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!!

lou reed - berlin, the acetate version

Lou Reed's Berlin. An album that divided critics and fans back in 1973, but which is now considered to be perhaps Lou's greatest album. An uncompromising descent into the story of Caroline, the hapless protagonist of these songs, in the final months of her sad life. It's a stunning, if harrowing work. 

Over the years there have been many suggestions that Berlin was intended to be a double album, although there's never been any sign of any extra songs. However, recently an acetate record has come to light containing longer and differently mixed versions of some of the songs. This gives some credence to Lou's comments that basically they'd over-recorded and had to trim, quite drastically in some cases, most of the songs to bring the whole album in under 50 minutes. 

These tracks are very nearly finished, the vocals for example are the finished takes, the orchestral overdubs are just about the same as the eventual album apart from a few noticeable differences on songs like "Sad Song" and "Caroline Says… I", but the overall sound is slightly muddy as it's clearly a cassette copy of the actual disc, and quite probably a few cassettes down from that. 

The acetate begins with "Caroline Says… I" - the same as what we are used to, until the dizzying orchestral conclusion which goes on much longer than on the finished album until that sudden ending and cymbal crash which leads into "How Do You Think It Feels?". This also has a longer outro. Then "Oh Jim", which is split in two, the opening body of the song dissolving into a longer guitar workout which actually ends rather than fading out. Part two, the strummed "Oh Jim, How could you treat me this way?" part starts from scratch. On the final album the guitar and horn duel dissolves into the strummed intro of the second part. 

Then we get "Berlin" itself which has a whole new ending. Instead of that final downbeat piano chord leading into "Lady Day" the final note is replaced by a whirling organ and guitar part which riffs on the basic "Berlin" melody for about a minute and a half. It's oddly jolly, and quite Scott Walkerish (somewhat like "The Girls From Streets") and good though it is you can see why it was cut, as it doesn't really fit the mood. The acetate is missing "Lady Day", Men Of Good Fortune" and "Caroline Says… II" - whether these were actually on the disc or not, or just not recorded onto cassette I don't know, but the recording continues with the last three songs on side two. 

"The Kids" is near enough the same, the children's voices are perhaps slightly more strident, and therefore slightly more disturbing. "The Bed" - the echo and ghostly organ sounds different to me, and the song comes to an end with the otherworldly choir effects that usually end the song being tracked separately. This heavenly choir conclusion is also longer and sounds more similar to the unearthly choir effects in 2001 - specifically the Ligeti piece that Kubrick used whenever the Monolith appeared. Can't be a coincidence. 

And finally "Sad Song" which begins cleanly, no segue from "The Bed". Same track, same marvellous arrangement, some little orchestral differences I think, but nothing terribly dramatic. I've no idea where the missing songs are, or where this acetate recording came from - it appeared to surface about a year ago, and since then it's been widely spread around the internet. Google 'Berlin Acetate' and you'll find all sorts of references to it. Wonder where it's been for the past 40+ years? 

In the same vein - I also played Lou Reed live in Copenhagen September 1973. The band is rock solid, the same band as on Rock And Roll Animal and Lou Reed Live, so you know how solid that is! But Lou is all over the place - it's very early on the Berlin European tour and yet Lou is sometimes forgetting words, getting the timing all wrong, and slurring badly. But it's weird, you get a sloppy, wasted "Walk On The Wild Side". then, all of sudden, he snaps into focus for a killer, razor sharp "Oh Jim". He's suddenly like a different person, all angry and snarly and full of that Lou Reed attitude, yet just minutes before he'd been a dribbling waste of space, ruining a good song. But in the mid 1970s that was Lou!

virginia astley - early stuff

After enjoying a chance encounter with Virginia Astley and David Sylvian's "Some Small Hope" on shuffle a while back I decided to play the whole Hope In A Darkened Heart album.

 

Ryuichi Sakamoto's production marks it out as firmly mid 80s but it's not a bad record at all. Astley's voice is perhaps the sticking point - either you like it or you find it overly twee and sugary.

 

I like it, so the sweetness doesn't bother me. It's very old fashioned, very jolly hockey sticks in a decidedly Enid Blyton way, and there's not a hint of irony about it either. Peculiarly English, and that's not British, but definitely English, and Home Counties English at that. Oxfordshire was where Astley grew up, and all of her songs seem to inhabit that county; lovely green fields, chocolate box villages, old fashioned phone boxes, dry stone walls, creaky gates, tweeting birds and leafy dells. Of course From Gardens Where We feel Secure is the epitome of that pastoral imagery. The natural sounds - birds, donkeys etc - were all recorded around the village of Moulsford where Virginia lived. It's on the Thames, and has frequently been used as a location for Midsomer Murders - it's that sort of English village. 

 

Anyway, then I searched and searched and unearthed some other, earlier VA music. Which is all rather good. Still teetering on the fence that separates charming from twee, these early singles initially demonstrate more of a reliance on synths. The earliest stuff is a Peel session from early 1982 when she was the lead singer in The Ravishing Beauties (the other two were Kate St John and Nicky Holland, both of whom later went on to arrange masses of stuff for masses of bands). The Ravishing Beauties frequently supported Teardrop Explodes as they shared a manager, but the Beauties' mix of wobbly synth pop, warbly vocals and Wilfred Owen poetry (oh yes, there's nothing like depressing WW1 imagery to sell records!) was a long, long way from the Teardrops' sound. Nothing was recorded except this one Peel session, of which "Arctic Death" is perhaps the strongest song. It's a very confused track, borrowing a synth line from Gary Numan's "Bombers", and VA's high vocals are all but unintelligible. But it sounds terrific. 

 

Branching out on her own, VA then recorded some demos with John Foxx, which eventually became the superb From Gardens… At the same time she issued a couple of synth pop style singles - the first was an EP that reworked some of the Ravishing Beauties songs, but which also included the choral "Sanctus", then we had the excellent "Love's A Lonely Place To Be" which sounded cheery until you listened to the words... 

 

More singles followed in 1985 - "Tender" is about as conventional a pop song as she ever recorded, very nice, but rather unremarkable, but "Melt The Snow" and "Darkness Has Reached Its End" were far more ambitious. Soundwise, these songs are encouragingly old fashioned - totally out of step with 1980s pop. No guitars or booming drums, but string quartets and flutes, piano and precise diction. "Darkness…" in particular, is a really wonderful song, gorgeous orchestrations, and a very catchy melody. Of course, none of these even remotely bothered the charts. 

 

1986 saw the recording of Hope In A Darkened Heart - the six Sakamoto produced tracks were deemed not sufficient for a full album, so "Darkness Has Reached Its End", and "Love's A Lonely Place…" were remixed, and a new version of "A Summer Long Since Passed" was recorded, and these three tracks end the album. This album did actually chart, a little, probably more due to curious Sylvian and Sakamoto fans than anything else. 

 

Since then Virginia Astley has been pretty quiet. A couple of albums followed in the early 1990s, both of which seem to be impossible to find, sadly, and not long ago she issued a mail order only album of her poetry which she recited over harp music performed by her teenage daughter. Which does nothing to shake off those accusations of twee-ness... 

 

Well worth investigating though, as there's an undeniable charm about all of Virginia Astley's work, a charm that is rarely found in music today.

 

 

bryan ferry - avonmore

Avonmore is rapidly becoming one of my favourite Bryan Ferry albums. It took a little while but it's one of those albums that really does improve dramatically with repeated plays.

 

It's much better than my first impressions led me to think. But also it's far less of a new album than I first thought, with, I reckon, just two recently composed songs out of ten!
 

The good points first - it sounds terrific, the musicianship is as slick and fluid as you'd expect and the tunes themselves have sneaky little hooks that really lodge themselves in your brain. I do wonder about Ferry's ongoing quest to lose himself entirely within a cocoon of backing singers, and a cast of thousands of musicians, but the overall impression is still one of a cracking album, albeit led by one of the world's shyest men.   
 

On the downside, it sounds remarkably similar to 2010's Olympia, to 1994's Mamouna, to the unreleased Alphaville (1997) and Horoscope (1990) too. But that's because many of the tracks have actually been recorded, constructed and layered over the last 25 years. Albums like Frantic from 2002 or Dylanesque from 2007 had more of an organic band feel, genuinely sounding like a smallish group was actually playing these songs together in real time. But here we are back once again to Ferry lost in the studio surrounded by hundreds of hours of recordings of hundreds of musicians and painstakingly stitching them all together to produce a swirly densely layered patchwork. And quite clearly much of this album has been recorded over the past  25 years. Guitar licks from Nile Rodgers recorded in 1990, nudge against licks from Oliver Thompson recorded 20 years later. Indeed one of the guitar players, David Williams, sadly died about ten years ago - yet here he is, all over Ferry's new album! 

 

"Loop De Li" and "Midnight Train" are little altered from their original forms on Horoscope, the unreleased album recorded between 1989 and 1992. There are more overdubs, more of those seemingly endless little guitar licks and riffs, a newer breathier vocal in the up to date Ferry style and a good number of extra backing vocals - but the basic rhythm tracks for these two are the same as those laid down in 1989. Over the years Ferry has actually mined Horoscope extensively - "NYC", "The Only Face", "Gemini Moon" and "The 39 Steps" were reworked for Mamouna and the updated version of "Mother Of Pearl" was issued on a film soundtrack ten years later. Now we have "Loop De Li" (called "Your Love Has Died " on Horoscope) and "Midnight Train" which only leaves one track from Horoscope ("Death Of Me") that hasn't been eventually issued. And to be honest I'd argue that there are lot of elements of "Death Of Me" in the cracking Avonmore song "One Night Stand".  

 

Other reworks on Avonmore include a number of songs that originated during the Taxi sessions of 1993. Fed up with getting bogged down in Horoscope Ferry decided to record an albums of covers quickly and with minimum of fuss - so Taxi was recorded, mixed and released within six months! That's incredibly fast for Ferry! He recorded many more covers than he needed - the wonderful version of "Send In The Clowns" on Avonmore is just a mildly updated version of a 1993 recording. And various other Taxi era tracks have been used over the years - for example "All Along The Watchtower" on Dylanesque, "Goodnight Irene" on Frantic, "One Night" on Olympia. But the Taxi sessions also succeeded in getting his own songwriting going again and there were a good number of unreleased new songs recorded during 1993 - they are mostly unfinished with fragmentary vocals or la la la murmuring, but three of them have now been finished - a lovely ballad now called "Lost", the sharply rocking "Driving Me Wild" and the very catchy "Special Kind Of Guy". But all are still very recognisable from their 20 year old original forms.  
 

So that leaves us with just three tracks that originated in the last few years - "Johnny and Mary" is a cover of Robert Palmer's song, recorded last year with Norwegian DJ Todd Terje. On Ferry's new album it's been slightly remixed.
 

The title song - "Avonmore" is the hardest song on the record, with some cracking lead guitar work from Oliver Thompson. He co-wrote the track which is how I know it's quite recent as Ollie was a member of Ferry's band between 2007 and 2011 - and that's very recent in Ferry terms. The only other new song is the unusual "Soldier of Fortune" which was written and recorded with Johnny Marr, who has guested at a number of Ferry's live shows over the last couple of years. Marr also worked with Ferry on Bête Noire back in 1986, but apparently this is a newly written song.
 

So it may be Bryan Ferry's new album, but only two genuinely new tracks have been written since 2007 (plus a cover recorded last year) and the remaining seven songs were actually begun between 20 and 25 years ago! 
 

But, ultimately, does it matter? For everyone but the hardcore Ferry fans these are technically new songs, the album hangs together remarkably well, and it sounds superb, Ferry is out there plugging away, doing more publicity for this album than he's done for years, the live shows are still enjoyable and well attended, he looks good, and, although he's lost a fair bit of vocal range, he still sings well.

 

By any standards he's keeping very busy, for a man of 69 he's doing remarkably.

 

rambling thoughts - sea breezes

The first Roxy Music album is stunning. More on this another day.

 

But I've just heard "Sea Breezes", the penultimate song on Roxy Music and despite me knowing this song for getting for 35 years now, it utterly floored me again. Mainly because I couldn't understand how Roxy thought they could get away with such a truly bizarre song, possibly the most bizarre on a very bizarre album!

 

Beautiful oboe work and gentle electric piano underpin Bryan Ferry’s very delicate and pretty opening section, though Eno’s otherworldly wooshes of VCS3 take the dreamy edge off the piece rather (this synth makes sounds that no-one else can replicate, even today, and it makes many early Roxy songs sound genuinely futuristic, even 40+ years on). Ferry sings at the top of his range, lending the song a ghostly croon which sounds like it's floated in from another world. Then the atonal, stop start second section crashes in with Paul Thompson playing random drum fills which have no relationship with the steady pulse of the bass whatsoever, as Phil Manzanera sounds like he’s throttling his guitar into making hideous death rattles, but Andy Mackay is still playing an extremely delicate oboe melody that again has nothing to do with what the rest of the band is playing. It’s incredible, baffling and still makes me think – what the hell were they thinking?

 

I mean, really – who on earth thought this could work? But, against all expectations it DOES work, and somehow, inexplicably, it’s utterly brilliant.

Also completely mad, but in a full on rock and roll runaway train kind of a way is the version of “Re-make / Re-model” from an August 1972 BBC In Concert. Drenched in VCS3 white noise courtesy of Professor Eno but absolutely anchored by Thompson’s thunderous drums this is perhaps even better than the studio version on the debut album. Everyone is pushing forwards, everyone is having the time of their lives, everyone is battling to be louder than everyone else. Again, though, it ought to be a total mess, but weirdly it isn't. The sheer power of the band is never more obvious and it’s probably the best example of why early Roxy were so totally thrilling.

warm songs for a cold day

Shuffled iPod tunes today included quite a few summery songs, which is odd as it's cold today...

"On And On" from the first Tom Tom Club album. Frankly you don't get more sunshine-y than TTC. It reminded me of sitting in the sun while I was revising at University. It also made me want a cold beer too…

"Waiting On A Friend" - the Stones get all mellow... man. Isn't this one of the best slowies that Mick 'n' Keef ever did? This started life back in 1972 at the Goats Head Soup sessions, but Mick couldn't think of a lyric. So it was shelved until 1980 when it was dusted down and finished off for Tattoo You. And that was when legendary jazz man Sonny Rollins added the lazy, winding saxophone parts which really give the song it's magic. A really laid back vibe, probably pharmaceutically induced, but who cares… 

"I Talk To The Wind" from the first King Crimson album. All that flute-ing and gentle guitar work. The Crims never really hit that pastoral button again with such fervour. It's a very English song, and a very old fashioned feeling to it, like it's some sort of ancient folk song.  

"Telling Lies" - Bowie live in 1996. So it's not an especially summery song but this was at least recorded at a summer Festival. The crowd responds well to what is the first ever performance of "Telling Lies", I believe, at the Loreley Festival in Germany. Good version too, with Reeves Gabrels really going for it.  

"Does Caroline Know?" - Talk Talk live at Montreux 1986. Arguably the best ever version of this song, stretched to a languid 9 minutes, with loads of percussion and weird keyboard sounds, this is miles ahead of the rigid and constrained sounding studio track. Mark Hollis' vocals are, as ever, perfect. I could listen to this all day.  

"Daft Punk Is Playing At My House" - brilliant stuff from LCD Soundsystem. A great party track.  

"Dead Souls" - OK so Joy Division are perhaps a band for a cold, dark, miserable night. But this is a corker of a song. It rocks. JD were a surprisingly effective rock band when they wanted to be. Much harder than people generally give them credit for.  

"Never Let It Slip" - I confess I didn't recognise this song at all until about two thirds of the way through when I realised it was Jerry Harrison. This is from his third solo album Walk On Water which actually isn't a very good record and has probably only been played about twice. This isn't a bad song though, sort of sixties sounding, with a nicely catchy chorus and Jerry sounding, oddly, a little like Springsteen, gruff voice and everything.

"Rio" - Duran Duran. Back to summery sounds, if only because the video featured that yacht!

"Fire!" - yup, the Crazy World Of Arthur Brown. Utterly bonkers. And also brilliant, because in August 1968 it reached number 1 in the funny ol' Hit Parade. Incidentally, Ronnie Wood claims that he played bass on "Fire!" How's that for some random trivia!  

"Charm (over Burundi Cloud)" from Eno and Jon Hassell's Fourth World Volume 1 - Possible Musics. It's a wonderfully tropical sounding piece, with all those breathy trumpets and muted tribal beats and Eno's heat haze synths. I love this album, it's one that's really grown on me in the last few years. I always quite liked it, but never really loved it (certainly not like I loved On Land, or Plateaux Of Mirror or other Eno stuff from around 1980) but the last few years has seen me return to this album quite often and it's a big favourite now. Never really got into Fourth World Vol 2 - Dream Theory In Malaya quite as much, but I think I need to give that on another go now. It would be fascinating to learn how these albums came about. I wonder if tracks like "Charm (over Burundi Cloud)" and "Griot (over Contagious Music)" are basically earlier pieces that either Hassell or Eno has changed so much that a new title has been required? Maybe they started off with a piece called "Burundi Cloud" and then laid so much new stuff over the top (but still kept the original somewhere in the mix) that they renamed it "Charm"? Or perhaps this is simply a mash up of two distinct pieces called "Charm" and "Burundi Cloud" that the Domed One has then mixed together? Whatever, it sounds terrific, and this album is a firm favourite of mine.