Harry’s Place Arts

Most CDs sent out to music journalists, I suspect, don’t get listened to.  For me, given that several arrive every day, it can get almost impossible to keep track; I naturally home in on names I recognise, and others fall to the bottom of a “slush pile”.  Commissioning decisions then tend to get made on the basis of a combination of editors’ and journalists’ existing tastes, who is taking out advertising in magazines, who has the pushiest and/or nicest PRs and various other arbitrary factors, and a lot of excellent music slips through the cracks.

So, partly out of a desire to be a bit more professional, partly to try and capture a particular time in music, partly to give exposure to acts who struggle to be heard, and partly out of sheer bloody-mindedness, I have decided to listen to and review everything I receive.  Much as I like waffling, I think any record should be able to be summed up for the purposes of a curious, casual reader in the space of a single sentence, so that’s what I’ve done.  All of the albums below have been released in the last month; this is not by any means a definitive list as there’s a huge amount that I don’t get sent, and I’ve lost or given away a few.  And because HP is about nothing if not interactivity, I have slipped in one fictitous album.  The first person to spot which it is wins any one of the other CDs of their choice.  Without further ado, here in no particular order are the albums of August 2008:

Black Daniel ‘Hard Times On The Way’ (Dust Bowl / Pieces Of Eight) - Uncomplicated but grittily engaging synth glam-rock pitched half-way between Kasabian and Black Cherry Goldfrapp: riotous fun.

Pop Levi ‘Never Never Love’ (Counter) -Altogether more suave glam-rock from ex-Ladytron chap in California - Prince + Beck + T-Rex = occasionally sublime boogie.

Cats In Paris ‘Courtcase 2000′ (Akoustik Anarkhy) – Hugely ambitious Bowie-ish prog-rock songwriting x  low-budget new wave / synth-pop delivery = Pulp, were they entirely unhinged (but still brilliant).

The Fiery Furnaces ‘Remember’ (Thrill Jockey) – If you like the wacky NYC boho brother-sister duo and their time-signature handbrake turns, you’ll like this live album; if you don’t, 51 (fifty-one!) tracks of their cleverness will make your teeth fall out.

Toob ‘Push Me, Pull You’ (Process) – Slightly gothy electro / techno / dub from Red Snapper veterans with vocals and some rock crescendos; at least as good as any Underworld album.

Prins Thomas presents ‘Full Pupp: The Greatest Tits vol.1′ (Full Pupp) – Luscious and melodic modern instrumental “cosmic disco” compilation from Norway; listening in the car at night makes driving feel luxurious in a sci-fi way.

Minotaur Shock ‘Amateur Dramatics’ (4AD) – Quirky wildlife-obsessed indietronica journeyman twiddles banjos, guitars, trumpets over electro beats; presses all the right buttons but never really gets past “fidgety”.

Ted Barnes ‘Portal Nou’ (Mornington Records) – Beth Orton sideman plays strung-out, sparse, stunningly romantic dive-bar blues with accordions; chanteuses sing; heart weeps with joy.

Pivot ‘O Soundtrack My Heart’ (WARP) - Having had unexpected success with Battles’s “instrumental-rock-band-play-brain-tweaking-electronica” schtick, WARP try and repeat the trick with less jagged rhythms and produce amazingly palatable results.

Various Artists ‘Seed Records Volume Two’ (Seed Records) - The crème de la crème of wonky and off-beam techno, noise, italo disco, electro and other more niche genres, some abrasive, most accessible; as good as it gets for left-of-field electronica.

Lindstrøm ‘Where You Go I Go Too’ (Feedelity) - More Norwegian space-disco from Prins Thomas’s sometime production partner - only 3 tracks, including one nudging 30 minutes, of rippling synths and gentle throbs; extraordinarily manages not to be boring.

James Yorkston ‘When The Haar Rolls In’ (Domino) - Fence Collective-affiliated poet/songwriter adds most ambitious arrangements yet to his domestic acoustic romanticism; contrast with near-mumbled wordiness works to benefit the songs wonderfully.

The Orb ‘Pomme Fritz’ / ‘Orblivion’ / ‘Orbus Terrarium’ / ‘Cydonia’ (Universal-Island) - Re-issues with extra discs of remixes and unreleased tracks; curates’ eggs, all, with a lot of plod, but the bonus disc with the “difficult” Pomme Fritz is wonderful - contains some of their best work, in fact.

Plastic Little ‘Welcome To The Jang House’ (Half Time) - Bawdily offensive, Smiths-quoting Philadelphia rappers beloved of noisy nu-rave club kids and hipsters deliver excellent album approximating a more electro modern-day Beastie Boys.

Smile Down Upon Us ‘Smile Down Upon Us’ (Static Caravan) - Two UK instrumentalists with flutes and ukuleles in internet collaboration with a Japanese singer/electronicist called moomLooo who they’ve never met should be too “quirky” to bear but in fact it’s intense and rather gorgeous - atmospheric and intimate likeBjörk’s Vespertine.

Engine7 ‘Me, But Perfect’ (Herb Recordings) - Twinkly, sparkly, tuneful, Boards Of Canada-y, Balearic-y early morning bittersweet electronica from Scotland.

Leila ‘Blood, Looms & Blooms’ (WARP) - Terry Hall and Martina Topley-Bird add vocals to album that matches Tricky or Portishead at their best with added feverish childhood atmosphere.

Lesser Gonzalez Alvarez ‘Why Is Bear Billowing?’ (Carpark) - From the doodled artwork through the warbling vocal ornamentations to titles like ‘Narwhal Horn’ and ‘Build A Tiny Hill’, this could the work of a more lightweight Devendra Banhart; if you need another groovy hippy acoustic troubadour in your line, this’ll do.

Dark Captain Light Captain ‘Circles EP’ (LoAF) - Circular folktronica with understatedly excellent vocal harmonies.

Soil & “Pimp” Sessions ‘Planet Pimp’ (Brownswood) - 2nd album for Gilles Peterson’s label of maniacal dancefloor jazz with shouting from Tokyo; sounds like it’s had too much Red Bull but undeniably impressive.

Late Of The Pier ‘Fantasy Black Channel’ (Parlophone) - Super young midlands band much beloved of hip kids pile through Prince, Gary Numan, Timbaland, Bowie, Roxy, Daft Punk, prog rock and new wave angularity with ADHD delight.

John Matthias and Nick Ryan ‘Cortical Songs’ (Nonclassical) - Extremely impressive 4-movement orchestral piece generated with the help of A.I., plus remixes from Thom Yorke and chums that veer between sheer class and plinky-plonky chucking-cutlery-down-the-stairs music cliché.

Dot Rotten ‘R.I.P Young Dot’ (GPP) - While Dizzee and Wiley go pop-dance, young east end grime producer stays gritty; lyrics don’t stray much beyond combative / acquisitive cliché but delivery and production are highly advanced and quite gripping.

Digitonal ‘Save Your Light For Darker Days’ (Just Music) - String section play mainly stunningly lovely romantic themes with crackly electronica and steady trip-hop beats; some brief diversions into hippy dreariness, but not many.

Brett Anderson ‘Wilderness’ (No Label) - Sounds like “the mid-life crisis” album - piano, acoustic and string section, Wickerman folk threat, lyrics of regret - but his tunes and voice mainly carry it off.

Abba ‘Arrival’ (Polar) - Remaster of one of the finest pop albums ever made - all together now: “aaaaaAAAHAA”.

Blaktronics ‘Mechanized Soul’ (Pharub) - A perfect antidote to anyone who finds “conscious” jazz/hip-hop/nu-soul too wholemeal - sharp electronics make this moody and interesting throughout.

The Dandy Warhols ‘Earth To The Dandy Warhols’ (Beat The World) - Comedy pastiche-rock druggies still making albums for some reason - wish they’d just piss off.

Cyndi Lauper ‘Bring Ya To The Brink’ (RCA) - Hook-up with hip dance prodcuers like Scumfrog and Basement Jaxx, perfectly timed to sweep up disenchanted Madge fans; it’s not quite ‘Confessions On A Dancefloor’ but it’s damned close, and her voice is excellent.

John Baker ‘The John Baker Tapes: Rare & Unreleased Recordings 1954-1985 Volumes 1 & 2′ (Trunk) - Sonic experiments and jaunty jazz with funny noises of unassailable genius from diffident BBC Radiophonic craftsmen from the days when men in studios wore white coats.

Ragga Twins ‘Ragga Twins Step Out’ (Soul Jazz) - Though Shut Up & Dances’s backing tracks which collided hip-hop, dancehall and acid were formative in rave/hardcore, Flinty Badman and Deman Rockers’s lyrics are conscious - often anti-drug - reportage from acid house-era London; a great document of its times, plus it’s very funny and makes you dance round the kitchen to boot.

Gripper ‘A Life Of Consummate Ease’ - Stylish bar music, and I mean that in a good way: highly musical, downtempo but still groovy electro-funk-Latin-soul-breakbeat-what-have-you…

Karen P ‘Broadcasting’ (Sonar Kollektiv) - Excellent mellow mix-album of folktronica, jazzy disco and other fringe pleasures.

Jacopo Carreras ‘From Bed To Couch’ (LAN / Kompakt) - Some really iffy fidgetty electronica, but also some massive, rousing, maximal techno tracks that hark back to 90s stadium techo (Orbital, Underworld & co).

Otto Von Schirach ‘Oozing Bass Spasms’ (Cock Rock Disco) - Prolific Floridian electronic noise producer turns to booty-bass with filthy, earsplitting, hilarious consequences.

Kwame Zee ‘Fighting Dances And Dancing Fights’ (Afro Bass) - Ghanaian drum’n'bass producer brings in rappers, singers to protest Mugabe, Chinese incursions into Africa, globalisation; rousing, if occasionally over-fussy.

Geoff Soule ‘A Dialogue Between Feminine Wisdom And Masculine Uncertainty’ (Supermegacorporation) - Syd Barrett-ish fragility, jazz bass improvisations and Stereolab grooves from San Fransiscan ex-member of pop band FUCK.

Gustav ‘Verlass die Stadt’ (Chicks On Speed) - All the agit-prop, post-punk faux-naif singing and cheap drum machines you’d expect on Chicks On Speed, but with hugely sophisticated Weimar cabaret songwriting and clever glitchy twists; really rather good.

Constantines ‘Kensington Heights’ (Arts & Crafts) - Quite bizarre Canadian hybrid of Sonic Youth guitars and over-committed 70s Joe Cocker / Paul Rogers / Bruce Springsteen gravel; puzzling.

Rodriguez ‘Cold Fact’ (Light In The Attic) - Re-issue of bizarre Mexican-American theatrical counterculture-soul lost classic with a back-story to make your eyes pop; a gleaming gem of a record for anyone who’s ever loved an Arthur Lee song.

Capitol K ‘Notes From Life On The Wire With A Wrecking Ball’ (Faith And Industry) - Fifth album of multicultural indietronica from leftfield clubland perennial Kristian Craig; twee and finicky moments but also abundant fun.

Giant Sand ‘proVISIONS’ (YepRoc) - Features Isobel Campbell (as well as Neko Case and M Ward) which is no surprise because it’s as indebted to Lee Hazlewood as her albums with Mark Lanegan are; it’s as good as them, too, though.

Plush ‘Fed’ (Broken Horse) - Cult singer with huge but over-fussy showband horn and string sections sounds like he’s convinced he’s Wings-era Macca; he’s not - his songs aren’t as big as his arrangements.

Buddy Guy ‘Skin Deep’ (SonyBMG) - Ageing blues legend proves plank-spanking virtuosity, but too many songs sound like they’re from nightclub scenes in Baywatch, and parasites of the Clapton ilk attempt to feed on Buddy’s not-yet-dead body.

Mercury Rev ‘Snowflake/Midnight’ (V2) - Inveterate experimenters include more electronics than ever on their nouveau prog but don’t skimp on heartbreakingly lovely songwriting.

Yoshio Machida ‘Hypernatural #3′ (Baskaru) - Ever-excellent sound-art label gives us Japanese manipulator of found sounds into extremely delicate ambient abstractions which are excellent if you like that sort of thing (I do).

Mauxuam ‘Viceversa’ (Interchill) - Slightly clunky Italian ambient-dub with multi-layered “trippy” noises; sounds a bit outdated now in these days of dubstep and whatnot but it’s good for its genre.

Roommate ‘We Are Enchanted’ (Plug Research) - Fabulously ambitious Floyd / Talk Talk / Bowie prog “song cycle” with added electronic frills just about carries it off!

pacific! ‘Reveries’ (Half Machine) - Gothenburg duo make insanely catchy sunshine pop as only Swedes can; think ‘Together In Electric Dreams’ + ‘Pet Sounds’ + Hall & Oates - blurs the line between genius and irritant.

Tin Man ‘Lions & Tigers & Bears Oh My!’ (NR ONE) - Highly committed indie trio from Norwich who do seem to think it’s about 1983, but write songs you can sing along with and play like their lives depended on it.

Milosh ‘iii’ (!K7) - Trip-hoppy beats with Radiohead-lite falsetto singing over the top, but not nearly as awful as that sounds - after all, Radiohead could do with lightening up.

The Keyboard Choir ‘Mizen Head To Gascanane Sound’ (Brainlove) - Melodramatic, sometimes beautiful, sometimes harrowing post-rock instrumentals with lots of accordions, chimes and other layered sounds, dreamy bits and distorted crescendos.

Unbunny ‘Snow Tires’ (Affairs Of The Heart) - Classic suburban US slacker rock with that adenoidal Neil Young / Elliot Smith voice and small scale observations / big sweeping songs dichotomy that records like this seem to require, but my goodness they do it really, really well.