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RECORDS Music
SPOKEN WORD/ ELECTRONIC BRIAN ENO Drums Between The Bells (Warp) ●●●●●
Featuring the words of poet and contemporary thinker Rick Holland, this isn’t so much a collection of songs as a series of soundscapes accompanied by spoken-word passages, here uttered by nine people, including actress Caroline Wildi and Eno and Holland themselves. From that modest concept come
moments that are often sublime, occasionally grating (witness the Zen-like riddling of ‘The Real’), and an album of unassuming eloquence that reverberates from solitary headphone listening out into the relative chaos of the everyday world. Following the excellent Small Craft On A Milk Sea by months, Drums Between The Bells confirms recent years as Eno’s most fertile since the 1970s. (Nadine McBay)
JAZZ/ PSYCH FIRE! WITH JIM O’ROURKE Unreleased? (Rune Grammofon) ●●●●●
Saxophone behemoth Mats Gustafsson is best known for his work with baws-oot jazzers The Thing, but Fire! is a relatively controlled affair, more rock-oriented improv than free jazz. Gustafsson, bassist Johan Berthling (Tape) and drummer Andreas Werling (Wildbirds & Peacedrums), are joined by Jim O’Rourke for this second album. ‘Happy Ending Borrowing Yours’
is the climax of this trip, a slow- burning bass throb which uncoils to release a primordial baritone sax solo from Gustafsson, O’Rourke sneaking up from behind with mangled guitar and frazzled electronics. Werling is on point throughout, his deceptively simple drumming the foundation of this elemental music. (Stewart Smith)
ELECTRONICA JONNIE COMMON Master of None (Red Deer Club) ●●●●●
He’s an affiliate of Inspector Tapehead, a former member of Down the Tiny Steps, and the sorcerer behind the recent Deskjob compilation, featuring Panda Su, eagleowl, The Oates Field and others, but Glasgow’s Jonnie Common finally takes to the spotlight with Master of None, his debut album – and what a lo-fi electro-folk wonder it is. From existential casio-pop opener
‘Heir to the Throne’ to kung-fu cantata ‘Hand-Hand’, Master of None showcases Common’s vivid songwriting and production chops. The skewed-pop amble and harmonica swell of ‘Summer Is For Going Places’ is glorious; as is the sci-fi glow of ‘Photosynth’. You’ll forgive us for remarking, then, that Common is unique indeed. (Nicola Meighan)
POP-ROCK WHITE HEATH Take No Thought For Tomorrow (Electric Honey) ●●●●●
The latest graduate of the Stow College music industry course’s in- house record label is this Edinburgh-based six-piece’s collection of epic soundtracks, set to vocalist Sean Watson’s heartfelt lyrical concerns. Delivered in an opaque vocal
rasp, this is an album chock-full of widescreen ambition. At times it resembles the sublime adventures of late-period Talk Talk mashed-up with Sigur Rós, with its grandiose piano, violin and bass trombone arrangements overlaying the urgent melodrama of the guitars.
Watson certainly puts himself through the emotional wringer, and sometimes it all gets too much, but at its sweepingly regal best, this is grown-up heartbreak made for fractured times. (Neil Cooper)
ANTI-FOLK LACH Ramshackle Heart (Song, By Toad) ●●●●●
EXPERIMENTAL FOLK RICHARD YOUNGS Amplifying Host (Jagjaguwar) ●●●●● LO-FI/ALT-FOLK WOODS Sun and Shade (Woodsist) ●●●●●
Amid news that NYC anti-folk overlord Lach will be bringing his open-mic session to Edinburgh again this August, tempting hints that he might be setting up home here, the release of his sixth album in twenty years is an impressive coup for the city’s ever-reliable Song, by Toad label. Made in Cornwall with Neil
Halstead (Slowdive, Mojave 3), it rides in on the acoustic country rattle of ‘Another Night Without You’, part Pogues, part ‘Harvest Moon’, then wry urban NY folk-pop in ‘Everyone’s Therapist’ and on into ‘My Gangster’, They Might Be Giants meets 13th Floor Elevators’ bottle-blowing ‘You’re Gonna Miss Me’. A rash of styles, then, but just one distinctive voice. (David Pollock)
A Glasgow-based librarian with a cracked choirboy voice, Richard Youngs alternates between experimental releases on tiny labels and more ‘songwriterly’ albums on US indie Jagjaguwar. This is one of the latter, but it’s resolutely avant- garde. At their heart, these are simple folk songs, but Youngs interrogates their form, working over phrases and shaping moods.
In some respects, Amplifying Host is a refinement of January’s exploratory Atlas of Hearts, with its crystalline acoustic guitar figures and double-tracked vocals. But it also recalls 2004’s River Through Howling Sky, with skewed electric guitar lines. While not his most accessible work, it’s another fascinating transmission from the shadow world. (Stewart Smith)
Brooklynites Woods are a cottage industry of sorts who release their lo-fi, alt-folky tunes through a label run by their frontman, Jeremy Earl. Their sixth album highlights both the ups and downs of a band not having anyone to answer to – there’s a lovely homespun freedom here, but good judgment is twice left thumbing a lift when they leave the winding backwoods lanes and get stuck on the Krautrock autobahn. Cosmic jams ‘Out of the Eye’ and ‘Sol Y Sombra’ – which amount to nearly half the LP – aren’t bad tunes, they just would have been better released separately, instead of killing the otherwise enamouring Shins, Real Estate and Avi Buffalo- style ramshackle-melodic flow. (Malcolm Jack)
EXPERIMENTAL FOLK WOUNDED KNEE Anicca (Krapp Tapes) ●●●●●
This latest excursion in Drew Wright’s ongoing adventure in ethno-celtic vocal loops marries two extended pieces back-to-back on a cassette that comes in a plain brown, hand-stamped envelope and wrapped in an offcut of Harris tweed. Where ‘Whither?’ morphs into
snatches of Al Green’s ‘Take me To The River’, on the flipside ‘Wither’ is a kind of dub version of the former, and comes over more biblical in its bullfrog mantra. The length of both tracks allows Wright’s extrapolations space enough to breathe, and makes for an ideal accompaniment for Sunday afternoon strolls up Arthur’s Seat with bigger hills in mind. There’s even a plaster included in the envelope in case you trip on the crags. (Neil Cooper)
23 Jun–21 Jul 2011 THE LIST 81