MUSIC | Records MUSIC | Records – Jazz & World ALSO RELEASED
VARIOUS ARTISTS Hyperdub 10.2 (Hyperdub) ●●●●● Hyperdub’s tenth anniversary celebrations continue with this second of four compilations in 2014. Sorry to gush, but god it’s beautiful, a who’s who of the post-dubstep, post-garage styles that the label has stewed together, including the atmospherics of Dean Blunt & Inga Copeland, the future dubstep of Burial and Cooly G, the sci-fi soul of Ikonika (with Dam-Funk) and the label’s own boss Kode 9. (David Pollock) SINEAD O’CONNOR I’m Not Bossy, I’m The Boss (Nettwerk) ●●●●●
Recently famed for her wonderfully forthright opinions (notable recipient: M.Cyrus) than her wonderfully forthright music, Sinead returns with a tenth studio album aimed more at the converted than any new acolytes out there. Still, it’s a strong record, with standouts like unreconstructed rocker ‘The Voice of My Doctor’ and the Seun Kuti-featuring funk of ‘James Brown’ balancing the limper ballads. (DP) WIRE Document & Eyewitness 1979-1980 (Pink Flag) ●●●●● Whether a live recording can recreate the experience of the original is lent a little evidence towards the negative here, with a reissue of seminal post-punks Wire’s ‘live bootleg’ of their Dadaist 1980 stage show at London’s Electric Ballroom. The quality is raw but the atmosphere is dangerous and there are some nice musical motifs (demented sax on ‘Eels Sang Lino’, for example), although the effect is like listening to a party in the house next door. (DP)
MATTHEW COLLINGS Silence Is A Rhythm Too (Denovali Records) ●●●●● Album two from the Edinburgh- based composer / sound artist is titled in reference to a Slits track, with whom he shares a deconstructivist approach and
even a hint of tribal primitivism. But, unlike The Slits, this is music for the head rather than the gut – a minimalist suite, more abstract than his debut Splintered Instruments, that foregrounds delicate piano, eddying strings, a fog of brass, post-rock menace and sundry found sounds. (Fiona Shepherd) SEBASTIEN TELLIER L’Aventura (Because Music) ●●●●●
The smooth operator of Gallic electro pop returns with his second album in a year. This time his eyes are on Brazil. Pourquoi? Some big sporting event, apparently. So L’Aventura flirts coquettishly with bossa nova and tropicalia, plus Tellier’s usual seductive, playful blend of French chanson, exotica, disco, synth prog and breathy crooning – with mammoth centrepiece ‘Comment revoir Oursinet?’ (FS)
ANNA CALVI Strange Weather (Domino) ●●●●●
Calvi flaunts her good taste but exposes shortcomings of her melodramatic act on this terribly serious covers EP, which abandons the abandon, as it were, of Suicide’s ‘Ghost Rider’ and fails to capture the rapture of Bowie’s ‘Lady Grinning Soul’. Even with the gender play, her ‘I’m The Man That Will Find You’ cannot hope to outweird Connan Mockasin’s original. Guest David Byrne lightens things up on the title track. (FS) COCTEAU TWINS Blue Bell Knoll/Heaven Or Las Vegas (4AD) ●●●●●/●●●●●
Prepare to swoon like a tightly corsetted Victorian lady on a sultry day to these vinyl repressings of 4AD’s final two Cocteau Twins albums. Shoegazing benchmark Blue Bell Knoll with its actual, intelligible lyrics has barely aged a day in the 26 years since its original release, while Heaven Or Las Vegas, warmed by Liz Fraser’s maternal cooing, was their most commercially successful album and a favourite of 4AD boss Ivo Watts-Russell. (FS)
90 THE LIST 10 Jul–21 Aug 2014 90 THE LIST 10 Jul–21 Aug 2014
JAZZ & WORLD JAZZ DEATH SHANTIES Crabs (Fuse) ●●●●●
Glasgow’s Death Shanties promise ‘balls-to-the-wall free jazz’, yet Crabs, their official debut following 2013’s self-released Nunatak, is a more exploratory affair than that description suggests. As the panicky squalls of ‘Something in Me Wakes Up Terrified’ attest, saxophonist Sybren Renema can wail, but he generally favours more subtle forms of liberation, blurring tender melodies into metallic bell tones on ‘Stumps’. Drummer Alex Neilson, mastermind behind folk-rock troupe Trembling Bells, mostly plays with timpani mallets, giving his rolls a dampened, slightly distant tone. Creative overdubbing allows looped saxophones to circle Renema’s alto lead like angry flies in ‘Baby Dodds Is Dead’, while Mike Hastings’s droning guitar, a doleful male chorus, and Lucy Stein’s recitation of a psychosexual dream passage from DM Thomas’s The White Hotel help turn the English folk song ‘O! Where is Saint George?’ inside out. (Stewart Smith)
JAZZ BRÖTZMANN, EDWARDS, NOBLE, ADASIEWICZ Mental Shake (Otoroku) ●●●●●
Recorded live at London’s Cafe Oto, Mental Shake reunites Peter Brötzmann with the crack rhythm team of John Edwards and Steve Noble. Chicago vibraphonist Jason Adasiewicz is the wildcard, opening up gorgeous purple-blue tone worlds under the Europeans’ punky improvisations. It begins with a hunter’s call from Brötzmann’s Hungarian tarogato pipe, answered by Noble’s war drums. Adasiewicz’s chords add delicate tension to the juddering groove, which drifts into abstract space music. Brötzmann re- enters on saxophone, his vocalised goose calls leading the group into weirder territory, with sinister groans and wire-on-wood slaps from Edwards’ bass and rain-on-tin snare deluges from Noble. Belying his wildman reputation, Brötzmann concludes the set in romantic ballad mode. Noble brings an edge to it all with impetuous crashes and thumps, drawing snaggle-toothed responses from Brötzmann. A terrific set, full of beauty, wit and bite. (Stewart Smith)
WORLD OOIOO Gamel (Thrill Jockey) ●●●●● In parallel to leading Boredoms’ cosmic drum circle, Yoshimi P-We has
journeyed through cute motorik pop, tropical disco frenzy and kaleidoscopic jazz weirdness with her all-female group OOIOO. For Gamel, two male gamelan players have been added, giving a disciplined momentum to the group’s wonky DIY avant-pop. The effect is like a Japanese Raincoats collaborating with Steve Reich. Each track follows its own skewed logic, playing games with tension-and-release and confounding expectations, while maintaining a forward motion. ‘Don Ah’ moves through an introductory ritual of pentatonic vocal chants and tuned percussion, before switching into a tropical rainforest groove, topped with electronic birdsong and monkey shrieks. The giddy playground vocal chants of ‘Jesso Testa’ promise an explosive climax, only to sway sideways into a tangle of calculated wrongness. (Stewart Smith)
WORLD MERIDIAN BROTHERS Salvadora Robot (Soundway) ●●●●●
Elbis Álvarez, the pink throbbing brain behind Bogotá’s Meridian Brothers, is the most inventive kind of nut. Yet for all its eccentricities, Salvadora Robot never descends into wackiness. On ‘Somos Los Residetas’, he creates a hobbled, strangely danceable merengue, topping it off with Star Wars cantina clarinets and cheeky organ jabs. The title track is a jaunty two-step with wonky Joe Meek guitars, while ‘De Mi Caballo, Como Su Carne’ has mosquito synths nibbling at a salsa piano. The decelerated reggaeton of ‘Baile Ultimo . . . ‘ cocks a snook at Colombian arbiters of good taste who consider the genre crass. ‘El Festival Vallenato’ is particularly askew, with Álvarez ranting through an echoplex over a rhythm that sounds like it’s falling apart and rebuilding itself simultaneously. Buzzing electronics and mischievous chipmunk vocals bring this brilliantly demented carnival to a close. (Stewart Smith)