The Underground of Happiness

******************************************************************************************************** Bill MacKay & Ryley Walker – Spider Beetlebee (Drag City) Beautiful album of bright and bracing guitar instrumentals from this Chicago duo collaboration. The range of styles spanned over the course of just half an hour is a clue to the open mindedness and sense of adventure of both musicians. There’s a real sense of the shared joy in playing about the whole piece. A gorgeous miniature body of work and in many ways perfect music for this time of year. SpiderBeetleBee by Bill MacKay & Ryley Walker Laura Cannell – Lines of copper gold (Brawl Records) Bracing is also a word to describe this blast of overbowed fiddle from Laura Cannell of East Anglia recorded in a semi ruined church from her current album Hunter Huntress Hawker . Call it early music. Improvised. Experimental. It is primal and it is stirring. It feels essential. HUNTER HUN...

Churning dark edged kosmische from Jaime Fennelly and friends. There’s a pleasing synergy between electronic and organic as the female voices of Haley Fohr (Circuit des Yeux) and Janet Beveridge Bean (Eleventh Dream Day) swap places with the pulsing synths and rhythmic fiddle. Meditational, trancelike, adventurous, with a minimalist sway that’s satisfyingly cathartic. Undying Color by Mind Over Mirrors

Musical moments and memories from the year gone by. In no particular order. Enjoy. ******************************************************************* 1. North Sea Radio Orchestra – Dronne (The Household Mark) Another sublime set of tunes from Craig Fortnam and company which combines folk, kosmische and avant garde classical strands, taking the legacy of former band Cardiacs into fascinating new territory. Woodwind and strings are strong and strident against a hushed motorik rhythm on centrepiece song ‘The British road’, a wonderfully sharp state of the nation analysis of Brexit era Britain – when will they learn to fight like our men, how can I rise if you don’t fall. These poised swooping strings, along with the cooing woodwind, the signature guitar style of Craig Fortnam – courtly, playful, lithe – buzzing synths and the great pure singing of Craig’s wife Sharon against Craig’s reedier tones provide the core elements throughout. Essential food for the ears, th...

This is a record I’ve been digging a lot for the past couple of months, on a label that is consistently reliable for offering authentic and intriguing cuts. Layla Cohen is the woman who goes under the name Itasca (a composite of the Latin words for “truth” – veritas - and “head” – caput - apparently). She lives in Los Angeles and there is a shimmering, heat-induced quality to her plaintiff, straightforwardly beautiful folk songs. Above the delicate guitar figures and woozy mix of steel guitar and keys, Cohen’s voice drifts with an elegance that is particularly moving. There’s a purity to it, a muted tone, something like a soft bell or chime, somehow reminding me of Joni Mitchell more than anyone else, although free of any of Mitchell’s vibrato or baroque stylings. Soft alright but insistent and beguiling. It’s an album that sounds a little out of time but all the better for that. A majestic and authoritative document. This from the label one sheet (which in the cas...

A few compilations we dipped into this week. Tim Maia was a groundbreaking Brazilian singer/songwriter who paved a way in funk, out on Luaka Bop . Numero Group continue their great archive work by compiling the American kid bands who followed in the wake of The Jackson Five in the 1970s. And J&D with a Northern Soul cut from their UK soul scene 3 disc compilation. Entrance with a gorgeous chamber folk song with a hint of psych about it. Damien Jurado , compelling as ever, from the sountrack of Tumbledown . And The Sea Nymphs from the early 90s, a jaunty genreless gem. And Rattle . Two women. Two drumkits. Two voices. More on these pages. The Underground of Happiness uplifting pop music of every creed www.theundergroundofhappiness.blogspot.com www.facebook.com/theundergroundofhappiness Twitter: UndergroundOfHappy Playlist 418 Tues Oct 11 2016 11.00am-12.00pm (repeated on Tuesdays 8.30pm) UCC 98.3FM listen live on the web at www.ucc.ie/983fm *liste...

This is about the last thing you would expect from an artist renowned for banjo playing and Appalachian folk tunes. It’s a solo piano piece consisting of a core unchanging 6-note pattern – fast, repeating – while around it staccato bursts of notes drift in and out of phase creating a hypnotic interlocking whole. It’s the kind of minimalist phasing exercise you might associate with Messers Glass or Reich. It lasts about 3 minutes but it feels much longer...in a good way. In the sense that you feel like you’ve been through something significant. Something worthwhile. And something, if you’re anything like me, you feel you need to listen to again immediately to figure out what just happened. It’s not exactly clear what it’s doing on an album of mostly banjo tunes, mysterious and tantalising as they are. But then again, why question when beauty arrives. Let’s just treat it as an absorbing, intriguing puzzle. Track 8 in this playlist

Two bands from down under who burst through in the 1980s to start the show. The Moles have a new album out, it's great. From The Chills we heard from their 1986 album on Flying Nun , Kaleidoscope world, their album last year was a brilliant and thoroughly authentic update on the 1980s sound. The singular sound of Xylouris White who play Cork in October as part of the Jazz Festival (my kind of jazz). Syrinx , the kosmische sound of the Toronto early 70s underground, a beautiful thing. Nathan Bowles , making banjo swing and swoon. And Barry McCormack , the ex Jubilee Allstars man has a new album out, a rollicking folk rock set with a scathing eye on his home city of Dublin. Like The Fall, always the same, always different. More on these pages. The Underground of Happiness uplifting pop music of every creed www.theundergroundofhappiness.blogspot.com www.facebook.com/theundergroundofhappiness Twitter: UndergroundOfHappy Playlist 416 Tues Sept 27 2016 11....

This could be the first band I’ve ever heard from Nova Scotia and first impressions of the place are very promising. It seems to be the kind of place where literate downbeat songs of hometowns and well observed intriguing domestic details are recorded live and loose and lovely. Musically, Nap Eyes are drawing broadly into the same gene pool as early Go Betweens, the time when the roots and the post punk (Creedence and The Velvet Underground) were equally revered. Singer Nigel Chapman’s dry but warm delivery has a bit of Lou Reed about it, particularly from around the time of the Velvet Underground album. Words are written first, you suspect, because they elbow their way endearingly into the line and the melody. The sublime ‘Lion in chains’, taking its sweet time, with as many verses as it needs, chiming guitars over a gorgeous vocal burr, like a comatose ‘Sweet Jane’. The beautiful rolling drum pattern of ‘Stargazer’ feeding a wandering guitar riff which foreshado...