The project is new and the details are scarce.
But let’s be frank, here. Isn’t that the way it ought to be? For now it’s probably best to listen, click the Like button on Facebook, and wait to see what the record sounds like.
UPDATE: Mmm, yes. Also very palatable is “Weal Unto Him who has a Home,” but you’ll need to go to the Myspace to hear that one.
Mogwai loaded it on their Facebook wall, so that’s really all the endorsement you should need. It has a delicate, fairy tale vibe, a bit reminiscent of pre-Magic Chairs Efterklang.
From the debut album. Word is that new material is due soon.
For those of you who haven’t yet started The Silent Ballet’s compilation series, please do so, here. They’re excellent. They’re released quarterly. And you’ll only part with an electron or two.
Those who are already familiar with the TSB series should refer back to Volume III: Unfolding a Broken Heart, which introduced “The Temptation of Joy” by Jatun, AKA Scott Worley. Spun from Worley’s 2007 debut, the track is simple, lovesick, and drenched with Rubik’s Cube synth. There is no soaring trombone or mournful cello or vocal hang-gliding, but this is still a beautiful work.
Spring 2010 saw the release of Jatun’s Blanket of Ash LP. The last-minute synth is ever the primary terrain feature (this way some listeners may suffer a brief spell of Xymox acid reflux). But the material is lush and green, the reverb is jacked to 11, and the nightclubs still serve orange juice after hours. So to speak.
Stand-out cuts are the title track (stream it and others here), and the thick slab of music titled, perhaps ironically, “The Thin.”
Admittedly the mission statement reads “The intent here is to help you discover new artists, and not to keep you up-to-date, up-to-the-minute, up-to-the-split-second on the names with which you’re already familiar.”
Yet when the up-to-the-second news pertains to a possible HNIC performance on our side of the pond — indeed, right down the road from blog headquarters — it is what it is.
The evidence is lean. The quiver? Only one arrow: a Facebook wall post a few minutes ago. “SXSW application: completed.”
Hopefully the application, whatever that is, is approved. And hopefully they bring our friends The Monroe Transfer along for the event. For our readers on the opposite side of the North Atlantic, South-by-Southwest (SXSW) is an annual music festival hosted every March by the kind folks of Austin, Texas. It’s a big deal. Indeed, it’s too big. The present correspondent has only braved its tentacles as a local, and that was two or three years consecutively, about twenty years ago.
Pick up a copy of The Quiet Lamb, HNIC’s recent, astonishing LP (RLP?), here.
During the second half of “The University Is A Factory” — theretofore a conventional, almost jazzy instrumental piece — a fight breaks out in center ring. The guitars are raw and gouging now, the percussion is explosive, the course, unpredictable. When the strings return, you’ve been put properly on notice. “Rain on Titan” follows a similar, complex arc: here it is delicate and moving, and there, blistering and dissonant and final. Stream it below:
Rumour Cubes is a London-based newcomer, with one don’t smear the ink! EP and a days-older live recording of their track “The Gold Curve” (just below). If following a project from blueprints to ribbon-cutting is your speed, here you are. (And if not, you should listen anyway.)
(Anyone ever get the feeling that bands, albums, songs, or compilations with the word “memory” in the title are at least partially ironic? Hard-living musicians, and all that. But we digress.)
In this case, Memory is Animal Hospital’s 2009 LP, offered up by Barge Recordings. Animal Hospital is Kevin Micka, a master-of-all-trades overachiever from Boston. He records his own music, records yours, and “fixes stuff” (electronics, to be sure, although iPhones dropped in the swimming pool likely do not classify). He keeps it all together, here. Stream Memory just below:
The 17-minute juggernaut “His Belly Burst” is a gruesome visual, but a nice composition of string sampling and machine clankery. The track “…and ever” is groovy, distant, galactic and noisy, clocking in well past the 12-minute mark. The epic title cut is a variation on the theme of acoustic guitar riffs. Do listen.
Those of you catching Pantha Du Prince live this month might also meet Rafael Irisarri, who has just released The North Bend on Room40. Even better is his EP Reverie, released earlier this year, which you can stream just below:
Try the second track, “Embraced.” This is a restrained piece: small pebbles of sound, and the ripples in the pond they create. It is slightly eastern in flavor, a short primer in trekking. Also see “Für Alina,” Irisarri’s nod to Arvo Pärt.
The members of The Meligrove Band don’t read the newspaper. There is no other explanation.
What with war, poverty, state collapse, and catastrophic climate change, none of us would blame them if they were surly. But the music — and presumably the upstarts behind it — is fun. Celebratory. Quirky. Square like a beach ball. A tsunami of Yippee! Indeed, when the lyrics break temporarily from romance (“If I loved you to death, would your bones attack me?”) and cry out out something heartbroken (“This life is so hard”) the listener scarcely believes it.
Casual aficanados know The Meligrove Band from their late-2005 Planets Conspire, particularly the eyebrows-vanish-under-the-bangs intrigue of “Our Love Will Make The World Go Round.” It’s a jangly, danceable, cheerleader-rock anthem that whispers its pillow talk at 140 decibels. Built with pianos, fueled by guitars, and clad with joyful shouting, Planets Conspire stretched this ra! ra! motif into long play format. Perhaps it went three minutes too long, but it nevertheless heated the irons to a spectacular white glow. Five years ago.
The Meligrove Band did not strike again while the irons were hot.
Exclaim called Planets Conspire “strong as super glue” while it reached #2 on college radio. The band performed live on MTV Canada… twice. SPIN.com selected them as Artist of the Day. And then… V2 Records folded, effectively canceling the album’s US release, and removing any deadline or urgency from the task of making their next album – not to mention the money to do it.
Touring became more sporadic, while the band took a slow, piecemeal approach to album-making.
The deadline-free genesis of their fourth LP Shimmering Lights is obvious. Themes are drawn, perfected, and summarily abandoned. Detour signs point everywhere. Strewn about like so much detritus are the nods to their heroes, to their arch-enemies, and to themselves. The pastel track “Make Believe It” is Go Push Your House Into The Lake Good, replete with a 007 guitar riff, a space needle organ lick, and a pi/e time signature. Vocals are accessible, even inviting: the sound of a small fraternity singing karaoke to its own in-house material. And we dare you not to pine for the B-52s, even as they bow to The Mars Volta and The Flaming Lips at the same time.
“Really Want It” unpacks the pom poms and Jason Nunes’ galactic-explorer falsetto. It’s a fitting title: you really will want it. The soccer hooligan chorus. The acerbic guitar. The beehive hairdo textures. Sometimes resistance, it turns out, really is futile.
Those who still long for Planets Conspire can turn to another track, “Bones Attack!!” (yes! love us to death!). The piano returns, and the strings do, as well as the carefree fa la la! (Don’t worry. Grunge guitars come smashing through all of the hippie lemonade paisley in the opening moments of “This Work,” the next track.) “Eagles” somehow takes math rock out to the garage. And if architecture is frozen music, “Halflight” is blueprint slag.
This may not quite be the birth of a new art form, but competing indie wunderkinds will be ripping off Shimmering Lights for years.
The only conceivable criticism lies in the realm of track preferences: there is no manner of global fix that could improve the album wholesale. Yet the present correspondent does not really care for “White Like Lies,” while that might end up as your song of the year. Too andante. Too much unlike the track before and the track just after. In a record full of beautifully whitewashed mixes, “Kingfisher” plays as a bit over-hydrated. And maybe the reverb on the title cut should have been set to a 3.8-second delay instead of 4.2-second. See what we mean?
No? Then let’s just spell it out: they’re happy. They’re smart. They’re in love. And they’re ridiculously talented. Go eat mushroom quesadillas with them on September 21. And say hello to the white rabbit while you’re away. 4/5
Those absurd little 140-character snippets of signaling known as tweets? You know, the ones that threaten to dominate the American political landscape going forward? The reason bloggers need to pare down their URL addresses every time they write something?
They’re not all that intolerable if they’re from Mogwai. Who, by the way, also send food tweets. Some of their more interesting dispatches are:
After a bout of Olympic 90s throwback hedonism last night only Paul and I made it in today. Enzos pizzas Jalapeño and mushroom & pepperoni
Monday, August 30, 2010 5:33:01 PM via Twitter for iPhone
…
Heinz tomato soup. Ultimate hangover remedy. SB
8:32 AM Aug 20th via Twitter for iPhone
…
Anatomically incorrecting coffee and diluting vimto.
10:33 AM Aug 5th via Echofon
Of course the real news here is their move to Sub Pop Records and talk of a new album due in early 2011. Check back with their news page for updates, and download “New Paths to Helicon, Part 1” while you’re there.
(We really needed to move things along. Given the format, and our very young age, this was starting to look like the official Monroe Transfer flag-waving site. Thanks for bearing with us during our infancy.)
Our Ceasing Voice is a moody, atmospheric, big-sky — and ultimately remarkable — project based in Tirol, Austria. Their Myspace page points to nearly two hours of free downloads, so it is best to begin your travels there. The upcoming LP is titled When the Headline Hit Home, slated for a “summer 2010” release (?!). The track list is official. Album lyrics are posted on Facebook. The Wise Old Records site is no help in the matter whatsoever, even by its own admission. If Measured in Gramophone can glean anything else from the tea leaves, or get our hands on a digital copy for review, you’ll be the first to know.
Measured in Gramophone 