Review: Wytchazle and Justin Tracy at PJ McGinty’s in Ipswich

http://wytchazle.co.uk/

http://justintracy.com/

In stark contrast to the venue at which I last reviewed a gig, PJ McGinty’s has an excellent upstairs space set aside for music: there is no reason for anyone to be there except to listen to the performers, and it is just the right size and acoustic, with its high wood paneled ceiling (although I suspect a noisy rock band might come a cropper sonically). The two acts I saw on this occasion were served perfectly by the space.

Justin Tracy is a performer with whom I was unfamiliar before I saw he was on the bill for this evening, and did a bit of listening on the intarwebz. The night was actually put on for him by his father (although he generously took the opening slot) as he is based in New York and temporarily on manoeuvres in the UK (I think ‘tour’ would be too strong a word: his website says he is ‘planning an extensive tour for 2011’, but I imagine that will be in support of his forthcoming album Simple Things.)

Justin writes songs that seem to convey a sense of positivity in the face of challenging circumstances, which is to say it’s pretty uplifting stuff, although I have to admit it’s hard to get into detailed literary analysis on the basis of watching one gig. Musically, the material takes some interesting harmonic twists and turns, with successive voicings often relating modally, and has melodies that, while accessible, are not obvious. Not being obvious seems to be his stock in trade, in fact: his guitar playing employs a percussive, rhythmically intricate fingerstyle, very much in the John Martyn school, which decorates and implies the groundbeat as much as laying it down explicitly. His vocal delivery, similarly, is highly melismatic with complex, syncopated phrasing.

This is an approach which requires an exacting degree of technical precision: there was the odd moment when Justin Tracy could be heard to waver on the edge of rhythmic incoherence, but he always pulled it back from the brink. Also impressive were his readings of John Martyn songs (of which he performed a brace). The challenge with that material is to match the incredible dynamic control of the well known recordings, and it’s impossible for the listener not to compare the performance to that very tall yardstick. So, did he play them as well as Martyn recorded them? No, but he played them excellently, and it was a joy to listen to.

In fact, his entire set was a joy to listen to. His voice moved easily between a throaty but gentle natural register and a husky falsetto, and his body language was always that of a man totally engaged in performance. He had a relaxed, but reserved and self-effacing manner that engaged the audience, and a few interesting tales to tell, which he conveyed without rambling, pitching it just right for the crowd.

Wytchazle, on the other hand, I know well, but only in its component parts. Robert Foster I had seen perform once, briefly, as a solo lutenist, while I’ve seen Daisy Windsor performing on many occasions with her previous band The Floozies. Some of their material tonight dated from The Floozies era, with (I guess, I can’t pretend to be an expert) a fair bit of new original material, and a few standards thrown into the mix.

Daisy has been performing an awful lot over the last ten years, and it really shows. I know her voice pretty well, as I’ve recorded her for a track of my own, and since I last heard her sing she’s continued to build on some already solid foundations. She has a smooth, open contralto (actually I’m guessing, but she can go pretty deep) and a notably unaffected delivery with a light vibrato, which can be moving, or just involving, as the material demands. This was always the case, but in timbre, control and phrasing she’s continued to develop, and is singing now better than I’ve ever heard her.

The real eye opener was her reading of the standards that peppered their set. To be a jazz singer requires a particular set of skills. Singers that think it’s just a question of learning a style are easily spotted: they sound as clichéd as hell. Singing a standard well requires the performer to inhabit the lyrics, and to bring out their nuances through the controlled application of a wide range of expressive devices; it also requires a great precision of intonation, hitting notes that are sometimes very odd to the ear of someone used to a more diatonic harmonic palette. Daisy’s delivery on standards is noticeably different than on her own material, with a very well judged approach to the use of terminal vibrato in particular. I have to say, she nailed it, and I was surprised, not because I doubted her abilities, but because most decent jazz singers start learning their craft early.

So what does Robert Foster bring to the party? Well, pretty much everything and the kitchen sink! On the night in question he played acoustic and electric guitar, bazouki, banjo and piano. I should start by saying that he’s a proper class act: in terms of technique and musical knowledge he’s a consummate professional, with all the bases covered. Mostly what he does with stringed instruments is to accompany Daisy melodically, while she provides a bedrock of strummed acoustic guitar, although he used his jazz electric to accompany her on one standard, while the piano was principally employed on the standards, while Daisy put her guitar aside to concentrate on singing.

Rob’s guitar playing is fluid and melodically inventive, and he utilises it to produce a cascade of shimmering obbligatos to Daisy’s vocal parts. There were occasions when I felt he could have held back a little, not because he was noodling, but more for the opposite reason: at times there was so much melodic content in his playing that it became the main feature. In the main however, his accompaniment was the epitome of tasteful, supportive embellishment; his right hand tremolo on tenor banjo and bouzouki was employed to great effect.

Daisy’s own material is mainly upbeat in theme, although it ranges from the movingly melancholy to the whimsical, and is very well directed towards the sort of audience that singer songwriters get: people who want to be entertained, but who are willing to do some work themselves, and will listen closely. Her unaffected and totally genuine stage persona is similarly well suited, setting the audience at their ease and getting them on her side before she sings a note.

Between them these two acts provided an evening of very high quality listening, entertaining, engaging, amusing and moving their audience in equal measure. I recommend you grab any chance you get to see them (Justin Tracy in particular, as the opportunities to see him play may be pretty rare).

Review: Kamikaze Test Pilots - ‘Diaspora’ and ‘Into The Sun’

Into The Sun (2008) self released, 22.4 minutes, £4.74

Diaspora (2010) self released, 23 minutes, £4.74


both available on iTunes

http://www.kamikazetestpilots.co.uk/

It’s not often I encounter a band that grabs me as immediately as Kamikaze Test Pilots: soul, groove, passion, creativity, imagination and musicianship are just oozing out of both these releases and making a mess of my floor.

This is heavy rock, but it’s a rare brand of rock music that is as eclectic in its reach as I am in my tastes. There’s a lot of funky, bluesy, heavy rock riffing, but there are so many other stylistic elements it’s hard to keep count. On Diaspora ‘The Inmates Have Taken Over The Asylum’ has a death metal chorus, complete with blast beat, tremolo picking, and growl vocals, but the solo is a perfectly crafted, inventive twin-lead melody that reminds me of Brian May. ‘Kenny Rogers (With A Shotgun)’, which follows immediately afterwards is built on a rolling, hammered-on country rock riff, with a jew’s harp twanging away contentedly as though it was featured in metal songs all the time. ‘Chikken’ has funky riffs that would sound at home in a RATM song, and a sneering, angry, funny lyric (which I didn’t quite get, but then I rarely do ‘get’ lyrics). ‘Betterway’ is a deeply moving acoustic number that closes the release, an exile’s lament, whose lyrical intent is unmistakeable when you know that two of the four band members are young migrants from Zimbabwe.

The earlier Into The Sun has an opener (‘Abattoir Jazz’) put together with parts cannibalized from a straightahead swinger, while the amazing ‘Kumusha’ mixes its rock riffery with chimurenga style guitar, and several tracks have strongly punk flavoured moments. So how can all this stylistic diversity be tied together into something that sounds like a band? In theory this should all add up to an unlistenable mess; in practice it sounds entirely coherent, because this is a group of musicians simply letting their enthusiasms guide them, and not letting generic labels stand in the way of a good sound. In other words, it’s not at all contrived: if you artificially hatched a plan to put all those sounds together the result would probably be rubbish, but these two releases sound as though they have come about in a very natural, organic way.

Another reason that it all hangs together so convincingly (and so engagingly) is the consistent guitar sound, which while sometimes pretty damn heavy, sticks to a warm, clear, natural overdrive that is capable of responding beautifully to the demands of the band’s smorgasbord of compositional devices, and is very recognisable across both these releases. The same can be said for the deep grooving bass and drums: funky and propulsive, but with the lightness of touch that’s required to cop some of the wide variety of feels they tackle, the band’s engine room has a locked in sound that is very recognisable as its own.

Perhaps the most distinctive element in the sound is the vocal delivery: warm, throaty, powerful and heartfelt, often (along with the lyrical content) sounding angry, but only in the same way we all get pissed off about shit. That doesn’t tell you what’s distinctive about it, I know, but some things just have to be heard. It’s something in the combination of accent, rhythmic phrasing and modulation of timbre, and you should just follow the link to their page and listen (or better yet, go straight to iTunes and buy it).

Despite the melancholy or anger in some of the tracks, (and let’s face it, where would punk and metal be without a good dose of angry?) the overall feel of this music is totally joyful: you can tell from listening that every gig will be a party, and I’m going to see these boys play live the first chance I get.

Review: The Jim Jims at Twisters Bar in Colchester

I like that special feeling you get sometimes, that a band is playing just for you: The Jim Jims are good at creating an intimate atmosphere, although the impression was aided by the fact that there were only five of us listening for most of their two sets! A heroic struggle through trying circumstances is probably the best way to sum up the evening…

Twisters Bar put their bands on in a small area of floorspace, separated from the bar only by the route to the men’s toilet, and facing onto the main thoroughfare to the garden: I imagine it felt a bit like busking in a shopping centre. To add insult to injury, there’s a good bit of corner space the bands could play from, which is occupied by a ludicrously grandiose DJ booth. The band were using the house PA, which could charitably be described as a complete heap of shit: the sound was boxy and horribly feedback prone, and the supplied mic stand had to be stopped from spinning uncontrollably through the judicious application of blu-tak and masking tape! (In fact, someone had to go home and get another mic stand because the bar only supplied one: it was an act of great selflessness to come back, rather than pretending to have been taken suddenly ill.)

So how did The Jim Jims respond to the situation? They stood up (about three feet away from their audience, who were backed up against the wall to let smokers go to and from the garden), and did what they do, with their customary good humour and mellow, happy vibes. They play a mixture of bossa, chanson, standards and originals, singing in French and English, with a light but firm groove and sweet harmony. High points for me were ‘Fly Me To The Moon’, and a swinging original in waltz time, titled ‘In The Middle Of The Sea’, but the material was outstanding throughout. Beccy sings with a lovely, smooth timbre and nuanced phrasing, while Vince’s guitar work is a model of restrained, tasteful melodicism, and I enjoyed every minute (even when the ignorant wanker at the bar was trying to steal the show with some shit he was playing on his phone). A very enjoyable and entertaining night out.

Review Of The Year 2010: 12 Albums

This is my review of the musical year. Not the world’s musical year, but my musical year. It’s been a year that involved very little live music, and not a huge amount of new recorded music as I’ve been very short of both money and hard disc space, but I have certainly heard a lot of interesting new releases. Enough to pick out a cool dozen that have made a particular impact on me, anyway. I’ve included links so you can listen (or in some cases just buy): so get reading, and don’t forget to comment at the bottom!

Vex’d - ‘Cloud Seed’

Planet Mu ZIQ260CD

http://mysp.ac/hXPMJZ

Dark, grimy dubstep which takes more than a passing glance back at trip-hop, and displays a distinctly experimental bent. Of the new music I’ve acquired this year, not much has been in this vein, so this isn’t a best-of-the-bunch selection: it’s just one of the most creative and interesting listens I’ve encountered recently. Featuring a variety of guest vocals, from the Martina Topley Bird/ Beth Gibbons impression provided by Anneka, to the more badass sounds of Warrior Queen and Jest, this is a very varied album, on many grounds, but still very coherent as a whole, with its consistently dark and ominous atmosphere. Not much electronic music experiments with such a probing sense of enquiry.

Faderhead - ‘Black Friday’

L-Tracks LT006

http://mysp.ac/f0Cz3A

I’ve previously reviewed this album at greater length, here:  http://bit.ly/fSD7mw Faderhead is pretty uncomplicated stuff, in terms of its artistic strategy: it is industrial music, built for the dancefloor. Accessible, heavy, dark and irresistibly danceable, these tunes are crafted to perfection. This doesn’t have quite the audacity, or the ferocious intensity, of his previous two albums, but it has a lot of good tunes. Faderhead is one of the most skilled melodists and lyricists on the industrial scene, and those who appreciate the use he put those skills to on ‘FH2’ and ‘FH3’ will probably love Black Friday too.

Finntroll - ‘Nifelvind’

Century Media 9979600

http://mysp.ac/i0kVYg

Finntroll sing in Swedish, on mythological themes, and purvey a style that mixes black metal with folk music elements: these ingredients would normally add up to Viking metal, but Finntroll are Finnish, and their lyrics mainly revolve (I am informed) around the efforts of a Finnish troll king to repel invading Christians. The musicians’ skills bridge the two styles seamlessly, paying equal respect to each: the result is a perfect fusion to my ears, mixing the unfeasibly heavy with the jauntily melodic to produce a huge, ambitious soundscape of Wagnerian power and majesty. Epic, evocative music which sounds like the soundtrack to an equally epic movie full of battles and elaborate armoured headgear.

Negură Bunget - ‘Vîrstele Pamîntului’

Code666 Code 046

http://bit.ly/g07lBE

So clearly 2010 has been a black metal year for me, with two black metal albums being the only metal in my end of year review. No apologies, I love this stuff. Negură Bunget also play a folk/ metal fusion, this time from the Romanian tradition, and this album (recorded with an almost entirely new line-up) heavily emphasises the traditional elements. So much so that where the band comes in heavy with all the speed picking and blast beats of its black metal side, the mix often makes it sound like a tremolo percussion element, rather than the autocannon assault you might expect. This is an extremely creative, musically sophisticated album, with an epic feel similar to Finntroll, but also a far more subtle, ethereal atmosphere. 

Igorrr - ‘Nostril’

Ad Noiseam adn132d

http://mysp.ac/hsULA4

Igorrr combines the least likely selection of styles imagineable. Breakcore, classical, industrial, folk and death metal all vie for space in this crowded scenario, but the beauty of it is that it just sounds like Igorrr. There’s never any sense that these sounds were not meant to go together. I mean obviously this is strange. Extremely strange. It’s some of the oddest tonal music I’ve ever heard, but it’s only odd because it is a very honest and direct expression of an individual’s creativity. It’s like an aural equivalent to James Joyce’s stream of consciousness writing, with its apparently random changes of direction and its non-sequiturs, but it is in fact highly organised music, and displays an unusually erudite mastery of its sonic palette. There’s humour, but there’s also a dead serious artistic integrity. Beautifully weird.

MC Frontalot - ‘Zero Day’

Level Up Records and Tapes B003AMAF3W

http://bit.ly/fo6OFE

Frontalot spits with a flow that skitters crazily across the beat in a way that perfectly enacts the verbal rhythm of the half-distracted nerd, but stays immensely funky. Lyrically, ‘Zero Day’ seems more focussed on daily domestic existence than his earlier offerings, which took in a broader survey of geek culture, but that’s a balance thing: there’s still a tune on here about D&D, don’t worry. There are also, as you’d expect, some hilarious skits. MC Frontalot takes a wry, somewhat distanced, comedic if not quite satirical look at his subject matter, in contrast to, say, Beefy (who guests on ‘Disaster’), who writes heart-on-the-sleeve celebrations of nerd culture. There are no major departures from form on this album: production credits are shared with long time collaborator Badd Spellah, who also contributes to the beat making, which is fun and funky as ever. Deeply entertaining music, with lots of re-listen value, thanks to its highly referenced lyrical density.

Ozomatli - ‘Fire Away’

Downtown DWT70148

http://www.ozomatli.com

There’s a scene in Jackie Brown, where Samuel L. Jackson shoots Robert De Niro dead, looks at his corpse, and says: ‘What the fuck happened to you, man? Shit, your ass used to be beautiful!’ That’s more or less where I am with Ozomatli.  This album is a huge disappointment to me. There was no question about whether I would review it for my year’s roundup: for me, a new Ozo release is a big event. This band used to combine the deepest grooves, the widest stylistic compass, the illest rapping, and the most radical social awareness: Fire Away is anodyne, middle of the road pop pap. I have no clue why Ozomatli think this is the right direction to move in, maybe it will sell records for them, but personally, I can’t think of a single reason to listen to this album. Avoid it.

The John Butler Trio - ‘April Uprising’

Jarrah Records 82564682450

http://johnbutlertrio.com

If you want something socially aware, emotionally literate, deep grooving and stylistically eclectic, forget about Ozomatli and turn to John Butler. This is earthy roots rock, totally straightforward yet sophisticated. There’s acoustic, electric and slide guitar, banjo, even a dash of funky clavinet in the mix, with deliberately simple structures supporting utterly spot on playing, with as solid a rhythm section as you will ever hear. There’s a lot of creativity and imagination here: on the outro to ‘Johnny’s Gone’ Butler’s electric slide morphs into a Tom Morello style noise and texture solo, and there are many other examples of sonic experimentation. It’s all so seamlessly well integrated  into the perfectly judged songwriting that you don’t really notice it: it just sounds like one of the funkiest, most soulful bands you will ever hear.

Unter Null - ‘Moving On’

Alfa Matrix AM-1096-CD

http://mysp.ac/gV62H4

Erica Dunham has never let her Unter Null project sit still creatively. The contrast between ‘The Failure Epiphany’s dark electro-industrial dance music and ‘Neocide’s powernoise is stark, and with ‘Moving On’ she is clearly moving on again. There’s plenty here that’s danceable, but this album doesn’t pander to the dancefloor: there’s no equivalent tune to her huge hit ‘Sick Fuck’, other than ‘Obligatory Club Hit To Appease The Masses’. Instead, there’s a huge variety of textures and moods, quite a lot of soft synth pads and piano parts, and the skillful employment of techniques and sonic material from right across the broad field of industrial music and dark electronica. This is creative and serious music, but still as hard and dirty as ever.

VA - ‘Noughties Niceness’

Tummy Touch Records (no catalogue number)

http://www.tummytouch.com

This album is a free (yes free) digital download, available to Tummy Touch’s Facebook fans. I don’t know if they’ll negotiate for non-Facebook people, but I think it would be worth asking, they are nice people. I’ve already reviewed this at some length here: http://bit.ly/gbItnj It is a fairly random survey of the Tummy Touch roster, chosen ‘quickly would be the honest answer. But I guess they're faves from the last few years.’ Well, there are some fantastic acts on Tummy Touch so the boss’ faves translates as ‘some real treats’. Everything here is totally individual and idiosyncratic (oddball even), and highly accomplished one way or another. A few listens to this and I had acquired more than one new favourite song. Really, I can’t overstate the quality: stylistically it runs a fair gamut, but it’s generally rock and electro of the indie/ alternative/ punky variety. Download this album, love it (inevitable), and then buy some stuff from the Tummy Touch online store, which is all very reasonably priced.

VA - ‘Endzeit Bunkertracks Act V’

Alfa Matrix AM1146FCD

http://bit.ly/fYdV3C

The latest installment in Alfa Matrix label’s flagship compilation series, this 4CD package delivers just as much juicy, stompy, noizy industrial madness as its predecessors. Pretty much every track is a potential floor-filler: as you’d expect the beats are heavy, grinding jackhammers, and the lyrical content ranges from the darkly horrific, through the ludicrously sexual, to the blackly humorous. Stand-out tracks for me are Xykogen ‘Mthrfkr’, Captive Six ‘Noizemaker’, Shaolyn ‘More Bass In All Frequencies’, Nachtmahr ‘War On The Dancefloor’ and Katastroslavia ‘Completely Normal’. But you know what?  Ask me tomorrow and I’ll name another five: they’re all good!

The Dave Holland Octet - ‘Pathways’

Dare2 DR2-004

http://bit.ly/egZVlo

Dave Holland is a living treasure: he’s the Charles Mingus of our era. A formidable composer/ arranger, a ferocious bass player, but above all, an outstanding bandleader, capable of eliciting performances of face-melting intensity and commitment from his players. ‘Pathways’ returns to the core personnel of his phenomenal early noughties quintet, with extra horns to enable richer harmonic scoring: the heart and soul of this music is the blowing, which delivers a constant stream of ideas, passion, creativity and novelty, obviating the need for major stylistic innovations. Undoubtedly my album of the year.

Review: Noughties Niceness compilation from Tummy Touch Records

http://www.tummytouch.com/

I have to admit to a possible journalistic bias: I did spend some time in Cambridge with the (then beardless) boss of Tummy Touch Records, improvising verbal psychedelic jazz performances in public parks in the middle of the night (without any audience), wearing an orange jumpsuit. However, I should continue this disclaimer by admitting that I fail as a music journalist, and was unable to exploit this high level industry contact: I sent Tim a message on Facebook to request some background on the compilation, but he either didn’t get it or doesn’t wish to encourage stalkers. Oh well, his loss: my blog is obviously so widely read he could have finally taken his label to the big time. No, wait, I seem to be reviewing it anyway…

[This is now completely untrue, Tim did get back to me, and said ‘Erm, how did I choose them? Quickly would be the honest answer. But I guess they're faves from the last few years.’ But it makes for a much more amusing story if I say he didn’t.]

I’m going to attack this track by track, since it’s a compilation, and I won’t pretend to be an expert on the Tummy Touch roster, so I’ll do a bit of research, but basically I’ll be telling it how I find it (which is all good, incidentally). First though, I should say that it does have a certain coherence as an album, despite the disparate stylistic proclivities of the artists represented.

Noughties Niceness kicks off with a minimalist funk tune by Zook, titled ‘Bastinado’. I really like this. It is an object lesson in simplicity as vehicle for a sophisticated musicality: memory is probably my weakest area as a musician, but by the time I’d listened to this once I knew how to play every note in the bass and guitar parts, without needing to pick up an instrument to check. That’s how simple this is. It’s like ‘Green Onions’ (a record with nothing extraneous in it) with all the fat trimmed: in fact it makes Booker T And The MGs sound like self-indulgent prog noodlers. ‘Bastinado’ means ‘a sound beating with a stick or cudgel’ … no, I don’t know either.

Next up is UR Mummy from Niyi, but if you think you know what Niyi sounds like, you’re wrong. This is completely daft. It is far less of an obvious floor filler than most of what he puts out, far less commercially produced, and it has an infantile, suggestive lyric so silly it borders on genius. The beat is the kind of bare bones electro you might expect to find lurking on a Miss Kittin album, and the chanted vocal hilariously celebrates it’s own inarticulacy with lines like ‘I think inter-generational love/ is frowned upon/ far too much today/ … / so if I’m wrong/ well, I’m just wrong’. This is actually a clever, witty piece of music when you start to think about it, very danceable, and even sexy (‘I’d like to wipe her worksurfaces down’!)

Coco Electrik’s remix of The Phenomenal Handclap Band follows, ‘Dim The Lights’. This is a brutally shuffling fusion of electro-pop with 60s rock, garnished with some stuttery, heavily processed vocals, and there’s not much point describing it any further except to say it’s eminently listenable and curiously danceable.

Quad Throw Salchow have the least comprehensible name of any act on the compilation, but there are other reasons to like them too: the music for example. An overdriven bass single-mindedly hammers out a two note riff, while a synthesizer sparsely decorates it with a small palette of textures, and hoarse, intense but controlled vocals deliver a message that is as ominous as it is obscure. ‘Fate will Find You’.

More overdriven bass follows, though not to the point of distortion. Tim ‘Love’ Lee contributes a remix of a song called ‘No Search’ by a band called Striplight. Striplight purvey spiky, arty post-punk with declamatory vocals, which in this song tell a tale of self-destructive devotion not unrelated to Depeche Mode’s ‘Stripped’.  Which is to say it uses flaying as a metaphor for undressing.

And by now it’s surely becoming apparent that I’m an incorrigible geek for bass sounds… Crazy Girl’s ‘Regs’ is animated by a rapid fire pickstyle bass riff that sounds like it was recorded by micing an (overdriven) Ampeg SVT, but that’s not really interesting so I’ll tell you about the song instead. ‘Regs’ is a vitriolic, stream of consciousness rant against the mediocrity of the socially aspirational. The bass dominates the mix, but there’s guitar there too, also with the sound of a vintage amp, pushed hard through a twangy spring reverb, later joined by an equally vintage sounding electric piano: it’s hard to put a finger on the musical style, which is a modern take on the late 60s underground, but you could maybe call it psychedelic surf-garage (if a high syllable count doesn’t bother you). There’s something unhinged about this, in a very good way.

Patrick and Eugene contribute a cockney novelty song celebrating the gentle side of English drinking culture, a very likeable ditty with a twist in the tail, called ‘Saturday Night’.

So far the quality of everything on this compilation has been extremely high, but it’s saved some of the best until last. Before we go any further, I should point out that I definitely don’t tend to favour wordy, literate songs over more dance focussed offerings: in fact most of my favourite music doesn’t even have vocals. So let’s be clear, I’m not rating these tracks highly because I prefer a nice song: of the last four tracks, three are vocal tunes, and all three strike that perfect balance between lyrics, melody, style and all the other elements, where everything works in unity to express the meaning of the song.

Sargasso Trio’s ‘Heels On Fire’ is probably not a love song, but it’s an appreciation song, a song about the chemistry of the dancefloor. Not the dancefloor of some industrial scale club, all huge sub stacks and robotic lights; I imagined an upstairs room in a house with the windows open on a moonlit summer night, and the turntable skipping as drunken happy people bounce the floorboards. It’s pointless for me to try and paraphrase, or even to really describe a song like this. I can only express my admiration: for the way it avoids the obvious verbal route; for the way it is sexy without being overtly sexual; for the way it conveys a sense of the very specific value of an individual; for the way the groove is a part of the poetry, rather than simply a setting for it. This became one of my desert island discs by the third or fourth listen.

Turner Cody is a latter day beat poet: this plays both for and against him, as the beat poets were also a major influence on someone he sounds very like on ‘Corner Of My Room’, namely Uncle Bob. I know a little of Turner Cody’s work (although I’m not generally a big follower of singer songwriters), and although that influence is always present, there’s something about the vocal delivery on this track that makes it sound like an overt homage to, or even a pastiche of Bob Dylan. Which is not to say I’m accusing him of being a mere imitator: this is very much his performance of his words, it’s just that there is a clear relationship in his choice of words, and in his very clear enunciation of articles (definite and indefinite). Some of his verbal imagery is absolutely staggering, audacious even, and I won’t steal any thunder by putting spoilers in this review: you need to hear this track.

The next artist, Circuits, play new wave rock with a streak of reggae running through it, sometimes sounding like a more earnest version of The Police. The track included here is a dub (‘Fully Bearded Dub’), which accentuates that influence. It sounds as though someone set out deliberately to make a dub tune with no compound meters in it: even when the delays interfere with each other they don’t make triplets! It’s a really cool sound — and I don’t know why so many tracks on this compilation have such a fantastic bass sound, it’s like a masterclass in recording bass! — which breaks down into a bass led punk outro.

And as the last notes of The Circuits die away, the most enigmatic of this album’s offerings gently and unassumingly begins. I have no idea why Tara Busch chose to invent the name ‘Pilfershire Lane’ for this tune, as there’s nothing I can detect here that has anything to do with pilfering. Ambiguity is a good thing in a lyric as far as I’m concerned, however, so no matter. Busch is an excellent melodist, and does a nice line in chord sequences of the sort that pivot key changes on a tierce de Picardie. ‘Pilfershire Lane’ is a long and complex number, with a lot of sections: lyrically it seems to be someone in old age expressing nostalgia for the idyll of their childhood, and clinging onto their memories as a talisman against an uncertain future. It’s clearly set in the future as they are looking back to 1970, which is when I was born, and I’m not ‘old and grey’ yet. Stylistically it moves from a simple piano accompaniment, to an old style prog feel (like early Floyd) and back again, before an extended atmospheric outro, with church bells, choral vocals and background noises. Clearly I’m struggling to describe this, it’s far too complex to paraphrase, so I’ll say this: it never comes off as sentimental, it remains robustly ambiguous throughout, it is sonically and musically extremely sophisticated, and also very soulful in a curious way, and I like it a lot. I still have the impression there’s a lot I don’t get about Tara Busch’s work though!

Obviously this compilation doesn’t present the sonic consistency an album does when it’s the product of a single set of recording and mixing sessions; and the types of song and arrangement presented are incredibly diverse; but these tracks all display some kind of uncompromised artistic integrity. There is a certain commitment to pursuing a set of creative aims, a certain unwillingness to be bound by convention or fashion, that has obviously informed the decisions to sign these acts and to include them on this collection. It all comes across somehow as though there’s a single brain behind it. A big, and clever brain, whose past and future activities it would be worth taking an interest in.

The Best Of Live Unsigned part I

What follows is a representative sampling of the artist reviews I've been writing for Live Unsigned: it was going to be 12, but I did well to hold myself back to 14! Please follow the links and look at the artist pages on the site to find out when and where they're playing.

The Turbo A.C.’s

http://bit.ly/dsrOKX

Turbo indeed. This is turbocharged, twangy surf punk that gives Agent Orange a run for their money, with it’s big anthemic choruses built for shouting along from the mosh-pit. Tight as a nut, raw as sushi, and more in-your-face than your teeth. Do not go to their gig to stand at the back and look cool: this is a band that really lays it on the line, and they deserve nothing less in return.

Lester Clayton

http://bit.ly/dmA6S1

Grooving, rootsy, acoustic good-time rock, that reminds me of John Butler in a lot of ways: sophisticated but simple songs; top flight musicians with a deep, downbeat feel; and an irrepressible funkiness that comes through whatever else is happening. Real quality stuff, guaranteed to put a smile on your face.

Maximum RNR

http://bit.ly/abPBwy

This is refreshing: a punk/ hardcore/ metal band that sounds more punk than metal. Richly distorted guitars hark back to an earlier form of metal than most such fusions, from an era when the word ‘extreme’ was not yet debased through overuse. Frenetic beats sound like Dead Kennedys and Black Flag, with drumming that proves you don’t need a double kick to sound like a force of nature. Love it.

Firefly

http://bit.ly/aiSbyO

Folky and bluesy vocals accompanied by arrangements that sound sometimes very traditional (in the folk sense), and sometimes very twentieth century (in the classical sense), finding echoes of that additive circularity that links minimalism with the gamelan. All of which sounds very abstract, but the resulting sparse sound world is a very habitable, welcoming place, full of ethereal warmth and melody.

Mojo Fury

http://bit.ly/9PzprO

It’s always refreshing when a band describes their music as ‘rock’, rather than ‘nuanced post-genre neo-gregorian rock’, or some such. Mojo Fury are as good as their word: it’s not heavy rock, it’s not soft rock, it is straight ahead ass-kicking songs-and-riffs drums-bass-and-guitar rock. Impassioned vocals, pretty melodies, driving grooves, well balanced songs, great playing.

Logistic Slaughter

http://bit.ly/aMeXvt

I have to make an admission regarding extreme metal: I can rarely make out the lyrics, and I rarely go to the trouble of finding out what they are. It’s not because I’m old, it was always that way… for me, those genres of music are all about the visceral impact of the performances. Logistic Slaughter are nothing if not visceral: this is a demonic, hellish, overwhelming psychic attack of grindcore malevolence, and I’m loving the abuse!

Christine Owman

http://bit.ly/9kWbfR

‘I don’t need to stand out of the crowd. I just don’t want to be a part of it.’ So says Christine Owman on her MySpace, and as a manifesto for her music making, it’s something she stands by. Her music doesn’t grab you by the throat; it doesn’t rub your face in its dissonance or difference, but it follows its own distinctive path, a gentle, tentative, experimentalist exploration of the edges of acoustic songcraft. Robert Plant is a fan, and you can hear why.

The Good The Bad

http://bit.ly/9DtUP0

Atmospheric and idiosyncratic garage surf, performed with swaggering determination on guitar, drums and baritone guitar. They say they play ‘surf and flamenco’ but it sounds more like a spaghetti western soundtrack on crystal meth. They have no singer because they ‘couldn’t find one that would stand behind the drummer’ and their songs are numbered rather than named.Oh, and they are absolutely superb.

Susie Asado

http://bit.ly/al8dvp

Observational, descriptive, literary, wordy but musical songs. Susie Asado presents her material very simply and sparsely, and you can hear why: any messing about would get in the way of these very intelligent and fragile slices of work. Listen closely, and prepare to be charmed.

Sink

http://bit.ly/8ZcJEV

Sink’s music is non-formulaic improvisation: I use that term to mean improvisation that doesn’t follow formulae such as key centres, chord sequences, or metronomic rhythmic frameworks. As such it demands a certain commitment from the listener, and a very open pair of ears. These spacious soundscapes incorporate found sounds with instrumental performance, and evolve gradually, hinting at the self generative qualities of minimalism. Difficult, excellent sound art.

1000 Robota

http://bit.ly/aPmDXJ

This band is entirely too original and creative to be adequately described in a paragraph: they could be refugees from the 80s underground, but they look far too young. Guitars are utensils of aural deconstruction, layered texturally against propulsive, mechanistic slabs of bass and drums, surmounted by vocals that sound bored and wistful by turns. Engaging and unpredictable.

Banane Metalik

http://bit.ly/a5s8uo

A scary onslaught of a punked out psychobilly horror show, with lyrics in French and occasionally English. Screaming, thrashy electric guitars predominate, but when he gets the chance to step forwards the bull fiddle player shows he can slap like Lee Rocker. This exhilarating band is the real deal.

Snarky Puppy

http://bit.ly/b7jlkj

The first few bars I heard from this outfit reminded me immediately of uber-fusioneers Tribal Tech’s more technologically experimental moments, or Herbie Hancock’s 80s electro period. They describe their sound as ‘showtunes’ on MySpace, but they’re joking: this is creative jazz-fusion with an emphasis on danceable groove and texture. There are solos, and playing of the highest order, but this is no noodlefest. Egos are in check and the music is mind-blowingly good.

Zen And The Art Of Improvisation

Where does improvising end, and just playing something start? At the hands of a truly creative, switched on musician, that line is never crossed. And before that statement is going to make any sense whatsoever, I’ll need to explain myself a bit.

Improvisation can mean a lot of things to different people. To many, it means taking a harmonic or other technical framework, and rattling around inside it until all its nooks and crannies have been explored. This is what happens in most jazz, the spiritual home of improvisation as an organised musical practice: that’s what was going on when Coltrane spewed out sheets and sheets of filigreed detail over chorus after chorus of a standard. He was exploring all the possibilities, filling all the wrinkles of the harmony with his musical awareness, like molten latex pouring into a mould.

To some, improvisation means taking a framework, a selection of notes, and wailing on it, like Neil Young beating crap out of his guitar until it starts to weep, or B.B. King seeming to extract a whole melody from the bends and slurs he applies to just three notes of the blues scale.

And then there are those to whom improvisation means reinventing the wheel, sixty times a minute. To this group any recognisable phrase is a failure of the imagination, an inability to invent instead of falling back on the hackneyed and the formulaic. Of course that’s an extreme: Ornette Coleman’s ‘Free Jazz’ is full of identifiably post-bop phraseology (mainly from Freddie Hubbard), but it made the case for an approach in which every element of music is up for grabs, at any time.

There are in fact, I’m sure, as many ideas of improvisation as there are improvisers, or people who have thought about it, covering every point on the spectrum between the poles described above, and probably several other poles I haven’t even thought of. The point is though, that to most people, improvising means ‘making it up as you go along’, and what is being made up is usually conceived as a series of notes, a melody. How then, can anyone be said to be improvising, when they are just, to pick an example at random, playing the bassline from the outro of Fleetwood Mac’s ‘The Chain’?

The key is to be found in the practice of the free improvisers, those musicians who set out to produce something non-formulaic. What these people discover is that it’s increasingly difficult to generate novelty from a selection of notes. Improvisers have adopted some procedures from serialism, using tone rows to defeat the ear’s search for a recognisable tonality; the trouble they run into there, with an approach that organises the twelve tones of Western modality in an essentially arbitrary way, is that there are a finite number of note combinations. There are a lot of them, to be sure, but there is nothing unique about any of them: there is no untrodden path, no unexpressed formula to be found in any chromatic sequence. And so, it becomes necessary to look at the other elements of music.

Any secondary school music classroom is likely to have some of the following terms written on the wall: pitch, rhythm, timbre, harmony, dynamics, form. I’ve been talking about pitch, but of course any of these elements is a potential venue for improvisatory exploration. Free and experimental improvisors have explored many possibilities for developing musical meaning through these avenues: granted, traditional improvisation involves the manipulation of these elements, to a lesser degree, but the central thrust of that kind of blowing is always the melody. It’s the uncompromisingly non-formulaic improvisers who have most obviously taken the other elements and used them as primary materials for music making: what I want to suggest is that many musicians are improvising with some of these other musical elements even when they’re playing a set melody.

There’s a lot of choices to make when you play a melody, or a rhythm section part such as a bassline. How long should each note be? Should they be right on top of the beat, or a little ahead or behind? Should there be any vibrato on each note? If so, should it be terminal vibrato, or all the way through the note? How wide and fast should the vibrato be? What kind of timbre should be used - e.g. should a bassline be played by plucking near the bridge for a trebly sound, or near the fingerboard for a deeper, warmer sound? How should the line be phrased?

Most players will evolve the way they play a line through practice and rehearsal, until they arrive at answers to all these questions that work for them. It’s always necessary to remain aware of how those choices relate to what’s going on around you however: for instance if I’m playing in a venue that has a boomy acoustic I will make my sound less bassy, and play most of my notes more staccato, in order to avoid muddying up the band sound too much. I try to be as aware as I can be of issues like that, but the possession of a really finely honed awareness of how all the choices you can make interact with all the things that are going on around you is what separates the truly great musicians from the rest of us. These are the musicians who are always improvising.

So sure, they play all the notes you expect to hear when you hear the outro from The Chain: but when I play it, I play those notes because that’s how it goes. A master musician, a permanent improviser, is choosing those notes, because they are the right notes, just as they are choosing the note lengths, and allowing the music to breathe in a way that makes it flow instead of plodding. They could play anything at any time: they have come, as an improviser, to a musical framework, and they are going to make choices appropriate to their aims within that framework. The aims and the framework may be given by somebody else, but the choices made within them belong to the player, and this is equally true whether a jazz trumpeter is going to blow on a set of changes, or a session bassist is going to read a rock line from a chart, or an experimental tabla player is going to improvise with no reference points except the other players they will be playing with.

The point is that some players have that ‘always on’ level of total musical awareness, and the rest of us can, and should, aspire to it. What that means is trying to be aware of the other possibilities while we play what we have to play, and consequently of why we are playing exactly what we are: we’ll always be aware of the more nearby possibilities, such as minor variations in dynamics, but ultimately there is a whole world of music we could be holding in our head, and, crucially, relating to whatever we are playing. And the more of the big wide world of music we are conscious of as we enact our little part of it, the closer we come to that Zen state, of never ceasing to improvise.