list.co.uk/music Records | MUSIC
TWINKLY POST-ROCK REMEMBER REMEMBER Forgetting the Present (Rock Action) ●●●●● DREAM POP A SUNNY DAY IN GLASGOW Sea When Absent (Lefse) ●●●●●
Three years and countless live shows since The Quickening, Graeme Ronald’s Remember Remember has settled into a six-piece formation, with twinkly glockenspiels and soaring synths to the fore on contradictory third record, Forgetting the Present. As the oxymoronic pairing of band and album name might suggest, it’s never quite clear whether Ronald is looking forward or back with his busy – but never overdone – compositions. The answer, most probably, is both: a restless innovator with nostalgia for the old ways (so much so that the album’s fourth track is named after them), he unites three and four- decade-old genres with futuristic, otherworldly grooves and then smooths over the joins until it’s one progressive, sweeping whole. If imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, Remember Remember must be keen to impress label bosses Mogwai – tracks like ‘Magnets’ and ‘The Old Ways’, with their sense of creeping menace and shimmering guitars, could have been lifted right from the Les Revenants soundtrack (meanwhile ‘Why You Got a Blue Face’ sounds like a Mogwai title, before you even get to the song). The comparison is intended as a compliment, but it’s also starting to feel like there’s little new that can be brought to the post-rock table, and besides – the other band rarely comes out on top in comparisons with the ’Gwai. ‘Magnets’ is grandiose and engaging, but Ronald and co are at their best when exploring something a bit different, such as the intriguing dalliance with disco on second track ‘Le Mayo’.
A Sunny Day in Glasgow (with band members from Philadelphia, Sydney and Brooklyn, but not Glasgow) have always tackled the hazy sinews of dream pop in a more destructive fashion than most of their peers. The collective’s worldwide geographical spread and remote recording processes are reflected in the shifting collage style of their songs. Their marauding totemic rhythms emerge from a jumble of scorched keys, moonbeam basslines and disembodied voices swirling together into an ambience which can be heavy or unusually joyous. They’ve always offered a welcome sense of adventurousness in a fairly uniform genre. This fourth album marks their first written and recorded in a studio as a full
band rather than being largely written by founder Ben Daniels and recorded in fragments. Through this, they’ve managed to retain their intrepid edge while also recalibrating the pop / dream balance of their sound. Their roots in maximalist ambience are still present (‘Crushin’’), but they also perfect grandiose brass- adorned chamber pop (‘The Body, It Bends’), sculpt-twisted refractions of 80s synth pop (‘Oh, I’m A Wrecker’), renderings of modern stadium-pop anthems mangled sweetly out of focus (‘Golden Wave’), and allow vocalists Jen Goma and Anne Fredrickson to excel by edging toward slippery alt. R&B soulfulness (‘Never Nothing’). Their vocals are more important than ever as the band’s trusted wall of reverb
has been relegated in stature and now only swallows the occasional carefully
Ronald’s been quoted as saying he wanted these recordings to capture the energy of the current band's live performances, and in that respect they, along with producer Tony Doogan, have succeeded. Such introspective, studiously mesmeric pieces could easily get bogged down in their own intricacies, especially when only one of them falls below the five-minute mark, but they remain light and airy and full of momentum – if only it were a momentum that took them somewhere new. (Laura Ennor)
placed guitar riff or electro-static build-up. In this middle ground, ASDIG really find their groove as the album flits between dynamic mashup and woozy comedown. It’s a confident step forward for the group – the more collaborative recording process balancing their melodic sensibilities and experimental edge in a way that enhances rather than overwhelms the songs. By some distance their most complete record to date; their moments of brilliance are no longer as rare as an actual sunny day in Glasgow. (Chris Tapley)
NOT JAZZ THE NATIONAL JAZZ TRIO OF SCOTLAND Standards Vol. III (Karaoke Kalk) ●●●●● METAL / SLUDGE / PUNK BORIS Noise (Sargent House) ●●●●●
If this is your first encounter with the Bill Wells-helmed National Jazz Trio of Scotland, you may be surprised by the lack of jazz on the menu, by the utterly unembroidered singing style of his virtually indistinguishable trio of wistful vocalists Abi Vulliamy, Kate Sugden and Lorna Gilfedder who float over the top of Wells’ compositions with barely a beat to guide them and by the arithmetical conclusion that this trio therefore comprises four musicians.
Wells hails from a jazz background, but over the years of collaboration with indie musicians such as Isobel Campbell, Norman Blake and Aidan Moffat, has stripped back his musical signature, preferring to evoke an atmosphere with sparingly deployed instrumentation and samples.
Standards Vol.III is standard only in that respect. On ‘Alive and Well’, a breathy litany of everyday annoyances is wrapped in a soft blanket of ambient electronica, with fleeting guest appearances for organ, while the soothing monotone vocals continue to waft through ‘Rare Species’.
The airy mood is sustained throughout, while the musical style subtly fluctuates with the use of impish lo-fi baroque keyboards on ‘Unguarded Moment’, the featherlight touch of bossa nova rhythms on ‘Surprising Word’ and the oriental flavour of finger piano on ‘Buchanan Street’, a dwam of a paean to Glasgow’s bustling shopping street.
There are emotional layers and contrasts to be heard in the less-is-more approach to vocals too. Get beyond the superficially winsome tone of the delivery, and the valedictory ‘Getting Out’ is more bitter than sweet, more plaintive than triumphal. Usually, the girls sing solo, but their overdubbed voices intertwine with more expression on a cover of the Beach Boys’ a cappella number ‘With Me Tonight’ (from Smiley Smile) which is stripped back even further than the original and delivered with a haunting choral pop purity. (Fiona Shepherd)
Boris’ 19th studio album (yes, 19th!) and they’ve thrown a dash of everything into the casserole for Noise – which sporadically hits the bullseye on a number of jams throughout. The Japanese trio are renowned for their ecstatic and eclectic approach to heavy music, but it’s safe to say that they’ve been dabbling with a slightly more accessible tilt for some of their longplayers on Sargent House, such as New Album which surprisingly ventured down a J-Pop and synth-pop trajectory and was met with a somewhat mixed response, or their quite oddball collaborative release BXI in 2010 with the Cult’s Ian Astbury. The first real belter after the initial three tracks of hooky chorus riff filler comes when guitarist Wata’s delicate vocals are enveloped in a crushing wash of fuzz on ‘Heavy Rain’. It's reminiscent of the original Heavy Rocks release and Akuma No Uta and is a hair-raising moment which will remind jaded droners and pudgy sludgers that Boris still pack a lot of heat when they choose to wield it. Cue a totally disposable pop ditty ‘Taiyo no Baka’ directly after, giving Noise even more curious pacing than is needed and pretty much sets the yoyo-ing tone in terms of content.
Noise recovers a couple of times, notably on the post-rocky quiet / loud / quiet vigour on ‘Angel’ which, although perhaps predictable, does veer into ‘Feedbacker’ territory during moments. The straight up D-Beat flat-picking dynamics of ‘Quicksilver’ is arguably the highlight of this otherwise bipolar
release, and wouldn’t sound out of character on something by Amebix or The Varukers, but here tuned down a peg and extended by way of a ghostly outro. Despite it being central to the
very nature of the band itself, it’s frequently annoying how conceptually wide-ranging Boris can be, especially when they connect so much more when they’re just rocking out. Why they didn’t make a whole album of said material is utterly beyond me. (Nick Herd)
12 Jun–10 Jul 2014 THE LIST 73