Chimpomatic

Portishead

Third

Island

After a ten year hiatus, trip-hop pioneers Portishead are finally back with a new studio album - Third. Rumours have been flying around that this was in the works for a good 5 years, so it may come as something of a surprise to actually have it playing on your stereo. Reasons for the hiatus have never been explained, other than the members "keeping their heads down" with other projects. Beth Gibbons had the most notable success with her album with Rustin Man - Out Of Season, while Adrian Utley and Geoff Barrows have been mostly operating behind the scenes, producing and remixing bands as varied as The Pharcyde and The Coral.

The limelight is clearly a place this band don't like to be and the trauma that seems to be involved in them making music seems intense. Stepping back may have been the only answer, although by ducking out you can surely do little more than increase the pressure on your eventual return, which may explain the drawn-out production schedule of this third record.

With the driving drums of thumping opener Silence, the pressure builds immediately before abruptly pulling back as Beth Gibbons' haunting vocals quickly suck you back into the presence of your old favourite band. Where Dummy and Portishead had the big, expansive feel of epic movie soundtracks, Third takes a much more minimal and I suppose 'modern' approach. By modern, I mean 80's rather than 70's - as where the widescreen sounds of Dummy recalled Lalo Schifrin's 60's and 70's film scores for the likes of Dirty Harry or Bullitt, Third has a distinctive 80's sound - recalling the electronic horror scores of John Carpenter or the sci-fi future of Vangelis.

This is a record that makes very few concessions and takes no prisoners, which should be commended for such a mainstream, high profile release. The brash goobledegook electonic interruptions of Hunter, the distorted intro to Machine Gun or the abstracted Jazz solo towards the end of Magic Door do not make for immediate, easy listening - but every sound has its place and nothing feels overcooked. The superb production counterpoints every rough edge with a moment of magic, such as Machine Gun's  desolate, Blade Runner-like finale.

The Rip is the sublime high-point of the album - reminding us of everything that was so ethereal about Portishead's original output, but bringing a newer sound and dimension to the music. Starting with a rising electronic pulse, Gibbons' vocals lift the song up into the clouds before hypnotic, pulstating scales recalling the analog electronica of Jean Michel Jarre or Giorgio Moroder take over, letting the song fly off on its own.

Beth Gibbons' subsequent solo career seems to have upped her presence in the band, with some notable tracks focusing on the less-electronic themes she followed with her solo album - notably the wireless-radio-era sound of Deep Water. An album like this creates a demand for the sound you know, the sound you remember and the sound you love - but this new found eclecticism adds a further dimension. The highlights here certainly tick those retro boxes - but not without the introduction of some welcome new touches.

Bands like Portishead defined this sound, so it's no surprise to hear them pushing it further and moving it on - even with trip-hop at this mature stage. The anticipation for this record may have created a seemingly unachievable sense of expectation and in some ways I can't help but be a little disappointed. Every single track is not a bonifide masterpiece from start to finish, and some feel like they could have been developed further; but there are many highlights and it stands proud as an excellent record. The Rip is worth the price of admission alone and is one of several tracks to suggest that the highest of expectations can sometimes be soundly beaten.

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#CSF

14th Mar 2008 - 6 comments - Add Comment - Tweet

Youthmovies

Good Nature

Drowned in Sound

Youthmovies are an Oxford based quintet put together by Al English and Foals founding member Andrew Mears. After a series of well received EPs comes their debut album Good Nature, a distillation of the band’s various incarnations and the long graft of touring and festival playing.

The band cites King Crimson, Steve Reich and Sonic Youth as their official influences but there’s a lot going on in here and straightening out some kind of musical heritage is pretty pointless. In today’s musical landscape of retro-mania it’s refreshing to find myself perplexed and this is both the band’s strength and stumbling block.

There’s innovation aplenty here, songs that build and fragment, tease and frustrate; shifting from squalls of guitar, brass and heavy drumbeat to sudden, becalmed stillness. 8 minutes is a long time though and Youthmovies don’t shy away from extending their template of alternating (often conflicting) musical movements over such lengths. The effect is idiosyncratic and unpredictable but can be tedious in the same measure.

At it's most successful, on tracks like If You’d Seen A Battlefield, the band concede that melody is not a bad thing. The music slips between cascading guitars and rhythm driven brass, then erupts into a baroque guitar crescendo. It’s exciting. But the band’s habit of reducing lyrics to short phrases, repeated like mantras, expose a problem and in this particular song - a dangerous truth. ‘It’s not going well and it’s not going badly, it’s just going’, repeats Andrew Mears and he’s got a point.

Something for the Ghosts begins a 9-minute run by mesmerising you; shifting from wistfully repeated lyrics to tumbling guitar chords and building drumbeats. In many of these tracks, the changes of tempo and pace can become exhausting and ultimately a bit aimless. Here the song avoids becoming fractured and drives on, building ominously and with a kind of savage determination. It’s a shame then, when it hits the closing lines; ‘Motorway crash-barriers make me feel like we’re going to crash’. It’s not just that the words claim a kind of minimalist, poetic potency which is clearly beyond them but that in their delivery, Mears once again veers the sound dangerously close to Bloc Party territory.

Youthmovies tackle the label of prog-rock head on in their promotional material, then kind of do a little shimmy to avoid it sticking. They declare that it’s only ‘prog-rock’ to the ‘initiated’ but then spend the album trying to convince you that ‘progressive’ isn’t ‘a dirty word’. They’re right it isn’t and Good Nature does manage to get you onside. But equally they’re wrong to suggest there’s nothing pretentious about the swelling bombast and lyrical misjudgement which occasionally undermines the album. 6 tracks in, Good Nature hits it's stride and the journey’s well worth going on. There’s plenty more to come from Youthmovies I’m sure.

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#LG

13th Mar 2008 - 1 comments - Add Comment - Tweet

Various Artists

You Don't Know

Ninja Tune

Throughout Ninja Tunes 18 year history the Ninja Cuts compilation has been a landmark event in itself. The label has always prided itself on its varied array of artists working in more styles than is healthy which inevitably made a compilation that was both challenging and riveting. But where other Ninja Cuts have served to showcase the labels past releases this, the 5th in the series, has a far greater agenda. Aptly titled You Don't Know it aims to alter your preconceptions of what you think you know about this label, and it does this with ease. The main reason for this is that they now have 2 other labels operating under the Ninja umbrella and all are featured on this 3 CD compilation. Big Dada and the newest addition to the family, Counter, both radically side step the Ninja norm and when put together for the first time on one compilation the result is baffling. Long term Ninja institutions like Mr. Scruff, Bonobo and Coldcut sit alongside their Big Dada counterparts like Roots Manuva and Mike Ladd. Then if you chuck in new label Counter's poster-boy Pop Levi you really do start to question just what exactly is the Ninja sound.

But it's not just this amalgamation of labels that mixes things up here. This is not just any old best-of compilation, it showcases artists and releases from the past but rarely in their original form. Most songs are rare or unreleased or feature special edition remixes by artists such as Modeselektor, Tiga and Susumu Yakota. There are some live recordings from Cimematic Orchestra and inter-Ninja collaborations between Mr. Scruff and Quantic. If you're a dedicated follower of this label then this approach gives this compilation more importance and relevance but it can, at times, make for difficult listening. Not only has the tracklist been treated to a brutal visit to the blender but within each song there is radical alterations and mix ups.

There is so much going on here that it's hard to know where to start. There's a definite agenda running through each CD but it's so expertly disguised it reveals itself as more of a feeling than any coherent theme. CD 1 features what you would vaguely call the core components of the original label. Mr Scruff, Amon Tobin and The Herbaliser all feature but the highlight has to be The Cinematic Orchestra's To Build A Home. It's a treat on their new album and it's epic grandure really lifts this first CD. It's beauty is highlighted when taken out of the context of a concept album and put amongst the strange folk that surround it here.

CD 2 keeps things pretty regular with smooth cuts from Blockhead, Bonobo and RJD2. Kid Koala puts in an awesome guitar cut and paste extravaganza while Homelife's Seedpod makes a well earned return. We also get a remix of Coldcut's classic Atomic Moog. CD 3 really takes things up a notch and it's here where the 'You Don't Know' title really explains itself. Kicking off with Manuvadelics manic version of Roots Manuva's Chin High we're soon into nose bleed territory with The Qemist's drum and bass belter Drop Audio. We get guided through the more avant-guard vision of Big Dada with cLOUDDEAD and Mike Ladd and DJ Shadow puts in a rare and exceptional performance with the fantastic sample heavy Bring Madlib Up. The CD ends with a curios change up of beats with the house infused remix of Coldcut's Walk A Mile In My Shoes courtesy of Tiga and Switch's remix of Pest's Pat Pong.

Though all this really does convince the listener that we don't know it sometimes makes for an incoherent listen. Showing us that there is so much about this label that we don't know can also show us that there's a whole side to it that we don't want to know. Putting up old favorites then remixing the shit out of them can be a bit of a turn off but overall screams of bravery and the willingness to progress that has kept this label on top for so long. It's artists like John Mathias and Pop Levi that make this compilation interesting. They successfully remove it from the Ninja sound we have known for years and stop this sound from becoming a cliché of itself. They sometimes make the old sound, from the likes of Mr.Scruff, sound really dated and show that had this label not moved on with its own ethos and expanded its view with Big Dada and Counter then there really would be no need for it today. In the run of Ninja Cuts compilations this one is by far the most forward thinking and far reaching. It may not be as comfortable a listen as the previous ones but that's clearly not their intention. We may hit the skip button occasionally but we must eventually salute the direction of this label.

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#HHG

12th Mar 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet

Health

Health

American noise-rock is alive and well in the form of HEALTH, a Californian band who have established a cool reputation in their native LA by playing a lot of free gigs. Well, you've got a couple of choices when you go down the noise rock route - punky songs with walls of effected sound or arty sonic experimentation, with the latter being the more difficult to pull-off without sounding pretentious and willfully difficult.

I'm glad to report, then, that HEALTH manage the experimental side of things very well indeed. Sustained notes of pitched-up guitar drone happily alongside scratchy electronica while powerful patterns of drums boom from the reverb. There's not much in the way of traditonal song form, but the music is not lost or meandering - it's very focused and singular in it's approach, the sonic qualities and arrangements of note clusters given equal relevance to vocal sounds or sparse melodies. There are bursts of complex rhythmic exchanges, rather like a garage band in the style of Fantomas. The lyrics are mostly abstract and the vocals function as an alternative sound texture, which under the circumstances is exactly the right thing to do. Not for the faint-hearted or sweet-toothed, but for the open-minded this is a bit of a gem.

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#HarrisPilton

9th Mar 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet

School For Scoundrels

(dir. Todd Phillips)

The Weinstein Company

I wrote an extensive review for this on the back of an envelope while I was watching it a few months back.... but that was misplaced and is probably on it's way somewhere exotic by now.

In this Ealing comedy remake, loser Jon Heder signs up for confidence training at the mysterious School For Scoundrels. Teacher Billy Bob Thornton trains the boys in the ways of being cool, confident and generally picking up chicks - before setting his own sights on the object of Heder's affections.

Long story short: disappointing next to some of Billy Bob's better work, but not bad. The dude from Napolean Dynamite is pretty annoying in most contexts, and he's the main lead here - with Billy Bob more or less in a supporting role. As a bonus, Luis Guzman puts in his usual top-notch supporting role.

Once the actual competition between the two leads hots up things get a bit funnier, but it's a movie that's not quite sure where it's going.

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#CSF

7th Mar 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet

Hard Eight

(dir. Paul Thomas Anderson)

MGM

Aging gambler Sydney takes struggling John under his wing  - helping him raise money for his mother's funeral, then taking him onboard as his protégé. Just when things start to go well John's love for an occasional hooker gets him into trouble and Sydney's past catches up with him.

The Reno setting provides a nice downbeat counterpoint to the usual Vegas gambling movie but Anderson's art direction and cinematography style of expensive-looking-normality aren't quite honed yet, and the photography is often a little off the mark with focus and compositions. The movies strives for the unpredictability of something like David Mamet's House of Games, but the script is a little laborious, trying to be twisty-turny like Elmore Leonard but a lot of the characters just don't have the depth.

Gwyneth Paltrow is miscast as the hooker, but Phillip Seymour Hoffman and John C Reilly put in calling card performances that would lead them onto bigger things - even if it was Anderson himself who answered the phone. It's Phillip Baker Hall's movie though, and he exudes presence in every scene like a timeless star of the seventies from an alternate universe.

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#CSF

6th Mar 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet

White Hinterland

Phylactery Factory

Dead Oceans

White Hinterland is essentailly the work of one woman - Massachusetts based Casey Dienel. After a well recieved first album - Wind-Up Canary - Dienel has filled out the line-up of her band and returned with second album Phylactery Factory on the Dead Oceans label.

Dienel is from a singer-songwriter mould that has seen something of a resergence recently. We've seen this eclectic, quirky delivery from the likes of Taken By Trees, Feist, Emily Haines even Joanna Newsom, but it's hardly a new development. You could easily trace it back though the likes of Bjork or Stina Nordenstam and on to Laura Nyro, Joni Mitchell and beyond.

As is often the case with this style, Dienel's vocals do a seductive job of delivering their lines. There's a lot whispy talk of favourite trees, falling petals and old stone church's - but by her own admission the songs are rarely biographical and that distance seems to add a sense of emptiness to things that makes it a little hard to engage with.

Calliope works well, dropping the quirkiness and instead boiling down the best elements of Dienel's style to a more pure and simple sound - making the most of her voice to create an arresting track. The more jazz-orienteted sounds of brush drums, piano and double bass add some variation accross the album's incresingly familiar style and Napoleon At Waterloo offers a further attempt at shaking things up a bit, but it's too little too late.

It's not that the record doesn't get going, just more like it barely gets out of second gear and without the breathtaking originality of Joanna Newsom or the hook-laden catchiness of Feist, White Hinterland's efforts may unfortunatly blend away into the background.

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#NM

28th Feb 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet

Band of Horses

Koko, London

February 26th, 2008

Back in the UK for the third time in a year (and with more dates scheduled for July), Band of Horses have picked up quite a following since 2007's show at the Scala. After great support sets from MGMT and Sons & Daughters, the crowd went ballistic for Ben Bridwell's band of hairy truckers. The huge crowd response showed a lot of dedicated followers in the audience - showing that there may be hope yet that a band that has clearly never been made-over by a skinny-jeans promoting stylist can still crack the mainstream.

Cease To Begin opener Is There A Ghost? started the show and set the modus operandi for the evening: amp everything up to the maximum and rock it out. While that worked superbly for the harder rocking numbers like Ode To LRC or Islands On The Coast, the poor bass in the house sound system didn't take it well and pretty much every track was flattened out by the overbearing bass drum and guitar. Only Bridwell's powerful voice could climb out of the rumble, which unfortunately meant a lot of the subtleties of tracks like The Great Salt Lake or The First Song were flattened out and buried. Spirits weren't dampened however and the rock and roll energy of the band carried the show along on a wave of enthusiasm.

It's clearly Bridwell's band and following the personnel re-structuring after Everything All Of The Time that seems like a fairly natural order. Concessions were made to the new members with the first "fake end song before we probably come back on" - a barnstorming rendition of over-looked Creedence classic Effigy - before keyboardist Ryan Monroe stepped in to provide vocals on a new track in the encore, making for a welcome departure and a possible indication of territory a third album might head off into. With Bridwell releasing his grip of iron over the band, things were now flowing fast and loose and foot-thumping party tune The General Specific made for a fine sing-a-long before a flowing cover of Ron Wood's soulful Act Together.

This is a real, working band that are picking up accolades and knocking out good music in quick rotation. Hopefully this is still just the beginning.

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#Gig
#CSF

27th Feb 2008 - 3 comments - Add Comment - Tweet

Beach House

Devotion

Bella Union

With hazy lyrics, church organs, tambourine and triangle chimes, slide guitars and narcotic vocals the obvious comparison to be made on first listening to Devotion by Baltimore boy/girl duo Beach House is with Mazzy Star. Hand over a basket of dough, cheese, tomato and red meat to an American and they'll cook you a hamburger whilst an Italian will conjure up a pizza. In much the same way Beach House have managed to cook up a sound all of their own even if they have thrown the same ingredients into the mixing bowl. Where Mazzy Star are dusk, Beach House are the dawn. Hope Sandoval sings in tones of a last seduction or a siren calling ships to crash on the rocks but Devotion is the sound of waking on the beach in the moment between sleep and conciousness. The tranquil waves lapping on the shore herald news that the storm has passed.

Mazzy Star might well be the obvious reference point but there are more strings to the Beach House bow. The production on the likes of Wedding Bell is a salute to Brian Wilson and Pet Sounds, Gila is a respectful nod to Mercury Rev's Deserter's Songs and Astronaut has echoes of the Ronnette's singing Be My Baby. Thanks to a frazzled 2007 I failed to contribute to Chimpomatic's 'best of' list for 2007. Had I done so then my nomination for album of the year would have been Can't Go Back by Papercuts. If the bed-fellows are a reflection of the lover then the fact that Beach House are currently on a extensive North American tour with Papercuts comes as the highest recommendation.

If you like this kind of thing then you'll love Devotion, but if it's not your usual bag then it should at least be added to your library for Sunday morning come downs or lazing in hammocks outside your summer holiday Beach House. In a word it is - dreamy.

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#Muxloe

27th Feb 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet

Vantage Point

(dir Pete Travis)

Presidential assassin thriller that rewinds the Spanish action several times until you get to see what’s really going on/get bored/realise it’s all totally ridiculous.

That said, it’s quite enjoyable. One of those dumb rides that thinks it’s a lot smarter than it it, but then finally gives in and rounds everything off with a big chase and one of the funniest mano y mano declarations of love you’ll see in a long time. And it’s only 90 minutes, which is a real plus in the chimp book of not wasting your life watching duff films.

Dennis Quaid is the Secret Service guy who took a bullet for President William Hurt a few years ago, and still Hasn’t Quite Got Over It.

Matthew Fox has got some time off the Lost island to play the Agent Who Vouches For Agent Quaid cos he’s an old buddy and still trusts him even though he’s a bit twitchy.

Forest Whitaker is a tourist filming stuff with his SONY handycam (coincidentally, it’s a Sony movie too, what are the odds?)

Sigourney Weaver plays a hard-nosed rolling news producer making some Tough Calls. But then they forget she’s in the film and she disappears.

Said Taghmaoui was much better in La Haine etc.

“8 Strangers. 8 Points of View. 1 Truth (the end sucks)”
 

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#chimp71

26th Feb 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet

The Mountain Goats

Heretic Pride

4AD

If you've ever come in contact with our hip hop reviewer HHG you'll know it's probably not something you want to happen on a daily basis. He knows his stuff but he's a snob and thinks hip hop's the only music, not to mention his uncontrollable temper and borderline chauvanism. He's a valid member of the Chimp team but most of us here try not to have much to do with him for reasons already mentioned. So you can imagine my disappointment when his hulking frame approached me in the Chimp canteen one day last year. Standing there stinking of weed he asks, " Yo, Bear dude, who the fuck is this John Darnielle?"

Turns out his narrow field of musical experience was momentarily widened when The Mountain Goats frontman guest starred at the end of the recent Aesop Rock album. Much as I resent Darnielle for inadvertently bringing me into contact with my skunk soaked colleague it's clear that last years collaboration has opened the flood gates on Darnielle's own sphere of musical experience and brought out a thrilling surge in volume, tempo and excitement to this bands work.

Darnielle has always expressed a masterful penchant for storytelling, in few words he can evoke oceans of emotion, the slightest turn of phrase and he can explain a feeling or situation that you've been trying to pin down your whole life. When we last saw him he was struggling with solitude in the aftermath of a breakup in 2006's desolate Get Lonely. It's clear from the first drum stick count ins that the volume has picked up here but don't think for a minute that Darnielle is using this volume to express a new found lust for life. He might have addressed his romantic troubles since Get Lonely exclaiming in the album opener "I am coming home to you" but he follows it "with my own blood in my mouth." This new surge in musical arrangements serves more to express his heightened sense of fear and impending doom. The sorrow from 2006 has grown into taut anguish. On Lovecraft In Brooklyn he admits, "I woke up afraid of my own shadow, like genuinely afraid."

At the heart of this record lurks paranoia, tension and violence seen most effectively in the two songs that form the records backbone both in form and theme. In The Craters On The Moon builds with tight, drumbeat like guitar strums and heightened strings to a thunderous crescendo while Lovecraft In Brooklyn is a switchblade-wielding powerhouse prediction of death and destruction. This is contrasted in songs like Autoclave and the delicate So Desperate, which both show this songwriters continuing vulnerability.

Whether he's gently plucking, violently thrashing or soaring on great orchestral waves this record shows a refreshing array of musical expertise. How To Embrace A Swamp Creature employs sparkling jewels of instrumentation that glisten around Darniell's lyrics like looming rocks in the dazzling sunlight. Another reason for this renewed rise in tempo could be that Darnielle has more company on this record. Get Lonely was a stark portrayal of a man alone while here we have complex string arrangements (San Bernardino) and airy female vocals (Marduk T-Shirt Men's Room Incident) all joining together to create a far richer landscape than the ones inhabited in the past. This is undoubtedly The Mountain Goats most accessible record to date but it sacrifices none of the qualities that made the other albums. Darnielle is a very human song writer, weather he's using himself as the subject or creating complex characters to play out his view of this experience we call life he casts a light over this experience and though this reveals things we don't want to see they serve to enlighten us and inform us that little bit more about the human condition.

#Music
#BC

26th Feb 2008 - Add Comment - Tweet