95 posts tagged “uk”

Bernard Sumner is not looking so great lately, but his musical talents are undiminished, possibly even better than ever.  "Sink Or Swim" by his new band Bad Lieutenant has been lodged in my brain for a week now:

That is ten different kinds of catchy!  Sumner's reappearance set me off on a New Order listening binge, in which I was reacquainted with my favorite New Order song of all, the non-single "This Time of Night" from Low Life:

Perhaps you remember listening to Styx's Pieces Of Eight album, scratching your head at "Aku-Aku", the mellow instrumental at the end of the album, and writing it off as filler.  But I posit that young Robin Guthrie took it as divine inspiration, forming the basis of his guitar and composition style that would come to fruition in the Cocteau Twins.  Compare "Aku-Aku" with a representative track from Blue Bell Knoll:

10 Styx - Aku Aku

Styx

Cocteau Twins_Blue Bell Knoll_08_Spooning Good Singing Gum

Cocteau Twins

Not exactly light-years apart, eh?  Of course it could just be a coincidence, but wild speculation is so much more fun.

What better song for a dreary First of October than "October Already" by melancholy 80s minimal-wave band A Popular History of Signs?  "October already and where has it got us?"

06 October Already

A Popular History of Signs

UK funk trio the Baker Brothers (Dan Baker, Rich Baker, and non-brother Chris Pedley) are generally a little too close to smooth jazz/disco for me (too much hi-hat, not enough snare), but "Aargh, Aargh-Aargh" would fit right in on my virtual mixtape of Badass Instrumentals:

03 The Baker Brothers - Aargh, Aargh-Aargh

The Baker Brothers

That mixtape was created on Mixwit, which has since shut down.  I could reconstruct it with the code available at mixwidget.org, but that would involve getting a real web host and doing real web scripting (which may actually be a worthwhile endeavor... hmmm...).

The Baker Brothers' latest album is Avid Sounds, a collection of covers of 70s funk and soul classics performed with assorted guest vocalists.  I especially like their version of "Fly Like An Eagle"; I thought the Neville Brothers had realized that song's fullest funky potential, but I think the Baker Brothers have surpassed them:

04-baker_brothers-fly_like_an_eagle_feat_matt_mcnaughton

Baker Brothers

Now that I've got tuned percussion in 80s music on the brain, I keep thinking of more examples, such as "Love My Way" by the Psychedelic Furs and "Change" by Tears For Fears.  I was beginning to think it was just a UK thing, but then I remembered "Gone Daddy Gone" by the Violent Femmes.  So here is a playlist of that batch:

(And I just remembered Tones On Tail's "Go" in time to tack it on the end.)

Violent Femmes

Violent Femmes

Somehow it entered my mind this evening that the pre-chorus marimba ostinato in Japan's "Methods of Dance" sounds a lot like the background ostinato in Peter Gabriel's "No Self Control", then I started thinking about tuned percussion (marimba, xylophone, balafon, vibraphone, or their synthesized equivalents) in Japan's music in general, and how they often used tuned percussion for melodic motifs, and how Peter Murphy used nearly identical licks in some of his songs.  So I made a playlist to convey my point, but regardless of my point, they are all great songs to listen to:

Gentlemen Take Polaroids

Japan

It occurred to me today that "I'm So Glad" by Cream and "I'm Unsatisfied" by the Godfathers sum up the entirety of rock and roll; everything else is just mixtures and variations of those two themes.

09 I'm Unsatisfied

The Godfathers

I've been listening to an advance copy of the new Muse album, Resistance, and I'm pretty excited about it.  It sounds like a concept album straight out of 1979: wearing the mantle of a citizen of a repressive dystopia (is there a concept album that doesn't start with a repressive dystopia?), Matthew Bellamy sings this rallying cry on the opening track (and single), "Uprising": "They will not force us, They will stop degrading us, They will not control us, We will be victorious!"  All over a foot-stomping backing track that sounds like a glammed-up version of the classic Dr. Who theme!

Then they do their best Queen impression on "United States of Eurasia":

A concept album, in an era in which the album has been declared dead!  (By Radiohead and Bob Leftsetz, at least.)  Now that's a statement, of some sort.* They've even got a Hipgnosis-style cover for the single, adding to the whole Weird 70s vibe:

Muse_uprising

If that's not the work of Hipgnosis alum Storm Thorgerson (who has produced other covers for Muse), it might as well be.  File with Alan Parsons Project, Styx, Saga, Billy Thorpe, etc.  And I mean that affectionately.  ;-)

I got suckered: the "advance copy" of Resistance has just two actual Muse tracks (the two featured here), the rest are by a band called Reckless from Portugal.  That explains why these two tracks are so much better than the rest of the album, so now my expectations for the REAL album are even higher.

* Yes, I know the last Decemberists album was a concept album or opera or whatever; maybe this will inspire me to listen to it all the way through.

I can't keep up the funk thread because my musical ADHD has me grooving on "spytronica" now.  The 90s saw revivals of all things kitsch, my particular favorites being space-age lounge and spy music.  Combustible Edison topped the lounge sector, while Stereophonic Space Sound Unlimited released the ne plus ultra of spytronica, The Fluid Soundbox, at the close of the decade.  They haven't been heard from for some years now, but luckily Mr. Chop (a.k.a. Coz Littler) has stepped in to fill the void!

Organ wunderkind Paolo "Apollo" Negri has been churning out astounding Hammond solos in The Link Quartet for years, but now he has stepped into the spytronica genre with The Futuro Seven and their debut EP The Oppenheimer Transmissions.  Leadoff track "Cosmic Joke" contains a prominent "Sunshine Superman" lick:

Actually there hasn't been a complete void of spytronica in the absence of SSSU; Chris Joss has been putting out a steady stream of sweet beat-oriented spy and lounge music on ESL.  His latest album, Sticks, is Eastern-themed, which means there are lots of sitars and tablas in the mix:

Does the hammer dulcimer in "Night Scare" remind you of "Lucifer" by the Alan Parsons Project?  It does me.

Because I couldn't stop at 2!  I didn't think the Sound Stylistics were an actual band, just a bunch of British funk and soul hotshots who recorded an album for Bruton Music Library in 2002 as a one-off, which album eventually got a commercial release due to tremendous word-of-mouth.  But the core trio of Jay Glover, Dominic Glover, and Gary Crockett has retained the name and put out a new album, Greasin' the Wheels, with a stellar roster of guest musicians.  Credits on the individual tracks are sketchy, but I think it's Jim Watson (Brand New Heavies, Zero 7) who plays the juicy Rhodes solo on "Knucklehead":

05 - Knucklehead

The Sound Stylistics

What, The New Mastersounds Live in San Francisco came out last October and I'm just now getting around to it?  Oy vey.  They're playing a show in upstate New York soon and another in northern Pennsylvania, both of which I could theoretically get to with a 2-3 hour drive; unfortunately they're both parts of weekend-long music festivals with $150+ ticket prices, so I'll be missing them.  Live in San Francisco kicks off with a smokin' rendition of their signature tune, "The Minx":

01-the_new_mastersounds-the_minx

The New Mastersounds

Australia's Kylie Auldist is a frequent guest singer for the Bamboos and Cookin' on 3 Burners, and the Bamboos return the favor by providing the backing for her new album, Made of Stone.  Kylie's songs are unusually melodic for the deep funk genre, none more so than the intoxicating "Ship Inside a Bottle":

07-kylie_auldist-ship_inside_a_bottle

Kylie Auldist