Reviews – Albums
July 2009
Jack Penate
Everything Is New (XL)
Yes, in an event as unlikely as Phil Collins cutting a dubstep album with The Bug, Jack Penate is Beatmag’s Album Of The Issue. Previously pegged as yet another tedious singer-songwriter, indie-lite model – which indeed he was – he now completely turns the tables on any such criticism. Joining forces with dance producer Paul ‘Phones’ Epworth he popped up at the beginning of the year on an XL compilation with a song called ‘Tonight’s Today’ that sounded absolutely nothing like anything he’d done before, an Afro-flavoured pop romp that reeked of joy and sunshine. Brilliantly, the pair have made an album to match, spraying flecks of African guitar and percussion onto euphoric indie songwriting. It’s original, it’s fun and it’s a feat. If he can do this live, Penate may prove an unexpected highlight of 2009.
www.myspace.com/jackpenate (be careful, though, one of his crappy old songs comes on and you can’t turn it off)
Willie Isz
Georgiavania (LEX)
It’s clear from the start of their debut album that Willie Isz are bringing a much-needed something new to hip hop, but it’s not until a deranged fiddle-led Irish jig called ‘The Grussle’ that you realize quite how far off the rails they’re prepared to go. With the avowed intent to combine crunk’s energy with psychedelic rock attitude, Willie Isz consist of Atlanta MC, Outkast associate Khujo and producer-singer Jneiro Jarel (AKA Dr Who Dat? and Shape Of Broad Minds). Their album, much of which features live instrumentation, has a bawdy pop power that stays away from lyrical cliché and deserves to crossover, like Gnarls Berkley, if they took rock rather than funk as their template. Mind you, it’s still funky as Hell.
Moby
Wait For Me (Little Idiot)
Moby has done allsorts over the years. He became rich by accident when he famously attached old blues acapellas to electronica and beats on ‘Play’. It was hardly a recipe for immediate success. Previously he’d messed up his dance music career with a dismal punk album. Moby does what he feels is interesting. Last year that meant an album honoring the sound of disco and early house (‘Last Night’). This year, on his own label, he’s in a mordant mood and, together with singing female New York pals, he returns with an elegiac album of strings and tuneful downtempo numbers, all delivered with stripped down yet opulent production. It doesn’t sound a winning formula, as ever, but, despite a few too many filler instrumentals, it works admirably.
Malcolm Middleton
Waxing Gibbous (Full Time Hobby)
The Scottish songwriter and former member of Arab Strap claims this, his fifth album, will be his last for a while as he’s said all he wants to say for the moment. This isn’t good news as Middleton is one of Britain’s premier songwriters and his quality threshold rarely drops. ‘Waxing Gibbous’ opens with a couple of numbers that are musically slightly naff but his lyrics never quit and, in any case, once you’re passed those two it’s all gold. Middleton majors in songs of love and humanity that are firmly grounded in messy modern reality. Poignancy and loss are never far away and any album with a tune on it called ‘The Ballad Of Fuck All’ is surely worth a listen.
www.myspace.com/malcolmmiddleton
Silicone Soul
Silicone Soul (Soma)
A little known fact is that two of the greatest electronic albums EVER are ‘Staring Into Space’ (2005) and ‘Save Our Souls’ (2006) by Glasgow duo Silicone Soul, both beautiful, warm, groove-laden masterpieces that emanate everything good about house music. The trouble with that kind of achievement is that comparisons can forever be made. Their first album since is less soulful, lying somewhere between Berlin minimal techno and sadly now defunct Eukahouse acts such as Get Fucked, G-Pal and Smart Alex. It’s very good, especially the sampledelic ‘David Vincent’s Blues’, but perhaps doesn’t quite match the drive and personality of their classics. Never mind that though, it still beats most of the current competition.
Homecut
No Freedom Without Sacrifice (First Word)
Jazzual hip hop is very much an acquired taste, often disappearing up its own fundament in a welter of musical technique and yawn-inducing supper club smoothness. Sometimes, however, someone as classy as Homecut appears. Sure the mellow finger-clickin’ grooves, midnight muted trumpets and flute flourishes are intact but this young dude from Leeds, otherwise known as Testament, weaves it all into a mellow engaging whole. While it’s certainly coffee-table friendly (it even has Corinne Bailey Rae on one song) his style, somewhere between Roots Manuva and Soweto Kinch (who also features), is sufficiently bright and engaging to draw appreciation from all quarters.
We Fell To Earth
We Fell To Earth (In Stereo)
For those who like the idea of Krautrock but always found it a bit relentless, Richard File, once of U.N.K.L.E., and American singer Wendy Rae Fowler, arrive with We Fell To Earth. They take the hypnotic drones and rhythms of European space-rock, sprinkle it with electronic pulses and bleeps, then gently mutate it into sweet, mellow cosmic pop music. It veers towards the melancholic but is carried by a wistful sweetness and late night ambience that bears comparison to Portishead or Massive Attack.
Motor
Metal Machine (Shitkatapult)
The third album from Parisian doom-dancefloor duo Mr No and Bryan Black lays off their more industrial rock tendencies in favour of fierce gnarly techno. Appearing on T.Raumschmiere’s Shitkatapult label from Berlin, the nine tracks hammer home a viscerally hard club sound, jammed with waves of angrily humming machinery-in-meltdown effects. Far from Saturday night high street dancefloors, this one has steel in its blood, and the completely OTT ‘Death Rave’ will send fluff-merchants scurrying for their bolt-holes, quivering terrified beside their racks of David Guetta mix CDs.
Bachelorette
My Electric Family (Drag City)
Annabel Alpers may be based in New Zealand but I suspect that rather than surfing or country hikes, she spends all her time locked away with her collection of cheap synthesizers (possibly the electric family of the title) which she mingles with more conventional instruments, all played by herself. Her second album is a cheery collection that bridges the gap between synth-pop and the Beach Boys. Admittedly she’s nowhere near in the league of the latter in their ‘60s prime but her multi-layered sweetly harmonic songs have a charm that’s well worth checking out.
www.myspace.com/bachelorettepop
Terefe Whitecross
From Here To Helsinki (Kensaltown)
Back at the tail end of the original electro-pop boom, a time La Roux and Little Boots dream of, Nick Whitecross was singer with Kissing The Pink whose ‘The Last Film’ was a minor hit in 1983. Thirteen years later, he created an album with Martin Terefe (now best known for producing singer-songwriter bores such as James Morrison and Jason Mraz). Thirteen years after that the pair are back with a follow-up (although, to confuse things, it was apparently recorded six years ago). The wait has paid off. Terefe Whitecross muster juicy contagious synth-pop such as the ace ‘Jesus Was A Hippie’ or the mellow ‘The Collector’ with it’s haunting whistled riff, but even when they pull out their acoustic guitars, it’s all fairly witty and enjoyable.
www.myspace.com/terefewhitecross
OLDIES/REISSUES
Rodriguez
Coming From Reality (Light In The Attic)
A Mexican-American based in Detroit, Sixto Rodriguez recorded in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s but no one paid him any mind and by the early ‘70s he had to give up and get a ‘proper’ job. He sounds a bit like ‘Season Of The Witch’-era Donovan and, in an unlikely turn of events, over time his music became hugely popular in South Africa, eventually growing into a global cult that came into focus last year when his debut album ‘Cold Fact’ was re-released to acclaim. ‘Coming From Reality’ was his last album, made in London in 1971, and it’s a vibrant mixture of Dylan-esque poetics, electric and acoustic guitar action, and palatably kitsch forays into stringed up easy listening pop. While of its time – a time of hippies – ‘Coming From Reality’ is so approachable and vibrant it’s hard to believe no-one cared a jot when it first appeared.
www.myspace.com/sixtorodriguezzz
COMPILATIONS
Disco Kosmische Volume 1 (People In The Sky)
Jerry Dickens was once better known as Red Jerry. His Hooj Choons stable fronted an armada of top notch techno, trance and (quality) prog-house from the mid-‘90s to the early ‘00s. Dickens had golden A&R ears, a cracking attitude and the hedonic spirit to match. Then he disappeared. Happily, he eventually came back with People In The Sky, a new label, original home of Friendly Fires and current home to Wax Stag and Plugs. Where he’s at on this selection is an extremely tasty melding of psyche-disco grooves, techno throb and indie-funk. ‘Disko Kosmische’ ranges from heavy ‘80s Italo-disco to remixes by Optimo Espacio and Hercules & Love Affair, from Chaz Jankel to They Came From The Stars I Saw Them. Underground, edgy and original, it’s a thoroughly welcome listen.
www.myspace.com/peopleinthesky1
Albums for review should be sent to…
Thomas H Green, Beatmag, PO Box 4653, Worthing BN11 9FG
Beatmag Album of the Issue
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