Well, it’s an odd choice of name for a band. Maybe it’s an age thing or a Lincoln thing, but growing up, kecks were underpants. This is why it’s important to consider all aspects and angles when choosing a band name: what does your band name say about you? Still, it’s not as bad as The Front Bottoms.
The Kecks are based in Hamburg, although their members hail from Australia, the UK, Austria, and southern Germany, making them a truly international collective, and ‘All for Me’ is one of those songs where the lyrics don’t seem to entirely connect, a kind of patchwork of images and ideas and expressions that endlessly bounce off one another to convey… well, what, precisely?
It’s not a criticism as such: the same is true of so many lyrics: even boiling down pop greats from Bowie to Duran Duran reveals a lot of songs lack a general cohesion.
‘All For Me’ is a mid-to-low tempo indie tune that’s got hints of The Smiths and early Pulp about it, and somehow, in context, when Lennart Uschmann pours anguish and angst into the lines ‘And I wrote some songs for you / but you would always listen to / all of that white noise in between the radio stations’ it all makes sense somehow, on an instinctive, intuitive level, all of which is anything but pants.
Coinciding with the forthcoming US Presidential election and breaking a silence of decades, ‘Punk Professor’ Vivien Goldman has shared a new track and video on Youth Sounds / Cadiz Music.
The haunting ‘I Have A Voice’ is an elemental call to vote and a primal reminder of our own individual power. Released on twelve- inch vinyl and available digitally, Goldman’s ethereal vocal and crisp British enunciation compellingly floats over the yearning, emotional ripple of the music by producers Toby Andersen (keyboards) and Youth (Killing Joke, The Orb, Paul McCartney).
Geins’t Naït + L. Petitgand – Like This Maybe Or This
Ici d’ailleurs – MT012 – 13th November 2020
I must have fallen into a black hole in recent times: I hadn’t even realised that Ici d’ailleurs were still running their ‘Mind Travels’ series, which I’d followed from its inception, and have the first seven or eight releases on CD in a neat pile. Although, it would seem that apart from a couple of releases in 2017 and 2018, the series has lain largely dormant since 2015 – until now, so maybe I’m not quite as far out of the loop as I’d first thought. Its return is a welcome one, and arrives at a time many will be grateful. I am among the grateful, although providing a valid commentary to this – or anything – feels vaguely inappropriate.
These ‘Mind Travels’ releases were always strong by virtue of their otherness. The series was appropriately named, as the music each release contains is transportative, lifting the listener out of mind and body and to another realm. Like This Maybe Or This is no exception.
The pair came together in 2014 for the release of Je vous dis, which stood as a remarkable intersection of two very different artists – and yet it worked because of, rather than in spite of their disparity. Like This Maybe Or This is the duo’s second collaborative contribution to the series, and once again, it’s unsettling and awkward, although magnificently executed and greater than the sum of the parts. It seems that these two superficially divergent and disparate composers have found a certain commonality, and this, their second collaboration for the series, is a perfect merging of forms and ideas.
‘Hac’ brings clattering drums, undulating synths and a whole tumult of extraneous noise and voices not a slow-turning blender, while ‘22’ is a soft, supple semi-ambient effort, with mellifluous synth washes drifting in waves around a slow, metronomic wooden thud. Elsewhere, ‘uido 10’ is spare, grating, industrial: muffled vocal samples are partially submerged beneath murky sloughing waves of analogue noise that rises and falls like waves lapping against the shore.
It’s a brooding piano and stealthy sine waves that sculpt the tense mood of ‘Bagd’, before ‘Pecno’ brings an insistent oscillating throb that’s pure Suicide, while strings and piano grace the atmospheric ‘Dustil’ with an overtly orchestral / classical flavour, which contrasts with the expansive 80s electro stylings of ‘Liber’ which immediately follows. The final moments of the penultimate track, ‘37’ sounds- and feels – like the shoot-out at the end of a movie where everyone dies, and the desolate closer, ‘Aphro’ is a sullen-piano-led elegy at the end of everything. And it’s at the end of everything that we stand, or so it seems.
The world is on a knife-edge, and nothing feels safe, and nothing feels certain. And since, right now, the only travels many of us can undertake are in the mind, this album makes for a fitting soundtrack to a stationery journey.
If the title sounds pretentious – and let’s face it, it does – if any act can carry it off without looking daft, it’s probably Montréal’s premier avant-rock band Fly Pan Am, who are well-suited to a release in this series via Constellation.
The ‘Corona Borealis Longplay Singles Series’ is a set of sixteen single releases, each of extensive duration and with an audiovisual element. ‘Mirror Cracks Seeking Interiority’ is eleven minutes of squirming, scraping, laser-blitzing ambience pinned to a subtle but insistent mid-tempo bass beat. It’s difficult to pigeonhole, but then, pigeonholing is just lazy journalism, and what matter is that ‘Mirror Cracks Seeking Interiority’ leads the listener on a remarkable journey, a succession of transitions, some unexpected others which naturally flow into one another.
The liner notes outline the track’s evolution, recounting how ‘during lockdown the band has been trading files at a distance, including experiments with remixes of their Frontera live soundtrack recordings. ‘Mirror Cracks Seeking Interiority’ is the first fruit of these efforts and a first for Fly Pan AM in terms of process: each chronological section of the track is a solo work by each individual member, remixed in isolation, then stitched together in mostly linear fashion.’
The track’s success lies as much in its seamless assembly as its slow-spinning atmosphere: as much as there are distinct passages, ‘Mirror Cracks Seeking Interiority’ in no way feel cobbled together or patchworked. And, on the basis of the band’s comments, it seems that there’s more in the pipeline, and on the evidence here, it’s going to be good.
The accompanying experimental film by Charline Dally is quite a trip, too.
The latest six-tracker from GHXT goes for the slow-building intro with the low, slow ‘Shimmer’, where the murky, distorted guitar drone and twang cascading out over a retro drum machine stutter that’s backed off in the mix but cuts through sharp as a whip. It’s the Sisters of Mercy’s Reptile House EP slithering into a stranglehold of The Black Angels on ketamine with a dash of Barbed Wire Kisses era Jesus and Mary Chain.
Two years on from the appropriately-titled Gloom EP, the New York duo return with another batch of weighty, dark material which demonstrates their continued evolution, and the fact the EP format is one which suits them particularly well.
While operating from a comparatively limited sonic palette – dense, overdriven guitar that’s got a big, thick valve sound, minimally-programmed drum machine, and reverb-swamped female vocal they manage to do a lot with it: ‘Come Home’ is Curve-y shoegaze, while ‘It Falls Apart,’ released as a single in October, is a big, bollock-swinging swagger of messy blues, boasting a monster lead solo that sprawls over the entire track. Gloom and blues and murk dominate, casting heavy shadows and a hint of goth over the mood, but there’s so much more besides: the rich timbre of the guitar as it spins a slow-unfurling picked riff on closer ‘Die High’ calls to mind recent works by Earth and Dylan Carlson.
As the nights draw in on the approach to winter and the world feels like an increasingly apocalyptic hellhole, there’s something comforting about GHXST’s brand of immersive darkness.
Because life had been getting a bit predictable – y’know, with nothing happening but the same old same old, work / life at home / going nowhere schtick – it was without time to mix things up. A second lockdown and a new release from Bearsuit certainly fits the bill there, since after another half-arsed, muzzy bag of mumbling waffle from that tousle-haired tosser who probably couldn’t even give a straight answer to the question of whether or not he knew what a straight answer was, no-one really knows what the fuck’s happening, least of all half the government, a bewildering array of discombobulating sonic collage courtesy of Bunny & the Invalid Singers feels positively coherent by comparison.
This single – featuring a remarkably conventional A-side and B-side – comes as a taster of an album, The Flight of the Certainty Kids, scheduled to land in January.
Delicate, picked acoustic guitar that combines elements of classical and folk paves the way for a mellow, easy-listening vibe, with a meandering horn weaving its way across a slow, slouchy beat, and it comes on like latter-day JG Thirlwell compositions melting into Groove Armada. If that sounds like a curious and not altogether complimentary combo, think again: it’s a coming together of aspects of cinematographic vision and a breeziness of a bygone era, that bright, skippy 60s pop style with a subtle psychedelic twist. It’s mellow, and it’s well-executed, and lifts the listener towards a tranquil space.
It’s probably the distortion of history as played through the filters of 21st century retrospect – you know, all those ersatz Kodachrome-filtered scenes of joyful skipping around, weaving daisy chains and carefree living in microdresses, flares, flowing locks, beards and sideburns… How we idealise the past. The swinging 60s bypassed most of those there at the time, just as punk wasn’t the revolution that’s endlessly eulogised for the majority grinding away at day jobs or otherwise blissfully unaware in the suburbs. Nevertheless, a semi-fabricated 60s lounge and ultra-chill vibe is the main flavour of flipside ‘None of this Happened’, and maybe the clue is in the title: maybe it’s a wilful misremembrance, a distortion. It’s pleasant enough, of course, and perhaps appropriately, it all goes off in every direction toward the end, and we’re left in a sonic whirlpool of weird.
It’s another creative success for Bunny and Co, and augers well for the album, at least if you’re on the market for a full set of psychedelic pop strangeness.
While Lorna and Nathan have been keeping themselves occupied with their uber-lo-fi DIY side project Videostore during lockdown, their main vehicle, Argonaut have been on something of a backburner. As has been the case for so many bands, working remotely simply hasn’t been entirely feasible, or conducive to creativity and recording, although the band have been striving to pull together with virtual rehearsals and so on.
Consequently, after some nine months of effort (and eight years ager their formation) the London-based spiky indie-punk have delivered the first single written collectively (just before lockdown) by the whole band.
Less uptempo and energetic than previous releases, ‘13’ is a wistful, reflective song that’s more haunting post-punk than punk, and as much as it’s inspired by Nathan and Lorna’s son’s turning 13 and is a celebration of youth and that voyage of discovery, a song of encouragement and positivity, there’s a sad tinge coloured with a pang of loss and an awareness of the ageing process: the video illustrates the contrasting emotions, as elation and wonder are marked against the ticking clock.
It’s touching, and a great tune: understated, but effective and resonant on many levels, making it more than worth the wait.
The Secret Warehouse of Sound Recordings – 23rd September 2020
Christopher Nosnibor
Maybe it’s just me, perhaps I’m tired and emotional or perhaps I’m just feeling particularly sensitive as the long-term effects of an absence of live music and being generally cut off from people bites harder as the nights draw in and the days grow shorter, but I’ve started to feel a real heavy-hearted ache lately for the things I miss. Maybe these are my October Blues, which means the arrival of this single is perfectly timed – not to lift the spirits, but to reflect that inward-facing melancholy that comes with the urge to hibernate or hunker down by a log fire.
Admittedly, it’s been a long time since I spent lazy evenings in basement bars listening to live blues, and it’s perhaps precisely because of that that Muca & La Marquise’s latest single, fills me with pangs of nostalgia.
Stripped-back and simple, primarily an acoustic guitar and voice, it evokes simpler times – while at the same time being absolutely timeless – of late-night smoky basement bars, with its jazz-tinged blues and laid back laconic delivery. La Marquise has a magnificent voice – timeless, classic, smooth. The guitar-playing is similarly understated, but follows a nice, chilled slow blues chord sequence and there’s an exquisite break, too, that draws you in and drifts away on a magnificent wave of melancholy.
A collective of international origins spanning Belgium, Italy, and New Zealand, All Runs Red’s debut is a stylistic hybrid, too, beginning with a drifting picked intro that’s a bit prog, a bit post-rock. It’s one of those tracks that makes a series of rapid transitions and leaves you feeling a shade dazed, but also confused and confounded, as you sit, stunned, just three minutes or so later, wondering how you got from A to B.
Initially, it packs a simmering tension, but one infused with a certain slickness, even a light funk groove before hinting at something else. I’m on the fence here, then between loving and loathing, because that smoothness reminds me of insipid cack like Maroon 5, but then there’s something building beneath the surface… and then the chorus breaks and it’s got ‘stadium’ written all over it – or at least arena. It’s sonically immense, and big on emotion, too, then there are howling backing vocals and a huge guitar workout breaks forth and then…it fades out? What? How? Who would do this, and why? I feel a little short-changed, and like I should perhaps complain – but what good would that do?
This may be a little belated, but then arguably, so are the band: From Ashes To New trade in melodic alt-rock that crashes in with the blustery force of post-metal before petering out into some middle ground that’s rooted in the turn-of-the-millennium tats ‘n’ haircuts trend. It’s hard to feel the fire and fury of such angst-by-numbers.
Don’t get me wrong: I feel a genuine sympathy for these guys: the scrolling text at the start of the video reminds me of all of the cancellations I’ve had to witness this year, from gigs and holidays, to conferences to recording sessions to…well, absolutely fucking everything. The office setting for the video hauls me back to the day I was required to return to the office – closed for the foreseeable future, possibly permanently – to collect my personal belongings. It felt like an ending, and a weak one that sputter out to nothing at that. The hangar-like empty space could, under different circumstances, have been quite exciting, even exhilarating, but under the eye of a gloved and masked security guard who watched as I separated out personal and company belongings from my desk, bagging up the items that were my own and separating out stationery, IT kit (although I regret not squirreling away a spare mouse now) and paperwork for recycling before leaving the gloomy open-plan building, the blinds half drawn and the lights off for what was probably the last time. It didn’t occur to me that maybe this would be the setting for recording a rock video: much as I wanted to capture the bleakness of the empty space, I was more preoccupied with making sure I’d loaded up and was off the premises in my allotted twenty minutes, and while the security guard was nothing but friendly, I felt tense and pressured, and yes, maybe the pressure was of my own making but I felt like an intruder and like I needed to get out before I cold relax and breathe properly again.
On departing, it struck me that with more of us being designated permanent home workers as the company looks to finding ways to recoup the immense costs of providing everyone with a laptop, the cost savings of not paying for electricity, cleaners, maintenance, and all of the other things associated with an office housing around 80 staff, I may not see many, if any, of the people I’d spent the last few years working with, in close proximity, ever again. Granted, half of them I could take or leave, some of them were cunts, but they all contributed to the fabric of life. I miss life, and I may even miss some of the people.
But it doesn’t change fact that this is some fairly generic and somewhat dated-sounding Limp Bizkit / Linkin Park lift, and while I feel their pain and panic, it’s all downhill from the intro: the video, likewise, as we move away from the TV screen, the source of the panic, to the empty office, something they seem to revel in but which carries quite different connotations for me and no doubt many.
This isn’t clear-cut, and this is personal, and sometimes, the personal does not lie within the universal. ‘Panic’ will no doubt speak to some, even many, and maybe it’s a matter of demographic, but it certainly doesn’t speak to me.
Aural Aggravation 