Nac/Hut Report - Schism No Symmetry

I was, I admit, getting a bit fidgety regarding the lack of a follow-up to Nac/Hut Report's last album, the majestic Angel-Like Contraction Reverse, which saw the light of day more than two years ago.

Not that two years between albums is an especially long period of time, but that previous collection had offered so many musical ideas such a rich texture beneath its chaotic surface, that you knew there had to be loads more where it came from.  So, when nothing new arrived, I began to worry they'd called it a day.

I needn't have fretted.  Not only were this Polish/Italian duo still alive and kicking, this second collection, when it arrived recently, proved itself a worthy successor.  Frankly it's been well worth the wait, those unexplored possibilities of its predecessor having been mined so brilliantly the gap in between now seems, in retrospect, almost illusory.

I'm not going to get all Greil Marcus on you and talk about the collection stopping time or anything like that, largely because Marcus was always the only person who could get away with such observations without disappearing up his own arse.  I'll merely comment that there are times when you want a band to go somewhere different and times where you want more of what they've given you before. The latter is what I wanted from Nac/Hut report and they've delivered brilliantly.

You know that the moment opening track 'Ah Ah East' grinds into its stride.  I'm featuring it in my Dandelion Radio show this month, an easy choice because it's such a prime example of what makes Nac/Hut Report so great: Brigitte Roussel's sublime atmospheric vocals underpinned by a churning musical dissonance that so many attempt but fail to produce anything like as well.

If anything, there's an ever greater assurance evident in their work than the last time we heard from them.  Since then Roussel has released an excellent solo collection and sounds even more unfazed by the possibility of lazy Nico comparisons, as indeed she should be, striding confidently out into the open on tracks like 'Jewish Son' to confront whatever the hell anyone else wants to make of what she does, and win.  Musical partner Li/ese/Li effortlessly steps up to the same plate, the creaking, haunted soundscapes on tunes like 'Wolf the Saint' offering a vibrant and evocative accompaniment. 

 It's a musical triumph, again, and you can get it as download or CD from their bandcamp site here. 

Flies On You - Etcetera

It should, frankly, be news in much wider circles that one of the half dozen best bands in the world at the moment has a new album out.  That the album is a self-released collection from a Leeds duo with more ideas in a single track than anyone (and I mean anyone) who appeared at the recent BRITs is both a national scandal and a telling comment on what passes for the modern music industry.

 

Having astonished anyone in the world who cared enough about great music to listen with 2012's Nothing To Write Home About, we had no right to expect that the follow-up would offer any more than Flies On You had already given.  Long before it dropped, however, we knew that it would.  We knew it from the moment that the insightful and playful commentary on the paucity of modern mores 'Katie Hopkins in Human Form' appeared as a single late last year, that is, if we didn't know it already from when 'Can You Smell That Burning Noise?' announced itself last summer.

 

Both singles appear here as components in a panorama of musical delights that slices through contemporary Britain like a buzz-saw.  If the call-to-arms of 'Action Stations!' offers the album's most direct political assault, it does so with that arch playfulness that Flies On You have made their own: the demand to bring down the government sits alongside the mundane call to bring down your dirty clothes and discarded yoghurt pots.  Its direct stab at Thatcherism 'Thank You St Francis' is as short as it is penetrating, illustrative of the agenda of a band who've lived through all the shit of the last thirty-odd years and come out the other end as committed to opposing it as ever and with a defiant smile on their faces that no number of corrupt bankers, vicious media magnates or self-serving politicians have ever been able to wipe off. 

 

But there is far, far more breadth here than that. 'Hangdog' is a stormer of an album opener, a vibrant and aggressive statement of intent, while in contrast 'Roofspace' offers a sublime groove you can happily settle into in the bath, or anywhere else for that matter.  I'm playing 'Our Little Secret' in my March show on Dandelion Radio, a chilling tale of child abuse that, in the context of the album, is pertinently placed within a collection that has an underlying theme of abuse in all its forms, an anger at the inevitable results of living in a world where getting what you want and to hell with the consequences for anyone else has become the prevailing and disgusting norm.

 

There's a consensus in this country, but it isn't the one the gutter press or those in the Westminster bubble like to think it is: Flies On You are among its most fervent and cherished standard bearers. The album's worth far more than a fiver of anyone's money but you can get it for that now at http://fliesonyou.bandcamp.com/album/etcetera.

Best Albums of 2013: 8. Nac/Hut Report

8.  Angel-Like Contraction Reverse - Nac/Hut Report (Double Hallucinative)

Stunning release from this Polish/Italian duo who take guitars, loops and various other noises and channel them brilliantly into nine raucous yet strangely melodic tracks.  Overlaid with Brigitte Roussel's bewitching vocals, each raw slab of noise mutates into something discernible as a song, the layers of meticulously placed sound ensuring you're not easily able to identify where it ends and a dark sonic wilderness begins.  

As I suggested when I reviewed it earlier this year, this isn't something you can put on and do the ironing too - unless you want to run the risk of self-mutilation.  It demands your attention: give it.

Get it here.  

Bernays Propaganda - Zabraneta Planeta

I assume Bernays Propaganda take their name from Edward Bernays, often viewed as the father of public relations, and his 1928 book, within which he argued that human beings are by nature irrational and, if democracy is to work, must be controlled by careful manipulation of information.

I don't know where this Macedonian band stand on this particular issue, but it strikes me that, should Bernay himself be alive to hear them, he may believe he'd found in their music adequate evidence for his thesis - the band have an unremitting tightness to what they do which suggests an impeccable selection and honing process behind what they do.   He'd be wrong, though, because the band who he presumably lent his name to are about as close to you can get to an organised frenzy of anarchic elements as you can get in music.

And while I might argue elsewhere - in my earlier review of the Nac/Hut Report album for instance - that the anarchic results of letting your music just run wild can be very pleasing, Bernays Propaganda show that the reverse can be extremely pleasant too.  Zabraneta Planeta, the most recent result of their creative process, is a masterpiece of tightly controlled yet appealingly raucous guitar riffs, reminiscent of early Gang of Four or Au Pairs, driving percussion and vocalist Kristina Gorovska's vocals, which exhibit the force and unfussy dynamism of, perhaps, both the Au Pairs' Lesley Woods or Pauline Murray at her best.

I received this fascinating album via Moonlee Records, by whose offices I also learned that the band are also responsible for Xaxaxa, a more directly punk offshoot whose work you can check out here.  I was already familiar with the latter band and what they do appeals very much, but Bernays Propaganda have a wider musical palette and I like them even more for it.  The band are not afraid to veer off into varied yet fascinating musical territories within their sound world, as where the short, spiky 'Makedonski son' is followed by the sparse brilliance of 'A Bone to the Dog'.   Or where the fuzzy charms of 'Bar kultura' rub up against the tight spasms of the album's title track.

From within this veritable selection box of musical delights, I've opted for album opener 'Pogresno Zname' to play in my April Dandelion Radio show, currently streaming at various times throughout the month.   Perhaps it's because it's the band at their most Gang Of Four like, and also Kristina at her most Lesley Woods-like in her tight, didactic pronunciation of syllables from a language, I must confess, I don't understand.   Or perhaps it's because they take all of these elements familiar to a child of punk like me and put them all together in a mix that manages to sound in no way retrospective or jaded.  

There's a freshness about Bernays Propaganda that almost seems like it's defying logic to be there, something unfathomable and which, when you find it in music, has an appeal you can't explain or define.  I wonder what a reductionist like Bernay would have made of that?

Bernays Propaganda are playing gigs across Europe at the moment.  You should go and see them if you get the chance, and also grab a copy of their album as CD, LP or name your own price download from here.

The remaining European tour dates are as follows:

03.04.2013    wed       @ Toulose/ Fra

04.04.2013    thu         @ Blokes Fantasma, Barcelona/Esp

05.04.2013     fri          @ Cure, Alicante/Esp

06.04.2013     sat         @ La Casika, Madrid/Esp

07.04.2013    sun      @ Lisboa/ Por

08.04.2013    mon   @ Casa Viva,Porto/ Por 

09.04.2013    tue    @ Damm, Gijon /Esp

10.04.2013    wed  @ Antiguos Almacenes,Cantabria / Esp

11.04.2013    thu     @ Putzuzulo gaztetxea, Zarautz, Bascia

12.04.2013    fri     @ L'Athenee Libertaire, Bordeaux/ Fra 

13.04.2013    sat     @ Le Buffet De La Gare ,Marmande /Fra

14.04.2013    sun   @ Le Chinois, Paris/Fra

16.04.2013    tue     @ Le Batiment,Deux-Acren /Bel

17.04.2013    wed @ Kinky Star,Gent/ Bel

18.04.2013    thu    @ La Compilothèque,Brussels /Bel

19.04.2013     fri     @ Vrankrijk, Amsterdam/ Hol 

20.04.2013    sat     @ Deonderbroek, Nijmegen/ Hol

21.04.2013    sun     @ JUZ, Manheim/Ger 

23.04.2013    tue    @ Ak 44, Giessen/Ger

24.04.2013    wed  @ Sielwallhaus, Bremen/Ger

25.04.2013    thu   @ Hamburg/ Ger

26.04.2013    fri      @ Gießer, Leipzig/Ger

27.04.2013    sat     @ Backstage, Aarhus/Den 

28.04.2013   sun     @ 1000Fryd, Aalborg/Den              

30.04.2013  tue   @ Blitz,Oslo/Nor

01.05.2013  wed  @  Bergen/Nor

02.05.2013   thu    @ Endless Tinnitus Studios, Oslo/Nor (* just XAXAXA)

03.05.2013    fri      @ A-Villan, Stockholm/Swe 

04.05.2013    sat    @   Verket,Umea/ Swe

05.05.2013    sun     @  FG7, Lulea/Swe 

06.05.2013    mon    @ Kulttuuribingo, Oulu/Fin

07.05.2013    tue       @ Vastavirta,Tampere/Fin 

08.05.2013    wed     @ Lepakkomies, Helsinki/Fin

 09.05.2013    thu     @  Ylase 12, Tallin/ Est 

10.05.2013    fri       @  Nabaklav, Riga/Lat

11.05.2013     sat      @ Vilnius/Lit 

12.05.2013     sun     @ Przychodnia, Warsawa/Pol 

13.05.2013     mon   @ Tectura, Lublin/Pol

14.05.2013     tue     @ Kawarnia Naukova,Krakow/Pol

15.05.2013     wed  @  Boro, Brno/Cz 

16.05.2013      thu    @ Obluda, Bratislava/Sk

17.05.2013      fri      @ AU, Viena/ Aut

18.05.2013      sat    @ Mochvara,Zagreb@ /Cro  

19.05.2013      sun   @ KC, Zrenjanin/Srb