Wednesday 18 March 2015

steven wilson - hand.cannot.erase.

I've been playing virtually nothing but Steven Wilson's new album Hand. Cannot. Erase. and associated tracks for the past couple of weeks.
 
The album comes in a bewildering array of formats, all of which contain different tracks - demos, out-takes, instrumental versions, remixes - all to be found across the regular CD, deluxe CD/DVD, Blu-Ray, super deluxe book edition etc... Whatever versions you want however, this is an album that is well worth getting hold of.
 
The album itself is very loosely based on the true story of a woman who gradually withdrew from the world, despite living and working in London. She lost contact with her family and her friends and then seemed to vanish. People assumed she'd just moved away, but due to a combination of benefits continuing to be paid in and rent continuing to be paid out, no-one realised that she'd died in her flat, with the TV still on and Christmas presents for her brother's kids still half wrapped. No one seemed to miss her and her body wasn't discovered for over two years! 
 
The songs on Hand.Cannot.Erase. don't actually tell the story of this woman, but some are clearly inspired by the way she withdrew from contact with the world. The best place to hide is in the busiest city. No-one will notice you if you don't want to be noticed. So we get songs of regret, of sad childhoods, of lonely people - but surprisingly this is in no way a miserable album. There's an excitement and a buzz about it, lots of electronic textures that set it apart from the retro prog of Wilson's previous album, and above all some of the songs are solidly, joyfully commercial sounding.
 
The title song mixes the catchy, snappy sound of one of Wilson's other bands - Blackfield - with the punchy anthemic rock of bands like Manic Street Preachers - and it's superb. It's immediately followed by the trip-hoppy sound of "Perfect Life" as the female protagonist of this album reflects on an idyllic part of her childhood when her parents adopted another girl who introduced her to Dead Can Dance, Felt and This Mortal Coil - although it's obviously not actually taken from Steven Wilson's own life there's clearly a strong autobiographical strain running through this.
 
There are longer pieces, twisting and werning their way through various Prog influences. "3 Years Older" starts off with Pete Townshend "Substitute" like chords, but mutates into something like late 70s Rush before veering off at another tangent altogether. The demo version of this song even uses part of the wonderful No-Man song "Truenorth" at one point. But it would be entirely wrong to say that these songs merely nick stuff from their influences. The sources are clear at times but Wilson does so much with this inspiration that every song soars and changes into something new and fresh and exciting and genuinely thrilling. The use of female vocals on a couple of tracks adds considerable depth. This is not just prog rock - despite what the reviews might say - there's so much more to Steven Wilson than that.  
 
The final track, "Happy Returns", is arguably the best. The lyrics may seem inocuous on first listen, merely a letter to an estranged brother, but the words are deceptive and there's a heartbreaking sadness in this song that's deliberately left unresolved in the final line "I'll finish this tomorrow" which precedes some truly stunning and highly emotional guitar work. The coda to this is titled "Ascendent Here On…" which might point to the lonely death of the woman, but the website that accompanies the album also hints at something else, something rather surprising after the very humdrum and very human story that has gone before. The diary on the website details the fictional life of this woman and about halfway through there are the first oblique mentions of 'visitors'. My understanding of this was that the woman was slipping in paranoia and perhaps schizophrenia and that her mind was wandering due to her self imposed isolation. But the final pictures on the site, published the day the album was released, show what seem to be glowing lights in the sky, perhaps UFOs, accompanied by the words Ascendent Here On… Wilson has said in a couple of interviews that the story might not actually be exactly what it seems and when one interviewer suggested a sci-fi element to the loose story Wilson said something like 'perhaps…' so who knows? It’s deliberately vague and open to all sorts of interpretations. 
 
What remains certain however is that the album is a real masterpeice of modern rock and the bonus tracks add much to this. The demos are sufficiently different to be very worthwhile hearing, with two tracks that never made it to the album itself (one of which is just gorgeous). The instrumental versions of the songs are more than just the pieces with the vocals removed. Quite differently mixed and with alternative overdubs and instrumentation in places - again well worth hearing. And finally a few alternate takes and a couple of radio edits for "Hand Cannot Erase" and "Happy Returns" - is Wilson being a tad optimistic expecting radio play? If there was any sense in the world then these two songs, at the very least, ought to be on radio playlists. With all the acclaim and publicity he's getting for this record then is it possible, 25 years into his career, that he could actually get noticed by the general public? Stranger things have happened.


Sunday 1 March 2015

iggy pop - mass production

Still waiting for a decent remaster of Iggy Pop's seminal 1977 album The Idiot (and Lust For Life for that matter). 

In the meantime the 25 year old cd will have to do, all muddy and hazy but still brilliant. 

Now's not the time to go into the whole album, but I must just mention the final song. The Idiot ends with what is perhaps one of the oddest song Iggy ever committed to tape. "Mass Production" is basically the culmination of Bowie and Iggy's vision for the album. Teutonic, industrial, experimental, a weird mish-mash of Neu! and early Kraftwerk, Stooges and Detroit Rawk, and Station To Station and Low.  

It drags the listener into a nightmarishly twisted landscape of rain and darkness full of massive, industrial, smoke-belching factories. The lyrics are a clever, wry look at the identikit girls that Iggy used to find when on the road and the music is woozy, warped and more than a little deranged.

The opening was meant to conjure up images of the Ford car plants near to where Iggy grew up in Michigan - as a boy he'd been captivated by the rhythmic metallic clanging and bashing that emanated form these giant plants. But what I find most interesting is that the opening of his track is also virtually identical to the opening track on an oft-bootlegged Kraftwerk show from June 1971. Kraftwerk is German for power plant and Ralf Hutter and Florian Schneider were equally fascinated by the musical possibilities offered by big industry. 

This 1971 gig however only features Florian (no Ralf, who was finishing his degree) plus Michael Rother and Klaus Dinger who shortly afterwards split to form their own band - Neu! This is a very heavy show all motorik drumming and lots of overdriven guitar - nothing like the Kraftwerk we came to know and love, and also nothing like the first three Ralf and Florian albums for that matter. But it's wonderful that Bowie and Iggy were so into the Germanic synth / experimental bands that they were paying homage to (or ripping off, if you prefer) tracks on very obscure bootlegs!

Anyway, "Mass Production" has to be played extremely loudly. It's just better that way.

king crimson - live at the orpheum

King Crimson released their new album recently. And that's not a sentence I ever expected to writing in 2015. 

Live At The Orpheum was recorded in Los Angeles at the aforementioned theatre at the start of October last year. It's what Fripp would term a Calling Card from this new line-up of the Crims, being only a snapshot of the King Crimson's latest set list at a snappy 45 minutes long.

But what a cracking 45 minutes they are.

After a brief intro which concludes with the coda of the orchestra tuning up from the Islands album and Fripp's voice intoning 1 2 3, 2 2 3 the band viciously slam into "One More Red Nightmare", never played live until last year's tour. The three drummers run with Bill Bruford's original percussion lines and embellish and expand. The stereo placement sticks Pat Mastelotto on the left, Bill Reiflin in the centre and Gavin Harrison on the right, just as they were on stage, and much fun can be had hearing this on headphones as the drummers trade beats.
"OMRN" is terrific, perhaps not quite as thrashy as the original, but this is not a young man's band anymore and a little restraint is to be expected. To put things in perspective, both Fripp and Tony Levin will be 69 in a few months, Mel Collins will be 68 shortly and Jakko, Pat Mastellotto and Bill Reiflin are all in their late 50s. Gavin Harrison - the youngest member of the band - is a mere 52. As I said, not a young man's band, not at all

There's only one new track on this disc - a short percussion piece which doesn't really do anything. It's nice enough, but unremarkable.

"The ConstruKction Of Light" follows, all interlocking guitars and clever bass with Mel Collins basically subbing for Belew's now missing vocals. It's one of those songs that really impresses the listener with how horrendously difficult it must be to play. 

Then two from Islands - "The Letters" which is solid, but never a favourite of mine, and "The Sailor's Tale" which is absolutely wonderful. Probably the highlight of this album, it has a power and intensity which is, frankly, rather surprisingly as powerful and as intense as the original. Fripp recreates his famous solo with glee and the digital mellotron (played by drummer Reiflin) is just as menacing as the old creaky 1971 analogue version. And Mel Collins is an absolute star on this one. 

The album ends with "Starless". I've played this a few times now and I'm still not sure what to make of it. The opening part is lovely, as always, Fripp's pure guitar sound is gorgeous. The middle section, all tension and that fiercely repetitive building and building is handled brilliantly, and the explosive closing section is all present and correct. But there's something lacking I feel. Not entirely sure what it is, but perhaps the climactic conclusion isn't quite climactic enough. I can't really explain it, but I don't think it quite has the emotional intensity of all those 1974 live versions that I have heard in the Starless and Road To Red box sets. 

Anyway, full concerts from this tour are likely to be made available shortly, which will be great as this album is missing loads of superb performances - "Larks' Tongues I" and "II", "Schizoid Man", "Red" with added saxophone and loads more.

Looking forward to the UK dates in September enormously. Another sentence that I never thought I'd write in 2015 - new King Crimson concerts. Wonders never cease!!