JOHN FOXX & THE MATHS have released their third album in 18 months entitled ‘Evidence’.
The 15 tracks include collaborations with Matthew Dear on a version of ‘Talk’ which previously appeared on ‘The Shape Of Things’, US duo XENO & OAKLANDER on ‘That Sudden Switch’ and TARA BUSCH with her own ‘I Speak Machine’ mix of ‘Talk’. Dubwisely surreal, the title track’s collaboration with North American post-apocalyptic trio THE SOFT MOON sees many of the starker, dystopian flavours that Foxx is best known for.
Following the enjoyable flirtation with synthpop on JOHN FOXX & THE MATHS’ debut album ‘Interplay’, this is much more post-punk psychedelia like Gary Numan meeting Syd Barrett! The album sees available for the first time in physical format, Foxx and Benge’s brilliant minimal electro cover of PINK FLOYD’s ‘Have A Cigar’ (where the infamous “which one’s Pink?” line is changed to “which one’s Maths?”) while also included are Brighton songstress GAZELLE TWIN’s chilling remix of ‘A Falling Star’ and JOHN FOXX & THE MATHS’ reworking of her wonderfully emotive but unsettling single ‘Changelings’.
Regular live band member Hannah Peel adds eerie violin to instrumental ‘Neon Vertigo’ and the more angrily percussive ‘My Town’ although overall, the album takes on an atmospheric pace around more downtempo rhythmic constructions smothered in echoes.
Following her Arrival in 2011, QUEEN OF HEARTS graced the world earlier this year with a brilliantly glitzy slice of electro schaffel entitled ‘Neon’ that ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK thought managed to “out Goldfrapp GOLDFRAPP”.
Continuing her reign, her wonderful new single is the impressively tribal ‘Warrior’, an epically orchestrated production from the mine of DIAMOND CUT. Here, she takes the next step in the ice diva stakes by effectively turning into Claudia Brücken.
Sounding like Kylie if she had been weaned on PROPAGANDA’s ‘A Secret Wish’, the young royal walks that fine line incorporating pop, art and fashion beautifully. This is reflected in the striking video which has been directed and filmed by the acclaimed fashion photographer Elliot Morgan.
Other tracks on the ‘Warrior’ bundle include Queenie’s paradoxically delicious synthesized cover of Ben Howard’s growly acoustic number ‘Only Love’ and the Eurotastic HI-NRG ‘Broken Dreams’ which appears to reveal a love of MODERN TALKING… incidentally, the duo’s Dieter Bohlen is now the Simon Cowell of Germany!
There is also the bonus of an oddly laid back ALUNA GEORGE mix of ‘Shoot The Bullet’, which was originally produced by Swedish pop duo THE SOUND OF ARROWS.
‘Warrior’ is released as a download EP by Night Moves on 2nd December 2012. It is available via Amazon, iTunes and other digital retailers.
Making aggressive or confrontational music using synthesizers or electronics has never been the norm, although acts from THROBBING GRISTLE through to NINE INCH NAILS have used the technology available to often embrace the darker side of these machines and use distortion rather than melody to get their message across.
At the heart of these acts and others was usually a punk aesthetic which took instruments that were often incredibly difficult to program to make sounds which could shock and disturb… even THE HUMAN LEAGUE Mk1 famously mocked punk guitarists for only learning 3 chords when “we could play a synth with one finger!”
Which brings us to CRYSTAL CASTLES and their new album and the third to be titled eponymously…
If you had never heard this Canadian duo before and checked them out on Wikipedia beforehand, you would be confronted with a quote from Drowned in Sound describing their music as “ferocious, asphyxiating sheets of warped two-dimensional Gameboy glitches and bruising drum bombast that pierces your skull with their sheer shrill force, burrowing deep into the brain like a fever”… which is probably enough to send your average electronic music fan scurrying for his or her nearest MARSHEAUX album… however, if you fall into this category, fear not as this is CRYSTAL CASTLES most accessible album to date.
So what has caused this shift? For a start, with this album, producer and one half of the duo Ethan Kath has ditched the laptops and embraced analogue synthesizers and drum machines, softening their sound by leaving behind the multitude of glitch/warping plug-ins available to easily distort at production level. Having said that, a casual read through the song titles… ‘Violent Youth’, ‘Transgender’ and ‘Child I Will Hurt You’ are clues enough to let you know that this album still isn’t going to be an easy ride…
The first thing that hits you is the wall of sound, it’s as if Phil Spector was around and producing today and had embraced synthesizers, drum machines and even bigger reverbs rather than the traditional instruments he was known for working with. Most of singer Alice Glass’ vocals are buried in long, swimming reverbs, pushing them to the back of the mix, meaning that most of the lyrics are often frustratingly unintelligible.
What also becomes apparent is that the band have ditched much of the distortion to embrace a different sound, also jettisoning along the way their trademark 8 bit/chiptune sonics for textures which could quite comfortably appear on early DEPECHE MODE, FAD GADGET or OMD albums. In a way with this development, there are parallels with LADYTRON whose sound has also become more dense and reverb-drenched on their last album ‘Gravity The Seducer’after initially starting with a minimal, monophonic one finger approach.
The only danger with this progression, is that the band is potentially caught in a limbo/middle ground where hardcore fans will miss the sheer onslaught of earlier tracks such as ‘Doe Deer’ and ‘Alice Practice’ but newcomers will be put off by the way in which almost electro-pop tracks such as ‘Violent Youth’ and ‘Transgender’ are rendered difficult to truly love because of the obtuse vocal mix/production.
What is most surprising is the usage of commercial, gated R’n’B-based synthesizer sounds on the tracks ‘Wrath Of God’ and ‘Affection’ which were the sort of thing US producer Timbaland was using with Justin Timberland back in 2006…whether these production elements are being used in an ironic/postmodern way by the band is hard to gauge, but to these ears they give the album a dated feel.
A couple of the tracks even dip their toes into Europop/dance – ‘Sad Eyes’ which (with a slightly more coherent/conventional mixdown) could quite happily appear on an early PET SHOP BOYS album… all of the elements are present and correct, just hidden beneath the production values…
Probably the nearest thing to the old CRYSTAL CASTLES aggression is ‘Insulin’ which from start to finish is buried in distortion, making it a difficult listen even on iPod headphones, let alone imagining it being played at a punishing volume through a big PA system during one of their now (infamous) live shows.
Album highlights are the opening and closing tracks ‘Plague’ and ‘Child I Will Hurt You’, where the duo achieve a dark, atmospheric balance between melody and menace, the former opening with a sound which feels like it was sampled from Ridley Scott’s ‘Alien’… also worth a mention is the primarily instrumental ‘Mercenary’ which marries a psychedelic backwards synth part with ghostly trails of background vocals before descending into a maelstrom of bass distortion at it’s climax.
This album is worth a listen if you are new to CRYSTAL CASTLES, but be warned, it doesn’t give up its rewards easily and whether you are a new or an old listener you could feel frustrated with what might have been…
CRYSTAL CASTLES (III) is available now on Last Gang/Fiction Records
UK Tour dates include:
Birmingham HMV Institute (22 November), Norwich UEA (23 November), London Brixton O2 Academy (24 November), Glasgow O2 ABC (26 November), Leeds O2 Academy (27 November), Manchester Academy (28 November)
‘The Lost Are Found’ is an emotive body of songs, each from their very own world, but together blending to form an 11 episode triste drame.
The journey started when Claudia Brücken teamed up with the top producer Stephen Hague whose credits have included PET SHOP BOYS, OMD, ERASURE, COMMUNARDS, NEW ORDER and A-HA. Recording two brand new songs ‘Thank You’ and ‘Night School’ for her ‘Combined’ retrospective in 2011, they bookended that phase of her career which began of course with PROPAGANDA. ‘Thank You’ in particular captured a Bond Theme meets MASSIVE ATTACK vibe and planted the seed for an intriguing project which was the idea of her daughter Maddy.
Claudia Brücken told ELECTRICITYCLUB.CO.UK back in July: “The theme is melancholy songs…they’re sad but they don’t make you slash your wrists. I recorded it in four months with Stephen Hague and we had this real clear vision of what we wanted to do”.
Despite the varying eras of the compositions, memories and emotions within the human condition exist whatever the period. So by default, songs of love and heartbreak are generally timeless. And because many of these carefully chosen songs are semi-obscure, even within the catalogues of some of their more high profile writers, this album can be approached with fresh ears, like an adventure that has been previously uncharted. In that respect, ‘The Lost Are Found’ does exactly what it says on the tin.
The journey begins with the ethereal ‘Mysteries of Love’ written by David Lynch and Angelo Badalamenti. Layers of treated voices climb over synth mountains as lonesome ivories and glacial atmospheres bring Middle America to Alpine Europe. As featured in the film ‘Blue Velvet’ in its Julee Cruise version, also on the soundtrack was Roy Orbison’s ‘In Dreams’, another song which Claudia has previously recorded. One suspects this surreal film noir might be one of her favourites.
Following it, ‘Memories Of A Color’ from Nordic avant songstress Stina Nordenstam is a mix of acoustic and electric guitars with distorted organ over a mid-tempo percussive jazz shuffle as Claudia’s vocals provide an approachable counterpoint. Although ‘The Lost Are Found’ features a technological base, this is probably the most organic collection Claudia Brücken has ever recorded. Although her excellent ‘Another Language’ long player with Andrew Poppy was acoustic, that relied on stark, minimal theatre for its effect. ‘The Lost Are Found’ combines the ice maiden chill with a fuller naturalistic warmth for an artful but accessible sound.
One nice surprise is ‘The Day I See You Again’ from DUBSTAR’s first album ‘Disgraceful’; Claudia’s reinterpretation of the kitchen sink drama about a man who has grown to be “more Morrison than Morrissey” is done Düsseldorf style with Weimar piano and beautiful flügel tones complimenting the resigned frustration. Then one of the albums highlights arrives with ‘Everyone Says Hi’, a brilliantly lively take on one of Bowie’s more recent numbers dressed with catchy riffs and fuzzy shades.
Lesser known ELO B-side ‘One Summer Dream’ was the first song to emerge from these sessions and begins with a vintage gramophoned segment before building to a pretty John Barry influenced, ‘Felt Mountain’-era GOLDFRAPP arrangement which is frankly quite wonderful. Interestingly, Jeff Lynne himself has recorded his own album of classic tunes recently called ‘Long Wave’.
Another Stina Nordenstam work ‘Crime’ emerges with its pizzicato colours, subtle bass and sparring six string. It acts as a steadfast mid-album interlude in almost hushed resonance before it all snaps back into place with THE LILAC TIME’s ‘The Road To Happiness’. Here Stephen Duffy’s ironic ditty kisses Claudia within an idyllic setting of angelic chorals, spritely strums and French accordion courtesy of Stephen Hague. Salute!
Perhaps thanks to Stephen Hague’s production duties on the original, Claudia’s reworking of PET SHOP BOYS’ ‘Kings Cross’ retains the song’s melancholic edge, the metaphor of capitalism is actually very much still intact. But how it differs is the pressure now rises to a dramatic climax and adds a rush not previously apparent in the song. On the album’s singular new composition from The Burt Bros called ‘No One To Blame’, hints of ‘Spiegel Im Spiegel’ like an antique music box flit in while the electronic orchestration lifts the tune into a dreamboat setting as Claudia’s timbres alternate between innocence and worldliness.
As ‘The Lost Are Found’ steps to its conclusion, the revamp of ‘And The Sun Will Shine’ rom BEE GEES’ 1968 album ‘Horizontal’ is marvellously majestic with rousing string stylings, the neo-Riviera flavour sitting well with the soaring chorus. The album closes with Robbie Robertson and Richard Manuel’s rustic ‘Whispering Pines’ from which ‘The Lost Are Found’ title comes from. With spacey synth forte not unlike THE KORGIS ‘Everybody’s Got To Learn Sometime’ sitting alongside percussive brushes, it’s not quite how one would imagine THE BAND to sound but that’s the point…
The character spectrum which Stephen Hague has crafted for ‘The Lost Are Found’ is a hopeful, soothing experience that is not at all overbearing; Hague is known for placing his emphasis on vocals and by working the music around them, all the instruments have their place.
As a result, there is plenty of room for Claudia to breathe and manoeuvre. While obvious electronic references are perhaps more muted than what one would normally expect from her work, the varied organic embellishments add an enjoyable lounge dimension to Claudia’s repertoire which matures with each listen.
With thanks to Rosie Johnstone and David Lawrence at Impressive PR
KID KASIO’s latest video ‘Telephone Line’ features an array of vintage technology and wires.
The Kid himself Nathan Cooper said: “The video has been a labour of love! It features a Commodore Pet, 2 reel-to-reels, the Prophet 5 and an old 6 foot tall patch bay I built!!!!”
Also featured are a green two-tone pre-BT rotary dial Type 746 and a customised yellow Simmons drum set. The song itself is a bouncy holiday flavoured number with its funky bassline recalling LES RYTHMES DIGITALES’ ‘Jacques Your Body’. Imagine if Howard Jones and Nik Kershaw had an illicit affair in the dressing room of Top Of The Pops back in 1984? KID KASIO would be their resultant love child!
From his debut album ‘Kasiotone’, it also features the great LA ROUX meets RYUICHI SAKAMOTO ballad ‘I Miss You’ and the optimistic synthpop tunes ‘Not For Turning’ and ‘Living My Life’. Plus as if to prove his musical parentage, there’s even a cover of NIK KERSHAW’s ‘Dark Glasses’.
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is released by There (there) on 5th November 2012
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