Show 24/05/09

Here's this week's show. Sam is the guest.

mp3

Playlist:
Guided By Voices - Buzzards & Dreadful Crows
The Drones - Jezebel
My Sad Captains - All Hat and No Plans
Pere Ubu - Nonalignment Pact
The lucksmiths - T-Shirt Weather
Bob Dylan - Just like Tom Thumb's Blues
Fugazi - Two Beats Off
The Weakerthans - Our Retired Explorer (Dines with Michael Foucault in Paris, 1961)
Airport Girl - Power Yr Trip
Neil Young - For The Turnstiles
Red House Painters - New Jersey
Galaxie 500 - Fourth of July
The Rolling Stones - Jumpin' Jack Flash [Shine a light version]
Eleventh Dream Day - Daedalus
The Gaslight Anthem - Great Expectations
Youthmovies - Magic Diamond

This podcast was brought to you by the chord B flat minor.

Most People are Tin Trains - Show 17/05/09

This week's show was a collaboration with Rob from Rare FM's own In Transit.

Here's the playlist:
Talking Heads - Born Under Punches (The Heat Goes On)
Women - Shaking Hand
St. Vincent - Black Rainbow
Biography of Ferns - John The Barber
Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Y Control
Dinosaur Jr. - Just Like Heaven
Sonic Youth - What We Know
Young Marble Giants - Music For Evenings
Beirut - A Sunday Smile
The Replacements - Color Me Impressed
Sparklehorse & Danger Mouse - Pain [ft. Iggy Pop]
Bearsuit - Going Steady
Manic Street Preachers - All Is Vanity
Titus Andronicus - Arms Against Atrophy
Wilco - Bull Black Nova
Enablers - The Achievement
Malcolm Middleton - Fuck It, I Love You
Dananananaykroyd - Infinity Milk

mp3

Try and get through the ridiculous first few minutes where it sounds like I'm talking to myself and then Rob seems to be speaking through a fuzz pedal. We got the mics sorted eventually.

Check out Tin Trains, the In Transit blog, here.

See you next time for a post-exams celebration of a show!

2008 Revisited

Because I tend to get a lot of stuff second hand, and because I just don't spend enough time on blogs, I came quite late to a lot of the best stuff released in 2008. So, since I haven't written anything on here for a while and I'm having a break from revising, is a roundup of my favourite stuff from last year, nearly six months on.

Here's my original end-of-year list:
10 No Age - Nouns
9 The Hold Steady - Stay Positive
8 Shearwater - Rook
7 Dodos - Visiter
6 Times New Viking - Rip it Off
5 Crystal Stilts - Alight of Night
4 Deerhunter - Microcastle
3 A Silver Mount Zion - 13 Blues for 13 Moons
2 Los Campesinos - Hold on Now Youngster
1 Bon Iver - For Emma, Forever Ago

Here's the new one:

10 Titus Andronicus - The Airing of Grievances
9 No Age - Nouns
8 Bon Iver - For Emma, Forever Ago
7 Crystal Stilts - Alight of Night
6 Times New Viking - Rip It Off
5 A Silver Mt. Zion - 13 Blues for Thirteen Moons
4 The Manhattan Love Suicides - Burnt Out Landscapes
3 Los Campesinos! - Hold on Now, Youngster...
2 Enablers - Tundra
1 Deerhunter - Microcastle


Deerhunter's was the record that's just kept growing for me this year, and it's pretty clearly my favourite. There's at least three brilliant songs which stand out right from the first listen, and the more atmospheric ambient stuff takes some getting used to, but is pretty great as well. Tundra by Enablers is pretty overlooked, but is really good: Slint-ish math-rock with spoken poetry lyrics. Sounds hard to listen to, but really isn't. That Manhattan Love Suicides record is properly a compilation, but has some new stuff on so I'm going to count it.

Oh, and listen to Rare on Sunday for a very special show. More details to follow.

Show 26/04/09

Yes, oddly enough "tonight"'s show is already here.

As the studio is currently being painted this one is recorded in Most People HQ in Camden. I thought since I've missed the last two weeks I'd better do one today.
Anyway here's the download.

Click

And here's the playlist:

Sonic Youth - Sacred Trickster
Boo and Boo Too - Shimmering Glimmer
Modern Lovers - She Cracked
Big Black - Kerosene (live on the radio)
Bardo Pond - Yellow Turban
Deerhunter - Wash Off
Quasi - California
Sebadoh - A Violet Execution
Galaxie 500 - Strange
Gun Outfit - In the Dark
Comet Gain - You Can Hide Your Love Forever
Rocket from the Tombs - Amphetamine
Moe Tucker - Too Shy
Mission of Burma - That's How I Escaped My Certain Fate

Hopefully we'll be back to normal next week.

Album Feature: Bardo Pond - Amanita (1996)

Here's a new feature I'm going to start doing occasionally, a maybe less-known album which I've been playing a lot recently. Here's the first in the series: Amanita by Bardo Pond. I'll play a track or maybe a couple of the album on the next radio show (I was going to do one on Sunday, but the studio was broken again apparently).

I first became aware of Bardo Pond from the (excellent, by the way) Pavement tribute record, "Everything Is Ending Here". They contribute a blazing version of the rarity "Home", all fuzz guitars, buried vocals and gorgeous feedback trailing guitar freakouts. So when I saw one of their records on one of my second hand record buying expeditions it seemed worth a go. Amanita is their third record, and perhaps their most popular (judging by the usual suspect websites).

And it's easy to see why. It opens with nearly four minutes of a single note drone played on what sounds like two guitars, repeatedly falling away into feedback or dissolving into fuzzy high harmonics. It's a pretty jaw-dropping way to open an album, and when the first track opens up it only gets better. BP construct deeply spacey drony psychedelic rock songs which move and grow with all the monolithic grace of a volcano erupting in slow motion. Most of the songs are based on just a couple of chords, with rock-solid bass and drums anchoring washes of warm fuzzy guitars and some of the best raga-ish streams of guitar and feedback I've heard since Karl Precoda left the Dream Syndicate. The general feel maybe owes a lot to the space-rock scene of Spacemen 3 et. al., but in terms of textures there's a definite shoegaze influence; they sound something like half-finished My Bloody Valentine jams (but better than that sounds)! The wispy female vocals almost recollect some of Kim's more melodic Sonic Youth songs, and in fact that's probably who their approach most reminds me of. They're like a warmer organic counterpart to SY's cold, industrial noise excursions. The lyrics don't make much sense ("Hey Mom, when I grow up I want to be a fish" on the imaginatively titled "Be a Fish"), but they're buried so deep in the mix they become just another component of the wash of sound floating above the wall of feedback. There's a flute in there too from time to time. The record's amazingly laid back, but controlled: the songs last just as long as they need to, and there's sometimes real aggression in the guitar noises.

All in all a really great record, psychedelic not in any cheaply artificial sense but by virtue of carefully constructed soundscapes. It's like a warm bath in aural form. It's also great music to play on an evening wander round the city, as I've been finding over the last week.

It's on Spotify, give it a listen if you have that.

Here's their Pavement cover.

For fans of: loveless-era My Bloody Valentine, Spacemen 3, Dream Syndicate

This might let you stream it:

Amanita - Bardo Pond

Book recommendation

Here's a book I've just read and really enjoyed. Azerrad tells the stories of thirteen bands, mainly from the punk and hardcore scenes of the early eighties but branching into grunge towards the end.

What comes through most is such a strong spirit of community and of shared experience in all the bands he mentions: the way that even though their music might not have a lot in common the way that the members of the various scenes supported each other. The common difficulties of being in that kind of band at the time I suppose. That, and the DIY principles that everything is built on (it's basically a 400-page lovesong to Ian MacKaye/Dischord sometimes) are pretty cliche by this point but it's a powerful message and one which I think is still valid and important. It's the kind of book that makes you want to do stuff.

Also, Azerrad is pretty good at writing about music. I don't like all the stuff he talks about, but most of it's really good. He's never going to convince me to like grunge, but he's evangelical enough about early noise-rock (Mission of Burma etc.) that I've been prompted to listen to more of it and I'm really enjoying it. Their music still stands up on its own merits, but I have trouble getting really excited about Minor Threat, for example, although I do love Fugazi. Maybe they're just one of those bands you had to be there for.

Anyway the bands he talks about are:
Black Flag
Minutemen
Mission of Burma
Minor Threat
Husker Du
Replacements
Sonic Youth
Butthole Surfers
Big Black
Dinosaur Jr
Fugazi
Mudhoney
Beat Happening

Anyway give it a read, it's good.

No Show/Kill Twee Pop

No show this week as I'm at home.

But here's some nice stuff to listen to anyway!

I've been rediscovering my first wave twee-pop records this week. Something about the summer really makes them sound better for some reason.

Vaselines - Son of a Gun
I think some band called Nirvana covered this, the original's prettier though. Did you know Kurt Cobain had a K Records tattoo?

Talulah Gosh - Talulah Gosh
The video for this is sort of unsettling. Really, the absolute worst kind of fey white kids. But it's a lovely song! How do I reconcile these opposing views? Not sure. I feel a post about twee coming on.

Here's one way of reconciling it.
Their record "Kill Twee Pop" is actually really good, noisy shouty songs with angry lyrics which somehow sort of remind me a bit of Beat Happening.

Have a good Easter all, see you after the break!