March and April on my iPod

Such a mad couple of months, with gigs, new albums, work and flat-hunting all combining to mean I have to combine them both this time for an iPod extravaganza! Which means you all (sigh) get a bit longer to absorb my recent post on memory music. Lucky you!

Obviously, given my recent blurb on "memory music", hauntology and hypnagogic pop have been major aural focuses for me this month. I won't re-elaborate on the artists and records I gave detailed appraisals of previously, but must say that March's album of the month has to be Sadly The Future is No Longer What it Was by Leyland Kirby (History Always Favours The Winners, 2009). A titanic 3-hour monolith that sees Kirby echo his work as The Caretaker, but using Basinski-esque piano loops, rumbling synths and crackling noise in lieu of samples to carry across his sense of mournful nostalgia. Sumptuous. Also note that The Caretaker's Persistent Repitition of Phrases (HAFTW, 2009) has now been given a CD reissue, well worth picking up (this is a good opportunity for me to laud the excellent Manchester-based indie record store, Boomkat: www.boomkat.com, where you can grab this masterpiece, along with many others).

Altogether more immediate in its approach is Gary War's Horribles Parade (Sacred Bones, 2009), one of hypnagogic pop's stand-out albums, along with Dragging a Dead Deer Up a Hill by Grouper (Type, 2008), Island Diamonds by Pocahaunted (Not Not Fun, 2008) and Rifts by Oneohtrix Point Never (No Fun, 2009), all mentioned in "Memory In the Grooves". Horribles Parade is a fast-paced, totally warped and psychedelic rocker that sounds like very little out there. Under the deluge of weird sonic effects that drench his guitars and synths, you can just about detect some retro grooves, equally evoking brittle 60s garage-psych (such as 13th Floor Elevators and The Seeds) and icy post-punk in the Joy Division/Magazine vein. The rhythm patterns, bashed out on crude drum machines and supported by clouds of muffling synth noise, are overlayed by War's bleary guitar riffage, half-way between the Neil Young of Year of the Horse, and Manuel Gottsching's psychedelic solos on Ash Ra Tempel's debut, but recorded in a run-down student bedsit on cheap 8-track recording equipment. As for the vocals, it may take you a while to identify them, such are the watery effects that weigh them down, making it sound like they were recorded in a swimming pool. But concentrate and you will hear the dreamy leitmotivs and rhyming notes that highlight that, for all the effects and processing that he uses to soup up his songs, Gary War is really something of a pop songwriter. It's singular and unwieldy, but still classic pop-rock. A great introduction to hypnagogic pop's weird delights.

Also on Sacred Bones, and released in 2009, was the second album by Wisconsin-based band Zola Jesus, called The Spoils. Truth be told, The Spoils sits only at the edge of hypnagogic pop, it's backward-glancing haze owing less to Oneohtrix Point Never's ectoplasmic snatch and grab style than to the retro-nostalgia of indy rock's top acts who turn to the 80s to make up for their own lack of inspiration. Zola Jesus, however, are inspired, and let enough lo-fi spectrality permeate their record to make it sit nicely, if not always accurately alonside Horribles Parade or Island Diamonds. Their influence is the Gothic rock of the early 80s, a feeling mainly reinforced by the close similarity in vocal style between Zola Jesus' Nika Roza Danilova and such heathen chanteuses as Siouxsie Sioux and Diamanda Galas. The music is also dark and oppressive like the best Goth, but comes at you through a haze of lo-fi production values and stripped-down electronica, instantly channeling the gloomy forests and ramshackle backwater towns of Danilova's home state rather than towering Mittel-Europan castles or industrial cityscapes. Films like Silence of the Lambs or the dank prose of Cormac McCarthy's The Road are mirrored in the brittle riffs, crackling effects and monotonous beats, taking The Spoils beyond simple retro, by-the-ropes rock'n'roll and into something elusive, ghostly and mystical.


Equally evocative -oddly- of fog-laden forests, grim trailer parks and crumbling colonial houses in America's hinterland is Indignant Senility's Plays Wagner (Type Records, 2010), a monolithic slab of scratchy drone that owes a huge debt to the work of The Caretaker, whilst still managing to sound rather unique. As the title suggests, Indignant Senility's Pat  Maherr has taken the bombastic "classical" music of Richard Wagner and "played" with it. The result couldn't be much further removed from Wagner. Using old vinyl recordings of the German's music, and then twisting, turning, distorting and pummeling it beyond recognition, Maherr has created a massive gothic soundscape, where snippets of the old master's strings or orchestras seep into the mass of electronic drone like shafts of light, or ghosts of long-dead German aristocrats, heroes and princes trying to muscle their way back into reality. It's an exhausting listen, at 78 minutes in length, but a truly troubling and haunting one.

Closer to home, Manchester duo Demdike Stare have also been communicating with troubled spirits, as displayed on their peculiar debut electro gem Symbiosis (Modern Love, 2009). Their background is in turntablism, dub and techno, but Symbiosis only hints at such modern considerations, as it is one of the most oblique and troubling techno albums around. The pace is slow, sinister, starting with the insidious drone of the aptly named "Suspicious Drone", in which cracklng electronics seep around you like liquid knives, before segueing driftingly into "Haxan Dub", a slow-burning bass rumbler. Other tracks, such as "Jannisary" show an influence from Iranian music, but as with the techno and dub, this influence is ghostly and hard-to-grasp. Symbiosis is ultimately the product of England's haunted North-West, the sounds evoking, for all their modern synths and computers, the desolate Lancashire moors and dilapidated former industrial towns. They also betray their fascination with the grimmer side of English mythology: ghosts, haunted houses and witchcraft and similarly sign-posted, not least with the duo's name, a reference to one of the most famous witches in English history. Dark and impenetrable, Symbiosis does not have the immediacy of Broadcast's work, its closest hauntological cousin being Eric Zann's windswept epic Ouroborindra (Ghost box, 2005). 

Of course, none of this "Hauntology" is really -really- that original, and it owes a large amount to the experimental turntablism of Liverpool-born composer Philip Jeck, a maverick genius whose odd, experimental and ambitious records are benchmarks for anyone wanting to explore the possibilities of found sounds, old records and modern technology. His modus operandi appears consistent: he uses old, broken vinyl records and plays them old two dilapidated turntables, filtering the result through a gaggles of effects boxes to create powerful and disorientating sound collages. On Stoke (Touch Records, 2002), the results range from drifting ambience to epic avant-garde sound experimentation, the untiting factor being the endless crackles and hiss of his ageing vinyl. Some contain found sounds (could they be field recordings?), others hint at long-forgotten melodies and tunes. On "Pax", possibly Stoke's high-water mark, the fiercely manipulated voice of an anonymous blues singer is twisted into a mournful, disembodied loop, all traces of his or her words long gone, but the deeply affecting meaning preserved and even enhanced. That each of his albums is culled from live performances only enhances the sense that Philip Jeck is a singular genius in modern experimental music.

Also only on the fringe of modern hauntology (in fact, the clearest link is the fact that he is currently signed to Mordant Music, home of, well, Mordant Music) is Vindicatrix, aka David Aird, whose Die Alten Bosen Lieder album gets the "Best Album of April" award, even though it was released at the tail end of 2009. Compared to most hauntology, which takes pop culture and filters and distorts it into some sort of weird experimental soup, Vindicatrix doesn't even bother with the "pop" side of things. As the title suggests, this album sees Aird indulge his love for traditional German lieder, and translated into English it means "The Old Wicked Songs", which is pretty evocative! But do not expect dry, earthy folk tunes with traditional arrangements. Die Alten Bosen Lieder is a constantly surprising and unsettling album. What it shares with Mordant Music and other hauntologists is its breadth of influences and sources, as well as a basis in electronic music. At its core, it could even be seen as a stripped-down techno album, although not one that would be played in Fabric anytime soon. The first track, "Dein Schwert" is a modernised cover of a Schubert piece, reshaped to fit to a pulsating electronic beat, oppressive synths and futuristic effects, whilst Aird rasps and moans in German like Blixa Bargeld on downers. It is direct and dramatic where Mordant Music are elusive and cheeky, the sinister undertones of their Dead Air (Mordant Music, 2006) being pushed right up front. At times Vindicatrix evokes the "sound blocks" of Scott Walker's recent The Drift (4AD, 2006) album, but filtered through shades of dance, industrial punk and trip hop. At others, notably the three central tracks, "Lack of Correspondence", "Rubbing Pages Out" and "Insulinde", calm ambient passages are juxtaposed with brittle sonic experiments, much like David Sylvian's Manafon (Samadhisound, 2009), but perhaps with a greater sense of urgency and menace. Throughout the album, there is a sense of drifting through a dystopian urban wasteland, with the only sounds coming from a clapped-out transistor radio that randomly spits out half-formed tunes beamed from a decaying antenna lost in the fogs of time. As such, whilst Die Alten Bosen Lieder doesn't have the the clear nostalgia of vintage hauntology, it still encapsulates the spirit of half-remembered memes and musical cross-pollination that has made the genre so enthralling. And with its twisted humour and decayed post-modernist aura, it stands as one of the great albums of the last decade.

It wasn't all hauntology and backwards-gazing American oddball pop, though. I also -finally!- discovered the brilliant drone of Phill Niblock, one of the modern masters of minimalism, alongside Terry Riley, Pauline Oliveros and Tony Conrad. On the superb and awe-inspiring Touch Food (Touch Records, 2003), Niblock doesn't play, instead bringing in the likes of Zeitkratzer's master saxophonist Ulrich Krieger to give life to his deceptively simple compositions, the first three of which revolve around the adventurous manipulation of three staple instruments of modern music: sax, piano and violin. Under Niblock's direction, the instruments are double-tracked, distorted and reverbed almost beyond recognition, creating massive drone canvasses where each shift in tempo, volume or effect, even slight, becomes a flash of golden light in an all-envelopping cloud of sound. The images that come with the CD (one of the best booklets ever) show pictures of Chinese chefs at work, a weird contrast with the slow-paced, minimal music, but one that enhances the strangeness and disorientation of the music. This is an extremely long -and deceptively loud- album, but it's well worth letting it subsume your senses.

Also operating in the realm of minimalist drone is/are Eleh, a completely anonymous act who, after several limited vinyl-only releases, have/has finally released a debut CD album on Touch, Location Momentum (2010). This is not some sort of Residents-esque elaborately-orchestrated elusiveness. No-one, even the guys at Touch know who Eleh is or are. Could be a woman. Could be a man. Could be a band. Could be one person in a basement with some equipment. All we know is that Eleh use(s) vintage analogue equipment to create subtle drone epics of remarkable originality in a genre already over-saturated by countless sub-par releases. The first track on Locomotion Momentum, "HeleneleH", which may be a cheeky clue as to Eleh's identity, is the heady wine of drone music, and one that encapsulates the crafty sense of humour behind Eleh's mechanical obscurity, as a single unending drone note on a sine-wave generator is sustained for the best part of 20 minutes. Just as you're getting frustrated with the sheer bloody-mindedness of the piece, it suddenly shifts to a note, catapulting the listener into a new aural environment. These drones, whether the high-pitched white noise of "Circle One: Summer Transcience" or the rumbling organ distortion of "Observation Wheel", which evokes the best of early Klaus Schulze, are all-encompassing and drift imperceptibly into your synapses, enslaving you to their unexpected rhythms and shifting sound worlds. I don't care who Eleh is or are, so long as he/she/they keep delivering such superb CDs!

No such gentle disquiet from Venetian Snares, the peculiar moniker taken by Canadian techno producer Aaron Funk. His superb Rossz csillag alatt született (Planet Mu, 2005) is a classic of modern drum'n'bass, proof that the genre can still evolve and explore new territories. For Rossz csillag alatt született (which I still can't pronounce, despite getting taught how by my Hungarian flatmate) sees Funk exploring his Hungarian heritage in a most startling way, as he samples sounds from traditional Magyar folk tunes, twisting the sounds of violins, plucked cellos and full string quartets around ferocious breakbeats and driving synth noises that clatter along at hundreds of beats per minute. It shouldn't work but it does with some aplomb, especially on the magical "Öngyilkos Vasárnap", where Billie Holliday's sampled voice singing "Gloomy Sunday" (originally written by Hungarian composer Rezső Seress) adds a sense of melancholy and gloom, perfectly enhanced by Funk's doom-laden beats and distorted string samples. If you're not a fan of hardcore junglism, it's probably best to avoid Rossz csillag alatt született, but be warned, you'll be missing out on a truly unexpected techno gem.

Ending on a movie note, I want to send a big "you da man!" out to Michael Haneke, whose brilliant films Funny Games (1997) and The White Ribbon (2009) rattled my world one rainy Sunday in April. The former is one of the most disturbing pamphlet movies on the subject of violence you will ever come across. The principle is creepily simple: an upper middle-class couple and their young son rock up to their lakeside holiday home for a nice summer break, only to have their home invaded by two creepily polite and sadistic young men who torture them psychologically and physically with chilling detachment. Using "unallowed" film-making techniques such as breaking the fourth wall, Haneke highlights the sense of voyeurism and the dehumanising effects of violence in movies. Here, it is mainly off-screen, but the cold cinematography and lack of any sensationalisation make it seem all the more brutal. But that asks a fundamental question: why do we like our violence to be sensationalised?

The White Ribbon may just be Haneke's most perfect statement yet. Filmed in colour which was then digitally converted to black-and-white, it's a beautifully-crafted masterpiece of subtle disquiet, as the inhabitants of a German village in 1914 watch their daily lives descend slowly into chaos as random acts of senseless violence start to punctuate the well-ordered calm of their puritanical society. Haneke deliberately piles on the doubt and mystery, never allowing us to truly know who is commiting these acts, whilst also unveiling the hypocrisy and perversion that lurk continually under the well-mannered exterior each character projects. It's cold and studied, and deservedly won the Palme d'Or at Cannes last year, a just reward for one of the world's most enthralling directors.


Phew! What a slab! I'll avoid mentioning the dismal election result here in the UK which sees us foisted with the most unpopular and uninspiring government in decades, simply because it's just too dire for words. Proof if ever that voting in this country means fuck all. Still, it was worth it just to see Lembit Opik and Adam Boulton's meltdowns. Almost...