Woebot Goes Pop

Woebot: Argos from Matthew Ingram on Vimeo.

Don't imagine this will need much interweb promotion but Woebot goes a bit Dangermouse on this track, this little slice of Funkadelica; all subsex yows, gentle guitar licking, bass slaps and shimmer...even a slight Hair Metal slutiness about the drums and guitar interplay. He might not appreciate it (he might love it) but there's a hint of, gulp, Primal Scream about the eyes here...

For the record, I'm not a Primal hater, quite like the gruff little guy's drawl through americana, have even considered getting my 'rocks' off, at one point in time, when the lights were flashing, when synapses were snapping, when hot girls in cowboy hats were bouncing off the walls...

Primal Scream were also tough-looking guys; we tried to steal their rider once and dthey chased us right out the Festival. Looking behind, you tell a glasgae bolga was not far away from their minds...

Oh, the flips and fancies of the internet... I'd like to see where he's going with this... or where everyone's going with it...

It seems bold to go clean and musical in amongst the fluorescent grey sludge of yawnology, hypnodiscogs etc.

Gentleforce-s

Listening to Gentleforce - Learning To Forgive

There's something understated and creepy about this. Music on top, of course, but also between the lines. Not paid that much attention to this before but on headphones there's little slivers of melody and, well, insinuation. It's kind of anti-minimalism, maybe minimalism+

Must check out more of this; it's getting to be that there's too much music out there that is happy to be just surface.

Hope this track isn't a happy accident.


(NOTE: just noticed that Kek has already gotten here before me, lil' bugger that he is... and it seems like it's not a happy accident)

(NOTE+ and I just went over to the Gentleforce site and it seems like Ekoplekz is somehow involved as well, or at least lurking in the sidebars)

(NOTE++ So I guess that somewhere down the line this might not exactly be my discovery...)

For those MP3 diggers amongst you, there's a track here, courtesy of Who The Hell.

And I guess Feral Media and New Weird Australia ought to get a mention.

Finally, enough digging for now, there's a mix here, which features (is by?) Gentleforce alongside his influences...

I've just bought the CD, I think maybe some of you ought to, too... there's little stuff around out there that gets me; hope it's not the hallucinatory power of the 8.36 to Bridgwater...

From The Wytch Machine (and latterly via other, less mangled, devices)

TaggArt - 7 Songs

Tagged by Kek and Gutter...

"List seven songs you are into right now. No matter what the genre, whether they have words, or even if they’re not any good, but they must be songs you’re really enjoying now, shaping your spring. Post these instructions in your blog along with your 7 songs. Then tag 7 other people to see what they’re listening to."

No particular order:

Beyond The Wizard's Sleeve - Dig It

Play this at least once a week and never get bored by it. Most of it is probably pilfered from Krautrock past but it all fits together beautifully. This sounds a little like scrapings from the inside of my skull.

Bowerbirds - In Our Talons

Like the de de de's - great for summer cycling and singing along. There's a slightly whoozy quality to this that takes it to the darkside of twee. To watch, they have a long sideways way to go.

The Cure - Plainsong

It's all in the echo. Spacious and web-like. Got into this way after my Cure fixations of the late 80s, when I'd more or less abandoned them.

Ricardo Villalobos - Enfants

Addictive. Monolithic. Retarded. Wonderful. Hardly a song at all. The sound of something not moving. Slightly.

The Specials - Blank Expression

The last gig I went to was the mighty Neville Staples banging out Specials songs with delight that could be palped. Bounced around so much the soles of my feet were still pulsing two days later. Damn these rotten bones.

Whitehouse - Why You Never Became A Dancer

The only Power Electronics left on my iPod - got rid of the rest because it made me crash my bike, especially following on from some twee psychfolk. It's a great tune, one of their best. Apparently this is based on the Tracey Emin film, which doesn't put me off despite the fact that she looks like her own self-portraits.

Sigur Ros - Gobbledigook

Lower fi, less glacial than their normal fare, warmer and less distant, more akin to the slurfolk meanderings coming out of Finland. Quite beautiful, with a voice that always gets me in the guts.

Most of my internet mates have already been tagged so this is going out to people who probably don't even read this blog but whom I've been reading recently:

Ill-Ec-tro-nic

Headphonesex

TAPE

Microphones In The Trees

Ravens Sing The Blues

Because God Told Me To Do It

Wassonii

Meme Thing

Meme thing that's been doing the rounds, via Doppelganger and Kek and Gutter and Dom and everyone. 10 records that you don't want to admit are lurking at the back of your collection... or else at the lower end of your hard drive, obscured by deliberately incorrect MP3 tagging...

Most of these I've had Vinyl versions of, at one point or another and now retain in MP3 form at least. Irregular readers will know that many of my actual records disappeared or were scratched to pieces in a savage ex-girlfriend attack circa 1995.

1. David Essex - everything really, but especially Hold Me Close and the mighty Rock On.

2. Godley and Creme - Under My Thumb. The perfect single so far about a woman throwing herself out of a train. The electronic backing seethes with menance in a way that Nine Inch Nails never quite manage.

3. Iron Butterfly - In-A-Gadda-Vida. I'm just waiting for these guys to come back into fashion.

4. Paul McCartney - No More Lonely Nights. Because is reminds me of freezing my tits off waiting for a girl to finish her paper round. I had to jump out of a thirty foot tree because of this song.

5. Paul Young - Love Will Tear Us Apart. Not sacrilege at all. I prefer this to the original in almost every way. Lovely hair, put to music.

6. Natasha Bedingfield - Chasing Cars. The Snow Patrol cover that caught me in a loose moment and won't let go. Trust me, I've tried to shake it but the little fellah hangs on in there and keeps nagging at me. I find myself humming this on trains, sometimes with my eyes closed.

7. Mathew Wilder - Break My Stride. The sound of smug set to music. Later on, he became the voice of Ling in Mulan.

8. Marc Almond/Bronski Beat - I Feel Love. My first foray into the 10" maxi-single and the gayest record ever made, apparently. My second foray was a Gaye Bikers On Acid EP, which might be a semantic/linguistic trace for the Freudians / Lacanians out there to follow. My third 10" was Phorward, by The Shamen, which may or may not buck the trend. Actually, I still play this all the time, even when people are around so I'm not sure this really counts as a guilty pleasure. Still, like an 8 year old sitting on Kays catalogue underwear models, this feels vaguely wrong in a way I can't describe.

9. Divine - Walk Like A Man. See above. Triple it.

10. Phil Oakley and Georgio Moroder - Together In Electric Dreams. The first song I remembering being in love to. The girl looked a bit like Fallon, from Dynasty (the first one: see below) and never asked me to jump out of a tree once.



Records I didn't include because they were my parents': David Soul, Cat Stevens, Bread, Neil Diamond, Foreigner, Pilot (I love Magic too Gutter!).