Mr Poo Sky

Jeff Lynne seems like an affable bloke. He always comes across as a normal guy with a huge talent who has nothing to prove to anyone. He made the Electric Light Orchestra (ELO) a phenomenon in the ‘70’s and rode the wave of stardom from the bleakest parts of Birmingham to the brightest lights of Los Angeles. He has written and produced some of the greatest pop songs of the 20^th century and has collaborated with The Beatles, George Harrison and Roy Orbison to name drop but a few.

So why in the name of god has he resorted to producing the cynical pony that is “Mr Blue Sky”? Is his Los Angeles mansion costing him a fortune to air condition and he can’t afford the electricity bill? Lynne justifies the existence of “Mr Blue Sky” in the same way Mike Oldfield defended the re-recording Tubular Bells: new technology and experience means the flaws of the original can be rectified and a long held dissatisfaction can be eradicated. But as with all such re-recordings, people love the original recordings so much that a modern version is going to have to be very special to even come close to matching the original.

I for one don’t like these new versions. The opener “Mr Blue Sky” is OK, but suddenly ends where the extended coda of the original took the song into a dream like fantasy. Sure, the song is Lynne’s to do with as he wants, but as he points out in his liner notes, “Who’s in charge, you or the song?” For me it’s the song; and Lynne is trying to wrestle back too much control. Most tracks rumble by as just flat versions of the originals with the exception of “Telephone Line” and “Showdown” which I single out for special criticism. The only track to be improved is “10538 Overture” which was aptly the starting point for the band and the end of this album. Let it be the end of ELO.

Scissor Sisters Live

Until last night I had never seen Scissor Sisters live. But as Ana Matronic phrased it: Boy, I was bent over a barrel last night. It was not only the outstanding musicianship on show from the band, but the energy and sheer sense of fun that made this an outstanding performance.

As Jake danced around peeling off his clothing (a la Andy Bell circa 1988) and Ana whipped the crowd into action you couldn’t help but be drawn in by their enthusiasm. A great set list saw all the old favourites played with the assurance and self confidence of a band that have been performing together for ten years. Special mention also goes to the backing singers who were quite briliant when allowed to shine.

Wikipedia describes Scissor Sisters performances as “controversial or transgressive”, but I saw no evidence of that whatsoever last night. All I witnessed was great musicians and in an inclusive and fun loving atmosphere. Scissor Sisters live come highly recommended.

Pet Shop Boys, not my Elysium, yet

Awaiting the release of a new Pet Shop Boys album is always a difficult time. Are they going to dress up in silly outfits or grow their hair long and scowl in shades? Is the music a series of electro classics or is it a guitar driven dirge? So many questions to be answered.

With Elysium due to be released next month I was on tenterhooks until I heard it. Now I have listened to it a few times, I will pass my considered opinion. I will start by saying I hope this new album grows on me; a classic slow burner. The first impressions haven’t been good. The Andrew Dawson production seems to drag the sound of the album down and can hardly be considered fresh in the same way as its predecessor “Yes”. The whole album is very ‘down tempo’ and brooding: a pop tour de force it is not.

The opener “Leaving” is as upbeat and “pop” as this album gets, and thus becomes the logical choice for their second single cut. “Invisible” sounds out of place as the second track and kills any atmosphere the opening track may have created. Don’t get me wrong, I like the song very much, it is just in the wrong place in the running order. Next comes the first single “Winner” with the fun of “Your Early Stuff” close on its heels. Here Neil treats us to snippets of the acerbic comments he has (presumably) received in recent years in the same way as he did with “Yesterday, When I Was Mad” in 1993. Not a new idea admittedly but entertaining none the less.

“Face Like That” sees Neil complimenting the looks of an unknown individual whilst Chris turns his synths back to the sounds they used in 1988 (and that is a very good thing). This track is the logical opener for the album but, in this crazy running order, it is lost at number 5. “Breathing Space” is one of those sweeping, orchestral tracks that highlights what outstanding songwriters Messers Tennent and Lowe are, whilst “Ego Music” and “Hold On” do everything they can to undermine this statement. Here the album loses its way and the quality of both the production and the song writing takes a sharp downward turn. “Hold On” starts well enough but soon turns into a toe curling pastiche of the worst musical you have ever heard. “Memory of the Future” tries to return us to electronica nirvana, but the memory of the previous three tracks is just too much for it to overcome. “Everything Means Something” is intricate and sounds like it should have been sung by Elbow: not a natural fit for the Pet Shop Boys. However, “Requiem in Denim and Leopardskin” is as natural a fit as is possible for Neil and Chris, but not a logical end to the album for me.

To make a version of “Elysium” better for me, I would chop out “Ego Music” and “Hold On”. I would then take the tracks in the order of

1. Face Like That
2. Winner
3. Leaving
4. Your Early Stuff
5. Requiem in Denim and Leopardskin
6. Memory of the Future
7. Invisible
8. Everything Means Something
9. Give it a Go
10. Breathing Space

But what do I know?

I just hope it grows on me and that I can begin to cope with “Hold On” in the same way as I do “Happiness is an Option” and “Release” et al.

The death of the physical single

Things change. Music has moved on. The days when an artists released their singles as physical discs are almost at an end. And it upsets me greatly.

I have collected records by the Pet Shop Boys for 25 years and their singles have always been important epochs for me. Every release evokes a memory or is associated with a person, a place or a point in time. I still recall the thrill of going into a record store the week after a single was released to buy the Remix 12" ('It's Alright' and 'So Hard' stick out for some reason). Import singles were like some magical exotica with different covers and remixes that always cost far too much. I still marvel at the cover of the 'DJ Culture' 12" and the double sleeve edition of 'Suburbia' is a work of art that I treasure. In short, it isn't just about the music these discs contain; it is also the experience of owning and buying them.

The fact that Neil and Chris had to persuade EMI to release a physical disc of 'Winner' is a stark contrast to the myriad of single formats that were being released  in the late 80's. We are losing an art form and the soulless click of a mouse on iTunes or amazon doesn't feel anything like walking in to Our Price and seeing a display stand bursting with shiny new 12" singles.

Yes, vinyl and CD singles are not totally dead, but they are on the endangered species list. I for one, will miss them more than I ever thought I would.

Into the blue: a loved track

OK. So what happened in 2005 that was so important? Pope John-Paul II died. Tony Blair was returned as Prime Minister. The Live 8 concerts were held. Some wacko surgeons in France performed the first face transplant and we decided to put Saddam Hussein on trial. Strangely none of these events have left a mark on me and never enter my daily life. So if nothing of extreme importance happened to me in this year, why in the name of God did I miss the release of the Heaven 17 album “Before After”?

You may find this a curious statement; so let me explain.

I like music, more specifically I love electronic music and I adore good electronic music above almost anything else. I have ‘loved’ 123 tracks on last.fm and they are all worthy of this accolade. However, few are more admirable than the 124th and latest selection: “Into The Blue” by Heaven 17. Whilst this track was released 7 years ago, I only heard it in the last few weeks and I can't explain why this should be.

Martyn and Glenn. Nobody is sure where Ian is.

Heaven 17 were always The Human League’s weirder half brothers and nobody pretends they sold anything like the same number of records. But then they never really set out to be especially commercial. Heaven 17 seemed to record the music they liked and waited for the rest of the world to catch up. Like many others I never really did catch up and left them behind in the early 90’s – dance music exploded and I got lost in 'The White Room'.

In the new millennium I delved into the electronic music that influenced me and the dance music I had become enamoured with. Yet Heaven 17's more recent work seem to have remain at arms length and “Before After” went un-purchased. It turns out it was my loss.

A recent buying spree (yes, CD’s not mp3s) saw me purchase the missing albums from Heaven 17's back catalogue. Ironically, the album "Before After" consists largely of dance music that sounds ten years out of date for 2005 but is actually pretty damn good when I put my rose tinted spectacles on in 2012. There are many good tracks on this album but I am consistently drawn to “Into the Blue” like a moth to a flame. It's difficult to define what draws us to one song in particular. I'm sure some will listen to the track and wonder why I would become so obsessed by it. I could see why you may think it is a one trick pony and is nothing without Glenn's sampled "doo wap" refrain. But I don't care: it's my new "You Grow More Beautiful". Bliss.

Good but not gold

Some posts are easy; they just seem to write themselves. You get a thought in your head and it simply flows onto the screen. This isn't one of those posts.

Opinions amongst Pet Shop Boys fans regarding the new single `Winner` are divided. Initial reactions labelled the song `worthless chart fodder` and a shameless Olympics cash in. Others have pronounced the song to be ‘soaring’ or even ethereal. Yet almost everyone agrees that it isn’t the sort of track one would normally expect for a ‘first single’ from a new album. Winner is not a dance track and is more akin to ‘Home and Dry’ (I just hope to god the album won’t be like Release).

The first thought I had when listening to the track was ‘This is a shameless tie in for the Olympics’. Like others who have posted on the internet I can already hear it playing during a BBC Olympics montage and I’m not entirely comfortable with that. It’s one thing to find your song used on such occasions but to write a song almost for this purpose seems a bit cheap. Maybe its just coincidence that Neil and Chris wrote this song and decided it would be fun to release it at this time. Who knows?

I like the song but also think that it makes a poor choice as a ‘first single’. At the end of the day the ‘Olympics tie in’ aspect of its release leaves me somewhat repulsed and smacks of a commercialism that I wouldn’t normally associate with PSB.

Chip off the old block

I really don’t know what to make of Hot Chip. When I first heard “And I Was a boy from School” I thought I had found my new electronic music gods (if gods can be quirky geeks). With 2008’s “Made in the dark” I was sure the band had ‘come of age’ and that such a strong album would open doors. I even heard ‘Ready for the floor’ played on mainstream, daytime radio; heady days.

“One Life Stand” was good, but didn’t move them on either artistically or commercially; it sounded less cohesive and left me feeling a tad disappointed. Alexis Taylor’s solo album stunk higher than a kipper left out in the sun and anything labelled “Hot Chip Remix” is best approached with caution (but never as bad as a Caribou remix admittedly).

Thus I feared their latest offering “In Our Heads” could signal Hot Chip’s slide down the league of mediocrity into the relegation slots Simian Mobile Disco are intent on inhabiting. But the opening track “Motion Sickness” soon dispels the fear that the album is a complete loss. Alexis’s reassuring vocal floats over a kind of electronic soul track that is both eclectic and mesmerising (they even manage to throw in some 303 style acid riffs). The house tinged “How Do You Do?” sounds like it has been beamed in from 1988 via a Mylo remix. There is a smattering of duff tracks whose inclusion makes me wonder if their presence is simply to offer a blinding contrast to wonderful songs such as “Flutes” and the truly sublime “Let Me Be Him”. So a mixed bag, but ultimately one worth investing both time and money into.

It seems Hot Chip albums will never be consistent, but the highs far out weigh the lows. It will just take their record companies longer to generate that retrospective “Best of” compilation.

I came across a cache of old photos (well CD's actually)

The sheer volume of music I own means that sometimes I forget what I have. This might sound a bit strange, but it also means when you dig out a dusty CD box you can find a hidden treasure.

Whilst digging through The Beatles back catalogue, I unearthed a CD that I remember buying (for the confusing sum of £12.79) from an MVC store (remember them?) back in the 1990’s. Beck’s “Odelay” was purchased because I liked “Devils Haircut” I think, or maybe I was confused and thought “Loser” was on it; I don’t remember. However, I do remember not taking a liking to the album much and after playing it once or twice it went into storage for 16 years.

I decided to rip “Odelay” onto my hard drive and check it out; I’m glad I did. Maybe I have fallen behind massively (yes, I know I have) but this album sounds really fresh and contemporary to me. The majority of the tracks are interesting in their arrangements but there is also a greater depth to the song writing than the sampled loops and random noises might suggest. Tracks such as “Jackass” and “Hotwax” are surprisingly catchy and stand up to repeated listening. “The New Pollution” “Devils Haircut” were obvious stand out tracks / singles which are complimented by the more experimental sounds of “Where it’s at” and “Derelict”. Unfortunately Beck shifts into a poor pastiche of The Beastie Boys on occasions (“Novocaine” especially), but when you consider the album is produced by The Dust Brothers its no surprise. On the whole I’m really glad I unearthed this CD and recommend you revisit it should you own it.

Simian Mobile Disco do it again

Never has the phrase "Throw the baby out with the dish water" been so aptly displayed than in the recent output of Simian Mobile Disco. 

OK I get the whole 'change of direction' mid career crisis their extensive DJ sets have brought about; but why forget the tunes? The first two albums we full of cutting edge electronica coupled with slightly more pop orientated vocal work that made for a varied and entertaining package. 

This new album 'Unpatterns' is another techno driven dirge that doesn't really go anywhere. Like last years 'Delicacies' offering, this new album lacks the innovation of Underworld and has none of the melody of The Chemical Brothers work. This album's focus is so tightly set on the dance floor that its entertainment value is somewhat limited. Don't get me wrong, I love listening to dance music in all kinds of environments, just not dull boring dance music.

CD Rot

A few weeks ago I wrote about the idea of buying music largely as mp3's rather than in any physical format. I am failing miserably in this endeavour as the ever growing pile of amazon packages my postman is delivering testify. 

 

Now, the idiocy of my expanding CD collection is no longer solely limited to lack of space. I have begun to encounter the first incidence of what I think is CD rot in my collection. On opening up an Eurythmics CD I must have bought sometime in the late 80's, I noticed it had a distinct brown/copper tinge that I do not remember it having. I can find no pictures of the actual CD of this release on the net and am slowly convinced it is succumbing to bronzing. The disc does have a tendency to produce read errors but is also scratched a little so I can't identify if the problem is the scratches or the presumed bronzing. 

Either way the CD is easily replaced and is not especially significant. However, if one day I open up the cupboard and find a few hundred CD's unreadable and brown, I am not going to be impressed. If these discs are bronzing because of a known manufacturing error should the record company not offer us recompense? Faulty workmanship of any other sort would demand redress.

Whilst a blown hard drive may wipe out my music collection, I can at least make multiple copies of my music to offer some sort of safety net. If my CD's rot and become unplayable I am stuffed. This digital collection idea makes increasing sense. Anyway must go. Postman is at the door with a package from amazon.

VCMG "Ssss"

Forming one of the greatest British bands back in the early eighties obviously wasn’t enough for Vince Clarke and Martin Gore. 30 years on they have decided to bury their differences and try again. Anyone with even as little as a passing interest in electronic music should have been eagerly awaiting the release of the VCMG album “Ssss”. So now it’s here what are we to make of it?

Well, despite having two of the greatest writers of pop songs this country has ever produced in the group, VCMG have gone down the ‘techno’ route. But it’s definitely techno with Depeche Mode DNA. Comparisons with “Speak & Spell” are a little wide of the mark, but there is liberal use of some wonderful analogue synth sounds that hark back to he early days of their careers and draw on their shared history and love of synthesizers.

I found the first single “Spock” a moderately entertaining slab of minimal techno that didn’t hold my interest for long. Yet in the context of the album the track sits nicely alongside its counterparts and sounds a much better prospect. There are some good tracks on the album with stand outs such as “Skip this track” and “Windup Robot” proving that these pop pioneers know just how to get us dancing.

This is my kind of techno – bright, mid tempo, funky, evolving and electro-pop tinged. Highly recommended to even none DM/Erasure fans.

CD's - what are they good for?

About 5 years ago I threw away a wheelie bin full of CD’s. I had listened to them once and had no intention of listening to any of them again (you know “Eskimos and Egypt” “Spacehog” - shit like that). I needed to slim down my collection as I had moved house and didn’t have as much storage. It turned out to be a painless process and I have never thought “Oohhh where is that ‘Phil Collins Hits’ CD?” only to find it has been binned. I don’t regret anything – so why do I find it so hard to swap to digital music and let go of the rest my CD’s?

I keep a back up drive of my MP3’s as I’m worried that should my hard drive die, I will loose all of my music. Yet, I know I always have the back up of the CD’s. But each of the boxes in my spare room contains around 50 CD’s. There are 27 boxes - so that’s about 1350 CD’s (I have sold/thrown away/given away about as many in recent years too). That’s a lot of weight and storage space for a ‘back up for a back up’. It’s ridiculous.

Increasingly I am realising that the CD’s might be a 'back up' for a lot of my music, but there is an increasing amount  which I only own in digital download format. Sometimes this is because I have no choice and the music is only available as a download, sometimes it is out of choice, but I am becoming increasingly comfortable with the idea that music doesn’t have to come on a black or silver disc. I never play my CD’s or vinyl anymore and only use them as a source to rip. I play music from my phone via Bluetooth in my car and home; I use last.fm on my Xbox and play MP3’s constantly from my PC. Thus, it is totally illogical that I continue to buy music in physical formats.

I am trying hard to give up physical releases and weaning myself off by only buying digital downloads of artists who are new to me (such as Chairlift’s “Something” this week) and sticking to physical releases for artists I love and consider myself a collector of (Pet Shop Boys, Nine Inch Nails etc etc). I hope I can stay on the path to CD sobriety; my spare room is small enough as it is and I really don’t want to have to throw away that Sven Vath CD – oh no, hold on a minute……..

In time?

Until recently I always thought it was pretty easy to play in time with a sequencer. Since acquiring an electric guitar I have realised it is in fact, not that easy. Yet syncopation or just plain ‘playing out of time’ drives me mad.

Nowhere is the difficult nature of playing in time with a sequencer more painfully illustrated than on records made in the late 70’s. Take ‘Beat the clock’ by Sparks – you an almost hear the drummer cursing the producer (the inimitable Giorgio Moroder) as he frantically tries to keep up with the pulsating bass sequence. I always cringe at the timing on Gary Numan / Tubeway Army records such as “Me! I disconnect from you” and especially “We are so fragile” where the poor drummer stands no change until the guitar comes in to cover the millisecond variations in timing which sound so wrong.

 

Of course Mike Oldfield couldn’t stand things being out of time either and even went as far as re-recording “Tubular Bells” so that it was quantized. But would “Replicas” sound as good if it were re-recorded? Well “Tubular Bells 2003” would suggest some bits would sound better and others not.

Personally I would love it if the multi track was stuck in pro-tools and quantized. I can hear some people saying “Oh noooooooo, that’s takes away from its charm and naivety” or “It’s the only human element in an electronic recording and adds something”. Well no, sorry, it just spoils it. And whilst yes, I now appreciate that it’s hard to play along to a click track or sequencer, it doesn’t mean I want to listen to it.