Burl Veneer’s Music Blog

The 80s are coming back

nobody@vox.com(Burl Veneer) — Mon, 12 May 2008 19:50:27 -0700

They've been coming back for quite some time now (since 1990), of course, but now my 1980s are coming back. Since my recent post on Slab!, band member Stephen Dray has announced their imminent reformation (in the comments on this blog post), or resumption rather, since he maintains they never officially broke up. Woo-hoo! And now Portion Control have announced a new album, Slug, to be released May 31. Portion Control's early recordings, originally released on cassettes, were obviously inspired by Throbbing Gristle. But by their first proper album, I Staggered Mentally (1982), they had settled on a more beat-oriented sound, or as they billed it, "Hard, Rhythmic Electronics." Their 80s career peaked in 1985 with their most successful single, the industrial dancefloor staple "The Great Divide"--

Great Divide

Portion Control

There's some nice percussion in there; I'm finally learning to play a bit in a local drum circle. It hurts after a while, but it's great to actually make the sounds I've enjoyed listening to for so long.

Portion Control ceased operations after their 1986 album, Psycho-Bod Saves the World, but returned with a new album, Wellcome, in 2002, and Filthy White Guy in 2004. So their reactivation isn't exactly news, but Slug is, which is a good enough reason to dig out my old Portion Control records for another listen.

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I'm still listening to Nine Inch Nails (and Peter Hope)

nobody@vox.com(Burl Veneer) — Fri, 09 May 2008 16:03:47 -0700

Here I am saying The Slip is the best Nine Inch Nails album since the first one when I haven't really listened to any of them since Broken. So I've been trying to catch up, going from recent to older; Year Zero and With Teeth are actually better than I thought, but neither are reach-out-and-grabby like The Slip, and both suffer from album bloat. I am especially impressed with the opener from With Teeth, "All the Love in the World," which starts with a dub beat before morphing into a piano ballad (with falsetto, even!) and then finally an arena rocker:

Trent is relentless with his morbidly dour lyrics, though; it becomes overbearing after a while. I think I can place them all into three categories:

I have low self-esteem.
We live in a dystopia.
Living in a dystopia has given me low self-esteem.

Did I miss anything? What would Nine Inch Nails sound like if fronted by, say, Tom Waits and his morbidly gleeful lyrics? Like this, I bet:

A1 Too Hot

Peter Hope and David Harrow

This song contains one of my all-time favorite weird couplets:

Turn the dust out, oh clear a way
When the injury swells up, it will not be contained

Yeah! What the hell does that mean? I don't know, but it sure is catchy! Peter Hope first emerged in 1983 as the lead singer for The Box, a Sheffield band made up of former ClockDVA members. Mick Fish give some details in his book about Cabaret Voltaire, Industrial Evolution:

The Box tried a number of singers, one who sort of whooped like a Red Indian chief but couldn't sing in tune. They even played two gigs with Mal [Stephen Mallinder of Cabaret Voltaire] on vocals -- a marriage of styles that was quite successful in its own way.... The Box eventually advertised for a singer. By far the best response came from Pete Hope from Hertford. Vocally somewhere between Tom Waits and Howlin' Wolf, he moved up to Sheffield with his young family.

Hope's inventive lyrics and unbridled singing style perfectly complemented The Box's no-wave skronk. Although they released several records, The Box never broke out, and they disbanded in 1985. Peter Hope then embarked on a series of one-off collaborations: this EP with synth whiz David Harrow (now known as James Hardway), an album with Cabaret Voltaire's Richard H. Kirk, an album with Jonathan S. Podmore (now known as Jono Podmore a.k.a. Kumo), and a 12" single with studio engineer Mark Estdale as Chain:

Chain - Chains(1)

Chain

I just adore that gothic-industrial-funk sound; if only that had caught on in the way Nine Inch Nails did. Maybe it'll come back... Peter Hope, where are you?

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Hold all calls, I'm listening to Nine Inch Nails

nobody@vox.com(Burl Veneer) — Tue, 06 May 2008 15:48:38 -0700

I'm a Nine Inch Nails fan from way back. I was hanging out with my pal $ean at the original Kemp Mill Records where he was assistant manager the day Pretty Hate Machine came out; I bought one right out of the shipping box. I listened to it and knew immediately that "Head Like a Hole" was a future classic. It wasn't as hard as the stuff on Wax Trax! or KK, so there were plenty of haters who derided it as watered-down industrial; too bad for them. I saw NIN on the Pretty Hate Machine tour, at the Grog and Tankard in Baltimore, with Meat Beat Manifesto opening. I still have the t-shirt from the show. Come to think of it, I still have the SPK t-shirt I wore to the show; talk about threadbare! But since then I haven't really connected with NIN; Trent took a long hiatus, I started listening to different music, and I just skipped over everything else he put out. I really dug "The Perfect Drug," but not enough to buy it. So now he's free of record label ties and is giving away his new music; I downloaded Ghosts I-IV, but it didn't hook me. Yesterday I downloaded The Slip, and it did hook me! I've listened to "1,000,000" three times so far today! My initial reaction is that this is Trent's best album since Pretty Hate Machine. This is the new music buzz I remember from my youth!

Love that false ending! "1,000,000" is my early favorite, with "Demon Seed" in second place:

The Slip has the feel of Trent's live-on-the-radio performances with Peter Murphy: no more futzing around in the studio with umpteen overdubs trying to get everything just perfect, he's just laying down a few tracks and rocking out! And it works beautifully!

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The Iggy Pop-Peter Murphy connection redux

nobody@vox.com(Burl Veneer) — Mon, 05 May 2008 19:35:39 -0700

Several weeks ago I wrote about Iggy Pop and Peter Murphy sounding nearly the same; just yesterday I discovered the live radio performances that Peter Murphy and Trent Reznor gave during the joint Nine Inch Nails/Bauhaus tour of 2006. Lo and behold, they did an Iggy Pop cover:

Night Clubbing - Trent Reznor, Jeordie White, Peter Murphy

And to pile on the coincidences, Trent released a new Nine Inch Nails album today (The Slip), for free!

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Ghostland Observatory: sometimes the hype is right

nobody@vox.com(Burl Veneer) — Sat, 03 May 2008 06:14:33 -0700

Ghostland Observatory seem poised to be this year's Big Thing, leading to overexposure and backlash, but a month after listening to their new album, Robotique Majestique, I still have several of the melodies and choruses running through my head. Ghostland Observatory are a synth/vocal duo in the classic mold of Soft Cell, but where Soft Cell looked to 60s female soul hits for influence, G.O. starts with Queen's "Another One Bites the Dust." Case in point: the insanely catchy "Heavy Heart"--

Singer Aaron Behrens even brings rock histrionics to the stage show; can he compensate for the lack of any actual instrument-playing onstage through a whole concert? That will be insteresting to see, if I ever get a chance.

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Anti-War: Ted Leo

nobody@vox.com(Burl Veneer) — Sat, 03 May 2008 05:08:20 -0700

I don't often listen to so-called "Indie Rock," because when I do I usually find it boring, precious, excessively wordy, and lacking any rock'n'roll gusto, and then I remember why I don't listen to Indie Rock. Sasha Frere-Jones ignited a big debate last fall (if music geeks arguing amongst themselves can be termed a "debate") with his New Yorker article "A Paler Shade of White," in which he argues that indie rock sucks because it's all made by middle-class white college students (and graduates) with little to no influence from Authentic Black Music. (I remember hearing virtually the same argument nearly thirty years ago, explaining why Led Zeppelin was great and Def Leppard sucked.) I think it probably explains why I can't get interested in indie rock. But complaining about it is like complaining that Chick-Fil-A doesn't serve enough hamburgers. If it's a hamburger you want, don't go to Chick-Fil-A! Yesterday, however, I took a trip to the musical Chick-Fil-A, as Ted Leo and the Pharmacists were playing at Cornell's end-of-classes Slope Day celebration. I'd heard good things about Ted Leo from phantom blogger Jeff, and it was free, so I decided to check it out. Well...for the most part it didn't change my opinion of indie rock, but they did unleash the angriest, most passionate anti-war song I've heard in years, the best protest rock since Rage Against the Machine broke up. Here's the video for "Bomb. Repeat. Bomb.", which doesn't begin to capture the power of the live performance (a second guitarist really adds to the punch of the chorus):

Ted Leo and the Pharmacists - Bomb. Repeat. Bomb.

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Back to the funk: Brownout

nobody@vox.com(Burl Veneer) — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 19:55:02 -0700

I've been spending a lot of my listening time lately back in the 80s and neglecting the funk, so I sought to remedy that today. I started listening to Brownout, the Latin funk band from Austin, and as soon as I heard "African Battle" I was hooked. Deep funk beat, extra percussion, horns, and trombone solos? Yes, please!

Brownout - African Battle

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Medeski Scofield Martin and Wood give me goosebumps

nobody@vox.com(Burl Veneer) — Sat, 26 Apr 2008 09:00:13 -0700

I've liked Medeski Martin and Wood ever since I first heard them on the Get Shorty soundtrack (one of the grooviest soundtracks to a mainstream movie since the 70s), but I only ever got a couple of their albums. One that I bought was their first album with guitarist John Scofield, issued under Scofield's name alone as A Go Go. That came out in 1998, and MMW dropped off my radar after that. Last week I decided to do some catching up, and got their second collaboration with Scofield, Out Louder from 2006, credited to all four of them this time. I skipped forward to "Miles Behind," which I gathered was a play on Miles Davis's Miles Ahead and may be a tribute of sorts. And it is a tribute: not to the late-50s-era Miles of Miles Ahead, but to my absolute favorite stretch of his career, the wildly creative funk-rock-jazz fusion of the early 70s, Bitches Brew through Get Up With It, so despised by jazz purists but beloved by many who, like me, approach music with rock as their baseline. I first heard Miles's 1975 live album, Agharta, at the Tower Records (remember those?) in Rockville in 1991, and I bought it even though I was broke, because it was exactly the music I needed at the time. "Miles Behind" nails the Electric Miles sound (albeit without a trumpet); it distills that entire oeuvre into less than three minutes, and reliving the rush of my initial Agharta revelation actually gave me goosebumps.

Miles Behind

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S Convergence: Sakamoto, Satie, Stewart, Sylvian

nobody@vox.com(Burl Veneer) — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 19:29:27 -0700

Item 1: Mrs. Veneer buys Ryuichi Sakamoto's CD of solo piano pieces, BTTB. It's quite beautiful and Sakamoto mostly avoids the New Age clichés that plague so many piano CDs. Some of the pieces are obvious homages to classical works, such as "Opus," which evokes the Gymnopédies of Erik Satie:

04 Opus

Ryuichi Sakamoto

♫ Erik Satie - Gymnopédie No.1 [piano] ♫

Item 2: I learn from Wiel's Time Capsule that Mark Stewart is preparing a new album (his first of new material since 1995!) and tour, and that he has a new video out:

Mark Stewart - Loner

Connection 1: Hey, didn't Mark Stewart include that same Gymnopédie on his 1987 album? Yep, as part of the backing track for "Stranger" (a.k.a. "Stranger Than Love"):

05 Stranger

Mark Stewart

Connection 2: I've heard some of those lyrics before: "Somewhere, there is a place for us". They're from "Somewhere," from West Side Story. David Sylvian recorded a version of that for a TIAA-CREF commercial:

Somewhere (Orchestral Commercial Version)

David Sylvian

Connection 3: Sylvian and Sakamoto's collaborative song "Forbidden Colours," from the movie Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence, is perhaps the best-known song by either of them in the US:

Sylvian & Sakamoto - Forbidden Colours

Connection 4: Hey, Mark Stewart did two versions of "Forbidden Colours" on that very same album! Here's the dub version:

07 Forbidden Dub

Mark Stewart

It's all connected!

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The Doors, funky?

nobody@vox.com(Burl Veneer) — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 20:11:05 -0700

The Doors were accused of a lot of things, but being funky wasn't one of them. So I am naturally surprised when I hear Doors influences in contemporary funk; who'd'a thunk it? Nicole Willis and the Soul Investigators (she's from Brooklyn, they're from Finland) play deep funk, but they stretch out into more soul and R&B styles than most other deep funk bands. Listening to their Keep Reachin' Up album on my way to work the other day, I started hearing the Doors all of a sudden: halfway through "A Perfect Kind of Love" there's an instrumental break with a bassline right out of "Light My Fire," and then Antti Maattanen lays down a Ray Manzarek-like organ solo over it. It's what the Doors would have sounded like if they'd had some rebop!

06 - A Perfect Kind of Love

Nicole Willis and The Soul Inv

So then I thought back to another Doors-influenced song that I liked last year, which I always meant to post here but never got around to; isn't this the perfect time for it? The Doors influence in "The Witch" by The Broken Keys is in the Morrison-esque vocal (he even rhymes fire with pyre, just like Jim did), but for the life of me I can't figure out who is actually singing it. The Broken Keys are two English dudes named Nostalgia 77 and Natural Self (whose real name, apparently, is Keno-1); on their own they each make richly-layered hip-hip-flavored jazz with no male vocals (in what I've heard), so it could be either one of them singing here, or someone else altogether. This, too, is what the Doors would have sounded like if they'd had any funk:

05. The Witch

The Broken Keys

That is heavy; with those horns it could almost be an Ides of March song. I can hear a Black Sabbath version in my head, too, and the lyrics are right up their alley.

Maybe I'm too hard on the Doors. They did get almost funky once, with "Peace Frog"--

That's a pretty good beat; it would turn up again in Echo and the Bunnymen's "Bedbugs and Ballyhoo" (can't find it right now), and the Charlatans' "The Only One I Know"--

The Charlatans are streaming from Donnaslut.com: a single page with about 300 eclectic mp3's, including many of my obscure favorites, such as Allez Allez, Jerry Harrison, Nico + the Faction, SSQ, and lots, lots more. Check it out! Make sure you have playTagger installed first, so you can stream them from the main page instead of loading each one in a new page.

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