Tag: Album of the month

Posted in Album of the Month

DECEMBER: Young Fathers: Dead

Posted on by misterstory

young-fathers-theonepointeight

Can we forget about the Mercury? Probably not but I fear this may descend into a critique of the Mercury decision rather than critique of a piece of music. Anyway, let’s have a roll and see how this works out?

For me, this is an album of 11x 3 min pop tracks (no song under 2 min 50, none over 3 min 51). I am sure we will debate the word ‘pop’ as I think at least one of us will struggle with that definition? I would argue that you can’t have as many hooks in one album of 3 min tracks and it not be a ‘pop’ album.  It doesn’t matter  that the group choose to deliberately sabotage their own ‘pop’ credentials in dark, dystopian, discordant, choral chants, nose-diving bass lines and berating beats.

This isn’t easy listening. Having said that I found it effortless to get into (not bragging I just think this ticks loads of my boxes). But I understand that most people find the opposite to be true. I’ve recently gone back (album released in Jan 2014) and read loads of reviews of this album and most say that it is difficult to penetrate but massively rewarding when you do. I always bang on about ‘when’ I can listen to music and this is a distracting listen that really requires you to engage in its finer points. Background music this is not. Tunes to play while working? Nope. Driving, public transport etc, Yep. I listen to it most when training.

Much has been made about the multi-cultural make up of the band which all feels a little ‘Mercury’ to me until you start listening to the lyrics and picking through the subject matter.  ‘Ak47 take my brethren straight to heaven’ is pure hip hop cliche in an LA accent but it appears more impactful and evocative in an African (Young Fathers = Liberian, Nigerian. Scottish) accent and preceded by the imagery conjured up in the opening verses of ‘No Way’, the albums opening track. If you like this album then I would suggest spending some time with the lyrics of these tracks.

http://genius.com/artists/Young-fathers

I think this album avoids the ‘worthiness’ which it could have created with its multi-ethnic (Scottish included) influences and a lyrical topics. It feels like all of the constituent parts (ethnic background: check / socially conscious lyrics: check / eclectic influences: check) make for a cliche-ridden horror show but at each opportunity to fall into that hipster trap is swerves either lyrically or sonically and avoids the cliche. As if sat in the studio they felt it a track was getting a bit too nice so they chucked in a massive tribal rhythm and discordant drone to scare off the ‘wrong crowd’.

Who does this sound like? Anti-Pop Consortium, TV on the Radio, Shabazz Palaces, New Flesh, Saul Williams … New Fathers?As mentioned before this ticks loads of my boxes and I love all of the artists listed above (Shabazz excluded – sorry David may be I need to try that one again?).

So, similar to FKA Twigs, at the point of winning the Mercury, they’d only sold 3,000 units. Its now at least 3,004. But does this matter? Sales does not correlate to quality. Just look at the Cinema Box Office.

Brothers, your thoughts?

Posted in Album of the Month

OCTOBER: Wonder Where We Land by SBTRKT

Posted on by David Allison

Funny how an artist can make something that doesn’t grab you, and then make something else that isn’t so different – and it blows you away.

I *liked* the first album – or rather, I *loved* the singles and another track or two, and I thought the rest of it was a little undercooked. I expected this album to be a re-run of that experience – I *love* the Ezra Koenig tune and the Sampha single, and on first listen, I had a feeling of deja vu. Nice, inventive, soulful, but downbeat and – yup, maybe a little undercooked.

Wow, was I wrong? Every single time I played the album, it opened up a little more. Until I couldn’t stop playing it, and the songs started ringing round my brain even when I wasn’t listening to them.

This record is such a huge step forward from his debut. He was always clearly insanely talented, but he’s honed that talent very quickly, and this genuinely feels like an artist firing on all cylinders. And like all musicians of any note, he seems to create a sound that makes you wonder where the fuck it even came from.

What I like about it is that he doesn’t feel like a guy immersed in some hipster culture or trying to create something to do with fashion. It is *soul* music in the broadest sense. I knew nothing about the guy until I read this interview:

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/oct/02/sbtrkt-wonder-where-we-land-interview

– and it really informed my listening of this album. He does sound like an outsider, someone who’s willing to try anything out and see where it leads. A song like Look Away, featuring the Chairlift singer, could easily come across as repetitive or moribund – instead it feels insistent and melancholy. Higher, the Raury track, feels a bit like a slap in the face the first few times you hear it, coming as it does quite early in the tracklist. But again, it became something quite different after a few listens. He sure as hell knows how to get the best of Jessie Ware, an artist I *really* like but who can easily drift a little into bland territory without the right material. Best of all is the album’s closer, Voices in My Head, a terrifyingly real drug psychosis song delivered with paranoid genius by ASAP Ferg.  Again, you struggle to imagine how a collaboration like that came about. And then I read this:

http://rock.genius.com/Sbtrkt-voices-in-my-head-lyrics

And this kind of sums up what I love about this. He’s a collaborator – a proper one, who can bring out the best in everyone he works with – but one who at the same time has a complete musical vision.

This, Brothers, is undoubtedly one of my albums of the year. I look forward to your thoughts.

Posted in Album of the Month

April Album Of The Month: Space Dimension Controller – Welcome To Mikrosector-50

Posted on by GuyHornsby

The first time I came across Space Dimension Controller was at ADE in 2012, and I honestly knew his stuff only by name. I knew he was from Ireland, so it’s fair to say that I was a bit thrown by what was coming out of the speakers: the sound of a throaty deep black voice over a Prince-like groove. I had to stand there for a few minutes to see what was going on, but it became clear he was doing a live effected vocal, and it kind of blew me away.

Come through to 2014, and I’ve finally got the album after months of being recommended it, and what an odd, strange, brilliant, crazy beast it is. A concept (ugh) album of sorts, with the ‘Space Dimension Controller’ a futuristic time traveller arriving back on his home planet to odd goings on. It sounds preposterous and daft, but then you realise the guy is in his early 20s, and he’s making music that sounds like a melting pot of Prince, Rick James, Mike Oldfield, Afrika Bambaata, Josh Wink and you start to realise the guy has chops.

On top of that, there’s something quite endearing about an album that reminds me of some of the semi-B-movie films of my youth (think The Running Man and Total Recall). It’s a bizarre package for a 20-something Irishman to make, but I’ve not heard anything like it in the last ten years, and the more I listen, the more it grows on me.

So, here’s April’s album of the month. Listen, enjoy (I hope) and comment away….

Posted in Album of the Month

January 2014: Lorde’s Pure Heroine

Posted on by GuyHornsby

 

So, I’m late to Lorde’s album, only by a couple of months, but it’s been worth the wait. The hype’s been around for months and months, following her single, Royals, earlier in the year, which I’d realised had permeated my brain thanks to the peerless 6Music, which seems to sow the seeds of records I like without me even realising it on a weekly basis (see also: Midlake).
Let’s look at the facts: Lorde is Ella Maria Lani Yelich-O’Connor (yeah, Lorde’s easier, isn’t it?), a 17-year old New Zealander from Auckland. She first came to prominence with her Love Club EP back in the second half of last year (when she was still 15!), and this album was produced by local Joel Little. What’s it like? Well, it’s very modern electronic pop, if we’re going to get all genre-y. You can see the influences – she’s often cited James Blake’s sparseness – and it’s pretty stripped back, with clever, barbed lyrics, very much showing a love for hip-hop, but putting it in the prism of a girl that, at the time, had never left her home country, it’s pretty startling that it’s actually written by someone that’s tucked away in the end of the southern hemisphere. And that’s not being patronising, it’s just that it’s an unlikely result of such a situation, especially in terms of her age (one lyric on the album states “pretty soon I’ll be on my first plane”, which says it all).
But it’s a great example of lyrics and songs that a 25-year old over here may have written, but likely with songwriters and other producers behind her, as soon as the hype machine took hold. While those not in the know (or too lazy) dismissed her as another record-company construct, she’s the opposite, arriving as a pretty fully-formed artist, most likely a product and a benefit of the cultural or musical isolation of sorts. There’s hints of stuff like James Blake, Massive Attack’s more Spartan arrangements, Lana Del Rey’s languid style (which she’s also stated as an influence) and most obviously the xx (minus the guitars). Most of the album’s dubby pop, but there are a few dancefloor moments too. And there’s a good slab of irony in there, which sings to my ears. Having been to NZ a few times – and this is no slight, as it’s an amazing place – the ennui that also sits throughout the album isn’t faked. Small-town life out there is pretty dry when you’re near to Auckland, let alone coming from London.
I’ve only had a week or so with this album, so my opinions aren’t fully formed yet either, but it’s clear that Lorde’s a precociously talented artist. There’s a bit of a dip in the middle of the album, but then considering that I was busy drinking cider and scooting around Surrey in my Mini at 17, and she’s writing music like this, I can’t really get my head around just what it must take to do that at that age. And most of all, it’s refreshing to have someone emerge like this from an unlikely location, without the taint of record companies and hype or being pushed to work with producers or use songs written for her. Only time will tell how she develops, and one would hope that, while she absorbs the expanding world around her, it doesn’t affect her ability to do what she does.
She’s touring now, especially in the States, where I think her songs will go down as well as they do in the UK, and I can’t wait for her next album.
Enjoy, brothers!