Chimpomatic

Wires On Fire

Wires On Fire

Buddyhead

Ever since the mid-80's - when those two school buses carrying the Punks and the Metalheads crashed on the way to the high school - LA seems to have cornered the market on a certain genre of music. You could describe it as punk influenced metal, maybe with a touch of West Hollywood sleaze. Sure the genre is long out of high school now, probably driving it's own muscle car around town - but the agenda is still the same.

Following in the steps of the likes of The Bronx and The Warlocks, Wires On Fire are a pretty incendiary bunch - and it's no surprise to find out they are on tough talking and generally entertaining website/label Buddyhead. Hard and heavy, this is punk sensibilities with a penchant for guitar solos. You know they're going to rock live, but for this debut they've just laid down a sold album with some promise.

C+ (2.5 stars in chimp terms). Has potential, but could try harder.

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24th Feb 2007 - Add Comment - Tweet

The Dukes Of Hazzard

(dir. Jay Chandrasekhar)

Warner Bros

Notably mainly for it's ZZ Top sound-tracked car chase and Luke Duke's Zeppelin T-shirt, this mindless entertainment is watchable enough ...especially if you happen to be flying long haul. "Appalachian Americans if you please".

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23rd Feb 2007 - 2 comments - Add Comment - Tweet

Autokat

Late Night Shopping

Where these boys come from, which is Manchester, late night shopping = burglery, not a thursday evening in Harvey Nicks so this should put their debut album into some context. It's a raw piece of home made post rock that deals with the usual themes of urban city life in all its grime and glory. Signed to Manchester's influential Akoustik Anarkhy label, Autokat follow in the footsteps of bands like The Longcut and Nine Black Alps, but have more in common with bands like Warlocks or Chimpomatic favorites Working For A Nuclear Free City.

Opening track Shot sets a fair pace as its chiming guitar slowly turns into an awesome grinding riff that lays down a spiky platform for the vocals. The song eventually disappears off into a great slush of prickly guitar noise that turns this forthcoming single into a very grand opening statement. Seven Years is a much cleaner sound with more pronounced vocals while Dealy is the first of two well placed instrumental tracks that really give this album breathing space. Innocence really gets you to your feet after the rather lazy Bowling with its pure Gang Of Four beat, jangly guitars and upbeat muscle. Along with Shot it's one of the joys of this record that unfortunately is too few and far between.

Late Night Shopping can be patchy at times and the grit of the harder tracks is not always upheld throughout the album but it has a brilliantly fresh mix of melody and darkness. It can be sinister but can also lift you out of its threatening grasp with great floaty pop. Like fellow Mancs Working For A Nuclear Free City, this debut changes tempo so frequently and with such ease that the result is a record that's so packed with ideas and possible avenues for future pursuit and at the risk of sounding like a school report, this band oozes potential and though not all of it has been realised with this record it makes for a rosy look at the road ahead.

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21st Feb 2007 - Add Comment - Tweet

The Illusionist

(dir.Neil Burger)

Ed Norton, Paul Giamatti, Jessica Biel and Rufus Sewell in this turn-of-the-century tricksy magician drama.

Norton's got the skills to pay the Viennese bills here, wowing Crown Prince Sewell and his fiancee Biel with his onstage wizardry, while court cop Giamatti tries to figure out how he's doing everything. Biel turns out to be Norton's long-lost childhood squeeze; hey-presto, the magic's still there.

Looks a lot like The Prestige, but it's less of a cheat than that turned out to be, although the whole "nothing is what it seems" line doesn't really hold up, as it's all ultimately predictable and the "woah, is that what's just happened?!!" ending they're going for is so obvious that you're left wondering why Officer Giamatti's such a doofus and the only person in the room who hasn't seen it all coming.

That said, their combined charisma just about carries it along; more a dvd than a cinema outing probably.

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21st Feb 2007 - 1 comments - Add Comment - Tweet

300

(dir. Zach Snyder)

Enjoyable macho action that's basically one very long, very crunchy fight scene. Not sure how historically accurate any of this is, but it's the story of 300 buff sixpack Spartans fending off some extras from the dark hordes of Lord Of The Rings (aka Persia).

Based on the Frank Miller graphic novel, it's shot in a similar style to Sin City, and employs the same washed-out digital grainy aesthetic. It's also got the same slim connection to reality - this is heightened everything, everywhere. They shout SPAAAAAAAAAAARTAAAA as often as possible, and make a proto-fascist case for sticking together with your friends and family (as long as they're not born deformed, in which case it's prudent to chuck them out of town asap).

Gerard Butler is the superbuff Spartan leader. He's been the Phantom in The Phantom Of The Opera, Dracula in Dracula 2000 and Attila the Hun in Attila so he's obviously into his historical roles. Lena Headey is the rather unelegantly named Queen Gorgo keeping the Spartan home fires spartan. Weirdest casting for Chimpomatic readers will be The Wire's Dominic West - yes, if you've ever wondered what good po-lice McNulty would look like with long hair and his shirt off, here's your chance.

It's all pretty silly - and vaguely offensive in its depection of the Persians as a horde of unreconstructed "Others" - but carried off with a kind of unpretentious conviction: it sets out to make a crunchy bloodthirsty action blowout, and it succeeds. It's also told from a "here's a story about a legend" perspective, and doesn't really pretend to be anything like a historically accurate account. Apparently they borrowed some swords and stuff from Troy, but it's nowhere near as boring.

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20th Feb 2007 - 1 comments - Add Comment - Tweet

Pole

Steingarten

Scape

Before I got a girlfriend who can't go to sleep until she's read Grazia cover to cover I would like nothing more than to retire to my place of rest with some good head phones. Certain albums come alive when they surround you, when all your other senses are silenced. So with the lights out and the headphones blocking out all sound an album like Mileece's Formations or Murcof's Martes would take on an incredibly powerful form. Every change in the subtle arrangement would be breathtaking when it had your full concentration. We will often take time out to read a book or watch a film but rarely show music the same respect, it's what we have on while doing something else. But some works don't play well with the others.

Though not quite as breathtaking as the previously mentioned works Pole's latest offering Steingarten may well be one of those albums. When played in the background it appears thin and repetitive, but when given the solitary treatment it is a different story. The last I heard of the Berlin based producer Stefan Betke was in 2003 - with the release of his self titled, fourth full length. This had a change up to the normal form as he enlisted the help of Fat Jon on some of the tracks. The result was adventurous yet not entirely successful. Poles music was much more stripped down maybe to accommodate the vocals but the subtle textures in his compositions were lost.

With Steingarten we still get the same reduced techno, but the compositions have a strange warmth about them. Using sampled analogue fuzz and a myriad of bleeps and clicks the attention to detail is impeccable. It's this that makes this record so special. It directs your attention to the minutia of life. If you've ever had a leaky roof you'll recognise Sylvenstein, where a delicate beat is so finely constructed out of familiar sampled sounds that it sounds like water dripping into various metal pans of varying degrees of fullness. With Schoner Land you start to notice the soft soothing repetition of the end of a record as it skips over and over. This is music that has been so meticulously constructed to appear minimal. Intricate layers of indecipherable sound are beautifully punctured by crystal clear drops of  noise. The beats are inviting in their gentleness and the melodies are used as harmonic dashes of colour but are always kept fragmentary.

The whole album ends with the stand out piece Pferd. It features the only recognisable melody on the record and loops what sounds like flute and harmonica over the same delicate tapestry of beats. It's fragility finishes the album off perfectly and you hardly dare to breath once the silence sets in. This is Poles best work to date and should be appreciated in the right context. If you give it your time it will reward you no end.

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19th Feb 2007 - Add Comment - Tweet

M. Ward

To Go Home E.P.

New E.P from M. Ward containing his excellent cover of Daniel Johnston 'To Go Home' from last years Post-War album. Of the three new songs, two Ward originals; 'Cosmopolitan Pap', although fine has the slight feel of a filler, whilst 'Human Punching Bag' is the kind of poignant balled he can do with his eyes closed. Most interesting of all is a cover of Jimmie Dale Gilmore's (a.k.a Smokey from The Big Lebowski) 'Headed For A Fall'. Good stuff.

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19th Feb 2007 - Add Comment - Tweet

RJD2

The Third Hand

XL

This is the first album RJD2 has put out without the help of Def Jux Records and there's a good reason for that. His much hyped debut Dead Ringers followed on nicely from the work of DJ Shadow in the world of sampling and gave the aggressive yet progressive alt hip-hop label a new string to its bow. Then in 2004 came Since We Last Spoke. Obviously plagued by the constant comparisons to Shadow, this album signaled a shift in direction for RJD2. Still containing the sampled structure this album leaned more towards mellow vocal tracks than its predecessor taking much of its influence from 70's rock. Now in 2007 the transformation is complete. I hope the artist will forgive me for one last Shadow comparison but just as The Outsider was an album to silence all stereotypes and went to one extreme end of the musical spectrum and embraced hip hop in all its grime The Third Hand goes the other direction and almost rejects all things hip hop and embraces pop.

The fact that RJD2 has fled the Def Jux fold shows just how much he's changed direction. This album still has the impeccably produced beats but heavily relies on vocals. It's a pretty slick piece of work with some beautiful instrumental moments. Reality is one of the stand out points with a funky-ass guitar bass line sampled over a classic RJD2 break-beat that chops and changes repeatedly and weaves in and out of the singing while Get It revisits old ground as one of the few purely instrumental beat pieces. But I'm sure that I've picked out these two as highlights as they most resemble the earlier work and I'm not proud of that.

This album will not go down too well with true blue hip hop heads who followed him earlier on, and unfortunately I think I am one of those. I hate to say that - as I love artists who can break away from a successful sound and forge a new path, but this album sees a total shift in genre. This is not in any way to suggest that it's a bad album, far from it, as pop music goes this is better than most. The production is impeccable, the beats strong and the whole thing floats on a multi textured bed of strings, samples and synths.

I can really respect this shift in direction. The change we all saw in Shadow's The Outsider seemed to come from a bitter resentment that all and sundry were making careers off his sound and the piece of shit he gave us was supposed to give a two fingered salute. The Third Hand however seems to come from a more genuine, honest place and is just the sound of an artist wanting to move on from where he started no matter how good a place that was.

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16th Feb 2007 - Add Comment - Tweet

Lavender Diamond

The Cavalry Of Light

Rough Trade

This EP from Los Angeles based Lavender Diamond seems to be creating a frenzy at the moment, first with Matador snapping up the North American rights and then Rough Trade taking Europe. It's not hard to see why - with the band acting as a "a vehicle for the astonishing vocals and buoyant worldview of Becky Stark."

Stark's superb classical vocals give the record a timeless quality that is best compared to something out of NYC's Brill Building in the sixties, probably penned by Carole King. The crisp production and piano-led sound are familiar and engaging, but strangely unlike much of the music around at the moment.

You Broke My Heart (Listen here - Windows Media) is a tight, highly strung number - gently increasing the pressure as it builds up and up, with it's gentle sound hiding the heart-breaking undertone of it's message.

Ballad Please (Listen here - Windows Media) iis the most Carole King-esque of the tracks, with it's distinct, sad nostalgia. Lavender Diamond tread a careful line between the singer-songwriter side of seventies LA and the problem-solving of Andrew Lloyd Webber, but In Heaven There Is No Heat (Listen here - Windows Media) ilands things on the CSNY side of the fence.

Currently supporting the Decemberists on their European tour, the band will have a full length album out in May which I eagerly look forward to.

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12th Feb 2007 - Add Comment - Tweet