Circulation Magazine 3-1

C I R C U L A T I O N v o l u m e 3 • i s s u e 1 • f re e

How To Dress WelL + Alt-J(∆) / Baauer / Freakin / It’s A Bass Thing Photo:

Magnus Blikeng

circulation team

contributors

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Hana Teraie-Wood — MANAGING EDITOR Nam Shatil — SECRETARY Olivia Head — EVENTS CO-ORDINATOR Sam Briggs — FEATURES EDITOR Luke Innes — REVIEWS EDITOR Luke Wilson — COMMENT EDITOR Joni C Roome — LIVE EDITOR Jonjo B Lowe — PHOTO EDITORS Bex Liu Phoebe Rilot — ONLINE EDITORS Katya Pinter-Creed Henry Turner —

Contributors Chris Ashfield Alex Beazley-Long Chris Bennigsen Karl Bos Elliot Brooks Dan Cere Gabrielle Dumont Nick Dyson Sam Griffiths Lev Harris Alex Morden-Osborne Flora Ogilvy Jessica Roberts Simon Stead Yi Zhou — illustrator

Image CrediTs • How To Dress Well - Live projection photos: Magnus Blikeng / Live photos (x2): Kasper Vogelzang kaspervogelzang.nl Editorial photos: Max Zerrahn maxzerrahn.com. Ryan Muir rymuir@gmail. com www.ryanmuir.com • Alt-J - Thanks to Ian Cheek Press • Baauer - Maxime Quoiline • Sbtrkt: Amy Brammall/NME • Beacons: greetingsfrombeacons.com • Everything Everything: Petrus Olsson • Welcome to the Warehouse: Abigail Stein • Gig Listings, Purity Ring: Amber Zbitnoff

Phoebe Rilot

— photographer

Phoebe Rilot

CONTACT Any Queries / Complaints / Comments?

Circulationmagazine@Yusu.Org Www.Circulation-Mag.Com Www.Facebook.Com/Circulationmag Art Direction / Design / print bhav@bhavmistry.net

Columns 02

Photo:

Ryan Muir

02 02

Live Reviews

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Leeds Festival Beacons Festival Everything Everything Warehouse Project Gig Listings

03 03 04 04 05

Features 06 How To Dress Well 06 Alt-J (∆) 08 Baauer 10 Freakin 12 It’s A Bass Thing 13

contents

of Circulation magazine. It has taken trains, planes and international dialling codes to put this edition together. In this issue we interview Baauer in Paris and Alt-J (∆) as they tour the US, and after an unbroken string of British artists on the front cover, we ask How To Dress Well to become our first American cover star. Breaking the chain is something that Fleetwood Mac could also do, and we explore the place of heartbreak in music with comment piece ‘The Pains of Being Pure at Heart’.

Our final interviewees, York DJs Freakin and It’s A Bass Thing, are closer to home. UK Bass receives our undivided attention in our solo column piece, and we review the premier Beacons festival in a rejuvenated live section.

While we say ‘Happy Birthday to Rinse FM’ we celebrate our own landmark as the efforts of this Circulation team come to a close. We’ve taken ample leaps and bounds to reach where we are now. This team has fostered a remodelled publication, a weekly radio show, reams of online content and a new assembly of knowledgeable sound nerds. If I’m allowed to counter Tame Impala then I’ll let you know: it feels like we’ll only go forwards.

volume 3 : issue 1

Hana teraie-wood

Ed i t o r ’ s N o t e

◊ Welcome to the largest ever edition

UK Bass Music Autumn Mixtape

ALBUM REVIEWS

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Why? 15 Daphni 15 John Frusciante 16 Flying Lotus 16 Bob Dylan 16 Cat Power 17 Grizzly Bear 17 How To Dress Well 17 Spin - Off

19

The Pains of Being Pure at Heart Crate Digging Happy Birthday Rinse FM

19 20 21 01

C OLUMNS 02

AU T UMN MI X T APE

◊ UK dance music has a history of taking influences from abroad – hardcore, jungle, UK Garage and dubstep can all be seen through the combined veil of Jamaican sound system culture and early house and techno. So round about 2009 when dubstep had lost momentum and many of its best prospects were moving on, speculation begun upon whether UK dance music would solidify around a distinct sound again, and what that would be. Three years later, it’s hard to say whether there is a particular sound around which the UK scene is gathering (which probably means there isn’t) but the roots from which hardcore and rave were born are evidently present.

September 10th is a good example of this, with releases from three of the labels that gave the creative push away from dubstep and placed the foundations for what’s happening on dance floors now.

Swamp 81 sees a 4 track EP from resident MC, Chunky. These tracks pair the four to the floor kicks and gently rattling hi-hats of 90s house against broken percussion and heavy sub-bass of jungle and dubstep sensibilities. The EP provides a refreshing look at the current trend of dark, percussive dance music with touches of warmth – the soft pads on “Decca” and female vocal sample on “Thang” giving vital relief and making these tracks suitable for all sorts dance floors. The stylistic signifiers on ‘The Chunky EP’ aren’t blaringly obvious, but compared to the latest 12” on Hessle Audio by Pearson Sound, Chunky is screaming his influences from the rooftops. The three tracks present are devoid of any sure indicator of genre and also of Pearson Sound’s regular motifs. No 808 clave sounds or hooky vocal samples can be found here, instead precise and eccentric percussion darts around, accompanied by little harmonic content. On “Clutch”, pitch-shifted high-hats and a trembling pad adds nervous energy to the bombastic

drums. On “Piston”, irregular snares and kicks are set against slow synth lines that feel as if they are being played underwater. In terms of physicality, it’s unlikely that these tracks will completely mess up the dance but like many of Pearson Sound’s output they still manage to hold a certain momentum.

The oddity of the group comes from Hemlock Recordings: ‘MB/Studio Power On’ by Joe. Almost nothing is known about Joe and with almost as few releases to his name as letters in it, it’s remarkable that he has such a unique sound. The A side – “MB” - displays this well with a jazzy guitar lick, a slightly broken house groove and a warm bass tone to create a brilliant, funky track.

The B – “Studio Power”- is a more enigmatic creature. Offbeat snares bounce off a staggering high hi-hat, both of which are punctuated by the sounds of glass smashing, wood being sawed, and a sub-heavy kick. It makes for a confusing listen, especially when what sounds like a SNES malfunctioning comes in over the top, but the piano sample that follows pulls everything back together. All these elements added together create a very odd experience, but one that is definitely worth hearing.

To hear these records on dance floors - or good records in general Manchester is the place to be. Running until the New Year, Warehouse Project is hosting weekly parties with incredible line-ups. There are simply too many top names to list and are highly recommended events.

For sounds more local check out Ben UFO playing Mint Warehouse in Leeds on the 3rd of November (rest of line-up not yet released) and DJ Qu playing his particular take on New York house in Mint Club (also Leeds) on the 1st of December. Even more local is DJ Zinc playing at the Duchess on the 6th of November for It’s A Bass Thing’s 1st birthday, and with that on our doorstep there’s very little excuse not to go. •ND

volume 3 : issue 1

UK BASS MUSI C

How To Dress Well

Say My Name or Whatever — Daphni

Yes, I Know — Alt-J(∆)

Something Good — Flying Lotus

Phantasm (ft. Laura Darlington) — Lady

Twerk — Baauer

Dum Dum — Why?

Bitter Thoughts — Ariel Pink

Mature Themes — My Bloody Valentine

Sometimes — Tame Impala

Feels Like We Only Go Backwards — Find these and others on our autumn mixtape, free to download off our website circulationmagazine@yusu.org.

Live Reviews

Photo:

Amy Brammall/NME

Leeds Festival/ Bramham Park / 24-26 August 2012

is the lax nature of the campsite security that lends a ‘turning a blind eye’ approach to literally anything other than drug dealing and starting ◊ Debauchery and carnage seem knee high fires. like great fun when you’re 17 years Sadly for Leeds Festival, the current old, fresh from college with a crate trend in popular music has moved of Strongbow on your shoulder. But away from guitar bands and towards walking into Bramham Park on Friday I more dance orientated music. was quickly reminded that the 17 year Throughout the whole bill on Friday, old me was long gone and a cynical SBTRKT was the only name that I man stood in his place. Leeds festival wanted to see and his set proved is rammed from wall to wall with to be one of the most confusing groups of ‘lads’ downing cans of warm things I have ever seen. A full drum lager, teenage girls fresh from buying kit surrounded by synths and a their festival outfit from Topshop sampler was SBTRKT’s space to work, complete with straw hat and people as long-time collaborator Sampha throwing up against fences, portaloos provided vocals centre stage. Seeing and each other. Leeds festival has a crowd of thousands losing it to a reputation for being more raucous “Something Goes Right”, crowd surfing than Reading as it lacks a visible to “Pharaohs” and singing along police presence. Added to the mix to “Wildfire” was a baffling contrast

to the usual club scene SBTRKT is attached to. Strangely, it worked. The whole atmosphere was more dance floor than mosh pit and the set was a real highlight of the day.

On the main stage The Gaslight Anthem and The Black Keys churned out what seemed to be the same American rock song again and again, until Foo Fighters took to the stage. It was 8.30pm and they were scheduled to play for two-and-a-half hours.

They have a few good singles but no way near enough quality to fill that slot, so the band resorted to stretching every well-known song into self-indulgent, crowd interactive, drawn out boredom – “Monkey Wrench” lasted well over ten minutes.

Dave Grohl’s constant expletive laden speeches about starting rock bands were cringe-worthy and the crowd

seemed restless and bored. It was a shame because when they are good (“My Hero”, “Times Like These”, “Best of You”) they really do have some fantastic festival-friendly songs to perform.

During the break before the encore I encountered the staggeringly drunk Lewis - it was his nineteenth birthday and he proclaimed that Leeds was the best festival in the world. I asked him why, but the reply “I don’t know, it just is” didn’t really answer my question. It did make me realise that therein lies the beauty of Leeds festival; sometimes we all just want to belt out the chorus to “Everlong” with 50,000 people around us, not asking questions and not caring if a pint of unknown, warm liquid comes descending from the heavens over our heads. •JCR

Beacons Festival / Skipton Park / 17-19 August 2012

clumsy, but endearingly so. In the midst of evolving from producer to artist, Saturday afternoon saw Kwes at ease enough to stop seconds into “Get Up” and do himself greater justice by perfecting his set-up and restarting. As his slot warmed up and his impressive three-piece backing band (including a sensational female drummer) tightened in time for “Bashful”, I saw a slightly tipsy mum and two tiny kids dancing in the middle of the crowd.

Organiser John Drysdale’s aim to keep it “inclusive yet edgy…to avoid obvious music choices but work the crowd nonetheless” felt alive at moments like these. After an hour of Koreless’ warm, jazz-influenced response to a dying dubstep, Saturday night saw notorious crowd-worker Oneman deliver a memorable, two-hour set. Tracks from Mya’s 1990s pop-hit “Watcha Gonna Do” to TNGHT’s “Higher Ground” had the crowd united, all ecstatically howling with every tantalising rewind.

The same atmosphere ran through Wild Beasts’ performance. Mingling their older, more polished songs like “Devil’s Crayon” with newer material they worked the crowd to a sweat for bassist Tom Flemming to wittily remark that they “smelt good”. Harking back to the ‘golden years’ of teen-festivals, they came back on stage wearing

balaclavas for an encore/tribute to Pussy Riot.

As it drew to a close, I realised that the weekend had been refreshingly free of hard-core types trying to revive the gratuitous mosh pits of Reading 2009.

Making friendly conversation with his audience throughout his Sunday slot, Star Slinger rubbed well as he dropped his revitalising remix of the mainstream, club-dominating track “We Found Love”.

Refusing to play her most popular song “What They Say” and feeling inadequate as a follow-up to XXXY and Huxley, reputable Maya Jane Coles drew the weekend to a disappointing close. US rapper Lunice’s last minute cancellation was a bit of a bummer too. Yet with the last return to camp coloured by all singing Bashmore’s big ‘Owh baby’ sample as one, it clearly hadn’t jeopardised much.

As of yet, nobody’s pulled me up on my bogie-coloured wristband. Beacons 2012 was one of the UK music scene’s best kept secrets. I doubt its reputation will allow it to retain its small, community spirit through to next year. But regardless of what is to come, I’m actually glad I was there for the experience that it was. •JBL

◊ Festival wristbands are like Vodka Revs’ ‘Rich and Famous’ photos.

They don’t attest to an enjoyable experience but pronounce ‘Look- I was there; I was one in a very overdrawn and intoxicated onslaught of Obey caps and iPhones blaring “Niggas in Paris”.

The Beacons band was a plain, understated green. The line-up had everything from Japandroids to Pearson Sound, only an £85 ticket meant a back-field in Skipton instead of a Croatian beach. A location, I should add, that flooded so badly in 2011 that Beacons’ debut appearance was held back to this year.

I didn’t expect anything slick. Friday afternoon’s sad words “Sorry…Our equipment’s wet...we’re going to have to stop” felt fatefully inevitable. As third track “Control” was cut short halfway, a slightly embarrassed, older 1/2 of Disclosure had to meekly apologise to a disappointed crowd all well aware it’d long fallen flat.

But morale held strong. Minutes before she stepped on stage, the Stool Pigeon tent was swarmed for 2012’s soaring newcomer Jessie Ware. Debut

album ‘Devotion’ comprises vast influences; each so subtle it runs the risk of falling into Radio1’s drearily middleof-the-road clutches. Yet the range of her band drew out the distinct grooves of each track. Her sensationally soulful voice and natural charisma made her set feel intimate, in spite of the scale of her turnout.

Inverting the mood for nightfall with Nik Colk’s mournfully manipulated vocals, Factory Floor came next setting the stage for Mount Kimbie.

With mangled guitar sounds and sampled crackling clashing for the most part of the duo’s set, the sound was one of gritty improvisation rather than pre-recorded perfection. Sparse moments of harmonic co-existence became cutely coincidental; diamonds in the eddying rhythm of rough drum pad play.

In many ways, this was what Beacons became about: taking sogginess with the rare moments of sunshine, the bad in the light of the good. With Bashmore’s dubiously excused cancellation, Friday night saw Night Slug’s L-Vis 1990 deliver an arguably better substitute of disco-house, centred on the sound of 2011’s ‘Neon Dreams’.

Absence was compensated for as “‘Au Seve” became the weekend’s notably overplayed theme tune.

At times the organisation seemed

03

Live Reviews

Photo:

Petrus Olsson

Everything Everything/ then, they blew me away with their The Duchess / Friday technical ability, pitch perfect 14th September 2012 harmonies and an infectious

Jerry soon answered my question by declaring that the band was going to play “a lot of new stuff”. enthusiasm for playing live. The This was a lie; they played pretty ◊ Apart from playing in Coventry same band took to the stage at much their entire debut album ‘Man the previous night, the show at The Duchess but something was Alive’ and about 3 new songs.

The Duchess was Everything missing.

The first album did have some very Everything’s only gig in six months. Opening with a new song, the solid indie-pop songs and the band This set them up to disappoint or crowd waited patiently to get performed them very proficiently, excite with a showcase of material excited about something they but the gig lacked any sense of from incoming album ‘Arc’. They knew the words to. The band then passion, intensity or excitement certainly had a large crowd to dropped the big single from their that comes from a live show. Even impress with well over 200 people in last album “MY KZ, YR BF” – this great songs like “Leave the Engine attendance. was a strange move in setlist Room” seemed as if the band had Slightly later than billed, the organisation and was the first in just pressed play (they literally did headliners took to the stage after a number of questionable song on laptops providing a substantial the promising Post War Years. I placement issues that plagued the amount of accompaniment) and last saw Everything Everything gig. The audience lapped it up but stuck safely to the plan of playing a at Leeds Festival in 2010. Even a nagging suspicion of ‘where now?’ gig without doing anything special. though I knew very little of them lingered in my head. Bass player “Schoolin” also fell flat because of a

Photo:

Abigail Stein

Welcome to the Warehouse/ Manchester/ Saturday 29th September 2012

back-to-back to set off the night.

Vanguards of a contemporary mixing style bounded by no genre, they bounced between UK bass, garage, and RnB crowd pleasers ◊ Although it was the second night at ease. This unique ability for of the weekend, this felt like the blending tracks that quite simply true opening of this year’s latest shouldn’t work together along with incarnation of Manchester’s biggest Jackmaster’s undisputed aptitude electronic event. It encapsulated an for getting a crowd going set the atmosphere you would only expect pace for the night ahead. Next up to experience in clubs like DC 10 or was Bristol’s latest wunderkind Julio Space. Boasting an unparalleled Bashmore who brought a relentless line up of the biggest names in 90 minute house set culminating in house and techno and many of his hugely successful “Au Seve”. this year’s WHP residents including Four Tet stepped up to the plate Maceo Plex, Scuba, Bicep and Four after a mesmerising live set from Tet, it was one to remember.

Nicolas Jaar. Along with his live Jackmaster and Joy Orbison played band, he brought his eclectic

04

lack of innovation or invention.

The band disappeared for the encore and returned to let the crowd know that it was the longest gig they have ever played. This partially explained the stop-start nature of their set list, constantly mixing old and new songs. They continued to disappoint, as the crowd shouted for debut album highlight “Weights” they decided to end with a new song – no one knew the words, no one danced and when the band shuffled off I could overhear more than one person apologise to their reluctant companion – “I thought they would be a lot better than that”. So did I man-wearing-a-fleece, so did I. •JCR

music taste and creativity with him. Playing predominantly techno, he merged the tumbling “Jupiters (Happa remix)” along with Daphni’s menacing “Ye Ye” between the divergent sounds of disco and samba. Against all odds, it worked and created a unique set unlike anything else. A particular highlight was Bob Azzam’s “Batucuda Por Favor”.

Femme fatales Heidi and Maya Jane Coles headlined proceedings with a two and a half hour back-toback set. Dropping the dangerously seductive track “Girlz” by Miss Kittin, they proved their worth in a male-dominated scene. Despite having 2 slipped discs and a back

brace on, Heidi’s sheer energy and presence carried the night through to the end and also brought the usually timid and collected Coles out of her shell. This great chemistry and sense of fun behind the decks rubbed off of the crowd and continued as Heidi kept the crowd going dropping the likes of Cajmere’s “Acid house” and Ghengis Clan’s “Aaaaah Sheet!” whilst Coles flawlessly mixed more intense tech house sounds such as Steve Avery’s “Need Electric”.

If this night acts as a precursor for the rest of the WHP season then it looks to be the biggest and best 12 weeks of the brands history.

Welcome to the Warehouse. •CA 3

GIG LIS T ING s

Photo:

Amber Zbitnoff

◊ At first glance, York’s music scene might seem a little desolate.

But if you scratch the surface you’ll find there’s a lot on offer.

Fibbers, The Duchess and Stereo offer an impressive variety of acts, from indie and acoustic to blues, rock and dub. Cosy inside, they allow artists real intimacy with their audiences.

Failing to find fruit here, Leeds is but a twenty minute train-ride away. The Brudenell Social Club relentlessly manages to showcase

a diverse range of up and coming artists. Housing a different vibe is The Mint Warehouse, with a series of great house, techno and DJ sets in the pipeline. The brand new Vox Warehouse is also looking to be one of Leeds’ newer hotspots, with a minimal and contemporary look and an equally cool range of acts including ska, punk, drum and bass and experimental genres. Nation of Shopkeepers, Melbourne Street Studios and Mint Warehouse are

also good ones to watch for fans of the above.

Though further afield, there’s a lot to be said for Manchester too. Most notable in the coming months is The Warehouse Project, running for 12 weeks in Trafford Park’s Victoria Warehouse. During this time, the venue is hosting an amazing range of acts, including Animal Collective, Flying Lotus, Four Tet, TEEDs and loads more – keep an eye on it at www.thewarehouseproject.com.

•AM-O

28th October

6th November

20th November

Alt-J (∆)

It’s A Bass Thing 1st Birthday: DJ Zinc ++

AlunaGeorge

Cockpit, Leeds — 29th October

Hadouken!

The Duchess, York — 3rd November

HighRise:Congo Natty, DJ Luck, MC Neat, Culture Shock, Benny Page ++ Vox Warehouse, Leeds — 3rd November

Jessie Ware Cockpit, Leeds — 5th November

Charli XCX

Nation of Shopkeepers , Leeds

The Duchess, York — 9th November

Flying Lotus, Jamie XX, Hessle Audio ++

The Warehouse Project, Manchester — 12th November

Frank Turner 02 Academy, Leeds — 13th November

Holograms

Melbourne Street Studios, Leeds — 19th November

Jake Bugg Fibbers, York

Nation of Shopkeepers, Leeds — 26th November

Purity Ring HiFi Club, Leeds — 27th November

Sam and the Womp The Duchess, York — 1st December

Orbital, Julio Bashmore, Joy Orbison, Scuba ++ The Warehouse Project, Manchester — 3rd December

Scroobius Pip The Duchess, York

05

H OW T O D RESS WELL

I n t e r v i e w w i th

Photo:

Max Zerrahn

Having only arrived on the morning of the show, Krell looks remarkably at home on the hip Kingsland Road in Hackney. He lived in the area for a month while working on the final recordings for ‘Total Loss’ at the XL studios. Since then he has been in Chicago for the year and Berlin for the summer, but it’s New York and London that stick with him, “every time I’m not in New York or London I just miss the intensity of the city, you know like the existential velocity that matches the vibes in New York and London. I just love it.

The shopping’s so good. The people are just so fucking attractive.”

I wonder if the intensity of his environment influences his writing, ◊ Having just lost a love, Tom an idea he is quick to dismiss. “The Krell wrote his first album ‘Love place I go to tap into the creaRemains’ from a dark and lonely tive well-springs in my mind is not place. Known under the moniker of geographically bound” says Krell.

How To Dress Well, Krell’s soulful How To Dress Well’s critically acvoice transformed the harsh and claimed debut, ‘Love Remains’, was noisy instruments on his debut written in a much darker period of into an almost religious experihis life. ence. I meet him on the eve of his London show, a couple of weeks “I just lost my best friend, my uncle before the release of his second p a s s e d a w ay a n d I album, ‘Total Loss’, in which he claims to have turned despair into w a s i n a l o n g d i s ta n c e r e l at i o n moments of true brightness and s h i p, w h i c h wa s positivity. Amidst rushing sound b r u ta l ,a n d I h a d engineers and band members to figure out how fresh off planes from New York, we to work through sit down and cover rock and roll inspirations, Kanye West quotes and, t h o s e l o s s e s i n a w ay t h a t j u s t w a s n ’ t obviously, the world of fashion.

going to kill me”.

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Photo:

Ryan Muir

He acknowledges that the album and its stand out tracks “Ready for the World” and “Suicide Dreams” have a feeling of “depression, frustration and isolation”. The songs are awash with distorted percussion and blurred vocals, balancing melody and noise in order to create an album that was “alien but not alienating”.

Although Krell can’t remember when he got into R&B - the genre that provides the foundations for his music - he could distinctly remember when he became a rock fan: “I remember when I changed high schools and in order to fit in there with the guys that I really liked I decided that I was going to get into rock and roll music. I got ‘Clarity’ by Jimmy Eat World and an Alkaline Trio album”. Despite a wide-ranging musical taste, he recalls having always sung R&B melodies, reasoning that learning what music was really about came from listening to his mum singing Janet Jackson and Smokey Robinson.

With complex subject matters in Krell’s lyrics, I pay particularly close attention as he walks me through his songwriting process.

He attributes the backbone of each song to an individual affect, “sometimes it will be motivated by another song I’ve heard, or a film or image or experience, but I try and trace that affect”. He develops

a sound that he is melodically attracted to, before incorporating other elements and instruments with reference to the initial emotion:

“I try and make all the formal choices, the sounds, verse, chorus and structure responsible to the affect”.

A while back Krell reposted on his blog a lengthy quote by Kanye West with the title ‘Creativity’.

Amongst contemplations on his past and family deaths, Kanye had written, “I’m tormented with the need to create”. Is Krell tormented with a similar need and is that need hardwired into human beings? Rather than being hardwired, Krell’s need to create is a result of experience. “When I think about what has forced me to be creative: tumultuous things that happened when I was young, disabled siblings and just feeling like an outsider and wanting to give voice to my frustration”.

Krell reveals that he had created another, near entire album before recording the songs on ‘Total Loss’.

“I would like to release it eventually but it is really, really dark and I didn’t want that to be my contribution to the world”. I’m surprised that that the material isn’t felt to

be too close and personal to release to the world. No, he retorts. “I wanted to show that I am invested personally, and especially as an artist, in a shared experience of mourning and spiritual growth.”The new album marks a turning point not only in Krell’s music career, but also in his life. He illuminates how for ‘Total Loss’ he wanted to write in a way that meant “not just burying myself and drowning myself in depression in a way that ‘Love Remains’ did. So it was really important to me - not just as an artist, but also in terms of saving my own life - to figure out how to write my way towards a different affect. Not in a way that was falsely happy, but one which wins

a certain happiness and a certain hope through the intensity of loss, like in the way that you forge steel over fire. That was the goal”.

The task of translating such a personal record to a live format has also been subjected to a lot of thought. “I want the live show to be a collective, emotional and aesthetic experience, something like collective mourning. Whatever people used to go to church for, I want them to come to my shows for that: feeling special and feeling grounded on the earth and feeling like there’s meaning in the world”.

Throughout the show the dynamic shifts, with pared back numbers on the piano and violin of “the first song, [which] may be really sensi-

tive and quiet and then we’ll build towards a song that’s a moment of fucking piercing noise”. The ambience is maximized by projections played out behind him, some psychedelic, and others with more narrative.

The origin of such intellectualizing of songwriting and performing seems to be the importance Krell places on philosophy. As well as embarking on the How to Dress Well project, he is also studying for a PhD in the subject. Last year he spent his weekends traveling between New York, Montreal and Toronto as How to Dress Well and then on weekdays he taught undergrads. “You just have to grind.

I’m the kind of person where if I

don’t have too much on my plate I don’t do anything at all”. I tell him that I didn’t think anyone could sustain such an intense lifestyle, and he responds, saying that this year - for the first time - he is focusing solely on music.

Approaching the end of the interview, I have one final question. How did the elusive name, How to Dress Well, come about?

Krell laughs and explains that he used to live above a second hand store, where his friend had jokingly bought a 1980’s life instruction book with the title. He is proud of the connotations such a name obviously has. He loves the idea that people in the world of fashion would hear his music, commenting, “people in that world are very sympathetic to emotionally complex music … they are just quite a bit more of a progressive, cutting edge and avant guard community, so if calling myself How to Dress Well gets their attention, I’m totally keen on that”.

While Krell hopes for the attention of the fashion community, he has undoubtedly received it from the music world. Signed Weird World (a subsidiary of Domino Records) and ready to embark on a US and European tour, his goal of making ‘alien but not alienating’ music has offered fans something truly original and compelling to listen to. •LI

07

A lt - J ( ∆ )

I n t e r v i e w w i th

Photo:

Ian Cheek Press

as true alt-rock contenders. I spoke to their synth-man Gus Unger-Hamilton about the workings of what’s behind them, and the interesting territory ahead.

The band formed at the University of Leeds, their humour evident in previous name Daljit Daliwhal (an Al-Jazeera newscaster), and early motivations present in their second incarnation as Films. “We’re quite obsessed with watching films. Over and over. Getting a lot out of them,” Gus admits.

Obsession forms a large part of their repertoire, from the brooding “Tesselate” to playfully sinister radio favourite “Breezeblocks”.

Their own artistic obsessions reflect their respect for context, ◊ When a band creeps into wider their steady work-rate and atcritical consciousness and com- tention to detail. “I mean we’ve mercial viability in earnest, on got two songs about the film their own terms, they deserves Leon, which some people find plaudits. Applaud then the quiet, quite funny. I think it’s nice to unwitting and strikingly natural not just let things like books rise of Cambridge four-piece Alt-J and films wash over you, I like to (∆). engage with them, reference them They have achieved the retention in songs, keep them alive. I think of a certain intrigue, their carethat’s quite nice”. fully crafted collective mytholThe tone of the music on wellogy, a withdrawn charm and a received debut ‘An Awesome Wave’ reluctant approach to publicity pivots not only around personal that rarely smacks of pretence. fixation, but also a definite scent And they’ve secured the backing of haze, with songs such as of left-field hacks and main“Bloodflood” coalescing into fuzzy stream radio DJs alike which, stoner meditations. “I wouldn’t when combined with their recent say it’s a druggy album per se. I Mercury Prize nod, presents them think [drugs] have had a certain

08

impact on us, a lot of people mention them in association with us, that we…clearly smoke a lot of weed. I don’t know if that’s quite true but…we do.”

Their listener base does happen to chime particularly well with the more thoughtful, more herbalminded student types, the type that the band themselves were.

Their time at university is evident in the material, understated intelligence combined with a confessional and grounded honesty.

They’ve not changed in being realistic about their situation, or about the role of providence.

“We were never really of the mind of ‘ooh let’s go down the careers fair’, go through that process.

I’d pretty much resigned myself to the fact that as an English graduate of this generation, I’d probably not be walking straight into a job. So it’s quite fortunate that things happened the way they did”.

The irresistible pull of diversification of the demographic could indeed isolate those more thoughtful, doomed student fans.

If ‘An Awesome Wave’ does go on to clinch the Mercury, the ensuing exposure and heightened distribution could send Alt-J (∆) the way of previous winners.

Their tunes could be appropriated to underpin tawdry yoof teevee, leaving them only a Skrillex

re-jig away from the realm of the uniLAD. “Who knows, maybe uniLADs still buy albums, so that’d be a good thing. We’re not incredibly precious about who likes us or listens to our music. I think sort of… all for one. It’s always healthy to have more than one demographic listening to you. We don’t want to be pigeon-holed”.

“I don’t think it’d change us too much. Undeniably a win does a lot of things for you but I just think it’d be nice if more people would hear the record. We’re not opposed to media exposure to be honest”.

The shortlist this year may be inconsistent, but the likes of Richard Hawley, Field Music, Jessie Ware and even their friends Django Django will make it hardfought. “I rate [our competition] very highly, I mean there are some really great albums in there. It’s just nice to be on the list, being nominated is a prize in itself. The fact that there’s just one winner sort of means…everyone wins”.

Their inclusion in the Mercury line-up comes as just another reason to be pleased with themselves, though with a certain degree of removal, as the band currently travel the US. “It’s gone great, really good. We’ve just finished our headline tour, and I think all but one of those ten

gigs were sold out, which is mad.

Just having fans in America is quite an incredible feeling.”

The band thrives in a live setting, having crafted their intricate and frenetic setlists on the Leeds circuit. Their autonomy from ‘the rest’ is reiterated constantly, along with their dislike for labels and the cobbling together of disparate acts into a ‘movement’. “We loved playing at the Brudenell, a great place to play. It’s a good old alt-ish venue for all the right reasons, and amazing bands have played there. Although we didn’t really get into the ‘music scene’, I didn’t really see us as part of any of that.”

Whilst Alt-J (∆) gigs favour the more intimate atmosphere of the student arena, the inevitable need for expansion is apparent to them, with a tour booked for next May that takes in Brixton Academy, amongst other larger venues.

“We’re willing to work hard and do what’s expected of us up to a point. You can’t have your cake and eat it. You have to accept that if you want people to like

Photo:

Ian Cheek Press

your music, then you need to expand to accommodate it.”

This is where I see a potential dilemma with Alt-J (∆); while I have no reason to suspect that their straight-up humility is anything but sincere, their desire to be set apart and unique clashes with their cake-faced ‘come-one, come-all’ attitude to the Alt-J (∆) experience. Just as they may not be ‘precious’ about the listenership, they must be willing to compromise their dislike of pigeon holes in order to expand their project and embrace the wider market.

Luckily at this stage their music does happen to support the ‘no labels’ tag. It flits between genre and ideas, and if they can sustain their intelligence, their grounding and their creativity in the glare of wider hype, then they will deserve the continued applause. And above all, they deserve to enjoy it, as Gus notes.

“We’re not quite partying with the Peaches Geldofs of this world yet.

But no doubt that’s all going to happen soon…”. •DC 09

Baauer

I n t e r v i e w w i th

Photo:

Maxime Quoiline

European tour that would take him to Israel, Germany and Sweden.

Teki Latex, DJ and former member of TTC (mainly known for their song “Girlfriend” that Yelle criticized in “Je Veux Te Voir”) took me backstage where I met a tired Baauer, sipping on a beer and ready (we’d hope) to answer my questions.

Although Baauer is now well known thanks to the catchy “Harlem Shake” and “Yaow”, there is little information about the producer in general. So I ask him where his scene sobriquet came from. “It’s my middle name. But it also is a hockey skate company from Canada and means “farmer” in German if you type it with one “a” [‘bauer’] into Google”. ◊ Since its opening in 2008, the Baauer presents himself as a Social Club has become one of “hip-hop producer and DJ” but is the most important clubs in Paris. most famous for his contribution Snuck behind the Opera and sur- to trap music: a mix between hiprounded by its bustling nightlife, hop and what Americans call EDM the venue’s been busy promoting (Electronic Dance Music). Trap has young and new Electronic artists been re-emerging in the past few from all over the world. Their night months, ballooning in popularity on “Jerkin’ n’ Out” specifically caters Soundcloud and being featured on for American artists, and it was radio shows such as Annie Mac’s here that Shlohmo, Nosaj Thing, Mini Mix. For many, this genre has Danny Brown and even ASAP been around for at least a decade.

Rocky had their first opportunity Trap music has its roots in the 80s, to perform in front of a Parisian when one of the first programmable audience. drum machines the Roland TRThis September, Baauer, the Brook- 808 was released. Its deep bass lyn based hip-hop producer and bumps, hi-hats and tinny snares latest signing of LuckyMe, came became central to the trap sound. to perform at the Social Club on a The chopped and screw style used

10

first by Houston hip-hop producer DJ Screw, became another one of trap’s trademarks, with the slow tracks intended for its original listeners drinking codeine cough syrup. Recent rappers, namely Young Jeezy, TI, Gucci Mane and Waka Flocka Flame, have been credited for bringing the genre into the mainstream.

People tend to see in trap music a similarity with “skrillex-like dubstep”. For some producers like Lōtic, trap music appeared in Houston and has its own history.

New trap producers are, according to him, mostly white and have no knowledge on what trap music should really represent: they are only selling it as a product with the same bass-y tunes. When I ask Baauer how he feels about these critics and the possibility of this genre becoming a product of globalisation, he answers as if all of this didn’t matter. “People have of course compared trap to dubstep and its high chance of becoming ‘mainstream’. But to be honest,

Baauer was captivated by electronic music when it really shook the US scene in 2007. “Electro was just blowing up in the US and bands like Justice and Crookers were starting to be famous. I have to say that their music had a huge influence on me. I guess electro and fidget house – the type of songs the Crookers would produce - are both two kind of styles that had a big influence on my work in general”. But he’s still into hip-hop, especially southern hip-hop and crunk. When I ask him who he would like to collaborate with, he turns to these roots. “Like my dream person? There’s this lady rapper from the south called ‘Lady’. I play her songs at my sets, I like her songs so much. I would love her to be on my stuff” he says, laughing. But after listening to one of Lady’s songs “Twerk”, I understood the origins of the Lōtic argument; Lady’s lyrics represent a lifestyle that in some ways I can’t picture Baauer having.

Nevertheless, Baauer is still recognised by his peers. He’s afI d o n ’ t r e a l ly c a r e filiated with Wedidit Collective and about genres. I think its most famous producer, Shlohmo, t h e m o s t i m p o r ta n t who is also an important player in t h i n g i s t o j u s t d o w h a t the new expansion of trap music.

I l i k e a n d i f t h e s o u n d s “I am definitively close to the I m a k e s o u n d l i k e t r a p Wedidit collective. I have the same m u s i c a n d p e o p l e wa n t manager as RL Grime so I get to t o c a l l i t t h a t w ay, I ’ m meet Shlohmo through them. I’m o k w i t h t h a t. ” really good friends with both of

them. They are really fun to hang out with and both of their music is incredible” says Baauer.

Once the interview was over, I went back to the main room where Baauer was to play. The importance he places on giving songs an impact led to the crowd going crazy the second his set began.

They went wild for the same reason that Baauer’s a huge fan of fellow LuckyMe artist Lunice’s collaboration with Hudson Mohawke as TNGHT: “as well as being super cool and forward thinking, their music in a club absolutely slams”.

•GD

Photo:

Maxime Quoiline

11

F REAKIN

I n t e r v i e w w i th

Photo:

Phoebe Rilot

a rollup, “I fell into a party after not getting into a show. I ended up dancing like mad to house all night, sweaty and shirtless by the end”.

This was the pivotal moment.

Hooked on house from thereon, Rich and Patrick would spend years travelling back and forth to Leeds. Eventually, the hassle motivated them to bring the party to York. In 1996 Freakin was born and on the 6th of October this year, they celebrated its fifteenth birthday at Stereo with guest appearances from Luke Solomon ◊ I only need to take you to Wil- and Chris Duckenfield. low to prove York’s lack of a noAfter years of swaggering from table dance scene. Neighbour to side to side for hours, it’s a relief the gritty, post-industrial Leeds that dubstep has simply “bled and its gargantuan venues, the into the resurgence of house mufree prawn crackers and crappy sic”. We’re all familiar with those music seem pretty lame if held up who conveniently dropped the and compared. House is pretty electric guitar and skinny jean hot right now but sometimes that package just as turn-tables and £12 return ticket seems a neces- Stussy clothing got ‘cool’ so I ask sary expenditure if you want to them what’s kept them at it for hear the real deal. fifteen years.

Meeting Freakin’s Rich Clark and “It’s always been a massive hobby Patrick Funk, I realise that my for us” Patrick says, almost reasgeneration’s not the first to feel suring me. “We have lives outside the geographical pull. From the from it. We love Dj’ing but we age of 15, Rich had been going don’t get off on Dj’ing…It’s about to Leeds regularly for gigs. “One the crowd and giving them small, night” he says, taking a drag of intimate, back-room gigs”. Rich

12

proudly interjects “We’ve never had more than 200-300 people at one of our nights. We largely attract an older crowd but we’re having more and more students finding us”.

I hadn’t heard about Freakin until stumbling across them at YO1 festival. After months of thinking York had no more to offer clubbers than repetitive playlists from the mainstream, I asked the obvious: why not push the Freakin name with a younger audience?

“The thing about hype and profile is it makes everything seem incredible” replies Patrick wearily.

I’m guessing he’s had to say this before. “In my day students wouldn’t sit in Costa coffee. It’s just about the branding” he continues. They both modestly believe that “word of mouth is the best way of pushing it because you can actually trust it when friends tell you”.

University students are weak to well-worded slogans, lured repeatedly into the clubs that claim to be the hippest during freshers’ week despite never really enjoying it. Those who resist the mass-flow can end up feeling like ASBO street-preachers. Did they call it ‘Freakin’ to celebrate an

alternative community of ‘freaks’?

They grin when I ask this. Patrick drives the idea of having a “small-knit community who can feel like they’re at home”. As he goes on to recall Whodini’s “Freaks Come Out at Night”, I feel in the presence of two DJs who really know their stuff. Stepping into their studio at the back of Rich’s garden, I’m stunned by an enviable vinyl collection.

But do they think house has really changed? Rich perks up: “no, I think it’s a circular thing on the whole. It seems to be taking more of a techno route which is more exciting than the garage route. Sometimes I feel like it’s losing its soul in becoming so polished though. I can feel it in the rhythms”.

As our conversation draws to a close, Rich gets up to dig out a quote he wants to show me

by Nintendo’s ex-CEO Kristian Wilson. Handing me the laminated rectangle , I read “computer games don’t affect kids; I mean, if Pacman affected us as kids, we’d all be running around in darkened rooms, munching magic pills and listening to repetitive electronic music”. Call of Duty anyone? •JBL

I T ’ S a b a s s th i n g

I n t e r v i e w w i th

◊ Royce Rolls is one of a handful of names that are putting York on the map with regards to live music.

As a record label boss, DJ and club night organiser, he is a busy man, and I recently caught up with him after we bumped into each other at Beacons festival.

The series of It’s A Bass Thing club nights has succeeded in bringing names such as Joker, Redlight, Doorly, DJ Yoda and Boddika to the city of York. These nights have always been big events on the calendar and Royce Rolls is certainly proud of how his creation has grown – “I am really surprised at how It’s A Bass Thing has gone over the last year in general, it all kind of happened organically and

we just wanted to get York involved with what we’re doing”.

It’s A Bass Thing nights tie in with the label of the same name. The label had its first release this summer but Royce is excited about the future. “It feels like we have only just got started, but the reception has been amazing and we’ve got some amazing releases in the pipeline including Myth Richards’s ‘Baby She Wouldn’t Stop’ EP which has received Radio 1 support”.

Royce Rolls is also releasing an EP of his own on Cooly G’s Dub Organizer label. He describes the release as “just my own reflection of where bass music is right now, mixed with my own musical ghosts of the past”. As we chat about

dream collaborations the influences are clear to see, with Goldie topping the list alongside Aretha Franklin in a genre-spanning studio session.

With one eye on the forthcoming DJ Zinc night on the 6th November, which falls on the first birthday of IABT, my final question is about the acts Royce Rolls would love to bring to York. After a moment’s thought, he decides that “being realistic, Shadowchild, Mak & Pasteman and Hostage all spring to mind, plus I’d definitely have Redlight and Lil Silva back!”. Whoever graces the stage in future, the nights are always a success and they are not to be missed. •JCR

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the subsequent band has formed entirely around his central presence. Wolf manages the quite difficult talent of pulling off monotone, almost disinterested, vocals that somehow pack a hefty emotional punch, much akin to the dry sarcastic Joey Ramone style. There’s an honest level of self-doubt and lonely paranoia that echoes through the album, with enough wit and, sometimes, dark humour to sustain itself at that level of darkness. This pierces through during “Distance”, with the line ◊ ‘Mumps, etc.’ is a curious arte- ‘I’ve got to keep my distance / to fact of the indie generation. Why? withstand the silence when you’re are well known for their ingenious missing / when you’re not there mixture of indie-folk with hip-hop, to listen to this nonsense’, which but this album in particular shows is delivered with Wolf’s trademark the bizarre and exotic fruits of nasal flair. such a marriage. There are smooth, “Jonathan’s Hope” starts the album jazz inspired backing tracks and dictates the pace for what’s perfectly counter-weighting the to come; slow rap with a hard edge mumblecore rap of lead man Yoni and melodic chorus that playWolf, who earnestly writes about fully disrupts the song’s tempo. A his own depression, childhood, complaint could be levelled at the and music career. Think Fun Lovin’ album for being one-paced, but I Criminals with A-levels. think my earlier Ramones comFor there can be no denying that parison was apt: there’s a unifying this is the Wolf show. Wolf himself sense of cohesion, the opener used to be an act with the stage rises and falls into “Strawberries” name of Why?, and it seems that which in turn melts into the next

song, each picking up where the former left off and exploring just enough from the album’s path to make it a complex and multi-faceted venture. The album has the song structure of a well-crafted concept album.

Flamboyance is ripe throughout, with harps, pianos, and various orchestral instruments peering through the smoky background, offering a mystical sweeping soundscape; horns blare up on “White English” and violins creep around for “Bitter Thoughts”.

The album lasts a joyously short thirty-four minutes, which I understand must sound like I’m damning with faint praise, but it’s quick, punches hard and doesn’t overstay its welcome.

The stand-out tracks of the album are the opening “Jonathan’s Hope”, the haunting “‘Bitter Thoughts” and the closing love letter to death “As a Card”. To extract individual songs is however doing a disservice to a well-conceived, paced, and beautifully executed whole-album experience. There’s something interesting going on in this corner of the musical world, and you’d be a fool to miss out.•EB

Jiaolong

Daphni

WHY?

ALBUM REVIEWS

different way with which to analyse Snaith’s productions.

His latest alias, Daphni, sees a return head first to the dancefloor, in a much more clubby way than his last offering, ‘Swim’, which often veered off in more experimental and psychedelic directions. As is so often the case nowadays, we’ve been granted a taster of what the Daphni project has to offer thanks to the musical library that is YouTube, with tracks like “Ye Ye” and “Yes I Know” doing the rounds for months on social networking sites, as well as in ◊ Dan Snaith has been around for DJ sets across the world. Before saya while now. Whether it be under the ing anything else, it is important to IDM/ electronica moniker Manitoba note that despite its ostensibly more or the hugely successful brand of dance-orientated direction, Daphni folktronica dance pop as Caribou is still unmistakeably the work of Mr (‘Odessa’ even made it onto the Fifa Snaith. The meticulous amalgama11 soundtrack), he has been quietly tion of hats, toms and snares are building a faultless back catalogue arranged with such precision and of work that, whilst making the often dexterity, that it could only be the treacherous crossover to the leftfield work of a man whose craft is in some mainstream, has still maintained all way indebted to, well, mathematics. the sensibilities and integrity of a Whilst this may sound condescendrespected electronic producer. As ing to other producers, you cannot is widely discussed in dance music help but stand back and admire the circles, Snaith has also obtained a versatility of a man who, with such mathematics PhD from Imperial Coldistinct and diverse timbral choices, lege. What this may lack in ubiquitous presents us with a sonic universe pub quiz knowledge, is made up for that he can truly call his own. in that we are offered an intriguingly Lavish praise, maybe, but amidst

all of the rhythmic and orchestral complexity of Daphni, there persists a noticeably ethereal quality in line with classic Chicago house. The 4x4 beat is an ever present reminder of the Chicago connection, but it somehow never outstays its welcome.

It is a beat that the tracks are not dependant on but build around, allowing Snaith’s affectation for tribal world music (“Pairs”) and disco (“Yes I Know”) to take centre stage, whilst “Light” has the bassy propulsion to work in the middle of a deep house set, and final track “Long” would be comfortably at home at 4am on a beach in Ibiza.

In some ways, Snaith’s Daphni project could be viewed as a complete summation of his career to date. Through it, he effortlessly blends the abstract electronica that characterised his early productions, whilst yielding to the dance aesthetic that he has always shown in his DJ sets (for the record, he is fire behind the decks).

All that we can hope for now is that Daphni paves the way for other producers to follow Snaith down the eclectic road of unique production, safe in the knowledge that the house beat will always be there as the guiding force, and if you just look hard enough you will find it. •LH 15

I n tag l i o Zo n e

PB X F u n i c u l a r

John Frusciante

U n t i l th e Tempest

quiet comes

F ly i n g L o t u s Bob Dylan

◊ Opening with an ominous discord of piano and screeching and reverse vocals, the tone of ‘PBX Funicular Intaglio Zone’ is set up immediately. The album flickers between lo-fi synthesiz-

◊ ‘“I’ve only written four songs in my whole life, but I’ve written those

16

ers, guitars, and the more experimental side of Frusciante’s vocal career. “Bike” is the first major surprise, feeling more at home on a Captain Beefheart record than the former Red Hot Chili Pepper guitarist’s. The song then, without warning, snaps into a double time madness (imagine the change in “Sit Down Stand Up” by Radiohead and you’re pretty close) before changing yet again into one last groove, topping it all off with this album’s equivalent of a ‘stadium song’.

“Ratiug” comes in with a slick drumbeat, and quickly moves into standard Frusciante territory with signature harmonies à la “The Will To Death”. This is definitely circa 2004/5 John, but with an added texture that’s difficult to put your finger on. The last 2 minutes of this song are my favourites of the album, with a surprise performance from none other than Wu Tang affiliate Kinetic 9

MCing the song to a chilled close.

Influences of artists like Burial show on the instrumental “Guitar”. The LFO synth dropping at 0:56 shows that even John Frusciante’s not above a little dubstep, which makes the following track “Mistakes” make you smile even more. It’s a classic synth pop song straight from the 80s with elements of this album creeping in, encapsulating the great mix of avant-garde electronica and pop on which John prides himself.

Aphex Twin is what springs to mind by the time you get to “Sam” - a long build-up of drum rolls, cutting out to foreboding, lengthy guitar sounds and building up to a thunderous “Come To Daddy” style beat, with associated chaos. “Sum” ends the album - if you discount the Japanese bonus track “Walls and Doors” - on a mellow note, albeit spliced with some over the top drum fills and sharp filters, leaving the

listener on a tight R’N’B groove not unlike New York duo Ratatat.

Red Hot Chili Peppers had an opportunity after Frusciante’s departure to fully utilise their new band set up and breathe new life into what turned out to be an adequate follow-up to ‘Stadium Arcadium’, but sadly nothing more. Frusciante instead chose a more unconventional route which really has paid off. His solo career since leaving Red Hot Chili Peppers has seen him venture into music for film, further collaborations with Omar Rodriguez-Lopez, and far more experimental sounds than he could ever produce with anyone else.

While definitely not for everyone John’s definitely found his place, if he was ever searching. ‘PBX Funicular Intaglio Zone’ blends the avant-garde with expertly executed pop music in a way that I’ve not heard since Frank Zappa. •SS

◊ ‘With the release of ‘Cosmogramma’ in 2012, some critics speculated as to whether Steven Ellison had left himself space for improvement. Putting it in video game terms – it’s like Flying Lotus had already completed the game, but trying again with ‘Until The Quiet Comes’, he has found a bonus level with an abundance of extra points.

This new album feels maturer than Flying Lotus’ previous work. In a mini documentary on ‘Until The Quiet Comes’ Ellison says “I tried to trim the fat in a lot of instances... it was kind of a challenge for me to pull back and strip things down, and at the same time I think it makes the most sense.” Take “Tiny Tortures” – a light smattering of percussion combined with a simple melody which changes in tune just enough to keep it from being repetitive.

Or, the title track. This song massages your eardrums with its steady jazz tempo, allowing you to breathe with the

music so you can feel yourself being taken somewhere without having to think about what’s happening.

It listens comfortably in one go, so much so that I often didn’t know where tracks begun or ended. That’s excluding the sudden switch from the lovely, light, jazz infused piano of “All The Secrets” to the low synth-y intro of “Sultan’s Request” – which may be the only jolt on the record. There is another obvious skip after that into “Putty Boy Strut” which sounds so teasingly like a well-executed game of Space Invaders that in comparison to some of the fluid, peaceful arrangements in other parts of the album, it transports you to a completely different location. This is a nice contrast with the bass-y end of “Sultan’s Request”, which is clearly going to be a popular live track for Flying Lotus fans.

One thing that this album affirms is that Flying Lotus knows how to col-

laborate. On ‘Cosmogramma’, “Mmm Hmm feat. Thundercat” stood out as soulful; with a beat that verges on hotellobby jazz, Ellison dances gracefully underneath Thundercat’s oozing vocals.

Ellison does not deny us that pleasure and, once again, we hear Flying Lotus complement Thundercat’s vocals even more pleasurably with complex electronic production and echo.

“Until The Quiet Comes” is an exciting new listen. It has honed much of the experimental soundscape that Flying Lotus is so used to playing with Ellison succeeding in trimming any remaining fat. The album works swimmingly as a unified piece of music and it oozes an aquatic ambiance, whilst still retaining that lunar quality from the last time.

There are songs which relax, comfort, intrigue and tingle. •FO

four songs a million times”. Thirty five albums in and that statement has never been more apparent. The blend of rockabilly, country and blues – three styles that predate even Dylan’s fifty year career – is hardly cutting edge.

Yet these latest incarnations still seem fresh, asserting that the septuagenarian can reach an audience beyond the ageing Rolling Stone readership.

Anyone who has had the fortune to see him perform in the last few years will agree that the voice we recognise as Bob Dylan’s is long gone. When you consider his age and relentless touring schedule this is hardly surprising.

However, the hoarse, gravelly character of his ruined larynx with his infamous nasally voice suits his current style down to the ground, giving him a timbre more akin to an old bluesman.

‘Tempest’ is a rather dark album with themes of murder, adultery, death and corruption. The whole record is lyri-

cally dense and with an average track length of over six minutes, biographers and die-hard fans alike will be poring over these words for hidden meanings for years to come.

Standing at 14 minutes long, the 45 verse title track is a dramatized tale of events aboard the sinking Titanic, covering everything from brass fittings to Leonardo di Caprio, all parcelled into succinct stanzas. The sheer scale of the track is impressive and I’m sure many rhyming dictionaries died for the cause, but ultimately it does drag on a bit. Unfortunately, this is also the case for “Tin Angel” and “Scarlet Town”.

Both slow numbers are lyrically poetic on paper, but neither track is dynamic enough to draw you in.

That said, the strength of this album lies with the more up-tempo material.

The lead single “Duquesne Whistle” is a stomping bluesy number which opens with a lone pedal steel guitar

and features the lyrical blues staples of trains and women. It’s lively and the most musically interesting of these tracks, and its darkly comic music video is worth a watch. “Narrow Way” is a bluesy rock n roll track reminiscent of the classic “Tombstone Blues”, but the stand out track on the album is “Pay In Blood” – a snarling midtempo number about politics, corruption and depravity.

Dylan’s emotive, menacing delivery is full of venom and so raw that his voice breaks up under the intensity of his performance.

Unlike many of his older works, this album won’t change your life or revolutionise the music scene. However, standing alone, it’s a strong record which provides a vessel for Dylan’s ever impressive poetry. This certainly won’t be the last we hear of old Bob, and if he can continue to fuse his new style with the fervour of his older material then great things are still to come. •KB

trying to achieve. Whatever it is, it’s very successful.

The biggest surprise of the album is the ten minute “Nothin But Time”, which, after a pleasant five minutes or so of similar-sounding percussive-heavy synthesisers and captivating vocal lines, features Iggy Pop adding a warm gravelly tone a la The Velvet Underground. The song is somewhat tainted by its drawn out length to over ten minutes long; a fade out and then a fade back in again is annoying to listen to, especially over a two-chord structure.

The album is rounded off well with the big beefy finisher “Peace and Love”, which defines the entire album in three and a half minutes. With synth overlaying loud drums, bluesy guitar riffs and abstract but brilliant lyrics, this song ends a thoroughly decent record, which has a few flaws that are by far outweighed by the album’s finer points. •SG

Sh i e l d s

SUN

there’s fantastic sounding alternative drum styles and instruments, with a trademark reverb guitar line echoing throughout.

The second track further enforces Cat Power’s departure from slow folk.

The trance-like synth and drum line emphasise the percussive element of this album, and her voice works so well with this style. “3, 6, 9” incorporates auto-tune in the same vain as Bon Iver, with a bluesy vocal line and chorus that dominates the album.

Of course there are still similarities to her previous albums. “Silent Machine” is a Black Keys-style guitar-based song which still incorporates a synthesised section and brilliantly layered vocals.

This blues-rock style does appear in many sections of other songs on the album, but there are so many influences shining through it’s difficult to put a finger on what this album was

◊ “No wrong or right, just do whatever you like,” Ed Droste cries mid-way through his band’s latest offering, but it’s pretty clear Grizzly Bear don’t practice what they preach. Evidently, the band are doing something right here. While their last three albums fell to way-side with criticisms of being too ethereal and floaty, ‘Shields’ is snagged by no such nets; visceral and earthy, this is an album driven with a definite sense of purpose.

Everything has been honed down into a sharp, defined point, like a pencil freshly removed from the electric sharpener and still unused. Yet it doesn’t remain rigid or oblique. Every instrument in the mix has some part to play, there is neither too much nor too little. ‘Shields’ is a lucid, multi-faceted piece of work and

the more you listen, the deeper you are pulled into its balanced layers, each adding something particular to its immaculately blended harmonies and rhythms.

Opening with the punchy polyrhythmic “Sleeping Ute”, Grizzly Bear do not restrain the venom in their bite at any point on this album. Even the quieter, downtempo tracks “The Hunt” and “What’s Wrong?” still contain the same unfettered energy that permeates ‘Shields’ like a scarlet thread in a tapestry of beiges and blues. Even the band’s typically passive-aggressive lyrics have lost their complacency; lines like ‘make a fist’ and ‘speak don’t confide’ seem almost too direct for a Grizzly Bear album.

From the melancholy distortion on “Yet Again” to the furious drums on “Half Gate”, Grizzly

Bear have lost any apathy they once bore.

Their best album by a clear country mile, ‘Shields’ is Grizzly Bear with the volume turned up to eleven. The reserve and restraint are fraying at the seams and for once the band’s namesake is no longer an antithesis to their music. There is something wild and untamed at the heart of this album and it’s not afraid to burst through. If this really is Grizzly Bear doing whatever they like, clearly they should just continue. •CB

D RESS WELL

C A T POWER

known under her project name ‘Cat Power’, has built up a cult following on the indie underground circuit on both sides of the Atlantic. Famous for a minimalist style of acoustic playing and her distinctive husky voice, the development of Cat Power’s music is as interesting as that of Radiohead or even Bob Dylan. Ninth album ‘Sun’ seems to be Cat Power’s ‘Kid A’ in terms of change in artistic direction.

Her last album of fully original material, ‘The Greatest’ was mainly filled with innovative piano-based melodic lines, so on first listen of ‘Sun’ I was surprised to hear Cure-style guitars in front of a Massive Attack inspired drum pattern on the first track, “Cherokee”. The vocal melody is grabbing from the chorus, building up through discreet and vague verse lyrics, pleading ‘bury me, marry me to the sky’. From the start, you can tell that the production is excellent:

◊ ‘Following 2010’s heady, reverbdriven debut ‘Love Remains’, the music of Tom Krell, also known as How to Dress Well seems to have reached a state of crystallization with his sophomore album, ‘Total Loss’. Prompted by a struggle with depression and the death of some of his nearest and dearest, each of the tracks read like an act of catharsis, conveyed through his trademark falsetto and filtered through lowfi melodies and minimalist R&B beats.

Unlike its predecessor, which relied heavily on murky, nebulous synths, ‘Total Loss’ possesses an almost diametrical piercing, delicate quality that manages to sound near yet far, at times wafting through a meticulous soundscape, and at times descending into a sticky whisper. This ultimately works in Krell’s favour, as the tracks in this album seem more concise somehow, each deftly turning over notes in a succinct arrangement that better showcases

his unique vocals without compromising on evocativeness. This is best felt in tracks such as “& It Was U” and “Running Back” that utilize a bouncy, R&B tempo within a sparse percussive framework, reminiscent of something Janet Jackson might have done had she been jacked up on Ambien. Opening track “When I Was In Trouble” conveys some of Krell’s most heartfelt lyrics to date, and also sets the tone for the rest of the album beautifully. Another stunner, “Cold Nites”, is a soaring, atmospheric exposition into the very depths of Krell’s experience, and absolutely heart-wrenching to listen to.

Interestingly placed in the middle of the record, the instrumental “World I Need You, Won’t Be Without You (Proem)” might appear anomalous at first, but the use of strings prove singularly devastating and widens the scope of Krell’s musicality significantly.

Listening to How To Dress Well feels

very much like standing on the other end of a very long tunnel with an ear inclined towards the darkness—his melodies are haunting and visceral sometimes to the point of discomfort, but in the best way possible. It’s evident that ‘Total Loss’ was the product of coping with an immense amount of perhaps overwhelming emotions—and while Krell is not the first to have turned his melancholy into an art form, his interpretation counts as one of the most potent ones in contemporary music yet. •YZ

T O T AL LOSS

H OW T O

GRIZZLE Y BEAR

◊ Over the past few years, alternative folk songstress Chan Marshall, better

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SPIN - O F F

The Pains of Bei n g Pure at Heart

Photo:

Phoebe Rilot

◊ A disdainful 20th century music visionary once noted that “when I hear what we call music, it seems to me that someone is talking, and talking about his feelings, or about his ideas of relationships” . John Cage - who would have turned 100 this year - saw the convention of relationships in music as tedious and repetitive. But is it? It’s true that most pop records read like pained love stories with a beginning, middle and an end. But it’s also true that love songs have been the basis of artists’ highest commercial and critical success. Why is it that we find heartbreak so captivating, and what makes a good love album?

Recently there has been a lot written on noise and cathartic music, and one of my favourites describes a listen to Real Estate as “a nice nap”. That hits the nail on the head. Listening to the New Jersey band is like walking in a park where the homeless are out of sight and the hedgerows are pruned into immaculate shape.

Earlier this year they played at Leeds Brudenell Social Club and the set was as sonically neat as their done up shirts and high school hair. ‘Real Days’ strikes pretty sounds but it’s no legendary record. It’s as light as it is viscerally unambiguous and it features few acoustic contradictions.

Compare it to Girls’ ‘Father, Son, Holy Ghost’, a hangover from Mum issues, girl issues, opiate abuse and what you’d call an all-round cathartic mess, and it becomes clear that pain is conducive to pop.

Then Girls broke up in July of this year, which broaches another moot link between pain and pop. Great albums seem to follow, or be followed, by even greater break-ups.

Thanks to its lengthy tour, the success of ‘Unknown Pleasures’ led to Ian Curtis’s split with his wife Deborah; but as a result, Joy Division created the illustrious ‘Closer’. Its opening track takes its name from J G Ballard’s 1970 novel ‘The Atrocity Exhibition’, and Ballard’s notion of the death of affect instantly undermines Curtis’s call to “step inside”. That’s spooky, but it’s brilliant, and it’s Curtis’s nod to the change between the two records: his private life has been fissured by fame to become an atrocity exhibition in itself, an exhibition that took the form of a top 10 selling album. The idea’s shared in Radiohead’s 1997 ‘OK Computer’ in which “Airbag” and “Lucky” reference Ballard’s masochistic novel ‘Crash’.

I spent two years living and sharing a wall with a metal head, and as tenants with distinct musical preferences we involved ourselves in a vibrant, relent-

less and at times invasive two year musical war. We met eyes over two bands –Fleetwood Mac, which he graciously permitted as a group “that my mother listens to”, and Rammstein, who I just about accepted after hearing their tracks in a David Lynch film.

Truth is that Fleetwood Mac and Rammstein both had five of six members embroiled in break ups during the production of ‘Rumours’ and ‘Herzeleid’ respectively. In the context of each bands’ genre, their romantic imperfections translated into perfect pop. ‘Rumours’ became the 6th bestselling album in the US and 14th bestselling album in the UK of all time, and ‘Herzeleid’ (‘Heartbreak’) took Rammstein from the underground East-German scene to the heights of international acclaim.

You can’t listen to these two albums without acknowledging their heartsick back stories. Heartbreak happens to everyone but it’s not debilitating in music, and if anything it can bring in huge success.

It comes back to the Romantic idea that an artist has to experience something ugly in order to produce a piece of art. It is a sweet notion, but parachuting in poetics runs the risk of agreeing with Bono who mythically said, “with Joy Division, you felt from this singer, beauty was truth and truth was beauty, and theirs was a search for both”.

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Crate Digging

Apart from the misquotation of Keats Bono is more than clutching at straws. With pain comes political protest and with the latter there came punk, and with punk there was the Sex Pistols show at which the Joy Division members did meet. Being surrounded by the ugly makes you search for the beautiful, that’s how the argument goes. Without heartache there would be no ‘Loveless’ by My Bloody Valentine, no ‘New Moon’ by Elliott Smith, no ‘Mature Themes’

by Ariel Pink, and probably no ‘My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy’ by Kanye West.

So what makes a good love album

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is when the music is born out of contradictions. Mark Richardson realised “how moving music can be when elements from opposite ends of the music/noise spectrum occur at the same time”, and Rammstein and Fleetwood Mac are a good example of that. Noise is exciting because it can be interpreted in many ways. If a band’s heartbroken, chances are that their music won’t be a unified listen. That’s why Real Estate are okay but Girls are excellent.

As for listeners well, Richardson insists that listening to the protoindustrial metal of Lou Reed and its noisy offshoots “is for lon-

ers”. Although I can attest to the strength of my aforementioned housemate’s social life – our wall was very thin – I also view Rammstein and that coterie of metal as a sonic stalwart against unpleasant realities. It’s true that a wall of sound can aggressively shield one’s favourite hang-out from the cold outside, and it takes little imagination to translate this into a somewhat embarrassing metaphor for unrequited love. So what, is metal music the best vehicle for a failed love story? No, you don’t have to be hessian to think that “sex is a battle, love is war”, just look at Drake’s “Love and

Gunz”: “aim for the heart, battle of the sexes, all’s fair in love and war casualties expected”. Perhaps making music for a living stops you from making it for pleasure. Anyone who’s watched the documentary ‘Don’t Stop’ will vouch for the bitterness of Stevie Nicks thirty-five years on – “Fleetwood Mac is bigger, grander, heavier… and way more tense” – she says, and one can feel that her happiness was lost at the expense of her music. Perhaps John Cage was right, maybe there’s no space for relationships in music. Perhaps being a musician is inherently heart-breaking. •HT-W

◊ I picked up my Mikey Dread LP during a summer in Williamsburg. I had just polished off a jerk chicken leg and was chatting with a friend of Miss Lilly’s Cafe. As I sipped sorrel through a pink straw she recommended I look into the history of sound clashing in Brooklyn.

There is something about the discovery of an LP; something that sparks an appreciation far beyond that of a digital download. For record collectors and casual diggers, wax represents a time, a place, and is as much about how each of those records ended up in the collection as it is about what is actually on side A or B. Even in a time where the physical search of music seems like a waste of time, vinyl continues to be worth digging. Enough so to motivate publications like Wax Poetics to tribute an entire magazine to vintage digging traditions. Record labels from NYC’s Bastard Jazz to London’s Young Turks still pump out 12”s as if vinyl was today’s standard format. There exists

a strong international community of collectors loyal to the grooves of the phonograph. Younger than you’d expect, they dig because to them vinyl is a cultural artifact, a puzzle piece to a bigger musical history.

Traveling record events like the US’ Beat Swap Meet are a chance for fans to deepen their collections; a chance for Tom Petty fans to discover the other productions of Jeff Lynne, hip hop heads to compliment their collection of Jay Dee productions with the works of jazz pianist Gap Mangione. Others buy albums for cover art, in attempts to visually contextualize music that was never released with video.

For the DJ and producing communities, vinyl is the medium that spawned sampling, which meant that recorded snippets could be used as raw musical material. For hip-hop creatives like Questlove and DJ Jazzy Jeff, the rarity and obscurity of a collection is a competitive edge. This same competitiveness is what flourished

original sound system culture and is what motivates devoted collectors like Gilles Peterson to scour the globe for exotic analog sounds.

Unfortunately today, DJing out of crates limits the opportunity for live experimentation. It’s difficult for DJs to pass up the opportunity to loop and remix their own material on the fly in the name of ‘purity’. However, the DJ vinyl tradition is far from obsolescence as software like Traktor or Serato replicate the vinyl experience on a digital platform. There seems to be something magical about manually quantizing and syncing tempos that you just don’t get with auto beat match.

It’s the feel of vinyl, the possession of a piece of art that continues to surpass digital formats. There’s a reason why music lovers continue to feel more accomplishment walking home with a bag of gems from the 99p bin than we ever do torrenting an entire discography. •JR

H a p p y B i r thd a y Rinse FM ◊ This year, Rinse FM comes of age, as the radio station is turning 18. It is choosing to celebrate in predictable style with two huge raves, opening this year’s Warehouse Project on the 28th September before returning to London’s Brixton Academy the following night. Joining the seemingly never-ending cast of regulars for the shows will be dance music behemoths like Diplo and Modeselektor.

The grandiose scale of these nights is a far cry from Rinse’s humble beginnings, which is documented in a series of videos on their YouTube channel. In the clips, founders Geeneus and Slimzee reminisce about setting up the pi-

rate station and how they originally broadcast out of various rooms in Hackney, constantly changing the location of their studio and aerial to avoid detection from the police. Their stealthy practices did not always work however and in an attempt to thwart their illegal broadcasts Slimzee was famously given an ASBO that banned him from being above the 4th floor of any building in London.

Those days of petty crime are long gone, as the now fully licensed FM station is an institution in the British music scene. Rinse can claim to have played a significant part in the cultivation of grime and dubstep, two of Britain’s most exciting and eclectic music scenes and its greatest exports of the last decade. Its patronage and promotion of grime legitimised the concept of ‘UK hip-hop’, fostering a whole generation of brazen MCs. The likes of Wiley, Dizzee Rascal and Tinchy Stryder all perfected their flows on Rinse long before garnering international renown. Whilst grime’s greatest sons departed for major label to achieve their all-conquering chart

success, Rinse decided to bring dubstep to the masses by itself, releasing Katy B’s “On a Mission” last year. The album layered sultry vocals and synth hooks over sparse dubstep beats, reimagining the genre as pop music and spawning two top ten hits.

The album’s production was mostly handled by Geeneus, who only 17 years earlier had been crawling over rooftops in East London trying to set up radio transmitters.

How things change.

Whilst some things do change, a lot remains the same as even after all these years, Rinse is still at the forefront of the UK underground music scene. The current crop of taste and beat makers grew up with the pirate and hold it in the highest regard, choosing it as the place to debut the freshest tunes and test out their latest mixes and freestyles. The dynamic and essential record labels Hessle Audio, Swamp81, Butterz and Hyperdub all have regular shows on the station that serve as forecasts of where underground music is heading. Along with this they are simply peerless performances from

masters of their craft, effortlessly producing fantastic mixes week after week. I implore you to listen if you have not already, all of the shows are available to stream or download on their website www. rinse.fm.

Truly, Rinse FM is the articulation of the British musical avant-garde in its purest form, free from any commercial pressures, cloying traditions or establishment rules.

The emphasis is on quality, allowing those more knowledgeable and talented to dictate what should be heard instead of pandering to public opinion. Along with this, Rinse is dedicated to representing London youth culture in an honest and positive way, a breath of fresh air in comparison to the dismissive tone the mass media usually adopts when discussing the residents of Tower Hamlets. The youthful nature of Rinse in the face of such cynicism is vital to its appeal; so it seems rather apt that whilst it appears to have been around forever, it is still in the flushes of youth. Happy Birthday Rinse FM. •AB-L

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