MUSIC | Album reviews
ALBUM OF THE ISSUE
UNDERGROUND MIXTAPE MUSIC LANGUAGE 2013 Various Artists (Cry Parrot / Bandcamp) ●●●●● In 2011, DIY promoters Cry Parrot and Tracer Trails joined up to launch Music Is The Music Language, a Glasgow festival designed to celebrate Scotland’s underground music in all its fascinating forms – from folk to noise, electro to hip hop.
ALT. COUNTRY BILL CALLAHAN Dream River (Drag City) ●●●●● While the pool of lyrical references has deepened since the dust-bowl philosophy of his ‘I Break Horses’ Smog days, it often feels like Bill Callahan is so satisfied with the sound of his own dulcet voice, he could sing a shopping list and make it resonate with arch, tremulous insight. This theory is put to the test on ‘The Sing’ – the first track on Dream River. Callahan recites an itinerary of mundane situations in that familiar lugubrious burr: ‘Drinking while sleeping strangers unknowingly keep me company / In the hotel bar’. But, as the events gather, it becomes clear that the singer is casting a wry eye at the monotonous indignity of life as a travelling musician, culminating in ‘The only words I’ve said today are “beer” and “thank you”’. Callahan evokes the unique isolation felt while constantly being in company over trademark two-chord guitar patterns and Thor Harris’ lounge-infused brushed drums.
Now named Music The lounge influence pervades ‘Javelin Unlanding’, as galloping hand drums
Language, and chiefly run by Cry Parrot, the festival continues to explore our subterranean realms to thrilling effect. This is testified by the diversity and quality of the acts playing this year (it takes place in Glasgow, Sep 6–8, see preview page 63), many of whom appear on this excellent accompanying 24-track album – including languid-pop seducers eagleowl, techno-punk deviants Golden Teacher, dream- rock heartbreakers the Yawns and Alex Neilson’s a cappella troupe, The Crying Lion. It covers spellbinding warm-machine side projects (Conquering Animal Sound’s Anneke Kampman, alias ANAK-ANAK), and works-in-progress – from live offerings (Death Shanties’ ‘Obsidian Ovarian’) to scratchy post-punk demos (Seconds’ ‘When He Calls’). Opening with the tropical kitchen-sink techno of Dick 50’s ‘Eq’, and boasting Hausfrau’s ice-cool lounge-electro (‘Dancehall Days’); Ela Orleans’ extraordinary ‘Beat Goes On’; Magic Eye’s submerged pop lullaby ‘St Rita (Space Echo version)’ and Vars of Litchi’s jazz-punk wig-out (the brilliantly titled) ‘Yr Maw’ – ML 2013 is surprising, entertaining and enlightening. All proceeds help cover ML costs (it’s a not-for-profit enterprise), and the download is well worth whatever hard-earned coin you can afford. It may be 'pay-what-you-will' (which could be nothing), but don’t be misled: as introduction to the finest under-radar, off-kilter and outsider music Scotland has to offer, it's priceless. (Nicola Meighan) Read a longer version at list.co.uk
and flute encircle tremolo-heavy guitar and Callahan cooing, ‘You looked like worldwide Armageddon / While you slept’. With ‘Small Plane’, he fantasises about co-piloting a miniature aviation vessel with an unnamed love while delighting in barely perceptible degrees of intimacy as the world grows smaller in the wing mirror. Callahan is the heir to Willie Nelson in his ability to deadpan a phrase, then wobble it in an unexpected direction to maximise its visual impact. He does so with great bathetic effect on ‘Summer Painter’, as he sings ‘Like a sorcerer’s cape / The rain ripped the lips off the mouth of the bay’ against a hailstorm of juddering guitars. Just as Nelson’s innovative vocal delivery might owe something to his lifelong love affair with sensimilla, it makes some sense that Callahan has issued an ‘expanded dub’ remix of ‘Javelin Unlanding’ – the oak- strength sensuality of his phrasing offering ripe opportunity for manipulation while hand drums and Beth Galiger’s flute stretch and stutter into pleasing new shapes. (Alex Nielson)
CELESTIAL SONG JULIANNA BARWICK Nepenthe (Dead Oceans) ●●●●● WORLD/ELECTRONIC DONSO Denfila (Comet) ●●●●●
Nepenthe, n. a drug or drink, or the plant yielding it, mentioned by ancient writers as having the power to bring forgetfulness of sorrow or trouble.
There will not be a more apt title for an album this year than that of Julianna Barwick’s utterly becalming and therapeutic aural balm for the soul. The Brooklyn-based singer’s transcendent collage of diaphanous vocal loops and choral moments of ecstasy hit you somewhere in the spiritual solar plexus. It’s the sound of a secular ascension into heaven, heavy with portentous lyrical swoops and keys, layer upon layer of rarefied sonic harmonies. Rarely do you hear something so delicate, filled with such fierce emotion. Moments of beatific joy languish alongside detached, ethereal hymns.
Barwick’s voice is almost like an apparition floating, and at points soaring,
on this record, lending it a sense of direction but not dominating. She instead gently coaxes the listener into this divine otherworld – a floaty, heavenly Elysian Fields, rich with cooing sirens and soothing wonderment. It’s a sound Barwick has made her own and previously pulled off on her last full-length effort, the similarly bewitching The Magic Place. Here, moved by a death in her family during the recording process, she has taken her craft to another hallowed plain, and wrought some incredibly tender, heartrending moments of sheer corporeal delight out of music that is almost metaphysical – you hear the voice, the sounds, the musicianship but it has a powerful, awestruck resonance that
From Salif Keita and Ali Farka Touré to Amadou & Mariam and Tinariwen, Mali boasts an incredibly rich musical culture, one seemingly endangered by the political upheaval of the last 18 months. This Afro–European project is proof that Mali’s beat goes on. Recorded in both Paris and Bamako, Donso’s Denfila is a sound-and culture clash comprising 11 electronic and traditional musicians from France and Mali. Overall, Denfila is welcoming and interesting but not quite incendiary.
Its emphasis is on restraint and subtlety – each traditionally rooted track adopts a steady, languid pace, heavy on repetition, the electronic elements generally interwoven discreetly and tastefully. At times, it all feels a little antiseptic and / or dated, with certain tentative dub and echo effects recalling the complacency of mid-90s faux-psychedelic chillout. But the listener’s patience is often rewarded – what’s compelling is the way in which beats that initially seem plodding and uninspired slowly begin to reveal themselves as polyrhythmically intricate and fascinating. There are some exceptional moments, too: in ‘Dali’, the combination of oppressively heavy slow-sweep bass throb and delicate plucked n’goni (a kind of Malian lute) patterns make for something at once still and tranquil but also driving, unstoppable and trance-inducing. The fluttering, spiralling lines of guest guitarist Sambala Kouyaté are the simmering core of ‘Siby
feels somewhere not of this earth. She conjured this celestial atmosphere in Iceland with Alex Somers, Sigur Rós producer and locals (Amiina, múm’s Róbert Sturla Reynisson and a girls’ choir). If anything, there are brief moments where it is almost too delicate and nebulous, but that is a minor quibble. Barwick’s enlightened and su- premely elegant album captures the naked emotion of loss and transforms it into an uplifting experience of rare purity. (Mark Keane) Hours’, bringing a raw, bristly texture absent elsewhere. Consisting only of processed percussion, ‘Awakenings’ is eccentric and verges on the joyously frenetic, while ‘Heading to Gao’ evolves into a pleasingly psychedelic stomp that’s just a tad fuzzy around the edges. Also highly appealing are the four ‘Duruni’ miniatures – grimy, atmospheric field recordings from Bamako, vignettes of Malian musical life in situ. (Matt Evans)
66 THE LIST 22 Aug–19 Sep 2013