You may well have noticed that things have been a little stop-start at casa-EbM, and the reasons for this are twofold. Firstly, writing posts of any value is a time consuming occupation and I’m a busy man (“Fie!” I hear you cry, and maybe with good reason…). The main reason, however, is more of a semantic one. I’m only just beginning to emerge from a fug of indecision and uncertainty that has shrouded these pages of late. This fug was brought on in part by the DMCA trouble I got caught up in following some careless mp3 action on my Mumford & Sons and Big Pink posts, causing me to reassess my mp3 posting policy. I will now be complying a little more strictly with a few basic rules about posting, but that wasn’t the sole reason for my uncertainty.
The big question I was faced with was how best to balance the reviews and the more “editorial” content. The reviews I post provide the meat-n-veg of this blog, and give it a purpose and a mission, and by-and-large I try to steer clear of the more “bloggy” aspects of blogging; nobody wants to read my diary, surely? On the flip side, when I read other blogs and magazines I do enjoy reading proper articles about the more general aspects of the music world, and therefore imagine that a few of you would enjoy seeing that style of content on these pages too. Thus I do occasionally indulge myself with rambling not-quite-review posts from time to time. When I started this enterprise a more than a year ago I did a regular “top five” list feature, but that was a little too disciplined for me to keep it up for long, and now I stick to the occasional “article” whenever the mood takes me. Anyway, rambling aside, I think this site could do with a little more article-style content and I shall endeavor to provide some.
As a case in point, last week’s Remix post – the first non-review post in quite a while – has produced one of the best comment threads that this site has ever seen. After an initial deluge of criticism (some rational and articulate, some not so much…) something resembling a reasoned debate emerged, with people coming from all angles to have their say. In fact, such was the detail and strength of opinion expressed in some of the responses we’re considering devoting the next Bearfaced Podcast to the topic.
So what does 2010 have to offer here at EbM? Expect plenty more reviews, as per usual, but there’ll also be a little bit more in the way of editorial content; so stand by to correct me, agree with me, or just put in your two-pence in the comments section. It’d be nice to build something of a “community” here – when the posts inspire comments it makes the experience all the richer for everyone involved, and it does me good to have my opinions challenged and debated. That said, I can’t imagine this post inspiring too much debate; I promise to keep meta-blog posts to a minimum from now on. Although if there’s anything you’d like to see less or more of on these pages then write a comment and I’ll see what I can do…
I may be in danger of alienating some readers here, but I really don’t see the appeal of remixes. I know a decent proportion of you will have been directed here from The Hype Machine – where remixes seem to be quite popular – so I guess a fair few of you are remix-connoisseurs, but I just don’t understand it myself. Now don’t get me wrong, a good remix can be an enjoyable listening experience, but stumbling upon the mythic beast that is a “good remix” is a very uncommon occurrence. It seems to me that 99% of them are just plain rubbish. Of course, the joy of being a music blog is that I can bombard you with examples of both good and bad remixes, and I certianly intend to do just that…
The Good Remix
In my eyes a good remix builds on the foundation of a good track and creates a complimentary companion to the original. Most of the good remixes I’m aware of can stand alone as musical works in their own right, but even with the really good ones you’re only getting half the picture. To make a remix is to make a work that is inextricably tied to another piece of work; a musical Castor and Pollux. A good remix from a bad song can be interesting as an academic speculation, but is ultimately as redundant an exercise as a bad remix from a good song (and this is where remixes differ from cover versions; a good cover version from a bad song can be a wondrous achievement).
There are many exponents of the “good remix”; artists from Four Tet to The Postal Service have delivered sterling work in this field, most notably with Kings of Convenience and Feist respectively, but for now I will focus on the Miyauchi Yuri remix of Jeremy Warmsley‘s track If He Breaks Your Heart (full info here). This remix does butcher the harmonic content of the song by flattening it beyond belief, but even that is a defensible artistic choice. The sparse, angular substance of J-Wo’s original acoustic version is morphed into a lush soundscape by the remixer, but crucially the body of the song remains intact – it’s a song with a definite arc and a “message”*, and both are sill in evidence in the remix. You can listen to the remix and still glean the essence of the original whilst at the same time enjoying a wholly new musical experience.
As I’ve already established, these appear to be much thicker on the ground than good remixes, and the choices for a salient example are legion. Excellently named BbopNRokstedy[sic**] have the unlucky distinction of being the most recent act to drop a remix in my inbox. This one is a remix of Phoenix‘s excellent track 1901, from their 2009 album Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix. I’m a bit of a latecomer to the Phoenix party (I finally got around to listening to W.A.P. after their inclusion in The Hype Machine’s 2009 Zeitgeistearlier this month) so you won’t find a full review here at EbM, but suffice it to say the record’s a triumph.Alas the same cannot be said for the remix…
Here the relationship between original and remix is very slender indeed; it appears that BbopNRokstedy, in their infinite wisdom, have simply cut a couple of brief snippets from the vocal of 1901 and then sampled them repeatedly over a godawful dance track. Any trace of the original’s structure or arc has been thoroughly removed, and that this outfit have the gall to call this abomination a “remix” beggars belief. Now I realize I’m beginning to sound somewhat vitriolic at this point, but then that’s the very reason I’m writing this post. This kind of behaviour really annoys me***; I really enjoy listening to a good remix, but there’s no way of telling if a remix is going to be any good or not other than by actually listening to the thing.
But of course there is, really. There’s at least a 99% chance that a remix is going to unlistenably terrible, and with those odds it’s far better to simply steer clear of of them altogether…
Despite my somewhat shoddy updating in the latter part of 2009, this blog sill attracts a surprisingly high number of submissions. Some industry types seem convinced that this is a bad thing (“you might think that free music day-in, day-out would be great, but it’s just boring. You try and fight your way through mountains of dreadful demos!” and so and so on, ad nauseam…) but I’m not for one minute implying that this is the case with me, as getting sent free music was the main point in starting this blog in the first place. However, getting through all the music I’m sent can be something of a challenge as there really aren’t enough hours in the day to listen to everything. Thankfully it’s a challenge I relish, as every so often one comes across a proper gem of a record, or at least the sort of diamond-in-the-rough demo that hints at greater things yet to come. The Anticipate Heat EP by San Franciscan trio The Actors sits pretty much midway between the gem and rough-diamond categories.
These guys peddle the kind of earnest pop-rock that I wouldn’t normally post about. The EP’s opener, Heat in the Street, is a good song, but one swallow doesn’t make a summer, and after the next two tracks I was ready to put The Actors in the “average” box. The record is a competent debut, to be sure, but nothing in the first three songs grabbed my attention at all. Then – ready to put The Actors out of my mind and move onto the next record on my list – I listened to the last track, put the record on repeat and haven’t stopped listening to it yet.
Spoken word songs are fickle beasts. Every once in a while a great one emerges that grabs the listener and gives them a good shake, but ninety-nine percent of the time they fall flat – I have very little time for overly pretentious songs or bands that take themselves too seriously. You can only get away with that kind of behaviour if your songs are truly works of greatness, and quite frankly they rarely are. Thankfully I get the impression The Actors are fully aware of this danger. A knowing smile and a wink to camera can disguise any manner of ills, but even that approach isn’t necessary here. The vocal delivery on An Unremarkable Location (the fourth and final track on this EP) is perfectly pitched* – sincere without being cloying, engaging without descending too far into the theatrical. It’s certainly not poetry, but the combination of the dialogue with the music is sympathetic and natural, and above all it doesn’t seem forced – which can be the downfall of many of the more “worthy” spoken word efforts.
I get the impression from their promotional material that the two opening tracks are the ones the band are pinning their hopes on. As I said before, Heat in the Street is a good song – a jaunty little number with just enough of a “pop” feel to raise it into a higher category than your average rock band demo – but The Skydiver (track two) simply doesn’t do it for me. If you ask me they should be pushing An Unremarkable Location as it is, in fact, quite remarkable.
The Actors – An Unremarkable Location**
The Actors – Heat in the Street**
*Not in the musical sense, obviously – it is spoken word, after all.
** Addendum, Nov 2010: I’ve removed these tracks at the request of the band. They’ve apparently changed direction, and they say their early music ‘isn’t representative of where we’re going artistically or melodically”. You can keep abreast of further developments at their bandcamp page.
I don’t really know where to put this record. The fact that it was originally released on the BBC’s Late Junction label and has now been re-issued on Fat Cat‘s “instrumental/classical” imprint, 130701, places composer Max Richter‘s album Memoryhousein the hinterland that lies between the pop/rock and classical worlds.
I’ve been sitting on this album for months now (I received my copy in advance of the Fat Cat re-issue in October last year) and I must say it took me a long while to really get into it; party owing, I suspect, to this very issue of place. I simply couldn’t work out how to approach it. If one were to read Memoryhouse as a straight-up contemporary-classical work then it would fall flat on its face – the themes too simplistic, the strokes too broad, the overarching impact far too immediate and straightforward. But then to view this record solely in that light is to miss the point, for this is certainly not a “classical” record.
While not knowing the name Max Richter, most of you will probably be aware of his work on Ali Folman’s excellent Waltz With Bashir, and the fact that he is best known for soundtrack work casts quite a shadow over this release. To the best of my knowledge Memoryhouse is intended to stand in isolation, but every time I listen to it I immediately feel like I’m listening to part of something bigger.
If anything, this is a record of incidental scoring that has transcended its limitations. One that, if used on a run-of-the-mill TV documentary, would overshadow its visual counterparts and leave the viewer thinking, “gosh, they really went to town on that soundtrack!”. Any mere factual observations in the program would be overshadowed by the majesty of the music (performed on this record by the BBC Philharmonic Orchestra). For indeed this is a majestic record; too simple, maybe, when judged on technical and academic criteria, but in terms of pure emotional impact this record packs a punch. Evocative and stirring, Memoryhouse feels like it ought to be accompanying themes of vast importance and epic scope, but heard in isolation it sounds like something’s missing.
Well happy new year, folks. The first Bearfaced Podcast of 2010 is upon us, and this time there’s a slightly unusual playlist. The theme for this episode is “musical snobbery” and looks at all the stuff we really ought to have turned our noses up at; good songs by bands that we’d never actually admit to liking, and that sort of thing.
There’s also a couple of Christmas songs thrown in for good measure – now the joy of yuletide has past us by, how well does this year’s crop of festive songs hold up in the cold hard light of the new year?
As always, you can find the ‘cast in iTunes, download each episode directly from the Podcast page of the Bearfaced Records website, or simply listen to the embedded player below. Enjoy…
It’s not often that I dig out the ol’ vinyl player. If fact, being the fresh faced youth I am, the world of vinyl is one of which I have only a cursory knowledge. Anytime I want to enjoy my (admittedly meagre) 7″ collection I have to drag my dad’s old Pioneer PL-112D turntable out of the attic…
But it does appear that the 7″ is still alive and well. An old flatmate of mine had quite an impressive collection – all released in the last few years – and most singles seem to get a 7″ release alongside the newer formats. These two singles from Song, by Toad Records are available exclusively as vinyl (not counting digitally, which surely doesn’t count these days). The band behind this pair of singles is Meursault, already an Eaten by Monsters favourite owing to their fantastic debut LP, Pissing on Bonfires/Kissing With Tongues.
Now I gather that William Henry Miller is something of a live favourite for hardcore Meusault fans, but I must admit that when it was finally released (on last years Nothing Broke EP) I wasn’t all that taken with it. To be honest, I wasn’t that taken with the whole EP; I enjoyed it, for sure, but having never seen the band live and getting to know them through their album, the change of direction (from dense electronic soundscapes with a furious energy to a slower, more contemplative acoustic sound) wasn’t what I was looking for. In the months following it’s release Nothing Broke has certainly grown on me, but in my opinion these two new singles mark a welcome return to the more “produced”* sound of Pissing/Kissing. In fact, the B-sides (The Dirt and the Roots and A Few Kind Words respectively) are the same cuts that were used on the album.
And now William Henry Miller Pt. II – a track that sounded decidedly like filler on Nothing Broke – is now the stand out track of both these singles; a feat made doubly impressive when you consider that A Few Kind Words (the Pt. II B-side) was one of my favourite tracks on the album, which was in turn one of my Top 10 Albums of 2008. And Pt. I has undergone a caterpillar/butterfly rebirth as well! The word on the street is that Meursault are on the brink of writing/recording a new album, and if that’s true then I really can’t wait.
And as being as posting both the A-sides would be a bit cheekey, here’s a live version (subtitled Dylan Gives the Clap) that they recorded during last year’s Homegame for The Waiting Room:
This time last year the musical calendar was looking pretty darned exciting. With albums on the horizon by EbM favourites Broken Records, Emmy the Great, frYars, Esser and The Decemberists I was expecting great things of 2009. Sure enough, 2009 produced some great records and was an all-round “good year for music”, but strangely none of the albums I was so excited about delivered on expectations. All the aforementioned albums were good, but none of them were great, and certainly nowhere near as good as we’d all hoped they would be; hype is truly a terrible thing.
So it is with great trepidation and wariness that I nail my colours to the mast and say that I am really, really looking forward to the upcoming Frightened Rabbit album, The Winter of Mixed Drinks. Of course this will come as no surprise to regular readers who probably have some inkling as to how much I love FR. It seems like this album may be very well timed, as FR did very well in quite a few end-of-decade lists (such as the NME’s and The Skinny’s) and fans have been kept interested throughout 2009 first by the excellent Quietly Now! (a live version of Midnight Organ Fight) and the pre-Christmas single Swim Until You Can’t See Land. This single was our first taste of what to expect from the upcoming album, and very nice it was too. Now we’re being further tempted by another single, Nothing Like You.
This one won’t be released until the 22nd Feb and normally I’d hold off on a review until closer to the release date, but being as the album proper comes out only a few days later (1st March) I can justify getting this one out a little early (and it also shows how cool I must be to be able to get my paws on the single this far ahead of it’s release…*cough*cough*). The B-side, Learned Your Name, is a gentle, sombre affair, trundling along nicely without sparking too much excitement; but then that’s all you ought to expect from a B-side. The A-side, however, is a different story.
With all the great (possibly dangerous?) hype the band have been getting lately, and given the success of Swim…, all this single really needs to do is make sure it doesn’t disappoint. Regardless, Nothing Like You springs from the blocks like it’s got something to prove. It rattles along at a furious pace and does it’s job admirably – it’s more than equal to the quality of the work on Midnight Organ Fight, while at the same time pointing at yet more to come. To hell with my trepidation, 2010 should be fantastic!
Frightened Rabbit – Nothing Like You*
*obviously there won’t be a download being as this is just a single.
You may well have noticed that things have been a little stop-start at casa-EbM, and the reasons for this are twofold. Firstly, writing posts of any value is a time consuming occupation and I’m a busy man (“Fie!” I hear you cry, and maybe with good reason…). The main reason, however, is more of a semantic one. I’m only just beginning to emerge from a fug of indecision and uncertainty that has shrouded these pages of late. This fug was brought on in part by the DMCA trouble I got caught up in following some careless mp3 action on my Mumford & Sons and Big Pink posts, causing me to reassess my mp3 posting policy. I will now be complying a little more strictly with a few basic rules about posting, but that wasn’t the sole reason for my uncertainty.
As a case in point, last week’s Remix post – the first non-review post in quite a while – has produced one of the best comment threads that this site has ever seen. After an initial deluge of criticism (some rational and articulate, some not so much…) something resembling a reasoned debate emerged, with people coming from all angles to have their say. In fact, such was the detail and strength of opinion expressed in some of the responses we’re considering devoting the next Bearfaced Podcast to the topic.
Eaten by Monsters 
