The scene: a blizzard whites out the darkest of nights and wolves gather in packs to howl at the moon. Surely, you would have thought, some sort of rock cliché with any sense of terror emasculated by Ozzy and a thousand low budget horror flicks? Well not when the sound of these herding beasts are given over to Ben Frost. In his hands, they become, as they rightfully should be, truly horrific, chilling and full of dread: ‘The Carpathians’, the track from By the Throat wherein these creatures make their fearful appearance, should have been my Halloween offering rather than the comic Goth I served up.

I hesitate saying such things, but By the Throat is like nothing else I have ever heard. It’s practically impossible to classify and to make comparisons to other artists would be both tough and unhelpful. The closest musically, in terms of sensitivity to expansive orchestrations and feeling, are Teeth of the Sea. The only adjective that comes back again and again is cinematic. Despite being a tired and over-used term, it’s the best I can do. By the Throat is the soundtrack to a film of unspeakable and life-altering horror, watched in a hut in a snow-storm with only a single candle for warmth and light, with a pack of carnivores baying in the near distance. It’s fucking scary, ok?

The sounds assembled herein vary from the ghostly choral, to soothing brass, to the deepest of sub-bass, frozen keys and a variety of searing ice-burnt and monstrous electronic distortions. And it’s the latter, on tracks such as ‘Hibakúsja’, which really disturb and leave the most lasting of impressions. Here some machinic beast, ready to rip your gizzards out just for the fun of it, stalks, growls and devours.

In every imaginable way this is a breathtaking and awe-inspiring album.

The Carpathians

Hibakúsja

Acquire it here.

angrybonbon

Welcome back to my favourite noise-something bass/drums duo, Lightning Bolt. Listening to this is an extraordinary experience – how can it be so simple and so complicated? Jaw-dropping drumming, super-heavy riffs, vocal melodies a plumber could whistle… It’s perhaps a bit more metal, if that’s the word, than Hypermagic Mountain in places (‘Nation of Boar’, bloody hell) but it also feels like a more varied album – along with the ecstatic/primal 12 minute speaker-knackering freakouts (‘Transmissionary’) there’s the beautiful tweetery snippet ‘Rain On Lake I’m Swimming In’.

I’m listening now and I’m not sure whether I’m hearing sounds I’ve never heard before, or if that’s just my ears giving up. This is my commuting music at the moment, and I imagine it’s what the inside of my head looks like right now. Highly recommended.

‘Colossus‘ – Lightning Bolt – Earthly Delights

‘Rain On Lake I’m Swimming In‘ – Lightning Bolt – Earthly Delights

Go and see them at ATP or on the dates here. And have a look at this. And buy it from Fopp – I did and I discovered a fellow Lightning Bolt fan.

JKneale

I think I first became aware of anything labelled ‘ambient’ in the late 80s or early 90s. Back then my encounter with all things blissed out consisted of the Rising High Record’s duo of Namlook and Mixmaster Morris and sheep bleating with the KLF. There was obviously much more, but I was too naïve and ignorant to go searching out Eno and the like – that stuff was old and I wanted new, new, new.

As a consequence, utter the word ambient in my environs today and I still get images, glimpsed through an unhealthy and sweet smelling fug, of lava lamps, ill-fitting ethnic clothing and dreadlocks whiffing of a damp Labrador.

Things have inevitably moved on, even if I haven’t. The following three outings might not be representative of what is going on the ambient scene (no attempts at authority here once again), and in fact some might not consider them as such, but they’re certainly interesting listens.

First up, Jónsi and Alex’s Riceboy Sleeps. I fully admit that I’d practically given up on anything to do with Sigur Rós after their album Með suð í eyrum við spilum eHowlndalaus – it left me cold and utterly bored. In fact the high church choir boy wailing of Jónsi had really begun to grate my teeth. It was with some trepidation then that I mustered the cash and courage to buy Riceboy Sleeps, but I’m so glad I did for it is a masterpiece of lush dronage and organic swells. Moreover, it manages to dispel the po-faced element that I’d sensed creeping into Sigur Rós last few recordings – there’s a sense of fun on this record, the source of which I can’t quite put my finger on.

Howl

Second, is the collaboration of Sparklehorse and Fennesz on In the Fishtank. We’ve seen the latter on these pages before, but I’m pretty ignorant of the former. What I do know is that this was recorded in a stupidly short period (two days of studio time), but doesn’t suffer for it. From the squirming opener ‘Music Box of Snakes’, the soporific yet slightly disturbing lullaby of ‘Goodnight Sweetheart’ and through to the brilliant ‘NC Bongo Buddy’- which gives us the soundtrack of boilers and air-con units at the verge of breakdown in a skyscraper’s basement – this is a varied and rewarding listen.

Goodnight Sweetheart

NC Bongo Buddy

Finally, we have White Rainbow and New Clouds. To be fair I’ve yet to give this the full in-ear treatment. Neither have I allowed it to soundtrack a late night or appreciated it in a horizontal position. Hence it seems the least successful of these outings. Yet with its improv and Harmonia-esque burblings it’s worthy of inclusion here.

Monday Boogies Forward Forever

So ditch images of the great apolitical unwashed preaching revolution from a squat in Leytonstone, New Age self-improvement in the Rainforest and buy something contemporarily fugged.

angrybonbon

Released in January, US folk/country singer Alela Diane’s beautiful second album To Be Still has been swiftly followed by this EP (or ‘companion album’) featuring Alina Hardin. Alela’s voice is astonishing, and is perfectly complemented by Alina’s, and by the simple accompaniment. Three songs are covers, including ‘Matty Groves’, a ballad perhaps most famously covered by Fairport Convention on Liege and Lief. To say Alela and Alina more than do justice to a song that most people will know from that version, sung by the great Sandy Denny, should give some idea of how good this record is.

I want to plug To Be Still too, as well as mentioning the covers album Ms Diane recorded with Joey Waronker, Gus Seyffert, Leo Abrahams and Woody Jackson as Headless Heroes. The Silence of Love includes covers of more contemporary songs. I present their cover of the Jesus and Mary Chain’s ‘Just Like Honey’, which seems to suit a country feel – though this video was clearly done by GREAT BIG SOPPY HIPPIES – and for my co-blogger there’s also a version of Cave’s ‘Nobody’s Baby Now’.

Alela Diane featuring Alina Hardin – ‘Bowling Green‘ -  Alela and Alina

Headless Heroes – ‘Nobody’s Baby Now‘ – The Silence of Love

Headless Heroes – ‘Just Like Honey’ – The Silence of Love

Buy the EP from Amazon or iTunes or there’s a limited 10″ version that might be available through Rough Trade.

JKneale

Micah P. Hinson, everyone’s favourite Texan and honorary native of Burnley, returns with a double album of covers. When I saw this I thought a) Micah had put something out fairly quickly so that he could tour and b) he might have over-reached himself. He does have a fantastic voice and a classy sense of how to arrange and perform, but could he cover such karaoke classics as ‘Are You Lonesome Tonight?’ and (gulp) ‘My Way’? What about ‘Suzanne’? And could anyone do justice to ‘Running Scared’?

Well, it’s an almost flawless covers album – which puts it in the same company as Kicking Against The Pricks in my book – and the answers to those questions are ‘not bloody likely’ and ‘yes’. Though accompanied only by the extraordinary musical all-rounder Nick Phelps - MPH’s one-man touring band last time I saw him – and a couple of friends, this sounds nothing like a space-filling record. It continues the experiments with Link Wray distortion and surf guitar heard on Micah P. Hinson and the Red Empire Orchestra with clever cello to fill out the sound. And while the better-known songs benefit from a bit of volume – ‘My Way’ sounds best when MPH is singing quietly, loudly, if you see what I mean – there are some superb covers here. ‘Running Scared’ is particularly impressive, because Micah has Orbison’s clarity, if not his lungpower. ‘While My Guitar Gently Weeps’ sounds different enough to work.

But the other standouts are, for me, in the standards and in the more obscure choices. I could listen to these versions of ‘Kiss Me Mother, Kiss Your Darling’ and ‘In The Pines’ all day – the latter sounds like Blixa Bargeld has turned up to add the requisite noise+weirdness. And the cover of Pedro The Lion’s ‘Slow and Steady Wins The Race’ is this album’s prize, as far as I’m concerned – that strange matter-of-fact oddness you only get from straight-faced examinations of faith.

This is a handsome-looking album (or rather 2 CDs running to 50-odd minutes) and you should go out and get a copy.

Micah P. Hinson – ‘Running Scared‘ – All Dressed Up And Smelling Of Strangers

Micah P. Hinson -  ‘Slow and Steady wins The Race‘ – All Dressed Up And Smelling Of Strangers

Buy here – I did. Nice mug, too!

JKneale

In advance of tomorrow…

Happy  Samhain, Hop-tu-naa or All Hallow’s Even.

With respect to the beloved departed and dead.

Alien Sex Fiend – Now I’m Feeling Zombified

Bauhaus – Double Dare

The Cure – The Hanging Garden

Fields of the Nephilim - Last Exit for the Lost (Live)

The Cramps – Goo Goo Muck

angrybonbon

I take it all back, the kids are alright. It seems they are enthused by the future enough to collect from car-boots and connect bits of tech to give us a soundtrack of what might become. Fuck Button’s Tarot Sport is thus the perfect youthful accompaniment to Moebius’ Kram.

Before my first encounter with Tarot Sport I was slightly worried. I’d heard phrases and words such as ‘accessible’, ‘mainstream’ and ‘cross-over hit’ bounded about. Understandably, I think, this produced concerns that one our artists of 2008 had watered down their sound. This anxiety was underlined somewhat as I came to realise that the brilliant ranting-cum-speaking-in-tongues that added so much to Street Horrsing had been jettisoned.

And I still miss the indecipherable fuming. However, this album has won me over in three ways. First, there’s a real sense of arrogant independence on show here: for example, not many combos could get away with a 10.32 opener (‘Surf Solar’). Second, with a flick of a switch they have the ability to mesmerise with an utter grandeur and massiveness (for want of a better word). Third, the now seemingly signature fuzzed guitar/organ drone is still apparent and as warming as ever.

Take ‘Olympians’: the sense of space and enlargement on this track is so convincing and hypnotic that it can make you feel both godlike and irrelevant at the same time. If you don’t believe me, just stare at the sky when you listen to it. No, try it.

So give it time (if you have enough). It’s an album of expanse and scale that at first can make you feel a bit lost, a bit insignificant. But then you give up any sense of control or possible importance, and you come to realise that being lost can be a wonderful thing.

The Lisbon Maru

Olympians

Just buy it.

angrybonbon

Hey there, DJ, the nation needs you.

‘The Nation Needs You (Extended Mix)‘ – Cuban Boys

Have I done this before? Anyway, cheers John.

JKneale

It’s hard to say very much about seeing one of your favourite bands for the first time in about fifteen years. You know all the words; even if they start with a series of B-sides you can sing along. Everyone else does the same, even the ones who weren’t born when Come On Pilgrim came out. At times, like the first few lines of ‘Hey’, the Academy sings louder than Frank Black, hits all the notes, gets the timing exactly right. It’s powerfully affecting. It’s great.

But: if they’re only playing Doolittle, and you follow the heresy of thinking it’s not their best album, what do you do?  OK, it’s a great record and it hasn’t dated and everyone loves it and there’s a book on it and everything. And I guess this was the point of this evening in a Don’t Look Back way. But when you’ve written so many great songs it does seem a bit odd to lock them away. Or to choose those B-sides – you do need something else to pad out Doolittle, as no Pixies album breaks the 40-minute mark , but all three of ‘Here Comes Your Man’s backing tracks instead of ‘Velouria’, ‘Ed Is Dead’, etc etc?!

Anyway, it was great and they sounded fantastic; ignore my moaning. Kim Deal’s little asides stole the show, as usual, especially her warning that a ‘doddery old fella’ named Vaughan Oliver was lurking in the crowd. Here’s some live Pixies, from one of the CDs from the 2004 reunion tour: ‘Goodnight Kim!’ ‘Goodnight Charles!’

‘River Euphrates‘ – Pixies – NYC December 18 2004 (late)

‘Where Is My Mind‘ – Pixies – NYC December 18 2004 (late)

‘Gigantic‘ – Pixies – NYC December 18 2004 (late)

Buy the very good digital download of the gig here – it’s where I got the image above.

JKneale

Why does it take 65 year old Dieter Moebius (ex-Kluster/Cluster and Harmonia) to produce a proper soundtrack to our collective futures? I mean, what are the bloody kids up to? It’s all very well them shooting hordes of robots dwarves on their I-Boxes, but shouldn’t they be connecting piles of analogue electronics together and providing us with a soundscape for what is yet to come?

As my vision of the future involves more than just a smattering of retro-futurism, and thus includes jet-packs and hover-cars, perhaps it’s a little unfair to criticise the kids in this way. Having said that, surely we all share a vision of the future that involves jet-packs? Hover-cars I’m not right bothered about, but there must and will be jet-packs – that much we must agree on. Right?

Ok, let’s put the jet-pack issue aside for a moment and get to grips with Kram. In short, this is retro-futuristic analogics at its finest. All sorts of machines warmly throb and pulse.  On ‘Schwizt’ and ‘Markt’ technologies are caressed with emotion until they verge on sentience. These washes of tenderness are replaced on ‘Lauert’ by slashed shards of sound that put you on edge and sharpen the senses. On the wonderful ‘Womit’ a soundtrack of the future city at night is envisioned, where only those machines essential to its 24 hour maintenance are left to pulse.

The standout tracks are the twinned ‘Rennt’ and ‘Rast’ – with ‘Rast’ distinguished only by the sense that the tech that seems so in harmony on ‘Rennt’ might break down, splutter out of power or develop into something more sinister. Plus they’re ripe for an Orbital remix – simply add a few breaks and you’ve got the bonus tracks for Snivilisation.

Womit

Rennt

Rast

By what means of transport do you get down here to buy it? You know the answer to that…

angrybonbon