The Other Music newsletter

[imomus]

Once upon a time—in fact five years ago, when I lived in New York—I used to read through the Other Music newsletter with reverence, clicking all the links, listening to all the sound clips. I discovered some interesting records because of it: Max Tundra's first release, Sack and Blumm. Then, the way these things do, something changed. Was it something in me, or in the shop itself? OM's graphics got snazzier, but there were competition giveaways and promo stuff to wade through before you got to the reviews. The blurbs the staff wrote began to verge on the self-parodic; not only pretentious, but full of the overblown assumptions of the snobbiest kind of consumer journalism.

You know how Wallpaper magazine projects an "ideal reader" who knew Chef Miyasaki's fugu cuisine in Johannesburg, but can now conveniently sample it in Moscow too? (I mean, indulging in flattering fantasia beats admitting that you're just rewriting press releases, right?) Well, Other Music projects an ideal reader who's collected all of Obscure Psychedelic Artist X's rare late 60s vinyl releases from eBay, but is now relieved to find them on one reasonably-priced double CD set. Check out the video clips on the BBC's Posh Nosh page for a lovely parody of exactly this kind of journalism.

Anyway, I still get the OM newsletter, though I now take my buying tips from other sources. OM's music picks seem increasingly yuppyish (smooth jazz noodlings) or just downright conservative (fundamentalist Christian rockabilly, I kid you not). But today I decided to sit down and listen to everything in this week's edition and give you my impressions, prejudices and judgements on the music on offer. You can hear the music by clicking the links. I tend only to write about things I endorse in these pages, but this exercise forced me to confront things I had a wide range of feelings about: excitement, admiration, indifference, mistrust, loathing. Unlike the invariably breathless OM staff, I pull no punches. I'm not trying to sell records here, just work out how this music sounds and how I feel about it. So if I'm rude about your favourite artist, do forgive me. Here goes:

COLLEEN
The Golden Morning Breaks
(Leaf)

"The Happy Sea"
"Summer Water"

I did my bit to add to the cloud of media hype surrounding Cecilie Schott's first album on Leaf, writing about her for Vice and photographing her when she visited Berlin from Paris, where she works as a teacher. She's a friend of Anne Laplantine, and the sleeve of her debut album was drawn by my friend Flo Manlik, so she's very much family. I have to admit that "The Happy Sea" clip doesn't really do much for me, though. It's a slow brassy throb with some tinkling glockenspiels on top. The second track, "Summer Water", is nicer. It's not Coleen's fault, but my taste at the moment is for music with some textural space in it, more structure than this, and counterpoint. I'm in love with the Konki Duet album, for instance. Hey, Other Music, did you stock or review the Konki Duet album? No, you probably didn't. I wonder if you have any Active Suspension releases at all?

FOUR TET
Everything Ecstatic
(Domino)

"Smile Around the Face"
"Sun Drums and Soil"

I must admit to being rather annoyed with Four Tet. Kieran Hebden came along a year or so after I coined the term "folktronic", got seized on as a figurehead for a new movement called "folktronica", and is now, predictably enough, bored with the term and disowning it. Not only did he profit from (then abandon) my genre term, he even put a picture of my girlfriend on one of his single sleeves! (A drawing of Hisae appears on "My Angel Rocks Back And Forth".) Musically, I've been very disappointed with Four Tet in the past. Far from the electronic folk music I expected to hear, he seemed to be making rather vapid and tepid sequencer chaff, inoffensive instrumentals for slightly daring yuppie supper parties, a throwback to 90s stuff like Howie B. "Smile Around The Face" actually has a more interesting chuggy texture than anything I've heard, though. "Sun Drums And Soil" feels a bit like a rather more aggressive version of "Remain In Light"-era Talking Heads. I must say I wish the legions of people who'll no doubt buy this would go and get a Fan Club Orchestra record instead. Or the new Nathan Michel album "The Beast". Hey, Other Music, do you stock the Fan Club Orchestra?

SMOG
A River Ain't Too Much to Love
(Drag City)

"The Well"
"Rock Bottom Riser"

Smog's Bill Callaghan is someone I'm vaguely aware of, and vaguely wary of. He's a lone troubadour who sings depressive songs and is beloved by the sort of Frenchmen who go and see depressing anglo-saxon singer-songwriters perform on boats moored on the Seine, then proclaim them the second coming. That and Nick Cave fans. I guess I just dislike the sort of desurgent sincerity, the formal conservatism, of such figures. That's mostly prejudice, though, because I haven't really listened to Bill's oeuvre. I already really dislike the album title, "A River Ain't Too Much to Love". I should tell you at this point that I hate Neil Young and all who swear by him. But what do Bill's new songs sound like? Well, "The Well" is a sort of rollin' rockabilly number about "blues" and "ah felt so bad" and "wouldn't ya know". It's not as morbid as I was expecting, but it just feels deeply conservative to me. I resent the "assumed universals". Then again, if this were played on a synth it might not be far from Bruce Haack. No, what am I talking about, Bruce was funny and instructive! "Rock Bottom Riser" continues with talk of "pledgin' ma love to you" and "ma foolish heart". Like Nick Cave, he's clearly a literary fellow who reads Raymond Carver short stories, but I just don't respond to heartlands humanism like this. Go teach creative writing class in North Carolina or something, why dontcha?

TOSCA
J.A.C.
(G Stone / K7)

"Superrob"
"Naschkatze"

It's smooth, with a 70s blaxploitation vibe and reggae chops. Everything's just askew and off-kilter enough to avoid cliche, but it's a bit slick for my taste. This is the Richard Kruder who used to be in lounge outfit Kruder and Dorfmeister, right? So he's a Viennese who wants to sound American, right? The second track reminds me that I used to like Nightmares on Wax, for some reason. It's the sort of music you imagine people calling each other "Daddio" to: bland bobo music. Tommy Guerrero, anyone?

ED ASKEW
"Ed Askew"
(ESP-Disk)

"Red Woman - Letter to England"
"Fancy That"

God, this sounds exactly like a latter-day Stephin Merrit song! Until the high-pitched tenor comes in. It's a bit annoying, actually, that voice. Appalachian Irish narrative, with shades of Tim Buckley and Van Morrison. Did I tell you that I hate Van Morrison? No guru, no teacher, no method, that's me! Other Music's staff, meanwhile, do this record no favours by saying "to call it a work of genius would be no exaggeration". Come on! "Love to love the lovers who love to dance in the sky..." Plinky plonky picking and this annoying voice that sounds like the "genius" has just sucked a big lemon.

SANSO-XTRO
Sentimentalist
(Type)

"Misplaced Feather"
"Unsentimental"

This is a woman called Melissa Agate. It sounds like the kind of record F.S.Blumm might make with Anne Laplantine, therefore is A Good Thing. There are subtle undercurrents of processing and the right kind of counterpoint: not too much going on, attention to actual notes and how they affect each other. The second track, "Unsentimental", is great, I love out-of-tune guitars in chafing fields of static. Ah, now in comes a fat Moog! Oh, please don't bring in a drum loop! No, Melissa, no! It's getting too cluttered and slick now! You lost the clumsiness! Anne Laplantine would never lose the clumsiness. That's the best bit! Still, best record so far.

ANDY VOTEL
Songs in the Key of Death
(Fat City)

Clip One
Clip Two

Other Music writer at his most annoyingly wanky here: "I personally champion Votel as a kind of connoisseur-ace-charlatan... as someone who unbiasedly enjoys music and just simply gets it--with an edged, radically indulgent meditation on diverse sequencing and multivalent methodology in referential weaving in order to create a culture-genre-f**k of deliciously ill tunes." For fuck's sake, have you been taking writing classes with DJ Spooky or something? Andy Votel's music is just a gimmicky collation of samples as far as I can tell, what The Books would be like if they were a lot less original and had a much crappier collection of soundbites. But, hey, a lot more funky!

MED
Push Comes to Shove
(Stones Throw)

"Push"
"Get Back"

I guess this is "underground hip hop". It's a bit sharky and angular and awkward for me. I find the vaguely edgy hostility cliched and unconstructive. Again, it stays just far enough from convention to be the kind of thing Other Music feels okay about endorsing. They're not Tower, you know! But it's texturally unappealing. I don't like the digital sample sounds, the reverbs, the snares. I don't like the muscular way the accents are hammered home. I guess you could call it "indiscriminate assertiveness" or something. It's like a street where every car is a fire engine; after a while you just ignore the warning. Also, you know, sleeve shot of artist looking surly in front of brick wall. When you get bored of this, originality might be something to try, guys!

TERRESTRIAL TONES
Onboroed/Circus Lives
(Uunited Acoustic)

"Circus Lives"

It's my friend Rusty Santos with members of Black Dice and Animal Collective, the best new groups in America! You know, if I were ever to play a show in New York, say (just hypothetically) at 9pm on July 15th 2005 at Tonic, Rusty Santos would certainly be on the bill! This is a nice slice of sound which makes me think of Ralph Records and Pere Ubu, somehow. And of course it also sounds like the last Black Dice album: fascinatingly quirky in ways which are disturbing and reassuring at the same time. Endorsed! Yes yes! The good stuff! But why is this the only record OM only give us one clip of? And didn't some of these guys once work there?

MAXIMO PARK
A Certain Trigger
(Warp)

"Signal and Sign"
"Apply Some Pressure"

Why do British bands always erase all space in their records by putting in fuzzy chiming guitars? Why do they all still sound like they're in the 80s? Is avoidance of interesting arrangement ideas a defiance of bourgeois values? The singer in Maximo Park sounds a bit like a Geordie Mark E. Smith, like. The guitars just resemble a billion records from 80s Peel faves, but slightly slicker, you know, like Franz Ferdinand. More melodic chorus than The Fall would write, hey, crossover potential! This is music for people who voted no to the EU constitution because "things are changing too fast". It's music for the British weekly music press to do features on, with pictures of the band. It's music to play under a big banner that says "Carling Lager" on it.

FERN JONES
The Glory Road
(Numero)

"I Do Believe"
"I Was There When It Happened"

I already don't like this record when I see it's called "The Glory Road" and has a track called "I Do Believe" on it. Oh God, it's devotional music from the 50s! Someone send a tsunami to the southern US states so they stop believing instead of endlessly declaring they do. Of course, that would only strengthen their belief. They'd keep stubbornly believing even if God came in person to tell them he didn't exist. And it would be terribly touching to behold. And we'd all buy records about it. Track 2 is about being saved. Jesus. The sound is quite nice, though: limpid and lame, the way I like it. And you can snap your fingers to it, Lord, yes you can! Christian kitsch, just what I don't need. Thanks, Other Music!

BILL FAY
Bill Fay
(Eclectic)

"Narrow Way"

BILL FAY
Time of the Last Persecution
(Eclectic)

"I Hear You Calling"

This is some rediscovered 60s British folk singer. The arrangements are a bit Joe Boydish. His voice lacks magic—in fact, I'd say it's a bit out of tune—but there's something nice about this. The arrangements are "baroque folk", they plod, but in a good way. It's nowhere near as good as Robert Wyatt, but there's something poignant and unvarnished about it which reminds me of him. Then again, Bill Fay sounds like a loser, and Nietzsche wrote somewhere that you should never buy records by losers. Or Christians. Read some Nietzsche, Other Music! Tower does.

ETHIOPIQUES 19
Mahmoud Ahmed: Alemye
(Buda Musiqe)

"Ney Denun Tesesh"
"Wegenie"

I fucking adore the Ethopiques series. North African and Arabic pop is one of the things that really excites me at the moment. The singing is so expressive, the arrangements and time signatures complex yet compelling. Eno once said that he felt, listening to these vocalisations, like a little child, a total beginner. Also, just about any music from 1969 to 1975 has that nice compressed, rounded analogue recording sound that I like so much more than sharp digital sound, and has probably been recorded in one take rather than overdubbed. The clips here are pretty great. To anyone who thinks I'm an enemy of passion because I don't like people like Van Morrison and Nick Cave, listen, this is passion and I love it!

A CERTAIN RATIO
I'd Like to See You Again
(LTM)

"Touch"
"Show Case"

I also fucking adore James Nice. One of LTM's first releases was a tape of the demos I made with my first band, The Happy Family, and without the positive reception it got I might not have continued in music. James has stayed in the early 80s, re-releasing the Crepuscule Factory school of electronic pop, and now he's putting out ACR's 1982 album again. I loved early ACR, but this album was the first one I didn't buy. I suppose they'd got too slick for me, too tight, too clean. Gone is the sloppy cold wild funk of their earlier stuff, the chaos and contradiction; the sound on this record is just boring, somehow. No "feel" at all. The drums have a Linn plod, even though they're being played by Donald Johnston. The slap bass just sounds like Level 42. You guys probably don't even know who that is, do you? You're lucky.

GILES, GILES & FRIPP
The Cheerful Insanity of...
(Eclectic)

"North Meadow"
"She Is Loaded"

There are way too many rereleases in this newsletter, has pop music died or something? Oh right, it's the best of both worlds: you know Robert Fripp, right? Well, I know a Robert Fripp record that you don't know... Brand recognition plus snob appeal. This is hardly an essential Fripp record, though. It sounds like Free Design songs being sung by waiters at a garden fete. You know, it's quirky and not very good, it only sold 600 copies in 1969 and it should only sell 600 copies now.

THRONES
Day Late, Dollar Short
(Southern Lord)

"The Suckling"
"Senex"

God, it's some sort of warped death-grunge with Neu! sound effects on top. Again, it's the lack of space in this sort of fuzz guitar music (with its 70s drum fills) that makes it feel so airless, so claustrophobic. Of course, you're meant to feel like you can't breathe... I blame Christianity for this devilry. Waiter, some bossa nova, please!

THE MELVINS
Mangled Demos from 1983
(Ipecac)

"Snake Appeal"
"Set Me Straight"

I really have no interest in this sort of garage rock. "Three chords and three cases of brew", says Other Music. What about "three poisoned chalices"? Rock music is some kind of nasty toxic religion. If my neighbours were into this, I'd move out.

WILD PAARTY / ON U SOUND
Volume 1 / Various Artists
(Cherry Red)

"Quit the Body" The Chicken Granny
"Woodpecker Sound" Jah Woosh

You know, Cherry Red are the coolest fucking indie label ever. Iain McNay invented the indie charts, and now he seems to be the only original indie left; everyone else signed with Sony or EMI and died the death. I adore my label because they never seem to get bigger or smaller, they just survive. And here's how: they acquire old catalogues and rerelease the gems therein. Here they are putting out Adrian Sherwood's great On-U Sound stuff, which I listened to a lot in the early 80s (especially the New Age Steppers). The Chicken Granny is what ACR could have sounded like if they hadn't got boring. It's scat-scratch-jazz in the style of Rip Rig and Panic, it's Johnny Rotten joining Pigbag. Jah Whoosh is a Jamaican Cabaret Voltaire sort of thing. I'm sure Black Dice are listening to this stuff, making mental notes.

Comments

[emobus.livejournal.com]

Ah, good old OM. I always make sure to go whenever I'm back in New York.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Oh, me too. But I also go to Kim's, and Earwax, and...

[emobus.livejournal.com]

sigh.. the mere mention of New York record shops makes me nostalgic. Vancouver has some good shops too (as every decently sized city should). Not all of them have excellent newsletters, however.

[(Anonymous)]

You should listen to the Smog Album Wild Love. "Bathysphere" and "Prince Alone in the Studio" might be more up your alley.

Van not the Man!

[spoombung.livejournal.com]

You're not alone in hating Van Morrison.

This idea that there's a 'head' music - a cold heartless, clever music and a 'heart' music - a warm emotional, simple music, is absolute, utter bollocks: so, if you don't like Van you've somehow missed the point, you've got no soul and you don't really know what 'real music is about. So many people subscribe to this nonsense - it's quite unbelievable!

Bellow

[(Anonymous)]

Hi Momus. Following on from your answer to my Bellow query, doesn't the idea of humanism have within it as an implicit basis the suggestion that the scientific (necessarily positivist) model of the world is the right one, and that consequently such things as goodness, evil, beauty and ugliness are finally absurd and illusory, not being "underwritten" as it were. Humanism as I understand it goes on to build, upon the acceptance of this thought, an ethical system which does its best to reconcile psychological and biological human social need with an uninterested universe. It has no room for any kind of notion of atemporal, unphysical soul.
On this understanding, Bellow seemed strongly to suggest in Humbolt's Gift that he was anything but a humanist.

Re: Bellow

[imomus.livejournal.com]

the suggestion that the scientific (necessarily positivist) model of the world is the right one, and that consequently such things as goodness, evil, beauty and ugliness are finally absurd and illusory

I don't understand why science being right would make goodness and beauty illusory, I'm afraid.

[jermynsavile.livejournal.com]

I don't always like what you like but am with you all the way on your list of dislikes (Van Morrison, Neil Young, DJ Spooky's literary style etc).

Also share with you a dislike/distrust of "desurgent sincerity" and "assumed universals". Go down that road and you end up visiting Ben Elton rock tribute musicals.

Given your description of Cherry Red's business strategy, can you put in a good word to them regarding a re-release for Judy Nylon's Pal Judy album (produced by Adrian Sherwood for U-Sound in the early 80s)? Thanks!

Re: Bellow

[(Anonymous)]

Well, of course - science is right. But there is no scientific instrument for measuring the grace of a kind and open face, or the agreeableness of a magnolia tree in bloom. What I mean is that though beauty and evil seem very real to us now, they are things that depend entirely on our happening to exist, and as we will one day physically cease to exist, our feeling for such things cannot claim to be real in the same respect as our scientifically observed universe. The things that make life worth living, or make it a trial, would appear to be "unreal" in this sense.

Re: Van not the Man!

[la-aquarius.livejournal.com]

I'd go so far as to say that most people don't really hear the music they're listening to. In other words, they hear the image they associate with it, they hear the outside of it; they hear the marketing. At best, they hear the lyrics, if there are any.

Unfortunately, I believe this is often as true of hipsters as it is of "cretins" in the mainstream. 90% of what I hear -- whether it's Coldplay, Gorillaz or M.I.A. (who I'm crazy about, mind) -- is, musically and structurally speaking, pretty much the same. The only differences (besides lyrics) are timbral.

Maybe I'll wake up tomorrow and everyone will be writing micro-tonal pop songs in mixed meter, with George Crumb theatrics and invented, Harry Partch-like instruments. I'll cross my fingers!

Re: Bellow

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Subjective does not mean unreal. There are different kinds of reality, and they live side by side. Fiction knows this better than most. Bellow has Charlie Citrine, in Humboldt's Gift, investigate Steiner's anthroposophy movement in his quest to find out what the soul is. Now, you may think this makes Bellow less of a humanist and more of a mystic. I'd say it makes him more of a humanist, because humanism is a kind of secular religion, and is drawn (too much, some might say) to the language and ideology of religion. It fails to move on from "the hole in the sky" and seeks to fill it with substitutes: art, the human soul, and so on. Hence pompous humanist tributes to "man's undying spirit" and so on. Artists like the Acephales group in France, or, today, the Chapman Brothers in Britain have been particularly withering about this tendency to want to fill the God-shaped hole, and I personally respect their attitude. Sure, we humans need to create positive value, but it doesn't need to be god-shaped, or take its language and ideology from mystical or religious traditions. (Though personally, if I like Rudolf Steiner's round windows, I'll put them in my house, whatever the beliefs that led him to make them.)

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Ah, Pal Judy! That was one deranged album! She was Eno's "pal" at the time, wasn't she? I'll certainly mention it next time I speak to the Cherries.

Re: Bellow

[imomus.livejournal.com]

What I mean is that though beauty and evil seem very real to us now, they are things that depend entirely on our happening to exist, and as we will one day physically cease to exist, our feeling for such things cannot claim to be real in the same respect as our scientifically observed universe.

Also I should say your conception of science is somewhat pre-Einsteinian. Relativity theory says that the observer actually changes the observed.

[jermynsavile.livejournal.com]

You're right, she was Eno's 'pal'. She was a classy and fascinating character and I learnt a lot from talking to her at the time. I also loved the collaboration she did with Eno - as part of her partnership in Snatch (with Patti Palladin) - on RAF, the B-side of his King's Lead Hat single. It's only release on CD as far as I know is part of a Jon Savage compilation of early punk (unfortunately chock full of sincerely turgid American punk bands and Roxy Club favourites). Her work as part of Snatch was interesting at worst and absolutely great at best.

Thanks in advance for speaking on my behalf! She could probably do with the royalties.

Re: Bellow

[(Anonymous)]

Firstly, I would point out that you use the word reality to describe two different things. One, the scientifically observable universe of matter and energy, and the other the subjective value we ascribe to it. The second is clearly not real in anything like the same way the first is, which would suggest not merely different orders of reality, but that the human's subjective world view is utterly distinct from that of the scientific instrument.
Simply because Citrine is made to look into Steiner (which I very much doubt means that Bellow thought Steiner's was the most feasible religious or esoteric system), we can't call Bellow a mystic, can we? And if we could, we certainly couldn't say he was more of a humanist for it - mysticism is the experience or intuition of an order of reality and meaning beyond the phenomenonally apparent. And the humanist's human is just that (though the inner workings of consciousness, which conjure up for us the experience beauty and evil in the world remain mysterious of course). Humanism can't really be said to be a secular religion. Can Buddhism be called religious secularism? If it can, then surely we are misunderstanding one word or another.
And finally, where's the God shaped hole? Who put God to bed?

Re: Bellow

[(Anonymous)]

Yes, thank you, I've read my Heisenberg. The particles and energy science observes remain real in a way good and evil in the world do not.

Re: your preference for clumsiness

[georgesdelatour.livejournal.com]

Do you know that comment of Arnold Schoenberg: "My music isn't avant-garde - it's just very badly played!" ?

Re: your preference for clumsiness

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Not a lot of people know what a funny, funny man Arnold could be.

Re: Van not the Man!

[spoombung.livejournal.com]

"Maybe I'll wake up tomorrow and everyone will be writing micro-tonal pop songs in mixed meter, with George Crumb theatrics and invented, Harry Partch-like instruments. I'll cross my fingers!"

Ah, yes, but then we'd all react and want bubblegum again if that happened!

Going back to the 'head' and 'heart' music, it's doubly irksome that this comes with class/race cliches, you know - 'heart' - music is made by simple people, poor people, working class people, black people, good people. And 'head' music is made by cunning people, devious people, middle class people, white people, evil people.

I blame the NME 1976 - 1988 and dickheads like Seething Wells. And Paul Weller.

Re: your preference for clumsiness

[(Anonymous)]

Everyone knows what awful, dreary music he wrote though!

Re: Bellow

[(Anonymous)]

Interesting questions: Where's the God-shaped hole? Who put God to bed?

Re: your preference for clumsiness

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Oh I dunno, I'm a bit partial to "Pierrot Lunaire" and "Verklarte Nacht" myself. But I think his pupil Anton Webern outshone him. I was just thinking the other day that I want to make a pop record with the economy, exoticism and loveliness of Webern's "5 Pieces For Orchestra". What's more, Schonberg ended up playing tennis in LA, whereas Webern got shot by the Americans, which makes Webern much cooler.

Re: Bellow

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Everyone knows that, silly. It was Freddy "Krueger" Nietzsche.

Re: Bellow

[(Anonymous)]

So anyway, to conclude the argument: Bellow was not a humanist.

"But now we have mental assets. As many world views as you like. Five different epistemologies in an evening. Take your choice. They're all agreeable, and not one is binding or necessary or has true strength or speaks straight to the soul."

Re: Bellow

[(Anonymous)]

I know you're joking, but Nietzche! Barely sane misanthrope Nietzche! Freddy "humility and love won't get you anywhere" Nietzche! He very succinctly spoke to a century of selfishness and greed, but he didn't put God to bed.