Some Friendly

How great is this? Straight outta St. Alban's...



Friendly Fires sound like Slowdive fronting a tropicalia band, they're named after a Section 25 song (possibly), and they are fantastic, despite my wife telling me she thought they were singing "Jump in the Poo". This song has put a huge smile on my face. That the video is impossibly gorgeous is a bonus.

It comes out next week, I believe.

http://www.myspace.com/friendlyfires

When the Levin Breaks

After (of necessity) wallowing in the post-punk era for a while, where better to turn than some mid-90s obscure post-modern classical music?

I'll admit that even though I have both of the albums Todd Levin made in his short musical career, I know next to zip about the man, so I'll have to waffle around this. But I can tell you that his swansong, DeLuxe, is an audacious and occasionally astonishing album, melding high camp, science-fiction, opera, and whip-smart pop sensibility, and featuring a picture of the composer bouncing around on a space-hopper on its sleeve. Which was possibly a first for Deutsche Grammophon, the Rolls Royce of classical labels, and the imprint on which DeLuxe was released in the mid-90s. I mean, you wouldn't catch, say, Herbert von Karajan doing that, would you?

Levin had previously come to my attention in 1992 as the composer of Ride the Planet, a rather less metropolitan set of compositions that used guitar and keyboard textures (i.e. traditional rock tropes) in the service of classical methods. That album appeared out of the blue on Philip Glass's excellent and much-missed Point Music label*. Just in case the rather ethereal sleeve (see left) didn't tip you off that you were in the presence of art rather than common-or-garden rock and/or roll, the sleeve notes were written by Jenny Holzer, who also helpfully provided all the song titles. These include the snappy "In a Dream You Saw a Way To Survive and You Were Full of Joy" and "It Is Heroic to Try To Stop Time". The music? Oh, I nearly forgot. Imagine Michael Brook fronting Pink Floyd and you wouldn't be far off.

However, some three years later, Levin had gotten a haircut, a smart suit and a job at Sotheby's (according to the sleeve of DeLuxe), as well as a change of label. Luckily for all fans of post-modern whimsy, he found time to knock up some compositions inbetween pricing up gewgaws at the auction house. I've included a couple of his works below. Blur (presumably not named for the Britpop chancers) is quite audacious, and somewhat giddy-making. You're also getting a 6 and a half minute snatch of the incredibly arch, and knowingly annoying, Todd Levin, the autobiographical third track on DeLuxe. The unedited track is 35 minutes long and may a) try your patience and b) screw with my monthly bandwidth allowances, so you're only getting an edit of it. If anyone is really desperate to hear the whole thing, drop me a note. And yes, that is the theme tune to Space 1999 interpolated into Todd Levin at the start of the track. In fact, if you listen carefully, I reckon you might just be able to hear the kitchen sink being thrown in too.

If anyone can shed any more light on the whereabouts of the mysterious Todd Levin, again, drop me a line.

Download Blur (Fragrance Free Mix) by Todd Levin mp3 (deleted Aug 2009)

Download Todd Levin (DG Ultramix) by Todd Levin mp3 (deleted Aug 2009)

A contemporaneous review

The New Composers- Levin, Andriessen, Bang On A Can etc.




* Which reminds me of my one and only Philip Glass anecdote, which I'll now gratuitously shoehorn in. I once spoke to the man himself briefly-- I'm sure it's etched on his memory. Anyhoo, it was a record signing; he'd just brought out The Heroes Symphony and was signing copies. My brother was and is a big Glass fan, so I got Phil to sign the CD "To Big Al", Big Al being my brother's nickname through childhood. "Big Al, huh?" mused Big Phil, "I wonder, did your brother ever meet Little Al, who used to run a record store in Greenwich Village?" "Not unless Little Al ever visited Thornton Cleveleys," I replied, to general bafflement.

Jive talking.

I've just returned from a foreign holiday, where I was privileged to hear, among other Euro-pop nonsense, a cover version of Jive Bunny and The Mixmasters' That's What I Like, which, as readers of a certain vintage may recall, consisted of hits by Chubby Checker, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis and Chris Montez given the then-fashionable MARRS treatment (i.e. sampled, scratched, mixed and collaged).

The cover version was clearly played by a band (rather than sampling the original records); they even sang in cod-English with a Spanish accent. All of the stuttering bits of Jive Bunny's original were kept intact.

One question. Why?

Cherry. Oh Baby....

And so without further ado or a don't, Cherry Red's Pillows and Prayers. There's not much left to day that hasn't been said before about Pillows and Prayers (often involving a combination of the phrases "chart-topping", "winsome" and "Kevin Coyne") so I'll just post a quick track from said album in hopes that you'll buy the thing.

XOYO by The Passage is, as anyone listening to John Peel in 1983 will know, one of the shoulda-been hits of the era, and sounds a lot like Soft Cell if Marc Almond's preferred reading matter had been Brave New World rather than the collected works of Sacher-Masoch. Though since I've heard the lyrics in high-fidelity, rather than on crackly late-night AM, I've realised exactly why it could never have been a hit (Dick Witts' playful, polymorphous visions proved something of a bar to daytime radio-play, I imagine).

Like the Some Bizzare Album (below), Pillows and Prayers has recently been re-released for the umpteenth time, and garnered plaudits from Q Magazine at this year's Q Awards (Catalogue Release of the year, apparently). So if you haven't yet got a copy, it's not too late. Though you will have to pay a little more than 99p, I'm afraid.

Download XOYO by The Passage (mp3) (deleted Aug 2009)

Buy The Passage CDs

Buy Pillows and Prayers

Random Access

I’ll quickly round up my accompanying pieces for an article I wrote in John Cooper’s Scream City no. 4 (now sold out, I believe). I had intended to write these while the zine was still on sale. What on earth made me think I could increase my miserably poor blogging rate over the summer? Oh well; another lesson learned.

In case you’ve only just joined us, the article was about sampler albums of the post-punk era, and I still need to blog about Stevo’s Some Bizzare Album, and Cherry Red’s iconic Pillows and Prayers.

First up, Some Bizzare [sic]. Whatever you might say about Stevo’s business practices (and some people have been less than complimentary), he could certainly spot talent, and this album features early tracks by Blancmange, B-Movie and Depeche Mode, who all decamped for other labels, as well as acts that Stevo managed to retain such as Soft Cell and The The*.

While Jell didn’t go on to fame and/or fortune, they were one of the more interesting acts on the compilation. Though “they” is perhaps not the correct word here, Jell being another nom-de-synth of Eric Random (né Eric Ramsden), a bit player in some of the more interesting music that came out of the early 80s, including sides by Cabaret Voltaire, Durutti Column, The Tiller Boys and his own band, the Bedlamites. Their (his) contribution to the Some Bizzare Album, entitled I Dare Say It Will Hurt A Little, is available below for your downloading pleasure.

Like On-U Sound’s Pay It All Back Vol. 1, the album used to go for silly money, but no more. It has recently been re-released with the original 12 tracks being supplemented by bonus material from The Residents, The Normal and Fad Gadget. So buy it and keep those pesky ISPs off my back.


Download I Dare Say It Will Hurt A Little by Jell (mp3) (deleted Aug 2009)

Buy Eric Random's CD

Buy Some Bizzare Album


* mea culpa, I said in the Scream City article that The The had also left. Not true; they stayed loyal to Some Bizzare until the mid-90s. I think I was remembering that my copies of Infected, Mind Bomb etc. all sported the Epic logo. Stevo, as was his wont, tended to licence Some Bizzare’s recordings to majors, The The to CBS/Epic, Soft Cell to Phonogram, Cabaret Voltaire to Virgin, etc. Incidentally, I’ll always have a soft spot for The The’s fellow Epic recording artists Wham! because they said in 1986 that Infected was their favourite album of that year. George Michael also used to say that his and Andrew’s favourite LP of all time was Closer by Joy Division. I wonder if that’s still the case?

BTW, did I ever tell you story of my friend Audra and her encounter with Matt Johnson? No? Another time, perhaps…

Steady On

While we're at it, I heard the redoubtable Gideon Coe comparing media darlings the Hold Steady to Bruce Springsteen the other day. Well, I can just about see the similarity. But to my ears, the Hold Steady (on their new single at least) occupy the exact midpoint on the musical continuum that connects latter-day Butthole Surfers to Bruce Hornsby and The Range.

See if you agree:

Stainless Steel in the Hour of Chaos

First off, apologies for leaving you hanging. I've been out and about in the real world (of which more in future posts).

We'll get back to the sampler album tracks shortly. In the meantime, though, I've had Neon Neon's excellent new single going round in my head for weeks now, and it's finally released this week, with accompanying video. The video (below) segues partway through into the single's B-side, Trick For Treat, featuring Spank Rock and Ron Jerem.....sorry, Har Mar Superstar... but don't let this put you off.




Okay, so the Psychedelic Furs and Thomas Dolby have called to say they want their sound back. But when a group has the balls to create a concept album (about John DeLorean, no less) in this age of instant downloads and short attention spans, that has to be applauded. The people at the Mercury Music Prize obviously think so-- said album (Stainless Style) received a nod for best long-player of the year in the Mercury shortlist yesterday.

If you like I Told Her on Alderaan, there's every chance you'll enjoy the short mixtape that Gruff and BoomBip of Neon Neon provided to Pitchfork. It outlines their influences for Stainless Style, which include Neil Young's derided Trans, Janet Jackson and Debbie Gibson. Hooray! Download this here.


(Bonus pic: two pre-teen vandals in front of a DeLorean. In Coventry.)