20,000 & Counting

That recent JD Meatyard review took Unwashed Territories over the 20,000 mark for viewings.  Thanks!

To mark the occasion, here are the top ten most viewed band/artist reviews.  The list doesn't include general reviews of things like festivals and end of year lists, just individual acts.  Pleasantly surprised that Sugarbrute top the list, even though the band broke up (I think) some time ago:

1. Sugarbrute (below) in session (12 May 2011)

2. Zabraneta Planeta - Bernays Propaganda (3 May 2013)
3. View of the Outer Rim - Lee Negin (23 October 2012)
4. Alchemical Postcards - The Chasms (6 September 2011)
5. Icon Give Thank - Sun Araw & M Geddes Gengras meet The Congos (27   November 2012)
6. Lunar Collection - Lee Negin (below) (24 March 2013)

7. Let England Shake - PJ Harvey (24 December 2011)
8. Demoni - Kottarashky & The Rain Dogs (20 March 2013)
9. Relic - Matt Stevens (4 August 2011)
10. Doobie Wonderland - Acid Mothers Temple & The Cosmic Inferno (1 September 2013)

Interesting that Lee Negin's the only artist to feature twice.  Notable that the ten artists are also spread over six different countries.  Wonder how many changes to this list there'll be when we reach 30,000?  On current form, that should be around February 2014.

JD Meatyard - Northern Songs

You could make a good case for claiming that John Donaldson's JD Meatyard project is yielding his best work to date, better even that what he produced with the remarkable Calvin Party and Levellers 5.  A remarkable, even contentious claim, but if his debut album hinted at its truth, Northern Songs states it boldly.

Donaldson has matured into a singer-songwriter of remarkable power and versatility.  Here, he moves with ease between the gently romantic 'Dance With You', for instance, to the bluntly acerbic 'A Political Song (Blow It Out Your Arse)', showing an artistic dexterity it's hard to imagine many even attempting.  Ditto, the courageous honesty of' 'Jesus Call' or the humility of 'Standing on the Shoulders of Better Men', where he runs through a roll-call of great artists and comes up with some of the most poetic comments ever written on the subject of Mark E. Smith, to name just one.  It's fitting that the title of the song adapts a quote from Bernard of Chartres that's more popularly attributed to Isaac Newton because a balancing of the spiritual and the material gives a metaphysical framework to JD Meatyard's work that few can approach.  It's this that raises him well above the run of the mill political observer, not that there are enough of them around at the moment anyway.

I've chosen to play the powerful 'Jesse James' in my October show on Dandelion Radio this month.  That's partly because I've already played a lot of the other songs here over the months building up to this release and partly because it's an irresistibly forceful retort to the crisis in modern capitalism that's always been there and which those with an interest in sustaining it are hell-bent on covering up.  The need for an outlaw figure to take back, literally in these times, money that's been taken from the poor and given to the rich becomes, in John Donaldson's hands, a political move so urgent it's disturbing there's a shortage of similar voices, a suggestion lent force by this sparse yet powerful guitar-driven clarion call.  Yet it's a sign of this artist's considerable scope that he can make a song like 'One Last Waltzing' sound just as imperative in its potential to rescue the human condition.

JD Meatyard lives in a world in which governments have witnessed the spectacular collapse of an economy driven by greed, plugged the gap using public money and then blamed public spending for the crisis in the first place.  And they look like they're getting away with it.  It's the same world you live in too.  His manifesto is Northern Songs, an album that calls up political outrage and human tenderness as two sides of the same coin and, as such, it's one of the most important artistic statements of the age.

Get it from the Probe Plus store here.

You can still hear the session JD Meatyard did for my September Dandelion Radio show here.

Katie Gately - Pipes

Blue Tapes have already released some of the most intoxicating music of the year, so it was with a sense of fevered anticipation that I approached their latest offering, a C30 cassette from Los Angeles sound artist Katie Gately.  To say I wasn't disappointed would be an understatement: on first hearing it was apparent that this was in contention for the best release yet from the label and on second I decided there was no question that it was.

Pipes is a fourteen-minute masterpiece of sonic exploration and, if that phrase conjures up thoughts of cold, atonal experimentation then dismiss them immediately but this is anything but.  Remarkably for a work made purely from tones of the human voice, it has a defiant and heady kick and a distinct and bewitching sense of harmony, albeit harmony of a kind you'll rarely find even hinted at in the mechanic industrial factory fodder of yer average pop song.  Gately strips all that away to leave something pure and brilliant and the fourteen minutes we're left with is sublime, sparse and entirely enthralling throughout.

Apparently it took Gately six months to put this together and, given its meticulously crafted power, that's entirely believable.  The tape's limited to a run of 200 and, given the praise that's already been lavished on the release and on Gately by the likes of The Wire, the 405 and my own Dandelion Radio colleagues, among others, you'd better get in there fast.  Get it here and hear the piece in its entirety in my October Dandelion Radio show.

Find out more about Gately's work at her soundcloud site here.  Here's a free sample of something else to get you started:

Count Nine Sheep to Fall Asleep

In Session in my October show: Helena Dukic

There's something about the songs of Helena Dukic that sets them apart from everything else I'm listening to at the moment.  Perhaps it's because she's a classically trained artist coming at popular music from an entirely different angle and armed with a different artistic template than most of the performers I encounter.  Or perhaps she's just got that certain indefinable magic about her that all great artists have.

The history I refer to includes spells at Music Academy Zagreb and Cambridge University after a childhood spent playing the piano.  She might easily have ignored the world of what you and I listen to all together, but thankfully she hasn't and the refreshing affection she clearly brings to her work is comparable with, say, David Lynch's forays into music following a long upbringing in film.  Not that there's anything remotely similar about what they produce, but the unconstrained abandon and sheer job evident in the works of both make for a similarly fascinating listening experience.  Except, with due deference to Lynch's work, I like what Dukic does more.

I first encountered her on the Audio Antihero benefit compilation earlier this year.  Even in such exalted company as the great Jeffrey Lewis and Darren Hayman, Helena stood out and the song she contributed - 'Come Along' - is one of my favourites of the year.  I immediately approached her to do a session for the show, she agreed and the results can be heard on my Dandelion Radio show this month.

The three tracks she's recorded for us all have that sublime, magical quality I referred to earlier.   If I had to single one out, I'd probably go for 'Don't Know How to Hate You', which has a beguiling quality that has allowed it to settle in my head and make a little nest there, right next to 'Come Along'.  But thankfully I don't need to and can hear them all along with all the great stuff Helena has placed on her soundcloud site too.  Give it a visit: it's free, in more than one sense of the world.

Here's a (non-session) taster: Magic Toy Shop

CRAWANDER - Cartoon Core

To be honest, I'd almost given up on it, thought they must have broken up or something, so long had I been waiting for the debut album from CRAWANDER, which was mooted well back into last year.  As it turned out, all I really had to do was check the band's Soundcloud site, where many of the tracks have been available for months.  That'll teach me for not paying attention.  Thankfully, the band were, and a message from them put me right.  The album's now available and it's called Cartoon Core.  Was it worth the wait?  You betcha.

If the smattering of teaser downloads that surfaced last year were anything to go by, the clear suggestion was that CRAWANDER might well be the best band in the world at the moment.  It was a big call, but Cartoon Core confirms that promise.  The sixteen tracks include those teasers, including the playfully acerbic 'Pro Bono Vox', the storming 'Prophit' and my personal favourite, 'No Problem Like My Problem', which includes perhaps rock and roll's finest ever lyrical reference to eating pizza.

The new tracks don't disappoint either.  'I Hate Teenagers', which I'll be playing in my October show on Dandelion Radio, and 'Sirens', are fine examples of the vibrant frenzy that characterises this band's approach, comparable with anything that came out to whet our ravenous appetites last year, while album closer 'I Sense Death' is a churning growler of a finale that makes you want to run through the whole thing again.  But it seems wrong simply to pick out examples, because there's simply not a bad track on Cartoon Core.  In fact, there's not even an OK track here: the same level of excitement and energy is maintained throughout and every one is an absolute corker.

The band's facebook page has a biography that suggests they're an original beat combo from Liverpool.  Clearly there's something here that fits in with the whole odd and playful aura surrounding the band's identity, though I can't quite work out what (which is possibly the point), but my understanding (unless this is part of it too) is that they're from Croatia.  But none of this really matters, because where they really belong is in my music collection, and I would suggest they should find a place in yours too.

Get the album from here.

Individual track download of No Problem Like My Problem if you need to, but just skip it and go straight to the whole thing. 

The Flatmates: A Legacy Worth Returning To

The original line-up of The Flatmates came together in 1985 and quickly became one of the key bands of the C86 era.  Back when there was such a thing as a meaningful indie singles chart, The Flatmates recorded six singles within a two-year period and every one reached the top twenty.  Now, guitarist Martin Whitehead has reformed the band with original drummer Rocker on keyboards and three new members and they've got a new single out, 'You Held My Heart', which you can catch, among other places, at the end of my September show on Dandelion Radio, streaming at various times throughout the month at www.dandelionradio.com.  

It’s fitting that the band should choose to reform now, with indie pop enjoying somewhat of a renaissance and so many cracking young bands around paying undisputed homage to The Flatmates and their C86 brethren.    At my recent foray to the Green Man Festival, among the many and varied delights on offer, by far the most exciting new discovery for me were the Argentinian three-piece Los Cripis, who belt out their own loud variety of old school indie with a deliriously infectious energy.  And they certainly aren't the only ones doing it.

It may be felt that, in returning to take their place among so many perky young offspring of the music they brought so much early life to, The Flatmates might run the risk of appearing mere tired old folk, like the embarrassing dads and mums who wreck the kids’ party by dancing like chickens.   Any such doubts are dispelled with one hearing to the new single, which comes out via three separate labels, no less: the band's original Subway Organisation imprint, Rocker's Local Underground and Archdeacon of Pop.  It's a sublime piece of indie pop, written by new vocalist Lisa Bouvier, and backed by a Whitehead composition, 'One Last Kiss'.

Band reformations can, it’s true, be a hit or miss affair, but The Flatmates have returned to the party with a bang in the form of a cracking release that ensures the wave of bands they helped inspire welcome them not as mere godparents who deserve respect for what they did almost three decades ago, but as a force that remains as productive and as stimulating as it ever was.

Get the single here or here.

 

COPS - Cry Now, Cry Later

For those not familiar with COPS, I expect ears to prick up considerably when I mention it's a new project from Harry Cloud, whose Indian Pussy album so delighted me last year and which I probably even under-valued until I found myself getting stuck into it repeatedly towards the end of 2013.

For this project, Harry's teamed up with Chloe Mandel and Paul Roessler and together they've put out this three-track EP, which you can get as name-your-price at their bandcamp site here.  Unless you're one of those sadly inadequate individuals who found Harry's album last year - and, indeed, Ocean Song, which I rather clumsily overlooked the release of earlier in the year - a tad on the brutal side, you're going to love this project, which loses none of what made Indian Pussy such a triumphantly violent ride through the sensibilities of humanity and adds some sublime touches into the bargain.

Cry Now, Cry Later doesn't ask for much - less than twelve minutes of your time, in fact - and gives a hell of a lot back.  Opener 'Tiny Little Hole' might even charm you, its slowly evolving riff growing behind voices from the primordial soup of some semi-apocalyptic soundscape, before 'Somebody Shitty Hitting On Me' lays a breathy female vocal across undulating guitars.  I've chosen this track to play in my September show on Dandelion Radio, which you can hear streaming at various times through the month, although I might easily have gone for 'Deserve To Suffer', the EP's final track, which takes what I assume is Chloe's voice over a buzzing riff and meanders through the enigmatic corridors of sound that are plastered all over this fine release.

COPS have a pugilistic appeal that's served slowly, via sludgy masses of ground-out noise, but is no less powerful for it.  Indeed, their oozing packs a far more lasting wallop than so many of the visceral speed-merchants I stumble across on my daily search for something to tickle my increasingly warped fancies.  Allow me to save you much unfruitful browsing - go straight to COPS.

Download the EP here.