Author: GuyHornsby

Slightly late brothers, but the December album is Josh Rouse – Nashville. It came out in 2005, and I got alerted to it by my girlfriend at the time. It was something I’d have never really gone for without guidance, but don’t be fooled by the title, despite the odd steel guitar, it’s not a country album. It’s just a pitch-perfect slice of songwriting that tugs at the heartstrings. It grows with each listen, and it’s written distinctly with vinyl in mind, even when I had the CD it was listed as ‘side A/B’.

It had some emotional resonance with me, as it straddled the breakup of the relationship that brought it to me at the time, but that’s years in the past, and its effect hasn’t lessened, even though the association to that time’s now in the distant past. It’s also something I’d go – knowing the Brothers’ cd collections (and how hard it was to select something outside them) – as far as to say may just not fit for you, but if it does, it’ll be worth it. That’s the risk with new music. 99% of the albums I like, one of us has, so this is something different (it was between this and a Ben Folds Five album, but I chose this as it was more rewarding in the long term for me).

It sounds pretty timeless. It could’ve been made in 1975, or 1995, and it’s rare to find a modern album like that that hasn’t aged at all. I saw him perform it live in 2005, and it was just as powerful.

So, listen, digest, critique, and lay it all back on me. Only a cold soul could fail to be moved by Sad Eyes. An absolutely heartbreaking record.

Here’s one of the album’s lighter moments, My Love Has Gone.

While I know there’s a distinct love of the electronic on here, we’ve not really had an out-and-out electronic album up for the Brothers yet. And I’ve come across one this summer that I’m really really enjoying. It’s not a whack-you-over-the-head one like Justice or Daft Punk, nor is it uber-cool soundcapes a la Shed or Something Else. But I’ve been a fan of Simian Mobile Disco for a while, but never delved too much into their music up to now, not in album form. They’ve done a pop album a while back that had some intersting tracks on it, but appalled fans of their dancefloor stuff. Then they did Delicacies, which was the opposite end of the scale, and a bit too growly for me.

But James Ford and Jas Shaw are two lovers of analogue, and that I like very much. They’re two endearlingly nerdy, very English guys, and when I saw them at Sonar talking about the album and their music, it was hard not to get drawn into their own take on it. Jas Shaw’s pet project is a wardrobe-sized modular synth, which they take out on the road at times, and live, they’re actually an outfit that really can claim to create pretty much everything on the hoof, far away from laptop/ableton jockeys. Their music’s across the whole spectrum, but listening to Unpatterns, there’s a proper actual knowledge of the past that comes through and colours everything they do. The music is warm, plump, punchy, solid….. they know what they’re doing, basically.

So, enjoy. I didn’t get blown away by this, but I didn’t want to be. I just wanted a collection of electronic tracks that crossed the genres that were made by people that gave a fuck and that wanted people to listen as well as just dance.

While you’re there, I highly recommend their RA Exchange interview, here:

http://www.residentadvisor.net/podcast-episode.aspx?exchange=101

And not just because I was sat there, hungover, nodding, all the way through.