WYE OAK - CIVILIAN | Dog's Eyes WILCO - THE WHOLE LOVE | Art of Almost

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P. Manasseh - ANA Wayside & Woodland Recordings, 2012 | Buy

I wouldn't ordinarily post a press release verbatim, but I figure this is okay as I wrote it. ANA is the first Wayside and Woodland release I've been involved with.

ANA is the second album by P. Manasseh and sees the multi-instrumentalist working very much in isolation, crafting minimalist compositions that are an exploration of the way we see and interpret the world, an attempt to create sonic systems based on visual patterns and structures.

The rigid order found in the work of radical 20th Century minimalist artists Carmen Herrera and Donald Judd and the textile designs of Jacqueline Groag worked as catalysts for the project. Manasseh was attracted to the challenge of interpreting colour and pattern in music: “Approaching visual abstract motifs, patterns and colours in such a way is problematic…the system is as important as the interpretation, the various strategies taking on a life of their own”. The simplest, most eloquent expression of this is ‘Blanc Y Verde’: one isosceles triangle.

This obsession with form and tone manifests itself in the use of tuning forks, which Manasseh has used in his work for a decade or more. Their appeal lies in their precise, simple nature, forcing you to think about resonance on a fundamental level, the pure expression of cause and effect. The subtle use of field recordings on several pieces comes from a fascination with immersing oneself in sound and the intense desire to connect with the systems inherent in our world, which became acutely apparent to Manasseh while touring the barren white-out landscapes of Eastern Europe two winters ago with epic45.

ANA however, is far from bleak. The exploration of systemic music production has lead to truly beautiful compositions borne of repetition and the subsequent subversion of order; glistening melodies, outbursts of joyful chaos and the vibrant sounds of everyday life captured on tape. It is an album that is as likely to appeal to those taken with the arpeggioed soundscapes of Emeralds and Mountains as the minimalism of  Elaine Radigue or Pauline Oliveros – all touchstones for Manasseh during the 18 months or so spent working on ANA. 

'Moire'

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Clear Eyes, Full Hearts, Can't Lose

Explosions In the Sky  - Remember Me as a Time of Day How Strange Innocence | Temporary Residence | 2000 | Buy

One of my favourite discoveries of 2011 was the NBC show Friday Night Lights, which ended its run of five seasons in the US last February. I'm only at the beginning of season two, in large part because the show has been neglected by UK TV networks.

This subtle, intimate drama centres on the lives of high school football players, their coach and the small, football-obsessed town of Dillon, Texas. Its naturalistic observations of personal dramas are utterly riveting, with some of the best character development I've seen in a show since The Wire. It also convinced me that American football can be exciting and caused me to reappraise the music of Texas's Explosions In The Sky, whose music features heavily in the first season.

Aside from a couple of songs, I'd previously - unfairly - written off the quartet as dull, po-faced post rock that was big on formula and emotional bombast. The use of 'Remember Me as a Time of Day' in the pilot of Friday Night Lights made already intense moments truly lump-in-throat and convinced me to start at the beginning with How Strange, Innocence (2000). Entirely instrumental, the album surprised me with understated, magisterial passages like 'Magic Hours' and the awesome thundercrack of 'A Song For Our Fathers'. I'm looking forward to checking out their other albums albeit gradually.

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Pictures of Paradises

My dear friend James Nash is an illustrator and comics artist based in London, who, alongside other projects, has been drawing a diary comic for years now. After a six month hiatus to "get a life worth drawing", he's restarting it for one year, serialised weekly. Through three panel daily strips, James captures the frustrations, failings and occasional emotional breakthroughs that define the life of a twentysomething.

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Damien Jurado - Nothing is the News Maraqopa | Secretly Canadian, 21 February 2012 | Buy

Damien Jurado looks set to continue his collaborative hot streak with Richard Swift with Maroqopa, out next month. 'Nothing is the News' starts out softly, a cousin to the tender 'Pear' from 2010's career-high Saint Bartlett, before unexpectedly bursting into the kind of epic psych jam you just don't hear anymore, more's the pity. It's as much a surprise as Saint Bartlett opener 'Cloudy Shoes', a disembodied, existential pop song that reminded me of The Flaming Lips' 'Waitin' For A Superman'.

It's great to see Jurado kicking against the confines of the singer-songwriter archetype this far into a solid career, while retaining the pared-down dramatic realism that has made his work so compelling. I look forward to Maroqopa - long may these two run together.

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The Shins - Simple Song Port of Morrow | Aural Apothacary/ Columbia | Buy

James Mercer may have jettisoned the original lineup of The Shins in favour of Richard Swift and some other new faces, but if 'Simple Song' is an indication of the direction of Port of Morrow, he's happy to carry on as usual. Sure, it all sounds cleaner in a 'major label money' kind of way and there's a definite glam-rock stomp to proceedings, but it's still all about heady pop hooks and Mercer's infectious yelp. There's even a bridge two-thirds through and some serious ivory tinkling. Big, smirking pop. 

The Shins may not have changed all that much, but they enter a very different musical landscape with this new album - one where guitar pop is on the wane. These aren't the hallowed days selling a shitload of records off the back of playing to a fake crowd at The Bait Shop in The O.C., or that ultimate Garden State cringe-moment. It'll be interesting to see how it fares. Personally, I'm glad to have them back with a fresh blast of heartfelt, sugar-rush indie.

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The Water | Dir. Kevin Drew | Revolver Films, 2012

Pitchfork.tv are currently showing The Water, the directorial debut from Broken Social Scene frontman Kevin Drew. A subtle, harrowingly poignant short about the tragic inevitability of loss, it's haunted me all week. I'm loathe to say any more as it deserves to speak for itself.

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I was trawling through the archives of my old blog the other day and came across this post I wrote in the bleak midwinter of 2008, back when my mind was sharper. Blood on the Tracks is at the top of my vinyl 'want list', so it was interesting to revisit this a few years on.

Blood on the Tracks: The Perfect Winter album 

Winter is there in the taught strings seemingly on the verge of snapping, representative of Bob’s psyche certainly, but also evocative of the fragility of frost on a brittle branch and a brisk dusk light walk on treacherous ground. From the opening line of ‘Tangled Up In Blue’ a chill descends, with the spare guitar line and the line “early one morning the sun was shining, I was laying in bed” bringing to mind the glare of sunlight through a crack in the curtains and the sharp, immediate clarity it brings on a crisp morning. By the album’s midpoint, ‘Meet Me In The Morning’, the sun may have sunk “like a ship” and Bob may be mourning his broken heart but there’s also an icy swagger in the music, a defiance of the cold as the hail falls. At the end of the album, the hail has given way to “buckets of rain” and there’s resignation in his voice, a kind of calmness in the acceptance of defeat and loss: “Life is sad / Life is a bust / All ya can do is do what you must”.

Too often critics separate Dylan’s lyrics from his music and analyse them as poetry, but this album perfectly illustrates why this is approach misses the point. The emotion and feeling of the songs is as much there in the strained guitar, sorrowful harmonica and stark atmosphere of the record as in the words. One of my favourite things about the LP format is that the best compel you to immerse yourself in their world, conjuring images and meanings that are often unique to each listener. To me, Blood on the Tracks is the snowy summit of this kind of listening experience.

Side One, Track One: Tangled Up in Blue

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The War On Drugs - Come to the City b/w Don't Fear the Ghost 7" | Secretly Canadian, 2012 | Buy

On 24 January, Secretly Canadian release  'Come to the City', the emotional core of The War on Drugs' Slave Ambient. That album - a definite top five album of 2011 for me - was defined by an exhilarating sense of urgency, propulsive classic rock songs chugging through a swirling nebula of endlessly layered ambience. The tension between the two makes for a thrilling listen, with Adam Granduciel's confident vocal swagger fighting to not be overpowered by his surroundings. It's the perfect soundtrack to the rush of modern life. 

The feeling of a journey permeates the band's entire output; the sense that each record is a waymarker on a long trip, with Granduciel and his cohorts one step ahead of us. 

B-side 'Don't Fear The Ghost' is subdued compared to most of Slave Ambient, but it makes for a fitting companion to 'Come to the City' - a brief pause for thought after that songs headlong rush.

Don't Fear The Ghost:

Come to the City:

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Joanna Newsom on Bill Callahan's listening habits. From Arthur Magazine, 2006.

I was reminded of this inspiring quote when writing my post about my own listening habits yesterday.