ANALOGUE ORIGINS

Interesting to read Simon Reynold's re-appraisal of the seventies 'cosmic' synth sound in yesterday's Observer Music Monthly. Not the sort of thing you might expect the Blissblogger to go public with, but still I bet most of my fellow contributors* here have been touched by this particular branch of electronica at some point in their lives. Kek has his fondness for Tonto's Expanding Headband. No doubt Loki has taken the odd 'shroom assisted flight to a Tangerine Dream soundtrack. Perhaps Psychbloke had a brief flirtation with that hairy Greek Vangelis in his youth. I've touched base with all those artists at some point (I recall the infamous frizbee throwing contest with a copy of Vangelis' 'China' back in my school days) but long before I ever discovered the hipster vanguard it was Jean-Michel Jarre who first seduced me into the realms of pure electronic sound.

Appropriately enough, I discovered Jarre whilst on holiday in France around the turn of the eighties. One of my Dad's friends allowed me to have a listen to his new gadget - a clunky item about the same size and weight as a house brick called a 'Sony Walkman'. The cassette was Jarre's "Equinox", and I can honestly say that my young mind was utterly blown and my senses completely ravished by the electronic sounds emanating from those daft little orange spongy earphones. What I heard during the twenty minutes I was allowed to use the Walkman probably coloured my future tastes more than anything else. The swooping filtery analogue melodies, the pitter-pattering electronic percussion, the sense of floating through entire new galaxies of sound...an audio rush that I've been trying to reach again and again ever since.

My love affair with Jarre was fairly brief. It lasted, in various states of intensity, through to the mid-80s "Zoolook" period (or so I thought - but when I checked earlier I found that I also had vinyl copies of the later "Rendez-vous" and "Revolutions", so perhaps my interest lasted longer than I care to remember). One of my favourite Jarre artifacts is also the first thing of his I ever bought - a 7 inch single celebrating his record-breaking one million audience for the Concorde concert in Paris. It features a live version of 'Equinox 7' that I prefer to the studio version because its a bit faster and the rhythm section is more prominent in the mix, giving the track a driving urgency, that's more immediately recognisable as a true sonic precursor to the electronic dance music we take for granted today...

Jean-Michel Jarre - Equinox 7 (live at the Concorde)

*Contributors?! You're having a laugh, right? Even Loki seems to have lost the will to update this blog...where is everyone..?

The Perfect 4 Notes

One day, when all the churning is done and my ears are ready (they need to be oiled) I'm intending to make a complete album of tracks based around my favourite four note sequence - the slightly lilting der dah de dahh as heard on thousands of songs in my head and quite a few outside it.

Here's one of them, perhaps my favourite song of last year that I never got round to mentioning.

Asobi Seksu - New Years

A Yousendit chordochromatic tension-breaker

It's a small piece of wonder that progression, it taps right into my psyche, it always makes me feel happy and content and as luvved-up as I ever managed on Ecstacy. In fact, every time I take anything remotely psychedelic nowadays (i.e. mushrooms, spaghetti bolognese that's been left three days too long) I hear it, even when it's not playing (or else, it's always playing ).

It's the perfect 4 notes.

The Endless Not

They just sort of carried on.

Listen to Journey Through A Body, their last studio release before Part Two: The Endless Not, and you'll hardly notice the seams. Organic Weetabix. It's like they've simply taken an extended 25 year breath between the end of Oltra la Morte, Birth and Death and the beginning of Voice Of Silence, a breath that's seen a legion of copyists fastforward and die, that's seen the grime of TG's 'industrial world' disappear to the pacific rim to be replaced by digital carpet sweeping and odd job titles (soon there will be a Minister of Anti-Social Insecurity).

And so, here come TG, all guns blazing, straight into the first track which is resolutely ironic in that Genesis never shuts up; his voice broken up into Balance Shards (think A.Y.O.R or Aural Rage's Make Room For The Mushrooms), dipping in and out of the mix like the best TG live you never heard. West Indian Pepper Sauce. Later, on Almost a Kiss and Rabbit Snare and even the title track, Genesis will return to the softer creepiness of the early PTV stuff but you almost hear the release of steampunk as Gen's manipulated voice rises through the fog - he's glad to be back and we ought to be glad to have him.

To a certain extent, the album hinges on what you think about Gen's vocals. Marmite.

Yeah, we know he can't sing but there's something about his voice I love; it's like a broken human being dragged through a hedge onto some newly laid tarmacadam. It's plaintive, delirious, disturbed and slightly dorky - a killing combination when surrounded by the whorls of sound that TG drive up. Tortelloni. His voice is all over this album - you hear it even when it's not there.

TG still sound like themselves, after all this time. No one has successfully re-created their sound and, while they're not exactly pushing new ground here this return to a better version of their old sound (the improv. indulgences of the Journey album thankfully gone) is exactly what's needed in an era where noise no longer annoys; someone to be a little thoughtful and, well, considered about it. This is the sound of 4 adults, working over musical demons, resisiting the urge to recalibrate, sticking with their own understanding of what's out there and what needs to be in. Wolf Eyes, Black Dice etc better take a long hard look...

Throbbing Gristle - Greasy Spoon

A Yousendit Rebirthing Gene(sis) Pool

Out Out Out

During the bi-annual Loki family musical re-education session yesterday, right in the middle of my earnest, ill-meaning lecture "Electronic Noise 1974-2007: A Panapoly of Parallaxes"*, the littlest Lokis (6 and 9) suddenly fell into fits of giggles as Non's "Out Out Out" came on. I'd been explaining the transcendental nature of noise music and they'd already shown a decent appreciation (as measured in parental glow and ice-cream scoops, thrown Pavlov(a)-style at the little mutts) of Basinski's Distintergration Loops, some early Bianchi/Bennett collaborations and almost the entire TG Part Two: The Endless Not (of more later) but I had a feeling that Non was going to be trouble and so it proved. All my hard work blown away when the littlest Loki of them all looked up, mid-hysteric, and asked:

"Why does that man keep yelling 'Ouch!' If he's hurt himself the first time , maybe he just ought to give up?"

I have to say, she has a point.

Non - Out Out Out

A Yousendit Crowdpleasing Yellathon

*Probably not free at Goldsmiths University as part of the Noisebauten Centenary