September 2007

Beatmag Album of the Issue

1. Studio
West Coast (Information)

Scandinavia strikes again. With cosmic disco outta Norway all the rage round Beatmag Mansions, Sweden now makes a bid for our attentions. Studio are Gothenberg duo Dan Lissvik and Rasmus Hagg and their game is pulping up a funk-reggae groove with white boy urban funk of the Liquid Liquid/Happy Mondays/!!! variety. There are outbursts of Cure-ish singing but the six songs on ‘West Coast’, two of which last longer than ten minutes, are all about drifting off on an hypnotic, lazily danceable groove.
www.myspace.com/sstudio

2. M’Lumbo
Sacrifices To The Neon Gods (Mulatta)

If the idea of the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band fighting it out with the Butthole Surfers appeals, then M’Lumbo are your kind of band. Begun twenty years ago by Zombie Ron Boggs and Robert Mbotto Ray, the New York band indulge in a brain-mashing combination of psychedelia, jazz and post-modern gags. Their latest album, at least their eighth, takes a multitude of kitsch US TV themes and smashes them into each other in a whirl of crazed LSD derangement. It’s unhinged stuff but the immediacy of their subject matter keeps their far out experimentation invigoratingly accessible.
www.mlumbo.com

3. Caribou
Andorra (City Slang)

Quite how ‘Handsome’ Dick Manitoba of second division US punkers The Dictators managed to win a court case against Dan Snaith in 2003 and force him to change his band name from Manitoba to Caribou remains a mystery (similar to the bemusement felt when Verve had to add a ‘The’ to their name in case American fans mistook a psychedelic Brit-rock band for a longstanding jazz label). Such ponderings aside, Snaith’s latest album is a lovely thing, full of bursting harmonies that sit somewhere between The Mamas & the Papas and Gregorian ecclesiastical. It’s an ambitious orchestrated affair that deserves to break Caribou into the A-league.
www.caribou.fm

4. Simon Bookish
Trainwreck/Raincheck (Use Your Teeth)

More loonyland stuff, albeit disguised as ‘art’. Simon Bookish is classically-trained musician Leo Chadburn who’s involved with jazz, electronic and avant-classical projects. His second album consists of squidgy bizarre electronica, not a little abject, and spoken word surrealist narratives about subject matter such as stepping on toffee-filled crabs. Some it, such as ‘Invasion’ and ‘Dwarf Documentary’ are not only exceedingly odd, but very funny.
www.simonbookish.com

5. Vector Lovers
Afterglow (Soma)

Martin Wheeler last popped up producing tracks on Tracey Thorn’s recent critically acclaimed then sadly quickly forgotten album ‘Out Of The Woods’. He wasn’t in his usual electro-dance mode then and he’s not in it again for this, his third album. Apparently built on remnants of tracks dating from as far back as the ‘80s, it’s quality electronica that’s moodily laidback but with loads going on and never ‘chill-out’. Occasionally Wheeler throws in some vocals for good measure and, happily, they work too.
www.vector-lovers.com

6. Automated Acoustics
Love To The Dedicated Listener (Alternative Blueprint)

It says on the CD, “Like Tom Waits being taken up the wrong’un by Aphex Twin.” Such lovely imagery. Nonetheless, arriving in hand-made packaging that features a pressed dried leaf, the description is not massively wide of the mark. Automated Acoustics is one bloke called Lawrence from somewhere in the South-West of England and his bodge of electronics and folk-blues singing has a rawness that appeals. Fans of Icelandic electronic bluesman Mugison may well find something to enjoy here.
www.alternativeblueprint.com

7. Mother And The Addicts
Science Fiction Illustrated (Chemikal Underground)

Glaswegian band whose name has become something of an albatross, one suspects, deliver a sophomore album that dips eagerly into all manner of unexpected styles. Starting in tight indie territory it soon tilts at the funk of mid-period Orange Juice on ‘Watch The Lines’ and from there on in is quite as happy firin’ off pop, punk, and psyche-rock. Solid stuff.
www.motherandtheaddicts.com

8. Moha!
Norwegianism (Rune Grammafon)

This year has been fantastic for anyone who likes their jazz laced with punk or their punk laced with jazz, or indeed their jazz-punk laced with avant-garde mayhem. Following on from the likes of Fluborne Teversham, Shining and Fraud come MoHa! about whom we have no information but that they’re Norwegian, something we might have been able to deduce from the album title, and that their names are Anders Hana and Morten J. Between them they whip up a no-nonsense racket of avant-electronics and guitar’n’drums that definitely tumbles into the jazz zone. Noisy as Hell, wilfully difficult but wildly energetic instead of just pretentiously unlistenable.
www.myspace/themoha

9. 12 Stone Toddler
Does It Scare You? (Amazon)

Anyone remember The Cardiacs? They looked like besuited perverts from a ‘50s B-movies and played queasy, slightly sinister, guitar pop that owed a debt to Madness. Well, 12 Stone Toddler enter similar territory for a post-Scissor Sisters age, replete with freaky overboard stage fashions. From Brighton, UK, they’re a band who don’t take themselves too seriously but deliver big brash Vaudevillian tunes that refuse to kowtow to 2007’s tedious indie hegemony.
www.12stonetoddler.com

10. Satanique Samba Trio
Sangrou (Amplitude)

Iconoclasts in their native Brazil, Satanique Samba Trio are no-wave punk to Tropicalia’s ‘60s psyche-freak-out (hence why their first album is called ‘Misantropicalia’). Led by Munha and Ed Sinistro they take traditional Brazilian music forms and turn them on their head in an avant-garde assault that has ambient filmic qualities one minute but sounds like the theme to an insane Warner Brothers cartoon the next. Definitely one for those who like to wander off the beaten track.
www.sataniquesambatrio.net

Oldies/Reissues

The Dragons
BFI (Ninja Tune)

Here’s an album with a story attached that’s worth telling. DJ Food came across a track by The Dragons on the soundtrack to a surf movie but didn’t know anything about them so tracked them down. Turns out they’re three brothers Doug, Darryl and Dennis Dragon, sons of a conductor and an opera singer, who had decided, in the spirit of the times, to create their own psychedelic opus in 1970. They called it ‘Blue Forces Intelligence’ but couldn’t get a bite from any record labels so moved onto careers in music, notably as members of the Beach Boys band and and, in Darryl’s case, as The Captain, of ‘70s hit-makers Captain & Tennille. Now, Ninja Tune have unearthed and released that 37 year old album. It’s a happy snap-shot of those deliciously utopian times. Laid back multi-layered West Coast psychedelia is the order of the day, replete with kitsch easy listening harmonies. Every grey dull indie band from the UK to New York should look and learn.

Compilations

‘Fabric Live 35 – Marcus Intalex’
(Fabric)

Mancunian drum & bass don Marcus Intalex throws down a set for Fabric’s everlasting mix series. It showcases the d&b underground very much alive and well, thank you, full of juicy hooks and lithe funk moments that anyone with a taste for dancing could appreciate. In other words it’s not evil noisy stuff or hefty raggatastic bellowing, instead rolling elastic grooves are laced with doses of vocals, soul and technology. A welcome entry point into the most insular scene in existence.

Beatmag’s rundown of the best to throw your hard-earned money at.

Albums for review should be sent to…

Thomas H Green, Beatmag, PO Box 4653, Worthing BN11 9FG

Filed under: Music, Reviews - Albums by Flexmaster Nylon
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