Wildbirds & Peacedrums

August 26, 2010

On the way to this gig, a friend asks for a description of Wildbirds & Peacedrums. “They make your insides shake,” we tell them. He raises an eyebrow. Another friend adds “but your heart is in your mouth.” He looks faintly suspicious as we arrive at the (lovely) Lexington.

Vocalist Mariam Wallantin and drummer Andreas Werliin formed  Wildbirds & Peacedrums whilst studying improvisationl music together at the University of Gothenburg in 2006. Four years, three albums and a marriage later, the couple’s sound is still rooted in structured improvisation and experimental collaboration.

Tonight, the Lexington is populated by an audience of bearded industry types, eager to pass their personal judgement on Rivers, released this month on the Leaf label. The album brings together previously vinyl-only  EPs Iris and Retina.

The duo open with ‘The Wave’, a bluesy track off Rivers featuring steel pans. Like The Gossip played at the wrong speed, it’s a swagger of signature-shifting simplicity. Next up is ‘Chain of Steel’, which we are told is the first song they ever wrote together. A vocally-led incantation, the track draws on Wallantin’s Iranian roots in its Persian rythyms and patent emotional intensity.

The unique dynamic between the two is made explicit on ‘My Heart’ (with Wallantin repeating the key lyric “I am lost without your rhythm”). There’s a mutual support between the two that extends farther than a purely musical partnership and allows for vulnerability in performance. And with the support of Werliin, Wallantin offers us an incredibly generous performance – at one point even abandoning the microphone and with it any mediatised divide between audience and performer. Like Bjork, her eccentricities are sometimes classed as affectation – yet it’s clear that this is expression rather than pretension. She means it.

A sore-throated Kate Bush collaborating with a loose-limbed Chris Corsano. In the best possible way. Sore-throated in a rich, husky, enviable way – rather than spluttering and sick. Loose-limbed in a spacious, instinctive way – echoing the vast Scandinavian landscapes from which they hail.

By the encore, my insides are shaking and my heart is in my mouth. My eyebrow-raising friend and the bearded industry types are cheering like they mean it.

Reading Festival

August 27-29, 2010

When the music at Reading Festival begins on Friday (following a boozy Thursday session in the town centre), a hangover is as welcome as the evacuation of vomit that preceded it (said sickness is still being blamed on an salmonella-friendly campsite BBQ on Thursday night). As the phrase goes, time stands still for no man (even one with a hangover) and a now-successful remedy is to get a cold pint of Gaymers (other ciders are available, just nowhere near the festival site) and head off to see some bands.

The early afternoon begins with Frankie & The Heartstrings, Surfer Blood and New Young Pony Club, and all benefit from a fresh crowd keen to jump around and revel in the weekend. Girls provide a welcome decline in pace, even if the crowd aren’t as supportive, waiting patiently for closer ‘Lust for Life’.

By the time Two Door Cinema Club hit the stage the arena bars have all been located, and the aforementioned hangover is a distant memory, which is lucky as this set was the real surprise of the weekend. Sure, ‘Tourist History’ is a decent album, but to fill out the tent with such an energetic crowd leaves the band looking almost awestruck. Reading regulars Biffy Clyro always draw a big crowd, but lead-singer Simon Neil’s questionable bleach-blonde beard and pink jeans combination is something that can’t be overlooked, no matter how good their set is.

Mumford & Sons draw the biggest non-headline crowd of the day on the NME/Radio 1 Stage; such is the desire to see songs with accordions and banjos that many people are forced to watch on the outside screens, with hoards of punters clamouring to get just a glimpse inside. For some people, there are probably a million better things to do whilst waiting for sub-headliners Phoenix.

Despite not personally watching them, it is almost compulsory to at least make reference to Guns N’ Roses, as (for the wrong reasons) their hour-late arrival is amongst the most notable moments of the entire weekend. Hearing reports from friends and other notable figures on Twitter makes the decision not to buckle to temptation and check them out entirely worthwhile.

LCD Soundsystem and Marina and the Diamonds are the main beneficiaries of the lack of activity on the Main Stage, but James Murphy edges out Ms. Diamantis on the basis that his band’s days are numbered (however much everyone wants another LCD album) and they play out the first day with a superbly well-received set that spans all three of their records so far.

After the shambles that was Axl Rose the night before, Saturday is crammed full of bands eager to announce themselves punctual, or to have a dig. Whilst they are obviously entitled to an opinion, bands without a particularly prominent stature (for example, Hadouken) attempts to gain a quick laugh seemed a little disingenuous…

Besides the promising return of Everything Everything to the festival (after playing the BBC Introducing Stage last year) the day is spent at the Main Stage. This is lucky, as the clouds disperse, making way for welcome rays of sun. Mystery Jets are joined during their set by recent collaborators The Count and Sinden, whose single ‘After Dark’ gets everyone dancing.

The Main Stage is home to some acts that have moved up the festival ranks over time –  The Gaslight Anthem, The Maccabees and The Cribs all show they are willing (but more importantly, able) to showcase their wares to some of the biggest audiences they have played in front of at festivals. For The Maccabees and The Cribs it’s a last chance to perform to festival crowds before heading back into the studio to work on new material.

When it comes to reunions, The Libertines’ set is destined to go one of two ways: either a disjointed mess which would effectively ruin the legacy they had garnered over the last ten years, or a performance worthy of their (rumoured) £1.25m fee which would leave those there desperately wishing for more. What transpires is emotional to watch, and to see Pete Doherty and Carl Barat on stage together again is something that many thought would never happen again.

In terms of Reading/Leeds headliners, Arcade Fire might not be the most obvious choice, but of the three on offer over the weekend, they are the band with the most to gain from the festival, and lead singer Win Butler humbly acknowledges that they didn’t have a hit song, but are just pleased to be playing. A set that comprises of their best work from ‘Funeral’, ‘Neon Bible’ and recent release ‘The Suburbs’ may just about cement their place amongst the festival elite.

As most of the weekend has remained dry, it seems only predictable that Sunday’s weather would not be so generous. Still, this means that heading towards the NME/Radio 1 tent is an even better decision, with sets from The Joy Formidable, personal favourites Los Campesinos! and Mercury Prize nominees Wild Beasts, drawing bigger crowds than they may have initially expected.

A quick wander around the arena leads to the BBC Introducing Stage, where The Drums draw a rather sizable throng for a cynically well-publicised ‘secret’ appearance on Radio 1’s Live Lounge. Whilst their recent single goes down well with those gathered, a ropey cover of Arcade Fire’s ‘We Used to Wait’ is mercifully forgettable and sees the numbers dwindle substantially.

In the Dance Tent we see Four Tet and Metronomy. The former, whilst sounding amazing, isn’t a great visual spectacle – and might as well be dancing round whilst playing ‘Football Manager’ with iTunes in the background . Joseph Mount et al play the majority of their only ‘proper’ album, ‘Nights Out’, throwing in a couple of old tracks for good measure.

Sunday evening is a mixture between musical past and present wth, with Paramore, Klaxons and the supremely witty We Are Scientists, mixed with the likes of Weezer and Blink-182. In a weekend full of reunions and returns, it is only fitting to roll back the years and laugh at jokes about masturbation, giving Barack Obama a blowjob and covering Jedward singles with Tom DeLonge, Mark Hoppus and Travis Barker.

With measures taken in the campsite to curb most of the ‘traditional’ anti-social behaviour in the early hours of Bank Holiday Monday, Reading Festival might be returning to the point where the music is more important than rioting – roll on next year!

Altar Eagle - Mechanical Gardens

Mechanical Gardens is the latest release from husband and wife Brad Rose and Eden Hemming’s Altar Eagle. It’s a soft lit romp between warm, fuzzy synthesisers and glassy techno bathed in the saturation of a super 8 camera. It could be the soundtrack to some hazy evening lost to the corner of an ATP chalet, or a dusty field filled with summer time, hangovers and the peaceful slow motion of an over heated, relaxed mind.

Considering his other projects (The North Sea, ajilvsga, Alligator Crystal Moth) Rose isn’t the first name you would naturally associate with soft focussed alt-pop but Mechanical Gardens is a triumph of rich, flowing electronic dream pop that offers ease of access into its nine crumbling, colour-bled tracks without resorting to gimmickry or forfeiting its calm, ethereal qualities to po-faced demands for melody.

Throughout the album, your ears are drawn to wandering through the mental record collection within your head, gliding across names of artists conjured, like quotations, from Mechanical Gardens. However, this isn’t a brand of deja vu or some hatchet hint at something not entirely original at the heart of the album. On the contrary, you feel as if the two halves of Altar Eagle have travelled through their own musical influences and arrived at something entirely their own on the other side.

From the very start, the shoegazing of Slowdive collides with M.I.A.’s sample snatches and aching synths as they pour through opener ‘Battlegrounds’ before delving into ‘Honey’. Further on we find the haunting mumbles of ‘Monsters’ housed in what feels like Bloc Party on one of their more successful electronic jaunts, reshuffled and reassembled with fuzzy, static soaked velcro. Altar Eagle even try splicing detroit techno with My Bloody Valentine’s Butcher/Shields vocal dynamics for later track ‘Spy Movie’. Closing the album, ‘Six Foot Arms’ holds something of the Animal Collective about it with its scatty background and pulsing, prodding synths that stab in and out of the fore. It’s hard not to fall into compiling a list whilst attempting to convey the vast spread of mental music triggers littered throughout.

At times, Mechanical Gardens feels like some witty set of remixes fired about by two battling DJs in the throws of the friendliest of rivalries. As an album its a hypnotic 45 minutes of shoegazing, ethereal dream pop with a beating techno heart that rips your mind to pieces with joy as you unfurl the layers of each track. Your brain will race with every connection it creates from the rich soup of influences on offer, but it can’t get in the way of such an enjoyable oddity of an album.

Ten Kens - For Posterity

Following a couple of personnel changes within their ranks the Toronto noiseniks Ten Kens locked themselves away from the world for a number of months to gestate this, For Posterity, their second album, and boy does it sound like it. Loud is definitely the word of the hour here whilst the sense of the frustration born of too much time in each others’ company is palpable throughout, so clearly they fed off the self-imposed studio confinement.

Whilst generally maintaining the clear breadth of influences that characterised their self-titled debut there is though less immediacy about the songs on this album and it’ll take a few listens to bed itself down in the discerning listener’s aural palate. Vocals are more often than not little more than swoops up and down the extent of singer Dan Workman’s range it seems and recognisable words are at a premium. Coupled with many lengthy instrumental passages that morph from proto-psych through to hardcore in the space of a single song and you’re in possession of one of the more challenging albums of the year to date. Third song, ‘Insignificant Other’, is a perfect example of this marrying of genres.

That track though signals the point at which the band’s vision begins to cohere and from then on, after the aforementioned few listens, it’s possible to see what they’re aiming for. By the time the halfway-point tune ‘Summer Camp’ is reached it’s reasonable to ask the question of whether the band are in fact the new Pixies, such is the riffage they produce and the range that Workman’s pipes can cover. ‘Grassmaster’ however is more the illegitimate offspring of This Is Hell coupling with Frightened Rabbit.

‘Style Wars’ takes rather too long to get to wherever it wants to be but things pick up again on ‘Hard Sell’ and from that point on it’s a straight run to the finish. The band have then come up with a distinctly better than average second album and that time spent in enforced proximity to each other has more than paid off.

The National

Track of the week: ‘You Were a Kindness’ by The National

I heard this when they played it live for the very very very first time, and it was just as amazing then as it is now when hearing it behind my laptop. Berninger’s baritone is just lovely, so filled with sadness. The slide guitar, when I heard that live, that was brilliant. Stroke of genius. Best thing is, this is nothing like what they did on their High Violet album this year. Not that the album was bad, but somewhere in the back of my mind I was wondering what would happen if they got even more bombastic… would it possible?

But it’s OK: here, they’ve come back with a restrained heartbreaker full of self-doubt. I love the reference to Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire (Berninger sings: “You were a kindness when I was a stranger”, which I think is taken from “I’ve always relied on the kindness of strangers”, otherwise “kindness” in the first sentence is grammatically incorrect). It’s one of the best songs I’ve heard all year.

http://hypem.com/#/track/1191849/The+National+-+You+Were+a+Kindness

‘Hand Me Down Your Love’ by Hot Chip (Todd Edwards Micro Chip remix)

You know, I kind of like Hot Chip until they go into ballad mode. But what they can do is make a party – if they just play ‘Over and Over’, I’m game. This remix by Todd Edwards sometimes sounds a little bit too 8-bit Nintendo-ey though, and it does tend to grate – at times I find this remix to sound the wrong sort of unhinged, leaving me glad when it goes back to basics. I would’ve loved it if this song had just a bit more punch. Or, since it hasn’t, if it were about two minutes shorter.

http://www.lagasta.com/hand-me-down-your-love/

‘Days of Our Lives’ by Restless People (Joe Karaoke mix)

This is a track originally recorded by Restless People, which has here been covered by Primary 1 (interview here) under the Joe Karaoke moniker. I like this better than the original – it adds a touch of melancholy to the summer jam. Maybe that means that I’ve got to get out of my room more often and head to the beach every once in a while – but I loathe the beach, so scratch that. I love that this reworking barely resembles the original,too; not that the original was bad, but I love it when people don’t just slap a bass on it and say, “voila, here’s a remix!” – I’ll take it.

http://hypem.com/#/search/karaoke%20joe/1/

‘She’s a Superstar’ by Aeroplane feat. Chromeo

Oh, how I’m regretting not catching Chromeo when they were visiting my little country, because what they’ve been showing the world this year has been quite impressive. This is a number they did with Aeroplane, a lovely stomper of synthy glam. The vocals are great, as can be expected from Chromeo, and Aeroplane just makes it work. Work! I love the musical-like chorus of “she’s a superstar, superstar!” too, after which we get the piano and the beat again. Aeroplane and Chromeo have pulled off a track as great to listen to as to dance to. And I’m always in for a hint of glam.

http://chromeo.net/blog/2010/08/chromeo-vs-aeroplane-aeroplane-vs-chromeo/

‘First in Line’ James Yuill (Dan Lissvik remix)

I’m a bit on the fence re: James Yuill. Some of his stuff I really like, but a good deal of his work doesn’t really connect with me. When this track started I thought, oh no, African drums! I’m not a big fan of those. But luckily that is pushed into the background in favour of a restrained melancholy. I think Lissvik has  really made something that complements Yuill’s voice, as both the music and voice have the same atmosphere. I imagine this will be lovely to bob your head to at night while the train is bringing you back home.

http://hypem.com/#/track/1192502/James+Yuill+-+First+In+Line+Lissvik+Remix+

‘Fuck You’ by Cee-Lo

I don’t think anyone is disputing that Cee-Lo has a good voice, because he has. It’s just that out of his previous songs this year, the choice of song here is a bit poor – this just doesn’t have the punch Gnarls Barkley and Danger Mouse had. Cee-Lo is belting it out, but the music itself just feels a bit insipid. It doesn’t have the bing and the bang and the oomph. It goes a bit big-band retro for my ears, but not quite enough to be mad enough. Where are the horns, hmm? It just feels Cee-Lo is pulling the cart with all his might, and the music is hobbling along. It isn’t a combination where one part strengthens the other, and the use of “fuck you” gets a two point deduction. It’s an overused, meaningless, all-too-common phrase in my book. It might’ve been bold and provocative in the ’60s, but now it’s the reverse. Boo you, Cee-Lo.

http://hypem.com/#/track/1196353/Cee+Lo+Green+-+Fuck+You

Fan Death - Womb Of Dreams

We’ve all been there – wondered if Dave Grohl has died again this week and ended up three hours later stuck in a never-ending carousel of Wikipedia entries. Criticised for its lack of accuracy (although for reliability, the BBC has it only a gnat’s chuff off the Encyclopedia Britannica – but then, I found that factoid from Wikipedia itself), as “free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual, encyclopedia projects” go (again, lifted from Wikipedia’s entry on itself, which is already some fucked up feedback loop), when it comes to binging on pointless information, it’s a pretty cool resource to have.

Vampire Weekend-supporting Vancouver-via-Brooklyn outfit Fan Death, then, must have been cursing when that list of the fifty most interesting Wikipedia entries was passed around the internet last year. Suddenly their kooky name, not a threat to their over-familiar followers but taken from an urban myth blown up by media scaremongering in Korea (a spate of deaths attributed to leaving an electric fan on overnight, if you don’t know already) didn’t sound so obscure – losing them valuable cool points. No Erol Alkan remix is going to save them from the indignity of that.

Turns out that obscurity isn’t what Fan Death are gunning for. Loading up on more genres than a particularly large branch of Blockbuster Videos (which I guess isn’t saying much) – and taking the view that pop producers are actually the only ones taking risks these days – they seem to have their sights fixed on the charts. This is a pretty slick slice of cosmopolitan disco, but for all the glossy sheen there’s that lingering suspicion that you can’t polish a turd, and if, under the layers of glitter, that’s what this is.

The creeping clutter of strings that greets listeners with Womb Of Dreams’ opener ‘Constellations’ is a star-gazing suggestion that this is going to be epic. It leads into early single ‘Veronica’s Veil’, which is perhaps closer to where the heart of this piece lies. Full of mirrorball pomp, it does it’s best to dress this up as the likely heir to Hercules and Love Affair – if it didn’t come across as a calculated attempt to tap into the Florence and the Machine market.

Indeed, singer Dandilion Wind Opaine (who, with the video to earlier release ‘Cannibal’ to her name, has some right to claim responsibility for the band’s image) has seemingly been groomed with toppling the current indie darling cum pop queen in mind, which is fine as long as you’re comfortable with the feeling that you’re being targeted as a market sector rather than as a person. Her patter is supposed to come across as a sultry purr but grates these ears. By ‘The Best Night of my Life’, the whole affair feels like a set-up date where the other party is revealing Fatal Attraction-levels of interest and you’re trying to size up the nearest exit.

A shame because when they get it right, Fan Death’s brand of exotic Kasbah funk hints at an ability to incinerate dancefloors. But from the get-go, and particularly in the lead track, this feels obviously orchestrated – maybe overly so.

Weezer's Rivers Cuomo, from near the front of main stage: atop a sign, below a screen

August 28-29, 2010

Leeds Festival is a sheer delight. The crowd isn’t necessarily dead excited for one band in particular, more enthralled by the sheer amount of things at its disposal.

(The following review ignores the Friday because, unfortunately, I wasn’t there. Sadface-”boo” me.)

Saturday’s main-stage bill is killing me (not good ‘kill’) with its entire line-up of  ‘dumb’ schtick, skate-punk, nu-metal and rap metal FUSION (perish that thought) from the super-late ’90s/early ’00s, bravado, and jokes about wanking and Mexicans.  An attempt to make myself more informed will inevitably be met with criticism that Reading/Leeds’s selection of bands within said header is A Good One, but I can’t tell my Limp Bizkits from my Good Charlottes. I last just 10 minutes through the way of Blink-182’s headline set, because I don’t understand what it feels like to jump around as instinct – even though I realise how prematurely aged that makes me sound. Are brains less instinctive to use? Were they even more unfashionable back then, when this was big?

I was rathermore into Darren Hayes, Artful Dodger and my Pure Garage I compilation at the time you see, so I can’t remember. And I therefore have a total lack of nostalgia for the Saturday bill. “But it’s Weezer,” I hear you cry. “But it’s a melody, just like Darren Hayes’s,” says your mate. You’re both right; Weezer are great fun live, and I forget my preoccupation just like a good girl oughta. Frontman Rivers Cuomo climbs on everything, crashing and falling like the class joker… and a complete and utter buffoon.

I’d probably be more “but it’s Weezer” myself if I held Pinkerton on the pedestal most music-loving people seem to, but without that it’s little more than a half-fun/half hideously valueless “sure you’re still having a mid-life crisis dude, but where’s your self-respect?”-type situation. “And where’s yours, you Savage Garden loving dimwit?” I hear you cry; I’m not sure, truth be told, but can conclude that I need more – and needed more, at 15 – than fulfilment in a 10-second space.

Back in my comfort zone, it’s immense to see Magnetic Man getting all amazing as the sun sets, and the audience’s reflexes at their danciest. And it’s more than the 10 seconds that the music reverberates for, as the beats are met with a veritable quake by the entire packed tent. I’m excited by just how simultaneously The People head-bop, raise arms, and “lose it” to the familiar doof/lurching-doof rhythms. Bass drums pound, settle and infiltrate with such force that I ponder whether Skream, Benga and Artwork possess Godly powers. And that’s excitement, m’lord.

Summer Camp put on another of the weekend’s great shows, with Jeremy Warmsley and Elizabeth Sankey – now without the band – as shiny and adorable as they are on their records. ‘Veronica Sawyer’ is just beautiful, and not-on-record ‘1989’ particularly shines through; the romance and twinkles of their sound are presented with a stride that’s getting more charming each time I see them play. The choruses are so crashing that they could – and should – be loved by hundreds of thousands.

And now for the gratuitous MAN-rock vs. LADY-pop angle of the piece, wherein I can carefully disguise the gap between the music I was brought up on, with – the bill. Queens Of The Stone Age‘d be a force akin to the power trio of Magnetic Man if Josh Homme’s eyes weren’t busy rolling back and forth during their most manly of manly numbers, ‘No One Knows’. Marina and the Diamonds gives me more in the way of danger… if danger is thought of more as steadfastly-stuck-to tautologies.

Ms. Diamandis a superstar regardless of who she’s terrorising, and ‘Shampain’ is her gold-card. Her machine-like demeanour isn’t new, but to see it hit the sycophantic crowd exactly where it hurts is super-special. Her preposterously self-obsessed songs come to life through an icy, impenetratable wall that I’m happy to sit behind. Marina wears the pop star outfit, does the pop star poses and really gets the fame game.

The pleasures continue with Yeasayer, save a mid-set lull because it’s just too darn much to be that damn obvious for so flipping long. Blood Red Shoes have a ruddy great time later on, and I do too. Everything Everything are all I could wish for at their secret-ish set to an enthusiastic crowd late on Sunday, but I’ll spare you that and direct you to the 1,800-word spectacular that is my words on Man Alive, instead. Hell, I’ve been writing for a long time now.

Thanks Leeds, it’s been fun. And a special thanks to Gaymers for hosting us, and Avis for the means to drive up at the last-minute.

L.E.D. Festival

August 28, 2010

Competing with established gurnfests SW4 and Creamfields, not to mention the might of Reading and Leeds tempting tens of thousands out of the capital, it is somewhat of a bold move for L.E.D. Festival organisers to launch a new two-day dance event on the August Bank Holiday weekend. Reports from Friday were ominous; an extremely patchy bill topped by the horrifically turgid David Guetta was matched by a low turnout, mud and a barely audible soundsystem. Boasting the likes of Aphex Twin, Friendly Fires, Leftfield and everyone’s favourite comedy South African rappers Die Antwoord, surely the Saturday would fare better?

After negotiating the obligatory Victoria Park police sniffer dogs – and witnessing some poor chap being led off in handcuffs – first port of call of the day is zef-as-fokk Die Antwoord over on the minuscule main stage. Despite a humble crowd, chav-on acid Ninja, strangely alluring pixie Yo-Landi Vi$$er and masked decks maestro DJ Hi-Tek treat the show like it’s their Wembley Stadium. Entering in their trademark white hoodies, the unlikely-looking trio quickly launch into their biggest tune ‘Enter The Ninja’ complete with Yo-Landi’s naggingly catchy, high-pitched “I am your butterfly” chorus. Fears that they’ve peaked too early are soon quashed thanks to their gloriously cheesy stage antics. Highlights amidst the “zef” shouting include YoLandi in gold bling waving her ass at the crowd singing “I got what you want boy but you’re never gonna get it”, Ninja dancing like a knobhead in ‘Dark Side Of The Moon’ boxer shorts and the pair’s simulated fight in animal costumes during the encore. True, their rap-trance tunes are naff, but Die Antwoord more than make up for it in outright weirdness.

A short visit to the Annie Mac curated tent is cut short when grime MCs Boys Better Know astonishingly start chanting “oggy oggy oggy, oi oi oi” and beckon “we need more girls down here!” Even a brief outburst of pissing rain doesn’t halt my quick exit. Now, alongside death, brilliant Friendly Fires shows are surely one of the few certainties in life? – or so I thought. Unfortunately, the band are the first victim of the day of the shoddy soundsystem. Despite Ed MacFarlane clearly giving his all, his vocals are barely audible while the bass reverberates out of the speakers like a wet fart. The sad result is that usually shimmering tracks like ‘Jump In The Pool’, ‘Paris’ and ‘Lovesick’ are flat and fail to get the pulse racing.

Bizarrely, the sound recovers from its lurgy just in time for Goldfrapp. Dressed in basically a  shredded binbag, Alison Goldfrapp still manages to look resplendent as the band dispatch a fuzzy electro set dominated by their current album ‘Head First’ alongside the likes of ‘Strict Machine’, ‘Number 1′ and ‘White Horse’.

The summery vibes are all a stark juxtaposition to the fucked-up techno carnage of Aphex Twin in the dance tent. Flanked by a impressive strobe setup, Chris Cunningham is unrelenting in his warped aural onslaught of crunching bass lines, bleeps and almost alien sounds. Die Antwoord’s much rumoured guest spot doesn’t quite materialise but they do bound on stage briefly in their animal suits during a bowel-shakingly dark number. Nice. Cunningham duly saves the weirdest to last, coaxing the paranoia of the wide-eyed capacity tent with 15 minutes of screams and shrieks.

With the dance tent now finished, it ensures the crowd over on the main stage for headliners Leftfield is the largest of the day. Despite Paul Daley no longer touring, guest vocalists and a full band performing alongside Neil Barnes ensure the set is far removed from the knob-twiddlery of kindred spirits Orbital and The Chemical Brothers. With darkness now set in, ‘Leftism’ classics like ‘Release The Pressure’, ‘Song Of Life’ and ‘Open Up’ sounds as voluminous and ground-breaking  as they did 15 years. Never wavering, the set is epic throughout and comes to a suitably crushing climax with “that song of the Guiness advert” ‘Phat Planet’.

So, despite the odd sound hitch, the second day of L.E.D. Festival is saved by the strong bill. Whether organisers will be able to propel the festival to new heights in 2011 remains to be seen.

PVT - Church With No Magic

While being robbed of their vowels by similarly-named Yank band Pivot would present something of an issue on Countdown, it seems to have proved a blessing in disguise for Aussie electro three-piece PVT. Not only does their new handle sound more like a physics equation, sitting comfortably with their bleepy maths rock output, they’ve used it as an opportunity to start over. And from the title onwards, this is an exercise in spiritual rebirth.

Beyond the name, the most obvious new development is that they have literally found their voice on Church With No Magic. Rather than applying vocal noises as just another layer of instrumentation, the songs are increasingly shaped around frontman Richard Pike’s actual singing, and his talent is such that you wonder why he didn’t pipe up earlier.

Married with the vocals is a resurgent interest in the mechanics of songwriting. While the majority of the album leans more towards atmospherics, off-kilter beats and electronic throbs, there are elements of the traditional craft. Take ‘Window’, which marks the mid-way point of this enterprise – it’s a bona fide single, with a mantra-like chorus and everything. (It even has its own video, which – as the live shots show – this may be electronic music, but you can’t dance to it).

Given the slight reincarnation, there’s obvious parallels with Joy Division and New Order – in fact, their sound is often caught somewhere in between. More accurately, you could look at them as a reverse Radiohead, moving towards epic early U2-scale traditional songwriting but dragging the wonky electronica of their label Warp with them. Be thinking cascading gothic future-retro – like Interpol plugged into a sinister calculator.

Not that opener ‘Community’, thick with its pulsing Doctor Who-like reverb and Gregorian chanting, suggests a new approach. If anything, it serves as a statement of where this band has just come from rather than where the album is going. Leave that to ‘Light Up Bright Fires’, where trademark Boards of Canada blips boil into something you might recognise as a “song”.

‘Window’ is certainly a stand-out moment, and a much-needed release given the density of the rest of the album – like the dark matter out in space, it’s the gravitational pull of the stuff that seems to exist beyond our sensory perception that keeps this album together, but a breather is nice.

‘Timeless’ is the take-no-prisoners everything-but-the-kitchen-sink epic ending (that isn’t quite, since it’s the penultimate track), building up around a dirty bassline borrowed from Leftfield, only to grind like a heavily-buffered YouTube clip of itself. This leaves ‘Only The Wind Can Hear You’ to round things off, bringing to the foreground the borrowed Vangelis sound that’s hardwired into this band’s DNA. Tellingly, a large portion of this album hinges on the same model Roland employed for the Blade Runner soundtrack (only doctored with a piece of tape to read “Poland”).

A great leap for the band, this is one of those occasions when a step towards what you could consider mainstream appeal actually works. You can only assume that the Church With No Magic of the title refers to how effective various religious orders might be if they ditched all the dogma and mumbo-jumbo and the differences that result in persecution and war and got down to the core reason for their existence in the first place – bringing people together.

Dylan Leblanc - Paupers Field

What Paupers Field does so beautifully is show that true anguish is weary and unhurried; heartbreaking in its resignation. Born-in-the-90s Dylan Leblanc, and indeed the album itself, are preceded by an impressively dramatic bio: dropping out of school to hang out with musicians, the murder of his grandfather, and his own drinking and depression all vie for pole position in his list of influences.  As he sings on the opening track, “Are you feeling alright? Are you feeling low?”, you can’t help wonder who he’s talking to – us or himself.

Such archetypical Deep South musical credentials means that, in a less secure pair of hands, this album is in grave danger off sliding into cliché and self-indulgence. Colourful family history? Check. Evidence of own personal anguish and potential slide into addiction? Check. Swooning steel guitar and delicately picked melodies? Check.  Protégé of established and great country star? Check out Emmylou Harris on guest vocal duties. But Leblanc pays tribute to the idea that something can be so much greater than the sum of its parts, and translates his life experiences and feelings into something both musically brilliant and emotionally moving.

One of the album’s highlights is perhaps the least typically ‘country’ track, ‘5th Avenue Bar’, where Leblanc pushes against heavy cellos to articulate his despair at having nothing left of a relationship but a picture in a locket – a deliciously nostalgic idea from someone of a generation for whom photo memories are more common in pixelated form. Like many creative types of his age, he’s obsessed with ideas of the past, both real and imagined. This album is full of ghosts, sometimes literally; on ‘The Death of Outlaw Billy John’, he tells the tale of the moments up to an execution and the weeping of the relatives of this condemned man, with empathy and aplomb that you can’t help but feel something for this man, even though he was guilty of ‘fourteen banks and thirteen cold blooded murders.’

The instrumentation on this album is undeniably beautiful, but if it weren’t for Leblanc’s vocals,  this album would loiter in ‘very good’ instead of, as it does, striding determinedly into ‘outstanding.’  His voice, smoky and forlorn, sounds like it’s been around far longer than his 20 years, and as he croons and howls his way through these twelve tracks, trailing vowels and misery, there isn’t a single moment of insincerity or posturing. Dylan Leblanc, and his Louisiana brand of tragedy are as real as they come. Both absorbed in and reflecting on his own misery, instead of alienating the listener he draws us in and leaves us hanging on every modest word.