I like a bit of rough...so do you, I know - so do Sean Canty and Miles Whittaker who, in case you'd forgotten, are Demdike Stare. You might have forgotten. It's been so long since they made an album. Of course you hadn't forgotten. They were a big thing for a few years, back during...I've forgotten. Anyway, I always liked their releases for being a bit more tasteful, rather more selective in what they sampled than your average imaginary Horror score artists.
A friend says he's heard it's more 'techno'. That's one way of looking at Wonderland; the wrong way. It's more lively than most of what they've done, album-wise, but more to the point, chops up 'street' rhythms into things of their own making...jumpy things, jagged, grindy, Grimy things. At this point I'd reference the exact genres they've been sniffing at but I know nothing of current street music, preferring to avoid the street when at all possible because it's filled with people on their mobiles, wearing tracksuits, hoods and talking hybrid patois between mouthfuls of fast food...so I've heard.
FullEdge (eMpty-40 Mix) is the kind of 'techno' that gets me going....swaying this way and that as it does, with counterpoint percussion, tectonic rhythms, beats brought up in the mix, then down - big tune - and a bit 'street' with the warped vocal sample in there - relentless too. Hold on, I'll crank up the system for Sourced - BOOM! - that's it, right there - it's kinda drum'n'bass-y but then somewhere else, like Doc Scott on steroids. The way D&B used to sample Rap or Ragga vocal snippets is deployed here to great effect. I reckon, whilst they've been 'away', Demdike Stare have spent a lot of time listening to street music, which is great because someone has to do it for me, then take what they like and turn into something as good as this.
I mentioned 'rough' at the start. Well, that's one of the pleasures of Wonderland, a rough place where bass is distorted, beats crushed, swift cuts compressed, sabre-like 'scratches' scorch the mixing desk and everything is constantly mutating.
........................................'the soul, the mind, the body'..............'the future'.................
I don't know where the sample comes from - it's on Demdike Stare's mixtape, The Age Of Innocence& good it is too, of course, but they really should get their arses in gear & make a new record, don't you think?
What? You don't care? OK..........................................................................
talking of mixes.................
33rd! Who-o-o-o-o! That's up 49 places since Dec 17th so I'm hoping to be Number One for Xmas, you know, just like Slade & those other bastards that plague us to this day if we dare to venture into shops looking for gifts.........last year we complained to the manager of Sainsbury's because they started playing that stuff in November................this year it started later.....it pays to complain? if you haven't heard the mix it's here
.......................hauntology..........the beast that would not die? which is ironic, isn't it, considering the genre's dalliance with undead/spiritual/spooks etc.........so...........
...............maybe you do................maybe you don't.................................................but here I'm passing on
The Seventh Cyrkle by The Seventh Cyrkle because despite containing every trope imaginable & if you're being cruel, cliché, it's bloody good even with magyk circle-Demdike-devil-rides-out-Wicker whatever all over it - yes, very good, except I don't like the Folky vocals, of which there are few, thankfully.......based on a 1975 horror anthology of the same name..........................................
With an instant MP3 version available when bought from Boomkat, you may as well throw the record away when it arrives. No, give it to your local charity shop. Imagine the delight in someone's eyes when they see it there amongst the Elton John and Queen albums. Assuming they know what the Pre-Cert label is about...and they slept on buying Blue Amiga. What are the chances of that happening? You giving it away, I mean, never mind the rest.
Andy Votel and Sean Canty know how to make cults of themselves; only get 500 LPs pressed. Not just that, they make astonishingly good music as Neotantrik and on Pre-Cert have put out quality releases by Xian Orphic and N.Racker. More than mere Giallo soundtrack copyists, they avoid wearing obvious influences on their sleeves. Guests Suzanne Ciani and Bruno Spoerri give you some clues as to where they're coming from, but throughout the six tracks so many sounds are woven in as to defy simple categorisation.
With chattering synths, drones and unnameable sound elements, the collage of Mimologue echoes the early electronic pioneers. Amanita Cecilae (almost the name of a mushroom minus one 'i', honest) is more obviously Giallo soundtrack-influenced but succeeds by keeping it's distance. Ferrat Nova's title tells you it might be a space-age soundtrack and it would make a good one...film by John Carpenter. Within The Boundaries Of Knowledge is Neotantrik at their best. It splices a hint of wordless horror vocal with Free sax and rewound high-speed speech that suggest dark psychosis, whilst the minimal simple organ refrain suggests the tragic plight of some tortured soul from the asylum and his victims. That sort of thing.
The sort of thing this short album (37mins) suggests, like most Pre-Cert releases, is that the Devil is in the detail. Less is more. What is suggested through stealth equals more than throwing buckets of sonic blood at the listener.
BOOM! Andy Stott and Miles Whittaker Drippon' science, running in red and making a Metalheadz album that never was, or could be, come to think of it. As dark as Doc Scott or pre-celeb Goldie ever got, they never had the nerve or aesthetic vision to do as much damage as Stay Ugly. Yes, you will wonder if those old speakers have finally blown. I did, but the Wharfedales are nearly 40 years-old. Brutal doesn't do this track justice. But how would it have played in a d&b club circa '95? Everyone would have complained about the sound system, probably.
That aside, despite taking a leaf or three from classic era drum 'n' bass when no-one was for turning, Stott and Whittaker rewind and re-imagine their own version of those dark nights. Temper Tantrum in particular reminds me of certain tunes I'd keep in my box ready to raise everything; DJ Krust, perhaps, or Lemon D. But this is a sombre, austere take on the old blueprint, with no concessions to an imaginary dance floor, only the skinny white boys lurking in corners, clasping a can of beer, nodding whilst their insides are rearranged by the bass.
Spectral Source carries a hint of Techno-Jazz fusion in the loop, baring in mind that the merest suggestion of Lonnie Liston Smith used to warrant the tag 'Jazzy', creating something like classic Carl Craig beefed up by the modern concrete aesthetic. Corrosive gets a boost 3mins in...here come the drumz! Again, they're so distorted and chopped as to suggest a past that's not only been plundered, but ripped apart.
Just when you might think the old breaks are going to be broken all the way through, Back Down comes lumbering along like a battalion of mutant killer bees, so big they can't fly, only buzz, loudly, scarily...and they're made of iron, partly. The last track, Quay, might seem to offer some respite, but it's additional sounds are too ominous to allow for rest, only the restless turning in your bed whilst unknown entities rattle things and grunt like a pig.
29 tracks of murky dub techno, moody atmospherics, meltdown rhythms and more twisted beats are just what you need - legally free here at the Entropy site. Demdike Stare meets Basic Channel...almost that good anyway....
...but no, here's Howard, tinkling his keyboard in a tutorial fashion, showing us chords, diminished flats, cells and other things I've since forgotten...
...telling us all about the Story Of Music, no less - I eagerly anticipate his description of the musique concrete revolution and Stockhausen's electronic kick, assuming he'll include them. What will he say about Hip-Hop? Will he demonstrate the use of the Apache break on twin decks, or simply play a sample on that keyboard of his (does it have a 'breakbeat' setting?) - can't wait.
Meanwhile; Difficult Music. Atonality, no less. The sound the fury of Anton Webern, Arnold Schoenberg and Edgard Varèse upsetting the establishment by playing new things on old instruments - that is the shocking aspect. It's kind of Classical, but not as we know it. Had synthesizers been available in 1910 they may have written for them, and nobody would have cared because avant-garde electronic music isn't taken seriously. Not on TV, anyway - therefore, not anywhere - because to be on TV validates everything, from cooking to cats that can skateboard....
...skateboarding ducks became a symbolic joke on British TV back when everything was orange (or to be more precise, nicotine-coloured) and workers went on strike. Yes, that long ago. How could those who sniggered at animal antics being broadcast predict that three decades later the whole world would be addicted to animal antics via a thing called YouTube on computers (!) that weren't the size of a bungalow, but could be held in the palm of your hand?!
How could I have predicted, when starting my career as a DJ, that two decades later a Varese LP would always be in my record box (ask your dad) for one residency. The place was called Bartok, and therein lies a clue to the theme it promoted (but only if you know anything about the history of Classical music). Yes, Varèse would get a regular airing, although when they hired me perhaps they expected more Mozart. But it was a thrill to play Ionisation - call me crazy...
Why bother watching these programmes when there's so much Easy Viewing to tempt us? Wall-to-wall cooking, dining and cosy comedy beckons. I spoke to someone about this recently who suggested that many with demanding jobs (intellectually, presumably) wanted Easy TV. Oh the irony, since aren't those the very people this kind of programming is aimed at? And what is everyone else's excuse? They need a break from existence, to hit the mental snooze button. What else is High Definition TV for if not Lowbrow Culture? We have very Smart TVs for so many Stupid programmes.
'Why is the world full of so much shit?' LJ asked me not so long ago, meaning excrement of the cultural kind - and, staring out the window of the bus, I came up with the theory that the sheer volume of tripe on the telly acts as fertilizer for the forest of foolish nonsense today - music, film, whatever. The more there is the more they make and the outlets bloom like so many poisonous fungi, which people consume, and their brains die. - you see? Whereas when there were fewer channels the simpletons were more likely to come across something good and possibly think 'That's quite good, actually, despite the subtitles etc', and the world (UK, at least), would be a better place, filled with more creative energy dedicated to Art, Music, Film because people had been inspired by something they saw on TV. But was it better back then, in, say the 70s? Wasn't there as much crap as there is now? Percentage-wise...who has the figures,and who decides what it Crap? I don't know. The theory may be nonsense, but it passed the time. And anyway, Barry Norman's film programme (ask your granddad) was sure to feature many undisputed classics in the 70s. Today, there isn't even a good film programme on terrestrial TV - and if there was, it would be filled with formulaic garbage, mostly.
Radical music gets no time on TV. Not even on The Culture Show, which regards New Folk (?) and token black singers as the be-all and end-all of contemporary music. Yet it ventures across all terrain in the Arts. Is music not considered a valid art form in the UK today? Is Ekoplekz twiddling his knobs in vain? Demdike Stare? Café Kaput?Mordant Music? Perhaps I missed programmes featuring them...
...so I rejoice in the current 'glut' of programmes about music on TV. Yes. They may be historical by nature, but what The Sound and the Fury does cover makes a change from the usual BBC policy of providing TV for Mojo-readers...
