grouplove: never trust a happy song (canvasback)

A new somewhat scathing review (sorry Grouplove!) up on TMT:

What’s that? You’ve never heard of Grouplove? But they came 10th — TENTH! — in NME’s list of the hottest new bands of 2010. Yes, that NME. The not-all-past-its-prime, totally hip and zeitgeist savvy, trendsetting little zine out of the UK. You know... the one with Oasis on the cover.

Never Trust a Happy Song is the debut full-length from L.A. indie-poppers Grouplove, and I’m afraid to say it makes for a pretty dreadful listen. It starts well enough. Although lyrically totally nonsensical, Itching On a Photograph is a vaguely infectious sing-clap-and-whoop-along in the style of The Killers, The Thrills, and Modest Mouse. Okay, so it sounds dated. Seth Cohen was listening to this sort of thing back in 2003. But it’s tuneful enough. Definitely proficient. From there on in, however, it’s pretty much downhill all the way. The more you listen, the worse it gets. And not just in terms of the songwriting either. Never Trust a Happy Song is unremittingly hyperactive. There’s only so much of this relentlessly bland, super-duper sincere, happy-clappy drivel a man can take. It’s like being bludgeoned over the head with a massive piece of indie-pop candy cane. And it makes you wonder: who or what is this music actually for?

...For my totally incisive and incredibly well expressed answer to that question read on here

towards an acoustic jurisprudence

A piece I presented at the recent Critical Legal Conference in Aberystwyth is now up on the ever excellent criticallegalthinking.com. Check it out here. A longer, far more developed version under the title 'The Soundscape of Justice' will be coming shortly in the next issue of the Griffith Law Review.

hudson mohawke: satin panthers ep (warp)

hey look! my first review for Tiny Mix Tapes:

 

Satin Panthers is Hudson Mohawke’s third major outing for Warp, and in many respects, it’s also his most accomplished. It’s a tight little EP — five staggering, stuttering, often imperious dancefloor gems — and far more consistent than Butter, his debut full-length from 2009. Opener “Octan” is a masterpiece of a pricktease: all anticipation, no climax. And then, once “Thunder Bay” has kicked in with its surly rude-girl vocals, massive baile-inflected horn riff, and ravetastic synth break in the middle, our appetite for the rest of the record remains duly whetted. From the loping THC-addled bassline of “Cbat,” through the glossy-as-fuck "All Your Love," to the frenetic martial snares of closer “Thank You,” Satin Panthers is a quality piece of work from Glasgow’s much vaunted wunderkind.
 

But here’s the rub: It’s also less exuberant, less manic, less gleefully ADHD than some of HudMo’s previous efforts...
 

Read the rest of the review up on Tiny Mix Tapes

shameless plug: discipline journal

a great new arts journal called Discipline and edited by a friend of mine is being launched at the Alderman on Friday night. says its website:

Discipline is a Melbourne-based contemporary art journal. It has a focus on longer, research-based essays, interviews and artist pages.

While based and published in Melbourne, the writers and artists who have contributed to Discipline are both local and international. In presenting longer-form essays, the journal aims to ground a new body of sustained intellectual writing about contemporary art that does not merely fall back on the crutch of ʻpluralityʼ as a means for theorising art after postmodernism and globalisation.

Discipline aims to publish highly focused essays that take on, critically and intelligently, the full strength of contemporary artworks, working through their specific concepts, histories, politics and materialities.

Review: BJ Morriszonkle, Bitch Prefect, New War, Harmony (album launch) at the Tote

The reason the Tote is a Melbourne institution is that it understands the value of risk: that it is precisely the ideas which are not yet fully formed that need a place in which to be developed and nurtured. In other words, if the Tote is precious – and a lot of us clearly think it is – it is surely because it allows nights like this one to happen.

Overall, I’m afraid to say, tonight is a disappointment. Opener BJ Morriszonkle, however, deserves none of the blame. His is without a doubt the zaniest solo act I have ever seen. Weird he may be, but make no mistake: this guy is an accomplished musician. Hunched maniacally over his double decker keyboards and thumping out frenetic rhythms on a lone cymbal by his side and the kick drum at his feet, the strangest sounds emerge: as if from a demented circus in your nightmares. This is precisely the kind of bizarre fare that both needs and deserves a forum like the Tote.

By contrast, Bitch Prefect are utterly bland. Their raw and raucous garage-rock, complete with appropriately abysmal vocals, holds very little interest in 2011. They’re a throwback. And fair play to them. Nothing especially wrong with that. No venue more appropriate. But to my ears it all sounds a little too much like a band doing an impression of a band doing an impression of the Velvet Underground. That might not be a problem if you’re Everett True, but personally I can’t help but think that particular gesture was already getting a bit old in the 90s.

New War have more than a hint of retro about them too. Only, it feels a little more urgent, more relevant somehow. Theirs is an intriguingly bleak yet pulsating dub-inflected and reverb-soaked spin on post-punk. That they pull it all off without a lead guitar is particularly impressive. And it’s a shame that the monitors bugger up just in time to ruin their last number.

Harmony, sadly, are far less impressive. The early signs were promising. A decent couple of recordings on bandcamp and a line-up which has had some eager commentators prematurely crying ‘superband’. But, at tonight’s album launch at least, the live act simply doesn’t work. It’s the concept that’s wrong as much as anything else. Harmony, it turns out, is precisely the wrong word. The band essentially comprises two utterly distinct halves. On the one hand we get a sort of blokey power rock thing from the lead singer and rhythm section. On the other, three girls provide a strangely inappropriate vocal accompaniment on top. Ok, so the sound system doesn’t do the ladies any favours. But even if it hadn’t conspired to obliterate any nuance that might have been otherwise discernible in their peculiar blend of doowop and gospel, I can’t imagine how the overall effect would have been anything other than bipolar.

As with so many nights at the Tote, then, this one is equal parts hit and miss. That is both part of what can make it such a frustrating venue, and a key part of its continued necessity and appeal.

Review: Ghoul, Collarbones, Absolute Boys at the Northcote Social Club (05/05/2011)

Forthcoming in Inpress magazine:

According to the Northcote Social Club’s website, tonight’s headliners Ghoul, along with the likes of Seekae and Pikelet, are amongst ‘the crème of Australia’s experimental underground.’ For what it’s worth, they’re some of my own personal favourites too. But as I settle in for what turns out to be a thoroughly pleasant Sunday evening in the inner north, I find myself wondering about this word ‘underground’.

Because the fact is that the underground just doesn’t feel very underground any more. There’s no atmosphere of danger, or wildness, no sense that something illicit or threatening is taking place. This is a development that UK critic Simon Reynolds noted in a recent article on the LA buzz-label Not Not Fun. It’s not that Reynolds is particularly enamored of rowdiness or violence, of course. But what he is worried about is the possibility that the change signals a lack of urgency, of risk-taking in music, and, most importantly, a lack of oppositionality to the insipid ‘overground’ or mainstream. Sure, the digital revolution’s been amazing in terms of the accessibility of alternative musics, but it’s also meant that it’s no longer necessary for the underground to define itself against the mainstream. It’s perfectly possible to exist alongside it.

Tonight, the music’s great, but it’s hard not to see Reynold’s point. It’s all a bit quirky, to be sure. But fundamentally, it’s nice; safe: this feels like a Sunday night.

Openers Absolute Boys clearly still have room to grow, but their bass driven and reverb bathed grooves are already very likeable. Sydney’s Collarbones, similarly, are a little on the raw side of things. Their unusual brand of glitchy electro-meets-witchhouse-meets-RnB has moments when it works like a charm, but both their sound and their live act could do with some refinement. It’ll come though, I’m sure. They’re certainly not lacking in either potential or exuberance.

Finally, Ghoul, whose bass player has been replaced tonight by a little black box of tricks, are excellent. Lead singer Ivan Vizintin, as always, holds the key to the band’s appeal. His voice is rich and grainful. It has a gravitas and a soul that one rarely comes across in experimental electronic music of this kind. The set kicks off with a live rendition of 3 Mark from their recent EP Dunks which is totally different to the recorded version, but just as good. And the new material showcased towards the end of the set sounds really promising. Overall, the show’s a resounding success.

What it’s not, though, is particularly edgy. Collarbones did a cover of Jenny From the Block for God’s sake! And their myspace has a version of Justin Bieber's One Time. As far as Reynolds is concerned, this de-oppositionalisation of the underground is clearly a ‘bad thing’. It amounts to a depoliticisation, a backing down to corporate interests and the Simon Cowells of the world. For my part, I’m not sure we have to think of it like that. What would an ‘authentic’ underground even be like in 2011? How could it possibly avoid being ironic or meta, nothing but a lame pastiche of its rave, punk or rock predecessors? Perhaps it’s better to let the underground, along with our desire for it, simply wither and die, and be content with a form of radicalism as pluralism which works slowly but surely alongside and within the mainstream instead?

jamie woon: mirrorwriting (candent songs)

forthcoming in inpress:

It was inevitable really, just a matter of time before the sonic language of dubstep got appropriated for the purposes of an otherwise completely conventional pop framework. On his debut record Mirrorwriting, Jamie Woon does to dubstep what Craig David and Daniel Bedingfield did to UK garage, what the Eurythmics did to new wave and what Cliff-bloody-Richard did to rock’n’roll: that is, to take a vibrant, interesting and important new sound and make it safe, insipid, and, sadly for those of who actually give a shit about music, popular. Woon placed fourth in the BBC’s Sound of 2011 poll.

Lets be clear. I have nothing whatsoever against fusion or hybridity. Woon can count as his peers in the dubstep-crossover market James Blake, Darkstar and Subeena amongst others, all of whom are great. But there’s a big difference between fusion as a way of fashioning something genuinely new and fusion as a mask for a total lack of originality. James Blake this ain’t. There’s nothing remotely exciting here. This is the same old R’n’B with the same old utterly vapid lyrics and the same old ever so sincere and soulful but actually completely unaffecting vocals. The only difference is that on Mirrorwriting Woon’s tarted it all up with dubstep’s patented glitchy bleeps, pitched voices and a whole lot of reverb.

Mirrorwriting isn’t actually as bad as a lot of pop you’ll hear this year. But it’s a particularly disappointing example because Woon is clearly a pretty talented chap. He’s got a good voice, an ear for a tune and has evidently been hanging out in all the right places. As a result, it’s a real shame that, where his early demos and singles showed some definite promise, this record has wound up being such a massive bore.

james parker 

topology: difference engine (serrated records)

In this week's edition of Inpress:

Whatever else it might be, a review is first and foremost a recommendation. So I should begin by saying that I cannot recommend the latest effort from Brisbane ‘new music’ stalwarts Topology highly enough. Difference Engine is an extremely accomplished record. It is rich and gorgeous and playful and urgent. It has charm and depth and, above all, vitality: life, vigour, exuberance.

More specifically, Topology’s seventh album since their formation way back in 1997 comprises four distinct works over ten movements, all for a basic quintet of piano, bass, viola, violin and saxophones, with the addition of djembe on Robert Davidson’s exquisite Exterior. There is an extent to which Difference Engine can be understood as an exploration of the relationship between the mathematic and the organic, the mechanical and the vital: or to put it somewhat more poetically, the difference between clockwork and a pulse. φX174, for instance, is named after a bacteriophage and was composed in part by mapping DNA letters to pitches to create melodic and harmonic material. ‘Both genes and music’, we are told, ‘are made of linear and quantized information which represents unfathomable diversity and mystery.’ And the record itself is named after ‘the world’s first computer’, Charles Babbage’s ‘difference engine’ from 1822.

All this is evident acoustically primarily in terms of the use of repetition which, although it is undoubtedly a key part of the compositional vocabulary, never (d)evolves into a full blown minimalism. Rather, it provides the music with its heartbeat and its considerable drive, if not necessarily its soul. That comes, of course, from the performers themselves: Babbage, Hoey, Powell, Colbers and the two Davidsons. This is an album which sounds as though it has been wrought from the best part of fifteen years of both friend- and musicianship.

james parker

belbury poly: the willows

something else from the founder of the Ghost Box label (for copious detail on which see the wonderful Rouges Foam), this time from one of his own records. love the way it's bookended by that haunting, stalking riff:

Review: Tunng at the East Brunswick Club (22/02/11)

Forthcoming in Inpress:

Two different sensibilities, two different perspectives. As we head home from the gig, Alex has a great big smile on her face. She’s been charmed by Tunng tonight. And I can see why. For starters, their music is just as quirky and delicately articulated live as it is on record. Acoustic guitars and percussion blend seemlessly with the electronic chirps and pre-recorded beats for which the group have rightly made a name for themselves as stalwarts of Britain’s so-called ‘folktronica’ scene. But in the flesh they also bring to this a self-deprecating English humour which is genuinely endearing. Lead singer Mike Lindsey deserves a lot of the credit in this respect. He seems like a genuinely affable guy. And having temporarily daubed a pair of outrageous blue and gold winged sunglasses for the occasion, his outrageously out of place faux-metal guitar solo on By Dusk They Were In The City is unquestionably one of the night’s highlights: a moment of musical slap-stick genius. That this is a band with its collective tongue (tunng?) planted very firmly in its cheek is abundantly clear. Alex, as I say, is one hundred percent sold. And she certainly isn’t the only one this evening either.

For my part though, I can’t help but feel that it’s all just a little bit nice. As fun as Tunng admittedly are and for all their pretentions at genre-bending, tonight the line between this and straight-up blandness sometimes seems precariously thin. The tempos plod and the crowd gently bobs and everyone is very nice and sensible and polite and we’ll all be tucked up safely in bed again shortly after 11. God knows I hate myself for saying it, but this is a Tuesday night gig if ever there was one.

Of course, I’m just as well aware as the rest of you that this whole Lester Bangs music-as-Dionysian-headfuck schtick is nothing but a tired old rockist cliché by this point. And that now that mp3’s have become the permanent wallpaper to our acoustic lives, it’s unfair really to criticise the likes of Tunng - who seem like a great bunch and whose records at one point or another I’ve really liked - for making such a pleasant racket. But the thing is that the wallpaperification of music culture simply makes me itch for those rapturous, transcendent moments even more. I’m on the hunt for jouissance and nice simply doesn’t cut it.

This is why I find it so difficult to know what to say about opener Fergus Brown. He seems like a good bloke and a genuinely decent musician. But – and here’s the real point – as the indie-folk nexus takes up an increasingly central place in the mainstream, I find myself increasingly tired of it all. I’m tired of singer-songwriters, I’m tired of folk, I’m tired of 90s FM pop revivalism and all of their lovingly crafted ditties. It’s all so utterly blissless.