Friday Video: Foals, 'Olympic Airways', post-Skinscore

A nice summery video from Foals, the best popular math-rock band of 2008 and one of my records of the year with Antidotes. The sound seems (intentionally?) muffled at first, but it's a beautifully shot video of one of the most thrilling, trilling quiet-ish songs on the album, and a great display of youth shenanigans. Which brings me to the point that, after their performance of 'Hummer' on the popular TV show Skins which gained them a large and youthful fanbase, they proved to be a tremendously interesting and worthy post-punk band. Antidotes is a crystalline, energetic post-rock album, filled with sweet hooks and a pulsing beat that keeps it going through eleven tracks of desultory experimentation. And no guitar chords.

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Anyway, I'm sooo over Skins... At first, I thought getting rid of all the old characters mightn't be too bad an idea, given that the show isn't Saved By The Bell and youth is a transient phase, but now it seems that the new cast is allowing them to regress the central attitude and vision of the show. Parts of the second series were actually really classy television, and the first season had novelty and daring behind its shock! hedonism! aspects - this season appears to have neither quality.

The trailer looks exciting enough; of course, neither of the two previous elaborately shot sequences was meant to bear more than a figurative resemblance to the events of the series itself. So in this case, it's what the creators of Street Wars would have you believe the average Friday night out in Britain is like. Dubiously aged drinkers in a stereotypical English pub suddenly turn to ransacking the place, beginning with lighting distress flares indoors. The opening sequence of the series - "this day has potential. It's pregnant" - introduces: a cocky skater kid who cheats death and serious traffic accidents; a semi-Chav-like guy who drinks lager in the morning; and a semi-autistic nerd who counts calories. Eventually, Harry Enfield gets nutted in the face. Oh dear.

Nobody expects Skins to be realistic, but we do expect the comedy to have a point. So far, this series seems as aimless as the tabloid idea of drunken teens it was supposed to lampoon. Nevertheless, I'll probably still watch it - the first episode at least - to see if the jokes or the characters get any better.

Series 3 trailer (featuring TV on the Radio, 'Halfway Home')

Episode 1, part 1 (featuring Fucked Up, 'Son the Father')

The (rest of the) Best of 2008 Pt. 2 - with words

Hardcore for Nerds: The Best of 2008 Mixtape, Part 2

('Jingle Bells & Snow Drifts')

Total: 29.6 mins

(Download)

7. Cold War Kids - 'Every Valley Is Not A Lake' - 3:34

8. The Gaslight Anthem - 'The Patient Ferris Wheel' - 3:34

9. Chequerboard - 'Toy Winds' - 3:53

10. So Cow - 'Shackleton' - 3:54

11. Foals - 'Olympic Airways' - 4:19

12. Envy - 'Conclusion of Existence' - 5:08

13. Fight Like Apes - 'Snore Bore Whore' - 5:20

Welcome to the doppelganger of Zeitgeist II - part two, the lower half of Hardcore for Nerd's top dozen (plus one) albums of 2008. These are the - at least -'very good' records; yet, although perhaps not reaching the excellence of the top six, they have many of their own moments of the sublime.

I've created a different coloured cassette in part because says-it doesn't have a 'side 2', but also because there's a sort of yin-yang division between the two mixes. Pt. 1 was the (comparatively) hard-rocking, propulsive and at times dissonantly erupting side; Pt. 2 is groovier and more expansive, though, at times, equally sonically dissolute - and on this basis, it has the festive subtitle 'Jingle Bells and Snow Drifts'.

Pt. 1 was almost exclusively guitar rock; Pt. 2 (excepting, mostly, the jazzy rhythms of Cold War Kids or the Springsteen-esque pop of The Gaslight Anthem) shades towards electronic sounds. Given those admittedly not completely sharp contrasts, there is also another important element of the yin-yang separation: the containment within each part of its opposite - the little oppositely-coloured dots in the tradtional ying-yang symbol. So, while on the one hand the first mix had the ambient sounds bleeding into Grails 'Natural Man', on the other this mix features the explosive, dissonant guitar freakout of So Cow's 'Shackleton'.

1. Cold War Kids, 'Every Valley Is Not a Lake' from Loyalty to Loyalty

(Category: Alt-Americana (Jazz-Blues subcategory) Album of the Year - Runners Up, The Black Keys - Attack and Release)

"every sermon is not the gospel, babe,

let me put it another way, every valley is not a lake"

From Robbers and Cowards to Loyalty to Loyalty there is a huge improvement, but also a strong strain of familiarity. Cold War Kids have made a better album with better songs all round, but their sound - piano-laden hooks, trilling guitar, bluesy rhythms and disjointed construction - is still the same. Particularly, if you wanted singer Nathan Willett to dial down his wassailing, you'll be disappointed. For me, it's an essential part of the band: that edge of sonic anarchy and extra touch of expressiveness. In part, he's a guy channelling female blues singers, or channelling Jeff Buckley channelling female blues singers (and no, he's nowhere near as melodious... but it works better this, the dissonnant, way). 'Every Valley Is Not a Lake' isn't the strongest example of that factor, but insofar as it does display the vocal experimentations of Loyalty to Loyalty, it blends well with the expressionist lyrics and jangly blues-pop to make a very fine song.

2. The Gaslight Anthem, 'The Patient Ferris Wheel' from The '59 Sound

(Category: Alt-Americana (Springsteen subcategory) Record of the Year - Runners Up, Bruce Springsteen - 'Dream Baby Dream', The Constantines - Kensington Heights)

Noel Murray, Popless - 30 favorite songs of 2008:

"It took me a spin or two to get used to the pop-punk polish and relentlessly anthemic nature of The '59 Sound, but I kept returning because the songs are so catchy—like Bruce Springsteen's Born In The U.S.A. as recorded by The Bouncing Souls"

I've been following Noel Murray's 'Popless' column over at the AV Club throughout 2008, and at times intrigued, inspired, baffled and amused by his alphabetical trawl through modern popular music. Plus, of course, finding wonderfully apt descriptions of artists I myself know quite well - of which this is one. The song he chose, incidentally, was 'Miles Davis and the Cool' which I used for the Year End November selection. In the end of the column, furthermore, it seems that other albums that Noel Murray was listening to this year included Human Bell and Future of the Left. A man of taste.

'The Patient Ferris Wheel' perhaps shows up the Bouncing Souls, Jerseyite punk-pop influence even more. If the Gaslight Anthem have their limitations, then the only really pertinent one is that The '59 Sound is a surrogate for the successor to 2006's The Gold Record by the Bouncing Souls, or Anchors Aweigh (more refined in its Springsteen-ism) or even (anthemic pop-punk masterpiece) How I Spent My Summer Vacation. For the moment, however, there's

"standing in the Jersey rain

thinking about what an old man said

maybe I should call me an ambulance

I've never felt so strange

standing in the pounding rain..."

3. Chequerboard, 'Toy Winds' from Penny Black

(Category: Electronic Album of the Year - Runners Up, Rarely Seen Above Ground - Organic Sampler, Matmos - Supreme Balloon)

It's been a pleasure to come back to this album again after marking it up for consideration in April. Even better, it seems to be cropping up quite frequently in comment submissions for Nialler9's Irish Albums and Songs Poll 2008. The winner two years ago was Si Schroeder's Coping Mechanisms, which I've discussed on this blog before, and of which there are certain echoes in Penny Black. 'Toy Winds' is the concluding track, which showcases perfectly the two elements of Chequerboard's sound: classical guitar lilts and glitchy electronic beats. Atmospheric music made extraordinarily visual (the creator, John Lambert, is a professional graphic artist as well) with the stunning artwork, and the conflictingly nostalgic sense of wistful Victoriana put to dubstep, in a loose sense, and meticulously crafted electronic sounds in general.

4. So Cow, 'Shackleton' from I'm Siding With My Captors

(Category: Irish Release of the Year Pt. 2 - Runners Up, Bats - Cruel Sea Scientist, Halves - Haunt Me When I'm Drowsy, Heathers - Here, Not There)

It's a bit disappointing, now, to hear So Cow backed with a drum machine - after seeing the current rhythm section in action, live - but it works, or is at least excused, here in I'm Siding With My Captors' mini-epic love song 'Shackleton' and its journey from minimum to max. It has its own "personification, exposition and tragic irony" all within its opening three, or even two, minutes: as the songwriter-within-a-song drafts his masterpiece, only to strip it all back down again, to the beat of a tinny drum machine and what sounds like a miniature organ; and haaving "paid the cellist for his time", all that's left is a heartful plea "one day I'll write the song that you require, and until then lalala [guitar noise]". Repeat, and close. Beautiful.

5. Foals, 'Olympic Airways' from Antidotes

(Category: Indie Album of the Year pt. 2 - Runners Up, Crystal Castles who were on Skins too)

A further stretch of finely crafted indie electronica, Foals 'Olympic Airways' is among at least a handful of other brilliantly constructed songs from Antidotes, the album that immediately separated Foals from being just another angular post-punk band, that happened to be on Skins playing one of their (now) duller tracks, 'Hummer', and showed them to be something altogether more interesting. After all, Radiohead's 'Nude' was used as almost the entire basis for the second season trailer of Skins - which was, televisually, also very interesting - but no-one goes around calling them 'Skinscore'. The breathy tension, the ably created mood of experimentation, and the obvious catchiness, make this track out to be what Q and not U's Power could have been had it taken another, equally valid direction. There's a certain post-rockiness to the sparse guitar lines, and the slightly over-predictable crescendo, but overall they are superficial elements to the underlying stylistic substance - nebulous, but affecting -of the track.

6. Envy, 'Conclusion of Existence' from Envy/Jesu (Split EP)

(Category: Electronic Release of the Year Pt. 2)

Like Noel Murray's brief summation of The Gaslight Anthem above, this rather lengthier discussion of the Envy/Jesu split on sputnikmusic reflects a lot of my own thoughts on this record (I only have it in mp3 form at the moment, because it has only been released in Japan for most of the year, but I have the white vinyl on order). I'm far more of an Envy fan than a Jesu, but I like some of the work from the latter (more so than from Envy's other split partners this year, Thursday) and combination makes even more sense when one considers the direction Envy has been heading ever since A Dead Sinking Story. The most Jesu-like, electronic track, 'Conclusion of Existence' is barely screamo in any sense, but it's still very strongly Envy. Glitchy electronic beats, again, take up half the song before exploding (at 2:44) into unexpected strings and, in general, the sort of chaotic beauty, though now somewhat more restrained and subtler, that made Envy so surprising in the first place.

7. Fight Like Apes, 'Snore Bore Whore' from Fight Like Apes and the Mystery of the Golden Medallion

(Category: Irish Album of the Year Mostly Re-recorded So It Doesn't Count (As Much) But Still Really, Really Good)

And finally, the album I couldn't leave out of the mixtape, and which really is in its on way one of the best of the year - the Fight Like Apes full-length debut, and the album closer 'Snore Bore Whore' (originally, of course, the closer to the 'Do You Karate?'/David Carradine Is a Bounty Hunter Whose Robotic Arm Hates Your Crotch EP). One half hushed melody synth ditty, one half total wall-of-sound shoegaze synth epic; one complete miracle of a song. Do, if you're a convert, watch the ecclesiastical performance from Other Voices (recorded partly in St James' church, Dingle, Co. Kerry; it's also the original composition - as it does, technically, sound better on the album) below:

Récherche Du Tunes Perdu (c'est-a-dire, Airs Trouvés)

Hello, and welcome back. First of all, that title isn’t meant to signify much. I’ve never read Proust (yet) so it’s just a bilingual pun with pretentions above its station. This is just a few notes on what I’ve been listening to these past few weeks.

Hopefully Hardcore for Nerds’s readership hasn’t atrophied too much in the past three weeks, and that likewise this post will be of interest at least to some.

Having taken with my only a ‘small’ mp3 player – one gigabyte, practically the smallest amount of music memory you can buy now, thank you Moore’s Law – my holiday listening consisted of a) the last three Envy albums plus their two more recent EPs, b) a broad selection of Hoover/Crownhate Ruin listening and c) all the really good new albums I’ve bought – or near enough – this year. I collected most of the latter at the end of the fourth month of the year, and I hope to do a reprise of that list at the end of next month. In addition, I brought a few books to read to have something to do while listening to music...

- Carry The Meek by Ham Sandwich is still going strong as my favourite album of the year, and I’m not exactly sure why. Obviously, it sounds really really good, stays fresh every time I listen to it, and is connected to some very good live memories. Yet I can’t help feeling troubled by issues of parochialism, originality and simplicity; three things which are in fact strengths of the band for me. Kells in Meath isn’t my parish, certainly, but they’re in the orbit of Dublin and it still seems odd to prefer this to anything else I’ve heard from the US or UK, especially when that’s where I get 90% of my music from. I can’t even claim them, at least straightforwardly, as great innovators or even treaders of any particular obscure branch of rock – they’re just an oddly named indie band somewhere between the Yeah Yeah Yeahs and The Smashing Pumpkins, and a little bit outside of either. There’s a good deal of complexity there that might be easy to miss in their songs, but for the most part Carry The Meek is the simplicity of the true punk-pop record.

- coming in a very close second is Triptych by Shooting at Unarmed Men, the follow-on band of Jon Chapple from the always-good-to-be-mentioned band, Mclusky. I was impressed by this album from the start, but thinking about in a more structured way for my post about it here helped me appreciate it on a whole other level, as a conceptual masterpiece of post-punk, hardcore and noise-rock that frankly puts Future of the Left, thrilling as they are, in the shade. Furthering this perception was a second – or third, I forget – reading of Nicholas Rombes’s Ramones essay for the 33 1/3rd series of music books. Rombes, an associate professor of English, opens the book with the statement “Ramones is either the last great modern record, or the first great postmodern one”. Not least for its atavistic qualities in returning to stripped-back hardcore punk, Triptych - essentially a series of vignettes in disparate but connected genres – resonates a lot with this description. Compared to Ramones, it really is just another one in a long line of great postmodern records.

One thing especially that struck me was Rombes’s claim that the first four tracks of Ramones - ‘Blitzkrieg Bop’, ‘Beat On The Brat’, ‘Judy Is A Punk’ and ‘I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend’ – “capture the full range of the Ramones’ sound and stand as a sort of mini-album within the album” or a “self-contained mini-album” (pages 84 and 90, respectively). The premise of Triptych is of course three discs of four tracks each, and in total 13 songs, very close to Ramones total of 14.

- I don’t have very much to say about it here, but the self-titled album by Human Bell (Andy Heumann of Arboreteum and Nathan Bell of Lungfish - formerly and amongst other groups, that is) still ranks extremely highly for my year so far. It’s an incredible instrumental mix of post-rock and blues, not overlong on bombast but heavy, very heavy on texture. I’m surprised how little I’ve heard of it, even if Road Records did – and very accurately so – pimp it up as ‘if slint were more influenced by early blues music meets a bit of the explosive post rock of mogwai'.

- a new entrant to my 2008 canon is Vampire Weekend’s also self-titled debut. I took this album with me and played it more times than anything else other than Carry The Meek. Like that, it’s tremendously easy to listen to – it’s called indie rock, look it up – and if my feelings aren’t quite as strong for it in comparison, the album still has some fantastic and unique qualities . It’s not so much in the much-touted African influences although they are there and to good effect. Just as they have been done before, as the BBC Culture Show illustrated pretty neatly last night in a segment on Afrobeat drummer Tony Allen, when they showed these two videos in immediate succession (although admittedly only a brief clip of the latter):

Talking Heads - 'Once In A Lifetime'

Vampire Weekend - A-Punk

What is different about Vampire Weekend, though, is the whole mix of sounds on the album; African singing and drumming, likewise indie guitar sounds, orchestral touches - faux-baroque string sections - and a real old-sounding pop style (I originally thought 60s, my friend says 80s, and I reckon music is in a constant 20-year cycle of rebirth). They also sound bizarrely English - part of the pop archaism, I suppose - right down to having lyrics about tea; "English Breakfast is like Darjeeling". Whereas as another indie band actually from England (Oxxxford to be precise), Foals, are trying really hard to sound like they're the ones from Brooklyn.

- Antidotes, by Foals is an album I didn't bring with me, but that's not out of any boredom with it. Quite the opposite, I'm fairly confident it will hold up for the year. It really was an album with a surprising amount of depth to it, considering how far it moved from the sound indicated by the early and popular singles. Anyone who judges bands on the basis of their haircuts or the TV shows their fans watch is a real chump, but my gut feeling is that Antidotes is far beyond, say, Crystal Castles. At the moment, it feels good to swop around the LPs of Vampire Weekend and Antidotes with No Kill Beep Beep and Different Damage by Q and not U, and I don't care if anyone calls me an indie hipster for my troubles.

- other albums I didn't listen to quite as much but still enjoy were the Black Keys, Attack & Release - some of the production magic is wearing off, but it's still a good one for the band - Sinaloa, Oceans and Islands - I'm really getting into this one now, apologies to any hardcore (in the genre sense) fans who thought I was oddly lukewarm before. Instrumental Irish albums Penny Black and Spectre and Crown are likewise still going strong, the latter particularly I'm starting to enjoy more fully now. Plus the two excellent Irish EPs, Bats Cruel Sea Scientist and Halves Haunt Me When I'm Drowsy; one with a heavy math-rock kind of sound, the other with a totally opposite ethereal post-rock, EITS-and-Sigur Ros style, both very accomplished and well worth a listen. And that's all the new stuff I've bought and really absorbed so far.

- Naturally, a few other recent or not-so-recent releases need a mention. I was conscious of not having Have A Nice Life's Deathconsciousness double album along with me, which has collected a lot of praise from both Geek Down and Last Train To Cool. Shoegaze-y post-hardcore, it's very hard to explain and I've been meaning to buy the proper release for a while now. Also, I just downloaded Patti Smith's The Coral Sea from eMusic yesterday. Kevin Shields plays guitar on the whole of it, quite mesmerising. Anyone else heard it yet, or for that matter the new Grails (Take Refuge In Clean Living)?

- And finally if briefly, onto things more emo-ish. The WFMU live recordings of Hoover and Lincoln are fascinating listens; the Hoover session is very lengthy, about three-quarters of an hour with songs from both Lurid Traversal and the then as yet unreleased EP tracks; the Lincoln a good deal shorter, under twenty minutes but showing some real fire in some of their songs. I think I'll sit down and work out the tracklistings (assuming no-one has done so already?) and make a full post on them. In the meantime you can of course find the Two-Headed Coin split from the two bands here.

The Fugazi Peel Session from 1988 which I just found before I left is also excellent, with more experimental version of tracks from the 13 Songs album, especially a screamingly good closing version of 'Glueman'. I haven't always been a great fan of live or demo recordings, but the above examples, plus Zen and the Art of Face Punching's timely resurfacing of the Clikatat Ikatowi demo release and the August 29, 30 1995 live recording (you can find the latter in the comments there), have certainly made me more interested.

Shooting at Unarmed Men, Foals - 7" x 2

Two 7"s, no relation between them - that is, none other than they both come from two of my favourite albums of the year so far, Triptych and Antidotes. Shooting at Unarmed Men's Triptych is a conceptual masterpiece of punk and post punk, executed with admirable brio, I think is the word; Foals, Antidotes an equally impressive indie take on math-rock, mixing Q and not U with Battles and remaining fairly idiosyncratic.

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'Sometimes The Only Thing You Can Do Is Die' is the first song from the first disc of 'Triptych', a ferocious song quite typical of what one might expect from the former bassist of Mclusky. It's brief - as you might be able to see by how little of the space on the 7" it takes up - and the jerky speed of the intro was I think the reason it kept skipping, although a new record.

In full, the song - which merges into 'This Song Comes With A Picture', featured on this mix - is gloriously fast and heavy. It's punk not metal, but the riffs could almost be described as 'punishing', and by the screaming halfway-through you can tell Jon Chapple is enjoying himself.

The B-side, 'Missed Opportunities' is the very last, hidden track from Triptych. It's also quite short, a little acoustic ditty but with a strong harmony, great echoing percussion, and a sort of Sixties guitar-pop sense about it. Between these two songs, this 7" showcases the strength of the album - brevity, diversity and a powerful sound.

Shooting at Unarmed Men - 'Sometimes The Best Thing You Can Do Is Die'. PURE224S, 2007 (vinyl rip)

(And be sure to head over to the Fight Like Apes Myspace where from today they have all three songs from their upcoming single to stream, including the 'Lightsabre Cocksucking Blues' cover - which is very impressive. It's much less of a straight cover than their live version, and they've really done something different with the song)

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Just by comparison, I'm less impressed with the Foals record than with Triptych, but in itself it's a fine, even excellent, interesting album. Antidotes as a whole is a step beyond their singles, like 'Hummer' which didn't make the cut, and 'Cassius' and 'Balloons' which did. 'Red Socks Pugie', the third song on the album after quality opener 'The French Open', and 'Cassius', is a much better introduction to the album's sound.

While 'Cassius' - one of the 7"s of which I posted here - takes a jazzy, punky attitude to its central hook, 'Red Socks Pugie' is much more atmospheric. I heard a DJ on Phantom one night describe it as having 'a really good beginning, an okay middle, and a really good ending'. It's a sort of nebulous song, shifting gears without having an obvious centre. Yet, it works very well, making some really interesting and enjoyable math-rock-influenced music to listen to. Just like the album, really.

Foals - 'Red Socks Pugie' (side A only)

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Oh, and it's my birthday today. XXI

Off to see Si Schroeder and Baltimore experimentalists Matmos in Andrew's Lane tonight - the first gig in the excellent 'Future Days' festival in Dublin this weekend, featuring Low, Bonnie Prince Billy and Dan Deacon. Unfortunately, it's the only one I think that I will be going to.

But that's okay, because I have the entire Envy discography - on guess what format? - winging its way to me from Temporary Residence. A belated birthday present.

Best of 2008: Year End April

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This might seem a little odd, but at least one other person has done it so far, and at the end of March no less (commonality: Foals, Antidotes). I had the idea about a week ago, when I realised that I bought exactly five new albums that I could say, with a high degree of likelihood, would end up on Best of 2008 list. So those are the first five releases pictured above, roughly in order of preference. The next two and, later, three are a slightly more complicated story.

But first, to the mixtape:

01 - 14:25

1. Ham Sandwich, 'St. Christopher'

2. Human Bell, 'Hanging from the Rafters'

02 - 09:04

3. Foals, 'Balloons'

4. The Black Keys, 'Lies'

5. Shooting at Unarmed Men, 'This Song Comes With a Picture'

03 - 07:43

6. Chequerboard, 'Penny Black'

7. Sinaloa, 'Tread, Not Trudge'

04 - 08:31

The Jimmy Cake, 'Red Tony' (long-form version only)

Year End April, 7 tracks

Year End April (YEA 01-04), 3 tracks + bonus

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Artist/Album/Track title:

Ham Sandwich/Carry the Meek/St. Christopher

From listening to their singles on the radio and from seeing this band live in February, I would already have a very high opinion of Ham Sandwich. But this album is really, really good and I would have surprisingly little hesitation in saying this will probably still be my #1 record by the end of the year. It's solid to the point of being flawless, with hardly the one song of filler and keeping up its energy throughout.

'St. Christopher' is the opening track, with a little piano melody leading into the rhythmic post-punk/pop-punk/whatever sound of the group. Just as any of the other songs on the album, the combination and trading off of the male/female vocals work very well. And from there it goes, keeping its beautiful melody and trading up its dynamics until the end of the song explodes into a repeated chorus.

This whole album is very loud, and pace Bob Dylan's comments on modern sound recordings, I haven't enjoyed the production of an album so much since I first heard American Steel's Jagged Thoughts. If it's done with the right degree of sensitivity, good production can make an album into something shimmering and wonderful.

Original post: Ham Sandwich - Live at Whelan's, 23/02/08

Human Bell/Human Bell/Hanging from the Rafters

This is one hell of a post-rock record. I bought the Human Bell LP basically because it was on recommendation at Road Records (where I've bought more than half of this list), and specifically because the description and pedigree caught my eye. A collobaration between Andy Heumann and Nathan Bell, the latter a former member of Lungfish, this is seven instrument guitar songs of a variety of different styles. The 'more bluesy kind of Slint' part from the Road blurb caught my eye, and really this is a bit like Lungfish covering Chulahoma-style Black Keys.

This track, the opener to side B of the LP, is the longest on the album at over nine minutes, although most of the other songs average out at about five or six. It has a short intro before the main rhythm of the song kicks in, and then it's all hypnotic guitar blues, scuzzed-out background and snappy drumbeats. Like Lungfish, there is something hugely hypnotic about this band's sound; and like the Black Keys, there is something heart-jerking and colourful about its expression.

The important point to make is the variety of the songs on this album: as I say, there are seven of varying lengths, centred on instrumental guitars but also bringing in Nathan Bell on trumpet at times; and exploring different aspects of the post-rock sound from Slint or the For Carnation to Mogwai. I said previously:

"Human Bell experiments with a variety of grooves, and a variety of minimalist approaches to music. If the combination of richness and minimalism isn't a glaring paradox, then that's what it means to toll the human bell:"

Original post: Human Bell - Human Bell

Foals/Antidotes/Balloons

Apparently 'Skinscore' (Skinxc?) is now a word - at first I thought this was a slightly redundant phrase describing, I don't know, Oi or something else with actual skinheads in it, but then I realised it meant bands associated with the (excellent) TV show Skins. Since at the moment it basically only consists of Foals and Crystal Castles, it's not the most solid of genres with regards to quality: but despite its pejorative origins, it does throw up some music of considerable interest. This same place where I found that term was a Drowned in Sound article trying to trace Foals back to all the other math-rock bands, everything apparently from Slint to Q and not U.

This is taking the view of Foals as a breakthough math-rock band comparable to the success last year of Battles - which, in fact, Foals do quite resemble on their full album. 'Balloons' is one of the two singles, the other being 'Cassius', to make the cut for that album. Jerky, angular guitars, with frenetic pacing and the colour of a jazz saxophone, make this out still as an excitingly oblique take on what I - and many of the readers here - would find more familiar from listening to Q and not U. (This week a new limited-edition 7" from Irish band Hooray for Humans came out, by the way; so expect something on the blog about that soon, assuming that I am able to pick it up)

The whole album, however, is largely just as energetic as these two singles and encompasses a wide range of interesting sounds and styles. It may not be the single most complex thing to be released this year, but there is plenty to engage and challenge the listener, with post-punk stylings and repetitions and more than a touch of electronics. Particularly if it ages well, this album is assured a high placing in an end-of-year top 10.

Original post: Foals, 'Cassius' video + vinyl rip

The Black Keys/Attack and Release/Lies

This album completely crept up on me, sending me into a flurry of illegal downloading and then trips to HMV to fork out over-the-odds money for an admittedly rather nice gatefold. The 'Strange Times' single makes for a pretty good encapsulation of their 'new' sound, which isn't so much new as their trademark blues rejigged and enhanced by the inspired production of Danger Mouse. But considering my disinterest in their last two full-lengths, I was going to need more than a catchy single for convincing.

'Lies' was the second song up on the band's Myspace page, and basically is there to represent the bands softer, balladic side. I read on a message board a conversation between some guy who had his own advance copy and was itching to share the news with everyone of how good Attack & Release was. He mentioned that there was one really good slow-ish song, and someone else asked 'is it Lengths good?' (that being a pretty awesome slow, countrified number from Rubber Factory); he said 'it's better than The Lengths', and the reply went to the effect that that was a physical and scientific possibility. Well, it ain't, 'cos this song is very possibly better.

So, long story short, the spacious and semi-exotic sounds of Danger Mouse as added to the Black Keys' rejuvenated groove have made this song, along with all the others on their new album, into fantastically novel blues-rockers. Attack & Release has totally reaffirmed my belief in the Black Keys as important, progressive and sonically powerful artists. As well as an album that's immediate to your ears, it's also paradoxically something that you can get lost in the sound of.

Original post: The Black Keys - Attack & Release, Chulahoma

Shooting at Unarmed Men/Triptych/This Song Comes With a Picture

Jon Chapple, the bassist and singer from Mclusky, moved to Australia with his new band in the last few years. Having previously released the rather good album Yes, Tinnitus! and a few singles, this was something to look forward to when it got a European release, which it did on March 31st this year. Although, as I explained in my review of the gig, I find the Future of the Left an impressive band I still prefer this side of the post-Mclusky tree.

Triptych is, as the name suggests, a triple-disc album. Spread over those three discs are twelve (well, actually thirteen when you include a 'hidden track' at the end) songs, but don't worry, they aren't anything near 15 minutes long each. In fact, the first disc - from which this song is taken from - clocks in at a little over nine minutes in length. Overall it seems as if Shooting at Unarmed Men had just too much material to fit on one CD, and instead of going for the too-ordinary double album, decided things come better in threes.

Which is what they do, because Triptych works rather well. It's difficult to explain if you're not familiar with Mclusky, but the Jon Chapple 'part' of their sound was in a large part the broad, expansive post-hardcore foil to Andy Falkous's scatterfire punk; lots of complex, epic bass rhythms carefully wrapped up in three-minute punk songs. Which isn't exactly what's in this track, 'This Song Comes With a Picture', but is part of the whole tapestry of the album. Triptych lines up bursts of lo-fi, rock'n'roll sounds which almost hark back to 70s punk (and a shade more on the British side of it, as well) with more extensive strips of hardcore and post-. Altogether, it's an interesting listening experience and one which brings together the catchiness of their earlier work.

Original post: Shooting at Unarmed Men, 'Girls Music' (Promo Single)

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So they are the five albums which originally came to mind; I think, if five equally good albums come up every four months in the rest of the year, that should leave them with on average a 2/3 chance of being in the top 10 (my probability maths is a little rusty, but basically 10 over 15). The middle three I all bought on LP, so - having got my first record player in January - they make an important introduction into the world of modern music on old formats for me. Top is the only one I've caught live, although I could have gone to see (3) if I didn't mind the Skins-core fans, and (4) I saw a couple of years before the current album.

In addition to those five, are a couple extra that I've been getting into this year. Chequerboard's Penny Black is a bit of a dark horse, not because of any lack in quality, but because it's a bit 'out-there' in terms of the music I listen to (it's been played on Lyric FM - only by John Kelly though, naturally). Classical Spanish guitar over glitchy electronica, if you liked the Si Schroeder track from the 21st Century Bites mix, you should really like this too; but if you didn't, then probably not. Chequerboard is all one man, John Lambert - musician, producer and full-time graphic artist. The album is a beauty to behold, as you can see from this example of the artwork below (from The Indie Hour):

I bought his earlier album, Gothica, recently and the CD booklet was entirely taken up with a comic book short story (graphic novella?). Penny Black has a kind of Victoriana theme going on, and it's probably just my imagination but the music does seem somehow reminiscent of late-19th century Ireland.

The second extra track, from Sinaloa's new album, is more of a white horse for this list - as genuinely really good modern screamo record. I first got into Sinaloa from their 2006 Ampere/Sinaloa split and which I still think is probably their best work, but their full lengths are excellent too. They don't just play modern technical hardcore, but also have a strong vibe of the original Moss Icon/Indian Summer sounds. A certain person commented on Zen and the Art of Face Punching that they thought Sinaloa was the blandest of the new emo bands (and subsequently what sort of punishment they would deserve for saying that). But I can see at least in part where they are coming from; Sinaloa's sound is quite repetitive and that dreaded word, same-y - even after listening to them quite often and quite closely. The thing is, their style is just so purely and powerfully emotional that it just doesn't matter. I guess it's a bit like saying that all blues songs are bland, if you didn't appreciate the emotion in them.

Oceans of Islands is an album I'm pretty sure I want to get on LP, and if I order it from Purepainsugar in Europe like I'll have to, I should be able to get the latest repress of Indian Summer discography along with it. Woo!

Finally, the fourth 'bonus' track in the long-form download is from an album which has made a big splash in the Irish indie scene when it was released in the middle of last month. (I hadn't got it at the time of first making up the mixtape, which is why it's only on the long form version, and to tell the truth I haven't listened the full way through yet). The last Jimmy Cake album was released when I was about fifteen, so they haven't been a group that I've been aware of apart from very generally, but their long-awaited new album Spectre and Crown sounds very very good.

The Jimmy Cake are a sort of post-rock musical collective, who've been rotating members over the last five years. Lots of instruments, and a lot of different sounds, but all very good. You can read all about their album launch show here and here. This opening track sounds a bit like Ham Sandwich strung out on opiates and as performed by GY!BE (although the Godspeed comparison isn't allowed, because it's both too easy and too inaccurate). Jazzy, layered, and rather beautiful.

The album artwork, too, is extremely aesthetically pleasing. It was commissioned from a Japanese artist, Atsushi Kaga, who is based in Dublin. The whole CD case is this beautifully smooth black, with the iconic image on the front and tracklistings written elsewhere in a calligraphic, wispy font which is almost unreadable. The spine (the green bit in the picture) is a detachable peace of card which, along with all the information in Japanese (I have a copy of the Ramones' Leave Home with the same thing) has the tracklisting in a normal font and the barcode, usefully located away from the main artwork. Really, for the best album artwork of the year, it's between Chequerboard and The Jimmy Cake at the moment.

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New Vinyl Photography and Friday Videos: Crystal Castles, Fight Like Apes, Foals & Radiohead; Skins & SXSW

(Click to enlarge - and to test your knowledge of Dischord/No Idea/etc release numbers!)

First of all, hope you like the new header (above, top). I'd been thinking of changing it for some time, especially since the mp3 player in the original (and the headphone cable, but not the headphones) had given up on me. You might recognise the current picture from the Double Slowcore Post; it's a record stylus in action, shot from a slightly odd angle. It fits the slightly different direction this blog has been going in lately.

The picture immediately above - the sum total of my LPs as of 04/04 - is the genesis for a third header. I might come up with one or two more, and maybe rotate them on a weekly basis...

However, no vinyl is involved in this post; it's all hip, up-and-coming indie-ish bands, shown mostly through the medium of low- and medium-quality video:

Crystal Castles on Skins:

I've heard a good deal of buzz about this band, particularly surrounding their outing at this year's SXSW. Apparently the singer was flailing around the stage only days after she had a few ribs bruised (or cracked, I can't remember) in a car accident. I haven't heard much, but I like their sound and I'm encouraged to seek out more; kind of like a collision between the Yeah Yeah Yeah's Karen O and the loopy beats of Dan Deacon (oh, but I've used that comparison before - see below) with a good dollop of Suicide thrown in. Here's their appearance in a scene from Skin, "the new-rave OC" according to UnaRocks". Pretty rockin':

Fight Like Apes at SXSW:

Yep, back to being parochial again. This excellent Dublin band first garnered my - quite shallow - Dan Deacon/Yeah Yeah Yeahs comparison (prologue to Fuck This Band: Mclusky Singles) and fit more generically somewhere between "obnoxious pop" and punk. I haven't heard much about their trip to SXSW, but a few Irish journalists who went said they put on a very good show - for documentary evidence, here's a couple of videos from YouTube (also found via UnaRocks). Fairly decent sound quality, too. I'll be seeing them for just the third time when they hit the UCD Student Bar this coming week, and then hopefully for a fourth when they play the Village with Future of the Left next Sunday:

Foals - 'Hummer', Skins Secret Party Episode:

A video I've been meaning to post for a while, in particular following this post on 'Cassius'. The scene comes from a special mini-episode of Skins which was broadcast shortly before the start of the second season. Basically, the group find a small abandoned mansion in a forest and put on an impromptu rave with, er, Foals providing the music. Mucho hedonism.

You can watch the full 10-minute episode on YouTube here.

Holy Fuck - Radiohead 'Nude' Remix:

Finally, the song used for the recent Skins trailer, Radiohead's 'Nude', has been offered for remix for the band (BBC story). I came across - via Thrill Pier - a Holy Fuck remix today, which sounds pretty good - you can download it from Fileden here. This is the original trailer which I posted previously:

Friday Video - Foals, 'Cassius' + vinyl rip

I got Q and not U's No Kill Beep Beep LP in the mail* yesterday. Why that's relevant is because a) that album is awesome and b) it's my gold - well, okay, yellow - standard for quirky indie math-rock. Currently, Foals meet that standard; or at least, match up well against it.

The first time I saw or heard anything by this band was the video for 'Hummer' on David's not-updated-in-a-while blog, The Fate of the Human Carbine. Foals are a UK band, from Oxford specifically. Anyway, 'Hummer', while a decent enough song, left me thinking that they were not much more than a derivative, Q and not U style math-rock** band.

However, 'Cassius' is a far more impressive song, and over successive listens quickly forced me to re-evaluate my opinion of Foals. It's always nice when that happens, that you have to admit being wrong but also that you find a band you really like - at least in part.

Their other singles, 'Mathletics' (surprise, surprise) and 'Balloons' are quite good, with the video for 'Mathletics' in particular being well worth a viewing. And 'Hummer' was performed rather brilliantly on Skins, so Foals went even further up in my estimation, even if I don't think it's the most creative of their songs.

Their album, Antidotes, was released last week (on Sub Pop, in the States) and has been getting pretty good reviews. I've yet to hear it - and [as of time of writing] I've yet to pick up the 7" for this single, a stack of which are hiding behind some more current releases in HMV - but I'd say it'll be worth checking out. The press has been making a big deal out of the fact that they've left 'Mathletics and 'Hummer' off the record, like it's some big artistic statement. Personally I think it reflects in part that 'Cassius' and 'Balloons' are the stronger songs, but also that while singles are good for albums - like Ham Sandwich's Carry the Meek, which is entirely taken up with singles for its first five tracks - albums have to stand on their own as well.

Here's the video for 'Cassius'. I guess I should mention it has a saxophone and trumpet in it. It's not a central part of the song, but they do give some great colour to the mathy sound and there's a terrific free-jazz part at the end of the song. Happy body-popping!

* post. Blogging plays hell with your Hiberno-English.

** or more accurately, 'dance-punk', but that's a shit name. Battles = math-rock. Q and not U = math-rock. Battles ≠ Q and not U. [but Foals = Battles + Q and not U!] Such are the problems of life.

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Foals - Cassius (7" #2), 2008