November 2006

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

Sound 10
(11 this issue for no good reason)

Beatmag Album of the Month

1. Amy Winehouse
Back To Black (Island)

There is much controversy in Beatmag’s office over Ms Winehouse. Certain parties begin frothing in indignation at the very mention of her name with ‘attitude’ cited as the problem. Surely, however, attitude is what’s lacking in the world of soul and R&B. There’s a thousand media-trained women out there, from Rhianna to Joss Stone, singing spectacularly but saying nothing. The great female singers of the past, on the other hand, from to Nina Simone to Aretha Franklin, had attitude by the bucket-load; they were women you didn’t mess with. Winehouse, gobshite that she is, follows in their grand tradition and, with superb production assistance from Mark Ronson and Salaam Remi, imprints her uniquely raw yet poetic lyrics onto a template that combines the old school jazz of her last album with a prime ‘60s Motown feel. She’s a one-off and, if they ever succeed in shaving off her rough edges, it will be music’s loss. Long may Amy Winehouse resist rehab, use the word ‘fuckery’ in songs, and hang around north London pool halls. The album, by the way, is one of the year’s best. Buy it.

2. Silicone Soul
Save Our Souls (Soma)

Beatmag is a broken record when it comes to preaching Silcone Soul’s excellence. Why don’t more media sorts recognize their talent? It can only be their facelessness that hinders. A decade ago when DJ culture and electronica were hip such things would not have mattered and the Glaswegian duo would have been huge. Such whingeing aside, their follow-up to last year’s delicious ‘Staring Into Space’ (Beatmag Album Of 2005) holds its own beside it predecessor. There are no real surprises on board but for fans of electronic music that’s both soothing and invigorating, melodic and beat-driven, pacey but poppy, intelligent but accessible, ‘Save Our Souls’ is a big, big treat. Whether it were 4.00 AM in a bubbling warehouse party or 7.30 PM serving canapés before dinner, this music warms the soul.

3. Akira The Don
When We Were Young (Something In Construction/BMG)

Looking like one of the three musketeers on a flyaway hair day, Adam Narkiewicz is an unlikely prince of bitingly lyrical British hip hop. Dividing listeners into lovers and loathers (in general traditional hip hop fans don’t like him one bit) those that can handle their wordage self-absorbed, unselfconsciously goofy and spiced with cheery pop suss will discover a treat. Akira’s saving grace is his intellect and sheer fury at the unfairness of the world which he translates into dense literary wordscapes. Kicked off Interscope USA for being too political – try ‘Thanks For All The AIDS’ for size! – BMG have taken up the gauntlet but one fears the album won’t receive the push it deserves. There’s much autobiographical detail, from girlfriends to homelessness to the longing for childhood of ‘Back In The Day’, and it makes gripping listening. The first half doesn’t quite gel, for some reason, but listen from track six to the end and it’s a fine album indeed.

4. Subtle
For Hero: For Fool (LEX)

The indefineable avant-rock-hip-hop project of Anticon/cLOUDEAD hero Adam ‘Doseone’ Drucker and Amoeba Records’ Dax Pierson, featuring four others including woodwind and cello. Like Why?’s album of last year, though heavier, it pulps beats and electronica into a jazz-psychedelic backdrop for staccato rapping, delicious sunny choruses (as befits a Bay Area band), with occasional bursts of thud-riffing guitar for good measure. Tragically Pierson broke his neck in a road accident on tour with Subtle halfway through recording, but he hasn’t let his gradually recovering paralysis stand in the way of creating some of the most imaginative music around.

5. The Long Blondes
Someone To Drive You Home (Rough Trade)

The single ‘Giddy Stratospheres’ alone is worth the price of entry, a perfect fusion of Franz Ferdinand and Blondie. There’s much more to The Long Blondes album, however. Kate Jackson’s arch vocals lamp you round the brain like Marlene Dietrich fronting the Buzzcocks and the music’s an NME heaven of punchy guitar jangle and barrage of tribal drums. Best of all these dudes can write songs, songs not dissimilar to The Pipettes upon occasion despite the complete difference in image (perhaps it’s due to three of the five being women). Forget the hype, enjoy the sound of an indie group on a roll.

6. Dan Sartain
Join Dan Sartain (Swami)

Sartain reeks of punk hillbilly in the way The Cramps once did but he avoids their horror film kitsch in favour of a hard-riding Nick Cave/Johnny Cash persona. A whippet thin 23 year old from Alabama, his first album was all lo-fi cowboy-punk but lacked the songs to back up the belligerence. On his new one, everything’s improved, from the desperado songwriting of ‘Gun Vs. Knife’ and ‘Young Girls’ to the tighter production. Sartain has a classic album in him. This isn’t it but it’s a fine firey effort worth investigating.

7. Piney Gir
Country Roadshow (Truck)

After dabbling in electronica for her debut album ‘Peakahokahoo’ Angela Penhaligon returns in full-blown country mode. Despite being from Kansas her London base has rubbed off on her and the music has much in common with long-defunct Camden c&w rockers The Rockingbirds. Pedal steel guitar and accordion are much in evidence and the whole thing adds up to an unpretentious hoe-down with a great big grin on its face when it’s not crying into its beer.

8. Nickodemus
Endangered Species (ESL)

Rising through the New York hip hop underground Nickodemus, together with partner DJ Mariano, cemented his reputation with the success of his Turntables On The Hudson club night. What sets him apart, however, is the way he learned from Brit acts such as Coldcut not to be restricted by genre-centric blinkers. Consequently his music is a thrilling, dancefloor-shaking amalgamation of Latin, Hindi, house, funk, hip hop, jazz and much else besides. DJs, especially, should seek out a copy.

9. Manage
(Live) In Protest (Merciless)

UK hip hop has vastly improved in the last five years although there’s still a tendency for new acts to play exclusively to their head-nodding b-boy peers, regarding the wider musical world as a sell-out. Fortunately Manage, who organizes successful London hip hop event Speakers’ Corner and is a true hardcore head, has come out with a surprisingly approachable album. From the same school of production as Skinnyman, he combines unlikely pop-rock samples, DJ Chemo’s tough hissing beats and his own hard-nosed none-more-London lyrics to tasty effect.

10. Spektrum
Fun At The Gymkhana Club (P&C Nonstop)

An outfit with origins in Russia, Nigeria and New Zealand has found London an amenable home for its sassy electro-rock, though Berlin would have been equally apt. Midway between robot precision and ESG funk, the second album by the four-piece whips up a lubricious double-entendre-laden storm of songs about horny ponies, releasing the sugar, etc. Singer Lola Olafasoye has more than a touch of Grace Jones about her and on top of the usual sex-electro tics there’s a hint of early Talking Heads, all of which is for the good.

11. Manor Boys
Chelmsford’s Most Wanted (Barry’s Bootlegs)

Barry’s Bootlegs, home of Cassetteboy, is one of the most reliable sources of true oddness and demented humour out there. Manor Boys is a typically warped effort. Appalling Chelmsford rapper Philie-T persuaded his housemate Richard, a gravel pit worker, to ‘freestyle’ tales of his life over what sounds like Bontempi organ pre-sets. Most of it is so dreadful it’s not even funny but when Richard gets going it’s hypnotically weird. Coming on like a worrying hybrid of Frank Spencer, Mike Skinner and The TV Personalities’ Dan Treacy, he taps into the parochial strangeness going on behind the closed doors of suburban society. Featuring a guest appearance by Richard’s mum, it seems a reasonable bet there’s nothing more peculiar around at the moment.

REISSUES/OLDIES

Tackhead
Sound Crash Slash’n’Mix – Adrian Sherwood (On-U Sound/EMI)

Reminding all and sundry that he’s one of the kingsize electronica producers of all time, Adrian Sherwood not only has his own fine new album, ‘Becoming A Cliché’, out, but also this mash-up of prime-time Tackhead. In the ‘80s Sherwood’s noisy car-crash of dub, industrial percussion and righteous politics collided magnificently with the in-yer-face musicianship of Doug Wimpish, Skip MacDonald and Keith Le Blanc, who had once been the Sugarhill Gang’s rhythm section. Listening to this twenty years later, alongside the similarly charged ‘On-U Sound Crash’ mix, one smiles in disbelief at how far ahead of his time Sherwood was, and how fantastically vibrant it all still sounds.

COMPILATIONS

Collectors Series Pt.2, Danse Gravite Zero: Kaos & Sal P
(Faith)

Salvatore Principato is a little moustachioed dude who used to be in New York punk-funkers Liquid Liquid and Kaos is a lesser known DJ from Berlin. Together they deliver a masterful lesson in obscure funk, underground electro-rock, ancient synth oddities and a whole lot more (names include Throbbing Gristle, Yello, The Juan Maclean. Augustus Pablo and The Residents but listing them somehow makes the whole thing sound a lot more muso-serious than it is). ‘Collectors Series’ is the idea of ex-!K7 A&R and DJ Kicks maestro Stefan Struever and, judging from this one and its predecessor (‘The Modernist: Popular Songs’) it deserves to run and run. Kaos and Sal P never allow a slack moment in their grungily primitive electronic funk odyssey but keep things contagious and playful, especially on Zazu’s magnificent sci-fi prog ‘Captain Starlight’. A party-starter.

In Prison
(Trikont)

One out of eight African-American men between twenty and thirty-five is in prison. This stark and unpalatable fact is the premise behind the latest in German label Trikont’s lovingly researched series of themed compilations (its predecessors are ‘England’s Dreaming’ – about punk – and ‘Queer Noises’ – about gay music). Ranging from hip hop to raw old work-songs recorded on the chain gang, from Bobby Womack to Akon via Nina Simone and Tupac it’s a bitter but precisely articulated collection that rarely deserts decent songsmithery however unhappy the subject matter.

Albums for review should be sent to…

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

Filed under: Music, Reviews - Albums by Flexmaster Nylon
4 Comments »

4 Responses to “Reviews – Albums”

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