missive 255
29-10-2009
Singled Out
Missive 255

For Kel xx

Singled Out is looking through the square window

The Phantom Band ‘throwing bones’ (chemikal underground). Culled from the bands critically loved debut full length ‘Checkmate savage’, ’throwing bones’ is a strange one indeed - sounding not unlike the work of some spliff happy beatnik commune who sometime in the early 70’s who armed with a truckload of bad acid decided to hop on to a magic bus and head of into some vast stateside desert wilderness in search of some collective inner enlightenment and instead experience a lost weekend lasting some 4 decades, either that or the work of some crossroads folk parched delta blues mojo tooting super group - a kind of Travelling Wilbury’s gone dark side featuring a stellar cast of greats with names such as Petty, Earle, Young and Parsons all deliciously dicking about in the studio with an equally inspired cosmic grooved kraut uber group - say Tangerine, Can and La Dusseldorf hiding under the mixing desk impishly rewiring the resulting tapes with some mind expanding ‘Autobahn’ styled Beach Boys hyper driven wooziness.

Pains at being pure at heart ‘higher than the stars’ (fortuna pop). More adorably hurt and humbling shy eyed pop from the alchemists of ache Pains at being Pure at Heart. This time a whole EP’s worth of spanking new tuneage from everybody’s favourite bitter sweet beauties. ’higher than the stars’ is a tear stained brittle and bruised babe that lilts and lulls with a lovelorn frailness all the time tenderly tugging on the heartstrings, the instant sugar rush appeal of the sweetly soured caress of the sudden recall of melancholic melodic memories by such timid creatures as Ballboy, Another Sunny Day, the Field Mice and the Trembling Blue Stars is inescapable as is the forlornly numbing effervescence of the fuzzy fizzy pop aura to which this cutie opines and arrests all the tie cradled by shimmering sheens of Meek like exquisiteness. Better still the svelte dream weaving and milky way calibrations applied on the St Etienne Lord Spank remix of the same cut replete with cosy toed flotillas of woozy and willowy orbital inclines and silken star hugging brush strokes - utterly transfixing and a deeply transcendental turn on if you get my drift. In sharp comparison and acutely upfront in its displaying of their primed popsicle powered panache ’103’ is all a swooned and sweetly glazed with the feedback shower shimmy of a youthful Primal Scream / JMC while the drop dead honey toasted ’twins’ should have lovers of all things the Vaelines / Teenage Fan club / Sarah et al light headed and a purring with its temptingly seasoned mid west sea breezed tingle. Nuff said.

O’Spada ‘time’ (make mine). Another record label who appear to have been issuing forth turntable treats with carefree abandon while our backs have been turned are Make Mine, not to be confused with the midlands based electro collective headed up by Portal / Yellow 6 - instead this one based in the UK location unknown has been eking out select prime seven inch sized prime cuts like no ones business - releases to date have included specially commissioned outings from Dent May, the Books and King Honey with the latest being a sneak peek offering from the hotly tipped Stockholm troop O’Spada. Seized upon by the Despotz imprint, O’Spada are currently cooking up a debut album which is due for release next year from which under the cover of night and by some shady hush hush secret handshake ceremony conducted in a darkly dimmed fog bound back street alley Make Mine have stashed under their jumper an advance tape of works in progress. Agreed not our usual cup o’ cha that said we’re not so stupid or ignorant as not to hear within the finite grooves of ’time’ some slinkily sassy slices of sophisticated disco-fied soul funk which I think I’m right in saying has the memory banks recalling the dance draped lushly toned ear candy pop sensibility of a certain Shakatak whilst simultaneously finding itself festooned in all manner of retro fondant grooves and swirls all lovingly primed with decidedly early 80’s floor flashing decorative motifs - one we gather best suited for the after lights out romantics among you.

Check out a new video channel being hosted by those disc dealing dudes over at LOAF - via http://vimeo.com/channels/loaftv

Colourmusic ’yes’ (Memphis industries). We’ve a sneaking feeling that we may have mentioned Colourmusic at some brief point in time throughout these pages and if we haven’t then shame on us. By all accounts recently relocated to the ever expanding Memphis Industries, ’yes’ their debut single for their new paymasters comes pressed up on limited quantities of 7 inch sized wax, best described as Plastic Ono’s ’give peace a chance’ rewired through the sun beamed feel good aural apertures of the Polyphonic Spree and fractured and distressed by a seriously off set funky drill replete with a Dadaist monochromatic gloss. Flip the disc for ‘you can call me by my name’ which happily veers into the same kind of brittle and fried sun warped lo-fi goo much admired by a certain Ariel Pink while the Zep-esque chug of ‘put in a little glass’ is a wonky and clearly flipped acid head pop nugget that bumps and grinds amid a becoming pageantry of grizzled blues wraps, glam tweaking and floral Beach Boys styled west coast harmonies - irresistible in our book. Impishly dizzy ‘spring song’ opts for a nifty slice of willowy pastoral kookiness which to these ears sounds not unlike a shyly retiring XTC relocated into the eccentric and barm pot back of beyond mind of Vivian Stanshall wherein in amid the maze of mirth and magic the Go Team and Freed Unit cheekily play hide n’ seek. Bringing up the rear ’gospel song’ does as it says on the tin lid - so jubilant and abundantly happy you feel like bottling the blighter up and selling it from over the counter at a local chemist.

Record Collector #369 - blimey is it really three decades since Record Collector started appearing on the newsstands with its cute pocket sized A5 frame unassumingly tucked behind the Beatles monthly magazine and appearing if I recall rightly as a bi-monthly event. This ‘billed’ as a bumper issue celebrates the publications 30th Anniversary and has as its cover feature and inner centrepiece first hand accounts from the Stones fronted Altamont festival and its lasting aftermath effects on Jagger and Co’s withdrawal from the darker sound side to something more conservatism and less confrontational. Elsewhere there’s a recap on Madness - incidentally also celebrating 30 years and a spotlight on an avid nutty boy collector who reputedly has some 10,000 plus different Madness related releases. Michael Jackson rarities still make the mark on RC’s monthly Ebay-o-meter, this time a signed copy of ‘Thriller’ fetching 2 and a half grand - a price significantly higher than the relative rock bottom values a few months before his death wherein the star himself even struggled to raise capital by way of personal auctions - obviously the Cat Stevens mixing desk trumps all. Fleur De Lys are given a long overdue appraisal along with Camel and not quite likewise Pilot while that golden year - yawn - 1979 is briefly surveyed for hip happenings while those much loving of lists have appetites satiated by not only the 30 most collectible artists of ‘our’ time - Elvis we note with interest these days occupies the #24 slot - but a year by year (79 to present) listing of key rarities. This months label of love is big scary monsters who embarrassingly we’ve never come across so far while ‘rockin the box’ focus’ on the youthful haircut hell of Spandau Ballet. Next month promises an extended feature on Nick Drake’s ‘five leaves left’.

Wire #309 - is it just me or are these issues of Wire coming around at a more regular pace than their monthly cover billing suggests, no sooner do we put down the last ish which incidentally featured another instalment of their critically essential Wire Tapper CD series then along comes #309. Inside Jim Jarmusch does considerably better than Lou Reed at the inscrutable hand of the Invisible Jukebox while there’s a short piece focusing on 00100 - the latest combo featuring Boredoms drummer Yoshimi - whose sonic wares we will be doing our level best to source and seek out in the coming days. The merits and wisdom of Cornelius Cardew’s subjugation to the will of Marxism and his defining work ’treatise’ are considered in detail by Philip Clark while elsewhere there are features and interviews with jazzman Henry Threadgill and guitarist Pete Walker. bit stream reveals details of the British Library’s recent opening of their sound archive online - for free no less - an immense resource of some 30,000 plus field recordings and spoken word samples - go to sounds.bl.uk for more information. Some of the finest Primer moments are gathered and bound up into a new publication entitled ’the wire primers - a guide to modern music’ which aside featuring previously published accounts on sun ra, the fall and sonic youth has a wealth of exclusive write ups on Derek Bailey and Zappa among others. Oh yea some dude called Julian Cope is this months cover star but don’t let that put you off - kidding of course, the stone hugging fried one chats about his new hairy, beatnik beat pop combo Black Sheep.

Uh Oh’s ‘cash- rich, imagination - poor’ (cherryade). Was it only recently that we featured this lot in these very pages - hang on I’ll just check - indeed it was - missive 243 to be precise wherein we cast a overly fond eye upon their recent download only single ‘the eyes you want’ via the ever wonderful NRONE imprint. After a brief detour to Little Power for their second full release ‘I can’t wait’ - which to disbelieving grumbles and groans we appear to have missed out on - the Norwich based upstarts have for this release again jumped ship - this time to the acutely essential home of spiky pop Cherryade’. ‘cash - rich, imagination - poor’ is a critically uber cool slice of dislocated angular groove, equal parts caustic and wiring, the isolationist riffage sparring and scarring wallows and weaves a landscape of pseudo glam gnawed grind that pulsates with the kind of restless off kilter grandeur that made the Pixies ‘surfer rosa’ such an on first hearing listening experience without comparable peerage, add in some subtle pop fixated harmonies borrowed loosely from XTC’s ’making plans for Nigel’, some seriously tasty and testy stuttering bump n’ grind accents and top it all off with Naomi’s agit angst scowls and you have a demonic dance floor damager. ‘glow in the dark’ over on the flip is a more panic stricken frenetically charged slab of post punk club floor seduction that find Naomi excitably navigating her way through a tensely wound strobe effected backdrop of mooching circular bass throbs and fuzz spiked white funk dialects, quite frankly just what transistors were made for. www.cheeryademusic.co.uk

http://www.myspace.com/processprocess - gonna stick my head out and say that this is the best thing to head out of Australia since the Devastations debut cut ’loene’. quartet process hail from Victoria and judging by the sounds found here have somehow gathered together a brooding and blistered mix tape of all your favourite sounds c.1979 - 83 and then proceeded to swamp drag the blighter into a heady mix of darkly wired hell hound blues. No official releases available as yet alas but there’s a demo CD kicking about and talk of a live self financed 7 inch at the planning stage - we suggest you enquire now to save the inevitable tears when the buggers go scarce, the band go stellar and the prices go through the roof on the auction sites - believe you me it’ll happen. Arriving laden with a handful of killer nuggets on their my space player, process tread an acutely austere landscape, from the minute ’ceremonial dagger’ kicks into action with its withered Indian call and its grizzled and brooding riff shadow plays your immediately alerted to the latent Birthday Party, Inca Babies, Gallon Drunk and Gun Club brewing between its fracturing grooves while ’the revelations’ tears a strip or two leaves from prime time era post punk dislocation of Joy Division. Then there’s the minimalist slow coiling intensity of the distressed and damaged ’missionary position’ here captured live and sounding like some titanic womb torn off spring of a bunk up between a menacing Suicide and a screwed up and fraught Boys Next Door. Edging for the sets best moment is the colossal ’medicine’ - featuring some of the best skin tingling atmospherics we’ve heard since Daniel Ash plugged in and set about lowering the temperatures to a deathly chill for Bauhaus’ ‘bela Lugosi’s dead’ though scratch a little deeper and there’s more than a passing whiff of a youthful Southern Death Cult / Death Cult bleaching the décor though in truth we admit to being mightily partial of the spurs n’ shades ‘drunk magic Jesus swastika’ - a howling rattle snaking slab of dust bowled magnificence flanked by the deathly shadow cast of swinging gallows and the ghostly opine of parched tombstones. Stunning in a word.

More at the weekend - submissions address -
Mark
105 shaldon drive
Morden
Surrey
Sm4 4bq
Uk

Updates - www.myspace.com/thesundayexperience

Email mark@losingtoday.com / surroundinsound@aol.com

Take care

Mark
xx