Playlist 190 - Sept 27 2011

The Underground of Happiness
uplifting pop music of every creed

www.theundergroundofhappiness.blogspot.com
www.facebook.com/theundergroundofhappiness

Playlist 190
Tues Sept 27 2011
11.00am-12.00pm
(repeated on Tuesdays 8.30pm)
UCC 98.3FM
listen live on the web at www.ucc.ie/ccr
*listen back to this show here
https://rapidshare.com/files/1491453982/The_Underground_Of_Happiness_27-9-2011.m4a

Playlist
Frankie Valli & the Four Seasons - You're a song (that I can't sing) (Mowest Compilation) (Munster Soul Clubnight, The Phoenix, Cork, Oct 29)
Toro y Moi - All alone
Dark Captain - 3 years to go (playing Hoxton Bar & Kitchen, London, Oct 5)
Peter Broderick - It wasn't a deer skull (from the soundtrack of the film Confluence)
North Sea Radio Orchestra - I a moon (playing The Komedia, Brighton, Oct 12, w/ William D. Drake)
William D. Drake - Wholly holey (playing The Komedia, Brighton, Oct 12, w/ North Sea Radio Orchestra)
The Phoenix Foundation - Bright grey
Cloud Control - Death cloud
Trailer Trash Tracys - Wish you were red
Future Islands - Balance
Breakbot - Fantasy
Downpilot - So I'll try
Gruff Rhys feat. El Perro del Mar - Space dust #2 (playing Academy, Dublin, Oct 3)
Botched Fairytale - All cylinders
Tim Kasher - Rabbit, run (playing The Workman's Club, Dublin, Nov 18, w/ Mariachi El Bronx)

*next week's show features music from Adrian Crowley, Paul Curreri, Mint Julep and Dum Dum Girls among others

e-mail the show on radio@ucc.ie
or text +353 (0)86-7839800
please mark messages “uoh”

Conor O'Toole,
c/o UCC 98.3FM,
Áras na Mac Léinn,
Student Centre,
University College Cork,
Cork,
Ireland.

Eden Ahbez – Eden’s Island (Trunk Records)

Another lost classic re-issued by the wonderful Jonny Trunk. This album was originally released in 1960 on Del-Fi Records and features one of life’s proto-hippies in the shape of Eden Ahbez (an assumed name, as you may have guessed, born Alexander Aberle in Brooklyn in 1908), a drifter, performer, student of Oriental mysticism, who moved west and reportedly lived outdoors with his family in Los Angeles, under the first L in the Hollywood sign. He was also a regular performer at the city’s coffeehouses in the 1940’s, mixing poetry with flute and bongo arrangements. And, most famously, he was responsible for the song Nature boy, that superb evocation of innocence abroad which was turned into a hit by Nat King Cole in 1947. All those elements are present on this album, along with a strong undercurrent of Central American rhythms which tends to bring Esquivel to mind (this is always welcome). Especially on songs like Full moon, a beautiful, sombre vibes arrangement with a spoken word paean to solitude and natural living. And the claves and flute rumba of Tradewind. Forget Rock the boat, the dance classic Mongoose could form the highpoint of any party, with more than a touch of calypso about it and a chorus like “Mongoose chase the snake away”. The everpresent chorus of female backing vocalists is another great feature of the album (check those “ooh yeah yeah, ooh yaw yaw’s” on Eden’s Cove). They’re calling this hippie exotica. I’m up with that.



*I've got mixed feelings about posting this (seeing as it's apparent the video was filmed against the man's wishes, basically), but this is still fascinating footage of Ahbez speaking a few years before he died.

Scott Solter – One river (Hidden Shoal)

We mentioned last month the lead track from this album (first released in 2005 on Tell All Records), from the man who is one half of American experimental pop duo Boxharp. Its seven instrumental tracks run continuously, proceeding at glacial pace - turning, shifting, transforming in a slow, deliberate melt. Textures derive from guitar and synth smears, as well as tape manipulations and field recordings, producing a symphony of heart-tugging power. Overall, there is a pastoral rather than an industrial feel, with the humming and groaning and rumbling of the natural world being evoked. It would be wrong to single out one track over another – you need to hear this river in flow. Suffice to say, this is an ambient work of sublime beauty.

*As a post-script, Mark and Laura Solter have put together a wonderful piece of film to accompany the entire album. It's called Twins and Wives, it's a series of stately tableaux (of rural and nature scenes mostly) and you can watch it here.

Tune-Yards - Gangsta video

No excuse needed around here for a bit of Tune-Yards, the album whokill on 4AD being a shoe-in for album of the year in the UOH cabin. The still current single is Gangsta and a new video for the song has been put together by the very talented Merrill Garbus herself. She comes across as more ninja than gangsta in it, to be honest, showing herself to be extremely flexible (physically as well as artistically). But really, she could have filmed two flies crawling up a wall and put the tune to it and I would have been happy. Legend. Shot on the ubiquitous Eye-Phone...

Dum Dum Girls - Bedroom eyes video

Further to news about the new Dum Dum Girls album, Only in dreams, last month, we now have a new video for lead track Bedroom eyes, made by Tom Macon. It's a wonderful cascading kaleidoscope of multiple Girls, which very nicely mirrors the shimmering guitar sound and theme of sleep-deprived twilight zone paranoia. There's also a LOT of lipstick and that is always a good thing.

Frankie Valli & the Four Seasons

Over the summer, in among the piles of great new music arriving, I became more than slightly obsessed with one song from 1972. It was contained on the great compilation Our lives are shaped by what we love: Motown's Mowest Story 1971-1973, brought out by the wonderful Light in the Attic label. The song in question is the first track on the album, You're a song (that I can't sing), by Frankie Valli & the Four Seasons. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to track down a video or full listening link for it, but you will find a 30 second sample on the LITA website here (there's some other top class tunes on it too, from the likes of Odyssey, Sister Love and G.C. Cameron).

http://lightintheattic.net/releases/572-our-lives-are-shaped-by-what-we-love-motown-s-mowest-story-1971-73

As you'll see on that page, the label was the brainchild of Berry Gordy, the Motown boss, an idea to transfer the Detroit operation to the west coast, and launch a west-coast version - breezy, cosmic, psychedelic even - of Motown in the process. There's plenty more detail on the label background and catalogue in this article by Graeme Thomson in The Guardian a few months back.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/jun/30/mowest-motown-california

But the song... It's an acoustic guitar and strings ballad, with a big, itchy bassline. It has a male harmony chorus line that predicts Philly soul, in all its orchestrated glory. And it has Frankie Valli's vulnerable falsetto, playing the part of wounded underdog to perfection.

You're a song that I can't sing
You're a word that I cna't say
You're a game that I can't play

It also has flutes and a "Wand'rin Star" harmonica. And the most winning chorus I've heard in years, incorporating a perfectly ingenious keychange. It seems to have found a point where doo wop, soul and male crooning can live in perfect harmony.

The more I listened to it, and marvelled at its deceptively simple structure, the more I realised it reminded me of this other west coast song from a few years before, sung by Glen Campbell.



That one was written by Brian Wilson of course and that's the Beach Boys taking care of the trademark backing vocals. The emphasis is a little different but the sentiment is similar. When I first heard that, I was deaf to all other music for several weeks. You're a song (that I can't sing) is having a similar effect now. Do yourself a favour and get hold of it. Light in the Attic are waiting for your call.

Roll the Dice – In dust (Leaf)

This is a kind of concept album about life in the modern metropolis, with a soundtrack of machines at work, from the Swedish duo made up of Malcolm Pardon and Peder Mannerfelt. It’s one of the most evocative and strangely groovy collections you’ll come across. Favouring analogue synths over digital, they’ve managed to capture the rhythmic, repetitive, grinding, but also messy, untidy, unpredictable character of urban life. Or, if you prefer, they’ve made an intriguingly semi-pop series of electronic instrumentals, that also manage to have some jazz improv and Krautrock in them.

The elements range from the buzz of static to broad, sweeping synths and dubby bass pads, stop-start industrial clanks and the swoop, suck and throb of circuitry in general (one track is actually called The suck), all combining in a sort of machine swing dance class of the (near) future. However, one of the most appealing features of the album is its terrific, busy, spidery piano riffs (used to particularly memorable effect on Way out and See you Monday). These take on the role of a pulse, allowing the synths to take melody, in wonderful kosmische style, and bass, to some of the farther reaches of dub. It’s like being taken on an alternative tour of a city, through factories, workshops, past conveyor belts, typing pools, the hum of traffic and the clatter of man-machine interactions vying for your attention at every corner. It’s warm and thrilling, with a hint of danger.

Calling All Workers by Roll the Dice

The intention, Mannerfelt explains, was to create something “a little unsettling and claustrophobic”, and also “overwhelming”. It’s certainly all that but still, the redemptive moments stand out for me. The four-note descending pop perfection of Way out; the cinematic grandeur of Maelstrom; the beautiful, shifting waves of See you Monday; the dignity amidst the grime of Cause and effect; the intoxicating throb of Calling all workers, gradually subsiding under a plaintiff melody.

Mannerfelt has spent time as a member of Fever Ray, and Pardon has composed film and tv soundtracks. This album has a character all of its own though. In the end, it’s dramatic pop music with a distinctly underground edge, and a rounded and completely engaging narrative woven through it. A towering, 21st century piece of work.

Roll The Dice - Calling All Workers from Roll The Dice on Vimeo.

Playlist 189 - Sept 20 2011

The Underground of Happiness
uplifting pop music of every creed

www.theundergroundofhappiness.blogspot.com
www.facebook.com/theundergroundofhappiness

Playlist 189
Tues Sept 20 2011
11.00am-12.00pm
(repeated on Tuesdays 8.30pm)
UCC 98.3FM
listen live on the web at www.ucc.ie/ccr
*listen back to this show here
https://rapidshare.com/files/4208677283/The_Underground_Of_Happiness_20-9-2011.m4a

Playlist
Connan Mockasin - Faking jazz together (extended version) (playing Deaf Institute, Manchester, Sept 26)
Liz Green - Bei mir bist du schoen (playing Kings Place, London, Nov 25)
Memoryhouse - Modern normal
Eden Ahbez - Full moon (Trunk Records)
Dutch Uncles - The ink (playing Academy 2, Dublin, Nov 18)
(The) Caseworker - The slow track
Larsen feat. little Annie - It was a very good year (playing Cafe Oto, London, Oct 8, w/ Trumpets of Death)
Driver Drive Faster - They may talk
Trumpets of Death - The press gang (playing Cafe Oto, London, Oct 8, w/ Larsen)
Yann Tiersen - Monuments (playing Jeff Mangum's ATP, Minehead, Dec 2-4)
Roll the Dice - See you Monday
Dent May - Fun
Rachael Dadd - Anchoring (playing The Bicycle Shop, Norwich, Oct 23)

*next week's show features music from Peter Broderick, Future Islands, North Sea Radio Orchestra, William D. Drake and Toro y Moi among others

e-mail the show on radio@ucc.ie
or text +353 (0)86-7839800
please mark messages “uoh”

Conor O'Toole,
c/o UCC 98.3FM,
Áras na Mac Léinn,
Student Centre,
University College Cork,
Cork,
Ireland.

Peter Broderick – Music for Confluence (Erased Tapes)

A new soundtrack work by the now Berlin resident (following last year's Congregation and 2009's Falling from trees dance soundtracks, both also on Erased Tapes), this time to a film documentary by Jennifer Anderson and Vernon Lott about a cluster of unsolved cases of missing and murdered young girls in Idaho around 1980, and the main suspect that links the cases. With subject matter like that, and track titles like She just quit coming to school, Until the person is apprehended and Circumstantial evidence, you might expect something dour, serious, hopeless. Far from it. Broderick manages to maintain a delicacy and lightness of touch about the arrangements, without sacrificing a certain ominous quality in keeping with the subject matter. Broderick’s main instruments (if it’s fair to call them that, he seems to play everything, including vibes and steel drums on stage with Efterklang in Cork last July), piano and violin, are most prominent, to plaintiff and moving effect. Suspenseful brushed violins combine brilliantly with background swells and rumbles on Some fisherman on the Snake River. For contrast, The person of interest features layers of strident violins and low end (almost tympani-style) piano notes, to create a plot-advancing, police procedural feel - the one track that deviates from the album’s prevailing mood of beautifully unhinged melancholia. The stand-out moment for me is the otherworldly It wasn’t a deer skull, a sublimely unsettling major-minor shift of winsome violin over brooding ambient and choral backdrops – there’s also a pleasing touch of Jack Nietzsche’s One flew over the cuckoo’s nest score about it. (Its piano theme also previews in sparse form on We enjoyed life together.) Vocals are used only very sparingly - on the opening track In the valley itself (female, wordless) and the closing Old time (the film’s credit music), a lilting, nostalgic tune of plucked acoustic guitar and violin, sounding very much like an out-take from his 2008 album Home. In the accompanying press release, Peter says –

“I set out to create some textural soundscapes which could complement the building tension of the story without being too intrusive or suggestive. Days and nights, snowed in and experimenting with layers and layers of whichever instruments I had around, finding a murky atmosphere that fit with the uneasy feeling which the film gave to me.”

Job done, I’d say. (Is a 24-year old too old to be called a wunderkind?) Another poignant and intriguing collection to add to this man’s already awesome body of work. And another triumph for Erased Tapes, a bona fide treasure of a label.

Peter Broderick - Music For Confluence (album teaser) by erasedtapes

*The press release also contains a charming backstory to the album’s recording, featuring Peter Broderick falling on his feet in spectacular fashion, as he contemplates a move to Berlin in November 2010. He managed to rent an apartment there in a building where the landlord wanted only musicians living (sounds like the land of make believe to me), above a piano shop which Peter had the run of outside of business hours. In this abandoned musicians’ playground, Music for Confluence was conceived and largely recorded. You couldn’t make it up, really.

Efterklang Interview

We had a few extracts from the interview with Casper Clausen, the singer from Efterklang, on the show this week. The full interview is available here.



Topics of conversation include Vincent Moon and the making of the film An island, celebrity crushes, the common ground between Harry Nilsson and Mariah Carey, the differences between The Leaf Label and 4AD, their collaboration with Daniel Bjarnason and the Messing Orchestra for the Reich Effect Festival at the Savoy Theatre in Cork, the secret location for work on their new album, their Efterkids music education program and being “married” to music. Listen out too for an unexpected rendition of The Beatles’ Penny Lane.

AN ISLAND - 3rd TEASER - Vincent Moon & Efterklang from Rumraket on Vimeo.

The gig they played in Cork (the night after I did the interview) was a powerful, even emotional event. More thoughts on it here.

Driver Drive Faster - Open house (aA Recordings)

I’m a bit behind the curve on this one (the curve being June 2011 - I know my colleague Jim Comic was well ahead of the curve on this), but this is an album too good to pass up from the Manchester four-piece. It’s freewheeling and forward-thinking folk rock with a strong pop conviction at the core (actually it makes me think of the kind of band Elbow could be if they weren’t so, dare I say, dour.). New single They may talk starts life as a glittering electric piano-sunburst guitar duet, but by the chorus has somehow morphed into a great falsetto-festooned jam, with some great hi-hats. Missing out is a classic English smalltown tearjerker, with hints of brass band under the chorus riff. A title like Can’t afford to rely on paté might turn you off but stick around for the plaintiff vocal and teardrop piano, it’s affecting. The superb Gravel dents throws the verse-chorus structure out the window but still manages to cram in a sackful of hooks (I particularly like the space-funk interlude about 1m30 in). A mile back makes like a strutting 1973 Bowie momentarily, before striking out for gloriously downbeat pop pastures. The arrangements are clever and unexpected but never overplayed, driven along by inventive, restless backbeats. There are shades of Mercury Rev (via The Band) in their more creative moments. But overall it’s closer to the kind of fertile English folk-pop territory that Darren Hayman has ploughed to great effect recently. It’s literate (as you’d expect from a band named after the opening line of a C.S. Lewis book) and relevant to now, but most importantly it’ll have you humming along with one fantastic pop tune after another.

They May Talk - Driver Drive Faster from Driver Drive Faster on Vimeo.

Memoryhouse - The Years EP (Sub Pop)

This is something worth taking 19 minutes out of your day to listen to. Memoryhouse are a duo from Toronto, consisting of Evan Abeele (composer) and Denise Nouvion (vocals). They originally self-released most of these songs in 2010 on digital only. Those songs are now getting CD and LP treatment, with a couple of extra tracks added, and everything re-recorded/mixed/mastered from scratch. And of course the considerable support of Sub Pop. What you have below is fairly unusual - the whole EP, as a stream with accompanying film. I'd say it's dream pop, but whatever you want to call it, it's intoxicating stuff. That word isn't out of place actually because there's a certain narcotic quality to it that you wouldn't be wrong in associating with a Panda Bear or a Beach House. There's more of an ambient drift underneath this, mind you. I just feel like lying down really and letting its reverbed gorgeousness wash over me all day. At the risk of overdosing your senses, the visuals by Jamie Harley perfectly capture the dizzy and pleasurably disorientating atmosphere of it all.

The Years (Full EP Stream) from Memoryhouse on Vimeo.

You can compare the earlier recording of the material via this video for Lately.

Memoryhouse // "Lately" from Church and Steak on Vimeo.

And here's a separate stand-alone video for the track Quiet America.

Quiet America from Memoryhouse on Vimeo.

Interesting too to read about the Virginia Woolf influence, on the band's website here.

http://www.memoryhou.se/day/2011/09/13

More literature in pop music, we say.

Playlist 188 - Sept 13 2011

The Underground of Happiness
uplifting pop music of every creed

www.theundergroundofhappiness.blogspot.com
www.facebook.com/theundergroundofhappiness

Playlist 188
Tues Sept 13 2011
11.00am-12.00pm
(repeated on Tuesdays 8.30pm)
UCC 98.3FM
listen live on the web at www.ucc.ie/ccr
*listen back to this show here
https://rapidshare.com/files/3057731109/The_Underground_Of_Happiness_13-9-2011.m4a

Playlist
Tune-Yards - Gangsta (radio edit)
Patrick Kelleher & His Cold Dead Hands - Broken up now
Tarwater - Inside the ships
Atlas Sound - Terra incognita
Madam - Someone in love (playing National Portrait Gallery, London, Sept 16)
The Dead Trees - Older (playing St Pancras Old Church, London, Sept 19)

Interview with Casper Clausen of Efterklang
Efterklang Interview Excerpt 1
Efterklang - Alike
Efterklang Interview Excerpt 2
Efterklang - I was playing drums
Efterklang Interview Excerpt 3
*d'load the full interview here
http://conorot.podomatic.com/entry/2011-09-01T07_01_04-07_00

Maria Taylor - Along for the ride
Next Stop: Horizon - Reed organ song
John Cale - Whaddya mean by that
Metronomy - Everything goes my way

*next week's show features music from Connan Mockasin, (The) Caseworker, Rachael Dadd, Yann Tiersen, Driver Drive Faster and Dent May among others

e-mail the show on radio@ucc.ie
or text +353 (0)86-7839800
please mark messages “uoh”

Conor O'Toole,
c/o UCC 98.3FM,
Áras na Mac Léinn,
Student Centre,
University College Cork,
Cork,
Ireland.

Watch out for the Efterklang parents in this video

A Winged Victory for the Sullen - A Winged Victory for the Sullen (Erased Tapes)

We were talking last month about a new album due out on Erased Tapes, the self-titled debut from A Winged Victory for the Sullen, the collaboration between Stars of the Lid founder Adam Wiltzie and L.A. pianist Dustin O'Halloran. That's a band name which could go either way, ambitious or pompous, depending on the content of the music. You can test the question now by listening to it in full on this link.

A Winged Victory For The Sullen (EXCLUSIVE FULL ALBUM STREAM) by erasedtapes

You'll notice early on that it's completely instrumental and conducted at a moderate to slow pace. I think it's a monumental piece of work, personally. It feels like it has the power to divide the world between the time before you heard it, and the time since. There's a kind of floating, unearthly beauty about it. Starting immediately with the plangent piano chords of We played some open chords and rejoiced... . And the strings with ambient soundscape melancholia of Requiem for the Static King Part One. (That's a tribute to the late Mark Linkous of Sparklehorse apparently, in whose touring band Wiltzie played, and no tribute could be more fitting.) The gorgeous Steep hills of Vicodin tears was released a few weeks ago but I still can't get enough of its stately swells of violin and cello (courtesy of Peter Broderick and Hildur Gudnadottir) wrapped in oscillating electronics. And let's also mention the glorious, suspended state of grace of the 12 minute A Symphony Pathetique - not a second is wasted. Elsewhere, there are intriguing drones and field recordings that pulse in and out of view. It's ineffable, moving, transformative music, and one part of me thinks it's too beautiful for this dirty world. Nevertheless, essential.

Here's a fan video put together for Steep hills of Vicodin tears.

The Jezabels - Endless summer (Play It Again Sam)

We love a bit of AOR around the UOH cabin. And that's exactly what you have in the voice of The Jezabels' lead singer, the wonderfully named Hayley Mary. The Sydney four piece's new single came out in the last week and it sounds a little bit like Arcade Fire fronted by Belinda Carlisle. That's a good thing, in case you're wondering. It's a thumping tune with an irresistible chorus. The video features horses and shotguns and allsorts (as well as a mightily impressive crew list - there's even a Tech Assistant).



If they have more tunes like that, they should be quite a thing. See if you agree with me on the Belinda Carlisle thing.



They also put together some video footage of their time at Electric Picnic last weekend in Stradbally, their first appearance in Ireland, which seems to have been well received. There's mention of Sinéad O'Connor and triangles in the same sentence. Appropriately, there's also a snatch of Arcade Fire's EP performance in there. And it's in their favour that they sing along to Depeche Mode's Just can't get enough in the tourbus.



During Electric Picnic, they dropped in to have a chat with Jenny Huston of 2FM, where it seems to me jet lag may have taken hold. On the other hand, maybe she should just have asked them about the tunes.



The Jezabels' debut album Prisoner is due out this side of the world on Play It Again Sam early next year.

Playlist 187 - Sept 6 2011

The Underground of Happiness
uplifting pop music of every creed

www.theundergroundofhappiness.blogspot.com
www.facebook.com/theundergroundofhappiness

Playlist 187
Tues Sept 6 2011
11.00am-12.00pm
(repeated on Tuesdays 8.30pm)
Cork Campus Radio, 98.3FM
listen live on the web at www.ucc.ie/ccr
*check the blog for listening links/videos

Playlist
Serge Gainsbourg & Jane Birkin - 69 Année Erotique
Georges Delerue - Camille (from the soundtrack of the film Le Mépris)
A Winged Victory for the Sullen - Steep hills of Vicodin tears
Bill Ryder-Jones - A leave taking (from the soundtrack of the film A leave taking)
Dark Captain - Submarines
Other Lives - Tamer animals
Rachael Dadd - Balloon (playing The Cube, Bristol, Oct 21)
St Vincent - Surgeon (playing Workman's Club, Dublin, Nov 13)
Liz Green - Displacement
Roll the Dice - See you Monday
BLK w/BEAR - Casey Jnr
Mint Julep - Aviary
(The) Caseworker - National runner
Canon Blue - Indian summer (Des Moines)
Cymbals Eat Guitars - Keep me waiting

*next week's show features music from Atlas Sound, Patrick Kelleher & His Cold Dead Hands, Tune-Yards and The Dead Trees among others, plus an interview with Casper from Efterklang

e-mail the show on radio@ucc.ie
or text +353 (0)86-7839800
please mark messages “uoh”

Conor O'Toole,
c/o Cork Campus Radio,
Áras na Mac Léinn,
Student Centre,
University College Cork,
Cork,
Ireland.

(The) Caseworker - Letters from the coast (Hidden Shoal)

(The) Caseworker – Letters from the coast (Hidden Shoal)

*Brother and sister Conor & Eimer Devlin (originally Irish) form the core of this three-piece. They’ve produced a beguiling album of sunburst guitar melodies, sitting on a foundation of drone, with a thin gauze of hazy suspense draped over it. We’ve already spoken about the chiming single National runner - written about the Ethiopian long-distance athlete Miruts Yifter and it shares something of his relentless drive. The widescreen feel of Boats is created with banks of ringing, Byrdsian guitars, which combine for a thrilling crescendo. The beautiful Sea years has Eimer’s hushed, low-in the-mix vocal set against a driving bassline (reminiscient of Yo La Tengo a little bit). There’s more than a shade of shoegaze about both Sister song and Little good it did you, with fuzz smears and high-fretted bass. And I love The slow track with its ingenious uplift of trumpet, coming in the wake of a closet bossa nova. Enigmatic but approachable as anything.

*I've just heard from the horse's mouth that Conor & Eimer Devlin are not in fact related at all, they just share a surname. I feel like a right langer...

[The] Caseworker - 'National Runner' by Hidden Shoal

Mint Julep - Aviary Video + Free Download

New music from Mint Julep, the husband and wife duo Keith and Hollie Kenniff, based in Portland, Oregon. It's a beautiful slice of shoegazey electro-pop, with a suitably dreamy female vocal, as the opening line confirms.

"I lie awake
dreaming of landscapes in the rain"


The mid-section breakdown also reminds me a bit of OMD - just another reason to love it. You can download it for free here.

Mint Julep - Aviary - FREE DOWNLOAD by Keith Kenniff - Helios

The video, made by the Berlin-based A Nice Idea Every Day people, succeeds in conveying the ennui of youth, along with an undercurrent of something slightly disorientating (it could be the interesting shaking camera effect).

mint julep »aviary« from a nice idea every day on Vimeo.

It's taken from their upcoming new album, Save your season, which is due out in November through Village Green. There's also a Mogwai remix of this song, which will be available shortly - more about that anon.

Dirty Projectors + Bjork - On and ever onward (Domino)

As a quick follow-up to the recent news about the physical release of Dirty Projectors + Bjork's Mount Wittenberg Orca by Domino - we also mentioned the Dirty Projectors vocal technique, if you remember - there's a listening link now for one of the tracks so you can get the full benefit of hi-fi. It is the glorious On and ever onward and happens to be one of the best examples on the record of that distinctive, staggered or stacked, vocal technique (works best with headphones, I find). Can I recommend you take 10 minutes and 5 seconds out of your day, sit back and listen to it five times in a row.

Dirty Projectors + Björk - On and Ever Onward by DominoRecordCo

*I must add this, from the Domino press release -

The Projectors women Amber Coffman, Angel Deradoorian and Haley Dekle somehow bring the sexy back to 3-part melismatic contrapuntal organum.

I couldn't agree more!

Ennio Morricone - Are you in or out?

A few years ago, I came to a conclusion. I decided that the world was divided into two types of people. Not doctors and nurses, as Brendan Behan (quoting the English painter Constable, I think it was) once famously told Eamonn Andrews in an early Irish tv interview. The two types of people I'm talking about are

those who love Ennio Morricone
and
those who don't.

I decided that anyone who didn't appreciate the music of this man was a philistine, could not be trusted and could not be my friend. This radical division of humanity was brought on by immersing myself in More Mondo Morricone, a compilation brought out by the German Colosseum label in 1996. The subtitle on the album gives you key information about the content - "more mindblowing film themes by Ennio Morricone from Italian cult movies". (If ever a product description perfectly matched the contents, that is it.) This was the second in the Mondo Morricone series. There's a great review of the Trilogy Box Set release (all three in the series reissued together) over on Pitchfork by Alex Lindhardt - if you can dodge the hyperbole, there's plenty of good information in it.

http://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/5569-mondo-morricone-the-trilogy/

I particularly like this line from that review - it pretty much sums up my own feelings.

If you don't know Ennio Morricone beyond The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly soundtrack, your life is a sham, your friends are holograms, and your soul is a barren wasteland where maggots greedily feast upon heartlessness and willed ignorance.

Indeed. Which is not to say that it isn't a great soundtrack mind you - it contains one of the most iconic and recognisable pieces of music on the planet after all. Although very different in overall mood from the Mondo Morricone selections, the main theme does contain some of their trademark features - massed choirs and other vocalisations (waw-waw-waw), characterful flutes and trumpets etc. (Reminds me, I must put together that mixtape of tunes featuring whistling...)



By the way, I'm not generally a fan of those "Music from the Movies" concerts. However, I'm prepared to make an exception when it's the composer himself conducting and there are more than 50 musicians onstage. This is a full orchestra, with female soprano and choir performingThe ecstasy of gold from The Good, the Bad & the Ugly, recorded in Munich in 2005. It's stirring stuff.



It was through his work on the spaghetti westerns of Sergio Leone , of course, that Ennio Morricone made his name internationally. But the Mondo Morricone series deals with his domestic output outside of those films, from around 1966-1977 (which many people would say is his prime, and I'd agree). And the man has been incredibly prolific. He has composed more than 400 soundtracks, covering film and television, from 1961 to the present, and has worked with Bernardo Bertolucci, Gieuseppe Tornatore, John Houston, Dario Argento, Pier Paolo Pasolini, Terence Malick, Roman Polanski, Roland Joffe, as well as Leone, among many many others. You can get the full list below - he really has taken Bernard Herrmann's statement, to the effect that modern composers should engage with the medium of film, to heart.

http://www.enniomorricone.it/uk/soundtracks.htm

The reference in the subtitle to "Italian cult movies" can be taken as code for skin flicks or B-movie horrors, I imagine the Euro equivalent of the kind of stuff Roger Corman was pumping out of California in the 1950's and 60's. Except with soundtracks of staggering depth and sensitivity and sensuality. This is one of my favourite tracks from More Mondo Morricone, the absolutely gorgeous Come Maddalena (Like Maddalena) from the 1971 film Maddalena. It's got at least three things that you should fall in love with on the spot - the breathy pleadings of Morricone's regular vocal collaborator Edda dell'Orso, a ceiling-high church organ and harpsichord melody section, and a massed choir paired with swooning strings. At about 7 minutes, this clip is missing over 2 minutes of a drum intro - which is unforgiveable - but it's still great. (It also features a completely out of context photo of Madeleine Stowe from, I think, The last of the Mohicans, but never mind.)



Another gem, Sospiri da una radio lontana (Sighs from a distant radio) has Edda dell'Orso again leading the way, this time with what could be some comedy moaning from a Carry On film. This is quickly overtaken though by some beautiful, mournful trumpet/clarinet lines straight out of the Burt Bacharach songbook, more breathy vocals and brilliant glockenspiel and keyboard pairings. From the 1975 film Paura sulla citta (A town in fear).



Check this sublime instrumental as well, 18 Pari (18 Equal) from the 1972 film Un uomo da rispettare (A man to respect) which starred Kirk Douglas. It's an infectious bossa nova backbeat with staccato Hammond organ and twirling flute.



These three tracks show how embedded Morricone is in popular culture, and especially his influence on pop music. A band like Stereolab, for example, have clearly taken note of his arranging style, as you can hear on this song, Miss Modular, from 1997. Fermale, non-verbal vocalisations, stabs of Hammond organ and brass swells, all there.



And, in fact, they are on record about this influence. Here's an interview with WAH2 where Tim and Laetitia speak about Morricone's arrangements, and how they extract meaning out of musical noise. (They also mention the castle he lives in and his many guard dogs, but that's another matter...)



After my obsession with More Mondo Morricone had run its course (for the time being), I went after more of the man's work. And funnily enough, about a year ago, Britta Phillips of Dean & Britta fame posted a video on her facebook page, the main title from the 1969 film Vergogna Schifosi (The dirty angels). It's got the glorious Edda dell'Orso again, with a great soaring soprano, duetting with a completely swoonsome orchestra. Nice and neat the way Dean & Britta closed this particular dream pop circle. Because dream pop doesn't get any better than this.

Essie Jain, new songs

You know the way there are some things in the world that are almost too beautiful? Well two new songs from English-born-but-New-York-based Essie Jain fall into this category. Via the Dig for Fire website.

Essie Jain: Stand In The Light from Dig For Fire on Vimeo.

Essie Jain: Indefinable from Dig For Fire on Vimeo.

Jesus, I could listen to that all day. It's glorious. There's a kind of fragile quality about the music, but not gratuitously so - it's perfectly in keeping with the themes and arrangements of the songs. And not so wispy that it might disappear if you touched it either. Earthy, more adult.

I had in mind to post something about Essie for a while, since she brought out her last album of children's lullabies on her own label, Light in the Morning. This is from last January, on these pages.

Essie Jain - Until the light of morning (Light of Morning)
Already loved in the UOH bunker (one of my albums of last year before it was even released). No frills, it's primal and straightforward stuff, this, and all the more beautiful for it. An album of lullabies featuring uncluttered rhythms (waltzes are prominent) around simple guitar and piano figures, with a single voice (mostly). But what a voice, an upper register landing somewhere between folk and classical - reassuring, soothing, cerebral somehow. Look no further than the sublime Lay down or What a big wide world. Perfect for children, and susceptible adults.

Film by Carolina Melis

Essie Jain | What a big Wide World | Light Of Morning from Carolina Melis on Vimeo.

Film by Nathalie Johns at Dig for Fire


Film by Kevin de Wilde at Pollifax.com


Sublime is the word alright. The kind of music that The Underground of Happiness was created for, as a matter of fact. Do yourself a favour and get hold of that album on Essie's website - it's life-changing stuff and goes far beyond something that's only good for putting children to sleep.

http://lightofmorning.com/

Roll the Dice - Calling all workers (The Leaf Label)

We've mentioned Swedish duo Roll the Dice more than once recently, and now they've released the first track from their upcoming new album (In dust on The Leaf Label, Sept 12). It's an instrumental tune, Calling all workers, and features intoxicating layers of field recordings (the clarion call of a ringing bell), busy bass grooves and stately piano and vintage synth. It really is brilliant. The accompanying film by Frode Fjerdingstad uses an unexpectedly rural/seaside setting, but a close-up on the relentless industry of ants in the undergrowth recalls the "workers" of the title.

Roll The Dice - Calling All Workers from Roll The Dice on Vimeo.

And you can download it for free here. I haven't heard the whole album yet but on the basis of this it could be something.

Calling All Workers by Roll the Dice