Asobi Seksu - Strawberries 2x7" (+ live at Crawdaddy, Dublin 11/02/09)

(inside of the gatefold. All artwork by Sean McCabe)

("Limited Edition Red Vinyl With Strawberry Scented Sleeves" - yes, really. Subtle enough, but in a sugary-sweet flavouring sort of way. As one might expect.)

'Strawberries' - Edit (3:29)

'Strawberries' - CSS Remix (3:19)

This double 7" came out in November 2007, a month before the Merry Christmas (I Don't Want To Fight Tonight) single, both in support of their second album, Citrus. Currently they're touring their third, Hush, which officially comes out on February 17th, on Polyvinyl Records. Obviously I'm more familiar with the songs from Citrus, of which there were a few played at the gig - notably 'Strawberries', 'Pink Clouds Tracing Paper' and 'Thursday'. The songs from Hush sound very strong though.

First thing that hit me about the band was the sound of the drums - absolutely pummelling, a piercing bass drum - which makes a lot of sense given the drummer's previous work. Actually it reminded me, in a live setting, of a favourite Irish band of mine, Ham Sandwich (though I would make the comparison more generally anyway), who have a heavy rhythm section, shoegazy guitar and a female vocalist as well. Though there can be few modern comparisons with the vocals of Yuki Chikudate, which are simply stunning (and surprisingly audible in the context).

The show drew to a close with the My Bloody Valentine-clone of 'Pink Clouds Tracing Paper', and for an encore, a transcendentally distorted version of 'Red Sea'. Thankfully it didn't reach the sound levels or duration of MBV's recent "holocausts", but it's always a good thing when, in a gig, the visual and auditory inputs from the stage cease to appear to be 100% experientially, in-the-same-room real. Now that's shoegaze.

Other reviews here and here. It also was Gig of the Week in the Irish Times too, with a nice photograph, but only it seems available in the print edition.

David Grubbs, Live @ Whelan's 24/01/09

David Grubbs, 'An Optimist Declines' from An Optimist Notes the Dusk (2008)

This show is the first time I've been sitting down in Whelan's, with candles in little glass jars, jazz-club style, and beermats on the table. David Grubbs was listed in The Ticket as 'Rock-pop experimentalist. Recommended'; I knew him before from appearances on Codeine's The White Birch, from (pre-Slint) band Squirrel Bait, as well as Bastro; and his latest solo album garnered considerable praise in the Prisonship's best-of. Armed with those recommendations and connections - though Gastr Del Sol passed me by, insofar as bands from past decades can be said to have done so - I still wasn't sure what the show would sound like, apart from that track from his album above.

The set-up was sparse: an amp on top of a case with a mic in front of it, and another mic in front for vocals. Support was from Debutant from Aberdeen, an impressive singer-songwriter with a penchant for heavily-delayed post-rock guitar, building up from quiet chords to full-on looping ear damage. The show was promoted by Forever Presents, who brought Dan Deacon and Matmos to Dublin last year, and gave respective support slots to Jape and Si Schroeder, the latter my favourite Irish proponent of the shoegaze-y post-rock guitar style. Here, though it was a bit one-man-band Mogwai at the very end, on the whole his set was varied and interesting, and very enjoyable to listen to.

It didn't prepare you much for Grubbs, and it's hard to know what would. Obviously the context was the same - one man + electric guitar; but the content of the performance was quite different. In fact, if you were doubting the versatility of the guitar as an instrument, this would have been the show to go to. Personally I don't know much, if anything, about the technique of guitar-playing, but as with all art, I know what I like. And I liked David Grubbs.

That's not to say that the show was all rapt adoration of his axemanship. He could have played a full set of slowcore guitar, all spaces and reverbating chords, and it would have been amazing. However, he didn't, and the performance gained from being challenging. Combining stoner rock (echoes of Earth and Grails) and slowcore (especially Codeine) with bluesy riffing, the set built up through a diverse range of songs including 'An Optimist Declines', with its affecting vocal cadence and heavy guitar; through more pop-oriented folk and Americana, but still imbued with the slowcore ambience, such as 'Eyeglasses of Kentucky'; and concluding with a lengthy instrumental which seemed to blend the sounds of stoner rock guitar with those of a banjo and an ambulance siren.

I picked up the album from him at the edge of stage after the show, too. It doesn't disappoint either, but it's still quite challenging. Reading the press one-sheet (pdf), there's an interesting paragraph which says

"Much continues to be written about the end of the album and its splintering into the MP3dom of individual songs. An Optimist Notes the Dusk is at one and the same time an album and a collection of splinters. There is no contradiction. Do we dare suggest it sounds very 'playlist'?"

The album is just six tracks, which can be either described as varied or incoherent (if you wanted to be negative), without getting into Zen-like oppositions. Opener, and easy stand-out, 'Gethsemani Nights' is very reminiscent of the earlier For Carnation, though here the guitar, while still as (largely) clean and sparse, is more insistent, heavier in its tread, like a fastidious bluesman; and behind it a trumpet - by Nate Wooley - somewhere between Abilene and Human Bell. It's slowcore with an extra weight, an initially challenging further dimension.

Musical Rooms Part 52: David Grubbs

(Just trying out posting in Trebuchet. Let me know if you'd prefer reading in a serif font)

Future of the Left & So Cow - Live at Whelan's Upstairs 14/11/08

Future of the Left, two weeks ago, in one of Dublin's newer and smaller venues, added on to the venerable Dublin gig institution of Whelan's. Previously, the only show I had seen upstairs in Whelan's was the almighty Bats, and they rocked it, so I knew it was good for a fast and noisy band. Whelan's as a drinking institution has supposedly been going since 1772, so four years before the US Declaration of Independence, and a further two hundred years before the invention of punk rock. The upstairs part is thus two thick-walled, 18th-century townhouse-type living rooms knocked together, with a bar stuck on around the corner. It has been described as having a "homely, fire-placed atmosphere", and personally I like that you can see out between the drapes over the windows onto what passes for a neon-lit, bustling city street in Dublin.

The 'Heineken Green Synergy' part of the show was the usual corporate sponsorship, entailing a somewhat reduced ticket price and the availability of only one draught lager. The press release claimed that it was FoTL's Irish debut, but they in fact appeared in April for a rather impressive show with Fight Like Apes... sponsored by Budweiser. Essentially, they've come back with some new songs, a gig-only live CD, and a better-tasting type of beer.

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Support was the seemingly, initially, somewhat odd pairing of a frantic, abrasive noise-rock group with a frantic, abrasive noise-pop-punk group, So Cow. It was an unexpected pleasure, as I'm Siding With My Captors is one of my highlighted Irish releases of the year so far. Difficult enough to describe: "Mostly I've seen it described as lo-fi indie pop stuff, sort of like Pavement, but what hit me from hearing this song is the sort of early 90s ska-punk/pop from San Francisco; like a mix of Green Day's first two albums and Operation Ivy/Common Rider". Live, they're a treat. The one-man-band part of the band, singer and guitar player Brian Kelly - of Tuam, Galway via Seoul, South Korea - sung and pogoed his heart out, while the excellent rhythm section thrashed their way through desultory, frenetic pop tunes. Here's a live version of 'Casablanca', from So Cow's first album, and a track, 'Greetings', from I'm Siding With My Captors:

"...I'll get a tattoed x on my hand,

adopt the traits of Buddhist monks

get hip! with all your nomenclature

compromise with your drug culture..."

So Cow - 'Casablanca', Live on WFMU (stream the full set (including interview) here or download it here)

So Cow - 'Greetings', from I'm Siding With My Captors

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The headliners Future of the Left, a three piece with members of former Welsh punk bands Mclusky and Jarcrew, essentially work on stage as a comic double act between bassist Kelson Mathias and lead singer/guitarist/keyboard player Andy Falkous. They're a very, very sarcastic band. And then there's the music. I ended up quite enjoying their set the last time I saw them, although it seemed to drag on a bit in the middle; and I occasionally put on last year's/this year's (here's the AV Club review [A-] of the album's US release in January) full-length, Curses, for a spin, but I've never gotten into the band the same was either Mclusky or Shooting at Unarmed Men. Nevertheless, their music does have its moments of outstanding creativity and forcefulness which, when combined with the immediacy of a reverb-drenched, sweat-soaked live performance, make for damn good punk rock.

Below are a couple of songs, following the pattern above - one a live recording, the other an album version of a particularly good song. 'Manchasm' is one of Future of the Left's distinctive 'keyboard' songs - the tour journal on the band's Myspace, written by Falco, has at the end of 2007 a best-of list including "Best Guy in a Big Black T-Shirt Storming Out When We Start Playing the Keyboard Songs" (it was in Sheffield) - and the single and video are posted here. Second, 'I Need to Know How To Kill A Cat' was also a B-side to the 'Small Bones Small Bodies' single in the same post, where I described it as "Super-rhythmic, with strong echoes of 80s punk and post-punk - e.g. Minutemen and, of course, Husker Du's 'How To Skin A Cat' (which violates the 3rd Law of Thermodynamics, but it's a metaphor for Capitalism, so that's ok). Er. 'I Need To Know How To Kill A Cat' - good song." However, it was also pointed out to me that it sounds like a Fugazi song; a tight, circular guitar rhythm and drum beat underlying frantic, anxious vocals (which are rather more Mclusky than MacKaye). And as was also pointed out, if it's good for a Fugazi song, it's a very good song indeed.

Future of the Left - 'Manchasm' from Last Night I Saved Her From Vampires live CD (to be released on 4AD on a future date)

Future of the Left - 'I Need To Know How To Kill A Cat', from Curses

There is a third song I would have liked to post, the ritual encore 'Cloak the Dagger', the "extended multipart freakout... a very un-Mclusky level of psychedelic instrumental abandon" (Tiny Mix Tapes review of FotL supporting Against Me! in the Webster Hall, New York). Unfortunately, the best part about it (I think) is the rumbling, old-school punk bass sound, that reminds me of nothing more than the Ramones' first album and 'Havana Affair', doesn't come across too well on tape. Or at least, nowhere near as good as it does live, which is where, in the total, visceral, full-on physical and disappearing-down-an-internal-stairway-with-(part-of)-the-drum-kit theatrical kind of way that you need to appreciate it. Like, to continue the Fugazi metaphor, which is actually kind of appropriate in this context, listening to Happy Go Licky, the record never doing for me what just seeing them on YouTube did.

(Another Dublin gig-related institution: it's mostly where I go to get tickets, but it's also a gloomy basement (metal) record store. I heard a Trinity College law prof use his experience of accidentally going in there as an analogy for the difficulty of the marginalised in society in accessing legal aid/advice. Yeah)

Fight Like Apes - Live @ Whelans, 26/09/08

'You Are The Hat' from Fight Like Apes and the Mystery of the Global Medallion LP. The usual set opener for the band.

So that was it. The FLApes debut album launch after ten months, for me, of listening to arguably the biggest, and most exciting, indie band to have come out of Dublin for a long time. Last November was their first headlining gig in Whelans, to promote their second EP, David Carradine Is A Bounty Hunter Whose Robotic Arm Hates Your Crotch. With a band with eight songs to their name - plus one very special cover - they blew me away then; last night, with the last time I had seen them being in April with 2/3rds of Mclusky, Future of the Left, was full circle in a perfect way.

I was going to review the show, but I've always been ambiguous in my attitude 'reviewing' shows as such. A lot of what I have to process about this show is tied up in processing the album, which is really cohering for me now that I have it on the turntable (and only a couple of scattered mp3s in fact, as I'm out of eMusic downloads for the moment.) In addition, I still haven't found out the name of the support band, who were actually quite good (were they English?). Sort of Mclusky surrogates as well (see below). Anyway, I might get back to it.

EDIT:

Still haven't found out the name of the three-piece support band, but I did find this interesting review on Irish indie music website Cluas.com ('cluas' is the Irish word for 'ear') which describes the show as "one of the most terrifying gig experiences of my life" - due to "an over-excited crowd" - but also "inexplicably one of the best gig experiences" for the music.

Thanks to Tower Records for the free poster above, which came in a canvas bag - it's the tenth anniversary since the opening of the flagship Irish store on Wicklow Street, which is still by far the best major record store in Dublin and probably the rest of Ireland - with a bunch of promo CDs and, get this, Fight Like Apes - 'Lend Me Your Face' 7". Yellow vinyl, backed with their excellent cover of Mclusky's 'Lightsabre Cocksucking Blues'.

On which note, very many thanks to the girl behind me who picked up my glasses after they fell off during that song (yes, I wear glasses. Who'd have thought?) They've - surprisingly - never done that before, but I had to go apeshit, as it were, for that song, especially for MayKay's line "This isn't a question, it's a statement: Mclusky". I'm not sure exactly how many of Dublin's gig-going population are familiar with the Welsh noise-punk pioneers yet, but anyone who's been to one of Fight Like Apes' gigs will have heard that song. Two things to note: first, it's Mclusky, all one word, with a lower-case 'l'; and second, Future of the Left are very good, but Shooting at Unarmed Men - Jon Chapple, the Mclusky bassist's band - are the ones to check out this year for their album Triptych.

www.fightlikeapesmusic.com

Fight Like Apes on eMusic (full album & the two EPs)

Live on WFMU: Hoover, Lincoln and Crownhate Ruin

These recordings are from Pat Duncan's show on the US alternative radio station, WFMU, originally recorded in the years 1993 and 1994 and re-broadcast in this decade. You can see the playlists for all of his shows available for streaming here. This Hoover set is nearly an hour long, and includes songs from both The Lurid Traversal of Route 7 and (what would then become) the Slowdime EP, i.e. then unreleased songs, as well as the atmospheric vocal recordings just like in Lurid Traversal.

Lincoln isn't part of the Hoover family tree - as in they share no members - but their split with Hoover was one of the latter band's earliest releases, while Lincoln themselves only released two other 7"s, of two and four songs each. 'Benchwarmer' is from the Hoover split, and the last song 'Sugarloaf' is from their first 7", on Watermark Records. Despite the lesser number of tracks, this set shows a band with a similar style of music, showing that Hoover weren't completely alone in what they were doing (and, um, in what Fugazi weren't) although no-one was quite as good at it as they were.

Finally, the Crownhate Ruin set is the reason I waited this long before posting these, as I wanted to get around to listening to it properly (and, as it turns out, fairly easily record it) before presenting them together. All these tracks are from the first two sequential Crownhate Ruin 7"s ('A Primer' and 'Elementary') as well as the split with Karate, plus some extra tracks; nothing specifically from Until the Eagle Grins. Compared to Hoover this makes them rather prolific, for whatever reason, turning out a progression of different tracks culminating in the full-length.

Hoover, recorded live in the WFMU studio 4/13/94. Engineered by Charles Maggio.

(Pat Duncan - June 24, 2004)

1. TNT For The Man

2. Pretender

3. Electrolux

4. Shut

5. New Five Drive

6. Breather Resist

7. Weeds

8. Cut Like Drugs

9. Return

Lincoln, recorded live at WFMU on 6/24/93.

(Pat Duncan - November 17, 2005)

1. Benchwarmer

2. Repair & Reward

3. Lil' Slugger

4. A.C. Wade

5. Sugarloaf

The Crownhate Ruin, recorded live at WFMU 11/26/94. Engineered by Charles Maggio.

(Pat Duncan - June 23, 2005)

1. Open Bottle

2. A Visit From Mars

3. Lesson In Thread

4. My Country Getaway

5. No Claims Enemy

6. Baby Blue & Black

7. Present To President

8. Last Place In Triage

Hoover & Lincoln (one download, two files)

Hoover show (split into separate mp3s thanks to Matt): part 1 ; part 2

The Crownhate Ruin (one file)

(separate mp3s)

Go to the playlist links to stream the shows in their entirety, or just download the recordings above (the latter done by myself, thanks to whoever did the former originally. It's dead easy, really.)

Hard Working / Bloggers

The annual new Irish alternative/indie music showcase, line-up announced today.

From Unarocks:

202's / 79Cortinaz / A Lazarus Soul / The Aftermath / Alphamono / The Ambience Affair / Angel Pier / Armoured Bear / Mark Austin / Autamata / Bats / The Beat Poets / Bravado / The Brothers Movement / The Cades / Carly Sings / Nick Carswell & The Elective Orchestra / Caruso / Chequerboard / Cian / Class Of 1984 / Ollie Cole / Crayonsmith / Cutaways / The Dagger Lees / Deaf Animal Orchestra / Distractors / Dolbro Dan / Dublin Duck Dispensary / Exit: Pursued By A Bear / Fiach / Fighting With Wire / Valerie Francis / Fred / Gorbachov / Grand Pocket Orchestra / Groom / Halves / Headgear / Heartbreak Cartel / The Holy Roman Army / Hooray for Humans / The Hot Sprockets / Hybrasil / Kill Krinkle Club / The Kinetiks / The Last Tycoons / Le Galaxie / Lines Drawing Circles / Little Xs For Eyes / Mackerel The Cat / Tom McShane / Fiona Melady / The Minutes / Walter Mitty & The Realists / More Tiny Giants / My Brother Woody / Nakatomi Plaza / New Amusement / Noise Control / Not Men But Giants / One Day International / The Followers of Otis / Panama Kings / The Parks / Pilotlight / Pocket Promise / The Rags / The Revellions / Robotnik / John Shelly and the Creatures / Sickboy / Sideproject / So Cow / Sounds of System Breakdown / Sparks Fly / The Spook of The Thirteenth Lock / Super Extra Bonus Party / Supermodel Twins / Sweet Jane / Tidal District / Tiger Empire / David Turpin / The Vinny Club / Vodkopter / Youre Only Massive

I've never been before, for the most part because I listened to very little Irish indie music even just a year ago, but assuming I do go, these artists I'll be trying to catch: A Lazarus Soul (because there's plenty to build on the last time I saw them), Bats ('cos I need to seem them for a fourth time), Chequerboard, Crayonsmith, Fighting With Wire (as much from what I've heard of their music as for the fact that the bassist was wearing a Future of the Left t-shirt in a video I saw of them), Fred, Grand Pocket Orchestra (seen them once before, supporting Fight Like Apes the first time I saw them - while Those Geese Were Stupified reckons they're up to supplant the newly slickened headliners), Halves, Hooray for Humans (hopefully this time with a drummer), So Cow and The Vinny Club. Amongst others. And of course, the point of the festival is to discover new acts as well.

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On a slightly different note, some new like-minded hardcore/alternative-type blogs which have been added to my blogroll recently:

failing the rorschach test is a cretinous curmudgeon from Canada with a liking for Bats and their Cruel Sea Scientist EP. Only a handful of posts so far, but they're detailed and well-written and as well as posting Mission of Burma, Streetlight Manifesto and Pg.99, there is also the excellent Please Inform The Captain This Is A Hijack - Defeat Or Humiliate The United States Of America.

One of Mike Kirsch's numerous bands, it takes the sampling approach of the preceding project Bread And Circuits and amplifies it. Bread And Circuits used Fela Kuti, while Defeat Or Humiliate... samples Stokely Carmichael - amongst others - and separates the album into brief hardcore tracks and ambient spoken word/instrumental samples. Anyway, follow the link to read about it more and download it.

Computers That Breathe is a blog of a guy called Brooklyn Bill, which has also only been around for about a month and has about a dozen posts up. Mostly 80s-90s post-hardcore and alternative rock with Unwound, Shudder To Think, Chavez and a bizarro-universe version of Husker Du called Moving Targets which is actually really good. Or as he says,

"Listen, I'm not trying to ruffle any feathers or piss on anyone's gods but in my humble opinion MOVING TARGETS' RECORDS BURNING IN WATER AND BRAVE NOISE ARE AS GOOD AS HUSKER DU'S ZEN ARCADE AND NEW DAY RISING. There. I'm glad I got that off my chest because its been eating a hole in my stomach for 18 years".

The Art Beats the Thing Itself is not really a music blog (it's an art blog, pretty much - but hey, I've got one of those myself too) but the guy who runs it, Zack Thrower, is in a band. And not just any band, but a quite awesome hardcore/screamo band of the original late 90s/mid-00s style we all know and love - their myspace cites Shotmaker, Spirit of Versailles, Frail and Kaospilot amongst others under 'sounds like'. Anyway, they're called Nationale, they're from Georgia in the US, and they have a four-song CD demo quite excellently packaged available via their Myspace. Check it out, and the blog which follows the production of their flyers and demo artowork.

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And finally, to return a little way to the beginning of the post, The Indie Hour has been on blogroll for a while but with the last mixtape on this blog a reminder is probably in order. The Indie Hour blog is run by Aoife MC who also presents the show of the same name on 103.2 Dublin City FM every Thursday 9-10pm (I'm listening to it right now, which is kinda weird). Bats, Terrordactyl, Adebisi Shank from that mix have all been featured on the show - the second two artists coincidentally starting off tonight's show - as well as bands I've written about myself like Fight Like Apes, Hooray for Humans and Halves (I'm about to write about them, anyway). Each show usually features an interview with and live performances from an artist - tonight is Heathers, who have just returned from their US summer tour. And the best part is that the shows are available to download as a mp3/podcast after they've been broadcast.

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.

Fight Like Apes - Glastonbury 2008

from www.fightlikeapesmusic.com

Dublin "synth-grungers, electo-noiseniks and synth-violence operators" Fight Like Apes played the BBC Introducing stage on the Saturday night at Glastonbury. There's a couple of videos on the BBC website, 'Lend Me Your Face' and a fiery performance of 'Battlestations'. Watch out for singer MayKay's Mclusky t-shirt:

BBC - Glastonbury 2008 - Fight Like Apes

Check out the band's new website, above, where you can stream the new recordings of 'Something Global', 'Lightsabre Cocksucking Blues', 'Knucklehead' and 'Lend Me Your Face', see further UK and Ireland festival dates, and generally do all the things you can do on Myspace, but without the shitty graphics and web layout. (Seriously, I'm all for streaming music, but half the time I go to a Myspace page the songs fail to load the first time round, and the whole thing is as stale as soft biscuits).

Hardcore for Nerds - 'Jake Summers' b/w 'Battlestations' (7" rip)

Future of the Left, Fight Like Apes & Shooting at Unarmed Men - collected tuneage

Friday Video: Fight Like Apes, 'Lightsabre Cocksucking Blues'

Obviously, I didn't go to Glastonbury - instead I spent the weekend writing up posts for Envy and the Crownhate Ruin, neither of which respective genres were much in evidence at the festival. But I often deign to listen to other things that more people - a lot more people - enjoy, so I caught some of the live coverage on BBC. Saw Jay-Z's cover of 'Wonderwall', as well as Horace Andy appearing for Massive Attack, which was excellent. I do like me a bit of dub, and while I'm not an inordinately large Massive Attack fan ('Teardrop' is great when it's used for the House theme though), Horace Andy's Dance Hall Style is a favourite of mine. I should post it sometime. The headline sets by Kings of Leon and the Verve looked pretty good as well. I was looking, though I didn't see any, for some footage - or whatever the appropriate digital term is - of Vampire Weekend, since despite my early attempts at resisting the hype, Vampire Weekend is actually a pretty great album.

[Update - Skinxxxcore 4 Eva!]

Foals - full set

Crystal Castles - full set

Si Schroeder, Matmos - Live @ Andrew's Lane Theatre, Dublin 12/06/08

Last night was a surprisingly good gig. So good, in fact, that I don't much mind now not seeing the other acts in the Future Days festival (Jape & Dan Deacon, Low and Bonnie 'Prince' Billy). I'd wanted to see Si Schroeder for a while now and didn't much mind who was on the top of the bill. Matmos looked interesting, but a bit like Xiu Xiu last month, I wasn't expecting much. (And like Xiu Xiu, this was Matmos's first visit to Ireland)

Andrew's Lane Theatre (A.L.T.) is a new venue in Dublin. The new hip venue, to be precise. A former play theatre, it's been revamped and redecorated with a new coat of purple paint and - inside and outside - graffiti murals by 'Maser'. It's shockingly hip - but apart from that greasy undercurrent of attitude, it's a perfectly pleasant place to spend an evening. The sound quality was very good - having heard some negative, but generally mixed, reviews on that front - especially as both groups on the bill could be considered audiophilic.

Si Schroeder, in the form of his debut album Coping Mechanisms, is one of the most talented and interesting Irish electronic/alternative artist around today. It's a sort of 'fits between' (for me) Xiu Xiu, Lungfish and My Bloody Valentine.

A review on another blog of his support slot for DeVotchKa was unimpressed by his solo show. I was hoping myself for the full band, as that's the way it works on the record and because live videos I had seen (such as this one for 'Lavendermist') with the band were indeed quite impressive.

As it happened, he came on stage for his first song alone. Normally I'm not too receptive to that sort of thing, but considering as well that the last solo guitar player I saw performing was Lou Barlow, I found nothing to complain about. I'm not sure what the song was - I've heard it before, I think - but he played well, attentively, even locking into a breakdown groove on his semi-acoustic. Then the full band came on, and they played a series of songs from Coping Mechanisms - 'C4' I think, 'Lavendermist', 'The Reluctant Aviator' and 'Eyes Wide' - followed by a couple of new songs. The latter were quite interesting; one with metallic, swiping guitar played off against a drum roll, another with waves of shoegaze-y guitar glancing off repeated waves of drums.

Permit me, since it was just my birthday, to try and coin a new - to me, anyway - term: post-shoegaze. Because that's what Si Schroeder sounds like to me; the whole waves of sound are there, but only towards the end. The band seem more interested in the quiet parts that lead up to and surround it, though not to any detriment to the end result, which is a seriously impressive and loud experience of ensemble playing. My friend and I worked out that the songs operated on a continous curve, right from finger-picking quiet to shuddering loudness - gradually increasing and never at any time dropping back down. It's a curious dynamic. but one that works to great effect on their songs. And live, which is where a band's sound can take on a really distinctive and vibrant form, it came into its shimmering, blissful own.

Si Schroeder, 'A Little More' (video) and 'The Reluctant Aviator', Airfield Sessions

Si Schroeder, being both singularly impressive and deceptively quite loud, allowed us to retreat from the floor for the interval in happy knowledge of a good gig so far. At this stage, I still didn't know what to expect from Matmos - which is often a good way to go into a show. A San Franciscan duo, who recently moved to Baltimore to continue their work, they seemed rather inexplicable. Their latest album, Supreme Balloons, was released this year and is being stocked in sweetbabyjaysus's record shop 'Under The Mooch' as "their latest offering of found sound scavenger hunt stylized schizophrenic video game soundtrack perfection". The AV Club review wasn't too positive, declaring the songs "jubilant... but slight in a way that suggests much of Supreme Balloon would have been a lot more fun to make than it is to listen to. That certainly applies to an ambient title track that goes nowhere beyond wiggly test-tones for 24 minutes - a long time to go nowhere, no matter the concept." (Reliably astute, an AV Club commenter pointed out that ambient tracks, by definition, aren't meant to go anywhere).

There was a lot of interest in Matmos, however, when we went back in to find the floor at least half-packed with people ranging from a few teenagers right up to one behatted man in his 70s with his wife (well, at that age, one presumes). On stage, in darkness, were the duo - joined by noted collaborator J Lesser, and dressed at least patially in suits, shirts and skinny ties. Various glows and sounds emanated - there's no other word for it, really - from their tables of equipment. A few initial adjustments were required - having taken apart some of their 'playhouse' to facilitate Si Schroeder, which they reckoned was 'well worth it'. Matmos were surprisingly personable chaps, which is probably a good thing considering their music.

They played four songs before an encore, each accompanied by stunning visuals. Stunning isn't the right word, quite - more like mesmerising, or mind-fuck. The first song - which built up from an initial assortment of totally alien, tactile screeches and bloops - was an inverted, almost motionless shot of a test subject, her eyes cupped and ears covered by headphones, apparently reacting to auditory stimuli. The second was a soft-porn video of a guy pleasuring himself in a hot tub - but with the grainy video distorted, chopped and generally messed around with, while aural destruction and aggravation went on around us (there's a live video of it at the end of the post). Ironically, because it is in fact the source of Matmos's name - "the seething lake of evil slime beneath the city Sogo in the 1968 film Barbarella" - this reminded of the scene from that film, where Jane Fonda is trapped by the evil genius in the sort of whole-body organ, which tries to play/pleasure her to death. You'll either know the scene or you don't, I'm not going to try to explain it any further.

The third song was probably the best, a bizarre blend of country and funk played out against a backdrop of maps of America, which was interesting right from the start but got seriously heavy and, um, funkalicious - J Lesser was performing duties on bass, by the way - for a large section. The following song, however, I have to describe as torturous. [Upon listening to it, I reckon this was the title track to the album.] It may have been the after-effects of my slightly less-favoured blend of malt whiskey, but the combination of bass frequencies and shifting matrix of black-on-white dots - fascinating to the mathematical mind, though - for the visuals left me feeling physically uncomfortable.

As the song unfolded, I literally spent five minutes following a conversation in my head about the nature of 'entertainment' and art - why one expects a gig to entertain you, but will read an uncomfortable book, watch a depressing film or play or even listen to a discomforting album. Here the experimental nature of the music, and the ambient nature of the music and visuals, come together into an artistic experience you have to decided yourself whether you want to enjoy or not. In a way, Matmos gives its listeners a profound sense of agency while appearing to alienate them. Reviews say you can't dance to Matmos, but I think you can; only when you're not, and you see people who are, you wonder what they hell they're doing.

It was at that point in the gig - coming up to 11 o'clock - that people started drifting out. I won't say I wasn't tempted to join them, but at the same time Matmos remained quite fascinating. Challenging, yes; and difficult, extremely; but musically, there is plenty there to interest you. (Perhaps less musically than sonically so, but there is a bit of both) The gentle exodus allowed movement towards the stage, and so I had a pretty good view for the encore, which involved a gong in Drew Daniel's lap. At this point, I realised that Matmos is something like Battles for advanced learners - devoid of almost all commercial accessibility, but still profoundly innovative.

While the gig had elements of science fiction bizarreness about it, man and machine, performer and audience coming together in a brave new music venue, there was still something touchingly human about it. It was enjoyable in the sense that it was an odd soundscape, tough going in parts but rewarding with some beautiful aspects.

Matmos, 'Exciter Lamp and the Variable Band' (video) from Supreme Balloon, and 'Public Sex for Boyd McDonald' (watch if you dare) with saxophone, live performance

The excellent Sigla Blog: Musical Room series: part 31 - Matmos (and also, Part 32 - Dan Deacon)

May Live Mixtape (no live tracks) + Friday Videos

So, over the last while I've been at a fair few cool gigs. Nothing too strenuous, really, compared to other people: I got in the two big acts I wanted to see (Battles & Dinosaur Jr.); two smaller but very interesting shows (Xiu Xiu and Ham Sandwich), as well as a local act which I didn't write up (Heathers, with Hooray for Humans); and I didn't go to any of Bruce Springsteen's three nights in the RDS - although, as it happened, I had to sit on a bus and watch the hordes go in and out for two of those times.

This short mixtape or playlist divides up neatly into the first side of international (i.e. American) acts and the second side of Irish bands. It's all merged into two mp3s, no individual downloads sorry. I've included start times of each song to help, however.

(Apologies for the short post beforehand - some kind of server problems and a nice sunny evening outside)

MIXTAPE

Download May/Oh Five Oh Eight

Side A: (15:51)

1. Dinosaur Jr. - 'Freak Scene' (vinyl rip) (00:00-)

2. Battles - 'Tonto' (03:33-)

3. Xiu Xiu - 'Apistat Commander' (11:16-)

Side B: (16:34)

4. Hooray for Humans - 'Already Sleeping' (00:00-)

5. Heathers - 'Remember When' (03:30-)

6. A Lazarus Soul - 'The Day I Disappeared' (05:44-)

7. Ham Sandwich - 'Words'(10:17-)

8. The Vinny Club - 'It's Not You It's Of' (14:06-)

The first side is fairly straightforward; basically, the best song or near enough from each gig, as recorded from the album. I put in the vinyl rip of 'Freak Scene' from Bug well, because I could - same reason I put a vinyl rip of Slint, 'Good Morning, Captain' into a previous mix - but also out of technical interest. I'm not one to make a big deal out of the supposed differences in sound between vinyl and CD, but there is a difference between them here (It's a bit like someone talking normally and someone going 'BLEH!' in your ear). So this isn't as loud, but you can turn it up yourself.

The second side deserves a bit more explanation, on account of these all being Irish bands. Hooray for Humans I wrote about previously - this is the title track from their amazing new 7" out on Hideaway Records. They were playing support last Friday in Eamonn Doran's for Heathers and their album launch.

Heathers are two girls and a guitar - incidentally, from my old secondary school in Dublin -who literally are releasing an album and going on a US tour on the eve of their graduation. Here, Not There is a joint release between Plan-It-X Records of Gainesville, FL and Hideaway Records of, er, Deansgrange, Dublin. 'Remember When' is the first song off the album, which is really very good.

A Lazarus Soul played the Village the following night as support for Ham Sandwich, the show which is reviewed here. They were perhaps a little underwhelming, but this is the way they're meant to sound. 'The Day I Disappeared' is a song about notorious Dublin gangland criminal, Martin 'The General' Cahill, taken from their excellent album Graveyard of Burnt Out Cars.

Then Ham Sandwich, and 'Words', because it's my favourite live song of theirs. I could perhaps have put 'Never Talk' in instead, since that was the reason for the gig, but a) there didn't seem to be an opportunity to buy the single and b) I have something else up my sleeve regarding Ham Sandwich singles.

Finally, a sort of random but really good track from The Vinny Club, a side project from Vinny McCreith of Dublin band (sort of in the same league as Fight Like Apes) Adebisi Shank. The album launch for Rocky IV Reckyrd is tonight (the 31st), and I was planning on getting in one last gig in for May but I don't think I'll be able to go. However, it's a banging tune (taken from the Indie Hour podcast).

VIDEOS

The Redneck Manifesto (support act for Battles) - 'No One Plans Eleven' from a previous date in Vicar Street, recorded by Foetal Media

Xiu Xiu - 'FTW' from their new album, Women As Lovers

Heathers - 'Margie' (Irish and English), Live @ Eamonn Doran's, 23/05/08.

Ham Sandwich - 'Words', Live @ HMV instore

Ham Sandwich, Live @ the Village, 24/05/08

I should have got this up sooner, for fear of not getting it up at all. This is going to be a review of both this weekend's gig (the single launch for 'Never Talk') as well as February's Carry the Meek album launch, since I never got around to writing up a show review for that but instead spent all the time writing about the album.

I've already sort of decided that Carry the Meek is the album of the year for me so far. It's just so great that I'd jump at the chance to see the band live again. Unfortunately, this gig wasn't quite as good, overall, as their Whelan's show. It was still a great Saturday night out, a very enjoyable experience for what you could expect - as a friend said after the gig,

"Ham Sandwich [always] put on a good show. Fact"

That's all an attempt to be objective, for something that is a parochial, personal interest. There were a few reasons why the show would fall a little short: Dublin's suffering from a little bit of gig fatigue, not helped by the fact that the universities have had their end-of-year exams in the past few weeks. The Village took some time to fill up, and even then it wasn't completely packed. I personally wasn't starved of live guitar or electro sounds, having been at two gigs in the two previous nights in Whelan's and Doran's. And finally, I'm not a huge fan of the Village venue - it's a bit Studio 54 to Whelan's CBGBs (both the Village and Whelans are in the same building on Wexford St.). It's more difficult to fill up, and consequently their show didn't match the energy and raw power of the Whelans night. But, small quibbles.

Support act A Lazarus Soul were a band I really wanted to see live. Their brand of Joy Division-style, Dublin-rooted post-punk works excellently on record - Graveyard of Burnt Out Cars is poetic, graceful and heartfelt. On stage, early sound difficulties aside, it sort of half-worked - admittedly from high expectations. Frontman Brian Brannigan apologised for their "terrible" guitar sound, but truth be told you couldn't fault his own performance as singer. By voice he reminds me a lot of Sack's Martin McCann, who judging from his Other Voices performance had a terrific and mesmerising stage presence. Brannigan, too, really acted out. At one point in a song he was mock screaming (away from the mic, it being an instrumental passage) at the guitarist, gesticulating wildly - not out of frustration, but out of passion, for the music.

Something about Graveyard of Burnt Out Cars probably works best on record, or in a really perfect gig setting. (Its 80s audiophile sound, likely enough) But to take a particular example, there's a really crucial line on 'The Day I Disappeared', "and the Liffey filled with tears". On record, over the keyboard hook, it wafts almost transcendental over the rest of the song; that night, it didn't seem to hit anything like that. Again, quibbling and overly-high expectations from a support band in a (as yet) only half-full venue. Full credit to Brannigan's stage performance, and I hope to see this band again.

And then there was Ham Sandwich.

Opener, 'Keepsake' and an answer to those who wondered what they were going to do to follow the confetti rain of the album launch (more confetti, more colours). Podge Sandwich apologised for the state of his own guitar - which I noticed something a little off about on 'St. Christopher' - while pointing out that he's not actually the lead guitarist. That role goes to Darcy - fake moustache and carnation - who was crying out for the attention at the last gig. Well, it's true. Listen to any of their songs and notice that all the really interesting stuff comes from the lead guitar laid on top of Podge's. He's their Nick Zinner to Niamh Sandwich's (and Podge's?) Karen O.

Ham Sandwich are a loud band - on CD, production-wise, as I have noted already - and live. Not Dinosaur Jr.-loud, thankfully (at the end of two weeks of gigs!), but they really belt it out while keeping their dynamic range and the intricacies - such as there are - of their sound. This worked best in the sweaty, semi-airless confines of Whelans, but that's not to say it was absent in the Village either.

'Words' epitomises this sound, this loudness, and in my opinion is probably their best live song. This was confirmed in the Village, although like the rest of the gig it still fell short of explosive. 'Words' is heavy, driving - obviously on account of the two guitars, but credit must be given to the excellent rhythm section too - and really just impacts like most pop songs don't. It was the impression I got when I saw them live for the very first time, in the basement of HMV doing an instore the day before the album launch. Footage of 'Words' from that performance has made its way onto YouTube, and while the sound quality is pretty terrible, the energy shines through. Any band who can tear it up like this in a room surrounded by computer games, has got something going for them:

Finally - and before playing the single, 'Never Talk' - the band got down to their ironic pop cover. Previously, in Whelan's it had been Britney Spears' 'Piece of Me' - before 'Click Click Boom' - you can see their performance of it at Galway's Roisin Dubh here. This time, Niamh Sandwich coming out from backstage with a blond wig didn't do anything to dissuade us from the assumption that we were in for the same cover, but in fact it turned out to be Madonna's 'Material Girl'. The fact that, last February, I didn't even know Britney Spears had a latest hit called 'Piece of Me', let alone identify it, but was able to recognise the Madonna song might say a lot about me. Plus, it has a pretty great guitar solo: