We’re sorry - we’re going on hiatus

Jen — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 21:47:51 +0000

Hello all. Due to intense work pressures on both the Ben side and the Jen side of things we’ve decided to go on holiday from Play It As It Lays until the end of May, when we’ll be back, we promise. And we’ll be better. If you’re in London you can also come hear us playing records at the King’s Cross Social Club in the near future. Dates will be on the right as soon as we confirm.

In the meantime, we’d recommend:

See you when the sun comes out!

Ben and Jen x

these new puritans

Ben — Sun, 31 Jan 2010 16:45:08 +0000

Listening back to These New Puritans’ Beat Pyramid ahead of getting their much-praised new one, I’ve been mainlining this song for days. Snotty but oblique, full of anger struggling to find a name and target. With the words “And if there is a God”, and the yelping reach towards that top note, clarity seems to be coming together, only to vanish, leaving just a recitation of a telephone number without end as the song closes. Violent, empty and brilliant. This is the earlier (?) rougher version which just amps up the nastiness.

These New Puritans - Elvis (rough version)

anothony ’shake’ shakir

Jen — Mon, 25 Jan 2010 21:13:54 +0000

Three discs, £15. Not bad. The case to Detroit techno legend Anthony ‘Shake’ Shakir’s Frictionalism 1994-2009 is a sleek, paperback-sized jewel case. But inside it’s a record geek’s nightmare. The 3 discs are stacked directly on top of one another. Vulnerable - waiting for that one bit of grit to sneak in between them and ruin the party for everyone.

The best description I’ve seen is in The Wire, who said: “he finds a space for the foward momentum of Techno to coexist with the rotational torque of disco”, and while it’s much heavier on the techno than the disco, that’s far better than my own cack-handed blathering would be.

It’s hard to pick tracks, especially when I’ve only had three days with it. But it’s only going to get more difficult. The first is the opener, from 1996, really has that twisting torque thing going on. The micro-drop half way through The Fake Left, Go Right Plan from 2000, is classic. The third, from 2002, has addictive little twisting filters.

Get me that worrying jewel-case set too

Anthony ‘Shake’ Shakir - Mood Swing

Anthony ‘Shake’ Shakir - The Fake Left, Go Right Plan

Anthony ‘Shake’ Shakir - Frictional Beat No 5

mux mool

Jen — Mon, 18 Jan 2010 20:54:56 +0000

Since the 20JFG Darkstar 2009 mix I’ve had this on heavy rotation. Lazily, evidently, as now we’re three weeks into 2010, and then guardian music beats me and names Mux Mool new band/artist of the day. Serves me right for languishing in food, booze, and snow up north for so long.

The remix of Rhythm is a Dancer is woozy and chewy. I want him to rework some other dancefloor cheese too, to turn it into some hazy basement groove, all sloppy with dripping edges; sounds to roll your hips to with heavy lids closed.

Snap - Rhythm is a Dancer (Mux Mool remix)

I decided I won’t be doing a best of the decade to go alongside Ben’s. 10 years ago, I was 13. At 13 I still hadn’t made the switch from Boyzone to Papa Roach, and so really, there wouldn’t be much difference between the albums of my life and my albums of the decade.

courtesy of u-tern

Ben — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 17:56:37 +0000

Ever since hearing his fantastic remix of “Trilogy” by Kelis (who incidentally has spent the week working with La Roux and slagging off PETA), I’ve been following DJ U-Tern and his One Day Later… blog. It’s a consistently ass-compelling selection of nu-disco, electro, house and vintage boogie, with high quality vinyl rips, and as a special new year’s treat, zipped up collections of extremely sick disco classics. A track off it here from 80s Dutch three-piece Mai Tai: heavily artificial synth-funk conjured from hairspray, rayon and the sassily righteous fury of the wronged woman flanked by her BFFs. Like an outrageously overproduced En Vogue. Stunning. Apparently a UK top ten hit back in’t day! And this Boney M re-edit is so taut and lean it’s like it’s been to some sequinned boot camp. Reassessment clearly necessary.

Mai Tai - History

Boney M - Ma Bakes (’Ma Baker’ re-edit)

And there’s this One Day Later classic, which I always bring DJing but is too peacockingly strutting and camp for the well-heeled gastropub I play at. Like Eddie Murphy doing “Party All The Time” in drag with a mustachioed Italian backing band, at least in my mind.

Bobby Nunn - Sexy Sassy

silver futures

Ben — Thu, 14 Jan 2010 20:34:51 +0000

Found this awesome cassette collaboration between Etienne Pierre Duguay of Real Estate and Mark McGuire of Emeralds lurking in a ectoplasm-splattered corner of the internet, entitled From The Swamp Rot Rises My Babies Dreams. Shimmering guitar tones and new age synth pads seep out through muslin-wrapped fuzz, for 10 shamelessly blissed-out droning minutes at a time. Here’s Transmutations, cut out and amplified from the much longer tape side. You could maybe ask this man or this man for a copy, but let’s face it, they’re probably all gone, so go here for the whole thing.

Silver Futures - Transmutations

sentimentality and keith jarrett

Ben — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 18:57:12 +0000

Keith Jarrett - The Koln Concert, Part I

One of my Christmas presents was The Koln Concert by Keith Jarrett, the biggest-selling solo jazz recording of all time with 3.5m copies, and something I’d managed to have never heard. With my diet of improv restricted to tentative forays into the spastic, plastic brilliance of the East London jazz scene, Jarrett’s performance was not what I considered improv to be: psychologically probing, occasionally hostile. Instead it was florid, evangelistic, and deeply sentimental. And I mean that as the highest praise.

If you’re as unfamiliar with the performance as I was, it’s of two half-hour piano improvisations, with a shorter encore to finish up. Recorded in 1975, it apparently became a post-hippy, pre-punk staple in university dorms, a crossover hit in a way that no other improvisatory music had been. Jarrett works from a series of chords and motifs, and pushes air through them until they unfurl in dazzling runs, or allows them to get into soft-rocking or faintly ragtime grooves. The mood is of hopeful romance, and of passionate yet tenderly-voiced beliefs. The two most immediate reference points to these ears are the patriotic vistas of Aaron Copeland, and the white-bread soul of the Doobie Brothers. It is, like all sentimental music, profoundly uncool.

Something I wondered about while listening was what critics and players would make of it if it was performed today. I’m sure many would see it as gauche or misguided, but really, in a global music scene where difficulty and anger are now much-explored, a truly sentimental performance is one of the few radical gestures left…

By sentimental performance I mean a transmission of the nakedly, dangerously positive emotions - adoration, pride, faith. It’s easy to splatter your sax or guitar across an audience; the pummelling malevolence of much of the avant garde, from power electronics to improv freakouts, may be thrilling, but these days it’s essentially conservative. Sentimentality on the other hand requires one of the most skilful balancing acts in music - avoiding both irony and overcooked emotion.

Pop has trodden heavily into both of these traps. You can never be sure whether the apparently sentimental likes of Hot Chip and LCD Soundsystem truly mean it; while you can never be in doubt of the monolithic, lumphammer emotions of Westlife or Snow Patrol. The wordless Jarrett obviously has an advantage, as he can give the impression of flying without wings without actually yelling it from a stool, but pop has nevertheless forged some of the most artful and effective sentimentalists: Bing Crosby, the Ink Spots, the Beach Boys, Joni Mitchell, k.d. lang, Mark Kozalek, Lambchop’s Kurt Wagner, Jens Lekman. You could even argue that the new loved-up strain of post-dubstep bass music, from Joy Orbison, Mount Kimbie et al, is effective because of its refreshing sentimentality after the frowning years since 2-step died.

Nostalgia too is hugely sentimental, and it has been plumbed heavily recently by Julian Lynch, Ducktails, Washed Out and the rest of the American underground hypnagogic gang. Their childlike jams call back to you from the 1980s, flanked by He-Man and Castlevania. But despite their often affecting music, it’s a bit of a cop-out compared with Jarrett - the big challenge is to ground your sentimentality in the here and now, which Jarrett, in using improvisation, does absolutely.

It takes balls to be truly sentimental, to properly do justice to your own emotions; it’s the very lack of balls in twee indie-pop, the underlying self-loathing, that makes it the worst of all failed sentimentality. Yeats described it as “fooling yourself”, but being sentimental is actually having the courage not to flinch at white-hot feelings. And to feed those feelings back into performance, as Jarrett once did in Cologne, is music’s boldest manoeuvre.

kurt vile live

Ben — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 23:02:25 +0000

Last year I had an epic and still somewhat ongoing obsession with Kurt Vile’s “Beach On The Moon”, which saw me listen to absolutely nothing else on my iPod for days at a time, addicted to its Balearic saltiness and free-associative musings. And now I’m now hooked on the live recordings Chocolate Bobka recently posted of Vile playing an acoustic set in Washington DC.

Vile is the master of the heavy downstroke, big mind-filling chords that punctuate his songs and tie their fabric tight; he also lets them breathe out again with impulsive but steady chord shifts, and of course his brilliant vocals, all Dylan street-shaman rambling and high-school sniping. There are gorgeous little details too, like the faint arpeggios behind the steady listlessness of “My Best Friends (Don’t Pass This)”, and when he gets fixed into a groove you feel like he’s hovering on the edge of the spiritual planes cruised over by the likes of Fahey and Rose, before shrugging and deciding against it. Get the whole awesome set here.

Kurt Vile - My Best Friends (Don’t Even Pass This) (live at DNA Test Fest, Washington DC, 28/4/09)

Kurt Vile - It’s Alright (?) (live at DNA Test Fest, Washington DC, 28/4/09)

ben’s album of the decade: lambchop - nixon

Ben — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 15:41:02 +0000

It was a tough call between this and the Strokes’ first album, which I danced to at my school leavers’ ball, throughout university, in house parties beyond and even at a friend’s wedding this month, and I know I’ll be dancing round my residential care home to. They reminded us that traditional cool signifiers are still the coolest - cigarettes, hair, leather, denim, staring, New York. And they made them human with a faint undertow of desperately wanting all the uncool human things - acceptance, friendship, love. And all with sensational, sneer-resistant songs. I deeply, deeply love it, and it will certainly provoke the most vivid Proustian rushes in the future.

But Lamchop’s Nixon still has the edge for me. Discarded by a family I babysat for aged 15 because the singer “couldn’t sing”, this is a seemingly bespoke album, designed to exactly my specifications. Unapologetically sentimental, with Disney strings and last-dance guitars, and a man ruminating cryptic American poetry across gutteral mumbles, tender baritone and cr0oning falsetto. Nixon’s world is the obtuse American bleakness of Carver tempered and given meaning by the happy stoicism of Garrison Keillor; it’s the sound of the observer falling in love and becoming observed. Though not without difficultly: take the boozing couple in Nashville Parent, and the freaky American Gothic of the last two tracks, which bring it to a disturbing and brilliant end.

Lambchop - Nashville Parent

Lambchop - What Else Could It Be?

It’s a completely realised masterpiece, whose naked vulnerability and twisted humanity is checked and consoled by immaculate, full-bloom music. Buy it.

Check below for the rest of my favourite albums of the noughties…

1. Lambchop - Nixon
2. The Strokes - Is This It
3. Cee-Lo - Cee-Lo Green…Is The Soul Machine
4. Interpol - Turn On The Bright Lights
5. Joanna Newsom - Ys
6. The Rapture - Echoes
7. The Sea And Cake - Everybody
8. Arcade Fire - Funeral
9. Aloe Blacc - Shine Through
10. Radiohead - Kid A

11. Dirty Projectors - Bitte Orca
12. Phoenix - United
13. Metro Area - Metro Area
14. Bonnie “Prince” Billy - The Letting Go
15. Kings Of Convenience - Riot On An Empty Street
16. Delia Gonzalez and Gavin Russom - The Days Of Mars
17. Ricardo Villalobos - Fabric 36
18. Yo La Tengo - And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out
19. Bon Iver - For Emma, Forever Ago
20. Wilco - Yankee Hotel Foxtrot

21. Cat Power - You Are Free
22. Fleet Foxes - Fleet Foxes
23. At The Drive-In - Relationship Of Command
24. The Knife - Silent Shout
25. Mos Def - Black On Both Sides
26. Broken Social Scene - You Forgot It In People
27. Jim O’Rourke - Insignificance
28. The Notwist - Neon Golden
29. Boards Of Canada - In A Beautiful Place Out In The Country
30. Outkast - Stankonia

31. The Libertines - Up The Bracket
32. Jamie Lidell - Jim
33. Arve Henriksen - Strjon
34. Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavilion
35. Saint Etienne - Sound Of Water
36. Primal Scream - XTRMNTR
37. Foals - Antidotes
38. Ryan Adams - Cold Roses
39. Bird By Snow - Sky
40. Romanthony - R. Hide In Plain Site

41. The Avalanches - Since I Left You
42. Maximo Park - A Certain Trigger
43. Clipse - Hell Hath No Fury
44. Grizzly Bear - Yellow House
45. Jens Lekman - Night Falls Over Kortedala
46. The Bug - London Zoo
47. Fennesz Sakamoto - Cendre
48. The Microphones - The Glow, Pt. 2
49. Godspeed You Black Emperor! - Lift Yr Skinny Fists Like Antennas To Heaven
50. Junior Boys - Last Exit

ben’s big noughties list

Ben — Wed, 30 Dec 2009 23:33:49 +0000

Like all massive nerds and men, I like a good list. So I’ve spent literally hours compiling my favourite 200 tracks of the decade, while my body cries out unheeded for post-Christmas exercise. It’s after the jump if you’re interested, but first here’s a few downloads of tunes from it that haven’t been featured on any list I’ve seen, but should have been.

First this, from Tortoise. The inquisitive child of a riff, the porno-soundtrack rhythm guitar, the splattering drums, the hip hop breakdown - it’s all perfect.

Tortoise - Monica

Next is this hugely underrated bit of driving microhouse (is that still a term?), with lupine howling and precambrian utterances coming from a boat off San Antonio.

Black Dice - Smiling Off (Luomo remix)

Copied in beefy 320kbps quality from the 7″ is Hot Chip’s alternate take on “Boy from School”, with Morodery undulations, frantic New Order guitars and a gutpunching bass drop after the breakdown.

Hot Chip - Boy From School (Maida Vale version)

One of the greatest recommendations I ever received from John Peel is this from Laura Cantrell - playing from a prep-kitchen radio, this country ballad had a melody and elegantly resigned sorrow that left me with eyes moister than any onions could provoke.

Laura Cantrell - Two Seconds

Brooding clouds, Paul Van Dyk cheese stabs, IDM clattering, and, oh yes, a sax solo freakout running through the whole thing. Fake tan and afrocentric beards collide with demented results.

Laurent Garnier - The Man With The Red Face

Ty is tainted somewhat by the dread hand of the backpacker hip hop fan, which does him a major disservice. Two streams of consciousness rage through a weed fug, with moist-eyed overdriven guitar soloing bleeding its heart everywhere.

Ty - The Nonsense

And so here’s the countdown (or rather countup), with only one track per artist for variety’s sake…

1. Daft Punk - One More Time
2. The Rapture - House of Jealous Lovers
3. Godspeed You Black Emperor! - Storm, Pt. 1
4. Phoenix - Too Young
5. Gillian Welch - Revelator
6. Booka Shade - Mandarine Girl
7. Tortoise - Monica
8. Strokes - Last Nite
9. Candi Staton - His Hands
10. Aaliyah - Try Again

11. Glass Candy - Rolling Down The Hills (demo version)
12. MGMT - Electric Feel
13. Bloc Party - Banquet
14. Black Dice - Smiling Off (Luomo remix)
15. Arcade Fire - Rebellion (Lies)
16. Ciara - Promise
17. Low - California
18. Joan As Police Woman - Eternal Flame
19. Sebastian Tellier - La Ritournelle
20. My Morning Jacket - One Big Holiday (live @ Okonokos)

21. Battles - Atlas
22. Band Of Horses - The Funeral
23. Outkast - Hey Ya!
24. Dirty Projectors - Stillness Is The Move
25. Hot Chip - Boy From School (Maida Vale version)
26. Grizzly Bear - Colorado
27. Together - So Much Love To Give
28. Missy Elliott - Get Ur Freak On
29. Justice - Waters of Nazareth
30. The Libertines - Don’t Look Back Into The Sun

31. Animal Collective - Fireworks
32. Amerie - 1 Thing
33. Nathan Fake - The Sky Was Pink (Holden remix)
34. Bon Iver - Skinny Love
35. At The Drive-In - One Armed Scissor
36. The Juan Maclean - Give Me Every Little Thing
37. Wilco - Jesus, etc.
38. Felix Da Housecat - Madame Hollywood (feat. Miss Kittin)
39. Kurt Vile - Beach on the Moon
40. Modest Mouse - Float On

41. Arthur Russell - Springfield (DFA remix)
42. Jens Lekman - Kanske Ar Jag Kar I Dig
43. M.I.A. - Paper Planes
44. 50 cent - In Da Club
45. Black Dice - Cone Toaster
46. Laurent Garnier - The Man With The Red Face
47. Excepter - The Punjab
48. Gold Chains - Rock the Parti
49. Gang Gang Dance - House Jam
50. Delia Gonzalez and Gavin Russom - Relevee (Carl Craig remix)

51. The Microphones - I Want Wind To Blow
52. SebastiAn - Walkman (Werol Alkman edit)
53. Noze - Remember Love
54. Lambchop - Nashville Parent
55. The Walkmen - The Rat
56. The Coral - Dreaming of You
57. Ricardo Villalobos - Fizheuer Zieheuer
58. Les Savy Fav - The Sweat Descends
59. Dr. Dre - Still D.R.E.
60. Cat Power - The Greatest

61. Badly Drawn Boy - Once Around The Block
62. The Killers - Mr Brightside
63. TV On The Radio - Wolf Like Me
64. Rubies - I Feel Electric (feat. Feist) (Tiedye remix)
65. Destroyer - European Oils
66. Richard Swift - Would You
67. Babybird - Back Together
68. Paul Woolford - Erotic Discourse
69. Test Icicles - Circle Square Triangle (James Ford remix)
70. !!! - Me and Giuliani Down By the School Yard

71. Cassie - Me and U
72. Romathony - Wreck
73. Theo Parrish - Falling Up (Carl Craig remix)
74. DJ Kaos -Love The Night Away (Tiedye remix)
75. Yo La Tengo - Our Way To Fall
76. Ben Kweller - Falling
77. Royksopp - What Else Is There? (Thin White Duke remix)
78. Holy Ghost! - Hold On
79. HEALTH - Perfect Skin
80. Out Hud - It’s For You

81. Julianna Barwick - Dancing With Friends (live on Ma Fama)
82. The Chemical Brothers - Star Guitar
83. M Craft - You Are The Music
84. Mclusky - To Hell With Good Intentions
85. Radio Slave - Modena
86. Interpol - Obstacle 1
87. Hercules And Love Affair - Blind (feat. Antony)
88. Kanye West - Slow Jamz (feat Jamie Foxx and Twista)
89. Watussi - If All We Had Was Love
90. Kate Bush - A Coral Room

91. Ex-Otago - Rhythm of the Night
92. The Sleepy Jackson - Rain Falls For Wind
93. Gnarls Barkley - Crazy
94. Laura Cantrell - Two Seconds
95. J Dilla - Stop!
96. Klaxons - Golden Skans
97. Golden Silvers - True Romance
98. Feist - 1234
99. UGK - International Player’s Anthem (feat. Outkast)
100. Alphabeat - Fascination

101. Born Ruffians - I Need A Life (Four Tet remix)
102. These New Puritans - Navigate Navigate (Loving Hand remix)
103. John Legend - P.D.A. (We Just Don’t Care)
104. Frode Haltli - Jag Haver Ingen Karare
105. Hope Sandoval - Suzanne
106. Midlake - Head Home
107. …And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead - Relative Ways
108. Bonnie ”Prince” Billy - Strange Form of Life
109. Adele - Hometown Glory
110. Arch M - 21^st Union

111. Nine Inch Nails - The Hand That Feeds
112. Peter Bjorn and John - Young Folks
113. Jack Penate - Tonight’s Today
114. The Sea And Cake - Too Strong
115. Sound Team - In The Dark No One Can Hear You Sweat
116. Sam Amidon - Saro
117. Ryan Adams - This House Is Not For Sale
118. Clipse - Trill
119. The Bravery - An Honest Mistake
120. Gossip - Standing in the Way of Control (Soulwax edit)

121. Lindstrom - Another Station
122. Fennesz - Endless Summer
123. DJ Shadow - You Can’t Go Home Again
124. System Of A Down - Chop Suey!
125. King Khan and the Shrines - Welfare Bread
126. Franz Ferdinand - Take Me Out
127. Ty - The Nonsense
128. Cody Chestnutt - Look Good In Leather
129. R Kelly - Ignition
130. Doves - Black And White Town

131. Justus Kohncke - Timecode
132. Spektrum - Kinda New (Tiefschwarz remix)
133. Coldplay - Talk (original version)
134. Rihanna - Umbrella
135. Valet - Kehaar
136. King Biscuit Time - I Walk The Earth
137. Alan Braxe - Intro
138. Alice Smith - Love Endeavour (Maurice Fulton remix)
139. The Bug - Poison Dart (feat. Warrior Queen)
140. Spoon - You Got Yr Cherry Bomb

141. DNTEL - (This is) The Dream of Evan and Chan (feat. Ben Gibbard)
142. LCD Soundsystem - Losing My Edge
143. Digitalism - Pogo
144. David Banner - Play
145. Broadcast - Come On Let’s Go
146. The Futureheads - Hounds of Love
147. Madonna - Hung Up
148. Lil Jon and the Eastside Boyz - Get Low (feat. Ying Yang Twins)
149. The Pipettes - Your Kisses Are Wasted On Me
150. Justice vs Simian - We Are Your Friends

151. James Blackshaw - Transient Life In Twilight
152. Motorpsycho - Year Zero (A Damage Report)
153. Mystery Jets - You Can’t Fool Me Dennis
154. M83 - Don’t Save Us From The Flames (Superpitcher remix)
155. The Teenagers - Homecoming
156. Justin Timberlake - Like I Love You
157. Radiohead - There There
158. The White Stripes - Seven Nation Army
159. Vitalic - Poney Pt. 1
160. The Knife - We Share Our Mother’s Health (Trentemoller remix)

161. Salif Keita - Ana Na Ming
162. Bjork - Unison
163. Three Six Mafia - Stay Fly
164. Ludacris - Area Codes (feat. Jazzie Pha)
165. Jim O’Rourke - Therefore, I Am
166. Jay-Z - Takeover
167. Iron And Wine - Jezebel
168. Philip Jeck - Fanfares
169. Manhead - Birth School Work Death
170. Liars - Grown Men Don’t Fall In The River, Just Like That

171. The Bronx - History’s Stranglers
172. Spank Rock - Bump (Switch remix)
173. Mos Def - Hip Hop
174. Crystal Castles - Air War
175. The Big Pink - Velvet
176. Prince - Illusion, Coma, Pimp and Circumstance
177. Dizzee Rascal - I Luv U
178. Maximo Park - The Coast Is Always Changing
179. Akron Family - Ed Is A Portal
180. Cribs - You Were Always The One

181. Fugazi - Cashout
182. Yeasayer - 2080
183. Joseph Arthur - Can’t Exist
184. The Game - Hate It Or Love It (feat. 50 Cent)
185. Robin Thicke - Wanna Love You Girl
186. Estelle - American Boy (feat. Kanye West)
187. Mark McGuire - A Matter of Time
188. Slum Village - Raise It Up
189. Benny Benassi - Satisfaction
190. Roisin Murphy - If We’re In Love

191. The Long Blondes - Guilt (Pantha Du Prince remix)
192. Lemond - Current Affairs
193. Mylo - Drop The Pressure
194. Cee-Lo - The Art of Noise (feat. Pharrell)
195. Shit Robot - Simple Things (Work It Out) (feat. Ian Svenonius)
196. Lil Wayne - A Milli
197. Johnny Boy - You Are The Generation That Bought More Shoes And You Get What You Deserve
198. Jurgen Paape - So Weit Wie Noch Nie
199. Jamie Lidell - Another Day
200. The Streets - Has It Come To This?