en http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/uk/ Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 Thu, 1 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000 60 http://www.audioscrobbler.net/data/webservices http://www.last.fm/user/nibus/journal The Last.fm journal for nibus. Last.fm journals are a place to talk about all things music. http://www.last.fm/user/nibus/journal/2009/09/09/2zyo5x_thomas_k%C3%B6ner_-_la_barca_locations Wed, 9 Sep 2009 12:59:57 +0000 http://www.last.fm/user/nibus/journal/2009/09/09/2zyo5x_thomas_k%C3%B6ner_-_la_barca_locations Thomas Köner's latest, La Barca, has sneaked out almost unannounced. Not enough time to listen properly yet, but here are the approximate locations of the co-ordinates masquerading as track names:

Hour 1 - Shibuya, Tokyo, Japan
Hour 2 - Nice, France
Hour 3 - Venice, Italy
Hour 4 - Hoyo Negro crater, La Palma, Canary Islands (Spain)
Hour 5 - Monte Palatino, Rome, Italy
Hour 6 - Damascus, Syria
Hour 7 - Paris, France
Hour 8 - Bab al-Louq, Cairo, Egypt
Hour 9 - Spitsbergen (Norway), Arctic Ocean
Hour 10 - Jerusalem, Israel
Hour 11 - near Bar, Montenegro
Hour 12 - Barcelona, Spain]]> http://www.last.fm/user/nibus/journal/2008/04/04/3jq1_free_spokane Fri, 4 Apr 2008 07:11:49 +0000 http://www.last.fm/user/nibus/journal/2008/04/04/3jq1_free_spokane A quick note to say that Richmond's finest purveyors of dusty, hushed indie-folk Spokane have a retrospective album, A Small Commotion available for free download.]]> http://www.last.fm/user/nibus/journal/2007/04/10/3jq0_tracks_on_the_ground Tue, 10 Apr 2007 09:07:47 +0000 http://www.last.fm/user/nibus/journal/2007/04/10/3jq0_tracks_on_the_ground Just a quick pointer to say that Keith Kenniff, of Helios, Goldmund and Boy in Static fame appears to up and running under his own name at http://www.myspace.com/keithkenniff with four lovely tracks - my reference points being Bedhead/The New Year, Red House Painters, Drunk/Spokane, Simon & Garfunkel and even a bit of The Lilac Time.]]> http://www.last.fm/user/nibus/journal/2007/01/09/3jpz_peur_en_hiver Tue, 9 Jan 2007 16:38:21 +0000 http://www.last.fm/user/nibus/journal/2007/01/09/3jpz_peur_en_hiver So, with it being the winter and all, and me being away from home, I thought I'd take some suitably wintry music with me, namely Thomas Köner's Nuuk, Biosphere's Cirque and Svarte Greiner's Knive - all of which have a sort of dark icy foreboding. Great.

The only problem is that this kind of music doesn't really work when wandering among the vineyards of the Languedoc on a cloudless, sunny day, in a t-shirt - which is what I was doing today.



Perhaps I'll have to move to Spitsbergen.]]> http://www.last.fm/user/nibus/journal/2006/09/28/3jpy_lyrical_angster Thu, 28 Sep 2006 20:00:13 +0000 http://www.last.fm/user/nibus/journal/2006/09/28/3jpy_lyrical_angster A couple of weeks ago a mate of mine started up a sort of CD tree/swap thing between mutual friends of ours. It had a few rules; the tracks all had to be on film soundtracks, but must not have been written specifically for that film. And they all had to have lyrics.

For someone (me) who spent a good deal of his younger days making endless compilation tapes and CDs for people, and putting a good deal of thought into them, the must-have-lyrics rule seemed a bit restrictive, mainly because it excluded a lot of interesting and diverse music which has no lyrics.

So, I had the following conversation with the instigator of this plan, by which method I hoped to get him to drop the must-have-lyrics rule:

"Can the lyrics be in a foreign language?"

"Yeah, no problem"

"But won't this mean that some people won't understand them?"

"Yeah, that doesn't matter"

"So why specify that the tracks have to have lyrics if some of the lyrics will be meaningless to some people and essentially will just be the sound of the human voice?"

"Er..."

"Which really means that the voice will just be another instrument"

"But...they have to be songs though"

So I got a bit stuck, because it meant that I couldn't have, say, Biosphere's 'Too Fragile to Walk On', but I could have Dead Can Dance's 'The Host of Seraphim', which I defy anyone to gain any lyrical meaning from. I couldn't make sense of 'must have lyrics'. And because I'm fairly sniffy about music, I was the only one who could see the unfairness of it. So I decided to load my compilation with 'songs' nobody could understand.

Now, back in 1993, at the peak of my 4AD obsession, I was a big fan of Red House Painters (I still am). I took apart all Mark Kozelek's lyrics and convinced myself I identified with them - he thought he was depressed, I thought he was depressed, I thought I was depressed - but the music came second to what he was saying in his songs. Now, when I listen to the first Red House Painters album (the rollercoaster one), in my opinion one of the greatest albums ever made, it's for the music. The lyrics don't mean anything.

This is the case with practically any song I listen to now. Some years ago, with the help of the wonderful Cocteau Twins, who I came to very late, I realised that you don't need lyrics (meaningful or otherwise) to make good songs - and by songs I mean singing, obviously. To me, there's just as much meaning in Whigfield's Saturday Night (which is a great song) as there is in the most lyrically elegant songs of, say, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds. Which is not to say I don't appreciate that Mr Cave uses a wonderfully varied array of words and is a great storyteller - but there's no meaning. If he'd sung 'I went to the shop but they'd run out of cheese', it would mean as much as anything else he's written.

Take 'Sweet Pain' by Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and Michael Brook. Fantastic song - what's he singing about? I don't know. Take almost anything by Sigur Rós (recommendations spam ahoy!) - great songs, dunno what he's on about. Same with the Cocteau Twins - what was that she sang there? Doesn't matter, sounds great. How about Einstürzende Neubauten's 'Fiat Lux' - I actually understand the lyrics of this, but it would make no difference if I didn't, it will still be a great song. Case in point - Neubauten had an extra two versions of 'Blume', one in French, one in Japanese. I understand the French but not the Japanese. But I prefer the Japanese version.

Because of this, I don't listen to lyrics. I listen to them inasmuch as I like the sound of certain singers' voices, and I listen to their phrasing and their choice of words in terms of how they sound, but I don't listen for any meaning.

Good thing too - here's an example:

Fleece lined/
Jacket from junior high/
I find that I leave cash in my pockets and/
Dried lint/
Candy wrappers wrapped around/
My wrists/
Maybe that's why I couldn't think

These are the (only) lyrics of Khonnor's 'Crapstone', which is a lovely little song, his voice is great, the words sound good. It wouldn't be half as good if he didn't sing on it. But, look at what it means - bugger all.

So, next time anyone tells me any rules for CD compilations, I shall just listen to the sound they're making - and not take any notice of what they mean.]]> http://www.last.fm/user/nibus/journal/2006/06/22/3jpx_my_life_with_swamptrash Thu, 22 Jun 2006 10:05:37 +0000 http://www.last.fm/user/nibus/journal/2006/06/22/3jpx_my_life_with_swamptrash Back in the late 80s/early 90s, my musical world revolved mainly around gloriously theatrical flour-abusers Fields of the Nephilim - a perfect complement to the bleak brownness of the north of Scotland where I grew up. While I was walking around in my long coat and scarecrow hat, on my radar appeared another band which was particularly popular amongst my friends - it was called Swamptrash. At the time I thought they were just a local band; I didn't even know what kind of music they played.

Fast forward about a year, I'm sitting in someone's rusty Mini Metro in Whithorn, southwest Scotland - where you can stand on the burnt stumps of The Wicker Man's legs, trivia fans - and the tinny car stereo is playing an equally tinny but very fast psycho bluegrass version of Johnny Cash's Ring of Fire. It's fantastic and it's by Swamptrash. I instantly resolve to buy everything they've released when I get home. According to some guide to Scottish music I remember picking up, they have an album (It Makes No Never Mind) and an EP (Bone).

Except I can't bloody find anything, can I? It must be a band that doesn't exist. The only two good record shops in Scotland at this time are One Up in Aberdeen (100 miles away) and Fopp in Edinburgh (which may as well be on Mars) - no hope of me going to either of them on my bike. Instead, I went to university in Bournemouth, which was free of both bluegrass and floury goths, but full of crusty prog fans and fey types timidly waiting for the advent of shoegaze. The unlikely twin attack of Slowdive and Ozric Tentacles soon made me forget about Swamptrash.

Until about a year later when I found a vinyl copy of It Makes No Never Mind in a record shop in Poole, next to a fish stall. I've never ever seen another copy of it, but any time I get asked for my top 10 albums (argh!) it's straight in there - a great frantic Deliverance swamp stomp of an album.

From there I went backwards to the backwoods moonshine-and-hammocks banjo (because I love the banjo) folk of Roscoe Holcomb, Dock Boggs, Bascom Lamar Lunsford and Flatt & Scruggs, then forwards to the more contemporary American gothic folk of 16 Horsepower and Slim Cessna's Auto Club.

Now, looking at last.fm's records for Swamptrash, they have 4(!) listeners, including myself. It's very strange that a band which has become a household name for me also appears to be one of the most obscure bands on the planet.]]> http://www.last.fm/user/nibus/journal/2006/06/09/3jpw_june_9th Fri, 9 Jun 2006 10:29:47 +0000 http://www.last.fm/user/nibus/journal/2006/06/09/3jpw_june_9th Today's topical track is Boards of Canada's June 9th, one of their sounds-like-1978 tracks. Listening to it now, its retro squelchiness reminds me a bit of The Human League. Next BoC topical track will be in 3 months' time (5-9-78 - which, er, sounds like 1978).

That wasn't very exciting, now was it?]]> http://www.last.fm/user/nibus/journal/2006/06/05/3jpv_facing_west Mon, 5 Jun 2006 12:42:24 +0000 http://www.last.fm/user/nibus/journal/2006/06/05/3jpv_facing_west Now then, this is where it's at. Eingya by Helios (aka Keith Kenniff aka Goldmund) is the peak of my musical year - so far. It's somewhere between the ubiquitous Boards of Canada, Arovane's wonderful Tides album, and the dusty somnolent folk of Spokane. In a small way, it reminds me of Mogwai - but without the sense of despair they occasionally produce - and the shamefully underrated Kettel. Atmospherically, it's got the same heat-haze soporific quality I (and I'm probably the only one) find in Einstuerzende Neubauten's Haus der Luege album.

But enough of 'sounds-like-this'. With the exception of ninth track The Toy Garden, which - although excellent - sounds like an outtake from Tides, everything has a coherently singular sound. It may be because it's sunny and warm here in leafy West London today, but this album is sunny and warm and leafy, all muted piano and chiming Slowdive guitars. Percussion is minimal, crackly, clock-like, brushed. Guitars are acoustic, electric, plucked, delayed, sparse, layered. It's just plain lovely.

I defy anyone with an ounce of humanity not to be moved by the liquid slowness of second track Halving The Compass - there's a lot going on in it but it sounds so simple. At two minutes forty, there's a heartbreakingly joyous four-chord piano run, then at three minutes eighteen there's a lovely blink-and-you'll-miss-it three-note hook buried in the mix. If I listen to it much more I will probably die. Ah go on, one more listen...

Like Khonnor's Handwriting and Deaf Center's Pale Ravine, it's a stand-out for Type, which is fast becoming an essential label.

Oh yeah, you should buy it, obviously. You can listen to bits of it on Kenniff's myspace page: http://www.myspace.com/thesadepicurean]]> http://www.last.fm/user/nibus/journal/2006/01/13/3jpu_my_life_with_autechre_%28or_not%29 Fri, 13 Jan 2006 18:53:12 +0000 http://www.last.fm/user/nibus/journal/2006/01/13/3jpu_my_life_with_autechre_%28or_not%29 Brief Autechre update:

I feel equal parts immense pride and immense shame that nothing I've heard by Autechre even comes close to the sheer greatness of 1 Thing by Amerie*

I suspect that these two artists are only comparable in my head. Now, if I was to do an A-Z list...**

*This is probably down to the genius drum sample from Meters which accounts for most of the track. It makes me want to go and hit cardboard boxes like a drunk spider in a dustbin factory.

**Don't worry, I shall be avoiding that bandwagon.]]> http://www.last.fm/user/nibus/journal/2006/01/06/3jpt_my_life_without_autechre Fri, 6 Jan 2006 13:46:53 +0000 http://www.last.fm/user/nibus/journal/2006/01/06/3jpt_my_life_without_autechre Boards of Canada? Check. Aphex Twin? Check. Squarepusher? Check. Jega? Check. Autechre? Nope.

I have a big problem with Autechre. I don't like it. Well, I think I don't like it. It's like food - lots of people saying 'this is really tasty, you should try it', and me saying 'ok, let's try it, sounds like the kind of thing I'd like' then finding out it's just...average.

Now I wonder if this is down to the fact that a lot of Autechre fans I've spoken to seem so precious about it. I keep hearing how influential they are, how so-and-so other band is an Autechre rip-off, how they're great pioneers in electronic music. My opinions seem to count for nothing to these people - I might like lots of things they like, but because I don't like Autechre, I don't count.

I dunno what it is - I like glitchy, melodic stuff, but Autechre seems just a square peg in a round hole for me. But I'll always give it a chance - anyone care to recommend some 'shallow end' Autechre stuff? Just don't tell me I have to like it.]]>