1. Prefuse 73 'Simple Loop Choir' (Warp) 2. The Long Lost 'The Art Of Kissing' (Ninja Tune) 3. Andrew Bird 'Not A Robot But A Ghost' (Bella Union) 4. Tuung 'Robin' (Need No Water) 5. Beirut 'La Loruna' (Pompeii) 6. Remember Remember 'The Dancing' (Rock Action) 7. The Whitest Boy Alive 'Keep A Secret' (Bubbles) 8. Blonde Redhead & Devastations 'When The Road Runs Out' (4AD)
'Noble Beast' is the fifth solo album by multi-instrumentalist (and expert whistler) Andrew Bird. Musical maturity is apparent with Bird's songs walking the line between expert craftsmanship and innocent playfulness and experimentation. Traditional influences of folk, blues and baroque grapple with a penchant for electronic techniques and repetition, culminating in confident and bold masterpieces that stand out from otherwise standand singer-songwriter fair. Coupled with the limited edition version of the album is the all instrumental 'Usless Creatures', which further explores Bird's sonic experiments over nine tracks.
A random friend request on Myspace led to me discovering this daunting, insane yet brave quest by Another Day On Earth...
Q. Tell everyone a bit about yourself and what you're up to. My name is Lawrence Bonk and I decided, for reasons I'll probably get into with a therapist in 2010, to write and record a song every single day for a year. I post the results of my daily experiments on a blog, http://www.anotherdayonearth.net.
Q. Why on earth did you take it upon yourself to write a song a day and what do you see the end result being? I don't exactly know why I did it. It's probably a few reasons. I was feeling pretty dissatisfied and crappy for a while. I went on an alcoholic bender pretty much throughout the holiday season. I got recessioned (my verb) out of some work and I was just kind of, floating around. So I decided, after a very strong coffee, that this this was a good idea. It didn't sink in until about day three or so.
Q. Have any songs surprised you? Which have been your favourites so far? Many songs have surprised me, in both ways. Nearly every one has. There are songs like 'Messy Love' and 'Sorta Boring Life' which excited the pants off of me when I was writing them, that ended up less than the sum of their parts. There is the opposite spectrum too, songs I wrote in just a few minutes that ended up going places I never imagined. 'Let Let Let Let Let Me In' did that and so did 'Traded In A Dream For Another Dream'. Other than that, my favorites are probably 'We're Just Floating Away' and 'Seesaw Rhythm'. I really hate spelling the word rhythm.
Q. What's your quality control like? Are there days you just think "fuck it, that'll do"? It's funny. Another main reason I started this was to get a handle on my quality control. I have the kind of perfectionist tendencies that can get in the way of ever feeling finished, of ever really being satisfied with anything. You know the type I'm sure. So my reasoning here was, I'd have to get over that because these songs are coming every single day. In a way I have, but I wouldn't say I ever go "fuck it. that'll do." Especially now that I know people are listening. But still, it's hard to make something great every single day. As long as I never sink below "pretty ok" then I'll be happy.
Q. Give us a top 5 of something. Top five most ridiculous dreams i've had since beginning this project:
5. going back in time to help a middle school-aged Will Smith beat back some bullies. 4. watching a live close up camera feed of George W Bush at a sporting event as he hummed along to the Beach Boys 'God Only Knows'. 3. hanging out at the white house and realizing that President Obama was playing a pornographic video game. 2. going back in time to visit with my child self and my parents and having to prove to them i was me by reciting a list of memories. thankfully i avoided a space-time paradox. 1. A tie between about fifteen random dreams about the television program "LOST." Maybe I'm a bit obsessed.
Alfred A. Darlington (more commonly heard as Daedelus) and Laura B. Darlington are The Long Lost. Originally meeting in their high school orchestra and becoming partners in the ballroom dance club, the couple spent 4 years apart but during a renewed courtship formed The Long Lost. Their eponymous debut album looks at love in an honest and sometimes uncomfortable light, reclaiming it from bland, mainstream pop. With Valentine's Day approching, it seemed the perfect time to speak to this hopelessly romantic couple.
PS: Was there an instant musical as well as emotional reconnection when you got back together? A: After four years of holding a candle for each other there were unresolved smoldering emotions; perhaps music was an outlet for this intensity. All I remember is how astonishingly quick our music all came together.
PS: How did the idea of The Long Lost first present itself? L: Shortly after we reunited, I mentioned to Alfred that during our hiatus I'd begun collecting toy pianos, which delighted Alfred to no end. This sparked a collaboration involving guitar and toy piano, and before long we were singing to each other.
PS: Why does the topic of love prove so enduring in song and do The Long Lost open any new doors on the subject? A & L: With the exception of Norwegian Death Metal, most music seems to revolve around love and sex. Many of our songs are love songs, but our situation is slightly unusual: we lost the great loves of our lives and then regained them. Though we are now happily together, there will always be those scars underneath that give even our most carefree love songs a certain poignancy.
PS: Give us a top five of something. Top Five Long-Lost Arts 1. Daguerreotypes 2. Silhouettes 3. Semaphore 4. Hair-work jewelry 5. Alchemy
Anyone who's peeped the Proper Songs Last.FM scrobbler has seen its been overrun by multiple plays of Remember Remember's insanely brilliant album from last year. Head brain Graeme granted PS some words.
PS: Tell everyone a bit about yourself and what you're up to. My name is Graeme Ronald, I'm 28 and I drink too much. I haven't bothered to shave in a number of days as I haven't in fact left the house in a number of days except to buy cigarettes and beer. Aside from this, I work by night under the pseudonym Remember Remember, righting societies wrongs through the medium of instrumental music.
PS: As a solo musician how did you approach writing the album? Was it straightforward recording it? Despite being a solo musician I play with a band so I guess you could say that I'm not a solo musician. I deliberately attempt to keep a sense of mystery about who is actually in Remember Remember but this has mostly resulted in the people that played on the record becoming upset as everyone thinks it's just me. So to try and set the record straight, Remember Remember is a collective, the only constant member of said collective being me, but the album could not have possibly turned out the way it did without the contributions of the other players. I suppose it was fairly straightforward, I had a very clear picture in my head of how every layer of every song was going to be placed, yet there were some interesting tangents that lead to very unexpected changes.....deciding at the last minute, after every part had been recorded that some songs really needed drums, for example....the absolute opposite of everything I've ever been told about proper recording practise.
PS: You play a variety of instruments, what's your favourite/or/most unusual? I would say that I turned my hand to a variety of instruments, not so much that I play them....i certainly wouldn't say that I've mastered any of them. My favourite instrument that I own, and probably the most unusual too, is a Mexican instrument called a Gatorra. It is, on one hand, completely useless, but on the other hand, a wonder-torch. I was given mine by a friend not realising how rare and incredible it is.....a guitar shaped drum machine / analogue synth made by a former TV Repairman called Tony Da Gatorra, constructed from old television components. It has a peace sign emblazoned on it and on closer inspection is in fact not in the shape of a guitar, but of a communist sickle.
PS: How does playing live differ to the album? I'm actually becoming increasingly worried that the album is impossible to recreate live without a huge band. I put together an 11 piece group for the launch and it sounded tremendous, however it's not always possible to have that many people available. Sometimes I play on my own, sometimes I play with a trio of myself, Sax (James Swinburne) and Violin (Joan Sweeney), and sometimes other combinations depending on peoples availability. I enjoy that it's different every time, but for people who have only heard the album I imagine the live show might be a bit of a surprise.
PS: If 'Remember Remember' could be associated with a date other than 5th November, what would it be and why? Oh probably my first date. Who could forget puking in the general direction of the object of your affection.
PS: Give us a Top 5 of something. 1. "Something" by The Beatles 2. "Something Else" by Sid Vicious / Eddie Cochran 3. Something's Gotten Hold of My Heart" By Marc Almond and Gene Pitney 4. "Some Things Come From Nothing" By Super Furry Animals 5. Deep Blue Something
Only a few artists, such as Hot Chip and Matthew Dear in recent years, manage to successfully bridge the gap between stark electronics and traditional pop songwriting; Line joins them with 'Hearts'. This is the debut solo album by Nottingham's Neil 'Line' Wells, although he has long been producing music either in Escapologists or assisting his friends Seachange and Savoy Grand. After pursuing a growing love of techno, 'Hearts' is the culmination of several years of honing melancholic musings and indie inspired electro into an accomplished and settled sound. Tracks such as 'Go Let It Out' and '1228' stand up as songs in their own right but when coupled with leftfield production and 8-bit electronic sounds they take on a new life. Add Wells raw, honest vocals and the result is a striking album of lost pop anthems. A triumph.
Upcoming gigs: 6th Feb @ Liars Club, Chameleon Arts Cafe, Nottingham 14th Feb @ Ginglik, London 5th Mar @ Islington Academy w/ Crazy P, Shock Defeat, Slutty Fringe DJs
With a fan financed concept album on the horizon, Morton Valence are sailing ahead in brave new waters for 21st century bands with their heads screwed on.
PS: Tell everyone a bit about yourselves and what you're up to. We’re Morton Valence (Annie, Hacker, Leo, Alex and Camilo). We play romantic ballads and noisy electronic guitar music. We’ve been doing this far longer than we ever imagined and we’ve got to the point where it would be impossible for us to stop, but it’s an addiction we’re more than happy to live with. We’ve played a lot of gigs, everything from the sub-toilet Camden circuit to a boat on the Thames and even one date in a skip. We spent last July locked away with the genius producer that is Brian O’Shaughnessy getting our album recorded. The end result of this is our great opus and saviour of humankind, ‘Bob and Veronica Ride Again,’ which will be unleashed on the world this May. Before that we have a single coming (Falling Down The Stairs), available from March the 2nd on Bastard Recordings, which comes with its very own zero budget video.
In collaboration with our fans, Bob and Veronica will be conquering the music industry in 2009.
PS: How did financing the album through fan investment come about? We’ve always known that we’ve had an album in us, but we also knew that if we were going to do it right we couldn’t compromise ourselves as we’ve done in the past, in particular relinquishing the creative side of what we do. When we were signed, the label’s attitude was a sort of patronizing ‘hey guys, we’re the professionals, leave it to us.’
And then they went ahead and completely fucked everything up.
Luckily we could see the funny side of it, and even luckier we were able to get out of the contract. After being told that none of us had ‘our heads screwed on,’ we simply thought, ‘ok, “Professionals” leave it to the amateurs then.’ Nearly 20 grand later, a full-length album produced by Brian O’Shaughnessy and mastered at Abbey Road, a BBC Radio 2 Record of the Week, a pending UK tour, dates in US and Europe and an ever growing bunch of fans, all we can do is thank the professionals for leaving it to us amateurs.
Basically, we asked our fans if they wanted to own a percentage of our album. Kind of like shareholders, the response was incredible, giving us a budget and in the process enabling us to set up an infrastructure to rival any indie label, as well as absolute and complete artistic control over everything we do. It’s a really simple idea, a win-win situation for everyone involved and we haven’t looked back. We still have a few shares left, write to us if you want to be involved.
PS: How important is it for bands to be clued up about the business side of music these days? Simple answer to that one...very important. This idea that if you’re an artist you should inhabit some sort of metaphysical ether and not be concerned with business is a nice idea if you’re happy to live your life as a doormat, otherwise you’d better get wise.
PS: You've written a novel that accompanies the album, what's it about? It’s a lowbrow romantic novella about a twenty-something bloke from the suburbs who falls in love with a devout Christian. He decides to fake Christianity to try and win her over but it all goes horribly wrong.
PS: What would be the subject of your ultimate concept album? The Eric Bristow Story.
PS: Give us a Top 5 of something. Top 5 all-time greats of the world of darts. 1. Eric ‘The Crafty Cockney’ Bristow 2. Jockey Wilson 3. Andy ‘The Viking’ Fordham. 4. Ted ‘The Count’ Hankey 5. Raymond ‘Barney Rubble’ Barneveld
Upcoming gigs: 5th Feb @ The Enterprise, Camden 27th Feb @ Artkoustik Festival, Angers, France 7th Mar @ People’s Republic of Disco at The Windmill, Brixton
