RECORDED MUSIC  (links to streams where possible)
Tim Hecker – Ravedeath 1972
Sun Araw – Ancient Romans
Skullflower – Fucked On A Pile Of Corpses
Demdike Stare – Triptych
Bee Mask – Canzoni Dal Laboratorio Del Silenzio Cosmico
Gang Gang Dance – Eye Contact
Mark McGuire – A Young Person’s Guide
The Field – Looping State of Mind
Jean Claude Vannier – Roses Rouge Sang

Please buy if you enjoy – support the artists.

LIVE MUSIC
Loren Connors – Café Oto
Johann Johannson – LSO St Lukes
Oxbow – Buffalo Bar
Steve Ignorant – Shepherds Bush
Keith Fullerton Whitman/Rene Hell/Heatsick/Andre Vida – CAMP Basement
Raagnarok – Bethnal Green Working Mens Club
Colorama – Dublin Castle

Bummers of the year were the tragic loss of Trish Keenan from Broadcast and the awful Field Day festival in Hackney.

2012 will see the release of our second album (Mayan calendar permitting).

A is for Astral Social Club

If you’ve never heard one of ASC’s brilliant and bizarrely-named ecstatic electronic noise collages you’re missing a treat. Neil Campbell’s genre-defying sound pile-ups range from warped ADD undanceable beat driven work-outs to shimmering multi-core power drones. I hesitate to use the term psychedelic because of the inevitable peace and love connotations but listening to this music is probably the closest to an aural hallucinogen I’ve ever got.

Campbell is a stalwart of the UK underground and I first ventured upon his music whilst he was at the helm of Vibracathedral Orchestra where the drone aesthetic was in strong evidence. Ever-evolving, he split from them in 2006 to proceed with this stellar monikered largely solo project. The chance to experience Astral Social Club live at the kind of volume that carries you into a synaesthetic maelstrom is one not to be overlooked and has been documented previously by me here.

Recommended releases:

Neon Pibroch (Important Records)

Trainspotter alert – the only tracks I couldn’t find on Spotify/Youtube were:
“Folk Ghost” Douglas Wood
“Prelude and Dawn” Basil Kirchin
“All Gone, All Gone” Palace Songs (The live versions on Youtube are awful!)
“Open Letter To The Older Generation” Dick Clark
“John Peel’s Voice” Delia Derbyshire with Brian Hodgson

Enjoy it kids!

The popularity of Céleste Boursier-Mougenot’s installation at The Barbican’s Curve gallery dictates a queue of at least 40 minutes length but a trifling test of your patience is a small price to pay for the delights held within.
The atmosphere of the introductory dark space with giant projections of fingers on fretboards and burbling electronic sounds is compelling enough but one is drawn quickly and magnetically to the end of this tunnel and the forewarned spectacle that awaits.

A turn of the corner reveals an almost starkly lit contrasting space consisting of pale wooden decking, tiny grass and sand dunes, and a number of raised sculptural figures. The occasional familiar clanging sound of amplified electric guitar merges with the twittering of a small host of zebra finches who are hard at work with the tasks of their daily life. The sculptural figures are a selection of electric guitars, basses and cymbals lying flat, strings upwards which act as perches for these tiny colourful creatures. As they eat, drink and attempt to nest amongst the steel strings and upturned cymbal plates an intriguing weave of sound is created.

Photography is not allowed and the welfare of the birds is strictly monitored with an authentic day and night cycle where visitors are banned from entry.

Highly recommended.

On a side-note, as I was in the area I thought I’d pop in to the Record Store Day event at Rough Trade in Brick Lane. As expected, the area was crawling with daft looking “hipsters” and the prospect of a 50 people long queue (to get into a shop!) sent me reeling off on a no doubt much more enjoyable walk home in the late afternoon sun. I later spotted this tweet from Rough Trade: “I like to say a big #rsd10 fuck you to the vile ppl selling the beatles/blur/ etc on eBay for silly money after buying it off us for £4.99 ” – well what did you expect??? A misplaced concern if ever I saw one – any berk willing to pay in excess of £4.99 for a Blur or Beatles 7″ deserves no sympathy whatsoever!

I will leave my thoughts on Record Store (shouldn’t that be Shop?) Day with the mighty Max Tundra: “Celebrate Record Store Day by buying a bunch of LPs, taping them for your mates and then returning them to the shop. #rsd10″

Certain people talk about “outsider artists” but Liam Hayes and his music seems to exist in a timeless bubble somewhere on the outskirts of the music scene, untouched by any trends or concessions to the present millennium. There’s a strange inevitability that; as he has for about 15 years or so, Hayes will continue to create music with an inexplicably select appeal as it grows in melodic richness and pop sensibility. In short, he’s one of those guys who should be huge. This is made even more evident as he and Jimmy kick into “Take A Chance” the lead-off track from “Bright Penny” and biggest hit-single-that-never-was of 2009 (or is it 1973?). The sound of the Fender Rhodes is almost uniquely evocative in the way it captures a specific era i.e. the odd pre-punk wilderness of the early/mid 70s mainstream and the use of two makes for an ideal method of articulating the sound of Plush. I’ve tried many times to pin down the influences that make up this sound but on the whole they remain fleeting and mercurial at best – I have heard hints of Brian Wilson, Curtis Mayfield, Burt Bacharach, Alex Chilton, Marvin Gaye & Neil Young (later we also agree on The Carpenters and The Doors with Jimmy). Regardless of this, Plush has a sound that vividly transports me back to an early childhood of chart friendly soft rock and soul soaked up through my little blue battery powered AM radio. But don’t let that put you off…Hayes has a voice that could blunt the most embittered cynic and tunes which make grown men smile rather than weep – it’s no mean achievement. There are highlights from all three albums tonight and the set is received rapturously by the small but unusually vociferous crowd.

Both of us are enthused and while I go off to chat to Alan whose label Broken Horse released the latest album, Matt takes the opportunity to collar Mr Jimmy (right) and congratulate him on the night’s performance. Plush have given Matt his mojo back and we join Jimmy upstairs for a(nother) pint, he turns out to be charming company and regales us with tales of his many bands and his sweetheart back home in Nashville.

By now, the evening has turned into “An Audience With Matt and Nige” as we welcome Liam Hayes to our bar-based chat show. Our protestations at his lack of more widespread acclaim are greeted mostly with bemusement  so we move on to  chords stretching over four frets, analogue recording,  his “daring choice of patent leather shoes”  (my words) and god knows what else. I have to admit, it’s all got a bit hazy by now but to his credit he’s either too polite to make his excuses and leave or we’re making some sort of sense – who knows? Anyway, I have a coach to catch to Bristol the next morning so it’s one for the road and off to flag down the sodding night bus. Happily, this is one of those rare nights that refuses to be spoiled by such trifles…

Thanks to Matt for his super “lo-fi” photos.

And here’s a clip from the gig I’ve just discovered:

Thanks to http://mapsadaisical.wordpress.com/ for this nice photo

Neil Campbell’s (a.k.a. Astral Social Club) set is the equivalent of ingesting a supercharged chunk of good acid during an electrical storm. As he plate-spins effects pedals and mic-manipulates layers of dense disjointed (near impossible to) dance (to) music, the visuals sketch out complex ever-changing geometric line patterns. Even the sound of a mobile going off during a subdued section doesn’t detract from this extended episode  of sensory euphoria. Sweet.

Skaters have cancelled so Alexander Tucker steps breach-wards with a set of looped cello narratives. I always enjoy his shows and always seem to catch him more by accident then design – this is no exception. The night is cut short as my companion requires a taxi to ferry us across London to last orders at a theatre bar – this, if nothing else is an excuse for tequila. Goodnight.

The shambling antics continue as he ineptly tunes the guitar, asking the audience for advice and stops the first number halfway through to get the bass sound adjusted. But when The Musicians Of The British Empire get their mojo working it’s electrifying; the primal energy and raw power reminds you why you fell in love with rock n’ roll in the first place. This is why a loud trashy guitar, bass, drums and voice remain such a potent musical formula – these are the base atavistic elements of rock n’ roll and they ain’t going away baby.
Childish has an amusing line in self-deprecating patter which belies his (and his band’s) abilities as they blast through a set of loud reductive rock which includes covers of The Who and Jimi Hendrix. This and the trash aesthetic that embraces the fetishism of vintage Hagstrom guitars et al* are the true signifiers of garage rock…just don’t call it garage rock. Billy’s assertion is that they are a rock n’ roll band, it’s the press that labels them garage rock because they don’t understand the tradition and lineage of rock n’ roll music.This punk-inspired theme of authenticity is something he keeps returning to which leaves me torn as I am equally prone to artifice in music as I am to the former. However, at the end of the day (to coin a crap phrase); authentic or not, great music will always ring my bell – so ding dong to Billy Childish and The Musicians Of The British Empire.

*The Musicians Of The British Empire even have their own (admittedly beautiful) set of upright Shure PA speakers which must be approaching 50 years of age.

Post-script
I couldn’t resist the opportunity to capture my cd in its full glory on the shelves at Rough Trade – humour me…

Without a doubt, the highlight of the night was Nisennenmondai, an instrumental Tokyo female 3 piece (like any of that matters). Using the traditional guitar-bass-drum line-up, they assembled heavily repetitive extended pieces which ended up sounding more like disco-tinged primitive techno than the “math-rock” described in the programme.  In fact, the least satisfying element of their set was when they resorted to a safer no-wavey rock sound for the last couple of numbers. If anything, at its best their sound was in debt to Manuel Gottsching’s guitar experiments such as E2-E4 (which foresaw the birth of minimal dance music) and also to the heavily sustained playing of Michael Rother in Neu! Anyway, enough of my yakking – they’re a highly individual and enjoyable combo that deserve to be seen.
Other highlights were the Flower/Corsano duo whose electrifying Shahi Baaja and drum improvisations kicked off the afternoon and thankfully avoided blowing out the power like the last time I saw them. Thought Forms proved a hit with their blend of distorted shoegaze melodies a la MBV/Mogwai. Kim Hiorthoy delivered a sweet set of chunky hyperactive techno but sadly only to a room of about 30 or 40 people as most were off witnessing yet another incarnation of Sunn 0)))’s dull doom racket (Thorr’s Hammer). Final word goes to Skullflower with their cranium obliterating wall of noise that resembled “Metal Machine Music” forced through a meat grinder. To describe it as music would be a long stretch, it’s not even a drone as there aren’t any real notes to speak of.  There’s nothing to be “enjoyed” here (although a perverse few will no doubt attest to differ) but like witnessing a burning building, it holds a hypnotic compulsion that kept me rooted to my spot for 30 minutes or so and that’s only to be saluted I suppose.

Tune into Rhubarb Radio for streams of some of the weekend’s sets and see ya there next year…

Enjoy…