La colonie de Vacances - s/t (Kythibong)

Sometimes the music doesn't match up to the concept but, when it does, it's just about the most wonderful thing in the world.  That's what makes this release from La colonie de Vacances not just a great listen but an essential purchase.

This 10" EP comes from our favourite label - the always excellent Kythibong - and the whole package sounds irresistible from the off.  LCDV consists of members of four bands who, when together, perform on four separate stages, with the audience central.  Four illustrators have joined them to produce a release whose accompanying 100-page book has to be spun while the vinyl , in its turn, can be read over and over.

You'll get the idea if you grab yourself a copy - and you should because, most importantly, the musical content still manages to be the most enticing thing about the whole release.  LCDV dish out four slaps of guitar-led brilliance that are by turns bewitching and crushingly forceful.  It's like having multiple ideas forced into your head via a lightning rod shoved in your ear.   That there are only four tracks here feels incredible given the range of ideas explored in such a short space of time (under 16 minutes).

I'm playing the second track from this enticing release in my Dandelion Radio show this month.   Meanwhile, you can get the EP and glory in its visual and sonic magnificence here. 

Seal of Quality - Affective Design (Kythibong)

The Kythibong label so often manages to keep you waiting for a new release just long enough to get the old anticipatory juices flowing before hitting you with something so wonderful you forget the time lapse and just want to get on with playing the thing.

 

Such is the case with this album, coming your way in early May.  Three years on from his debut for the label, it shows Seal of Quality seriously stepping up to the mark and truly living up to his name.

 

It's not just the weird quirkiness or the clash of instruments intended for the purpose (guitar) with others not so intended (Gameboy) that make the release stand out.  After all, there are hundreds of artists attempting the same thing, few of whom manage to achieve anything anywhere near as good as this.

 

It's more that Seal of Quality manages to fuse these elements into something that leaves so few concessions to convention.  Drum tracks (on opener 'All Set Up', for instance), rather than simply providing a beat, chatter frantically like how Stephen Morris might have had he ever achieved his ambition of transforming into a machine.  

 

'Push & Pull', which has been featuring in my Dandelion Radio show this month, is one of several breathless creations that offer a sense of these disparate elements clustering together, rushing to get to the same point.  The album's final and longest track, 'Deceiver', begins with a pretty much standard retro-futuristic vibe (think Blancmange battling with The Normal and losing, with greatly improved results) before you hear the chiptune noises and rhythmic patterns working away in there, ganging up into a tempo-altering frenzy that takes it - and you - somewhere else entirely.

 

It's astonishing at times that these tracks hold together so well, but hold together they do, most brilliantly.  Indeed, the overriding triumph of Affective Design comes in its ability to and produce something so defiantly melodic from all of this stuff.

 

Do I use the words 'worthy addition to the Kythibong catalogue' too much?  Probably, but it's hard not to.  More to the point, that's certainly what Affective Design is.  Get it on LP and CD here. 

 

 

 

 

 

Top Forty Albums of 2014: 30-26

 

Fuck Off - Good Throb

Before I continue, just a reminder that today is your last chance to cast your vote in the official Festive Fifty at www.dandelionradio.com/festive50.htm.  While you're considering that, here's the third instalment in my annual countdown of the year's best albums:

30.  Crisis-BSP - J CNNR (Tres Catorce)

From Spain, an old favourite who's been away and come back with a massive electronic bang.  

29.  Lands - Piano Chat (Kythibong)

And from France, an album of understated magnificence courtesy of one of the most consistently brilliant labels of recent years.

28.  Fuck Off - Good Throb (Self-released)

Anything but understated, it's so refreshing to hear albums like this that are, on the one hand, expletive-ridden slabs of guitar-hewn noise and, on the other, entirely original.  Recorded on New Year's Day 2014 and still going strong.

27.  No Fun (Not That One) - Mark Wynn (Self-released)

Hard to imagine this guy ever releasing a bad record.  The run continues.

26.  Utility Music - Gyratory System (Soft Bodies)

A track from this was the first thing I broadcast in 2014 and I still love it.

25-21 coming very soon.

Best Albums of 2013: 16. Sieur et Dame

16. Amour et Papouasie - Sieur et Dame (Kythibong)

Another release from the incredible Kythibong label, and another from Nantes, this time an astonishing collection that veers from nightmare cabaret to crazed opera and stops off every now and again for a quick flirtation with one of those Shock-Headed Peter type nursery rhymes that frighten kids half to death.  The dual vocals can simultaneously take you to humanity-transcending heights and make your flesh want to creep up your arse.  The overall effect is stunning: a unique album from unique performers.

Get it on CD or LP from here.  

Best Albums of 2013: 18. - The Healthy Boy & The Badass Motherfuckers

18, Carne Farce Camisole - The Healthy Boy & The Badass Motherfuckers (Kythibong)

The excellent Kythibong label brought us many great things during 2013 and one of the best was this, a simmering monster of growling bluesy folk, featuring the menacing vocals of The Healthy Boy - somewhere between Nick Cave and Jacques Brel in a pact with Satan - and the brooding musicianship of the Motherfuckers, from Nantes.  This was nothing like what I expected on seeing the band's name and a perpetual unearthing of surprises and wonderful destruction of expectations is a feature throughout the collection.  Get it on vinyl from here.  

Remember: nine days left to vote in the festive fifty.  Tell us your three favourite tracks of the year here.  

Sieur et Dame - Amour et Papouasie

When I begin my annual rundown of the best albums of the year next month, I'll have a tougher task than ever, so excellent a year 2013 has been.  This is partly, though not fully, because about half a dozen labels in particular have been prolific not so much in the number of releases they've put out but in the astonishing level of quality they've maintained.  Kythibong is one of those labels and, with Amour et Papouasie, they've done it again.

In fact, this is probably my favourite Kythibong release of all.  Sieur et Dame weave together the classical and the contemporary, the earnest and the playful in a bewitching manner that messes with listeners' minds just as much as it engages and fascinates.  Consider as an example 'Terrible', a tune that creeps around your brain, with the duo's dual vocals combining the sub-operatic and the near-spoken to leave an imprint on your mind that's far removed from what normally floats my boat, but easily as intoxicating for all that.  Or take the carnivalesque brilliance of 'Torride', which spirals to a frantic finale only to rest

finally on a few sparse piano notes, or the pummeling, upbeat 'Ours Molaire'.  There's plenty more besides: all ten tracks have a kind of unique and perversely enigmatic quality that allows them to inhabit roughly the same fascinating territory and yet stand out by themselves.

This is music for the soul and it transports me to places that few releases this year, for all the many good ones there have been, have taken me.   In my October Dandelion Radio show, I've chosen to play the album opener 'Chalheur Malheur', partly because it suffuses so majestically pretty much all of the album's many intoxicating elements and partly because its appropriation of 'Frere Jacques' is a piece of impudent brilliance that both moves and, yes, entertains me every time I hear it.

Get the album here.