MUSIC | Records
ALBUM OF THE ISSUE
ELECTRO POP FOUND Cloning (Chemikal Underground) ●●●●●
FOUND were most recently to be found, as it were, touring the country as part of the Anywhere But The Cities roadshow of musicians, poets and writers. Anything but the usual seems to be this band-meets-art collective’s cultural yardstick. These BAFTA-winning
boffins have already created a couple of sound installations to capture the imagination - a musical cabinet of curiosities called Cybraphon and a cyber orchestra hitched up to a record player.
Now slimmed down to duo Ziggy Campbell and Kev Sim, FOUND have followed up with their own album of impressively stylised machine music. Cloning was conceived as a soundtrack to an imaginary film, and features a scattering of atmospheric instrumentals touched by the hand of John Carpenter, and redolent of the synth scores to David Cronenberg’s body horror films of the 70s and 80s. The glacial ‘End Sequence’ comes halfway through, right before
‘Centrepiece’, a rockier electro proposition with some of the claustrophobic urgency of Suicide or early Human League, while ‘Credits’ is a ready-made, retro-futuristic sci-fi snippet. Cloning is not just for genre fans, however. The rest of the album is a treat for lovers of analogue electro pop. ‘A Souvenir For Every Hope You Had’ belies its emo-ish title with a beguiling combination of plaintive vocals, muscular rock drums and beefy synth chords. The foreboding ‘Hit the Clone Button’ comes over like a Caledonian Soft Cell with its mix of New Romantic atmospherics and a stealthy, dramatic vocal melody. ‘The Second Catastrophe’ is a seductive affair, unfurling over eight minutes, while the synth pop ballad ‘Wheel Out Apocalypse’ keeps a tight tonal rein on its message: ‘if I can’t have your lips, then wheel out apocalypse’. (Fiona Shepherd)
ELECTRONIC KODE9 Nothing (Hyperdub) ●●●●●
As the man behind the label responsible for prominent releases by the likes of Burial, DJ Rashad, Ikonika and many others, Steve Goodman has been at the forefront of dubstep and the wider electronic genre for over a decade. Though hard to believe, Nothing is the Hyperdub chief’s debut solo album as Kode9, following two previous albums with vocalist-poet The Spaceape. But after collaborating on, remixing and releasing the music of countless other musicians, Nothing proves to be an exceptional portfolio of Goodman’s deep and profound knowledge of grime, early dubstep, 2-step and beyond. Opening with the foreboding drone of ‘Zero Point Energy’, the album maintains
a menacing theme through the contrasting ostinato-like melody and turbulent dissonance of ‘Notel’. ‘Void’ emphasises a kind of desolation which engulfs the album overall, perhaps as a result of the vacant spaces in the track, initially intended for The Spaceape. His presence is felt elsewhere, like the ominous ‘Third Ear Transmission’, on which the vocalist features and final track ‘Nothing Lasts Forever’, where the atmospheric nothingness fades to a lingering nine- minute haze.
‘Holo’ is a definite highlight with its tranquil vocals floating above footwork- inspired rhythms, similarly heard on ‘Vacuum Packed’. Meanwhile, the spirited fanfare of ‘9 Drones’, a version of the classic ‘Nine Samurai’ from Memories of the Future, begins the fitting conclusion to an emotionally intricate journey. The
album is ultimately a requiem to a friend and frequent collaborator, with a feeling of emptiness and melancholy running through from start to finish. That’s not to say it lacks character, rather with Nothing Goodman takes a landscape of interesting and disparate sounds and succeeds in creating a mesh of sub-bass, footwork patterns and hypnotic looped instrumentals. Its subject matter might be ‘nothing’, but the album certainly demonstrates something strong and sonically memorable. (Arusa Qureshi)
SOUNDTRACK STARRED UP: FILM MUSIC REWORKED Various artists (Good Grace) ●●●●● SOLO DEBUT ANDREW WASYLYK Soroky (Empty Words) ●●●●●
Buoyed by the success of his return to critical celebration with hard-hitting 2013 prison flick Starred Up following a couple of lukewarm outings headed by T in the Park-set rock comedy You Instead (2011), Scottish film director David Mackenzie appears to have designs on the ground occupied by John Carpenter; that of director turned soundtrack auteur. This expanded, vinyl-only version of the soundtrack to the former film feels very much like Carpenter’s work, dense with foreboding, and its existence is hard to impeach and easy to welcome. It’s an unsettling but satisfying listen which stands comfortably in its own right.
It also fits into Mackenzie’s career much more comfortably than You Instead, given that he’s previously soundtracked his films with the work of The Pastels (The Last Great Wilderness), Talking Heads (Young Adam) and the combined output of Domino Records (Hallam Foe). Here the director is the prime mover, with assistance from Mogwai producer Tony Doogan and contributions from Belle & Sebastian keyboard player Chris Geddes, actor / musician Ewan Bremner and Reid School of Music head and Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra co-founder Professor Raymond MacDonald. The tone is unflinching and rarely changing, but highly evocative. The tracks
have names that match their mood, and naturally those called ‘Preparing for War’, ‘Abandonment’ and ‘Violence’ are the most sinister, a blend of thundering, sustained electronic bass notes and menacingly alien synthesiser lines. Yet
Scottish singer and musician Andrew Mitchell is something of a renaissance man. Perhaps best known as the latest in a long line of bassists to have hit the low notes for Idlewild (he joined in 2014), he also boasts a secondary career as the leader of Dundee indie-pop outfit the Hazey Janes and a tertiary gig as a sessioner for the likes of Electric Soft Parade. This is his debut solo record, and it’s a suitable enough departure from all of the above to help paint a vivid picture of just how versatile a performer he is. He’s taken his pseudonymous surname from that of his uncle Iwan Wasylyk
and the title of the record from the name of the Ukrainian village in which his grandfather grew up. It’s not a surprising association, because somewhere in the fusion of sounds Mitchell makes there’s a certain Doctor Zhivago-ness, an air of Eastern European romance and melancholy. And there’s much more besides; hints of Magnetic Fields, echoes of Scott Walker, a strong sense of both Mercury Rev and Aztec Camera.
There’s also a bit of Alison Moyet in those vocals; a femininity and a rich bassy tone all at once. ‘What of the wonderful world / what of the dreams that we had?’ he asks in a swooning voice over the opener ‘Last of the Loved’, its tense piano and rising strings reminiscent of the saddest Bond theme ever. There’s a folksy Harry Nilsson-meets-Edwyn Collins sense to ‘The Esplanade’, and a general feeling of psychogeographic nostalgia to the record, as if singing of
there are welcome changes of mood here and there – the loose bongo-led funk of ‘Dunking’, for example, or the calming ambience of ‘Respite Paradise’. ‘Between These Walls’ funereal tone is punctuated by crunching, Mogwai-esque guitars, and even the lighter closing one-two of ‘Credit’ and ‘Cell Thief’ possess a mood of institutional distance. It’s an imagination-grabbing selection which sets out a scene beautifully, and hopefully not the last time Mackenzie puts together his own soundtrack. (David Pollock)
places experienced and missed; in the mournful croon of ‘The Park Hotel’, for example, or his urgent tribute to Mull’s ‘Calgary Bay’.
The Scots poet ‘Robert Garrioch’ is paid tribute to in one instrumental, while ‘The More I Believe, The Less I Know’ is the closest the album comes to a masterpiece. In total, it’s something less than the sum of its constituent influences, but for the sureness of its vision and the confidence of its execution, it’s an early effort which is well worthy of recommendation. (David Pollock)
106 THE LIST 5 Nov 2015–4 Feb 2016