list.co.uk/music Records | MUSIC
AMBIENT ANDREW WASYLYK Themes for Buildings and Spaces (Tape Club Records) ●●●●● INSTRUMENTAL L PIERRE 1948- (Melodic) ●●●●●
‘It must be as ignorable as it is interesting’ was Brian Eno’s 1978 mission statement for ambient music, pretty much at the point when he was shaping the genre’s future direction. As with any sonic movement, two records can exist within its field while still sounding poles apart. So, ambient can easily accommodate as diverse a duo as Eno’s epochal Music for Airports and Andrew Wasylyk’s Themes for Buildings and Spaces. Certainly, that title could easily exist within the discography of a Robert
Fripp or Harold Budd, but Wasylyk uses the landscape and architectural vibe to concoct a diverse set of eight tracks (the longest of which clocks in at a most un-ambient three minutes and 13 seconds) inspired by his home town of Dundee. Having previously lent his musical prowess to the likes of Idlewild, Hazey Janes and Art of the Memory Palace, Wasylyk (actually Andrew Mitchell, who has taken his Ukrainian grandfather’s surname as his stage moniker) delivers a second solo collection which ditches the soaraway soulful vocals from 2015 debut Soroky to produce an instrumental album resplendent with brass, percussion, synths and samples of young Taysiders playing outside. The greatest successes are the more mournful pieces such as ‘Ghosts of Park Place’, and ‘Come the Autumn’ (the most Eno-esque number on show here), while the nostalgia-fuelled ‘Menzieshill’ wouldn’t have felt out of place on King Creosote’s From Scotland With Love. Even the more upbeat segments,
Over the past 15 years, Arab Strap mainman Aidan Moffat has sporadically indulged as L Pierre, his DIY repository for soothing found sound, scratchy samples and field recordings. The man best known for his droll, unflinching lyrics has produced, to date, four albums of woozy after-hours instrumentals, appropriating others’ work with ever-less studio embellishment of his own. But now Pierre is hanging up his boots for good.
For his fifth and final fling, he has lifted wholesale (from YouTube) samples of the recording of Felix Mendelssohn’s ‘Violin Concerto in E Minor’ by esteemed soloist Nathan Milstein with the New York Philharmonic. The original recording became the first ever 12-inch long player release in 1948, hence the title, with the date left hanging pointedly because, despite persistent whispers of its demise, vinyl isn’t dead yet.
The Mendelssohn is a gorgeous, sumptuous, sad symphony but the medium is as interesting as the message here. This swansong will be released strictly as vinyl only, with no sleeve to protect against wear and tear (my copy is now safely encased in a plastic sleeve, as this is a record I’ll want to play again, thanks mainly to Felix . . . ). Accordingly, the music comes pre-distressed, with the tremulous, slightly creaky
strings sounding a little warped, and the concerto chopped up and stuck through a blender. Following a tantalisingly slow fade-in, a mournful melody takes subtle hold,
like ‘Lower Dens Works’ and ‘Under High Blue Skies’, suggest a mysterious and murky hinterland.
Certainly not ignorable and interesting at the very least, Wasylyk’s contribution to the ambient genre might not be remoulding the form but it has definitely given his solo career a fresh perspective. And anything that adds to the artistic kudos of bonnie Dundee should be heralded as a good thing. (Brian Donaldson) ■ Out Fri 28 Apr.
running through the piece like a blue mist, the patina of distortion conjuring up images of European melodramas from the 70s, a realm of long doleful glances, lurid eyeshadow and fur coats. These moody moments are punctuated with stirring, urgent passages and dramatic crescendos before fading out on an exquisite haunting requiem which hits a locked groove at the end so that the listener can lick that wound for as long as they wish. It’s what Pierre would have wanted. (Fiona Shepherd) ■ Out Fri 28 Apr.
BAROQUE FOLK DOMINIC WAXING LYRICAL Rural Tonic (Tenement Records) ●●●●● ROCK THE JESUS AND MARY CHAIN Damage and Joy (ADA / Warner) ●●●●●
After an 18-year wait between Dominic Waxing Lyrical’s eponymous debut and 2014’s Woodland Casual, his latest project thankfully only took three years to be made and released. Rural Tonic, Dominic Harris’ third record under the Waxing Lyrical guise, reunites members of Edinburgh band Aberfeldy and celebrated ensemble Mr McFall’s Chamber to create his latest whimsical exploration into the spoken word.
Harris is primarily a poet, and while that is evident in the delivery of his often obtuse and metaphorical lyrics, there’s a musicality to his cadence and tenor which makes his work strangely alluring. Opener ‘King’ immediately sets out its stall with Harris’ scenic imagery in his lyrics, backed with a string quartet and embellished with natural sound effects. Lead single ‘La Giostra’ (‘The Carousel’) is perhaps the best example, a chamber pop waltz with a stirring piano line and flourishes of strings which typifies Dominic Waxing Lyrical. Meanwhile, the Aberfeldy half of the album takes on something much more
akin to Talking Heads-esque post-punk, such as the excellent ‘The Morningside Woodpecker’ which features a tightly knit stop-start rhythm section and more propulsive, direct delivery, making it surprisingly both heavy and playful. Harris’ sense of humour keeps Rural Tonic from floating off into a more self- aggrandising work, but it’s clear that this record won’t be for everyone.
Musically, the collection swings to different extremes, with the two sides
(post-punk and chamber orchestra) only occasionally interacting to create a mix of Beatles reminiscence and medieval, baroque folk exploration, such as on highlight ‘Kill Everyone’. Rural Tonic takes some time
to really get going and, while not forgettable (it would be very difficult to forget a project such as this), it doesn't fully hit the heights it promises. At its best, however, this is an intriguing romp. (Adam Turner-Heffer) ■ Out Fri 21 Apr.
Anyone who heard ‘Amputation’, last year’s first foray into new material from East Kilbride’s finest since Munki dropped with only modest fanfare in 1998, will be pleased to know that any anti-climax has been contained. Despite the fashionably insouciant, disinterested pose which the Reid Brothers, Jim and William, have made an art of throughout their career, ‘Amputation’ did a decent job of bringing it to life for real. The tinny drums, by-the- numbers squalling riff and half-hearted ‘oo-oo’s promised, at best, a modest impersonation of the good old days. It’s arguably the worst song here, and it’s done and dusted first. ‘War on Peace’ is much more like it, a song which similarly ambles, but in
that hazy, drug-addled fug which Velvet Underground made their own. ‘Each day I wake / it’s gonna be my last,’ Jim incants on ‘All Things Pass’, with more breezy pop joie de vivre than such fatalism really deserves. That’s what classic J&MC should really sound like, although there’s something more of their 1990s pop sensibility here than the 80s fuzzy atmospherics.
Producer Youth keeps things clean and interesting, and a procession of female vocalists balance Jim’s manly half-sneer. On the stately, swooning grind of ‘Always Sad’, William’s non-singer girlfriend Bernadette Denning is on board while the mighty Isobel Campbell is drafted for ‘Song for a Secret’ and ‘The Two of Us’, marshalling Jim from ‘too old to crucify / but too young for suicide’ to ‘I am just glad I found you / I’ll wrap myself around you’. And singer-actor Sky Ferreira appears on the dreamily downbeat ‘Black and Blues’.
Ultimately, Damage and Joy is a T2:Trainspotting of a record. With the point of it still questionable even as you experience it, the album doubles down on the combination of weather-beaten scuzz and pure Motown pop which you loved about J&MC in the first place. (David Pollock) ■ Out now.
1 Apr–31 May 2017 THE LIST 91