can’t escape the cosmic: mickey moonlight

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Jen
on July 1, 2008
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Mickey Moonlight (full title Mickey Moonlight & The Time Axis Manipulation Corporation) are Ed Banger’s new signing. That’s right, this cosmic exotica touting fella will be labelmates with all that dirty glitchy french stuff everyone’s kind of over now. So, it seems that Ed Banger are taking a new direction (at least briefly), a super space-disco direction, and the few intercepted transmissions are mighty promising.

Mickey Moonlight is Midnight Mike’s new project, and there’s some input from Zongamin (Susuma Mukai) too. Midnight Mike produced a load of Zongamin stuff in the past, and has recently been the tour DJ for Soulwax/2 Many DJs.

“Interplanetary Music” is a Sun Ra cover, the opening track from 1956 album We Travel The Spaceways. It rolls in vintage disco and comes out all retro cosmic, with layered natural vocals and the rhythmic plink plonk and wah-wah of exotica percussion.   


Mickey Moonlight - Interplanetary Music

“Music for Responsible Reprogenetics Public Service Broadcast” was composed as a short 1-minute ’sound postcard’ for Italian art magazine Uovo. It possesses an echoing lull, lowdown and tired soothing vocals.


Mickey Moonlight - Music For Responsible Reprogenetics Public Service Broadcast

As yet, this is all we have. The album is coming out in the near future, maybe in the autumn time. Skull Juice appear to have heard it recently though, so eyes peeled for more info from outer space.

forest creature

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on June 27, 2008
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Forest Creature are a duo from Sheffield. They produce something which (although I hate to describe music in such flimsy unimaginitive terms) sounds a little like Black Dice circa Miles Of Smiles playing Fuck Buttons covers. By this I mean there are colossal swathes of pulsing static and toneless fuzz, with the clicks, bleeps and clatters of Black Dice along with the droning euphoria of Fuck Buttons.

“Learning To Dance” was recorded with Patrick Derbyshire this year, and carries some of those west coast noise trademarks. However, despite the easy parallels they generate bruising viscous noise, supported by tight incessant beats and draped in the bloops of robot chit-chat, smothered with gravelly feedback.


Forest Creature - Learning To Dance

Their live performance was, I must admit, more engrossing than this, because it was louder, in an enclosed space, and therefore more intense and unforgiving. They gave me this CD for free, which was nice, and it simply must be turned up deafeningly loud. If you want to buy anything by them you can get the things (mostly on cassette) through Blackest Rainbow.

johnny lunchbreak

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Jen
on June 24, 2008
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Johnny Lunchbreak’s Appetizer/Soup’s On is yet another awesome reissue from the fantastic people at Numero Group. Like we’ve said here before, these guys are totally on it. It was released a while back, the first of the Asterisk series (catalogue number NUM-AST-1 for the geeks out there). Above is the only known picture of the band.

Johnny Lunchbreak are a vivid amalgamation of all the prevalent musical influences of their era, tuneful, a little bit raw, with all those bits and pieces of great rock ‘n’ roll acts, garage bands and sketchy pop of the 60s. They lasted for a few years in the early 70s. The band aimed at the BeeGees apparently, but were shooting squiffy, which resulted in a glorious fuzzy mixture of popular influences.


Johnny Lunchbreak - Amazing Pain

Tinsel days gets played out some evenings at Play It As It Lays. It’s got lovely rolling brash harmonies, and a gutter sweet melody.


Johnny Lunchbreak - Tinsel Days

You can, and should go spend some pennies over at Numero Group, you can’t go wrong, so splash out. (If you happen to reside in the US its free postage too.) Their blog is also rather entertaining, and holds not much relevance to the label. See recent post “Reasons I Like Working At Numero”.

bing bong borko

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Jen
on June 18, 2008
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Borko are a 7-strong band from Reykjavik Iceland (the project of Björn Kristjánsson). Celebrating Life, their most recent output, does just that. They are however, a bit silly too, on their myspace they claim they are ”co-writer of many famous songs. For example: Last Christmas, Knowing Me Knowing You and Suicide is Painless (the theme from Ghostbusters)”. The track titles include such daft titles (and lyrics to match) as “Ding Dong Kingdom” and (even better I think) “Doo Doo Doo”. However, despite the playfulness, there’s a seriousness in their sound.

The music is rusted with post-rock cymbal-heavy percussion and brass, which augments the glowing aural doodles and repeated harmonies. There are bits of messy programming and lilting melodies that smoulder like embers; dynamic and a little rough at the edges. There’s a hint of something like the playfulness of Animal Collective and some Mum in their shining innocence, but not much of either, a passing remark in “Hondo & Borko” and some looped vocals in “Spoonstabber”. The bulk is something much more mellow and quietly, intensely, euphoric.


Borko - Hondo & Borko

“Continental Love” builds high to a joyous apex, not breathing until the peak has hit. It reaches it’s crescendo four and a half minutes in, with percusssion crashing like waves on a shoreline in fading half-light. Repeated wordless vocals continue to intensify little by little, and horns come in somewhere near the back adding oomph and majesty.


Borko - Continental Love

The rest of the album is great too, you should buy it. Borko are appropriately signed to the wonderful Morr Music, a label which led me to lots of the music I like now. It is, I believe, a label of better music for people who like the Postal Service.  (But lets not start a row now). They also release on a great new Icelandic label called Kimi (which means corner). Checkitout.

awesome tapes from africa

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Jen
on June 6, 2008
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Ben and I have been on an afro-vibe for a while now. It features heavily early on in our showroom set and sets the tone beautifully, with rumbling polyrhythms and sweet bouncy melodies. Aside from many compilations and gamble purchases, one particularly impressive and fruitful source has been the Awesome Tapes From Africa blog. This week I ransacked it, and came back with some great stuff. I will give you a taste of  the best, and hopefully you’ll follow the link to gorge yourselves.

Prince Nico Mbarga’s “Sweet Mother” is considered to be one of Africa’s greatest songs (sometimes called Africa’s anthem). It sold 13 million copies. But I prefer the jollity of this one, from a tape with his own group, Rocafil Jazz. The vocals roll tousled and dynamic around loose knots wound by high electric guitar melody, springy percussion and elastic bass.


Prince Nico Mbarga & Rocafil Jazz - Aki Special

This track by (the apparently legendary? - me neither) Ghanaian Snr Eddie Donkor (also known as Kwasi Donkor) is from a cassette called Eye Banker. He plays highlife; bright yellow sunshine, synth melodies; wiggling hips with hands outstretched. Apparently the lyrics gives brotherly advice about money, women and gossip.


Snr Eddie Donkor - Kwaku Anase

This I just must post, as they are called the Allan Family. (Same spelling as me too, and although I wish we were related, I really couldnt be less Ghanaian.) It far more tribal, with pounding drums and a call-response set of vocals between the lead and a herd of others. The tightly compressed rhthms attack from all angles, at every instant, in different hues and tones, in a fast and elaborate, yet perfectly synched formation.


Allan Family - New Creation

 Take a look at more on the blog itself, and the awesome tape covers at the flickr site.

bonnie p in italian

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Jen
on June 4, 2008
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I am now a free woman. Yesterday I handed in 6000 words of my last ever anything to the ladies in the philosophy office. So after I went for booze in various locations about the city, for cocktails, beer, some food, and more beer, with a bit of folk on the side. I ended up going to see Count and Sinden. It was really bloody great, cheap vodka, good beats, it was all going swimmingly, then Wiley popped up and did “Wearing My Rolex”. The booze poured forth, and kept on going, making a good night a great night.

As a result, this morning I am delicate: I am a real person, yet fragile in my newborn state of personhood. This is perfect for now, not completely wispy and etheral, but calming with hopeful airs flowing generously in Italian vocals sung by Bonnie P…


Numero6 Feat. Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy - Da Piccolissimi Pezzi

You can get the whole Numero6 EP free from their website, which is nice of them.

loop duplicate my heart

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Ben
on June 3, 2008
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This week I’ve found two songs that rank amongst my absolute favourites this year, and both feature wonderful vocal looping that locks you in for the duration and leaves you feeling shaken and uncertain when they end.

Born Ruffians are a fantastic new band from Canada, whose quirky and skittish yet grounded and heartfelt songs have been bouncing around my headphones all week. The pop-math textures of “Foxes Mate For Life” are particularly holding my repeat button hostage. But this remix of their “I Need A Life” by Four Tet is in a different league. A conflation of his older bucolic sound with his new interest in the precision of minimal techno, it sets a series of beautiful clockwork creatures in motion, most effective of all being the cut-up and looped vocals of the Ruffians. The moment where the piano chord changes kick in on 5.21 is just perfection.


Born Ruffians - I Need A Life (Four Tet remix)

Julianna Barwick made one of my favourite songs of last year with her performance of “Dancing With Friends” for Portugal’s “Ma Fama” radio show. When performing she uses a core vocal loop that she builds other live loops around to create a swimming haze of intertwined melody. This track is from her Daytrotter session which at no point drops below absolute neck-bristling gorgeousness.


Julianna Barwick - You Were Waiting (Daytrotter session)

Listen and let the world click into place for a few minutes.

ed tracy

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Ben
on June 1, 2008
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One of the biggest (guilty?) pleasures in the music blogging world is to be the first ones to pick up on some hot new band, to be able to say I was there first. Here’s someone I’m confident will be absolutely huge in about six months or so, and I’ll get to be smug at the annual music blog dinner dance.

Ed Tracy is an acquaintance of mine through a mutual Birmingham friend. He used to DJ at our parties, and once planned to arrive via motorcycle through the front door but this dream was sadly quashed after we couldn’t find a driver. He used to play under the moniker Chopper Harris, and has been tooling around the toilet venues of London for a while. He also occasionally played live saxophone, naked, for now-defunct white 2-step/dub outfit Crack Village alongside Akira The Don and one of Ray Winstone’s female sprogs. Via a chain of command involving former members of Frankie Goes To Hollywood and Prefab Sprout his demo got him signed to Parlophone. He’s just been recording his debut album in L.A. with Greg Kurstin (who’s produced Lily Allen, Peaches and Kylie) and Rick Nowels (Dido, Madonna, Tupac and perhaps most impressively Belinda Carlisle’s “Heaven Is A Place On Earth”).

His stuff is classic British guitar pop with a creamy layer of white soul, and vocals that chew their way happily around juicy non-sequiters and vaguely slapstick imagery. Think the more carefree bits of XTC, the madcap yet vulnerable energy of Dexy’s and the unashamed heart on sleeve of the aforementioned Sprout. This is one of his earlier efforts with some very nice guitar-hero soloing, and a catchiness that ruled my summer about three years back. Check out his myspace for some of his excellent new songs (including “Too Much Money” which WILL be #1), and his blog featuring tales of Keith Flint eating apple crumble amongst other topics.


Ed Tracy - Foxes Of New Cross

praise him with the blast of the horn

Published
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Ben
on May 25, 2008
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Coming out next month is one of the strangest and most beautiful records I’ve heard in a long while. Entitled “Hear, O Israel”, it’s a recording of a Friday night Jewish prayer ceremony in 1968, set to jazz. So you have the likes of Herbie Hancock on piano and Thad Jones on trumpet, and they’re playing some flowing modern jazz, and then a rabbi starts intoning prayers over the top. And some female singers start warbling in Hebrew. It’s even more amazing than that sounds.

It was composed by a 17-year-old kid called Jonathan Klein, who got to performing it and somehow managed to recruit this dream team for the recording. It was privately released, only available by mail order, and sold somewhere in the region of 400 copies. And has never been released on CD until now, after Jonny Trunk, cratedigger, colossal music nerd and owner of the estimable Trunk Records, got a hold of a copy. I interviewed Jonny about all this recently (much to the chagrin of Trunk-lover Jen), and he told me that he heard that it was because Jonathan’s mother was having an affair with Hancock that it all came together. I can just picture Jonathan bugging him as he tries to get his trousers on and get out.

Here’s the second track, “Matovu - Bor’chu”, which gives a good indication of its totally unique Laurel Canyon via Delancy Street female vocals, and the post-bop, tethered-freedom feel of Hancock and company. And I throw the minute-long ”Final Amen” in there to tempt you with that rabbi-jazz I mentioned. Would make a lovely beginning/end to a mix CD as well. If you like that, then just before it on the record there’s a ten-minute track with Rabbi David Davis waxing lyrical about him upstairs that is mindblowing. The whole thing is mindblowing. Get it on the new subsidiary of Trunk Records, imaginatively entitled Jonny Records, here. On sale from June 9th I believe.


Herbie Hancock, Thad Jones et al - Matovu - Bor’chu


Herbie Hancock, Thad Jones et al - Final Amen

You can read my interview with Jonny in next month’s Flux magazine.

can’t go halfway: eat steak

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Jen
on May 22, 2008
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Wading through the quagmire of non-content, simulation and the intricacies of Aristotelian metaphysics, I find myself cheered by the jangly bounce and soulful groove of tracks like these.

“Can’t Go Halfway” reminds me that I really should keep on reading, or I’ll never get anywhere. It is from the Numero Group’s Cult Cargo Belize City Boil Up CD. Dear Aristotle, ‘you give me 50 cents when I need a dollar, you can’t go halfway, you got to go all the way, to have my love.’ It has a perfect reggae hook, bouncy and fresh, quick and light.  


The Harmonettes - Can’t Go Halfway

“If I Had My Way” is about eating steak everyday. If I work hard enough, one day I might be able to do this too. Not that I would, I’d just like the option. This is from Boscoe’s self-titled album, which has also been re-released by Numero Group. The rolling apex is great, built by the call-call repetition of the title, the slow brass, bass guitars, and the final breakdown of the answer when it finally comes.


Boscoe - If I Had My Way

Numero Group are really fabulous. You can find their stuff here. If you are rich I would reccommend buying the subscription to listen to whilst eating your steak. Whatever it turns out to be, it’ll be great.

No doubt more Numero Group will wind its way onto this blog in the months to come. I’ve still never told you about Jonny Lunchbreak!! How could I?!