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SINGLES & DOWNLOADS
It’s not just the world’s greatest athletes chasing gold this summer. Singles may be a lost art form but Team List are on the hunt for the finest standalone tracks avail- able. As usual it’s a mixed bag, but there’s a scuffle for the winner’s podium. Lower Dens kick things off with misty night-drive number ‘Candy’ (Ribbon,
13 August, ●●●●●), more a few minutes of moody atmosphere than a song, but it’s pretty great. Mina Tindle’s ‘Bells’ (Tape Club, Out Now ●●●●●) is an instantly affecting piece of beauty; lushly finger-picked with a confident, heart-melting voice, courtesy of this charming French artist. Django Django’s ‘Hail Bop’ (Because, 13 August ●●●●● is like The Zombies
fucking about with a drum machine and works incredibly well. A summery slice of odd foot-tapping brilliance. Alex Clare’s ‘Treading Water’ (Island, 13 August, ●●●●●) is more obvious in its attempts to lure you to the dancefloor with crisp breakbeats, soulful vocals and dubstep undercurrent. Not bad. Jessie Ware’s ‘Wildest Moments’ (PMR, 20 August, ●●●●●) is a lacklustre stab at ‘Epic Pop’, but her voice has a tenderness that makes the choruses soar. But it’s Fifer for life, Johnny ‘The Pictish Trail’ Lynch who steals the show with the hypnotically harmonic ‘Michael Rocket’, first in a new three-part EP series of 7”s from Fence Records, called Buff Tracks. ‘The Summer Is Empty Of Idiots EP’ (Fence, 20 August, ●●●●●) is a deserving winner of gold, and Single of the Fortnight. (Ryan Drever)
ALT-FOLK JAMES YORKSTON I Was A Cat From A Book (Domino) ●●●●● A traditional folk songs collection, the publication of his tour diaries and the anniversary reissue of his debut LP helped bridge the gap, but it’s been a long four years since James Yorkston’s last LP. The arrival of the Fife singer-song- writer’s fifth set feels like the return of an old friend. The serious ill- ness of his daughter has occupied Yorkston’s attentions in the interim; I Was A Cat . . . finds him trying to make sense of very human fears with humour and grace. New musi- cians – including Sparrow & The Workshop’s Jill O’Sullivan on duet ‘Just As Scared’ and Cinematic Orchestra drummer Luke Flowers on cathartic closer ‘I Can Take All This’ – lend flair and warmth to another exceptional album from an artist who typifies the permanence of class. (Malcolm Jack)
INSTRUMENTAL SUPERGROUP SYCAMORE WITH FRIENDS Sycamore (Ubisano) ●●●●●
Off-duty Tattie Toes drummer Shane Connolly and band-mate Jer Reid alongside Arab Strap- and-a million-others guitarist Stevie Jones form the core of this low-key side-project supergroup, but on this organic-sounding debut are emboldened by an all-star cast of similarly off-piste mavericks, includ- ing pianist Bill Wells, viola player Aby Vulliamy and vocalist Nerea Bello.
The result on these six instrumen- tal workouts veers from angular Mediterranean thrash to post- Tortoise twang, with wonky piano and viola scrapes pulsed by busy drum patterns. Beautifully textured, it beguiles one minute before going into orbit the next, a bit like a post- rock Mahavishnu Orchestra with all the indulgences chopped out. Lovely. (Neil Cooper)
ELECTRONICA/DUBSTEP) NGUZUNGUZU Warm Pulse (Hippos in Tanks) ●●●●● PSYCH FOLK POOR MOON Poor Moon (Bella Union) ●●●●●
FOLK KARINE POLWART Traces (Proper) ●●●●●
Like the flickering Tokyo city- scapes in Sofia Coppolla’s Lost In Translation, LA Duo, Nguzunguzu’s latest EP, Warm Pulse, is an entrancing, night-time foray into the unknown. Slick, cold and unfamiliar, yet curious and engag- ing, Nguzunguzu – pronounced ‘en-goo-zoo-en-goo-zoo’ – take sparse beats, and warm synth pulses to create a decadent mash- up of Dubstep’s pace and the wide-eyed vision of Aphex Twin’s Ambient Works. Warm Pulse is built atop sharp, thunder-clap beats and an unholy angel choir, almost conjuring the mechanical beauty of Battles’ Gloss Drop while the remaining tracks are imbued with head-bobbing beats but with enough unfathomable limbs and inflections that it’s never going to be a straight listen. (Ryan Drever)
The brainchild of Christian Wargo, also the bassist in Fleet Foxes and guitarist/singer in Crystal Skulls, Poor Moon are more in tune with the rustic charm of the former. Wargo’s new project’s debut album starts at a measured pace, from the cricket-whistling strum of ‘Clouds Below’ to the whispered, marimba-tinkling tumult of ‘Same Way’, and settles into a laidback late-60s groove, which might have been written by Pink Floyd (‘Heaven’s Door’) or Brian Wilson in his spacily detached heyday (‘Come Home’). Abetted by fellow Fox Casey
Wescott among the band, Poor Moon is a slow-burning pleasure based around Wargo’s grainy falsetto and a refreshingly time- locked sense of subdued analogue instrumentation. (David Pollock)
For all of Karine Polwart’s unques- tionable folk appeal (the clarity of her voice; multiple awards; the history and humanity in her songs) it bears noting that she has stolen the limelight in three of our finest indie collaborations – The Burns Unit’s Side Show, The Fruit Tree Foundation’s First Edition and Sushil K Dade’s Secrets From The Clockhouse – and that the Unwinding Hours’ Iain Cook produced Traces, her wonderful fifth album. Traces thrives with vital, contemporary protest songs (the jaw-dropping, Trump-baiting ‘Cover Your Eyes’), and euphoric landscape portraits (‘Tinsel Show’, about the Grangemouth refinery), in an album that (re)affirms Polwart as one of our most lyrically striking, and significant, artists. (Nicola Meighan)
WORLD OMAR KHORSHID Guitar El Chark (Sublime Frequencies) ●●●●● Arabic guitar god Omar Khorshid was a music and movie superstar in the 60s and 70s, working with great Egyptian composer Baligh Hamdi and backing the queen of Arab music, Oum Khaltoum. In 1973, Khorshid left Cairo to live in Beirut, where he recorded the far- out sounds collected on this intoxi- cating compilation, a reissue of an out-of-print LP. Sold in the west as Belly Dance records, his albums transcend any kitsch aura through their sheer brilliance. Khorshid’s twangy surf guitar, moonshot synths and psychedelic Joe Meek- meets-Hendrix production bring a heady space-age atmosphere to gorgeous Arabic melodies and wild dance rhythms. Sir Richard Bishop’s Saharan explorations start here. (Stewart Smith)
9–16 Aug 2012 THE LIST 125