On The Hi-Fi (in brief) Part 43

Walberswick - Jon Brooks
Brooks is back just 6 months after Advisory Circle's 2014 classic From Out Here (which I'm still listening to on a weekly basis) with another bewdy. He's keeping up his batting average and getting better with each new release. This starts off in weird electronics mode with Mr Brooks I Presume before settling into synth ambience in excelis.

Songs Of Gold, Incandescent - Dolphins Into The Future/Lieven Martens Moana
Classic themes here from Lievens. This is actually a compilation of rarities from 2010-2014. I mean isn't all his stuff rare. We've got waves, bells, jungle sounds, Pacific Islander choirs, strange electronics, underwater soundtracks, Casio vibraphones, submarine drones and the inevitable scuttling sea creature soundz. Songs Of Gold makes you realise how much sonic territory Dolphins Into The Future have covered over the years without you even realising.

Machines Are Obsolete - Pye Corner Audio/Pathways - Pye Corner Audio & Belbury Poly
(Ghostbox Other Voices Series 05)
A-Side: "Easy listening dystopian sounds. 80s attempts at futuristic soundtracks."*
B-Side: "Future Sailor but not as good like Howard Moon has found the new sound but no he hasn't it's just an old one. It sounds like every single song from 1983!"*

*Special comments from Mrs Space Debris.

Pathways is reminding me of a John Foxx tune I can't quite put my finger on. Chuck in a bit of Kraftwerk and a Giorgio Moroder synth guitar lead break and you've probably got it in a nutshell.

Murder For Hire - Kevin Gates
I was really looking forward to this but there's just way too much screaming dj action on this one. Kevin Gates gets buried beneath all the extraneous racket here. I hope he didn't put any classics on this 7 track datpiff exclusive mixtape because I don't think I can put up with dj holiday for one more second in my life. Why does he have to show up on like every 4th rap mix-tape and why doesn't he shut the fuck up and let Gates do his thang.

Livonia - His Name Is Alive
Who would have thought that this would still sound good 25 years later? My 90s trip has gone back to my 4AD records and sure the 80s was 4AD's decade but they still had some gems in the 90s like their last Cocteau's record, Throwing Muses The Real Ramona, The Breeders Pod, The Pale Saints, Red House Painters and the first 2 LPs from His Name Is Alive. Livonia was their first record and yeah it's really pretentious but fuck it sounded good today. I was expecting to want to turn it off after 30 seconds but I played it twice in a row. This is a strange album. It's sort of outsider folk/loop-ology/random electronics and noise guitars. I wanted to play their 2nd LP Home Is In Your Head which I recall being even better but it's on tape and sadly me house no longer contains a tape deck!

On The Haunted Gramophone

Who can understand where your brain will go next with regards to what you are gong to listen to? I'm still really enjoying The Advisory Circle's excellent 2014 album From Out Here. Perhaps it's the best ever release on Ghostbox. It's definitely up there with The Focus Group's Hey Let Loose Your Love and Belbury Poly's The Willows in my book. I just wanna keep hearing it and I know I've already written about it a couple of times before but hey it keeps growing in my estimation. It's probably not very cool to be into GhostBox these days but I don't give a fuck. Hipsters can go and listen to their fka twiggles, shite z-grade house and whatever else.

Gesellschaft Zur Emanzipation Des Samples

Actually some other stuff from hauntological zones has had my attention also. I went back and had a listen to the G.E.S. album Circulations and fuck me, after having a reaction just a notch above lukewarm to it back in 2009, I'm starting to think this recording is one of the best in its field now. If you dig those first couple of Focus Group albums and haven't heard this you need to check it out. Circulations is a gloriously random sampleadelic collage and a mini-masterpiece. Apparently a couple years after this release G.E.S. did a second volume which passed me by but now I'm on the search for that.

Listening to that has in turn led me all the way back to 1999. Leyland Kirby's first release under The Caretaker pseudonym was issued in 1999 but I didn't hear it till the early 00s. Anyway those first 3 Caretaker albums Selected Memories From The Haunted Ballroom (99), A Stairway To The Stars (01) and We'll All Go Riding On A Rainbow (04) have had me captivated again. It's a bloody great concept ie. the haunted ballroom is The Gold Room in The Overlook Hotel in Stephen King's novel The Shining. They made a movie too that you may have seen, directed by a guy you may have heard of. Of course The Caretaker is named after the caretaker Jack Torrance from the aforementioned ghost story. Concepts are pretty meaningless though, unless the music is the goods. They're sometimes meaningless even when the music's expertly executed too. On this trilogy though music and concept are in sublime synchronicity. These records are perfectly out of time, sentimental, nostalgic, revenant, disorientating and even sometimes quite lovely. The Caretaker's secret is to keep it subtle and let the music insidiously haunt you. This trilogy is a magnificent achievement. The mood The Caretaker creates lingers on long after you've stopped listening and I find myself going back time and time again to experience the inexplicable feelings this music elicits (sorry couldn't bring myself to say uncanny Mr Fisher). The Caretaker is possibly the most artistically successful of anyone who has been cast as hauntological.

Finally this brings me to Actress. I didn't mind their R.I.P. record from 2012 and I thought 2010's Splazsh was quite ace. I never would have imagined they'd end up in such exhausted zones as those on last year's Ghettoville though. Darren Cunningham's exemplary arty electronic melange was always a restrained version of tech, house, garage and other club styles. I don't know if tunes from Splazsh or R.I.P. ever got played out but you felt like it was maybe possible with some of them. I can't imagine anything from Ghettoville getting a spin in a club though, unless its a disco at a funeral or a zombie rave. This is post-millennial electronic music that's broken down, malfunctioning and barely able to transmit through its frayed circuits which is not dissimilar in spirit to Mordant Music's requiem for rave Dead Air from 2006. Ghettoville feels like the final death notice for rave memorial services. I mean 'wake for rave' has become a sub-genre hasn't it? With the likes of Burial, Lee Gamble, Mordant Music, Leyland Kirby's V/VM et al. This could be the final death knell for the technoid future in ruins or is their further sonic depletion on the horizon?

The Advisory Circle - From Out Here

*

GhostBox seem to be releasing less and less. I think the last one I bought was early 2013's Elektrik Karousel by The Focus Group (We'll just forget about The Sound Carriers shall we). The Advisory Circle's From Out Here came out yesterday and well the sound of brown continues. The Mrs says "Someone playing with their Casio in 1983." She lived in a small seaside village in North Wales at the time. She adds while Escape Lane is playing "Lovely use of minor falls." During Causeway Ballet she offers "This is very soothing and gentle and somehow familiar." This LP isn't anywhere near as jaunty as their previous LP As The Crow Flies from 2011. We're heading into much stranger zones on From Out Here. For every melodic and idyllic tune there's a peculiar one. It wouldn't be an Advisory Circle album without a couple of logo tones would it? There are two here. Gee whizz, he's even in 'Ekoplekz for babies' territory on Experiment. While the usual hauntological themes are present and accounted for such as 70s TV, library music, eeriness, information films, found dialogue and Radiophonica, this album captures the stillness, innocuousness, melancholia and the metaphysics of being. I dunno if it's just me today (impending birthday) or what?...but this album has signalled to me like no other that we are trapped (even though it's fleeting) in time. Lost in a time-warp and vaguely bewildered. Zoloft world....

Speaking of great batting averages John Brooks, the man behind the moniker The Advisory Circle is almost up there with Moon Wiring Club's Ian Hodgson, his collaborator on the Woodbines & Spiders record from earlier this year. Whether Jon is in solo mode (The excellent Music For Thomas Carnacki, Music For Dieter Rams and Shapwick) under the pseudonyms D.D. Denham (The terrific Electronic Music In The Classroom), Georges Vert (An Electric Mind) or making Advisory Circle albums his strike rate is high. The intriguing debut Advisory Circle mini-album Mind How You Go came out in 2005 and the masterpiece Other Channels was released in 2008. Wow, Mind How You Go is nearly 10 years old. It seems so much older and yet it also seems more recent at the same time. Is this atemporal stasis? It's some kind of paradox befitting the music of The Advisory Circle anyway.

*These soundbite things on soundcloud are rather annoying aren't they? That's the first & last time I'll embed them in a post!

VHS Head

A new VHS Head album Persistence Of Vision is on its way and I'm looking forward to its release. His first record Trademark Ribbons Of Gold was released in 2010 just before I started my blog. I couldn't believe it wasn't all over the Internet and in end of year lists. I guess it didn't fit anywhere in particular. It was 2010 and it didn't fit into its genres of the time like dubstep or whatever else was hip at the time. Its a frantic and experimental album. I understand it was made from samples and snippets of his 80s VHS video collection. In particular VHS Head was fond of the video company logo tunes or as they call them in the biz idents The effect was a bit like having the history of 80s video culture condensed into 64 minutes then thrust at you like an aural assault weapon with barely any time to think. This be not for the faint of heart. It's not unlike something Jon Oswald might get up to but much cooler. It's kinda funky and has an 80s disco vibe with a 2010 flava and I reckon some tunes could even get played out (on the dancefloor). While the sounds aren't arranged in an orderly pastiche 80s fashion, they are meticulously arranged. God knows how long Trademark Ribbons Of Gold took to make but it may be some indication that it's taken VHS Head nearly 5 years to release a new LP. It's A rush for sure and you might recognise bits and pieces here and there, particularly if you loved your 80s VHS trash. Sounds don't really hang around long enough they just fly past you. It does have a nostalgic vibe though. Probably the closest relation to it in current music is the music released on GhostBox (theoretically more than anything). Its retro but its also presented in a futuristic audio blaze. It has become one of my favourite records of the 10s, the 2010s or whatever no one has bothered to name this decade.

I Know nothing about Persistence Of Vision but let's hope
 its just as compelling as Trademark Ribbons Of Gold.

The House In The Woods-Bucolica

Whilst still in the 90s & 00s I have visited now a couple of times I must admit. Didn't really know what to expect with this record. It's the dude from Pye Corner Audio doing some stuff that's pretty different from the music he does under that moniker. We're still in darkly atmospheric territory but this time its more of an organic blur. Only one track has anything resembling a beat. This album is more in line with mid 90s isolationism than haunted slasher soundtracks. Bucolic is a funny word isn't it. I always have to stop and think 'bucolic no its not some hideous disease or poison. Its about idyllic country life.' So it's a word that sounds like it should have the opposite meaning than the one it has. A bit like this record really. This is the sound of wind and rain amongst the trees and mysterious lights off in the distance. I can smell the air and feel the temperature. But I can also feel the melancholy.  There's bliss too particularly on Sunlight On Rusting Hulk, which reaches MBV-like blissed out proportions. Then sinister vibes arrive, but are they though? Or is your mind playing tricks on you for a moment.  Are we just projecting fear onto a lull or stillness. This is a fascinating record. Rural psychedelia lives.  

Stuff On The Interweb

There's been heaps of good stuff over at blog to the oldskool including this mini mix from junglistz Foul Play and this 20 minute documentary on Gabber. This is quite bizarre and a little bit scary. It's a portal into a very specific time and place. Check out some of the most mental dancing from the 90s! It's funny now how tame and normal a lot of gabba now sounds. I'm in the 90s now.

Here's an excellent interview with Julian House the dude from the GhostBox label and man behind The Focus Group over at The Quietus. Here's an old bit on Julian from 2006 at K-Punk. Over at bandcamp there is a 19 minute track from The Children Of Alice, a trio made up of House and 2 members of Broadcast, called The Harbinger Of Spring which is well worth your 3 quid!

I only just discovered this Moon Wiring Club Mix Midnight In Europe over at NightVision here which is a bit different than MWCs usual mixes. This mix is of 90s ambient post rave electronica and includes Woob, Baby Ford, LFO, Biosphere, Luke Slater and many more. I'm in the 90s now in a chill-out room. Do they still have those?

Boards Of Canada-Tomorrow's Harvest

The opening of the new record Tomorrow's Harvest seems funny to me. They have a little logo tune or is it a logtone? An Ident? I don't recall them having used one before and to me it seems like a nod to the people they've influenced ie. The Belbury Poly, The Advisory Circle and the rest of the GhostBox crew. Then there are hints of John Carpenter that I don't recall being referenced before on their previous records, which could possibly be a nod to Pye Corner Audio or even Umberto. One wonders whether they keep up with all this stuff or it's just a coincidence.

Tomorrow's Harvest does seem a lot darker and not as lovely* or gorgeous* as previous efforts. The beats seem to trudge and appear quite inert. It's still unmistakably Boards Of Canada with no sign of the guitars used on The Campfire Headphase.  The Jury is still out for me as I'm only half a dozen listens in. Still it must be alright even if I've played it that many times. I remember playing Music Has The Right To Children about 5 years ago to someone who only listened to trance and he said it was like electronic funeral music. He didn't even think you could chill out to it. So the darkness thing was always there but now we're splitting hairs over its minute shades.

*Lovely and *Gorgeous are two terms, I learnt yesterday, that announcers on a certain Melbourne independent radio station are never supposed to use on air about the music they are playing. Guess what all you prince's and princess's of darkness nice is nice! The Black Crow King obviously still wields influence in Melbourne town.

On The Hi-Fi Part 27

Crucify Your Love - Dylan Ettinger
Now this guy has moved on quite a bit. He made one of the landmark statements of Hynagogia, New Age Outlaws from 2010. Some even consider that record to be where H-Pop ended. So where do you go from there? Particularly if people are saying that's the end of the genre but you created one of its masterpieces. Perhaps that call was a little early but all the same, what do you do next? Should you stick with it till the revival comes around? How long would that leave you in the wilderness though? Stasis V progression. This new ep is somewhere in between. It's like the Cabs have hijacked the hynagogia party. There are vocals in in a deep dubbed fug/fog amongst the H-pop sounds. Is that progression or regression? It puts this work in a zone not that far from eMMplekz but more on an easier listening tip, if that makes any sense at all. It's pretty good/Odd!?

OFF/On - Forma (2012)
Finally getting around to hearing this release from very late last year due to SLX having it as their record of the year for 2012. I didn't hate that first LP but it just didn't surpass its influences Cluster, Harmonia et al. This is top notch electronics retaining some of that Kraut vibe but now including 80s drum soundz, soundtracky motifs and even delving into 90s electronica. Who knows in a couple of albums time they may be soundtracking the new future and not the retro-future.

The Garnet Toucan - Monopoly Child Searchers (2012)
Another release from late last year. This time it's the other Skater you know the one who is not James Ferraro. Talk bout becoming the Andrew Ridgley or the other guy from Style Council of Skaters. I have over 30 releases by Mr Ferraro and not one solo outing from Spencer Clark until this landed on my lap. There was the excellent Inner Tube release last year which was a collaboration with Mark McGuire of Emeralds. You could slap a Ferraro label on this and I would be none the wiser. It really could be an old tape from 2009. That's a good thing here. Plastic fourth into fifth world neon soundz makes this a quality LP that I can't stop playing.

Random Access Memories - Daft Punk
Do I really need to add to the discourse of this cd? For what it's worth I fell asleep the first 2 times I listened to this. On the 3rd listen I started to enjoy the tracks towards the end of RAM. I really think this is a bad case of track placement error.

The Elektrik Karousel - The Focus Group
The title says it all really. This is like an acid trip through an horrific fairground (aren't they all a little bit spooky?). The emphasis being on the trip. You get into the zone with this LP and you are on a sonic ghost ride. Dear Wire reviewer I don't need to be English to enjoy this and I don't need to be humming its tunes once the Voyage is over. If I wanted to hum some tunes all day long I'd listen to Abba. This is about listening in the moment and that's what The Focus Group are all about. Another GhostBox gem!

The Focus Group New LP

Looking forward to this being released tomorrow. 2013 has got to have at least one good record!

Broadcast

Broadcast In Shindig Magazine Shock

On a rare pop in to a newsagent I checked out the music magazines like I used to when I was a teenager (I thought this would pass eventually but er...no). Pink Floyd were on the cover of Mojo again, some other old cats on the cover of Uncut and I think it was Led Zeppelin on the cover of Rolling Stone. I didn't bother flicking through any of those. Even Wolf Eyes on the cover of The Wire struck me as a bit retro. Then I glanced over and saw Broadcast on a magazine cover. I thought 'great there must someone finally giving The Wire a bit of competition.' But no they were fronting the cover of would you beleive Shindig. Shindig caught my eye about 5 or 6 years ago. I thought it was like a cross between Mojo and Ugly Things. I thought that perhaps they were now going down the path that I thought Mojo might have taken by now after they'd surely run out of stories (Mojo that is) on The Beatles, Stones, Hendrix, The Who, Eric Clapton, Beach Boys, Pink Floyd, Bowie, Sex Pistols, The Smiths, Nirvana etc. etc. Sadly this was not to be. I thought by now Mojo would perhaps be havin Black Widow, Heldon, Simply Saucer, The Electric Eels, Cabaret Voltaire, The Homosexuals, The Minutemen, The Cocteau Twins, LFO or even Omni Trio on the cover. Hey that's not gonna sell large quantities is it?

'Cor blimeyI can't believe we us haven't been on the cover of Mojo!'
The Homosexuals

Anyway I once bought a copy of Shindig with articles on The Pink Fairies, Dennis Wilson, Mad River, Love and The West Coast Experimental Band adorning the cover. I dug it. Sure they didn't have the name writters of Uncut, Mojo etc. but they had enthusiasts/lovers of music, not paycheck journos.

So it was a surprise to see Broadcast there on the cover. Is this Shindig broadening its horizons and entering a new bold age? They always have current music reviews but usually of the most retro groups. Lee Gamble or Raime aren't gettin a review here. Of course Broadcast do have that Retro-Futurism thing going on but at the same time they always struck me as a very modern band. I must say it was slightly haunting (no pun intended) seeing Trish Keenan on the News stands, God rest her soul. Contained within this latest issue of Shindig are ye olde types such as Sweet, Donovan, Mike Herron and Gene Clark but there's even an article on the Ghost Box label. Sure it's ten years or so after their inception but that's nowhere near the 40+ years since Donovan did records. Hopefully this isn't just a one off flirtation with modern music. Maybe Ekoplekz will be on next months cover! Here's hoping.

Ghost Box

I noted somewhere Ghostbox was getting a bagging possibly because it's old news or is it because that guy from LCD System is now rocking an old skool Librarian/Geography teacher look. I only just let Jarvis get away with it or did I? It was a bit weird after many years of beard wearing and being sometimes bespectacled that people started saying 'oh you look a bit like Jarvis.'  Maybe that LCD guy is gonna do a Hauntological album, then you'll know it's time to move on. If those GhostBox Study Series of singles, Belbury Poly's The Belbury Tales and that new Pye Corner Audio record are anything to go by GhostBox are in fine shape! I can't wait for a new Focus Group record.

*Also in other things related there is this new mix over at Pontone by IX Tab who I only found out about today. Choice cuts in this mix. Pontone have done it again by getting these guys to do a mix. Best Pontone Mix in ages.

**Also while in the ball park I found an old  Moon Wiring Club mix I'd somehow missed along the way. I've talked about all the other 4 or 5, so this was a nice surprise. It's called Bleep 43 or something? Click on the link. There's loads of film, radio and telly dialogue amongst the op shop records, library music and like minded artist's trax.

This is another fantastic Moon Wiring Club track. I've not seen that record anywhere in Melbourne and It's not on i-tunes. Was it only a limited thing? Maybe I'm gonna have to start ordering things via the Internet. Have I reached that phase in human evolution? Perhaps. On a similar note I haven't seen a GhostBox record in Melbourne since Synathsesia shut up shop years ago.

More Moon Wiring Club

I just noticed on the Youtube that there is another new Moon Wiring Club clip. I don't have the new album yet so this will have to do till it turns up at the record shop. I'm resisting the digital download as their records are worth getting for the artwork. How long do I have to wait though? I'm still housebound convalescing after my op last week.

Body Switcher from the new Moon Wiring Club album.

Another top clip.

 

 

 

 

The Young People

Wow just found this ace track by Moon Wiring Club

in collaboration with Belbury Poly. Another great

clip as well.

 

 

 

Another bewdy!

Portals and Parallels.

 

 

RE: Techstep

To listen or not to listen?

I got off the hardcore train before techstep it's true. There may be some good stuff I've missed and I'm lookin' at that No U Turn comp Torque thinkin 'Go on give it a go!' Anyway I couldn't get into stuff that followed either Speed Garage, 2 step, Grime and only really liked a couple of things in the Dubstep universe. I didn't hate Big Beat but that was hardly part of that hardcore lineage. I kept half an ear on the experimental side of things in the electronic world but even Mouse On Mars were makin crap by 2001. I didn't really get back into underground electronic music in a big way until Ghostbox and it's Hautological friends arrived in the mid 00s. Then the strange Hypnagogic stuff caught my ear and the new Kosmiche/Ambient skool. I don't really think I'll be delving into old school tracks of 2 step and Grime when their time comes back around though.

Energy Flash/Hauntology

Here is a quote from page 164 of Energy Flash: A Journey Through Rave & Dance Culture written by Simon Reynolds and originally published in 1998 but this is a 2012 edition.

'Imagine the theme music for a 50s Government film about Britain's new garden cities: serene, symmetrical, euphonious, evoking the socially engineered for a post war New Order.'

Here Mr Reynolds was referring to some of the music that Aphex Twin was making early in his career. I wonder if Boards Of Canada were reading this but didn't they already exist? or if the GhostBox crew were taking notes because it sounds like Simon Reynolds invented Hauntology 6 or 7 years ahead of its time, well the theory and subtext to it anyway. When I first heard BOC I thought shite they remind me a little of Seefeel & Aphex Twin, which to me was in no way a bad thing! I wonder if Simon is aware of this portentous quoted passage or realises his complicity in the entire idea/genre? I know he is a big fan of the whole thing and has scribbled many words on the topic via his blog and in an article for The Wire magazine many moons ago.

Stereolab

Just been gettin reacquainted with Stereolab quite obsessively. At the moment the period of 1992 - 1996. What a run they had going. Space Age Bachelor Pad music, Refried Ectoplasm, Transient Random Noise Bursts With Announcements, Mars Audiac Quintet, Emperor Tomato Ketchup etc. Nothing to say that hasn't already been said by the groop themselves really. John Cage Bubblegum, French Disko, Nihilist Assault Group,Tomorrow is Already Here, Metronomic Underground, Avant Garde MOR, Analogue Rock, Tone Burst, Exploding Head Movie, International Colouring Contest, Farfisa etc. They made reviewers redundant. Pop perfection. I wasn't sure I would still dig. Me dig! Me dig more than ever, I do believe!

The long version of this still astounds me to this day 18
years or so later. A Mind blowing Peak!

It all started withe the reading of that Pulp book by Owen Hatherley. I went back to The Smiths, Sex Pistols, Roxy Music (first 3 LPs) and then onto at one time contemporaries to Pulp- Stereolab. In the early 90s they were using a similar sonic palette and funny archaic instruments which Pulp started to use less of later in the 90s which was kind of a shame. I mean they were still good and all but imagine if they'd gone more arcane and retro futuristic. Moot point really just a thought to entertain you know how it is? When I first heard, well I saw their video clip on Rage, Stereolab I thought man they Sound a bit like NZs Snapper who I knew were into Suicide, maybe Neu and The Velvets obviously but I thought that maybe for Stereolab they may have been inadvertent influences, know what I mean. I guess heaps of groups had that whole Velvets/Stooges/Roxy/ Kraut/Hawkwind/Suicide axis of influences at the time. Anyway they were much more than that. That was just one facet of a multifaceted band. I love that artwork too, the only others in the league of artwork being the equally fab Broadcast and the Ghostbox label. I think they are all in someway connected anyway, the Ghostbox guys were originally cover designers I'm pretty sure. It's been a surprise rediscovery.

Belbury Poly

I was havin' a boring Sunday till I realised this was out. 

How excitement!  I couldn't wait for the record so I just

downloaded it.  Like Belbury Poly of old except with some

live instruments (including guitar, omg!) and voices.  On first

couple of listens, I've gotta' say 'Pretty, Pretty Good!'

GhostBox have done it again! 

Love the artwork as always.