Arne Weinberg - Alpha & Omega

As bassline house and UK funky emerges emphatically from London, the home of cutting edge minimal and techno is, and arguably always has been, Berlin. But while nearly all techno king pins, including the likes of Michael Mayer, Superpitcher, Ewan Pearson, and Ricardo Villalobos continue to operate out of Deutschland, one 4/4 minded German has recently made the switch to the slightly grittier climes of central Glasgow.

Arne Weinberg has been crafting delicate techno and ambient records since 2001. His record label has been an entity since 2004, and is just releasing his first full length since the relocation to Scotland. Weinberg’s exodus from the epicentre of techno will not come as too much of a surprise to fans. His brand of rattly electronica is far more akin to the producers over at Soma records – Glasgow’s premier techno label.

Weinberg’s is a thin, wiry sound with sparse atmospherics, quite alien to the warm, layered template as preferred by his contintental peers. As a consequence, and as with several albums on Soma as well, Alpha & Omega is not immediately accessible. Yet after a while you begin to familiarise yourself with the arch of its narrative, which subtly builds near the heart of the album, and then dies down to simmer at the end. Both in sound and structure, therefore, Weinberg shares more than just a passing similarity with a Scottish and Soma contemporary – Vector Lovers. But even that artist’s records aren’t as coldly metallic as Alpha & Omega. It brims with skittled hi-hats and whistly synth pads, all unfolding neatly and with little fuss.

‘Nightstalker’ is its most potent weapon. Starting out at first like Silicone Soul, them mutating into a complex, Slam-like work-out, it is perhaps the most dancefloor leaning track on the disc. The seven-and-a-half minutes of the laborious ‘Synthetic Dissection’ takes the wind out of the album’s sails (/ sales?), before picking up a little for the broody ‘Defining Negative Spaces’ and tech-housey ‘Eclectic Spiral’. Ultimately, it seems you can take the the musician out of Germany, but you can’t take Germany out of the musician. You’re left with a feeling that Weinberg is an accomplished techno producer, but it is all a little bit measured, mechanical, and, crucially, too serious.

Even Kraftwerk had a sense of humour. For those of you casually dipping into the genre now and then, avoid this and wait for the second album from France’s Pantha du Prince, due for release later this year. It is more than likely to feature things Arne Weinberg chooses to ignore – some oomph, and more importantly, some heart and soul.

Tiga

Madonna is about as vocally accomplished as a dying dog; she continues to abuse audiences at her faux-spectacular live shows, and her acting career has been about as successful as my last effort to win the lottery (I didn’t understand the damn thing and gave up).

What she can be eternally applauded for, however, is the team she surrounds herself with. Despite her limitations, this entourage has written catchy pop tunes for her across countless albums, kept her looking young and in fashion, and spun the media perpetually in her favour. You may be wondering what all this has to do with the first single off of Ciao!, the latest album from Montreal’s Tiga. Well, Tiga himself has revealed that a “very famous international superstar” is his guest vocalist on the track, but that this guest had insisted on complete anonymity. Almost zero research on the net revealed to me that this guest was none other than Her Madgeness. Another gem of an idea from one of the world’s great marketing teams? Well, it may have been, but it seems another department of her suited minions has failed to do its homework.

True to Tiga form, ‘Shoes’ has a wobbly bassline that juggles with your internal organs, while the two vocalists share their passion for haircuts, gloves and, er, shoes. It is funky electro equally as adept as his earlier work, and would most certainly bother the dancefloor… in 2005. Tiga was an electro master half a decade ago, and although he’s doing nothing wrong now, times have changed, and he’s fallen prey to what he celebrates on this record – the changing face of fashion. Consequently Madonna’s crew, who usually have their paws so firmly on the pulse, have also tapped into a four-year-old scene. Perhaps even they are starting to creak from rust. Lets hope she is confined to the scrap heap sooner rather than later.

Orbital II

Rave culture emerged with such a bang in 1988 that most of its vast following was left in an ecstasy fuelled daze for the remainder of the decade. It wasn’t until the early nineties that some of the producers of the era’s finest tracks began to realise the artistic potential of the acid sound. After all, the warehouse parties weren’t about standing around watching men with long hair masturbate guitars. It wasn’t about image or attitude or ego. It was about the crowd, and it was about dancing.

The people responsible for so many of those classic records were faceless. Many of them recorded under multiple guises and were never featured on the cover. But after a few years the rave population was eager for times to move on. One of the first acts to unlock this potential, and realise the euphoria of a five minute anthem across an entire album, was Orbital.

Their debut album Orbital was mostly a collection of disparate tunes, including their epic masterpiece ‘Chime’, but mostly connected by the slightly tinny sound created by the era’s limited technology. The following year that technology had improved, and with it Orbital’s vision. Instead of lumping some tunes together, the brothers Phil and Paul Hartnoll worked on Orbital II as an artistic whole. The songs segued into one another, taking the listener on a sophisticated rave journey. It never pandered to the build-climax-build-climax blueprint of so many of the more poppy dance acts of the era – the acts that took rave into the charts a year or so later. It was dynamic, layered material which planted the roots of techno, progressive house, and breakbeat. Moreover, it never compromised its strictly underground sound. After all, Orbital was named after the ring road around London where most of the capital’s illegal warehouse parties secretly emerged.

‘Lush 3-1′ chimes into life after the broody opener ‘Planet of the Shapes’. ‘Lush 3-2′ then picks up the tempo, descending into the dark euphoria of ‘Impact’ and ‘Remind’. The unrelenting surge of ‘Walk Now’, with its ominous didgeridoo, eventually make way for the funk piano and helicopter rhythms of ‘Monday’. With the strength of these epics it is easy to forget sometimes what comes next – the album’s final track and coup de grace – the peerless ‘Halcyon’. It is the quintessential dance tune; all delicate piano, floaty atmospherics, and beautiful female harmonies. And that bassline.

Despite ‘Halcyon’, Orbital II doesn’t feature many of Orbital’s big hits, but it is the key long-player in their career much in the same way Technique is for New Order. Regardless, because at the time dance fans hadn’t heard anything like it. The Hartnoll brothers had proved that the genre had legs beyond the 12″. You could argue Altern-8 or Acen were the first to pioneer an artist album of rave, but who remembers them? Orbital, despite a much publicised final career performance at 2005′s Glastonbury festival, are already being lined up for headline shows this summer. Think of a world without The Prodigy, The Chemical Brothers, or Royksopp. They all owe it to Orbital for opening the doors of possibility, and to Orbital II – rave culture’s crown jewel.

Filthy Dukes

This reviewer prescribes to the school of thought that music criticism should never rely too heavily on namechecking other bands when describing the sounds of a new album.

Granted, it can be a quick and easy answer to “so what are they like?”, but who wants to spend months in the studio carefully creating a collage of songs you think represent you, and that you enjoy playing, and you hope others will like, only then to hear the world’s critics explain to everyone how much it sounds like somebody else?

It is against the backdrop of this that the Filthy Dukes‘ debut long player, Nonsense In The Dark, must be appreciated. The London duo, real names Olly Dixon and Tim Lawton, are successful residents of the capital’s Fabric nightspot, where their cutting edge electro-eclecticism has earned them a solid reputation as dancefloor extraordinaires. However, they have gone about their debut with too many ideas and come out the other end with a collection of tracks all craving radio play but with no common thread. Such disparity may have paid off if the tunes themselves could hold their own, but sadly for the Dukes, most of them do sound like one of their peers, and nothing else, leaving me with no choice but to unwittingly offend them in the above maner.

‘What Happens Next’ borrows those hard guitar stabs from the slightly overrated MSTRKRFT, and come across as a poor man’s Justice. ‘Messages’ could quite easily have been one of the (many) forgottable album tracks from Caged Baby’s debut a few years ago. ‘Nonsense In The Dark’ would fit snugly on Fischerspooner’s largely ignored sophomore effort (except it has The Maccabees’ Orlando Weeks’ irritating vocal all over it). ‘You Better Stop’ is paid a compliment by sounding like it could’ve made the Chemical Brothers’ last album. ‘Somewhere at Sea’ is a quarter-decent stab at a Depeche Mode ballad. ‘Tupac Robot Club’ may have the best chance of achieving the group’s goal of hitting the charts, sounding as it does like Evil Nine on a very bad day without any weed. Strangest of all, ‘Light Skips Across the Heart’ reeks of that bizarre eighties collaboration between Giorgio Moroder and the Human League’s Phil Oakey.

Of course, sounding like other artists is no bad thing at all. To their credit, the duo have created a decently paced pop album of eighties synths and vocals, rave piano and atmospherics, and chunky breakbeats. But this was being done five years ago, and with more panache. Today, the niche the Filthy Dukes are trying to inhabit is already being majestically carved by the electro pop wholesomeness of Cut Copy and their slightly more bombastic Aussie cohorts The Presets.

By trying to sound like all of their influences, The Filthy Dukes’ own personality has gotten lost. In today’s diluted iEnvironment, maybe they should have pooled their efforts into making one stonking tune instead of stretching their talents across the increasingly outdated format of an album.

The Whitest Boy Alive - Rules

A famous swipe sometimes employed by critics is to describe a musician’s output as nothing more than elevator music. Elton John famously said he didn’t mind his songs played in a lift if it meant that for a few moments people were listening to him. The startling thing about The Whitest Boy Alive, on first listen, is that they do resemble the incidental music pumped inoffensively into supermarket aisles and hotel lobbies. At times their sound is so easy listening it makes Dean Martin sound like Squarepusher. And if anything, Rules leans further back in the lounge chair than Dreams, the band’s debut from 2006. Back then it was astonishing how something so easy on the ear could prove so groundbreaking, particularly as it was largely a gamble at the time for band leader and lead singer Erlend Øye.

He had already found critical and commercial success with his folk outfit Kings of Convenience and then furthered this with acclaimed forays into dance with solo electronica album Unrest and a mix album for the DJ Kicks series. He could have quite easily milked these two veins for at least a decade, but before we knew it he was already back in the studio wearing yet another hat. To form a straightforward guitar band didn’t seem like a logical choice. But his vision was to strip the band right back to its constituent parts and build a warm, skeletal sound from there. Early fans swarmed to the handful of gigs the band played in the UK and Europe, often five or ten times more people being turned away at the door than could get inside the venue – a state of affairs neatly referenced on Rules’ album cover.

But while their gigs might be difficult to get into, their new material remains effortlessly accessible. Rules is laden with a few more creamy bass hooks than its predeccessor, one of which kicks things off in opener ‘Keep a Secret’. A synth line soon washes over the track and it builds to a Herbie Hancock-style workout. Following this is the breezy summer funk of ‘Intentions’, a tune Shuggie Otis or Roy Ayers would’ve been proud to call their own.

The band has been known to cover early 90s house records at their gigs, such as Technotronic’s ‘Pump Up the Jam’ or Robin S’s ‘You Bring Me Love’, and standout third track ‘Courage’ sounds like it could be one of them. Synth stabs pepper the melody, which is dark and clubby, and Øye repeats the word “courage” like one of the sampled divas from a rave tune. The song’s 50 sec outro is one of the album’s highlights. Elsewhere, ‘Timebomb’ proves to be catchier than a cold, before ‘Rollercoaster Ride’ slows proceedings to an introspective groove. Longtime fans will recognise that Øye’s voice is his most potent weapon, and he puts in a soul-filled performance here. 80s blue-eyed soul pretenders such as Paul Young or Hall & Oates only added that distinctive throaty resonance because they thought that was how black artists sang. Øye eschews those phonies, gushing pure soul in abundance with his own unique, youthful timbre. Whitest boy alive indeed.

Later, the outright funk of ’1517′ proves to be yet another standout ~ funk constructed around lyrics such as: “People in Northern Europe since Medieval times/we’ve found it hard to deal with it when our dreams come true.” Not exactly Kool and the Gang, even if Øye does have plenty to say about relationships. Stylistically, No Wave bands such as Liquid Liquid or ESG are equally a point of reference to how Rules sounds, especially in faster, more compact songs like ‘Promise Less Or Do More’. The final two songs are arguably the disc’s strongest. The first, ‘Dead End’, rewards repeated listens and is sure to prove popular live. It doesn’t features scratchy guitars or feedback, but the track has more than a little in common with the The Strokes’ Is This It? Funnily enough, that band too managed to create an album of short songs packed with great pop ideas, successfully sounding both highly polished and organic. ‘Islands’ then closes the set. Running to almost seven minutes, it hypnotically builds on the previous song, working itself into a frenzy of high hats and jerky rhythms.

An inconsequential gripe with Rules is that nearly every song finishes abruptly, inevitably designed to leave the listener craving more. After the breathless finale of ‘Islands’, the feeling that you have somehow been emotionally robbed is overwhelming. How has this uncluttered little album generated so much out of so little? You have no choice but to press play and listen to it again, because Rules amounts to so much more than its parts. Less certainly is more. If they were to play the Whitest Boy Alive in elevators, the queues would be round the block.

Elvis Perkins - In Dearland

Anthony Perkins, most famous for his role as Norman Bates in Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho, was a self-proclaimed bisexual and reportedly only had same-sex relationships until his mid-30′s when he married Life magazine photographer and female model Berry Berenson.

Perkins died from complications with AIDS in 1992 and his wife, then widow, was killed on American Airline Flight 11 during the September 11th attacks on New York in 2001. An extraordinary start to life, then, for their second son Elvis Perkins, who became a musician and recorded an extraordinary album for XL Recordings in 2007. ‘Ash Wednesday’ bristled with refreshingly piquant songwriting in an arcadian style slightly more tender than The Decemberists or the Arcade Fire. Although written in response to his mother’s death, it was more a triumph of hope in general and of gentle, clipped surrealism.

The album’s lyrics avoided drawing directly from his experiences growing up and of 9/11, and instead plundered the realm of parental love and explored some of life’s subtler moments. It is with slight regret, therefore, to discover that this extraordinary individual has followed that sublime debut with a rather ordinary follow-up. As much of a cliche as it is, this is a prime example of difficult-second-album syndrome.

As is so often the case, two years was never going to be long enough to accumulate enough solid material to match that of its predecessor, which seemed brimming with fully-fledged, well matured ideas in comparison. The disc starts strongly enough, with ‘Shampoo’ emerging in a plume of organ and captivating with its darkly bittersweet rhythm and off-kilter vocal melody. But the quality of the songwriting soon dries up, the Civil War marching band nonsense of ‘Doomsday’ providing a particular low point.

‘I’ll Be Arriving’ sees Perkins mistakenly attempt a gnarled, angular guitar dirge and ‘Chains, Chains, Chains’ painfully reminds singer-songwriter fans of the later albums of the now terminally-rubbish Tom McRae. Anthony Perkins kept returning to the Psycho franchise throughout his career, noticing perhaps that he could never do better. It can only be hoped that his talented troubadour son, with his ability to claw masterfully at the heart strings, hasn’t already hit his peak.

Pontiak - Sun On Sun

Pontiak have digested their musical influences but like so many bands before them have regurgitated them forth moreorless fully formed, instead of chewing them over and bringing out the flavours.

Because flavours are what make or break a band – get it right and success is round the corner, or get it wrong and fade away, perhaps to be forgotten or unearthed in decades time as a hidden gem – reclaimed as precursor to the next big thing.

But when you’re a band feeding on the same old piece of cardboard that most of the ’70s and ’80s hard rock haircuts sicked up for the equally mundane and plodding ’90s grunge whimps, it can be safely said that all the flavour is well and truly gone. Where will you get as a band if you bring nothing new to the plate?

Pontiak are well rehearsed – they nail those Jimmy Page riffs, ape Doors-style organ now and then, ebb and flow like Pearl Jam, but they rock so, well, so inanely slowly that Jim Morrison today would probably be livelier and each headbang feels like a five month coma – and even then, what would the food being pumped into your stomach through a plastic tube taste like? Bloody cardboard.

Shapeshifter - Soulstice

Despite the efforts of Goldie and numerous others over the years, drum & bass has in the most part been on the fringes of popular dance music. Resolutely safeguarding its own culture with low-key and underground shows and events, its DJs, MCs, and hardcore following have never wanted the joy of the amen break to fully reach the masses. Undeniably, however, drum & bass has matured and evolved over the years, and is showing no signs of dying out (see: Trance), despite the demise of the Hospitality night at London’s Heaven recently. It has always had, and known, its place. But perhaps the most crucial step towards the mainstream in years is currently emerging from an unlikely source. Australia’s Pendulum cocked the ears of indie and more mainstream music fans in 2007 with the album Hold Your Colour (released down under in 2005), particularly with the momentous single ‘Slam’, and now a group of fellow Southern Hemisphere folk are following in that group’s footsteps.

Shapeshifter are from New Zealand; not a place you’d associate with grimy, inner city beats. But the band’s lush, green origin is apparent in the recordings. Smog-drenched suburban attitude is out, and in its place is a fresh, cosmopolitan approach to drum & bass, borrowing from dub, world, hip-hop, and more esoteric electronic music. Fans of hardcore may cringe at the squeaky-clean production, and at first glance it does seem like a shameless stab at a mainstream niche. What Shapeshifter achieve on double album Soulstice, however, is a set of accessible and expertly sculptured tunes fit for the dancefloor and, dare it be mentioned, the radio.

Single ‘One’ glides with piano and new age atmospherics; the hippy-ish lyric “don’t let the world get you down” more or less summing up the politics of the album. ‘Electric Dream’ borrows the synth loop from The Source ft. Candi Staton‘s ‘You’ve Got the Love’ and impressively re-invents it as a smiling drum & bass jam. ‘Bring Change’ starts with old philly soul before delivering what is the disc’s most emotional, gospel-tinged epic.

In spite of its recent troubles, Hospital Records’ back catalogue is still the place to go for cutting edge breaks. And dirty drum & bass with its myriad of MCs will always exist in the underground. But take note of Shapeshifter. The band have already gone platinum in their home country and have established a solid live reputation – the band sold every ticket of every show during a stint at London’s Shepherd’s Bush Empire. Whether this is the time for drum & bass to step up to the pop plate, as rave, UK garage, and trance have all done before, only time will tell.

Fanfarlo

11th December, 2008