Max Richter – Memoryhouse

A reissue of the astonishing debut recording from Max Richter, a composer whose mastery of tonality and melody place him alongside Arvo Pärt, Henryk Górecki and Michael Nyman in the modern classical catalogue. there are other elements of Max Richter’s work that recall Gavin Bryars, John Cale’s soundtrack projects and even Brian Eno in his use of electronics and ‘found’ voices. Memoryhouse is an invocation of old Europe, the ghosts of Sarajevo, even Versailles can be heard, orphaned voices reaching through the static, the faded grandeur of fallen empires and doomed campaigns. This is a work about reclaiming lost beauty, breathing new life into a past which has been devalued, a history that has been forgotten.

This video is from his album “Songs From Before” – see what you think…

Richard Hawley – Truelove’s Gutter (2009)

In which we enter a world of gentlemen’s hairdressers and brylcream, bakelite trimmers, a little something for the weekend. Outside, a fine drizzle and the lights reflecting off the soaking cobblestones. A bus hisses by, the smell of diesel hanging in the air, kaleidoscopic patterns in the rain filled gutter. Richard Hawley evokes the pre Beatles era of Matt Munro and his much maligned ilk with uncanny precision. The orchestral arrangements are sublime and he has the voice to carry it off without descending into parody. This is an album crafted with love and affection and the result is startlingly beautiful.

Yello – Touch (2009)

Incontrovertible proof that there is a god! After nearly a decade of silence, the awful notion that there may not be another Yello album was beginning to nag with irksome persistence. There were wild rumours of a studio collaboration with Kraftwerk that could only have been started by a desperate hi-fi salesman; meanwhile, back in the real world – nothing. Finally, the silence is broken;  in Touch, Yello demonstrate that the magic is still intact – sonic perfection!

Check out the samples and videos on the official website: http://www.yello.com/#/new-album

Spaghetti Western Orchestra – Live, Brighton Dome

In which five australian multi-instrumentalists take on the music of Ennio Morricone and adding generous helpings of bizarre instrumentation, tape loops, radio comedy sensibility and excellent sight gags, produce a splendid evening’s entertainment that might in another universe be called…. jazz.  Musically, these guys shine, the fact they also add generous helpings of innovative comic tomfoolery shouldn’t distract from that simple fact.  If they only have one joke, it’s a damn good one, the musicians perform in character as respectively, the Bank Teller, the Gold Sniffer,  the StoryTeller and the Young Feller, characters in a mythical western involved in a search for ‘Bob Robertson’, the pseudonym used by Sergio Leone  for his early american releases. It may not be Pirandello, but I’d urge catching this tour, the music is fabulous and the joke very funny – what’s not to like?

Hope Sandoval & The Warm Inventions – Through The Devil Softly (2009)

For some, Hope Sandoval will always be synonymous with Mazzy Star, a band whose particular brand of opiated country balladry casts a long shadow down the years, making itself felt in the music of the Cowboy Junkies and more recently The XX, to name but two. In fact, for Dave Roback, guitarist with paisley underground stalwarts The Rain Parade, this was a logical and powerful progression, a music so seductive that grown men abandoned family and friends for an echo of ‘Fade Into You’. Maybe not, though the lone voice crying out “Hope , I Love You” on the live version puts a powerful argument forward in support of that theory. Be that as it may, Hope Sandoval has a new album, produced by My Bloody Valentine drummer Colm Ó Cíosóig. ‘Through the Devil Softly’ continues to mine the dark side of life, songs of loss and dreams of salvation. Nobody does southern gothic quite like Hope Sandoval and in the Warm Inventions she has found a worthy foil.

The Only Ones – Even Serpents Shine (1979)

I recall seeing The Only Ones live at the Speakeasy in 1976, chatting to Mike Kellie the drummer before the gig and then watching in absolute awe as they unleashed ‘Another Girl Another Planet’ on an audience made up mainly of old school rockers on their way out, though most of them didn’t know it. They were the first new wave band I saw that could actually play, in John Perry they boasted a guitarist of startling originality and in Peter Perret a frontman with genuine charisma and an extraordinary talent, shame that in the end he only had one topic. The debacle that passed for a career is well documented elsewhere, but this album, was and remains a breath of fresh air in a world of conditioning. Building on the critically revered first album, it proved, if nothing else that we had, if only for a fleeting moment, a band that were capable of legend.

Here is a video of the band playing their one and only hit, the peerless ‘Another Girl, another Planet’

Yo La Tengo – Popular Songs (2009)

After the mighty ‘And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out’ this band seemed to have delivered a whole series of anti climaxes. The first signs of life came with the excellent title of their last album ‘I’m Not Afraid Of You And I Will Beat Your Ass’, though the songs it contained delivered little to terrify the quadraped in question. This album is different, the title betrays only mild irony but the songs are rather special, the sixties stylings, especially the orchestra, reminiscent of the immortal Wally Stott’s work with Petula Clark. The layers of dreamy harmony are in full working order, as are the nods to ‘Sunday Morning’ era Velvet Underground vocal stylings and the Sonic Youth inspired mass guitar frenzy – what Yo La Tengo do so well, sixties sensibilities harnessed to gonzo guitar breaks and muppet style jamming is here in abundance – a welcome return and an album to treasure!

Cougar – Patriot (2009)

So there comes a time, when a man takes stock of the sometimes impetuous decisions of his youth and it is at these times that the full horror of prog rock preys heavily on my mind. Concluding that it may perhaps have been palatable without the ridiculous lyrics and manwitch vocals is something that Cougar too have evidently decided and so it behooves me to mention their second album, Patriot. A blissfully vocal free torrent of bewildering time changes, doomy guitars and pastoral interlude. There are so many ideas jostling for position in this album that poor old Peter Hammill and his chums in Van der Graaf Generator seem like Status Quo by comparison. Reminiscent to these untrained ears of Explosions in the Sky, Mono and even in places the blessed Mogwai, no studio trick is unturned, from the stop start rhythms to the stuttering breaks, millions of guitars and dreamy synths. A curious album indeed and one that mysteriously, I find myself returning to.

Malcolm McLaren – Fans (1984)

Iconoclastic, innovative, irritating and inspired, Malcolm McLaren’s career turned the business of band management into a situationist prank and in punk rock, inspired an era defining sub culture that changed many people’s lives. Post Sex Pistols, he turned his skills to record producing, cutting up African music and Hip Hop to produce the ground breaking ‘Duck Rock’ and followed that triumph up with typical disdain by attempting to pull off the same trick with Electro and Opera.

That the album preceded trip hop by at least a decade is interesting, more interesting yet is the impeccable choice of source material and the fact that on sunny autumnal mornings such as today, it still brings a smile to my face and a spring to my step. There is some strange alchemy at work when the tragic beauty of Puccini’s Madame Butterfly is interrupted by McLaren’s puckish tones recounting the unlikely tale of love lost between an american airman and his abandoned japanese girlfriend. What should be cringingly embarrassing becomes suddenly rather touching. Such is the transformative power of opera. Here is the video – soft porn, fashion flim flam? a true eccentric at work!

“If I had all the money I’ve spent on drink, I’d spend it on drink”

A precursor to the mighty ‘Withnail and I’, and an influence on my own Grapes of Wrath stories, Sir Henry started life as an episodic tale in John Peel’s Radio show in the early 1970’s. Starring Trevor Howard as the fulminating Sir Henry, the film lurches drunkenly around a doomed attempt to exorcise the ghost of Sir Henry’s brother, Humbert, who had been accidentally killed in a drunken duck-shooting incident whilst escaping from an illicit tryst. Amongst a collection of eccentric family members, barking mad friends and mystifyingly loyal servants we meet the compulsively knitting Aunt Florrie, Lady Phillipa of Staines, who enjoys the odd sherry and the unforgettable Old Scrotum, Sir Henry’s wrinkled retainer. Humbert is played by the author, Vivian Stanshall, a man whose enthusiasm for the demon alcohol was matched only by his genius for absurdity and his love of an entirely mythical England.

“I never met a man I didn’t mutilate….”