The Woodentops: Giant and Hypno Beat Live

A 1986 Rough Trade album made by a band who sound like an old kids programme: jangling old-school indie tweeness, surely? Well, it certainly made sense that the Woodentops were on Rough Trade, but they always had something that set them apart from their peers. Giant, their first album, was defined by an acoustic sound a bit like very enthusiastic busking, and by fast and complex percussion. With hindsight the Woodentops were making a much better fist of the ‘indie dance’ thing than most of their contemporaries, and the rhythms of Giant looked forward to house. Seeing them at the Astoria sometime in 1986 or 1987 it was obvious that the Woodentops wanted us to dance like idiots; the fantastic live album Hypno Beat Live captures the jaw-droppingly fast pace of their live set. And here’s the proof that the Woodentops were part of Ibitha in 1987.

1988’s Wooden Foot Cops On The Highway turned out to be their last album, despite the band doing pretty well commercially. However they have reformed, all the records are on Amazon or iTunes, and they have a myspace – maybe they’re even touring again?

‘Travelling Man‘ – The Woodentops – Giant

‘Everything Breaks‘ – The Woodentops – Giant

‘Move Me‘ – The Woodentops – Hypno Beat Live

JKneale

Bronnt Industries Kapital: Hard For Justice

The first Bronnt album, Virtute et Industria, was a spectral, Lovecraftian thing that gave me the willies, and the second was the soundtrack to the Tartan DVD of legendary occult movie Häxan: Witchcraft Through The Ages. I heard Hard For Justice, the third album, in Fopp; if they’d been playing one of the others there would have been complaints, or maybe an empty shop. Or something beginning to manifest amongst the CD racks in the basement….

Which is not to say that this is underwhelming – more that Guy Bartell has mixed his usual church organ noises in with shiny 80s synths to make something like a Germanic John Carpenter soundtrack. In fact Bartell describes it as ‘Hi-NRG Kraut-Disco’, though even that sounds a bit too ordinary – it’s like the music from warped videogames or 70s crime/monster films. ‘Streets of Fury’ or ‘Threnody for the Victims of Lucio Fulci’, anyone? Highly recommended.

Knights of Vipco – Bronnt Industries Kapital – Hard For Justice

S.T.R.Y.K.E.R. – – Bronnt Industries Kapital – Hard For Justice

Buy anywhere decent – there doesn’t seem to be a link for this record on their site – or on iTunes.

Jkneale

Super Furry Animals: Dark Days/ Light Years

You’d have to be pretty confident to start your new record with nearly a minute of people mucking about in the studio, wouldn’t you? Especially if that record was called ‘Crazy Naked Girls’ and it turned into a deep-fried acid blues jam. Or if the last track included what sounds like a hidden song… which turned out to be some very very quiet electronica. Mind you, I suppose on your ninth album you can afford to take a few chances. That’s one of the many reasons I love SFA – and since I saw this in the top ten in HMV this weekend I’m obviously not the only one.

More consistent than 2007’s Hey Venus, this is a fantastic record that shows off the band’s playful side while still coming up with songs you can whistle. It’s about time for volume II of their greatest hits – in any sane world they’d be as big as U2, but in this one they’re just a band with scads of great singles – and there are a few here that I’d nominate: ‘Helium Hearts’, ‘Where Do You Wanna Go?’ and ‘Lliwiau Llachar’ for three, plus the songs showcased below. If I had to gripe it would be that the band have decided not to do any country-rock heartbreakers for a while, which I personally find deeply distressing, but… any twelve-track album with ten great songs is well worth celebrating. And, in the spirit of last Saturday’s Record Store Day, this is well worth buying in some kind of physical format – the Furries have always had an eye for great designs and this one combines work from their long-time collaborator Pete Fowler – curator of Monster Island – and Keiichi Tanaami, who designed the amazing cover for Hey Venus. The image above barely captures what it looks like – and anyway, it opens back to front compared to every other CD in my collection. You can’t see that on iTunes or after scabbing it on rapidshare, younglings.

For tasters: the song they put up to launch the album, which is obviously what Kraftwerk would have produced if they’d been bouncier and had written about the opening of a tram service in a small German city rather than continent-spanning train networks. “We have reduced emissions by 75%”, they boast, and who can blame them? And then a song with an unpromising title, which turns out to sound exactly what it feels like to suffer sunstroke, particularly when you’ve been drinking at lunchtime. This is nothing short of sonic alchemy.

‘Inaugural Trams‘ – Super Furry Animals – Dark Days/Light Years

‘Cardiff In The Sun‘ – Super Furry Animals – Dark Days/Light Years

Buy from the band’s site – I did, digital and CD for £12 – or from any decent independent store. Sister Ray’s website is down, though it looks like the business is safe and they will have it up again eventually. Phew.

JKneale

A Psychedelic Guide to Monsterism Island

Monsterism Island is full of Snorses, Wizards, Snyrds, Fowl Owls, Bat Skulls, Wild Robots, Fragmax and Grolfrax. As we tour this island of exotic chimera and creatures beyond our current knowledge we are given a soundtrack of wondrous and bizarre variety and extent. The fantastic psychedelic guidebook to this soundtrack evocatively describes the island and the travels the narrator and listener take far better than I can. All I can do here is to attempt to represent the sounds that have coloured my multiple journeys.

We arrive early in the morning on this far-off place with a breezy sense that Monsterism Island is somewhere Oceanic. As we venture forth, a feeling of potential dread of the creatures that lie within is replaced by an understanding that we shouldn’t be afraid as this is a place where Nintendo styled monsters live: both ‘Designated Wizard Practice Area’ (Belbury Poly) and ‘Silver Snorse Hotel’ (Luke Vibert) deliver almost nursery melodies that can only comfort. The former track, entitled because said sorcerers did something to the local milk with a spell gone wrong, hints at the cloaks ahead…

For as we move towards dusk the spring village fete has begun and there is only one band out there who can provide the backdrop to the bucolic festivities…it’s the cloaked wonders that are Circulus with the rapturous ‘Till Merry We Meet Again’. Future Sound of London in their Amorphous Androgynous guise add to the freak show with the uniquely titled ‘Mr Sponge’s Groovy Oscillations’ and Gruff Rhys cools things down a little with ‘Wild Robots Power Up’.

As the sun sets and night wraps itself around the island the tension increases, but it’s only on Jerry Dammer’s ‘Empty Library’ that things threaten to tip over into the truly chilling. Perhaps this is the library in the Ghost Town that beguiled us in the 80s? Is it just a little spooky that the night club referred to therein is now Coventry Central Library? Hmmm?

Later into the night we encounter gargantuan bees and as we dream in the purple wood we witness an owl ritual. Then, we and our narrator depart vowing to return at the sound of the bat skull’s horn.

Each time I’ve embarked on the journey to and around this weirdly enchanting isle, I’ve realised this album is slowly becoming my soundtrack to the nascent summer.

Bonkers. Brilliant. Get it, here.

Circulus – ‘Till We Merry Meet Again

Gruff Rhys - Wild Robots Power Up

Jerry Dammers – Empty Library

angrybonbon

Hatcham Social: You Dig The Tunnel, I’ll Hide The Soil

The two things I remember most of 1986: one is to do with football and needn’t bother us here; the second concerned music and its concomitant styles. For I remember in quite vivid terms suddenly being surrounded by bowl-cut hair stylings that I until that point I thought the lowest in cool and had avoided from the time I had any say over what was atop my head. Accompanying these seemingly unhip locks were monkey boots (interchanged with pointy boots), intricately flowered up shirts (done right up), and little army surplus satchels. Musically my mates, suitably attired, were making lots of references to The Monkees, The Byrds and the Velvets, all sprinkled with a more than light dusting of sugariness. It was all a bit bewildering, not enough to make me veer off the different (ahem) subcultural pathway I was travelling, but enough to find myself at gigs including Tallulah Gosh, Razorcuts, The Shop Assistants and the like.

Most of this is irrelevant but it all comes rushing back when one listens to Hatcham Social’s latest longplayer – You Dig The Tunnel, I’ll Hide The Soil. This is outright Indie pop and represents something of a move away from the angular scratchiness of the earlier stuff I own of theirs. These 11 Iced jangly gifts batter your cynicism and general angriness. The war against pessimism and scorn might take a while, but who can resist a band who’s LastFM’s pic should be a still frame on The Chart Show’s Indie chart (which was always hotly anticipated round these parts)?

The boys wear some obvious influences – a substantial dash of Orange Juice on opener ‘Crocodiles’,  more than just a shade of Bunnymen on ‘I Cannot Cure My Pure Evil’ and guitars that veer towards The Wedding Present on ‘So So Happy Making’ – but I see no problem with that whatsoever. At least this lot are (possibly) reading Because Midway rather than trying to remake the all but doomed XFM playlist for the nth time. It only falls apart when they try to put music to the Jabberwocky and end up sounding way too sixth form.

I suppose I should fess-up as this sort of stuff is not usually my cup of tea: I vaguely know one of the band, hence why it’s come across my horizon (paid for though). This might have coloured things with a more forgiving ear. That aside, I wasn’t expecting this album to begin my preparation for forgiving C86 (and all that). That’s some possible impact.

I Cannot Cure My Pure Evil

So So Happy Making

Buy it. Myspace here. Website here.

angrybonbon

Brakes: Touchdown

At some point last week, in that bastion of quality exposition that is The Metro newspaper, I read a very short review of Touchdown within the preview of Brakes’ gig at the Ruby Lounge. Setting aside the reviewer’s implausible comparison of the Brighton four-piece with Snow Patrol (yes, really), they warned readers that the new album did not represent a ‘change in direction’.

The idea of Brakes changing direction brings to mind some bizarre scenes and scenarios. I’ve settled on the image of the band stood at some rural and isolated cross-roads, probably on the Sussex Downs, with a signpost (made of rusting iron and driftwood) with at least three prongs: the first saying ‘Riffs n’ hooks’; the second, ‘Lowdown Hoedown’; and the third, ‘Bittersweet Brooding’. Gazing up at the sign, and wondering which road to go in order to enact a “change in direction” the boys stand bewildered and confused. They rightfully do nothing and thus in some way or other The Metro reviewer might have been right. However, they were also very wrong – Brakes never had a direction in the first place and thus can’t change from one. They’re quite happy with their position at this imaginary meeting place of directions without having to travel forth down one or the other. And I’m happy with that too.

Touchdown thus lands at this wonderful place. We get the riffs and beauty-of-this-world hooks of ‘Don’t Take Me To Space (Man)’ and a sense of ephemeral happiness in ‘Hey, Hey’, along with the driving harmonies of opener ‘Two Shocks’ and ‘Ancient Mysteries’. Elsewhere, the noisier ‘Red Rag’ or the Lemonheads sounding ‘Do You Feel The Same?’ are accompanied by the weird desires of ‘Crush on You’, the brooding/building ‘Oh! Forever’ (a fine set ender earlier in the week), the sweet melancholy of ‘Leaving England’, and the upbeat nods to Nashville of ‘Eternal Return’ and ‘Worry About It Later’.

No track exceeds just over four minutes, unless you count ‘Leaving England’ which seems to have a secret track tagged on the end and there’s nothing of the brevity of ‘Comma Comma Comma Full Stop’ here. Plus, showing my age and disposition, compared to most bands-of-the-mo, Brakes know how to build and pace an album – which is very welcome (bah, gah, humbug, et al.)

Only two tracks. Move along now. No Bays of Pirates here. Go this way and buy it.

Crush on You

Oh! Forever

angrybonbon

Brakes: Ruby Lounge

Guitarist Thomas White held aloft a pineapple before, obviously, ‘Porcupine or Pineapple’. Nobody seemed to want to receive said fruit so I waved my hands like the fan I am. The spiky fruit came forth from the stage, hit and bruised Miss S on the arm, and landed at my feet. Picking it up, I elevated the tropical delight at the requisite lyrical moment. Then, somehow, a fellow gig-goer persuaded me that I should pass it round the audience. In the spirit of fruit equality and redistribution I duly obliged.

I never saw the pineapple again and I’m regretting it now and probably for some time to come.

This was my first Brakes gig and I had high hopes. For once these hopes were exceeded. The set included the hits and new stuff, all welcomed with general whooping by a small but surprisingly vocal audience. In fact there didn’t seem to be a distinction in reception between the old and new stuff, with ‘Cease and Desist’, ‘Heard About Your Band’, the twistastic ‘Spring Chicken’ and Stetson-tipping ‘Jackson’ welcomed in the same spirit as the new and brilliant ‘Don’t Take Me To Space (Man)’. The guitars in ‘I Can’t Stand To Stand Beside You’ were nothing short of towering, to usher forth another reviewer’s cliché.

Two other things struck me. First, it was refreshing to see a band enjoying themselves so much. They admitted to having sampled the Manchester drinking pleasures of Mother Macs and Mat and Phreds and this would have had a lot to do with it. Second, despite a sense of cheer and spirited animation, Brakes can turn their hand to the intimate and moving with startling skill – encore ‘No return’ being the obvious case in point, but the pathos ‘The Most Fun’ was also worthy of note.

Oh and for the record, I don’t actually like Pineapple, but still wish I had the memento. At least, as John T rightfully pointed out, it wasn’t a Porcupine.

An older one:

I Can’t Stand To Stand Beside You

And two new ones from the forthcoming Touchdown album (available and purchased at the gig before you think peer-to-peer)

Don’t Take Me To Space (Man)

Red Rag

Land and buy

angrybonbon

The Flowers Of Hell: Come Hell Or High Water

Working very slowly through our mailbag, we finally get around to the Flowers of Hell, who describe themselves as ‘a 16 piece trans-Atlantic space rock orchestra’ based in Toronto and London. All of this sounds very good to me – we like enormous bands, we like music put together by people in different parts of the world (well, it worked for the Earlies) and my god we love anything within sniffing distance of space rock. Plus they’re made up of or have worked with some great people – Abi Fry, who plays with British Sea Power and Bat For Lashes, for example (I think that’s her sitting on the floor on the right), a couple of Earlies, and various others. Greg Jarvis, front and centre above, is founder and ringleader.

The album Come Hell Or High Water came out last week on Unfamiliar Records in Canada and Benbecula in the UK. And it doesn’t disappoint – it’s superb. I suppose post-rock covers it, but that’s a very vague term these days. I can hear more of a Velvets sound on the first, eponymous, album; but Come Hell Or High Water is more ambitious, finding a lovely balance between guitars, strings, found sounds and electronica. It’s quite beautiful; moving; unpredictable, too. Plenty of contrast and variety and invention. ‘Bluemschen’ shifts from atmospheric sounds to drone and drums; ‘Occasional Tears’ becomes a solitary piano line. Feet will be tapped in places; cloaks could quite reasonably be worn in others.

One of the consequences of being behind with your mail means missing real news – and we have missed the Flowers playing live. If you’re reading this, we’re sorry –please come back and play London and/or Manchester again soon.

‘Bluemschen‘ – The Flowers of Hell – Come Hell Or High Water

‘Opus 66 (Part 1)‘ – The Flowers of Hell – Come Hell Or High Water

More on their myspace; get the album at a special price here.

JKneale

Harmonic 313: When Machines Exceed Human Intelligence

This here album by Harmonic 313 is not new in at least two senses: it has been out a while; and there’s nothing desperately ground-shakingly-breakingly radical about its sounds. Yet despite the latter, it’s managing to maintain heavy rotation on various listening devices. It’s currently in my ‘in need of electronica, put this on’ file.

Much has been made of Yeovil’s Mark Pritchard’s debt to Detroit in his electronic offerings and you can see why with many of the tracks offering various nods to Motor City – the shuddering bass on opener ‘Dirtbox’ being an obvious exemplar. But elsewhere these old cloth ears of mine hear the body-jerks of Chicago house with ‘No Way Out’ having something of the DJ Sneak on Relief Records about it. I’d love to have it on vinyl in order to work the pitch slider up a few notches. Elsewhere, on ‘Koln’ and ‘Galag A’, you find the haunting and studied innocence of Boards of Canada and the stuttering off-kilter drums that Autechre have seemingly made their own.

Initially I found myself sighing heavily at the use of a Speak & Spell style vocoder on ‘Word Problems’, but the cliché has since retired to the background as the funk has come to the fore. Plus it makes a great soundtrack to the game on his website to win a new mp3. Note: not one for the colour blind and yes I’ve done it, but I’m giving away neither the solutions nor the track.

Dirtbox

Koln

Word Problems

Purchase via this link

angrybonbon

Venus Beads: Incision

Stoke’s Venus Beads released Incision on Roadrunner in 1991. My friend Phil was in Stoke at the time and did me a tape, which I thought was pretty good. We were both into post-hardcore US bands and keen to find similar music in the UK, which in the early 1990s meant bands like the Venus Beads: noisy guitars falling somewhere between thrash and showgaze, songs you could sing along with, interesting structures and arrangements. I didn’t ever have the chance to see them live, but the cassette got a lot of play (I can’t quite remember what was on the other side, but it was one of those tapes that got fast-forwarded a lot so I could listen to Incision again).

Having one of those nostalgic moods recently I decided to track down the CD. The songs still sound great – but the production is really quite weird. I don’t know enough about these things to put my finger on on what’s wrong with it, but it sounds pretty messy. Still, the music shines through and is well worth a listen. I hadn’t really thought about the way that some of the longer songs, like ‘Another Door Closes’ or ‘Ghosts of Summer Past’, develop into quite involved pieces of music that must have been tremendously exciting live.

Here are a couple of track: the closest thing they had to a hit, and the longer and more complicated opening track.

‘Moon is Red‘ – Incision – Venus Beads

‘Treading Water‘ – Incision – Venus Beads

And a video of ‘Moon is Red’, showcasing the industrial architecture of the Potteries

Buy.

JKneale