MUSIC | Records
PSYCHEDELIC POP GRUMBLING FUR Preternaturals (The Quietus Phonographic Corporation) ●●●●● HOUSE HERBERT Part Six EP (Accidental) ●●●●●
While Alexander Tucker declaring Preternaturals to be ‘our pop record’ could be misleading, there’s no denying that the third album from Grumbling Fur (the duo of Tucker and Daniel O’Sullivan) does wander some rarely occupied passages between wyrd folk and pop melodies to create an offbeat and memorable collection of avant-pop. Not surprisingly, Preternaturals builds on the blueprint laid by last year’s slow-burn success story Glynnaestra, a distinctly English take on psychedelia that clattered mordantly against the kitchen sink (often literally, with cutlery and kettles used as instruments). Here they dial up their astral pop tendencies while still straining to unmoor themselves from folk traditions. Pastoral sounds waft around amorphous electronic tones to create gently propulsive melodies with a hypnotic, almost shamanistic edge added by the duo’s mantra-style vocals. There are innumerable references that could be listed (detectable influence of Depeche Mode, Aphex Twin and Coil, and of peers in sonic exploration The Phantom Band), but it is ultimately a world unto itself – a kaleidoscopic trip on a steady footing. Their weirdness always somewhat concealed by lush harmonies and winsome hooks, it’s barely noticeable that ‘All The Rays’ starts with a chorus; or that the blissful sway of ‘Pluriforms’ is actually composed of fried circuitry and ghoulish vocal cuts; or that ‘Lightinsisters’ is about as alien as synth-pop could possibly sound. O’Sullivan describes Preternaturals as ‘fear that human beings are outside
of nature . . . everything can be elucidated by nature but we don’t have access to that’. Few bands can master the art of the uncanny, yet these songs have eerie undertones within, a satisfyingly irksome feeling that they’ve fallen into place as part of something far bigger. Grumbling Fur may be the kind of band so attuned to the other side that they’re destined only for cult appreciation, to be labelled ‘ahead of their time’, but one thing is for sure – you won’t regret stepping into their strange world. (Chris Tapley)
Matthew Herbert has done a lot of things with his various musical talents, too many to go into here, so let’s just settle on calling him an electronic polymath who has recorded pig farts, made some great house music and done everything in between (and there’s a lot in between). The music that brought him to most people’s attention is his slinky vocal house, notably from his pretty timeless Bodily Functions and Scale albums from the early to mid- noughties. He then abandoned this MO and went off making batshit sonic collage albums, playing live with his big band, landing the gig as head of the New Radiophonic Workshop, and generally behaving like the part-alchemist, part-mad professor, part-audio boffin, part-idiosyncratic composer we all suspected was bursting to get out. And now he’s back making house again under his Herbert moniker after
an eight-year hiatus. It’s a tentative return – this four-track EP seems to be a reminder to himself as much as to the listener that he is capable of mining that formerly rich seam of serpentine and refined house. Lead track ‘One Two Three’ proves that he has not lost his touch; it’s just a delightful, breezy, elegant, warm tune, lifted by coquettish vocals from London singer Rahel, and carried along by a coiling, gauzy groove. It’s all just deliciously simple and inviting. The rest of the EP seems relatively workmanlike by comparison. ‘Manny’ is a slightly irritating and skittish bit of loopy nonsense; ‘My DJ’ is an equally curious and faintly gloomy slice of wonky house; and ‘Grab That Bottle’ is a kind of PG-13 acid house track that lacks any real menace, but has a certain enigmatic, goofy charm.
So we’ve learnt that Matthew Herbert can still make tasteful, smart, sinuous vocal house, but is that knowledge enough to sate his own voracious appetite for discovery? If you make it, Matthew, we will listen. (Mark Keane) ■ See page 29 for an interview with Matthew Herbert.
JAZZ / AVANT-ROCK FIRE! ORCHESTRA Enter (Rune Gramoffon) ●●●●● OUTDOOR POP DAN LYTH AND THE EUPHRATES Benthic Lines (Armellodie) ●●●●●
Fire! Orchestra’s Exit, in which saxophone hero Mats Gustafsson expanded his free jazz / psych rock trio into a 30-piece behemoth, was a highlight of 2013. While still driven by Johan Berthling’s hypnotic bass, this new Fire! music blazed with the spontaneous interplay between a crack team of Swedish jazzers and the wildly inventive vocalists Mariam Wallentin and Sofia Jernberg.
Enter is a more structured affair, organising composed and improvised
passages into a prog rock-like suite. The mood is suitably 70s, heavy with the fug of patchouli and hash, the mellow vibes tinged with dread. ‘Part One’ is stripped right back, as a slow-burning Fender Rhodes riff ushers in Wallentin’s bluesy torch singing. Horns gradually enter to support the riff, before it all falls into a black hole of King Crimson-like mellotron. ‘Part Two’ hits the ground running, with a insistent groove knowingly filched
from The Beatles’ ‘Tomorrow Never Knows’. Pretty nifty, but for Simon Ohlsson’s pompous vocals, which are a step too far into prog naffness.
Electronicist Joachim Nordwall takes over for a refreshingly contemporary excursion into noise, but save for a few gaseous puffs of trombone beneath his frayed arcs of tone, there’s no real exchange with the Orchestra – a missed opportunity.
A mini-concerto for horns and solo sax is genuinely affecting, evoking a wintry Swedish seascape as Gustafsson blows freely over Mats Äleklint’s stately arrangement. There’s more spontaneous play between sections of the Orchestra in ‘Part Three’, with Jernberg gnashing and growling at the wailing horns over a see-sawing riff. ‘Part Four’ reprises Wallentin’s main theme, with the full Orchestra rising behind the vocalists as they strive for a cosmic weightiness. The ambition of Enter is laudable, but in its bid to accommodate so many voices, it lacks the character and energy of its predecessor. (Stewart Smith)
88 THE LIST 10 Jul–21 Aug 2014
‘I think some part of me took perverse pleasure in the thought of having to undergo some real physical exertion to make this record,’ says Dunfermline singer / songwriter Dan Lyth of his debut album Benthic Lines, and he puts his music where his mouth is. Five years in the making, this LP (and accompanying book) is a hugely ambitious undertaking. It straddles, evokes and excavates continents (Lyth made field recordings in Morocco, Australia, Turkey, Uganda and Fife); summons the historic and the modern (it references mythology, Biblical imagery and technology); and taps into bucolic landscapes, psychic states and urban sprawls. At the album’s heart is Lyth’s overriding (and unwieldy) goal: to create an album recorded entirely outdoors – from al fresco piano recitals to peat bog ambience; from high streets through forests, hillsides and quarries; from rooftops to car parks and church ruins to boats. In doing so, he raises some excellent, and timely, questions, about how music and the physical environment can interact, in contrast to this age of bedroom recording, cyber-realms and digital manipulation.
What’s most impressive about this feat, however, is not that Lyth achieved his objective (although that is admirable enough), but that such a concept, and effort, never gets in the way of the music: Lyth’s unadorned psalms are minimalist and intoxicating, but they’re never bogged down or distracted by the process.
Even without Lyth’s singular vision, or his need to invest intensive physical effort into his work, his organic electronica and chamber-pop hymns would still stand out. The album variously evokes Andrew Bird (‘Four Creatures’, ‘How It Happened’), Steve Reich (‘Super Nature’) and Final Fantasy’s Owen Pallett (‘We Were Bones and We Were Meat’); but mainly it sounds just like Lyth, and the great outdoors. That it does so with such subtle aplomb is something to treasure, and applaud. (Nicola Meighan)