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:

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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I have previously written about my dear friend, the late Mark Harp.  Mark's band Null Set brought postpunk to Baltimore; when another band called Null Set, from another city, put out a record, Mark's Null Set changed their name to Cabal.  The singer for Null Set and Cabal was Bill Dawson; after Cabal broke up, he teamed up with George Hagegeorge to form Black Pete and play guitar-charged industrial music in the vein of Ministry and Skinny Puppy.  They put out one twelve-inch in 1989, recruited an apparently substance-addled young glam-metal dude as their "bassist" (though it was speculated that his real role was to get into fights and thereby gain "cred" for the band), and folded shortly thereafter.  I missed my window for getting a copy of the record back then, but thanks to the Internet and GEMM, the window is open again.  I found a copy and ordered it (from a dealer with multiple copies), and it arrived yesterday.  The A-side is a cover of Mountain's "Mississippi Queen"--

Black Pete - Mississippi Queen

Black Pete

Coincidentally, on the same day, Ministry released their supposedly final album, Cover Up, a collection of covers of classic rock tunes, one of which is... can you guess?  That's right, "Mississippi Queen"--

02 - Laibach - Sympathy For The Devil (Dem Teufel Zugeneigt)

Laibach

That last part of this version (one of eight they recorded) has the best bass-drum workout since Steam's 1969 hit and perennial stadium favorite "Na Na Hey Hey Kiss Him Goodbye"--

Finally, wouldn't it be funny to refer to Laibach as Audioslav?

Let_it_be3

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I've fallen behind on my sunshine pop theme due to spending last night sorting out the dueling MySpace players problem.  Solution: no more MySpace players.  If they've got it set to autostart, there's not a thing you can do about it by tweaking parameters in the embed code.

In reviewing the tags on today's mp3 files, I realized that I've been conflating sunshine pop with "baroque pop."  The archetype of the baroque pop song is Simon and Garfunkel's "Scarborough Fair/Canticle," but another song on the same album (Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme), "The 59th Street Bridge Song (Feelin' Groovy)," is certifiable sunshine pop, so the two subgenres are largely intertwined in style, but not mood.

Eric Matthews has been plying his baroque, and occasionally sunny, pop since 1995, when he released his first album, It's Heavy In Here, on Sub Pop, of all labels.  In the present decade he has released two albums on Empyrean Records, the most recent being 2006's Foundation Sounds.  The sunniest of its 17 songs is "All the Clowns"--

All the Clowns

Eric Matthews

Neil Hannon has flitted from style to style in his enduring career as The Divine Comedy, and he is no stranger to sunshine pop.  While true sunshine pop tends toward naively earnest lyrics, I don't think earnesty* has ever been a component of Hannon's songwriting.  (Not his best songwriting, at least; while impeccably arranged, Absent Friends sinks under the weight of its bloated Meaningfulness.)  Wryness, slyness, archness, satire, ridicule, exaggeration, swagger, irresponsibility--these are the ingredients of his finest concoctions.  "Perfect Love Song" may be all sunshine on the surface, but I can hear Neil smirking all the way through:

03-PERFECT LOVE song

The Divine Comedy

And now there is Steve Rinaldi, performing as Rinaldi Sings (thanks to Salty Miss Jill for hipping me to him!):

And that concludes my abbreviated roundup of sunshine, or vaguely sunshiney, popsters.  No, wait, it doesn't--here's a repeat of Mike Flowers's blindingly brilliant (like the sun!) "A Groovy Place" (delivered with an even bigger smirk than Neil Hannon's, I imagine):

01 A Groovy Place

The Mike Flowers Pops

OK, now I'm done.

* The spellchecker tells me "earnesty" isn't really a word, but I think it should be, so it stays in.

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To the elite group of musicians who have mastered the art of retro-disco-cop-show-funk-o-lounge-a-phonics (i.e. Skeewiff and Shawn Lee) add Frenchman Chris Joss, who since 1999 has built up an impressive catalog of recordings in that vein.  His latest album, Teraphonic Overdubs, is out now on ESL Music.  Now that I can embed a MySpace player I don't have to try to pick out one or two songs to share, I can simply present what he's sharing already.  If you listen to just one track, scroll down to "Luna Rides Back" and listen to that one:

Amazon link:

Teraphonic Overdubs

Chris Joss

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Taking me even further afield from trumpets and dark cabaret is my discovery last weekend of another whole box of CDs (about 200!) that I hadn't unpacked since moving into this house eighteen months ago.   And in that box was The Fluid Soundbox by the instrumental band Stereophonic Space Sound Unlimited.  The lounge music revival of the 90s (see Combustible Edison) brought with it a revival of "spy music," and The Fluid Soundbox is the absolute best example of that subgenre.  Ostensibly Swiss (though everything about them seems made up), they are obviously steeped in vintage lounge, surf, spy, and cop show music, to the extent that Soundbox is practically a catalog of those styles.  Even their song titles are genius: "Triple Threat," "Formulator," "Robot A Go Go," "Project QX 5;" here is "Dragon City"--

09-Dragon City

Stereophonic Space Sound Unlimited

That was from 1998.  One of the best spy-music pieces of this new century was composed by Mark Mothersbaugh, of all people, taking a break from scoring nursery-school cartoons to write the original music for The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou.  The music accompanying the kidnap-rescue raid on the pirates of Ping Island starts out with the playful motif heard throughout the movie, then adds a brass-and-tympani-heavy orchestra for unbeatable spy-music goodness:

16 Ping Island_Lightning Strike Resc

Mark Mothersbaugh

Okay, I kid, Mark Mothersbaugh has done plenty of work outside of his Rugrats meal ticket (including all of Wes Anderson's films up through this one), but with kids of my own guess what music of his I've heard the most of over the last decade?

Just this week some brand-new spy music has dropped into my lap.  One of Mrs. Veneer's net pals, Scott Rupp, composes kickin' action themes and has begun uploading them to imeem.com.  On "Agent Koto" he combines two of my favorite styles, spy music and breakbeat:

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Last week I remembered I like Steve Tibbetts, so I added a Steve Tibbetts station to my Pandora account.  I was listening to it yesterday when I heard an unfamiliar Jon Hassell song.  Or so I thought--it turned out to be by Norwegian trumpeter Nils Petter Molvaer, a former Tibbetts labelmate at ECM.  I bought Molvaer's ECM album Khmer a few years ago, but I never took to it.  The backing tracks sound like rudimentary techno and hip-hop loops, dooming the album to the fate of so many hybrids, i.e. not being as good as any of the individual genres that it combines.  On the other hand, I did like his playing on one of Bill Laswell's Sacred System albums.  But the song I heard on Pandora is from Er, Molvaer's 2005 album, and it's his best work yet.  On several tracks he's obviously going for a Jon Hassell group sound, but his own tone and modalities are different than Hassell's.  Then there's the song I can't stop playing, "Only These Things Count"--

04 - Only These things Count

Nils Petter Molvaer

That's Sidsel Edresen singing, with a voice like a cross between... Nico and Dewey Bunnell (of America)?  And it's beautiful!  (Now I'm tracking down her own albums.)  The song feels like a thick down comforter with a golden brown velvet cover, draped over a sofa and just inviting you to plunge in, wrap it around yourself and luxuriate in the softness and texture.  That's what I get from it, anyway.  It also feels like a David Sylvian song, one of the ones with Mark Isham playing trumpet.  The song it reminds me of the most is "Thalheim" from Dead Bees on a Cake:

04 - Thalheim

David Sylvian

Okay, that's not Mark Isham playing the trumpet, it's Kenny Wheeler playing the fluegelhorn.  Not only that, Kenny Wheeler has been recording with David Sylvian just as long as Mark Isham has: both played on his first solo album, 1984's Brilliant Trees.  That album initially disappointed me: I was so enamored with the electronic sounds of Japan that I had trouble accepting the mostly-acoustic instrumentation of Trees, and I didn't buy a copy for over ten years.  I always liked "The Ink in the Well,"  though, and it features... Kenny Wheeler on fluegelhorn!

David Sylvian - The Ink In The Well

Coming up: equal time for Mark Isham.

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Since Salty Miss Jill brought up Neil Hannon in the Music Lovers post, here is Neil himself singing his song with "Jill" in the lyrics:

04 If...

The Divine Comedy

Neil Hannon is the true inheritor of Scott Walker's mantle, though he has a lighter touch: his humor is more sardonic than morbid.  (Walker himself now inhabits a different musical planet altogether.)  The best Divine Comedy album so far is Casanova, from 1996, which spawned the delightfully wicked single, "The Frog Princess"--

What a cheeky little man!  Incidentally, I owe my Divine Comedy fandom to Duncan Sheik, who linked to the DC website from his.  Co-incidentally, I heard Duncan's "She Runs Away" at the gas station yet again last week.  That song must really make people spend!

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Instead of more long-lost but now-found music, I'm going to follow up the past two posts of pretend Killing Joke with some real Killing Joke.  After the gothic beauty and mainstream appeal of 1985's Night Time, Killing Joke went into decline.  But in 1990 they came back with a vengeance with Extremities, Dirt, and Various Repressed Emotions, adding Martyn Atkins--the industrial drummer--to the line-up.  My first knowledge of the new album was seeing the video for "Money Is Not Our God" at the old 9:30 Club, and it just seethed with energy.  Jaz Coleman's snarl at the beginning is practically blood-curdling; try not to notice how much he looks like Eugene Levy:

Killing Joke - Money is not our god

"Success defined by acquisition STINKS!"

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Upon discovering, just last year (fashionably late again) that A Primary Industry had morphed into Ultramarine in 1990, I got Ultramarine's first album, Folk.  It's a nice extension of the softer side of API, with lots of layered reeds (from both woodwinds and accordions) loping, dubby basslines.  The bassline for "Bullprong" sounded familiar...

Ultramarine - Bullprong

Ultramarine

... because it's lifted straight out of 23 Skidoo's "Language"--

23 Skidoo - Language

23 Skidoo

Granted, it's only the bassline for part of the song, and Ultramarine builds a different musical environment on top of it, and it's no more blatant than a lot of sampling that goes on, and both bands came out of England's 80s "industrial" scene, so I guess it's okay.  Now that I've called out API for copying Pigbag, and Ultramarine for copying 23 Skidoo, I'm going to make an effort to find a strikingly original Ultramarine song to post here.  And I've got more to say about 23 Skidoo, but it's a bit of a jumble at the moment so that will have to wait, too.  Enjoy these two tracks in the meantime.

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Back in 2003, Radiohead fan Mrs. Veneer got me a little on board the Radiohead bandwagon by steering me toward a handful of songs that were near-perfect matches for my personal music receptors (Airbag, Electioneering, Idioteque).  So I picked up Hail to the Thief in its first week of release, brought it home and listened to it with Mrs. V., and we were completely underwhelmed.  She called it "unlistenable" and decided that Yorke and company had made it that way on purpose; I found it simply unmemorable, with not a single song calling out for a second listen.  I've just been revisiting it, though, and I've found a few songs to like on it, and one in particular that really grabs me:

06 - Where I End And You Begin

Radiohead

The reason "Where I End And You Begin" appeals to me is its similarity to (or ripoff of, depending on your point of view) "Theme for Great Cities" by Simple Minds (from the Steve Hillage-produced Sons and Fascination): same beat, same warbling synthetic organ sound behind it all.  "Theme," a grand instrumental, was one of the handful of songs I would wait for on WHFS in the year of my New Wave conversion (academic year 1981-82); when the trumpet-synth comes in for the chorus, and the key turns major, it's a masterful release of the tension built up in the preceding passages:

Simple Minds - Theme for Great Cities

Simple Minds

I was lucky to find a used copy of Themes for Great Cities (at College Park's late, great Record and Tape Exchange), a best-of collection released by Stiff in November 1981; it became one of my most-played records.  The sheer muscle and modernity of Simple Minds in their early years was aesthetically intoxicating, and even now those early works retain much of their power.  They managed to capture in music society's struggle with the accelerating speed of technology better than anyone else except perhaps John Foxx's Ultravox.  The New Gold Dream album, with its lighter sound and Christian themes and imagery, was slightly disappointing but still enjoyable; I saw them on their tour for that album, at Ritchie Coliseum in College Park, with China Crisis opening.  (China Crisis ended their set early: it was raining outside and water was dripping onto the stage from the leaky ceiling, and when guitarist Eddie Lundon got a shock he took off his guitar and left the stage, followed by the rest of the band.)  Unfortunately Simple Minds continued their charge toward the mainstream, losing all artistic credibility once and for all by recording the Keith Forsey-penned "Don't You (Forget About Me)" for The Breakfast Club, thereby becoming yet another victim of The Curse of John Hughes.  Simple Minds closed out the 80s with so much bombastic dreck that few people even know about the forward-looking music they created between 1979 and 1981.  See Saltyka's blog for an excellent, comprehensive look at this heyday period.  Dikkii has some valuable insights as well.  Finally, Simple Minds' 1998 album, Neapolis, was touted as a return to their early sound.  No such luck.  Jim Kerr is still stuck on "big-issue" songwriting, and the rhythms sound like trite, run-of-the-mill late-90s loops.  It's not all bad news, though; the instrumental track "Androgyny," while no "Theme for Great Cities," could pass for a 1981 B-side:

Simple Minds - Androgyny(1)

Simple Minds

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