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Gene - Olympian - 12-Jul-08 11:51 AM
RichPickings of arcticreviews wrote:

Martin Rossiter’s Gene ticked a couple of unwanted boxes that maybe doomed them; briefly they wore the unwanted mantle of “Morrissey’s Favourite Band”, before next getting the inevitable NME single of the week with the not totally un-Smiths sounding For The Dead.

All this inevitably whet popular appetite for their debut long player, which came complete with asexual pseudo-classic sleeve art and a tracklisting which read like a teenager’s school poetry project. The “Favourite band” tag was a mantle which they hardly seemed to deserve; whilst some of Mozzers lyrical androgyny had rubbed off on them, Gene’s initial collection was a far more muscular affair than much of their sponsors post Smiths output. True, there were one or two fey moments (Especially the less then thinly veiled Left Handed), but you sense that even if not a little contrived, they weren’t that confused about who they preferred to sleep with.

Musically too it’s far from revolutionary, the four piece never straying very far from the shackles of the usual influences, although Rossiter’s voice is confident and the guitar work is far from perfunctory. Highlights are the anti-prole rabble rousing of Sleep Well Tonight and the title track, a lighters in the air ballad that for all it’s ham fisted cajolery still manages to prompt a spontaneous lip sync or two. The rest tries hard but fails to be unique enough to capture much attention, hindered by a lack of originality.

Predictably caught in the Blur/Oasis crossfire, Gene were almost obliterated as were most other brit groaners (The exception being Pulp), hence their semi vault face on Olympian’s successor, 1997’s Drawn To The Deep End which when it worked was a tribute to their newly found sense of adventure. Following this they disappeared, returning to sporadically perform live on the packed “Former Favourite Bands Of Morrissey” tour, coming to a university near you this Christmas.

Cabaret Voltaire - The Crackdown - 10-Jul-08 12:06 PM
RixhPickings of reviews site arcticreviews wrote:

Around the same time as the trashy veneer of New Romanticism began to tarnish, a sub-genre of electronic music - in the days when creating a slightly different time signature wasn’t cause to invent one – emerged, swiftly identifying itself as “Futurism” with it’s perpetrators attempting to distance themselves from the vacuous overtones of Spandau Ballet et al. It’s elective principles were a million miles away from the preening, narcissitic elitism of London’s Blitz club and it’s art gone fash troubadours; the future it soundtracked didn’t accommodate human character traits like ego, instead being filled with cyborg technocratratic prophecies and nightmarish Orwellian systems of control. Precised elegantly by Ridley Scott’s dystopian visions in Blade Runner (And by most of the lysergically tinged work of the book’s author, Philip K. Dick, plus a little William Burroughs) here was a society which was the domain of the thought police, genetic facism and corporations replacing governments - anybody recognise anything familiar yet – in which homosapien inputs were increasingly peripheral to the mechanistic flow of production. It’s vestiges were already self-evidentiary at the beginning of the eighties, labelled so-called science fact; fully robotic assembly lines, microprocessors the size of a pinhead and continuous satellite observation all helping to create a feeling of pernicious hysteria. Sheffield duo Stephen Mallinder and Richard H. Kirk had risen to prominence in the vapour trails of post-punk, a creative maelstrom which had opened the commercial floodgates to a cast of boho rogues who took their cues from Dada’s surrealist thought hijackings but who paradoxically viewed punk as the final bovine grunt of rock and roll’s outmoded dynamic. Unfashionable and largely isolated, the city had benefited from a left wing cultural liberalism which had provided free space for a rabble of proto-collectives: partially as a result, it had spawned a modernist enclave which included Clock DVA, The Human League and Heaven 17. For Cabaret Voltaire reaching a nadir with the critical success with the likes of Nag Nag Nag and Do the Mussolini (Headkick) had led to stagnation. Whilst the Human League had captured a global audience, the iconic Phil Oakey hadn’t sold out as such as his approach had always been anti-punk and it’s nihilistic existentialism, the band’s principles embracing pop in all it’s 60’s girl band grandeur from the get go, to the point of at early gigs brazenly covering “You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling”. For the Cabs this commercial breakout was never likely, but the frustration of playing to a small, loyal but narrow minded fanbase led them to a mini-reinvention. Brokered by industry terrorist Stevo, the duo signed to his Some Bizzarre label in a deal similar to that which the larger than life impresario had secured for Matt Johnson, whilst putting Virgin in charge of distribution and recorded The Crackdown with producer Flood and with the help of Soft Cell’s Dave Ball. With unprecedented access to state of the art technology, professional direction and a studio luxuriously appointed by comparison to their Western Works base the results were a precision tooled updating of the lopsided id, producing a record that nudged at mainstream dance aesthetics (Almost hitting the UK top 30) but unashamedly laced it’s subversion with so much uncut paranoia, processed doom and tabernacles of understated menace. This was the landscape of Dick’s A Scanner Darkly set to music; Kirk’s sibilant vocals, devoid of tone or melody bearing the inhuman quality of a mendacious autopilot. As a counterpoint, there was a state of the art sense of mekanikal crispness to the sequenced and processed background; opener 24/24 chattered with disembodied handclaps whilst on both the title track and Just Fascination it’s possible to spot the beginnings of what would become the industrial movement, a debt most obviously expressed on Front 242’s Headhunter. Occaisionally there's room for twisted, backwards looking humour (Why Kill Time When You Can Kill Yourself)but as on Haiti, recorded during the peak of "Baby" Doc Duvalier's regie of torture heavy regime of dictatorial supression on the island, the principles themes of control and brutal supression are all pervasive.
If The Crackdown was partly a conscious move towards the dancefloor,it was on companion four track give away EP (Predictably now part of the CD package) that the duo’s more avant garde leanings are indulged; Diskono, all metal on metal percussion and wind tunnel vocals is early diseased techo, Double Vision a spectrally minimalist eastern European hymn that somehow feels cold, Badge of Evil a Stockhausen-esque drone and Moscow, with it’s wailing alto-sax and murderous Bukowski ramblings, is almost Lynchian in aspect. Not aging well but sounding no more anachronistic than rave, jungle or Brian Eno ambient airport music, the spectral world of paranoid delusion and visual cauterisation by media which The Crackdown fanfares is now our every day life.

XTC - English Settlement - 08-Jul-08 05:33 AM
RichPickings of arcticreviews wrote:

Every generation has an XTC: a brilliant, intellectual, original band plowing their own furrow to general apathy amongst record labels, radio stations and the music buying public. Although it sold well, the Black Sea album which preceeded English Settlement hadn’t exactly hinted at what was to come, the quirky, angular new wave contours and throw away lyrics of Sgt.Rock hinting more at playful irony rather than a desire for social commentary.

It was with little relish then that Virgin released the single Senses Working Overtime in January ’82 into a musical world dominated by personality free synthesiser duos and pointless American soft rock and soul. Contrasting starkly with everything around it, Senses.. was unashamedly folk, Andy Partridge’s reedy vocals building to a glorious, table thumping chorus that screamed life affirmation. A hit despite itself, it spoke volumes for the body of work from which it came in terms of song writing quality and point of view. Partridge and creative partner Colin Moulding had taken the bold step of both politicising their music and broadening it’s scope exponentially, drawing in proto-electronica, percussive African rythms, psychedelia and adding the aforementioned traditional folk motifs. The project was also lyrically ambitious too; Runaways dealt with domestic violence, No Thugs in our House of suburban parental denial, Ball and Chain the insensitivity of urban planning whilst Melt The Guns was a more than credible entry for the best anti-war song of all time. Virtually filler free (Although All Of A Sudden and Yacht Dance probably deserve a sideways look) English Settlement is as inventive, diverse, challenging and brave british record as any in the first five years of the 1980’s. The next time a tourist approaches you in the street and asks you to point them towards some faceless landmark as a means of gaining an understanding of the true spirit of this sceptered islands mongrel culture, tell them instead to go home and download this album. As quintessentially british as Chaucer, English Settlement should be on any cultural sub-curriculum in every school in every corner of this country.

Goldfrapp - Seventh Tree - 07-Jul-08 12:32 PM
RichPickings of arcticreviews wrote:

Any process of reinvention is a difficult one, but the sheer turnover of our icons in the noughties must bewilder even the starmakers, as ironically the music we're exposed to is increasingly recycled but the majority of pop idols are in a celebrity landfill within 12 months of their manufacture. Most tellingly, even Madge herself, the original queen of the career cosume change has in recent years seemed to be transmogrifying in rotation between disco leviathan and politicised role model with an underwhelming lack of gusto, leaving the only discernible changes from retread to retread being made by the retinue of Mrs Ritchie's stylists and remixers.

Goldfrapp's last album, 2005's Supernature, had the eponymous singer cast as an S girl next door, twirling a bull whip and being refracted in the light of a million glitterballs to a knee trembling soundtrack a la Moroder on the decks at a Torture Garden party for civil service mandarins. In a world in which leaked home made porn films are becoming fast recognised as a smart career move for the 21st century female celebrity, it looked like an inspired move, if a cliched one. At it's heart however whilst there was little in the way of public denial, there was an air of hollow uncertainty about the sex is my business positioning. Whilst perviness shifts units on a novelty basis (Ask Girls Aloud) the Alison Goldfrapp of Felt Mountain - the duo's more challenging initial release - was clearly going to reject having her conscience salved by watching the yen pour in or with offers of guest apperances in Argentinan beer adverts. The strippers gyrating guilelessly to Sick Machine had missed the point; the salaciouness on display here after all was an idiosyncratic byproduct, not merely a clumsy device.

It's appropriate here to drop in the warning; listeners who picked up the story at that juncture may struggle to deal with the extraction and subsequent teleportation from Supernature's environment. Whilst Mute have wisely led the charm offensive with single A, this is merely an age old tactic of running with what would appear to be something for recent admirers to most easily latch onto. A moribund aftermath tale of a bad drug experience with Goldfrapp trilling the refrain "I'm in a backless, dress on a pastel ward" against a straightforwardly accoustic backdrop, it's a piece of accidentally deceptive understatement.

Those who have sailed through the spoiler stand by; you're about to be rewarded in spectacular way. This is because the rest of Seventh Tree is a collection of psychedelic pop/folk which few people would have been brave enough to take on, let alone pull of with such inventive alacrity. Quite simply, it's one of the most original, uplifting and tactile records of the year.

Like all great albums, it's charms are numerous; the bucolic simplicity of opener Clowns, the unashamed Sgt. Pepper-esque footstomping of Happiness or the ascending choral melody of Caravan Girl's sumptuous bitch-slapped prog. But whilst the music is seemingly flown in from another dimension, it's also that rare thing in contemporary pop, a statement about the disposability of fame from through the other side of the looking glass, where our heroine is tired and bored of the treadmill and chooses the real world. Anyone who releases a song like the Eat Yourself, which starts with the kind of distorted banjo which featured on the theme tune to Bagpuss and finds itself less than four minutes later idyllically waking up in the arms of James Bond is frankly, in the context of mainstream entertainment career, showing two fingers to it's stricture and reward systems. Seventh Tree's trajectory is in fact a stunning career re-evaluation, a rare piece of chrysalis shedding which hasn't focussed on resplitting the commonest denominator. And in it's innate courage lies a soliloquy for the modern soul.

Tubes, The - The Completion Backward Principle - 04-Jul-08 01:02 PM
RichPickings of arcticreviews wrote:

In retrospect, whilst in Britain we seem to believe we have avant garde covered, it was inevitable that we wouldn't get The Tubes. And in a decade in which Americans were yet to discover irony and sarcasm as an essential context for critique, it was similarly unsurprising that few of their countrymen would do so either. And yet in their ethics, if not in design, they were a truly punk band, playing their music with little thought for it's commercial potential and - depending on to what degree you believe singer Fee Waybill's protestations - with their meticulously designed and choreographed live shows delivering particularly subversive judgement on the pitiless vagaries of the American dream. This however came to an end abruptly in 1980 when they were unceremoniously dropped, just as over here post-punk's go anywhere point of view was assuming it's brief insurgency onto major label rosters. Newly signed then to a Capitol label replete with it's share of sceptics, the nervous major wheeled in multi-Grammy nominee and former Alice Cooper producer David Foster to lend an experienced commercial hand to proceedings and reign in the band's more ephemeral tendencies. Waybill admitted in a 2007 interview that The Completion Backward was in fact the Tubes best work, citing Foster's all round contribution in saving the band from the wilderness after trying former label A's patience once too often. The contradictory forces at work - pressure for success whilst needing to feed their penchant for off the wall satirisation - offer an insight to just how hard Foster was driving Waybill and other principal ego Bill Spooner towards the mainstream, and makes for schizophrenic and sometimes bizarre results, with the flaccid Kiss-aping stadium rock of Let's Make Some Noise and Talk To Ya Later rubbing shoulders with Mr. Hate's edgy new wave and the pseudo comic hubris of Attack of The Fifty Foot Woman. Sure enough, Capitol were rewarded with homeland sales, but cracks in the group's facade were already appearing; Spooner recorded the eventual breakthrough Don't Wanna Wait Anymore, a sugary Foreigner-esque ballad with Waybill in absentia, whilst substance fuelled paranoia and disagreement over the extent of Foster's influence subsequently led to their propitious, life-imitates-art implosion. Evidently conflicted, Completion Backward Principal is the sound of confusion in progress.

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