Album Review:Hot Chip – Why Make Sense?

(Domino)

There is something to be said for the slow-burning, hard-won success, rather than overnight fame.

For over a decade the Hot Chip have been a consistently great live act, along with string of strong albums behind them seemingly gaining wider popularity with each one with a style that brings together LCD Soundsystem's wordy indie dance music, with Prince's funk and love of classic pop and electronic music. Since 2004's Coming on Strong the band have hardly put a foot wrong and have even managed to bother the UK charts with some of their bigger singles like Ready For The Floor.

With the group's sixth album Why Make Sense?, which has a title that is surely a nod to Talking Head's concert movie Stop Making Sense, Hot Chip are starting to feel like an established part of the British music scene, more so than just about any other band that has emerged over the last ten years.

Huarache Nights kicks of the album, with Hot Chip in dance floor mode. Built around a chunky bass sound, Alexis Taylor's familiar soft, soulful vocals enter, though vocoder vocals provide the big hooks, as robot voices chanting 'Replace us with the things that do the job better' hinting at an automated future. Why Make Sense? starts with a big dance track, but it's not the best representation of the sounds of electronic soul and funk that lies through the albums heart. The following track, Love Is The Future, with it's playful, retro synth chords bouncing about a light shuffling beat show more of the influence of late 70's and early 80's. The group even fit in a guest verse De La Soul’s Posdnuos before the chorus emerges for the song's finale, backed by disco ready strings, a sound which reappears throughout Why Make Sense?.

Started Right has a keyboard sound straight out of Superstitious era Stevie Wonder, as the band prove to be as versatile in taking cues from measured pop as they do with obscure dance records.

In fact the band seem to shine in merging disparate sounds into a coherent, catchy whole as tracks like Easy To Get effortlessly mixes up guitar funk before acid bass lines take over for the songs outro or the album's title track, which seems to carry echoes of prog rock and Brian Eno's early solo records with its huge drum stomp and building synthesizer arpeggios.

The band's second single from the album, Need You Now, might well be one of the band's best single to date. The track is equal parts a throw back to classic house euphoria whilst not sounding too far away from the likes of Disclosure. Set around an irresistibly powerful vocal sample from Sinnamon 1983 track I Need You Now for the album's big hook whilst Taylor's vocals compliment perfectly with a quiet desperation in the verses.

It's the personal and simple messages that stand out on an album that is a little leaner than a lot of their other releases and better for it. Touches of other influences emerge all over Why Make Sense? but the is a sense of honesty and a lack of cynicism that Hot Chip have kept throughout their career, that helps set them apart.

Album Review:Waxahatchee - Ivy Tripp

(Wichita)

There are many musicians that talk of laying their soul bare. Katie Crutchfield is a songwriter who doesn't need to say it. Named after a creek near her childhood home in Alabama, the recorded output of her Waxahatchee project has been entwined in memories, hardships and relationships.

Talking about her latest album, Crutchfield revealed "The title Ivy Tripp is really just a term I made up for directionless-ness, specifically of the 20-something, 30-something, 40-something of today”. She may count herself as part of that directionless generation, but she comes across as anything but. Releasing three albums since 2012, the intimate bedroom recordings of American Weekend, her breakthrough Cerulean Salt and now Ivy Tripp her latest collection of songs.

She still bears the sounds of her former band P.S. Eliot, filling Ivy Tripp with irresistible and scrappy pop punk alongside the intimate singer/songwriter fare. Tracks like Under A Rock and the grungy Poison come across like a mix of Riot Grrl and The Pixies, brimming with attitude and hooks. In the album's second half tracks like piano balladry of Half Moon and Summer of Love see Crutchfield pared-down to just one instrument with her voice.

The playful, lovestruck bedroom pop of La Loose really stands out. Backed by a swinging drum machine beat and keys it's sweet enough to give you a toothache, in a good way. Air feels like a more powerful sentiment at the albums centre. A mid-tempo almost-rock-ballad, but it's done on Katie's terms. Distorted keys bolster the track's bold, soaring chorus, along with some Kim Deal style 'oohs' backing her up. Ivy Tripp's additional instruments and touches of layered vocals show a move into slightly more sophisticated productions, but it's never too distracting.

The ramshackle Pavement style riffs on the track simply titled < don't gel so well, the drum beat that rolls about like an improvised drum solo doesn't help it, though there is a charm to how it barely holds together. Bonfire closes the album it's most interesting experiment. A bare bones track marches on a steady drum beat and two chords but carries a tension in the thick, low murmurs of distortion that fill the track with before almost breaking into feedback before the track's abrupt end.

Waxahatchee sings 'You see me how I wish I was/I'm not trying to be seen' over an electric hum of keyboards on Ivy Tripp's opening track Breathless. Ivy Tripp's the songs are short and personal, the musical equivalent of diary entries as if they were made in the same moments that inspired them, and you feel they would have been written whether anyone would be listening or not.

It's easy to see something of yourself in these deeply intimate tracks but even on a surface level it's easy to like the sugary sounding scrapbook of DIY punk and emotive folk. Throughout Ivy Tripp there is an honesty that cuts through all the noise and a strength in the delivery that reveals Katie Crutchfield to be a quietly powerful songwriter.

Album Review:Modest Mouse – Strangers To Ourselves

(Epic)

Signing to a major label has long been seen as signing a death sentence for your creativity. The artist narrowing their gaze and refining their sound for mass appeal, rather than rather than pushing out and exploring. Modest Mouse proved that rule wrong with their major label debut. 2000's The Moon & Antarctica was their most ambitious album yet, sprawling off in multiple directions and abandoning their lo-fi sound for a number of studio experiments that were no more palatable. Songs obsessed over the afterlife and the cosmos whilst tracks like the grand star-gazing Stars Are Projectors, still one of the bands defining moments, revealed an ambition that could be described as anything but selling out.

Their debut This Is a Long Drive for Someone with Nothing to Think About set out lead songwriter Isacc Brock's M.O. of mixing the literate with the emotional delivered with a vocal range that went from a half spoken croon to a Frank Black-style feral yelp whilst the band's sound was defined by limitations of being a three piece recording in small studios. When Good News for People Who Love Bad News came out in 2004 the band made a push towards the mainstream, with cleaner production and a fuller sound. The move paid of for the band as the album went platinum in America, a rare achievement for an indie rock band, spawning big singles like Float On but still kept much of the band's charm intact.

It has been eight years since the last Modest Mouse album We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank's nautical-themed rock and in those intervening years rumours persisted of abandoned recording sessions and collaborations with the likes of Big Boi (apparently this is still going to happen). Despite setbacks and problems, the bands sixth album Strangers To Ourselves has finally emerged and despite the time between releases feels familiar right away.

Strangers To Ourselves certainly isn't short of this bigger catchy moments either, the album's first single Lampshades On Fire seems to strike a similar tone to the bands big singles like Dashboard and Float On with a refrain of ba ba ba's it's not afraid of going after a simple hook to pull you in. The Ground Walks, With Time In A Box will surely be released as a single at some point, scratchy guitar lines scrap against Brock's erratic, tumbling vocals before the track brings in almost Steve Reich xylophone rhythms before ending in a reversed guitar solo. It's an example of the bands willingness to experiment in a studio going right, but unfortunately it's one of the only good examples of it on the album. Elsewhere, there a few too many studio tricks thrown in that just feel unnecessary.

Pistol (A. Cunanan, Miami, FL. 1996) seems like a misstep, mining the kind of jagged, angry funk that the band have developed over the last few albums. The song focuses on the dark true story of a serial killer but it's easy to to get distracted by the needless production including a baffling pitch-warping vocal effect that Brock uses through the song.

Lines like “If there's some point to this then which one is mine” on Pups To Dust see familiar lyrical themes like life and death carry over into these songs, not always with the same subtlety as in the past but Brock can still deliver them with a real sense of weight. Strangers To Ourselves gets away with mixing a lot of different styles, unabashed pop sing-a-long Wicked Campaign and ramshackle camp fire folk of God Is An Indian And You're An Asshole shouldn't work but really do. Sugar Boats is a rock song for a strange and twisted circus led by a bouncy bass line and squealing horns. It isn't a complete success but is a little better than it should be thanks to it's nervous and manic energy.

Maybe it is a victim of it's eight year gestation; the album covers a lot of styles but never manages to pull these threads together as a whole. For all the tracks that work there are more than a few that just pass you by, tracks like the opener Strangers To Ourselves and Coyotes just never give you enough to latch onto. Given all the talk of abandoned recordings, it could have come out much worse. Strangers To Ourselves still feels disjointed and it's runtime of nearly an hour doesn't help. It may feel unnecessarily dense and disparate but amongst the varying offerings the album does have enough high points to keep Modest Mouse fans happy - especially if they've enjoyed the bands 2000's output - and reminds you why they can be a special band.

Album Review:Ghostpoet – Shedding Skin

(PIAS)

Obaro Ejimiwe's profile seemed to rise rapidly following a Mercury Prize-nomination in 2011 for his debut album under the name Ghostpoet, Peanut Butter Blues & Melancholy Jam, losing out to PJ Harvey for the award. He had some releases to his name, including work with pop experimentalist Micachu, defining his sound with electronic production as half-spoken vocals that saw him straddling somewhere between singer songwriter, producer and alternative hip hop, a sound he continued to define for his 2013 follow-up Some Say I So I Say Light alongside working with Damon Albarn and The Streets.

For his third album Shedding Skin, his touring band have gotten a look in on this album, replacing the electronic textures and beats of his previous album, relegating them to a supporting role behind the drum kit and guitars. Whilst every other songwriter is going down the vocals and beats path laid out by the likes of James Blake, it's interesting to see Ghostpoet taking a different path.

The whole album with the addition of a full band feels like a bigger collaborative piece of work, drifting into new sounds like the hints of psychedelic soul in the energetic opening track Off Peak Dreams and dream pop creeps in X Marks The Spot. The album is bolstered with appearances from Lucy Rose, Etta Bond, Nadine Shah and Maximo Park front man Paul Smith adding to the voices and characters that carry Ghostpoet's dark narratives.

Shedding Skin creates a personal, intimate feel, guided by Ejimiwe's low key mellow vocals. X Marks The Spot cultivates this mood over it's quiet bass pulse before breaking into a dream pop chorus of paired male female vocals. The back and forth argument between the capable vocals of Nadine Shah carries it the drama of a relationship that's run out of steam as Ejimiwe just sounds tired as he sings “I don't care anymore”.

The title track keeps the drums to a minimum leaving more space to be filled by it's eerie tones and haunted repetition of the line “You think you know me/You'll never know me”. That Ring Down The Drain Kind Of Feeling sustains the dark sound with it's looser late night trip-hop swathed in murky vocals, echoing guitars and cold keys that chill like the midnight soul of early Portishead.

Yes, I Helped You Pack's darker rock conveys a domestic relationship crumbling with more than a little echo of Radiohead in it's ringing minor key guitar lines and creeping electronic echoes, an influence that seems to be weave through much of Shedding Skin, especially on tracks like the synth-led Better Not Butter.

Following advice given by Brian Eno, Ejimiwe recording an album quickly, Shedding Skin feels like it's benifited from that approach. It's focused body of work with a few small surprises. The more ambitious piano-led album closer Nothing In The Way shows there are more than a few novel tricks to Ghostpoet's song writing. It's a welcome shake up to Ghostpoet's sound that may pay off further when performed live, imbuing his song writing with a palatable drama as he paints vivid pictures of social ills and disintegrating relationships.

Album Review:BADBADNOTGOOD & Ghostface Killah – Sour Soul

(Lex)

BADBADNOTGOOD were at risk of becoming an academic minded jazz group, forming at the Humber College jazz program in Toronto. It's Hip Hop's gain that the three piece's jazzy covers of hip hop, electronica and video game soundtracks that they posted to Bandcamp got them the attention of the likes of Tyler, The Creator and led them to working with Earl Sweatshirt and Danny Brown.

Having already worked with Wu-Tang member RZA on the soundtrack to Man With The Iron Fists, the group have now collaborated on a full length album Sour Soul with Ghostface Killah, a rapper who has held the reputation of one of the best storytellers in Hip-Hop, earned during his time as a member of the newly regrouped Wu-Tang Clan and over a number of acclaimed solo albums like Fishscale and Supreme Clientele.

After a short musical introduction Mono sets the soulful tone for the rest of the album, Sour Soul really begins with it's title track as Ghostface wastes no time dropping lines that would sound rushed in other rappers hands, but here feels natural. Lines like “No technology, this world's corrupt
/They can't feed me food for thought, I won't budge” drop as an aggressive statement of intent.

Tones Rap is the most obvious example of Ghostface's storytelling style, revelling in performing as a larger than life, amoral pimp, full of complaints and problems but still unable to turn away from his criminal life, ending with the admission “Pimping ain't easy but it sure is fun”. The album is boosting by a varied selection of guests. Previous BADBADNOTGOOD collaborator Danny Brown shows up on Six Degrees on characteristically manic form whilst the down-tempo feel of Street Knowledge is assisted by the gruff but mellow Tree

An obvious comparison would be The Roots but the most obvious touchstones seem to be Bringing in string arrangements that add real warmth to the exploitation movie-era soul, it wouldn't be a stretch of imagination to hear Curtis Mayfield singing over some of these tracks especially when BADBADNOTGOOD get a real chance in the spotlight like on the instrumental Starks' Reality or the lush album closer Experience.

Ray Gun features cult hip-hop figure DOOM and lets us see what the long gestating collaboration between him and Ghostface might just sound like. In fact, the track covers Brazilian musician Caetano Vaeloso's Alfomega, a track that was meant to be used originally on a track with DOOM on Ghostface's album Fishscale but the sample wasn't cleared. The bouncy and quick tempo beat feels more in line with early upbeat music of De La Soul before it ends in a big moment of jazz-laden film score bombast.

It's a compelling collaboration, the flexibility of a live group over samples allows the music more room to build and support the narratives as they unravel or smoothly transition into musical interludes. Ghostface may not be on top of his game here but he definitely has his moments and it could be easy to see BADBADNOTGOOD becoming a mainstay of Hip-Hop album credits in the near future, at least for rappers that are willing to looks outside the current electronic trends for inspiration. BADBADNOTGOOD & Ghostface Killah have both found something good on Sour Soul, so here's hoping it's not a one-off.

Album Review:Sleater-Kinney – No Cities To Love

(Sub Pop)

'Another year, another slew of reunions' the cynic in me wants to think. Undoubtedly there will be plenty more reunions on the horizon but outside those groups that have used it to cash in on a greatest hits tour we've also gotten some great albums in the last few years. Afghan Whigs, Swans, Sebadoh are amongst the acts that have proven in recent years that comebacks shouldn't always be met with negativity. For as many acts that want to make some easy money there are just as many with something left to say.

The much-loved indie punk group Sleater-Kinney are the latest group to reform and have brought No Cities To Love, they're first album in a decade, with them. Formed in Olympia, WA in 1994, the group where amongst the most successful and longest lasting acts to have come from the Riot Grrl scene, taking influence from the indie and punk music from the Pacific Northwest as well as the likes of Pavement and Sonic Youth. The bands sound is also shaped by the interplay between Corin Tucker and Carrie Brownstein, both playing guitars and taking on vocals, mixing empowered vitriol with punk energy they created music that had a vital message whilst punk rock as a whole was loosing it's bite.

Since 2005's The Woods and the groups long-term hiatus in 2006 the band went of in different directions. Tucker has released two albums with the Corin Tucker Band whilst Brownstein teamed up with Fred Armisen to create the hipster skewering comedy series Portlandia. Drummer Janet Weiss continued to work with her husband as Quasi and joined Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks as well as working with Brownstein as part of the short-lived group Wild Flag.

No Cities To Love begins with a playful riff and rolling drums but that first track, Price Tag, really hits it's stride with a big defiant chorus that puts stadium rock bands to shame without losing it's edge. Sleater-Kinney shine in these big moments and the album is full of them, mixing the straightforward hooks of The Clash and the jittery unpredictability of Devo. Fangless jerks about with these harsh, lurching post-punk riffs as the vocals delivered with a wild, shouted desperation.

The title track from No Cities to Love is one of the strongest here. An almost pop-punk track showing one of the groups big strengths of putting big, irresistible sing-along hooks amongst scrappy guitar melodies. The huge jagged slabs of dissonant chords that begin No Anthems are pure 90's era Sonic Youth, angry and weird. The tumbling melodies give way to the short and sharp melodic punk centre of the track. Fade channels Fugazi-style emo, which leads the the albums last big chorus, and is a neat fit for Tucker and Brownstein's heart-on-sleeve style of singing.

It's not the kind of punk record that snarls and spits in your face, content to pull you in with passion and melody. In fact the way Sleater-Kinney sits in this unique spot between grunge, indie rock and punk saw them picking and choosing their own space somewhere between. No Cities To Love is lean, it's momentum barely lets up, and makes for a good starting point for anyone unfamiliar with Sleater-Kinney as well as a welcome return for long-time fans. It's an album that easy to enjoy just on the basis of it's limitless energy and charm, but there is definitely more to find beneath the surface of it's immediate pleasures. Like quite a few reunion albums it seems to pick up where the band left us and in doing so shows reminds us what was so good about them in the first place.

Album Review:Brian Eno – The Drop/Neroli/Nerve Net/The Shutov Assembly

(All Saints Records)

Arguably Brain Eno's most recognisable piece of music from the nineties was only five seconds long. He'd been hired by Microsoft to create the start-up sound for Windows 95. Though he still managed to put out a lot of work during this period, as well as producing record with U2 and reuniting with collaborator David Bowie. Still, his own solo releases from this period may be amongst his most eclectic releases as these recent reissues on All Saints Records seem to highlight.

Brian Eno is known for many things not limited to Roxy Music, his own forays in Ambient music and production for the likes of The Talking Heads, Coldplay and U2. Though his solo and collaborations work is were he has reached critical acclaim for his novel approached, be it in the experimental pop of Here Come The Warm Jets or Another Green World, where his pop music enter more left field and ambient realms.

Nerve Net is the earliest of these reissues, originally released in 1992, and sees Eno taking on some of the styles he help to popularise, merging blissful spacey electronica with strange pop and sampled loops. The first track Fractal Zoom is not a world away from the looping drum patterns of My Bloody Valentine's Soon, which came out only a year earlier on Loveless. It balances a darker ambient sound with softer layered vocals and centred with a solid funk-inflected bass line. Whilst some of the sounds show they're age others are forward thinking, Wire Shock has chopped up vocals arranged into a rhythm, still a staple of contemporary electronica whilst The Roil, The Choke, one of the few tracks to feature Eno's voices prominently, is one of the best tracks here, with more in common with his music from the seventies with echoes of tracks like The Ship and On Some Faraway Beach.

Niroli is a purely ambient one track album, named after a plant oil and made at a time when Eno was obsessed by smells and fragrances and even developed his own perfumes. The hour long piece of music is slight enough to fit in along side Eno's Ambient series. Like those works, such as Music for Airports there is still enough here to capture your attention in odd minor key flourishes, but its submerged sound can sink into the background just as easily. In fact Eno claimed in the linear notes for Airports that he aimed to make music “as ignorable as it is interesting” and Niroli easily fits the same bill and could have been included under the same series, maybe as Music for Daydreams.

The original cover for The Drop featured some of the worst album artwork ever made, a computer made image that is more clip art than virtual reality. Thankfully the computer-indebted music that makes up the album fares a little better. Brian Eno described the music on The Drop as jazz made by an alien who'd only heard descriptions of jazz music and the album mostly succeeds in creating music that is alien and familiar. It seems to continue some of the synthesized jazzier moments of Nerve Net over a collection of short tracks, like sketches and ideas laid out that loop into focus before fading out. Whilst it doesn't all work, some of the ideas like dreamy Spanish guitar chords that ring out on Dutch Blur or Boomcubist which has echoes of In Dark Trees are interesting enough to recall Music For Film or Eno's defining moment Another Green World. The Drop seems to aim for that kind of varied experimentation but never reaches the same quality or consistency.

The Shutov Assembly is a glacially cold piece of ambient music, made up of shorter pieces that offer more variation than his longer form works. It's cold textures could see it sit alongside the frozen soundscapes of Biosphere's Substrata. On tracks like Stedelijk and Alhondiga notes linger and echo like sounds bouncing between the walls of a vast cavern as distant hums fall in and out of the background, it's never busy and sees Eno push his interest in texture and space to the forefront. Shutov makes for a slow and solitary listen that seems a suitable fit for short winter days.

All of these albums are packed with bonus tracks and alternate versions, many are forgettable and easy to pass over, but some offer interesting ideas and pretty moments. Tracks like Prague on The Shutov Assembly see Eno using a solo piano rather than electronic textures creating a more melodic take on the albums frozen sculpture. Nerloi features another hour long track, New Space Music, made of low hums and tones that gently shift between tones whilst being void of any obvious melodic lines, it's ever shifting noises create a hypnotic effect.

Even when he doesn't always hit the mark these reissues that to their extensive linear notes full of interview and essays allow an insight into the thought processes and ideas that sparked these releases which seem to be, at least in a few cases, more interesting than the finished result. That's where Eno's brilliance lies, in trying unexpected things and taking different routes. These albums are a mixed bag of Brian Eno's nineties output. It does show a musical range and a willingness to explore, though not every gambit hits the mark, it still displays a singular talent.

Album Review:Scott Walker + Sunn O))) – Soused

(4AD)

At one point on Brando, the opening track from Soused, Scott Walkers' unique and heavy-hearted croon infers that 'A beating would do me the world of good' alongside a beat made from the lashings of a whip. It's a line that drips of violence and masochism and stands as a good warning of the sonic punishment that you can hear over over the album's fifty minutes.

Soused is a collaboration between former pop star and now Avant-Garde artist Scott Walker and earth-shattering drone worshippers Sunn O))). The drone group had sought out Scott Walker for their 2009 album Monoliths & Dimensions (which seemed to incorporate disparate arrangements and instrumentation one of Scott's albums) but conflicting schedules got in the way. Walker since wrote some material with the band in mind and when they finally got together they recorded it over a week. It shows through the album, it lacks in detail but makes up for it with a rawer immediacy.

Brando's first thirty seconds make you wonder just what you've gotten yourself into. High synthesizer's ring out over guitar lead melodies like some dreamy ballad from an eighties David Lynch film. It then falls to silence before those familiar heavy waves of drone pile in over a one note bass pulse and that whip lash beat. Scott Walker's voice carries a horror like a man brought to the edge of sanity by some horrific, unspeakable experience. At this point it become clear whether you will become enraptured or repulsed by the mesmeric dark guitars and vivid, haunted scenes that form the core of Soused.

As much as Scott Walker has gained a reputation as a meticulous, serious artist punching away slabs of meat as he hides away recording his albums, his music does a have a humorous and playful side that often come out through his use of language with lines like 'Leaping like a river dancer's nuts' in the Sabbath like proto-metal of Bull. Other tracks give themselves up completely to painting a picture with only a black and grey colour palette. The biblical Herod 2014 repeats a haunting mantra, 'She's hidden her babies away' over slow ghostly moans that carry the promise of a forthcoming terror. The beat-less track builds with what sounds like squealing, pained horn sounds and industrial sounds of clattering, shuffling machinery with colossal doom riffs that create unease without a drumbeat to hang on to.

Fetish begins with Walker's voice in near silence, punctuated with sharp staccato jabs that could have come from an old film's soundtrack paying homage to Psycho's shower scene. Dissonant and jagged art rock riffs and harsh screeching horns pick up the track as drums crash and tumble in a perfect exercise in loud and quiet dynamics as the song writing seems to tell a story in itself. Lullaby is a haunting drifting ending to Soused, more likely to inspire hellish nightmares if listened to before bedtime as it's quiet lulls are split between harsh dissonance and Walker's tortured wails.

In many ways this is one of the most accessible records in both Walker's and Sunn O)))'s recent output as they are both confined to a more rigid rock band set up. Sunn O)))'s heavy drones a pinned to drumbeats and Scott uses a smaller range of sounds to complements his twisted narratives. It's still alienating listen for the uninitiated, but for those who like their music with an undercurrent of horror this may well be a good introduction for these artists who exist at the far reaches of experimental rock music as Soused is a focused and compelling for those who can take the beating.

Album Review:Caribou – Our Love

(City Slang)

Caribou is the long standing project of Dan Snaith, an artists who was always effectively balanced the producer and musician roles. He's always had a pop core to his music, even when exploring krautrock tangents on The Milk of Human Kindness, which could lead him to crossing over into being an altogether bigger act and with his fifth album, 2010's Swim, he finally did it, showing up on the soundtrack to the FIFA video game series, moving up in festival bills and reaching a whole new audience with his turn towards dance music. His most recent release was 2012's Jialong diversion into immediate dance music under his Daphni moniker. The William Onyeabor sampling Ye-Ye in particular was one of his best tracks as well has the most direct example of intent from his dance floor excursions.

Whilst Swim still contained some of the heady psychedelic pop of earlier Caribou, Our Love is undeniably a purer electronic album, full of drum machines and analog tones, but for all that it still bares a something very human at it's centre, one of Caribou's real strengths. Opening track Can't Do Without You quickly settles into a locked 4/4 groove sounding distant like a party in the next room as a sample repeats the song's title before breaking out of it's filters. Drums kick in as synthesizers rise and swirl under and around Snaith voice, shrouded in echo.

The title track brings in an almost disco feel, with Snaith's falsetto, computerised soul vocals and Arcade Fire and solo violinist Owen Pallet contributing string arrangements that seem to interrupt the track at just at the right moments. It then takes a turn as it a British house breakdown with obligatory pitch shift vocal takes over, with an energetic like that of previous single Odessa on a gritty club rush. Jessy Lanza, who was responsible for one of last year's best debut albums Pull My Hair Back, appears on Second Chance. That track buries it's mid-tempo R&B beat under Lanza's voice with widescreen synthesizers that melt and reform around her voice to a dizzying effect.

The persistent grooves of beat workout Mars and the frustratingly short loved-up house of Julia Brightly show how far he's come as a producer as they just rely on machine rhythms with Snaith's reverb affected vocals left aside. Back Home delves into analog theatrics, part John Carpenter score, part melancholy synth-pop. Building around a triumphant lead line, placing layers of beats and melody on top of each other, it's a welcome change, slowing down the tempo but still providing on of Our Love's biggest peaks.

Low-key closing track Your Love Will Set You Free sneaks in some guitars to add a little funk to the filtered and phased vocals. Ending with a refrain of the song's title 'Your love will set you free' fades out as a mantra as a beat winds down. It's a tidy conclusion that backs up Our Love, a big declaration for losing yourself in dance. Not only has Caribou effectively tapped in to dance music rhythms he's brought his own soul into it and made it his own. The results make Our Love an affirming mixture of Jialong's instant pleasures and Swim's details and intricacies brought together with Snaith's pop heart. It makes for an album brimming with positivity that effectively taps into dance music's loved-up sense of togetherness that only the sour-faced individual wouldn't want to be part of.

Album Review:Flying Lotus – You're Dead!

(Warp)

Concept albums in electronic music are few and far between (and generally in music since the seventies) though hip-hop seems has a couple of examples with albums like Deltron 3030. Still, L.A. beat maker, label-owner and more recently rapper Steve Ellison, better known as Flying Lotus, is no stranger to big ideas. Showing himself as a consistently creative producer since breaking out with his second album, the urban grit-fused Los Angeles and following it up with the heady jazz psychedelics of Cosmograma and Until The Quiet Comes' more softer dream state Flying Lotus has gone further into making music that contains that spur of the moment feel of jazz with the laboured perfection of electronica.

His latest release You're Dead! Is his concept album, based on ruminations and pondering into the afterlife. Life, or existence, after death is an idea explored in everything from Hinduism to the Jedis in Star Wars but may not be a widely explored topic in music. Flying Lotus takes it on with the wide-eyed enthusiasm of his Auntie, Alice Coltrane's, forays into spiritual jazz.

It begins with a low earthy drone before the track breaks out into a number of false starts like its trying to settle on an idea to begin with. The result can sound overwhelming like it's through it's many, many sounds at you all at once, and serves as an apt taster of what to expect for the next forty minutes. You're Dead! is mad and excessive enough to have as much in common with prog-rock (yes, really) than anything with the current L.A. Beat scene. There are even a couple of lead lines from electric guitars showing up here and there. Still, there are no five minute solos here, tracks are short and sharp, skipping from one idea to the next.

In demand serial collaborator and Kendrick Lamar appears on Never Catch Me and justifies his contribution with the best verses on You're Dead!. He raps 'Ain't no blood pumpin' no fear, I got hope inside of my bones', the lines tumble and free fall over a constantly evolving Footwork beat. On the next track Snoop Dogg shows up to deliver his distinct, blazed rhymes alongside Lotus' rapper alter-ego Captain Murphy on a track that lurches forward with a stoned, stomping beat. There are some familiar collaborators for regular listeners, Thundercat and Niki Randa appear, with Thundercat's distinctive fret-hopping bass playing, which has been a constant in the last two Flying Lotus albums, featuring throughout the record.

At the albums centre is Coronus, The Terminator ushering in the albums' more introspective, meditative second half by providing a cut of lush and dream-like slowed down soul, taking the tempo down a notch and bringing in some layered vocals which segues perfectly into the equally sedate Siren Song featuring Angel Deradoorian of The Dirty Projectors' voice jumping to and fro. Herbie Hancock appears on Moment of Hesitation which lets go of its beat trappings and becomes a rhythmic jazz freak-out. Pong-style bleeps of carry Ready Err Not before the album introduces some more standard but still appreciated beat driven fare with tracks like Turtles, Obligatory Cadence and closer The Protest.

For all it's indulgences it just about manages to stay on the right side things, staying playful and thoughtful with it's many ideas that blur genre and style into a strange but complete whole, leagues ahead of any contemporaries. The many jumping off points and collaborators make for a jumbled and intense listen, lacking the cohesiveness of lotus' other albums but it's twists and turns are always interesting. His push into more real instrumentation really pushes to set it out as something different from his back catalogue and through its many faces it only goes to reinforce how unknowable death is. If Flying Lotus is right about anything on You're Dead!, wherever it leads, the afterlife will be a wild trip.

Album Review:Thurston Moore – The Best Day

(Matador)

For all the downsides of Sonic Youth's members calling an indefinite hiatus on the long running band in 2011, it has allowed the band's member to branch out and try new things. Sonic Youth's three decades of noise rock lasted through New York's undergrounds no-wave heyday, through grunge, MTV and into the digital age. Sonic Youth's distortion and dissonance hast always been a constant, influencing scores of groups in the process.

Free of that influence though still carrying a reputation to live up to, the band members have all embarked on their own projects. Lee Ronaldo has put out two solo albums of R.E.M-esque indie rock, whilst Kim Gordon went down a more experimental route with her more abstract noise project Body/Head. Meanwhile, Thurston Moore has been equally busy, joining two bands Chelsea Light Moving and Black Metal supergroup Twilight over the last three years.

Now he has a new solo album following his last, the Beck-produced acoustic affair Demolished Thoughts, with The Best Day. This new album comes with a few changes, a recent move to London has prompted Moore to gather a new backing band. It's no surprise to see Sonic Youth drummer Steve Shelley here (he also appeared on Ronaldo's solo albums) but Moore also drafts Guitarist James Sedwards of Nought and My Bloody Valentine's Debbie Googe on bass.

Speak To The Wild begins with echoing harmonics, the guitars chime and ring recalling some of Sonic Youths high points like the Jim O'Rourke produced Murray St. It all follows a simple but driving two chord riff as Moore jumps between lead lines, setting up a melodic tone that much of the album follows. The title track delivers upbeat riffing that recalls early post-punk like Television, with a bit of New York glam-rock power chords, it even breaks into a surprisingly big melodic solo at one point, which might possibly be Moore's most melodic lead line in his thirty odd years and thankfully it never goes to overboard as his cool keeps the whole thing grounded.

The11 minute long epic Forevermore builds on a droning riff with a constant drum beat and Neu!-like repetition. Full of sharp, serrated lead lines and violent peaks, it's exciting and justifies it's length. Detonation manages to recall some of E.V.O.L and Sister era Youth with a downright nasty sounding ascending lead with aggressive more-shouted-than-sung vocals that isn't to far away from a Liars track. The instrumental Grace Lake transforms from a major key the a distortion fed beast that, whilst not doing anything new, has some the the album's best riffs.

It's still missing something from his main band though, maybe the variety of vocalists or the call and response guitar riffs between Lee and Thurston. But there is something here that makes me think maybe it is the kind of record Sonic Youth could still be making. Amongst it all there's Those who are looking for a fix of music from Moore's former band may get it from The Best Day, it carries that noise rock torch and fills it with reflection and hope with a few unexpected turns and a personal feel to what you'd expect from a Sonic Youth record but retaining enough similarity that would have made a worthy addition to their catalogue.

Album Review:Bonnie "Prince" Billy - Singer's Grave A Sea of Tongues

(Domino)

Will Oldham, better known as Bonnie “Prince” Billy, or Palace Brothers or a whole load of other names, makes country folk music that digs deep into existential themes and religion, on a search for an answer to unknowable questions. Through his two decades long career his music has become bigger, more accomplished and his new album Singer's Grave A Sea of Tongues is a perfect showcase for his progression, but for all that Billy can still draw you in as he did when it was just his voice and an acoustic guitar.

Singer's Grave A Sea of Tongues is Bonnie "Prince" Billy's tenth proper album, though there is a lot more Oldham material around out there, and offers some new songs, along with some updates of older songs. Those updated tracks originally appeared on 2011's Wolfroy Comes To Town, a stripped down affair with a small backing band that featured Emmett Kelly and Angel Olsen, and here those songs become bigger, filled out with strings, slide guitar, banjos and gospel style backing vocals. It isn't that different but is a little more fleshed out similar to how Townes Van Zandt updated his songs over his albums.

The result is a lot lighter than say I See A Darkness' weighty existential folk, but it's not all bright as familiar themes of death and religion resurface. We Are Unhappy paints images of religious apocalypse with it's vivid lyrics, 'Mind, it is going/ and faith is destroyed/ It's emptiness showing/ God's cruelty deployed'. The dark lyrics are evened it out with the contrast of a lightly picked chord progression backed with a banjo and Gospel choir.

The album begins with Wolfroy's last track Night Noises a slow and tumbling track, powered by big, sustained piano chords. Quail And Dumplings is another track getting a fix-up, and prominently featured the vocals of Angel Olsen. This version sounds fuller as Oldham takes over Olsen's verse and adds a string section for the tale of aspiration as Billy softly pines for a better future with a chorus of 'We got empty tummies but it won't always be/ One day it's gonna be quail and dumplings for we'. The meal may seem like something from another era but it's theme of wanting what you don't have is timeless.

It's not all misery as Whipped shows, with an altogether brighter side of Oldham, contains a joyous refrain of “I'm in Love”. The music is often upbeat too, Mindlessness almost prog-folk main hook could have come from a wild sea shanty and is worthy of a drunken jig with it's plucked violin and drum rolls. Bonnie 'Prince' Billy's musical ability is on display on Mew Black Rich (Tusks), a downcast and contemplative turn that shows some searing, emotive violin soloing that really lifts the song into something that could have come from The Dirty Three.

Singer's Grave A Sea of Tongues is, like a lot of Oldham's work , an often affirming listen, with the updated songs becoming much warmer with the bigger backing band in tow. Some may be disappointed that the album isn't just dedicated to new material but all the songs here are full of life, light and dark, and really seem to serve Billy's intent. It may not pack the emotional gut-punch of I See A Darkness, but it's clear that he, and this latest collection of folk songs, is still intent on finding answers.

Album Review:J Mascis – Tied To A Star

(Sub Pop)

Dinosaur Jr's return brought little in the way of surprise, but that didn't stop their last few records being a great summation of everything that there are good at. Hook-laden, melodic and catchy the band justified this second wind continuing what the had started two decades earlier. Whilst having split his work over numerous groups and guest appearances through the decades. He's shown up on albums by Strand of Oaks and Fucked Up as well as, most surprisingly, in Richard Ayoade's film The Double this year alone – it still took till 2011 for Mascis to put together his first solo album Several Shades of Why.

For one of the forefathers of grunge and a slacker style of indie rock, an acoustic record doesn't sound like an obvious fit for Mascis, known for his guitar solos and distortion pedals. Tied To A Star not too far removed form his main band, even the artwork is by Mark Spusta who has contributed artwork to the last few Dinosaur jr. records. This is no bad thing, this album that is likely to keep Dinosaur fans sated, despite being a toned down and mostly acoustic affair. Tracks like Every Morning could have been straight from a Dinosaur Jr album, upbeat and backed with drums.

Heal The Star centres around a discordant chord progression would fit right in on one of their earlier records. It switches things up near the end as a percussive focus takes over on the bridge as a droning guitar takes on an almost middle eastern sound. Wide Awake's lush folk finger picking and gentle backing vocals from Cat Power is the kind of gentle experiment that justifies going solo. Backed with slide guitar and drums that crash in at the song's peak, it does show that Mascis can do soft and sincere songs.

Stumble keeps a rumble and buzz of an electric guitar alongside the acoustic, balancing the stripped back feel with a wash of noise set in the background as the lyrics bare a resemblance to The Vaselines' Jesus Don't Want Me For A Sunbeam. There is the odd turn into less tread sound on Tied to A Star with instrumental country riffing on Drifter. Trailing Off shows he can't help let loose with the occasional ripping guitar solo but if you're a fan of his then you'll know it's hard to dislike his concise, melodic and never showy playing style.

Not a radical leap into new territory, Tied To A Star is instead a great showcase for an under-rated, inventive and consistent songwriter just doing what he's always done and doing it well. Sometimes sweet, sometimes emotional but never cloying. He is still at his best with a foot on a distortion pedal but J Masics is not to be written of with an acoustic either.

Album Review:All Saints Records - Greater Lengths (compilation)

(All Saints Records)

All Saints Records spent the nineties curating and gathering together lost and new ambient releases. Picking up out of print records that weren't getting the treatment the deserved out of obscurity and shedding light onto music that roughly falls under the ambient genre. The label had some trouble later on when it found itself owned by a major label unwilling to invest in it but All Saints has emerged once more, teaming up with one of the defining electronic labels Warp records.

This new compilation Greater Lengths seems to be a victory lap for the label following a series of reissues of long out of print records from the likes of Brian Eno, Harold Budd and Laraaji. The label has been a place for interesting experimental and ambient music with a well defined but wide-reaching aesthetic. This collection of tracks from the labels' back catalogue sets out to cover a variety of sounds in an attempt to sum up that aesthetic.

It's not all a continuation of Music for Airports though, Jon Hassel creates strange, almost mechanical jazz funk with his track Streetfaxx. Harold Budd's understated creations show how to create a lot with very little. Piano and acoustic guitar wash up against each other falling in and out of place on Afar. Else were Armenian folk artist Djivan Gasparyan creates a slow-burning and mournful atmosphere on Tonight whilst Roger Eno's contribution that opens the album, Amukidi, sound like a slowed down African vocal chant.

The label also seem to serve as a home for musicians wanting to attempt something a little different from their best know output with music from Led Zepplin bassist John Paul Jones, Velvet Underground member John Cale and Cluster and Harmonia's Hans-Joachim Roedelius' classical compositions. Brian Eno ambient work seems like a big touchstone for a lot of the artists on the label but his output here seems more concerned with more contemporary sounds, tapping into electronic trends with the digitised voices and drum machines on What Actually Happened?.

The second part of Greater Lengths is a remix album, as up and coming left-field musicians are given the chance to update and re-imagine decades old music of All Saints back catalogue. It's a more interesting prospect than most remix albums, as the old guard give up their creations to those that they may well have inspired as the contemporary artists assert a place for this music today. Gathering a variety of interesting underground artists Sun Araw, Ela Orleans and Odd Nosdam. All working in different genres they seem to have one thread in common, a focus on texture rather than melody.

Ambient synthesizer artist Motion Sickness of Time Travel breaks up and weaves Laraaji's Space Choir into something other the acoustic instruments of the original are hard to spot but the spectral, meditative remains. Bandshell transforms Jon Hassel's music into a distorted alien rhythm pulsating like tribal dance from some strange future while Ela Orleans keeps the positivity of Laraaji's Kalimba adds her own driven beat and layered vocals.

Personable transforms Harold Budd's imposing synthscape work-out Dark Star into a dreamy, wide-eyed and sprawling ambient techno cut whilst rising producer patten twists another Harold Budd track Mandan into something that bares almost no resemblance to the original as loops sound like their folding in on each other over a barely together beat with an effect that is wild and heady.

For those interested in exploring ambient music past Brian Eno's Ambient series then Greater Lengths could serve as a good introduction to dig further into a back catalogues of a host of important acts. The remixes are what I've found to be the most interesting part of the compilation. It does a great job of bringing together some of the best artists working on the fringes of electronica and in doing so not only highlights the past for contemporary experimental music but it's future as well.

Album Review:Djivan Gasparyan - I Will Not Be Sad In This World/Moon Shines At Night

(All Saints Records)

Looking up Djivan Gasparyan, possibly Armenia's most famous musical export, I learned about the instrument he plays is called the duduk. It's an instrument I'm sure you've heard but, if your like me, couldn't put a name to it. Due to it's use in soundtracks it's sound is tied to the Middle East but is not dissimilar to the oboe. Gasparyan himself has contributed to numerous soundtracks, including the Hans Zimmer's score for Gladiator, Peter Gabriel's soundtrack to The Last Temptation of Christ and cult hit The Crow. For him I think the instrument has a deep association. It's use dates back at least one and a half thousand years, if not as old as Armenia itself its been there for much of its history and Djivan seems to want to preserve it's historical and cultural importance in his music he plays.

Djivan Gasparyan performs traditional Armenian folk music garnering acclaim around the world including the title of People's Artist of Armenia in his homeland . Often playing solo, his music is often spiritual and soulful, both lonely and affirming. All Saints Records have been steadily making the back catalogue of experimental and ambient music readily available once more, the latest releases are Gasparyan's first two albums 1989's I Will Not Be Sad In This World and 1993's Moon Shines At Night.

Songs like Brother Hunter or the title track from I Will Not Be Sad In This World tempt me to use flowery language as the music evokes sparse, beautiful mountains rolling away in the horizon, but I’ll try to resist. There is a timeless quality to the music, untethered from any particular era, it could have been passed down for generations and even the song titles could be snippets from old folk poems.

Tracks from The Moon Shines At Night seem to cover a larger emotional range. Gentle drones underpin the melodies, that range from overbearing melancholy on the glacial paced Sayat Nova while Tonight adds a string section to create a peace that rises and falls in swells, ahead of the curve of contemporary ambient classical acts. The addition on vocals on 7th December 1988 make it feel part of a folk song tradition, taking out most of the instrumentation to leave only a hum behind an echoing voice which, despite the language barrier, is undeniably moving.

Whilst the music is subdued and meditative it still packs in a surprising amount of emotion, it isn't background music for an inner city yoga class. In fact it's emotional core is what has made the duduk and Gasparyan's playing such an obvious fit for film soundtracks. This isn't music to match any mood, it has a time and a place, maybe a contemplative evening, but I don't see how anyone couldn't appreciate the songs that wistfully unfurl like elegant and ancient tapestries.

Album Review:Shabazz Palaces – Lese Majesty

(Sub Pop)

Over the last five or so years hip-hop seemed to have made a lot of space for the stranger and weirder side of the genre to show. Alongside the rise of bedroom producers like Lil B or Odd Future and acts like Death Grips that show that there are till many ways to approach, interpret and reinvent the genre. Shabazz Palacees are made up of Ishmael Butler of Digable Planets and Tendai Maraire, two artists that have been peddling their own unique takes of hip hop for over two decades now, well before this new outsider hip hop emerged, and manage to create some of the most unique music around..

Shabazz Palaces seem to have as much in common with the cosmic stargazing of Sun Ra or sci-fi techno of Drexiya than they do with contemporary hip hop. The group's debut, 2011's Black Up, appeared with song structures that avoided conventions with dense electronic influenced beats. It balanced a left field with the approachable as glittering synths and samples twisted beyond easy recognition make for an alien feel while synthesizer bass lines and treated vocals hint at a synthetic and artificial world. Shabazz Palaces music aims for a point where the line between technology and biology is blurred, and they're getting even closer on their follow up Lese Majesty.

Forerunner Foray features the kind of electronic futurism of acts from the Hyperdub roster in the blips and bleeps that rise and fall over the beat, broken apart by soulful female vocals stretched out to a crawl. They Come In Gold hits harder and stranger, a vocal is twisted into a melody under lines like 'we converse in ancient languages' as they map out a psychedelic interstellar journey.

Lese Majesty's beats flit between the loose and easy J Dilla style to the rigid drum machine beats. #CAKE opts for machine noises and 4/4 808 whilst Colluding Oligarchs stumbles and lurches forward with an off-centre rolling drum beat. The way the duo use samples isn't just as a backdrop for the lyrics, they feel integral to the immersion that Lese Majesty demands, as sounds often swallow up the voices or at least take equal space in the dense production. The album blends together into one ever-changing shape, retreating then re-emerging in a new form, MindGlitch Keytar TM Theme appears like a lost post-punk record, jagged and uneasy before Motion Sickness floats forth almost beat-less, bleeps of spaceship computers abound, over a bass line light enough to sound like it exists in zero gravity.

Listening to the album is taking a trip to another world that I don't fully understand, song titles and lyrics are often impenetrable, but a definitely enjoy my time there. Lese Majesty is an intricate and detailed place that demands that you invest your time to explore. Amongst a style that has embraced lo-fi grit, noise and experimentation more than ever in recent years, Shabazz Palaces shows a pair of musicians that can do strange and make it sincere in a way that outs the newcomers to shame.

Album Review:Mogwai – Come On Die Young (Reissue)

(Chemikal Underground)

Mogwai's second album begins with a clip of Iggy Pop talking about the burgeoning punk rock genre “it's a term that's based on contempt, it's a term that's based on fashion, style, elitism, Satanism and everything that's rotten about rock 'n' roll”. It is easy to see the sample intended as a parallel to the post-rock tag that had been stuck on to their debut Young Team, a term they have dismissed both in interviews and musically with their follow up record Come On Die Young.

Fifteen years on and Mogwai are now amongst the most established bands to have emerged in instrumental rock and a formidable live act but over the course of their career the Scottish band have never taken the easy path and for better or worse all of their albums have distinctly different. 1997's Young Team, which took on shoegaze, metal and the sounds of forward thinking acts like Slint, Bark Psychosis and Talk Talk, won the band critical acclaim. Huge sweeping creations like the seventeen minute long Mogwai Fear Satan or the violent and harsh riffs of Like Herod. Since then they have stripped their songs down to no frills essentials on Rock Action and taken their most ambient shift scoring the soundtrack to the French television show The Returned.

Instead of an easy follow up where they continue to construct the builds, crescendos and big shifts in dynamics that would define post-rock the band have never taken the easy route. On 1999's Come On Die Young they sidestepped their noisey debut's ferocious immediacy and put together a selection of restrained and subtle tracks that unravel over multiple listens. The album is now getting the reissue treatment, and seen in a much fairer light of their whole discography can be regarded as one of their finest successes.

Guitarist Stuart Braithwaite provides vocals on Cody, starting the album unpredictably, having as more in common with slowcore acts like Codeine and Low as it does with anything anything on Young Team. The track mixes whisper soft, tender vocals with the equally unexpected pining sound of a slide guitar. In fact a distortion pedal isn't triggered until the fifth track, Kappa, and even then it's overshadowed by harshly struck, clean guitars. The whole album has an order but with it's laboured limits there is variation. The shorter moments like chiming echo of piano keys Oh, How The Dogs Stack Up or Spaghetti western outro of Punk Rock/Puff Daddy/AntiChrist help hold the album together.

That's not to say the band don't let loose at times, Ex-Cowboy is as heavy as Mogwai have ever been. As riffs give way to harsh machine-like noise and drum rolls they prove they are still capable of creating the kind of thrilling noise-laden cacophony that few other other bands can manage and here, amongst the serene sounds of tracks like Cody these moments are all the more striking. It followed by two more aggressive tracks. A sparse and melancholy piano melody carries Chocky, as drums cascade around it, threatening to turn the track into something louder and more dangerous but just about manages to restrain itself whilst Christmas Steps delivers melodic hardcore punk riffing, taking the band back to the loud quiet dynamics of Young Team.

Amongst the extensive additional material accompanying Come On Die Young is the Travels In Constants EP, originally released in 2001, which seems to fit in well with the album despite having a slightly different feel, the first track Untitled sounds like Neu!'s more electronic moments given a moody update and shows the electronic touches that would become more apparent on later Mogwai albums. Another bonus track, Hugh Dallas hold up alongside the album tracks, featuring Braitwaite's vocals placed amongst echoing guitars, beginning at a mournful dirge before before swelling up to offer up a visceral and emotive climax that still manages to surprise like the first strike of thunder from a slow-moving storm.

If there are any weak links, it's the demo tracks, which are too similar to the finished versions to really reveal an insight into the bands process, just a little rougher around the edges. Still there are early versions of Rollerball and 7-25 which would later form part of Mogwai's soundtrack for the film Zidane: A 21^st Century Portrait.

There have been a lot of bands that have played around with the same template that bands like Mogwai established in the nineties so it really does show how well Come On Die Young hold up fifteen years on that it still has an feel all of it's own. Eschewing some of what made Young Team such a success was a gamble, as the band reassessing the builds and distortion of Young Team and creating a different and more restrained approach. There is still an atmosphere that in a certain light creates a tense, uneasy drama and in another beauty.

Die-hard Mogwai fans may already own most of what is here as most of the extras have previously been released in some form but it is clear that some effort has gone into this reissue, gathering just about everything there is from this period in the band's history, clocking in at two and a half hours. The album itself is still the best part of the package but everything here stands up and adds a little more context around one of Mogwai's defining musical achievements where they realised that they quieter statements can be the most powerful.

Album Review:Drcarlsonalbion – Gold

(Oblique Italy)

A pioneer of both drone and ambient metal, Seattle musician Dylan Carlson has also shown himself to be a capable writer of interesting and innovative heavy music. Beginning his career with inspirations like early metal groups such as Black Sabbath and the Seattle music scene and groups like The Melvins, his main band Earth has, over twenty five years, developed and pushed itself into more varied sonic territory, especially over the last decade since their return from a hiatus caused by Carlson's drug addiction.

Gold is the first foray into soundtrack work for the Earth front man for a film of the same name. It comes amongst a productive time for Carlson, shortly before the release of his first solo album, funded through Kickstarter, and a new Earth album, both due before the end of the year. The film follows a band of German settlers, traversing the western frontier in hopes of striking gold on Canada's west coast. A familiar story unfolds, where the often environment and those that inhabit it become the main obstacles for the travelling group.

The twenty four tracks, titled Gold I through to Gold XXIV, that make up this soundtrack exists in a lonelier space to Carlson's usual work with Earth. Many of the tracks just featuring a single guitar, an effective representation of the vast and empty North American wilderness. Sparse percussion is used like punctuation for the riffs as splashes of cymbals pass by like clouds or a bass drum hits like distant thunder.

Whilst this isn't metal, the music does bare the hallmarks of Carlson's main project, Gold I establishes a guitar progression that reappears throughout Gold with slow tempo pentatonic riffs and a thick and carefully constructed guitar tone that crackles and splits like the dry ground under an oppressive sun. It does explore some of the directions that Earth has taken over the last decade, with the sound sun-baked country and drawn-out Morricone melodies dominating, twisted into a much more minimalist form.

The vast slide guitar chords of Gold VII ring out and echo like their being performed in a valley, it's the most identifiabley “western” moments on the soundtrack. Gold XII echoes about like an demo from the heyday of psychedelia, wah pedal-soaked guitar jams that sound lost and wandering. Some tracks barely hang around for more than thirty seconds, filling in the gaps between the longer tracks with soft hums of feedback and low drones rattling away, swathed in reverb.

Fans of Carlson's work should know what to expect from Gold for the most part, the thick and warm guitar sounds but the stripped down approach creates something a little different, for creating a lonely and vulnerable sound that could crackle and fall apart. There is something powerful that rings out in these singular riffs and isolated chord progressions, familiar styles that feel somehow other placed on their own with a result that is much more evocative than you'd expect from it's simple approach.

Album Review:Tom Vek – Luck

(Moshi Moshi)

London multi-instrumentalist Tom Vek gained a cult following with his 2005 debut We Have Sound with a modest reception it gained him a dedicated following who'd have to wait six years for a follow up. In 2011 he released Leisure Seizure and whilst it didn't win him further exposure it still shown an artist work keeping an eye on. Now he's got his third album in just under a decade, Luck, and whilst he isn't the most prodigious artist it might be enough to cement his cult status.

Jittery and agitated post-punk of Sherman (Animals In The Jungle), the first single form Luck really stands out. It has the kind of simple three note guitar line that would be at home on a track form the mid-2000s post-punk revival. Whilst it all sounds a bit like Bloc Party's first album it doesn't come across as old with a sharp synth line cuts in alongside a restless drum beat. As the song's title forms the track's chorus Vek's ability for creating urgency in his half-spoken deadpan vocals becomes apparent.

Broke stands as one of the more ambitious genre-hopping tracks, with big pop song keys and middle eastern scales mixing with big garage rock riffs and and messy drum beats, throwing a succession of hooks and riffs at you for it four minutes. Trying To Do Better brings together a mixture of heart on sleeve emotion and aggression from post-hardcore with electronic sounds that works way better than you think it will.

The songs keep themselves around the four minute mark and simple verse chorus pop structures which is both a strength and weakness. Vek's penchant for mixing up disparate genres keeps things interesting but you always feel you know it is often leading to a big chorus. He has never been striving for lyrical complexity and for the most part his straight up and simple approach works but there are a couple of lines like “If you say you didn't do it /I'll believe you didn't do it” on the chorus of Ton of Bricks that are hard to overlook. He started ahead of the curve with his mix of indie rock and electronica but now it's common place for bands to incorporate electronics and smart production in the mix with the tried and tested band dynamics.

Luck is a varied piece if work, covering enough musical styles to give nineties Beck a run for his money but the risk with that is you can lose out on cohesion and that's were it falls short. You'd be hard pressed to find another recent album that touches on such varied genres as tracks like the acoustic The Girl You Wouldn't Leave For Any Other Girl to the cut-up jungle beats and squelchy digital bass lines of You'll Stay where Vek pushes his electronic influences to the forefront. Even in the internet age that has brought about the blurring of genre lines when he's at his best Tom Vek's musical approach still sounds unique.

Album Reveiw:Tobacco – Ultima II Massage

(ghostly)

As popular music becomes increasingly electronic, it's also aided the rise of the computer as an instrument, along with digital instruments and interfaces. Whilst this is a prevalent trend there are always those acts who go against the tide. Eschewing modern equipment for analog synthesizers, tape machines and old drum machines, Tobacco would be one of them.

Tobacco is an offshoot of cult act Black Moth Super Rainbow allowing frontman Thomas Fec to take the BMSR aesthetic into a stranger and often darker place with his primitive bedroom hip-hop and no computer in sight. I became familiar with Black Moth Super Rainbow's 2009 album Dandelion Gum, an album full of sunny and pastoral electronic music. Tobacco seems like an outlet for a completely different side of Fec. He has provided beats for rappers like Aesop Rock, Beans and The Hood Internet and his last album Maniac Meat also featured Beck on two tracks, an artist who also made his own oddball take on hip-hop on his breakout album Odelay.

His third album under the Tobacco moniker Ultima II Massage sounds like a seedy video game title and it mostly lives up to that as opener Streaker begins with all the tact of a grubby adolescent. There is none of the perfect EQing and over-laboured sound that you can find in a lot of modern music, the bass drums thud clumsily like a drunken madman. When Tobacco does take a step back into something a little more chilled out it often sound like a Boards of Canada demo, like on Self Tanner with its hazy and slightly-off synth lines or the stoned beats of Beast Sting and Creaming For Beginners. The slinky and funky Lipstick Destroyer is the music Daft Punk might make if they were locked up in a basement after making Homework with an 4-track and some early hip hop records as a vocoder and a disco beat fight through fuzzy guitars whilst album closer Bronze Hogan could be the theme from a long forgotten 1980s straight to VHS film as a big guitar riff and keys jostle around.

Eruption (Gonna Get My Hair Cut at the End of the Summer) has some of the more obvious vocal hooks (and some of the most discernible lines) like “Twist it like a pigtail/I can make your heart fail” along with a synth sound that is just gloopy. The song finds Tobacco liberally dropping “Motherfucker” like a teenager playing tough and reinforces a teenage viewpoint seems to come through a lot of this music, capturing an age where nothing is over thought and the world is still a strange place that you haven't quite figured out yet. There are a few tracks like Good Complexion that are a little closer to the sunnier psychedelia of Black Moth but for the most part Ultima will leave you feeling like you've taken a swim in a sewer.

It's a journey into a strange and grimy place, in fact if you have Chromesthesia I imagine you'd see the music as the yellow-brown stain left by tobacco, it's that dirty sounding. Whilst the retro and vocoder sound may seem to make Tobacco a one trick pony, there is a pretty surprising amount of variation and ideas in the lo-fi tunes that make up Ultima II Massage. It's gleefully strange, with song titles like Dipsmack, Spitlord and Video Warning Attempts that only seem to aid the oddness and make it all the more indecipherable. If you like your music a little on the weird side then it may well be worth taking a trip down this particular rabbit hole.