Jenny Hval - Blood Flight

Why now? (I've been actually asked this) This is when I'm listening to it.

There are so many of these...Scandinavian things... great drips of beauty (occasionally uglybeautiful) that seem to be ripped from their landscape... All that Finnish freefolk, the gurt Popsweeps from Sweden...

And, perversely, a lot of it sounds perfect as a soundtrack to Murakami's 1Q94, since they both share world where Little People might be pulling at the seams.

I feel like I've just come into the middle of my own conversation. Sorry about that.

Belgotronics

This could have been. Might still be. There's scope for all kind of ____________otronics, I think. And Belgium, Brussels particularly, seems like a good place to start. Remove the vocals from this and you've got something very interesting. Though, of course, removing the vocals is a lot harder than it seems.

Prince Rama Re(tard)mix Review w/ Transglobal Underground

For those that really can't be arsed with all the arsing, there's the proper review here.

"Rest in Peace”, the opening track of the latest Prince Rama album opens with a slightly strangulated House howl, the kinda thing you might have gurned circa 1990 (where were you?), which is then savagely dismissed without a thought; a discarded, non-devotional whore… the drum rumbles begin and then the Dead Can Dance Indian sweeps and suddenly we’re deep into what might be a psychosexual memory of Sinbad movies… a primary imprinting on chiffon and chant and painted ladies inside golden pots, concealed by red smoke… I should be clear, this isn’t intended as a slight… I’ve been playing this album a lot, perhaps because I’m imprinted that way too…

...you are too...

...especially if you think you're not...

...or maybe you're looking at this and thinking: I don't know a single bit of A Clockwork Orange argot; I'm not from your world, pops...

...I've never heard of Leela or the Tight Fit...

In which case; I'll try and explain.

No punctuation, or at least no full stops…only accurate way to understand where this record is coming from… it’s breathless dandyism, artful sabre-tossing and ultimately a little melancholic because the sounds of the east appropriated here (or rather, churned over; this isn’t a Transglobal Underground-style appropriation) are the sounds of Holly/Bollywood’s understanding of the east pre 9/11, when it was exotic and tameable… when no one was even thinking about atrocities or Hassan I Sabbah…when the evilest Arab you saw was Tom Baker in full-make up…

...actually I think I'm getting the odd sniffs around the internet (OK, so far just Jonny Mugwump) that Transglobal Underground might be due a comeback and surely now in the midst of MaybeRetromania (not read that book yet so I'm not really sold on the premise) this would be a perfect time for one of those timeless/utterly time-dependent shaggy Club Dog bands to make their comeback... the music definitiely has never gone away (found different beats perhaps, but not that different beats) and, actually, I find it hard to think that Transglobal Underground in particular could go away, being less a band more a condensation of a certain time, a few uncertain spaces... for you, this could be (INSERT Megadoggish drug-binge here), for me it's aligned to Brighton, sometime early-to-mid 90s where I saw Transglobal Underground and where the whole Eat Static inspired psytrance was about to lift off... in just a few days ethnic drones would be smeared over everything... right then, you could only look back and see, what? Monsoon?

(though you could of course blame Coldcut and Ofra Haza; odd how few picked up on this, or how long it took for everyone to align)

So... Prince Rama.



…it’s not all Sinbad (a lot is Sinbad); “Trust” starts off with an airplane drone and then add voices that sound like they’re trapped in another room before building into some cargo cult version of Gary Numan circa Cars, with some added flourishes from Danielle Dax…

I hear a version of She... the Rider Haggard version... unfilmed but out there...

…the Dax references continue into “Incarnation” which may be a soundtrack to a James T. Kirk honour duel on some far off Essex planet* while “Portaling” starts somewhere inside a mountain during the heart-sucking scene of Temple Of Doom and then sort of detours into handclaps and, bizarrely, pub rock-soul circa 1974…

<<< I've read reviews since writing this and they seem to know about Prince Rama (art school Krishna commune )... and it seems like the associations, these pretty little stabs at meaning that I make, are only semi-appropriate but...

Fuck it; I'm getting more and more annoyed with research-based reviewing. Occasionally, I give a shit about the context of a band (or what they meant to say) but mostly I don't; with this kind of brainfizzing confection, it's all there, it's in the open, there's nothing that re ---- search could bring to the party... >>>

Hectoring over...

You’ll get a lot of fun out of this record; its brain is grimy enough to past muster with all the Pocahaunted TDK fetishists but its bones want to be in the middle of a Bollywood set; lip synching and twirling imaginary balls of bird fat… it has colour, has odd breadth (and odd breath)

But almost no punctuation.




*This phrase was in the original review but I wrote it so long ago I'm struggling to remember what I meant by Essex Planet... it could be a typo but then I don't believe in typos so I must have meant something by it... perhaps I was thinking of Essex quarries (in all senses of the word, or two at least), perhaps it was just one of those sniping non-sequiters that I occasionally shovel into my word piles just for the steaming hell of it... I'll get back to you on Essex planet,,,

The Roots Of Goa Trance: Uchronie

Well, I know people kick the hell out of me for keeping with the faith (and it's a bigger leap than Kierkegaard took; a bigger leap than Yves Klein ) re: dodgy India-Alien obsessed PsyTrance - see, for example, Goan Wurries - but reading this via Blissblog opens a few interesting sideswipes and alternate histories - imagine where we might have ended up with another combination of:

(from here)

A selection of the acts played by Laurent and others in Goa from 1983-1989

Acts Of Madmen, Alien Sex Fiend, A Split Second, Anne Clark, Android, Arthur Baker, Art Of Noise, BAD, Bappi Lahiri, Blancmange, Borghesia, Boytronic, Cabaret Voltaire, Carlos Peron, Cassandra Complex, CCCP, Chris & Cosey, Code 61, Cyber People, DAF, Decadance, Den Harrow, Depeche Mode, Devine, Dr Calculus, Ecstacy Club, Egyptian Lover, Electra, Fad Gadget, Fatal Attraction, Force Legato, Front Line Assembly, Front 242, FockeWulf 190, Giorgio Moroder, Hard Corps, Hashim, House Master Boys, Hypnosis, Icarus, Information Society, Ironic Remark, I Start Counting, James Ray and The Performance, Jellybean Benitez, Jean- Michel Jarre, John Carpenter, Karen Finley, Keith Leblanc, Koto, KLF, Kraftwerk, Krush, Lama, Laser Cowboys, Laser Dance, Liaisons Dangereuses, Man Parish, Manufacture, Mark Imperial, Mark Shreeve, Ministry, Mittageisen, Moev, Morton Sherman Bellucci, Moskwa TV, Neon, Neon Judgement, New Beat Express, New Order, Newcleus, Nitzer Ebb, N.O.I.A., Nux Nemo, Off, Orient Afair, Peter Richard, Poesie Noire, Portion Control, Public Relations, Psyche, Richard H. Kirk, Robotiko Rejekto, Sandy Marton, Severed Heads, Screaming Trees, Signal Aout 42, Simple Minds, Sisterhood, Skinny Puppy, Space Opera, Spectrum, Soft Cell, Syntech, Tackhead, Tangerine Dream, Tantra, Telex, The Maxx, Time Zone, Torsten Fenslau, Total, Tribantura, Two Of China, Vicious Pink, Voyou, Yello, Zwischenfall, 400 Blows, 4You, 16 Bit...

You can see the nucleus of some really interesting things here; something similar to the plate-spinning antics of Stevo in the early years of Some Bizarre, something that could have eaasily diverted into an altogether stranger, more tentacled (tentacular?) beast...

It reminds me of some of the alternate timelines for Acid House that I imagined a while back - here mostly and then here (Where Richard NOrris has his say) - ... so many missed opportunities, so mnay angles yet to be explored... who's for suggesting Uchronie as the latest new genre? Music that purposefully re-imagines alternate musical timelines... starts afresh, sends signals down the line that don't get interrupted...

O Rang - Spoor

By the second album, I'd lost it. Even by the first album, Herd Of Instinct I was starting to lose it but Spoor seemed a genuine burst of skew-eyed otherness, in all the right ways. Whatever got tapped during the making of this, whatever barks and roots got steeped (perhaps just Gold Blend and sleep-deprivation), Spoor seems to just run with it; the music is as channelled as any I know and yet it doesn't spin off into 'my dad's bigger than your dad' (clue: he'll fucking die earlier) noodling, not even when the people involved are clearly excellent musicians, something that generally sends me swimming off in the other direction.

O Rang seemed to open something up and they seemed to have done it more or less accidentally. By the first album, the songs seemed more designed to impress and by the second album I'd completely lost the thread, as if somehow they'd recognised what they were doing and tried too hard to capture it (I can remember trying to capture the slow slurred Hamburger Lady TG sound in my bedroom when I was still at school and you could never get it right because it wasn't right).

Spoor pooled resources that it couldn't own. It sounded like everyone involved was making music during accute acclimatisation; it's music starved of oxygen or rather how music might sound when you're starved of oxygen and waiting to die. It's the music played secretly as Argentina are losing 6-1 to Bolivia. Jungle music up high. Dream-machine music.

Excellent Review of Herd Of Instinct here.