list.co.uk/music ELECTRONIC FUCK BUTTONS Slow Focus (ATP Recordings) ●●●●●
It’s clear that something special is in store from the first seconds of ‘Brainfreeze’, which opens this third album from Bristolian electronic juggernaut Fuck Buttons, AKA Andrew Hung and Benjamin John Power. It thunders in on an echoing clatter of drums, sounding like we’ve mistakenly been sent an album of Led Zeppelin outtakes. Then the synthesisers move in, scything sustained chords, rising and falling as the beat goes on, a fog of martial terror swooping around the listener. It sounds bloody brilliant and goes on forever (eight minutes or so), dragging us off in new directions as the drums cease and then rise again. The fun fact to quote about Fuck Buttons is that their music was used in
the London 2012 Olympics opening ceremony, but they’re not exactly Emeli Sandé. This music remains beautifully out-there: instrumental expeditions into fearsome landscapes of the imagination. ‘Year of the Dog’ is wonderful, a chorus of funereal voices and what sounds like discordant stringed instruments being pressed (all sounds are doubtless created artificially) over an oscillating wave of agitated, buzzing-fly beeps. Then ‘The Red Wing’ goes somewhere else entirely with a loping hip hop beat and what sounds like a recording of someone whistling used as a percussive instrument.
In truth, it’s a record whose earliest stages are the best, and the industrial clank of ‘Sentients’ or the slightly meandering dynamics of ‘Prince’s Prize’ create something of a furrow in the middle. But mainly the seven tracks here add up to one ext remely fine piece of work, an album entirely in control of its mood and emotional aesthetic, whose sounds open up new worlds and possibilities in the mind of the listener.
In ‘Stalker’ there’s a heavy hint of John Carpenter, surely a big influence, while the climactic ‘Hidden XS’ leaves us with a perfect encapsulation of their dynamic: a symphony of austere artificial sounds built into something shot through with compelling humanity. (David Pollock)
Records | MUSIC
PSYCHEDELIC/ELECTRONIC HIGH WOLF Kairo (Not Not Fun) ●●●●●
Originally from France, psychedelia enthusiast High Wolf is a global traveller, venturing across Europe, America, Australia and Asia in search of new sounds and a pan-cultural perspective. Disappointing then, given his exploratory interests and breadth of experiences, that Kairo’s opening track ‘Kulti’ doesn’t showcase its composer’s sense of adventure: a vanilla fusion of dub bassline, echo-soaked hand percussion and noodly guitar loops are indistinguishable from a thousand feather-moustached purveyors of dayglo tropical future-psych. With its polyrhythmic percussion, looming bass drone, electronic heat haze and wafting curls of melodic guitar, ‘Singularity’ is a far more engaging, intriguing and complex offering. However, its textures have barely begun to interweave when it just . . . stops. ‘RIP X’ suffers from a similar lack of confidence, its viscous bubbles and playful burbles rich with potential but slumping to a halt after just two and a half minutes.
Although it accompanies a standard four-on-the-floor thud with some echoing six-string noodle, ‘707’ just feels far too obvious. Only in its beatless, dreamlike and (again) all-too-brief second half does it blossom into something original and truly lovely. Luckily, this delightful momentum continues into the intoxicating 13-minute closer ‘Alvarado’, which begins with a cultish drum circle and slowly mutates into a fantastically disorienting psychedelic cosmic stomp.
For something that seemingly aims for spiritual heights, Kairo spends a little too
much time stuck in mid-1990s chill-out rooms, regaling the people on the next cushion with tales of the amazing sticky bud it shared with a goat herder in Marrakesh. There are genuine flashes of
beauty, fascination and potential transcendence here, but all too rarely are they given enough time to evolve. Ultimately, High Wolf gets there in the end – though as any traveller will tell you, the destination is much less important than the journey. (Matt Evans)
BLUES DAVID LYNCH The Big Dream (Sunday Best) ●●●●● EXPERIMENTAL COMPILATION VARIOUS ARTISTS The Outer Church (Front & Follow) ●●●●●
Not only has David Lynch created some of the most iconic, imaginative and unsettling films of the past 30 years, but he’s also responsible for some of their most memorable soundtrack moments. Since drifting away from film after 2006’s stunning Inland Empire, he has increasingly channelled his energies into sound.
Spare, sombre, heavily reverbed and woozy, the default setting here is one that will be familiar to admirers of its creator’s cinematic universe. There’s little variation in these downbeat blues-based vignettes rendered digitally wobbly, but they’re fairly evocative on their own terms, and the infrequent eruptions of awkward slide guitar hint at some pleasingly skronky weirdness simmering underneath.
However, what’s startling is how a director with such a vivid and unique visual and narrative imagination opts for the dustiest of chestnuts once he shifts idiom. Far too often, the lyrics settle into a dreary collage of stock blues phrases – all cold winds and hard rain and wishin’ wells – which sound both absurdly out of character and wearily stale. Matters are not improved by Lynch’s own high, painfully-thin voice, passed through a bank of tinny effects that give it all the charisma of a dial-up modem.
The high point, by quite some altitude, is the bonus track ‘I’m Waiting Here’;
this is entirely thanks to guest vocalist Lykke Li, who shows Lana Del Rey how to carry off that Lynchian chanteuse schtick with great style and without sounding
An electrical storm strikes. The lights flicker and a radio sputters into life: ‘Hikers camping on the Sussex Downs have reported strange green lights above Brighton. An anonymous caller has alerted us to the existence of an “uncanny audio-visual event” called The Outer Church. Might there be a connection to the mysterious phenomena? Stay tune . . . ’ The radio cuts out and the room is plunged into darkness. I hear the letterbox flap, followed by a muffled thump on the floor. The lightbulb buzzes back into life and I notice a package by the door. Cautiously, I open it and a double CD slips out, its cover bearing the legend The Outer Church. I’m startled, but eager to investigate this mysterious cult led by music writer/blogger Joseph Stannard, and the acts which have gravitated to the Outer Church’s regular club night wyrdings over the past four years.
The ritual begins as Embla Quickbeam’s ‘Crystal Sea’ emerges from the shadows in a fog of ghost frequencies and spectral voices. Grumbling Fur’s pagan synth-pop resembles Depeche Mode hymning the solstice, while Kemper Norton transmits folk song fragments through haunted machines. Flickering synths and Hindi vocal loops dance dervish-like through Angkorwat’s ‘I Hope He Had’ before Position Normal’s wheezing sampler sputters out broken shards of guitar, telephonic tones and dubbed-out radar blips. Pye Corner Audio takes John Carpenter to Judge Dredd’s Mega-City Four, while Graham Reznick essays a sleazy Numanoid march through a 16-bit cityscape.
like a Gap advert. Lynch’s film music (particularly for Fire Walk with Me) is superbly effective – but this is due to its complementary, reciprocal design, producing a perfect synthesis of sound and image. Devoid of his visual imagination as a creative spark, the music struggles to locate its purpose and instead finds only banalities. His distinctive cinematic soundworld gives Lynch both a lot to live up to and a solid basis from which to diversify – but sadly, The Big Dream manages neither. (Matt Evans)
Elsewhere we have eerily beautiful string phantasms (Old Apparatus’ ‘Patter’), melancholy pop reveries (Hong Kong in the 60s’ ‘Summer’s Bird’) and the dub-techno of Lanarkshire’s Broken Three. Over seedy red- neon throbs Baron Mordant & Mr Maxted release ectoplasmic wraiths into the night sky. The disturbed whispers and martial drums of Vindicatrix’ ‘Huemmana’, meanwhile, are deeply sinister. The Outer Church is expanding. Open your third eye and ascend. (Stewart Smith)
11 Jul–22 Aug 2013 THE LIST 83