They Came From Yorkshire: Flies On You - Nothing To Write Home About

There I was, musing on the extreme unlikelihood of every again finding an unashamedly punk-inspired band with something to say when this dropped into my inbox.  In the UK, that is.   Hungary's throwing them out at at a hell of a rate at the moment, as anyone hearing the products of the amazing Budapest scene in my show this year will already know.   But here in England, it's finally arrived and, fittingly, it came out of Yorkshire.

Flitting, as I've done for most of my life, between the two metropolises of Liverpool and Manchester, I've often risked getting my teeth rammed down my throat when asserting that neither city has ever consistently come up with the goods when it comes to injustice-fuelled rage.   Liverpool bands can certainly get the subject matter right, but the general tendency has been to do so by indirect means and underpin social comment with tuneful melodies redolent of their Merseybeat heritage.  Mancunians can spit bile as much as anyone, but the essence of their appeal is more likely to lie in idiosyncratic provocation rather than tup-thumping agitation, the excellent and under-rated Easterhouse excepted.   It's in the cities to the east that you've always been more likely to find innovative and enticing raging against the machine, in the music of, say, Gang Of Four, The Mekons, The Three Johns, Red Guitars and many others.   And from York it was The Redskins who got us tapping our feet to Socialist Worker manifestos while in Hull The Housemartins wrapped radical politics in pop like no one else ever has and perhaps ever will.

It's into this rich history that Flies On You fit with considerable assurance.  A duo from Leeds, their debut album Nothing To Write Home About is now upon us and it's a corker. Not only that, it manages to do achieve this without yielding to identi-punk mediocrity and with a breadth of vision that's well beyond other pretenders to a throne that's been so muddied by the uninspiring tosh peddled by so many it's almost lost all of its value.   Read what they say about themselves on their Soundcloud site and it goes some way towards explaining why.   Rather than finding a common interest in three chord bash and leaving it at that, Andy and Doug talk about their love for Big Youth, Yugoslav indie and Belgian synth-punk among other things and they eschew any temptation to fit themselves easily into a hole in favour of following their obsessions wherever they take them.

It's this that gives the album its eclectic power and brilliance.  While 'Slashing It Down' rides a Gang Of Four-like wave of rhythmic intensity overlaid with an understated, menacing vocal pitch and 'Spain' is a candidate for the best song ever to feature the repeated words 'fucking cow' - a much-coveted accolade indeed - 'Hum', as you may have heard when I played it in my September show, is disarmingly melodic, the threats simmering rather than boiling over, but no less bludgeoning in its impact.   If you catch my Dandelion Radio show in October during the next seven days - after which it will disappear forever, so you'd better be quick - you'll hear the threatening guitar brawl that is 'Shipmanesque', a slow burner that's now established itself as my favourite on the album and, indeed, one of the best things I've heard all year. 

Download the album here and anticipate more great things from Flies On You.   Music needs them and so do you.

Mark W

Lee Negin - Views From The Outer Rim

Keen-eyed followers of this blog may have noticed it has been somewhat quiet of late.  Sadly a busy and complicated life has, over the past few months, intruded on my listening habits to an disturbingly damaging extent.   I've still found time to listen to the stuff, of course, and to play as much as I possibly can in my monthly Dandelion Radio shows, but what I've had very little time to do is actually sit down and write about my responses to what has been crashing importunately into my eardrums, as the very best music does.

 

 

This means that many of the releases that have appeared this year haven't received due comment, and they now sit like unborn children within my laptop, the aural relationships that yielded them destined never to receive a full consummation in print or text.   Among them is Lee Negin's Technodelic Transmissions, which arrived as a blaze of psychedelic electronica, something that anyone familiar with Lee's work will be well acquainted with.

Fortunately, we have a second chance, because Lee Negin has blessed us with that all two rare thing, a second album in a calendar year.  Not only that, but this is that even rarer beast, a second album in a year that manages to be even better than the first.  Views From The Outer Rim has been assaulted me through my headphones for some weeks now with unabashed technodelic splendour, its electronic washes and experimental sideways leaps representing nothing less than some of Lee's best ever work. 

The titles give you some idea of what to expect.  The promised spacey bombardment of 'Decaying Orbit' spreads itself over eight minutes plus of expansive mind-splurge.  'Virtual Reality' combines hypnotic rhythms with worldy beats and sonic flourishes, forcing themselves into your brain and then subsiding to be replaced with something else just as evocative.  In my November show, which will be streaming from next Thursday at Dandelion Radio, you'll hear my personal favourite 'Beyond The Planes', an insistently swarming piece of electro-amazement that starts as a swirling, woozy glimpse at another realm only to rise on the back of fleshy beats and swooning vocals as the second half of its four minutes kick in.

Don't be fooled.   Early listens to Views From The Outer Rim may suggest a lightness of touch where, after several listens, you find instead the seductive grip of blank icy space clasping your consciousness into a submission whose origins are entirely brutal.   It's this harsh seduction that lies in the best of Lee's work.  I'll take the opportunity to say that you'll find it in Technodelic Transmissions too, but here, in this most recent 2012 release, is Negin at his mind-bludgeoning atmospheric best.

Go to http://leenegin.com, grab a copy of both of these releases and find out for yourself.

The Green Man Festival 2012

Even cheating death on the way home after a front tyre blow out on the A483 (seriously) and waiting six hours for the AA to turn up couldn't detract from the thrill of having attended Green Man 2012. I'll stick my neck out - the best yet.

Given that last year I wrote of my concerns that Britain's finest festival may finally be entering a period of decline, this was both a reassuring and an exhilarating thing to behold. If I point out at this stage that my top ten performances of the festival (below) doesn't include Friday's headline from Mogwai - musical super heavyweights at the very top of their game - you'll get some idea of the standards upheld and consistently exceeded throughout a weekend in which I saw full sets from over thirty bands and I'd say there was only one (I won't identify them) who failed at least to have something that raised them above the level of mediocrity. The vast majority of performances had more: the edge, craft and originality that had characterised all Green Men pre-2011 and a fair few of them have already been filed among some of the greatest musical moments from what, for me, has now become such an instrinsic part of my August schedule that it's worth missing a whole weekend of football for. Rare praise indeed.

Although my priority is always to seek out the new, interesting and different within the Green Man schedule, I found time this year to check out a number of certifiable legends and wasn't disappointed here either. I understand why the aforementioned Mogwai were main stage headliners, but I still think the intensity of their performance is better served by a smaller stage. Nevertheless, they made it work and gave Friday night the close of play fireworks the festival lacked last year. Dexys were tight, professional and surprisingly pleasing, even giving a rapturously received 'Come On Eileen' a fresh makeover. Van the Man was slickness itself, running through the crowd pleasers with his legendary dextrous finesse, playing the audience like another instrument and getting a great tune out of it, particularly during 'Gloria'. I haven't liked much by Scritti Politti since 1982 and, of the two fixtures of their set from the band's finest period, 'Jacques Derrida' was robbed of its phenomenal 'rapacious, rapacious' closing rap and replaced with something rather more contemporary and decidedly flat. Still, Green's intros and intellectual charm remain endearing and pleasing. Apologising for the triteness of one of his lyrics, he pointed out by way of mitigation the Kantian and anti-pragmatist sub-text and can do this without sounding like a tosser. Unlike me, when I unwittingly found myself in beer-induced discussion at the front of the stage with a young female student as I clumsily articulated the finer points of Hegelian and Kantian idealism to her while probably coming across only like Bertrand Russell on the pull.

The finest of performances from the legends had to wait until close to the end of Sunday night, when Jonathan Richman marched onto the Far Out Stage with an engaging grin, charismatic drummer in tow, and delivered his brilliantly honed combination of lyrics that veer between the profound and the brilliantly ridiculous, guitar work that wobbles between the virtuoso and the audaciously untuned, and a performance that, after years of blurring brilliantly the barriers between humour and madness, still manages to do so in a manner that no one else would be wise even to attempt. Richman remains a unique performer and a veritable human treasure.

For much of the rest of the weekend, those of a new, brash and unpredictable ilk provided the bulk of the highlights. Particular mentions should go to the incredible racket produced by Three Trapped Tigers and Teeth Of The Sea. The percussive attack of the latter was only bettered over the weekend by the remarkable Stealing Sheep, whose sub-Slits fractured dynamism matched angular rhythms with the sublime guitar accompaniment of Emily Lansley (who appeared in session with her other band Emily and the Faves in my Dandelion Radio show last year). Remarkably, the intensity of the performance increased as the set went on and, had the vibrant crescendo not sadly ceased after 45 minutes, you wondered in what area of the stratosphere we might end up. This is a remarkable band, standing out even in the considerable quality of the company, courageous in its off-kilter explorations and sublime in the way it pulled off the challenge. Company which included ex-Gorky's Richard James' new band Pen Pastwn with what was billed as a warm up set. If that's the warm up, the mind boggles as to what James' new outfit might go on to produce. There was once a wonderful period in which Gorky's Zygotic Mynci were purveyors of a breathtaking music craft that combined tear-incuding melody with remarkable energy and vivacity unmatched by anyone else. If you were wondering where the latter in particular has gone, it's right here. Friends, meanwhile, brought the sheer artistic temerity that resides in a very singular form in Brooklyn to the Far Out Stage on the last night, with a bassist and drummer who came on like Tina Weymouth and Mo Tucker combining with a guitarist who looked like something out of The Fast Show somehow to produce B52s-style plastic funk overlaid by a sassy vocalist with, it appeared, Lady Gaga pretensions. And they made it work, adding a rich variety to a fantastically enjoyable last night.



Stealing Sheep


Sometimes, of course, you find such brilliance in more understated forms. Cass McCombs and his band reminded me - pleasingly, because I'm prone to forget - that a standard rock guitar four-piece can produce a subtle deftness of touch and create its own very singular kind of magic. And The Wave Pictures, excellent in 2010, managed to crank it up a stage further this time, their intelligent lyricism and well-placed hooks bringing this year's fantastic 'Long Black Cars' album to evocative life on stage. Errors, I would dare to suggest, managed to trump even their mentors Mogwai while new recruits to the Rock Action roster, Remember Remember, weren't far behind. And a mention too for Stephen Malkmus and the Jicks whose hook-filled Mountain Stage extravaganza managed to improve even on their headlining performance of a few years back.


One disappointment? Alt-J, whose set I was looking forward to and to which a large audience had been attracted, seriously underwhelmed me and I was drawn away from the stage only to wander over to Einstein's Garden, a happy accident for there I found a three-piece called Glis Glis who the programme described as 'kraut-pop' and who I found myself bowled over by. Every year I promise myself to check out this stage more and every year I fail to do so and yet over the last three years I've found some of the festival's most endearingly quirky performers in its cheerfully odd surroundings. To Dalmatian Rex and Llwybr Llaethog you can now add the name Glis Glis. I picked up a CD from them and there'll be something from that when my Dandelion Radio show gets round to catching up with some of this in October.

Tiny Ruins

Given the abundant riches on display, how to pick an overall favourite? I'm going for Tiny Ruins in the Walled Garden on Sunday night. Sunday was a remarkable day of bands even by the Green Man's standards, but the off-beat delivery and lyricism of these Anglo-New Zealanders has been thrilled to on my show and elsewhere on Dandelion in the past and to see them live only added to the mystique and aura. Just guitar and a sparsely employed cello augmented a heart-rending vocal performance that awed the crowd into a silent reverie reminiscent of that conjured up my Moddi last year but, amazingly, even better. Anyone who can experience the amazing 'Priest With Balloons' and not marvel at being part of a world that can conjur up such things must surely be tired of life. Green Man 2012 assured me, if I needed it, that I wasn't anywhere near ready to cash in my chips on that score just yet.

There were minor gripes. The failure of the promised Cappucino Porter to make an appearance at the real ale bar, for one. If it turned up after Saturday evening, this was too late for me as I'd long since got fed up asking for it and settled for the not inconsiderable delights of Green Man Growler, a hardy replacment but I'm a man who likes his porter, so small thumbs down there. One other thing to watch out for is the irritating tendency of the moat between audience and stage in the Far Out tent to become filled with assorted cronies and members of other bands, irksome because it creates an elitist, 'executive suite' feel (a load of them were sitting down during Errors - like a row of deckchairs) that's totally out of place at this most human and communally satisfying of all musical events. I'm pleased Jonathan Richman drew attention to it during his set because it needs to stop before it becomes the norm. Come and join us in the audience if you want to see the band. Apart from anything else, it's bloody great there. And Green Man - if you don't need the moat, get rid of it and just let us near the stage.



But it would be churlish to harp on about such things after one of the more thrilling weekends of my life. Thank you, Green Man, for comprehensively putting right the worrying glitches of last year. How 2013 will top that is beyond me, but I'm already looking forward to seeing it try.

Green Man 2012 - A Personal Top Ten

1. Tiny Ruins

2. The Wave Pictures

3. Stealing Sheep

4. Jonathan Richman

5. Pen Pastwn

6. Glis Glis

7. Teeth Of The Sea

8. Errors

9. Cass McCombs

10. Three Trapped Tigers

Mark W





Llamatron - Mirror Of War

If you work in the kind of artistic territory that Llamatron does, for it to work fully you have to achieve something like the impossible.  You've got to churn up your electronica in a cement mixer of sound, take it as far as it can go and then, somehow, crank it up that notch further.  To a notch that, in any common sense idea of the world, doesn't exist.  That's when the tune seizes and assaults your brain in a mad fucking frenzy with an intensity you never suspected existed.   Into a world in which the rules of over-rated common sense don't apply.

And the great thing about Llamatron is he does this not only in pretty much every tune I've ever heard him put out, but also over what you might (madly) call his career.  That is, every time I hear something new from him I expect, and receive, that enormous sonic drive hitting unfeasibly perverse levels but, with each track, something still more amazing.  Astonishingly, the stuff just keeps getting better.  On his Mirror Of War EP, out recently, we get five tracks that breach the apparently unbreachable to stand as the finest expression of Llamatron's art thus far. 

This is not, you may already have gathered, easy listening.  Nor is it listening for people who want things to be easy.  The title of Mirror Of War gives a stark illustration of visceral death beating like a stillborn monster at the pulsing heart of his masterpiece.  In Llamatron's hands, the treatment of war isn't via allegory or delicate artistry, but as a slab of human death laid bare, masterfully delineated in tracks like 'Slay Her' and 'Hymn To The Death', where harsh electronica mutilates its subject brutally and leaves nothing left to be said.  Real death, in other words.  The absence of being.  With nowt taken out.

I love Llamatron's honesty of approach almost as much as I love his work, the sheer joy of which is found lurking in the most graphically violence subject matter.  I understand another EP, Ave Llama, is due to be released very soon on the Peace Off label.  It will, if precedent holds, be even better than this, which is something I can scarcely believe is possible while simultaneously knowing must be true.  Whatever is the case, it will find this remarkable French artist dealing with such paradoxes with a crushing assertiveness that I can never get anywhere near, and nor, as far as I can see, can anyone else.

Hear 'Hymn To The Death' in my May show on Dandelion Radio, streaming at various times throughout the month.

Free Llamatron: Remix of Flatliner by Sinister Souls here

Celebrating five years on air with Dalmatian Rex & The Eigentones in session

It's always difficult to know what to do about anniversaries, if you do anything at all that is.  I spent Saturday night watching amazing sets from Vert:x and Red Elektra 69 at the Jolly Tar in Wardle in the company of a few pints of Directors and the locally brewed Cheshire Cat ales, but I would have done that anyway so that doesn't really count.

So what came to mind as an option to celebrate five years on the air with Dandelion Radio was a fairly obvious one: to invite exclusive sessions from some of my favourite bands of the last five years.  Realising I couldn't fit them all into one show, without sacrificing all the great new music I wanted to play - which wouldn't have done at all - I opted to spread it out a bit.  Thus last month saw an astonishing live set from Extradition Order and next month we'll have a session from one of my favourites of the last twelve months, the wonderful Snailhead.  In July we've got a particularly special one-off and at the moment I'm not going to say what it is for fear that it doesn't come off.  Not to be missed though, I promise you that.

For the month of the actual anniversary itself, it really had to be Dalmatian Rex and the Eigentones.  Their 'Geek' single featured in one of the very first batches of CDs I received via Dandelion and I loved it instantly, using it as a springboard into what at that stage was already a well-established back catalogue from this fascinating band.  Since then they've got better and better, their repetoire still underpinned by a kind of private world surreal humour that comes out of oddball left-field obsessions, the backdrop to which is a weird tunefulness and enigmatic hummability that some of those pricks who sit in a recording studio discussing with their producers how to make their shit 'marketable' would kill for.  

The last five year would have been worthwhile even if Dalmatian Rex and the Eigentones had been the only band I'd encountered via my involvement with Dandelion.  That they are only one of several hundred such bands makes me feel very privileged indeed.  If you're a listener to the show, I hope you've found at least a portion of these bands to your liking.  If you're not a listener, check out Dalmatian Rex and the Eigentones and find out what you've been missing

Free download: A water vole contemplates the heliopause as a snowflake slowly falls upon Loch Assynt: OSGB36 NC208250

Mark W

Cocktail Pueblo - Best New Label of 2012?

I've written before about what a dull world it would be without those labels that are so consistently brilliant at filling gaps in my record collection I hadn't realised I existed. The names of Audio Antihero, I Blame The Parents, Daddy Tank, ABAGA and others will be familiar to listeners of my Dandelion Radio show and, recently, another label has appeared that, judging by its early releases, will be joining them in the pantheon of great small labels.
I speak of the Cocktail Pueblo label, which has burst out of France like a veritable Cantona in the early part of 2012 to gatecrash that elite group of labels as dramatically as Daddy Tank did roughly a year ago. This was courtesy of releases from Iceland's Toddi Welmann (the brusquely named '.') and the equally incredible Jagwar Pirates, whose scalded surf epic Full Total Complete Bronzage is assaulting my ears even as I write.

You can hear a track from both releases in my April Dandelion Radio show. Arriving too late to appear in the show either this month or in May was Let's Not by The Dictaphone, a classic of extreme synthy garage clutter with guitars that ramble off at odd angles and return in equally odd and unpredictable places. Anything that does this needs to be checked out so what are you waiting for?

In this crazy unpredictable world who's to say what the future holds? But you can be as sure as you can of anything that there'll be something from this in the June show. Don't want to wait that long? then order it here. You may notice there's also a self-titled album from The Dictaphone out on Tolmie Terrapin Press and available from the same place.

Mark W

Solarno - Rauthaz

Solarno, aka LA producer Jim Furey, got in touch as a result of the recent Dementio13 session mix in my Dandelion Radio show. While this immediately marked him out as an individual of impeccably good taste, this doesn't always translate into being a maker of good tunes, especially as - for me - Dementio13 has set the bar about as high as anyone in recent times for creating electronica of such sumptuous variety that few get close to.

As it turns out, one of the few who manage to breach such a bar is Solarno, whose recent EP Rauthaz immediately had me hooked. Follow the link to his bandcamp page and delight in four stunning tracks, plus one remix, all inspired by the colour red. In pretty much any other release, 'The Red Apple' and 'Population Inversion' would stand out as exceptional, but for me the superlative 'Dimmesdale's Angel' exceeds even their brilliance. It's one of the best things I've heard all year and inevitably I'm playing it in my Dandelion Radio show in April.

And it doesn't stop there. The discovery that there's a formidable back catalogue behind all this should keep me very busy once I find time after what has, so far, been one of the most incredible springs on record for hearing new music to carry out any sort of investigation of things I missed in the even recent past. Get along to http://soundsofsolarno.com/ right now and join me in what promises to be an enthralling quest.

Mark W