Review: Too Slow To Disco

For once I haven't pixelated or re-drawn the cover in a Ceefax style, as I want to talk about it at the start of this review and how it is a perfect window into what to expect on Too Slow To Disco from DJ Supermarkt.



Its grainy over-saturated blue sky, the iconic palm tree, the almost certainly 5-Star hotel in the bottom left-hand corner, indicates endless sunshine, convertible gas-guzzlers and a disregard for thinking too far into the future. We're in California, we're in the mid-70s and we're in the world of expensive funk-infused soft-rock, which has been re-evaluated and re-tagged as 'Yacht Rock' by crate diggers, record labels and taste-makers. We're talking The Doobie Brothers, Chicago, and Fleetwood Mac.

No longer verboten thanks initially to the rise of the widely successful Guilty Pleasures series and extensive sampling by Lemon Jelly in the early 2000s, this style of music has truly come in from the cold and into the warm embrace of hipsters through its influence on blog favourites such as Ariel Pink and Phoenix and to a certain extend on Daft Punk's ubiquitous Random Access Memories. This isn't even the first such compilation of yacht rock with Late Night Tales getting in on the act in 2012 with Music For Pleasure from Groove Armada's Tom Findlay (indeed Ned Doheny's Get It Up For Love appears on both mixes).



So let's put on our classics and have a little dance shall we? Except as explicitly stated in the title, the music on offer in Too Slow To Disco tends to chug along rather that strut, it's laid back rather than upfront, a piña colada rather than a Jägerbomb. And as with a night of just drinking elaborate fruity cocktails, the sugary sweetness and slick concoctions can leave you craving something with a little bit of grit or bite to cleanse the palate and means this compilation at times becomes too much of a good thing.

While Too Slow To Disco collates some interesting tracks (Browning Bryant's Liverpool Fool, Brian Elliot's Room To Grow, and Don Brown's Shut The Door) and has a solid ideological backbone, there are no exclusive edits or remixes on offer, so one could cut and paste this together if you so wish. Yet doing so would mean you'd be missing out on a beautifully assembled package (the LP version comes in a 2 x 180g yellow vinyl gatefold set-up) and I hope some weighty and witty liner notes (I'm reviewing a mp3 bundle of the album).

I for one will keep an eye out for volume two.

****

The vinyl version comes out Saturday 19th April 2014, while the CD and download versions are released on Monday 5th May 2014. T-Shirt bundles are available for pre-order now.

Johnny & Mary

Todd Terje's first album proper is out in two weeks and a few of the tracks from it have started doing the rounds including his collaboration with Bryan Ferry on a cover of Johnny and Mary.

Now while Terje's cover is lovely and glacial and Ferry's vocal fascinating and haunting, I find myself returning to Robert Palmer's original video. I've posted before about my love of literal videos and this is a fabulous example. A fabulous example with mimes in it. Brilliant.

White Sands

I recently dug out my decks and so my interest in vinyl has been reignited (don't hold your breath for the return of DJ Dim Parcio just yet though).

And when an email landed in my inbox today about the new single from Young Knives and that not only is it coming out on white vinyl and will be limited to 300 copies but that each sleeve will be unique I was rather intrigued; I do like a bit of coloured vinyl.

It also helps that the track is really good and has an interesting little video to boot.



P.S. Do I need a Young Knives tie for £5?

New Teeth

TEETH posted a new video last week, which I think is their first new stuff since 2011's Whatever.

And it's just as raw, electro and riffy as you remember.

Eye In The Sky

I picked up Metronomy's Late Night Tales off Amazon for £4 the other day (incidentally you can download a free Metronomy EP from Amazon called the Toe Rag Live EP at the moment).

The CD is worth getting just for the liner notes but the absolute highlight is soft rock heavyweight Eye In The Sky by The Alan Parsons Project...



Talking of Late Night Tales the next one, by Django Django, is out in May and if the last one is anything to go by (Bonobo's freaking brilliant effort) then it'll be an essential purchase.

FAQs

Task 003 from REDmatter is all about Frequently Asked Questions...

Ever Fallen In Love? - Buzzcocks



Is Vic There? - Department S



Has It Come To This? - The Streets



What Does Your Soul Look Like? (Part 4) - DJ Shadow



Where Is Home? (Burial Remix) - Bloc Party

Avey Tare's Slasher Flicks

Got Enter The Slasher House by Avey Tare's Slasher Flicks to review for next month's Buzz.

"The one out of Animal Collective who isn't Panda Bear has a new side-project with Angel Deradoorian (Dirty Projectors) and Jeremy Hyman (Dan Deacon) and all three audibly bring elements from their respective bands to this slow-burner of an album. On the first few listens the horror movie shtick is apt but eventually the noise and grating spectres drift away unveiling a beating weirdo pop heart akin to Ariel Pink. Lead single Little Fang and Duplex Trip alone are worth the ticket."



The album is out on Domino on April 7th and I gave it four stars.

A Reich Shower

I like to listen to BBC Radio 5 Live in the shower; its punchy output and rough AM sound suit the situation but yesterday they were talking about laser eye surgery for what felt like hours.

Rather than find something else on AM, I switched over to FM, flicked the tuner and stumbled upon something that sounded like Philip Glass. Sensing that this was the perfect time to try out Shazam, I learned that it was Tehillim (Parts Three & Four) by Steve Reich...

Loving Love Letters

I've now had a chance to listen to Love Letters properly and I've got to say it's a grower, but the tracks that I highlighted on my first listen are still the ones that stand out, namely...

Love Letters (love Oscar's tambourine skills)



Reservoirs (thanks for the link, Dayana)



And my personal favourite, Boy Racers



I also learned today that if you get the album from Spillers you get a free poster, dah!

Guinness' Surfer Is Old & Phat

It's Guinness Day on Monday or St. Patrick's Day as some of you may know it.

It's hard to think of Guinness and not recall some of their iconic commercials, the most striking of which was 1999's Surfer (yep it was 15 years ago - how old do you suddenly feel?)



As well as the horses in the waves and the poetic voiceover, it's Leftfield's thunderous and rolling Phat Planet that planted it in my young mind. It was probably the reason it was my first legal drink (holla at yo Gatekeeper).

Protocol

This week's task for REDmatter is "[...] to tell a story; this could be in the form of a 'how to' guide or even a 'day in the life of'. But here is the catch; you need to use photos as the main medium, with minimal amount of text."

So here is one of the routes that decides what music I blog about here...

FREE-DOOM

As well as making his own sweet Wallabees, DOOM's hook-up with Clarks Originals has also resulted in a new remix of Bookhead and is made up of recordings made on a visit to Clarks' factory in Somerset.

You can check out the accompanying video below and/or get the mp3 in exchange for an email addy here.

Ghost In The Shell Remix

I was always going to post about this even if it sounded like someone playing with a toy chainsaw while farting in the bath.

This is because Ghost In The Shell is my favourite anime if not close to being my favourite film of all time, and Making Of A Cyborg is its theme. It's also a beautiful piece of music in its own right.

Thankfully Rope hasn't been playing with a toy chainsaw while farting in the bath but has instead chopped and screwed Kenji Kawai's original into a machine-drilled bass bumper.

MP3 >>>  Kenji Kawai - Making Of A Cyborg (Rope Re-Interpretation) [Hot link from XLR8R]

Rebounding With Dornik

Crack (and a lot of other people) have posted about Young & Sick's rubbery Glass but while it's alright I was blown away by one of the tracks suggested by SoundCloud after I'd finished listening to it.

Usually I ignore these links, as their algorithms are usually a bit off for me but not this time; they suggested checking out Dornik's Rebound.

Now Dornik isn't new to me, heck he made my Top 10 last year (#9 with a bullet), but I can't get enough of his super-smooth 80s-influenced R'n'B.



I've must have played this at least 20 times today, good job I was home alone in the office.

Top 5 Things I've Heard Since I Started This Blog

My friend Gareth added me to Burning Red's REDmatter group and I've just seen that this week's task is a list post.

Every December I blog my Top 10 Things I Heard that year, so I thought I'd distil the lists down to a super-strength Top 5 so far (the year in brackets is when I blogged about it not necessarily when it came out, as you'll see).

5. Todd Terje - Inspector Norse (2012)

"Think Breaking Bad set in rural Norway with Jesse wearing an amazing (and I mean amazing) jumper and you get the gist of Todd Terje's new video for his funky spacey house bumper Inspector Norse..."



4. Telex - Moskow Diskow (2010)

"Moskow Diskow is a stupendous piece of dead-pan futuristic electronic disco music... from Belgium. It's the four-four handclap/fingersnap sound. It's the vocoder. It's the French (or Flemish, whatevs). It's the synths. It's the train motifs (the sister of Kraftwerk's bicycles?). It's the everything."



3. Amon Düül II - Mozambique (2010)

"[...] free-form, off-kilter German prog-rock [...]"



2. Danny Boy & The Serious Gods – Castro Boy (Somewhat Normal) (2009)

"I think I've found the gayest record ever [...] a clenched fist in-your-end-oh [...] Castro Boy is a truly remarkable track, a killer Italo-flecked HI-NRG floor shaker that screams shapes and sweat, mirrors and filth, intimacy and debauchery."



1. Rustie's Essential Mix (2012)

"Pitchfork can tell you why it's good or you could just use your ears..."



<< REWIND <<
Top 10 of 2013
Top 10 of 2012
Top 10 of 2011
Top 10 of 2010
Top 10 of 2009

Loopy Herbert

I was back in Cornwall recently and while I was being thrown around in my mum's Celica between Camborne and Falmouth, there was a documentary on BBC Radio 4 called The Art Of The Loop, which was presented by Matthew Herbert.

Sadly the programme has already dropped off iPlayer but you can still hear a clip...



This sent me hunting for Bodily Functions, Herbert's 2001 album that I used to hammer. To be honest, I'd not listened to it in such a long time that I thought I'd lost it, but on hearing its whoozy jazzy charm once again, it's gone straight into the stereo side stack.

Onyeabor In Bristol (Kinda)

I posted last week about Nigerian man of synth mystery William Onyeabor and I learned today that there's a super special event happening in Bristol next month.

I say super special as it's one of only two performances happening anywhere in the world. The night will consist of a galaxy of stars (yeah, what?) performing Onyeabor's music, including Hot Chip's Alexis Taylor, Pat Mahoney from LCD Soundsystem and Kele Okereke of Bloc Party.

GWTF 19: De La Soul & Dilla

GWTF = Go With The Flow

De La Soul have been busy this year celebrating the 25th anniversary of the stone cold 3 Feet High And Rising; they've given away their back catalogue, they're touring the UK in May and they've got a new album out too.

Perhaps the most exciting thing is that it looks like they're releasing a mixtape called Smell The D.A.I.S.Y with all the beats being J Dilla beats. Woof.

Metronomy Vs Soulwax

Following on from this, I went with dirty Amazon and their free postage (I also got Flying Lotus' last album, as I'm seeing him and Thundercat in Bristol in June).

The Rough Trade bonus CD has alternative takes of album tracks rather than new songs on it; if it had Soulwax's churning remix of Love Letters too then I might have got it from them...

Film: William Onyeabor

I've just watched a fantastic film over on Noisey about mysterious man of Nigerian electro funk, William Onyeabor and you should too...

First Listen: Love Letters

Metronomy's fourth album, Love Letters, is out next week and they've gone down the stream-the-whole-thing-on iTunes-route.

A lot has been made of where it has been recorded (Toe Rag Studios) and the rougher analogue 60s sound compared to the previous and pristine The English Riviera.

One thing that certainly is rough (and ropey) are the vocals on opener The Upsetter, which may be a statement of a new direction, or indicating the rawness to come, but actual sounds pretty bad.

Next we get the 6-Music-hammered I'm Aquarius, Monster and the stunning Love Letters. But the main reason I'm writing this, aside from my love of Metronomy, is the fantastic Boy Racers (around the 21 minute mark on the stream above). This wobbly and weird instrumental harks right back to Pip Paine, and with its squelchy synth bassline and double-handclaps reminds me a bit of Telex and that's no bad thing.

From there the album seems to fizzle out with the exception of the bleak and plinky Reservoir.

So while I'm not immediately smitten with Love Letters, I will still buy it as I'm now of that age where I only buy albums by bands I already like. The question now is whether I get it from Spillers for £9.99, dirty Amazon for £8.99 (plus AutoRip) or Rough Trade for £10.99, which includes an exclusive bonus CD.   

Lone Star

Been trawling though some old podcasts recently at work and one of the highlights was Daedelus' bonkers XLR8R mix , which you can download a mp3 of here but it's worth subscribing on iTunes for the m4As with the tracklistings.

It's thanks to that tracklisting feature that I was able to easy name Lone's Airglow Fires, a bangin' slice of... I'm not sure what category it fits into apart from a good one.