david sylvian - there's a light that enters houses with no other house in sight

After a few months of it sitting on the shelf, I gave the most recent David Sylvian album another try.

Firstly there's that preposterous title 'there's a light that enters houses with no other house in sight' - yup, gotta love it all being in lower case, not remotely pretentious or annoying…

Secondly, it's still too long, and it doesn't really go anywhere - it just sort of happens, for an hour. There are little parts that stand out, little flourishes, keyboard swells, samples of orchestral stuff and the final couple of minutes are genuinely impressive. But it had definitely improved since the first (and only) couple of listens late last year. Which is not something you can say about all of Sylvian's recent works - When Loud Weather Buffeted Naoshima, I'm looking at you! 

It's basically what he was performing in 2013 with Christian Fennesz and Stephan Mathieu as The Kilowatt Hour, and uses the same recordings of American poet Franz Wright dropped in randomly throughout the hour long piece. 

I have a live recording of a Kilowatt Hour performance but I've only played it once or twice - it was just lots of seemingly random noodling from the trio, electronic buzzes, flickering piano and ambient guitar, plus the spooky recordings of Wright. Atmospheric for a while, but over the course of an hour it became rather dull. 

'there's a light…' is more of the same but after a year of Sylvian tweaking it, I think it's rather better than the live performance. Musically, there are snatches of guitar, gentle piano abstractions, strings (presumably sampled) and other orchestral embellishments. At times it's almost tuneful and in places it reminds me of the marvellous Uncommon Deities though without Sylvian's lugubrious vocals.

It does still noodle rather a lot though, and I reckon that if this had been chopped back to around 20 minutes then that would have been quite sufficient.  At over an hour it does rather overstay it's welcome. To make it rather more palatable and manageable I've actually inserted break points and re-burned it. 

However in the course of comparing the live show and the finished work, and splitting there's a light… into more bearable chunks, I've come to the conclusion that's it's not quite as aimless as I first thought. I rather like Franz Wright's narration and recitations. His poetry / prose is interesting, mainly describing in oblique terms his battle with cancer, so it's not exactly cheery stuff.  His voice is appealingly similar in tone to that of Harold Budd, slow and thoughtful, with a warm, creaky quality about it. 

Basically it's all very atmospheric and mysterious, and it does actually hold my attention whilst I'm listening to it, which is at least something positive. But it doesn't make me think that I'd want to listen to it very often, not for pleasure. And isn't that really the point of music? Yes, I'm all for music that challenges and scares and excites and disturbs, but ultimately I want to gain some sense of pleasure from it. I can't believe that Sylvian himself gains much pleasure from creating such resolutely difficult and gloomy music. I wish he'd do something a little lighter, something with just a small sense of enjoyment about it. Most of his work, for some years now, has sounded as if it's been a real chore for him to produce. I guess he wants to make this sort of music, so he must like it, at some level, but please David, cheer up a bit! 

pieter nooten / michael brook - sleeps with the fishes

Sleeps With The Fishes is a moody, haunting, mainly instrumental album with a number of tracks containing equally moody haunted vocals. Swamped with gorgeous string arrangements, melancholy synths and highly atmospheric infinite guitar it is hard not to think of the album as entirely one piece, rather a set of separate tracks. 

 

Dutch musician Pieter Nooten began work on this record in early 1987. His band, Xymox, had formed in 1983 in Nijmegen in the Netherlands and was signed to 4AD records following some early support slots with rising 4AD stars Dead Can Dance. 1985 saw the release of the self titled debut album under the slightly expanded name Clan Of Xymox. The following year’s Medusa received unexpected praise and Xymox were fast becoming one of 4AD’s most talked about acts. But Nooten was tiring of the dark, overly gothic overtones and in early 1987 decided to quit the band. He continued to record and would regularly send fragments and home demos to 4AD supremo, Ivo Watts-Russell. Ivo was intrigued and granted permission for a full Nooten solo album. However Ivo had also decided that the demos needed something extra, and for this Ivo turned to Michael Brook, who’s 1986 debut album Hybrid had hugely impressed Ivo with it's ambient soundscapes. 

 

Brook had spent some years working with fellow Canadian Daniel Lanois and cerebral ambient pioneer Brian Eno. In 1985 Brook was heavily involved in the construction and sound design of Eno’s landmark 61-minute ambient piece “Thursday Afternoon” and Brook’s own Hybrid was the result of various sessions with Eno and Lanois throughout 1985 and 1986. The imaginatively swampy percussive beds of Hybrid were bolstered by many layers of delicate electric guitar. Brook had pioneered a method of sustaining an electric guitar note infinitely by taking the signal from a standard guitar pickup, amplifying it, and feeding it back into a separate pickup coil. The resulting continuously sustained note could then be manipulated to create whole new sounds. Daniel Lanois loved this set up and so Brook created one for him. Lanois’ infinite guitar was also coveted by The Edge during the sessions for The Joshua Tree and Brook created another one for the U2 guitarist (the beautiful results can be heard on “With Or Without You” amongst other songs.) 

 

Ivo figured that Brook’s mastery of the studio, and ability to create melancholy and mysterious soundscapes would complement Nooten’s fragmentary songs and music. Brook originally signed up purely as the producer but his involvement became such that Ivo suggested a joint credit. Although Nooten basically composed all the tunes, the overall shape and sound of the finished record would never have been arrived at without Brook’s considerable input. 

 

One the album's many strengths is the hazy sound that envelops the album. Brook's gently splashing percussion and murky glimmers of infinite guitar combine with gently buzzing washes of DX7 (borrowed from Brian Eno). Nooten's vocals are just as indistinct, and sometimes the only instruments to peak out of the fog are the occasional oboe and some mournful cellos. It's gorgeous. Eno once said that nearly every song in the world could be improved with the addition of backing vocals - to that I would add that most songs could also be improved with the addition of an oboe.

 

Most of the music on this record derived from Nooten's demos, but the duo also decided to re-record a couple of Xymox tracks. “Equal Ways” had originally featured on 1985’s Clan Of Xymox track and “After The Call” was reworked from the 1986 Medusa album. 

 

Although only about half the album is wordless, Sleeps With The Fishes always strikes me as an instrumental record, as it’s the music which really speaks, via the haunting strings, the eerie, wraithlike guitar, and the layers of synths that give the whole album a pleasing consistency. There's a wintery, frosty quality to much of the record, not unlike the The Pearl or the Plateaux Of Mirror where Harold Budd's piano is half lost in Brian Eno's chilly mist, music only partially heard on a foggy, chilled winter's morning. There's a truly ghostly quality to Sleeps With The Fishes, indistinct, hazy music from another place altogether.

 

The vocals are frequently low in the mix, mumbled and hushed, yet oddly the album doesn’t sound depressing or oppressive. Melancholy, reflective, sometimes sad and almost tearful, but it’s not miserable in the slightest and one of very few albums that manages to maintain the same quality throughout. And that’s a quality not only of the music itself, but the mood throughout - sad, beautiful, resplendent, and deeply affecting. The listener is completely drawn into the soundworld, and even after the album has finished its spine-tingling qualities remain. At times it veers close to Goth, but cleverly contains none of that genre’s bombast or melodrama, being quietly understated. The sleeve is similarly quiet and unassuming, lacking in all but the basic credits, black and with an obscure shape/design rather than the usual lush 4AD style cover. This is an album that refuses to announce its presence; rather it prefers to hide in a dark and cobwebbed corner and waits to be discovered. This dusty corner, (think of Miss Havisham's house, all pale drapes and ageing lace), might also contain the second This Mortal Coil album, Filigree And Shadow, which had been issued by 4AD just a year earlier, and which shares with Sleeps With The Fishes a great many traits. The TMC link would be cemented a few years later when “Several Times” was expanded into a full song by Nooten for the third This Mortal Coil album Blood.  There, the sonerous tones of Deirdre Rutkowski, accompanied by Gini Ball’s heartbreaking violin and Nooten himself on keyboards, give the song it’s final shape. And it’s breathtaking.

 

This album is a terribly intimate experience. It works beautifully when you are alone, deep into the night and the rest of the world is asleep. There is real beauty to be found here, it's very precious, and to be cherished.

 

 

 

 

 

nico - behind the iron curtain

Nico’s live album Behind The Iron Curtain has long been a favourite of mine, I first bought it on cassette, from a shop in Nottingham, while I was waiting to see my first Iggy Pop gig in June 1987.

 

This set was recorded on 9 October 1985, in a club in Rotterdam.

Now, the geographers amongst you may have noticed that Rotterdam is not exactly behind the Iron Curtain... The album sleeve actually states that it was "recorded live in Warsaw, Budapest and Prague between 29.9.85 and 31.10.85", but it wasn’t. Not one note.

 

The plan had been to record some dates of the October 1985 tour of Eastern Block countries but conditions turned out to be too primitive, electricity too unreliable, and Nico didn’t have access to her usual, er, supplies which resulted in some rather variable performances. However, her manager, Alan Wise, had already promised the record label a live album, so tapes from earlier in the European tour were dusted down and this Rotterdam show was presented as a document of the tour of communist countries. When the deception was exposed some years later, Wise cheekily said that it didn’t really matter as the basic set of songs was much the same as what had actually been played Behind The Iron Curtain...

The original double album was reissued on CD a few years later, but lost the vinyl side 3 in order to fit onto one CD. It's been reissued a few times but sadly the missing tracks have never been restored. It's also a little annoying that the flow of the gig was spoilt by a fairly random reordering of the set list and by fading the applause out after each song. Maybe one day this set could be reissued, complete and in the right order.

 

However, musically it’s a very solid 1985 Nico show. Nico was accompanied by a band for most of the 1980s. In 1981/82 this was more a regular guitar/bass/drums set up, but from 1984 until her death four years later the emphasis was on just piano / synth and percussion. Keyboard player James Young was in most of these bands and wrote a very funny, and very touching, account of life with Nico – Songs They Never Play On The Radio is one of the wittiest and most acutely observed books about being on the road.

 

By the time of this recording the band had settled down into a sharp unit, able to cope well with the vagueness of Nico’s timekeeping. In earlier shows there was a tendency for the band to insist on keeping a solid beat; but a regular steady beat seemed to fox Nico entirely, resulting in some disastrous train wrecks. By 1985 the band members had clearly decided to follow Nico’s own unfathomable take on keeping time, so some songs find the musicians speeding up or slowing down a little, but at least everyone is together!

The Nico ‘classics’ like “Janitor Of Lunacy” or “Frozen Warnings” are all here, along with a dramatically unaccompanied “All Tomorrow’s Parties” and a lovely gentle “Femme Fatale”. The band excels on the then current songs such as “Win A Few” or "Tananore" and there's a stunningly good version of “My Heart Is Empty” which is genuinely emotional. 

 

But my favourite is the opening semi-improvised piece called “All Saint’s Night”. The musicians would use this to warm up the crowd and the length of the piece would vary from night to night depending on how long it took Nico to make it to the stage, sometimes running for ages if she’d got lost on the way. Which she sometimes did... Once she’d actually found the stage Nico would add some la-la-la type wordless vocals. This Rotterdam version has been subtitled "from a Polish Motorway" to fake a bit of Eastern Block authenticity... It's an especially strong performance from everyone, and Nico’s vocals are astonishing. It's like she’s rising from a grave - her voice is more of an unearthly death rattle than it is singing. Yet, oddly, it’s perfect. 

 

 

 

rambling thoughts - mrs. murphy

Scott Walker recorded "Mrs Murphy" way back in 1966. Although it's technically credited to the Walker Brothers it was released on an EP called Solo Scott, Solo John which, as the name obviously implies contained two solo tracks each from Scott Engel and John Maus.

 

And one of Scott's songs was the self-penned "Mrs Murphy". It's pretty much the first of Scott's run of classic kitchen sink dramas (he later refined this style of writing on such wonders as "Montague Terrace" or "Such A Small Love" or "The Amorous Humphrey Plugg" (which is arguably the pinnacle of these acutely observed slices of suburban 60's life)).

 

But "Mrs Murphy" surely has one of Scott's best ever lyrics. For all Scott's love of obscure film noir and the existential dread of directors like Bergman, "Mrs Murphy" is rooted firmly in the working class streets of 60's England. It's a mini film for the ears, as if Room At The Top or Saturday Night, Sunday Morning or Billy Liar had been put to music. 

 

The unfolding scandal of the affair, the gossiping wives, the details of the street, the mysterious tall boy lodging at number 22 – all sketched out in just three concise verses, but such vivid, perfectly described verses. Oddly, despite all the detail and realism it's impossible to think of "Mrs Murphy" in anything other than black and white - it's so clearly the mid 1960s and England just seemed so totally black and white then... The song is also very cleverly constructed so that the listener switches across various points of view as the story develops.

 

The third verse begins ‘Poor Mr Johnson, being married to a wife, who should be caged’ – and it’s the sheer relish with which Scott delivers the word ‘caged’ which makes it so wonderful. It's my favourite line in a song filled with plenty of gems. And it's a brilliant bit of singing.  

 

The whole song is terrific though, the orchestral arrangement is just tremendous, and Scott’s vocal is one of his all time best. A genuine triumph.

william basinski - the disintegration loops

File under I have no idea why I like this stuff but I do - William Basinski's The Disintegration Loops.

 

Basinski is a New York composer who mainly works with synths and avant garde drones. In 2001 he began the process of archiving some of his older experiments. He had a number of tape loops of ambient fragments that were still held on old reel to reel tapes. But, as he played the tapes for the first time in years in order to digitize the music, the ferrite began to separate and the magnetic tapes literally disintegrated as they were played. 

 

Basinski found this process fascinating and let the tapes play for as long as possible. The loops gradually accumulated crackles, distortion, cracks and drop outs as the tapes became almost unplayable. The break up of the music becomes ever more part of the recording as the repeated loops layer themselves into new and unintended music. In the end Basinski found he had nearly five hours of this new disintegrating music.

 

You'd think that such disintegration would be unlistenable, but it resolutely isn't. The results of these experiments ended up as dark ambient soundscapes of astonishing power. It's incredibly hard to describe the emotional pull of this music, for it is, surprisingly, terribly emotional. The listener gets utterly drawn into the soundscapes, the looped music exerting a hypnotic spell, at once both calming and dreamy, but also bewitching and captivating, and sometimes a little disturbing. This is not relaxing background ambient music - as each piece progresses it becomes clear that it's impossible to play The Disintegration Loops in the background - it draws the listener in, closer and closer, deeper and deeper. Some of the pieces run for over an hour, others for 20 minutes or so. It doesn't matter, time seems to stand still when listening to them. 

 

In theory this all ought to be very very dull, and annoying too, as the music is progressively interrupted by break ups and glitches and even silence, but, bafflingly, it’s utterly compulsive listening and I find myself totally absorbed in the layers of sound. Really amazing.

 

After I'd had the Loops for some time I looked into the background of this music. Basinski worked on the Loops across the summer of 2001 and in early September he invited some friends over to hear the completed music. They all sat on the roof of his Brooklyn apartment block to listen to the new work but watched in shock as the Twin Towers were destroyed, the Disintegration Loops remorselessly playing out as the background to the horror that was unfolding.  

 

The four CDs of the Loops each have a different picture of the pall of smoke from where the Towers fell, pictures taken by Basinski from his rooftop that day.

 

Yet despite the circumstances surrounding the completion of the Loops it would be wrong to let the events of 9/11 overshadow what is an astonishing musical achievement. These loops easily stand alone, monolithic slabs of music captured forever in its own death throes.   

 

the mission

There are some bands that I feel that somehow I kind of shouldn't like, but I just do, I can't help it. One such is The Mission, specifically the stuff that Wayne Hussey and the band released in the second half of the 1980s. Rob, I know you love this stuff too.

 

With most of the Mission coming out of the Sisters Of Mercy after a very acrimonious split in 1985, they seemed to arrive fully formed, the ultimate Goth band. But they also knew how to craft decent songs, and all too frequently the image got too much attention when it's really the songs that are so good.  

 

Early tracks like “Wasteland” and the lovely “Severina” are simply cracking pop songs, and aren’t all that OTT either (though the video to “Wasteland” is surely the most Goth video ever - Wayne and the boys in big black hats, long black coats, standing on the top of Glastonbury Tor being blown by the winds.)  There are misfires – such as a cover of “Like A Hurricane” which doesn’t work at all. It’s just horrid. And when the Mish try to do ballads, they frequently seem to try way too hard and it all sounds a bit ridiculous rather than tender.

 

In fact, some of this stuff is absurdly overwrought, so massively bombastic that it’s almost laughable. But… in amongst the huge choruses and overdriven guitars and Wayne’s anguished cries of “Angel chy-uld” there’s actually some terrific songs too. And when the Mish dial it all down a tad, they are far more effective than when they are the Huge Shouty Mish. 

 

So, fun though a mad track like “Deliverance” is (and it is terrifically good fun actually), even better is a more low-key piece like the truly excellent “Butterfly On A Wheel” which stays moody and melancholy throughout and tries to be the Mish’s version of “With Or Without You”. Or there’s the b side track “Bird Of Passage” which is dominated by some great piano, and has a lengthy conclusion that is exactly like Roxy’s “Song For Europe”. 

 

All through their songs, there’s a strong sense that they knew exactly what they were doing, and that they knew that it was often all rather silly. In 1989 they actually toured as their own support act, playing a set of Glam classics as the Metal Gurus before switching back to the black and the big hats and the dry ice, coming back on stage as the Mission to play massive gloomfests like “Beyond The Pale” or “Tower Of Strength” – songs that are at least twice as long as they need to be, and contain more bombast than is good for anyone. 

 

Yet, though many of these songs are frequently doomy on the surface, most of the Mish’s best tracks are also neatly catchy, with clever hooks galore and great singalong, punch the air, choruses. This was a band who knew their market, who knew how to give the audience a great show, and how to really involve the crowd in their gigs. And that, surely, is the mark of a great band. 

 

 

the blue nile - hats

No reason, but I decided to listen to the second album by the Blue Nile today. Hats. Still as brilliant as always. This is a perfect album.

 

There's simply nothing wrong with this record at all. Everything in its right place, not a beat or a note that isn't required.

 

Hats was released in the autumn of 1989, but the Blue Nile had actually begun work on the record back in 1985, as their record label was keen for a quick follow up to the well received debut album A Walk Across The Rooftops.

 

But the Blue Nile couldn't record anything to their satisfaction. Nothing they did seemed to be good enough. After a couple of years of sporadic recording they basically scrapped everything entirely and went home. But this seemed to spark the band into life. Away from the sterile atmosphere of the studio Paul Buchanan found he could write again. Working out of each other's homes using a portastudio, the Blue Nile finally began to get somewhere and recorded demos for the whole album very quickly. When the band returned to the studio in late 1988, the album took shape immediately and the sessions were completed in just a few weeks.

 

Everything on Hats is honed, perfected, detailed. The tempos are almost universally slow, the instrumentation sparse, clear and uncluttered, every track takes its time, unhurried, unflustered. But these are songs in which you can wallow, songs which are strangely emotional and soulful despite being made primarily with drum machines and synths, songs which tug at the heartstrings. Buchanan's voice is, as always, a thing of beauty. The lyrics are impressionistic, but somehow say so much. The feelings evoked are universal - mainly loss and love - but the way the songs are constructed and the way Buchanan sings, it sounds like the songs are meant for you, just you. No-one else.

 

Gorgeous melodies, a marvellously wistful air, the whole album conjures up pictures of an autumnal evening, a bit of drizzly rain perhaps, but nothing too heavy, car lights reflected in puddles, lonely people in a darkening city walking under pale street lights.

 

It's almost pointless to single out tracks from what is a very complete album, but I will anyway. Because in "Let's Go Out Tonight" we have what I believe to be one of the best songs ever recorded. It's both heartbreaking and uplifting, joyful and mournful. Goodness knows how the Blue Nile managed to create such a glorious song. But then I could say that about any of the songs on Hats.

 

What an album.