BEA ULL #2: lethalnezzle

[Guest]

I woke up today with that weird feeling you have when you haven't really drunk enough to be hungover but you've still delayed a hangover you definitely should have had yesterday and as such just feel a bit jaded and like somebody else is taking the controls for a day. My mouth tastes like dog. I've got a big Guinness stain all over my light grey jeans, and now you all think I'm a douche because I wear light grey jeans. I'm supposed to be writing my Top 50 albums of the first quarter of 2014 with brief reviews for all of them for this blog, preferably for April 1st, and I'm one and a half reviews down. Forty eight and a half to go then. I also have to write these things called "H forms" for my college course, in which I basically summarise and outline all British and major European legislation relating to schools - basically which legislation influences school policy, so shit like the European Convention on the Rights of the Child, and the Health & Safety at Work Act. It's a fucking ballache tbh. The weather's fucking gorgeous, but the only reason I ever go outside is to smoke cigarettes, and I only have one left. I have to decide when I'm going to have it. Too early and I've blown my load, too late and I could've worked myself up into a mess of rage and stress who fucking hates everybody and wants to kill each person who tries to initiate conversation. And my mouth still tastes like dog.

But, on the plus side, I have spent the morning listening to the gorgeous One Quarter Descent by The Fun Years (2014), which is sort of like Basinski or Boards of Canada without all the weight those artists' respective music comes with. It's light and fuzzy, and it perfectly matches the room I'm in at the moment, an odd mix of shitty synthetic light from this wank energy saving lightbulb I have and the bit of sun that's actually creeping through my useless Velux blind that doesn't open all the way anymore. There's definitely some guitars here somewhere. I dunno, it sounds like waves battering a shore filled of decaying wind-up radios, all tuned to Radio 3, the station that plays all that inoffensive classical music. I listened to this when I got into bed last night too, although it sounds better on these speakers than it did on my headphones. I can't remember where I stumbled across this one, but it's been on frequently the last few days. It is the calm before the storm (or the clam before the strom). It's a two-sided tape, so there are only two tracks. The second one sounds Mongolian for a little bit and then it doesn't anymore. It's lovely but it doesn't make me feel any less jaded. And my mouth still tastes like fucking dog. Gonna brush my teeth soon. Might brush my teeth to some hardcore punk, make my gums bleed and shit. Rargh, punk.

[Guest]

Still haven't brushed my teeth, but I don't have shit to do today so fuck it. I'll brush them tomorrow. Decided to check out Todd Terje's It's Album Time (2014), which was a fucking mistake. It's too professional sounding. Clean and playful house music for people who don't like house music. Way too many Daft Punk references (you know those cliched, cartoony Troutmannisms that sound like somebody gave that little fucker from Short Circuit a wah-wah pedal, and should most definitely solely be the preserve of G-funk revivalists and, well, Daft Punk?) and, worst of all, a fucking terrible salsa number that only serves to bring back bad memories of 'The Cha Cha Slide' at school discos. It's just irritating tbh. I also don't see this album's purpose, most of it wouldn't work at a club but it definitely doesn't have the feel of something I'd ever want to put on in the comfort of my own home. He's definitely tried to make an "album", but it feels too forced. Like dude, just put out an album of house bangers without regard for whether it's cohesive. Because this is dogshit. Can't see myself going back to this one for a while. Will probably give it another chance before the year is up, but I don't imagine it's something I'll ever really enjoy.

Anyway, following on from that personality-starved turd of a record, I decided to spend the afternoon with an album that I know I like. Taking chances is for fools. So, the Weather Report's Live in Tokyo (1972) it was. I got into Weather Report because I used to be on some invite-only torrent site called Demonoid that has since been shut down by Ronald Reagan or something, and there was a dude on there who uploaded a load of jazz albums I happened to be looking for and in amongst his uploads was some album called Tale Spinnin' with a really cheesy cover by a band called, you guessed it, the Weather Report. Anyway, I stuck it on my iPod and thought nothing of it. Then, one uncharacteristically sunny day in early 2010 (I know it was then because Styles P had just dropped The Green Ghost Project and I'd spent the morning listening to that), I decided to put it on for no reason other than it had been sitting there for a while and I figured I should probably take a chance on it at some point. Long story short, I was smitten. Them summery fusion vibes. Probably the beginning of my ongoing dalliance with jazz-funk. So naturally I decided to check out as much as I could by the Weather Report, and I came across Live in Tokyo. It's just some fucking mental free-form fusion, all over the shop and yet at times relaxing as fuck. This is, however, a completely different Weather Report to the one responsible for Tale Spinnin'. There's an aggressiveness, an intensity, a dissonance that just doesn't surface on their later work. I can actually imagine Tortoise listened to this shit pretty much on repeat during the recording of their debut. But the one thread that runs through this manic early work and the effortless swing of their later releases is the summertime vibe. It's boisterous music for a blissed-out sunny day. I'm going down the shop to buy cigs.

[Guest]

So today I found out there's a new Hyperdub full-length release flying about, namely Fatima Al Qadiri's Asiatisch (2014). Anybody who knows anything about me at all knows that I've been on Hyperdub's dick for years, and so each new release from them is welcomed by me with open, excited arms. So when this album started with a strange cover of 'Nothing Compares 2 U' in what I think is an Oriental language that I'm unfamiliar with that somehow manages to be very minimal and yet completely gaudy at the same time I was a little taken aback. And yet it's that weird juxtaposition that guides the rest of the album. Grime minimalism meets that tasteless, cheap Chinese takeaway decor. Much like how 'Hong Kong Garden' by Siouxsie & The Banshees sounded like Chinese music made by people who dealt in very simple English rebellion music (punk) and whose only real experience of China was through Chinese takeaways and kung-fu films, Asiatisch is essentially a grime attempt at bastardised Chinese music that evokes a China that almost certainly isn't what actual China is actually like. The whole album has this really odd, synthetic ‘80s action thriller feel, some Big Trouble in Little China vibe, and ‘Hainan Island’ and ‘Forbidden City’ in particular sound like the sort of thing that might be playing if Michael Knight had to check out some suspicious goings on in Chinatown (though not necessarily in a good way). Then again, so does ‘Shanghai Freeway’, but it’s impossible to deny that song's arpeggiated steel pan-fuelled glory. With this and Mo Kolours' ‘Little Brown Dog’ from his new album, it’s fair to say that 2014 is the year of the steel pans (actually that’s a total exaggeration, but whatever, both songs are dope). I think I like this record, but I'm not sure. As I said, the opener was strange to say the least, and a couple of the interludes, including the last track, are entirely unnecessary (weird Windows 95 music; subtle undertones - albeit undertones that are certainly there - of that unbearable vaporwave aesthetic). But this definitely fits in with the revivalist/deconstructivist grime movement that's going on at the moment and at its best this record is dope. Something I'll definitely be coming back to, though it wasn't as immediate as some of the better recent grime releases such as Wen's Signals, Logos' Cold Mission or E.M.M.A.'s Blue Gardens.

[GeevyDallas]

[Guest]

Wtf are you doing, brush your teeth.

[Norman Bates]

[Norman Bates]

[Guest]

OK, so I figured I'd bite the bullet and check out Teeth Dreams, the new record by The Hold Steady (2014), a band with whom I spent a large part of my teenage years in love but whose last couple of records were a total disappointment. Their once-ramshackle bar band steez had been replaced with a stodgy stadium rock sheen and, whilst they had to grow up at some point, their ditching of the debauched tales and Springsteen-esque American nightmare lyrics of their early records for something altogether more mature simply said nothing to me about my life, to quote Manchester's favourite misanthrope. But, you know what, I really enjoyed this one. They certainly aren't The Hold Steady of old, but I enjoyed the record's rolling rockers ('Out with the Business' is fucking great) much more than anything they've put out since Boys and Girls in America, and even found something I could sink my teeth into during its quieter moments ('Almost Everything' is dope, definitely nothing groundbreaking but just a really nice, genuinely touching song). I don’t know whether this record is actually an improvement on their last couple, or whether I’m just now at a stage in life where I’m more readily forgiving of the stadium rock production (Finn uses a terrible flanger effect on his vocals for large parts the otherwise lovely ‘Wait a While’) and occasionally uninspired lyrics (“she said she always smokes cigarettes, ever since she was seven” quite honestly just sounds like it could be the opening line of a bad parody of a Hold Steady song), and more willing to accept that The Hold Steady will never again be The Hold Steady of 2004 through 2007. So yeah, this record has some fucking clunkers (‘Big Cig’, from which that aforementioned cigarettes line was pulled, is just plain bad, whilst 9-minute closer ‘Oaks’ is far too overwrought, not helped by its misguided ‘Purple Rain’ guitar solo), but overall it felt like becoming reacquainted with an old friend with whom I’d had a silly falling out – having to accept that we’d both changed, for better or worse, since we used to hang out all the time as kids, but able to remember the great times and the mutual interests that made us such close friends to begin with, and after a few drinks hopefully beginning to come to terms with (and even starting to like) the people we’d become. It feels good to have The Hold Steady back in my life.

Well, having actually listened to a good rock record today I felt like hearing another, so took to Skype to fish for recommendations. 19loveless91 obliged, and so I downloaded and then sat down to Today's Active Lifestyles by Polvo (1993), a band I'd heard of but never actually heard. And it was really fucking great. Retains the taut tension of a lot of post-hardcore (loveless said it wasn't dissimilar to Faraquet, who I really like, and he wasn't wrong), but manages to do so with the murky sloppiness and off-the-cuff demeanour of early Pavement or maybe Sebadoh. I kind of wish the vocals were higher in the mix, but it's the guitar that shines on this record anyway, largely flying off in refreshingly unpredictable directions and unafraid to make itself very apparent at any given moment. 'Time Isn't on My Side' treads that playful/sinister line in a way that early-'80s The Fall were so adept at, the labyrinthine criss-crossing that introduces centrepiece 'Stinger (Five Wigs)' sounds a bit like early Tortoise on really cheap speed, before really veering off into that Pavement territory I was talking about, and the vulnerable, melancholy instrumental guitar number 'My Kimono' is just absolutely beautiful (I went straight back and replayed it as soon as it finished, and again once the album was through). As an album I guess it contains the hallmarks of angry music without ever really sounding particularly angry, more just like some great friends goofing around and hopefully making quite a lot of noise in doing so. It's that constant battle between the tense and the sloppy I alluded to earlier that really gives this album the edge it has, and it doesn't hurt that there are some killer, immediately memorable songs thrown in ('Tilebreaker' has one of those choruses that soars out of nowhere and instantly sounds like you've known it for years, in the same way Built to Spill used to do circa There's Nothing Wrong With Love). Anyway, this is definitely something I'll be returning to and recommending to others in the future. Check it out if you haven't already.

Well, I've got a huge pot of beef bourgignon on the stove that isn't gonna eat itself. I'll try get some more listening done tonight and report back later.

[satiemaniac]

Had to immediately post reply upon finishing the first post (gonna dive into the rest right after I hit submit) to ask if we're somehow related. I, too, have been in a weird sort-of-hangover mode for a few days. I, too, have one cigarette left. I, too, need to brush my motherfucking teeth. Great format and I'm taking notes for when I have to make mine. Love love love, big ups and all that.

[Guest]

So, my bourgignon was banging. Yay for me. I've got work tomorrow so gonna get an early night, but figured I'd round off today's listening (and, by extension, today's Listening Log) with an album I'd previously had on in the background but hadn't yet given the attention it deserves, the latest from rapper Nocando, Jimmy the Burnout (2014). Previous Nocando releases have been hit and miss for me, and I always felt he struggled with the same problem as a lot of rappers who come from the battle rap scene (a constant need to come up with the next "hilarious" punchline) but was always a cut above most battle rappers in terms of stretching out cohesive concepts over the course of a whole song, even if those concepts sometimes felt forced or fell flat. He also has a really inconsistent taste in beats, which probably comes from being so closely linked with L.A.'s Low End Theory crowd - he's never been one to shy away from some pretty forward-thinking instrumentals, but sometimes the urge to always be rapping over something 'different' can lead to rapping over things that, put simply, just aren't very good. I could never get completely behind his debut album Jimmy the Lock, but in the last 18 months he has shown definite signs of improvement in every aspect of his music-making, and both his extremely fun mixtape Tits'n'Explosions and his involvement in the excellent Dorner vs. Tookie compilation (released on his own record label Hellfyre Club) had me hyped for his forthcoming LP. Aaaaaaand... it's dope. I still find his punchlines can sometimes come across as a little forced, and occasionally his hooks fail to hit their intended target (I'm looking at you, '3rd World Hustle'), but he's really got his grown-man rap thing down to a fine art, with a genuinely refreshing take on relationships and very healthy habit of turning tired cliches on their head. I also have absolutely no issue whatsoever with the beat selection here, with every single instrumental ranging from good to great (and the decision to get Dam-Funk in for album highlight 'Lucid Dream' an inspired one). So yeah, Nocando finally came through with a well-rounded, cohesive, fully formed project that bumps consistently and doesn't make me cringe (very often). Yay for Nocando.

Anyway, cheers to anybody who has actually been following this shit. I've got work for a few hours during the day tomorrow, and I'm planning on going to the pub to watch the Manchester derby in the evening, so the Log will probably be a bit more barren than it has been today, but hopefully I'll be able to fit a few albums in and pen some thoughts on them all. Just to finish, here's a quick rundown of what I heard today, and some initial out-of-ten scores for them all (I don't actually like rating albums before I've heard them a few times, so take these with a pinch of salt):

The Fun Years - One Quarter Descent (2014) - 8/10
Todd Terje - It's Album Time (2014) - 4/10
Weather Report - Live in Tokyo (1972) - 10/10
Fatima Al Qadiri - Asiatisch (2014) - 6/10
The Hold Steady - Teeth Dreams (2014) - 6/10
Polvo - Today's Active Lifestyles (1993) - 9/10
Nocando - Jimmy the Burnout (2014) - 7/10