Hanne Hukkelberg: Blood From a Stone

Originating from Kongsberg, Norway, Hanne Hukkelberg has been making music and testing out her vocal capabilities from the ripe age of 3. Performing with an ever-expanding cast of friends and accomplished musicians, Blood From a Stone is Hanne’s third release under her guise as solo artist and composer. When listening to Blood From a Stone, one can certainly detect Hanne’s early punk / noise roots and her assimilation into a scene that championed DIY noise and experimentation over musical pomp and uniformity. Like the songs of the Cocteau Twins, Joanna Newsom or Coco Rosie, Hanne’s music has a distinctly ethereal quality, which both captivates and entices; transporting the listener through a series of dark, foreboding and enchanted spaces. Unlike the onerous drone of Funeral, the Doom Metal band with which Hukkelberg once performed, the singer’s third album,  Blood From a Stone, positively lends itself to the majesty and grace of Hanne’s voice. If the world is a stone, Hanne is the crimson blood that spills forth from it, unapologetic, whimsical; brimming with emotion and depth. Hanne’s music creates a cathartic diversion from the hum drum of the everyday; it allows a space to engage in fantasy, and a medium for ecstatic, unadulterated feeling. Drawing inspiration from bands like Einstürzende Neubauten and Sonic Youth – Hanne utilizes all manner of found objects, from kitchen utensils, to clacking type writers, flag poles, sea gull cries and cat purrs, in turn weaving a unique and poignant miasma of textured, layered and ambient sounds.

Propeller Recordings (Norway)

Giants of the Animal Kingdom

Merriweather Post Pavilion / Animal Collective

As the undoubted giants of the animal kingdom, it has long been a difficult and irksome task to define the sound of the ANIMAL COLLECTIVE. Championing such a progressive and free thinking musical approach, the band continue in their efforts to negate the idea of category or genre. The songs of Avey Tare, Panda Bear, Deakin and the Geologist combine beautifully poetic lyrics with strange and discordant folk tales, reminiscent of the haunting dreams of childhood. There’s talk of exploding fireworks and stinging nettles, of bear hugs and banshee beats. Many of their songs seem to reflect on those simple yet fleeting moments of magic that you can’t quite fathom. On the beauty and absurdity of nature. On daydreams, fantasy, and the peculiar randomness of life.

The boys’ latest offering proves to be just as visionary and heartbreaking a masterpiece as previous hit albums like Strawberry Jam, Feels, and Sung Tongs. Listening to Merriweather Post Pavilion is like chancing upon a dusty old suitcase, crammed with the photographs, curios, and handwritten letters of a young and dreamy-eyed lover. It’s like finding a lost journal tucked beneath your seat on the bus, and guiltily pouring over the pages of a stranger’s most intimate and heartfelt secrets. It’s like tapping into the night-time dreams of Avey Tare or Panda Bear, each song offering such an honest and raw portrayal of love; of life; of a fleeting moment; or an object of desire.

Merriweather Post might be a little less crazed and raucous as the AC’s previous works, but all in all, it’s just as ethereal and nirvana-inducing an experience. The collection of 11 songs provides a euphoric and exotic mix of celestial beats, primal chants, tribal-esque drum rolls, and spasmodic, blissful noise bursts. All of this layered over a multitude of heavenly vocals – oftentimes wailing, other times screaming or cawing like birds in song. Merriweather Post veers towards a more gentle, subtle, and dare I say it, accessible sound. That being said, the AC still come out top trumps, for this band of magical songsters cannot help but woo and inspire us with their epic, heady, and whoozy concoction of oh-my-god-I-must-be-dreaming songs.

Grizzly Bear, Veckatimest

Inspired by a small uninhabited island, perched vicariously along the southern-most tip of Cape Cod, Veckatimest is the latest offering from the Grizzly Bear camp to  follow the great success of Yellow House in 2006. This collection of songs  transforms the physicality of land, sea, cloud and sky into a sound that is both otherworldly and of the earth – conjuring up images of a lush and untouched wilderness. It fills the heart with hot breathes of southern easterly winds, whipped up afresh from the foam-spray of the Atlantic. It invokes images of wild dandelions billowing in patches on the beach, and of gnarled driftwood drying in mounds of damp sand, dotted along the shoreline. With strong hints of The Sea and Cake’s summer-inducing, post jazz lilts, Veckatimest veers towards the lighter, breezier notions of jazz. Helped along by heavenly, cherubic layers of voice and sound, this is an album of dazzling proportions – cinematic in its scope and vision. With all band members contributing to vocal duties, and with four songs boasting string arrangements from the much loved Nico Muchly, Veckatimest offers a glimpse of an altogether different, matured Grizzly Bear, and my, are we grateful for it.

 

Warp Records

Pussy on the Mat

oh my! Tis Ivor Cutler

 

 

America

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I sit in my house for days on end and stare at the roses in the closet

Fin Du Monophone

MeatDraw, Self Righteous Records
 
 

When glancing over the track list of MEATDRAW’s Fin Du Monophone, one might begin to wonder if this band are the genuine folk-punk article, and not the toilet wall ramblings of some drunk, screwed up emo-rock kid. From the opening, ‘Are We Gonna Die?’ right through to the finale, ‘We’re Not All Gonna Die’, MD convey a strong disposition for the socially inept and the mentally collapsed; for eerie ghost towns, black magic and the ever encroaching APOCALYPSE. And yet, should you get your mits on a copy of Fin Du Monophone, you’ll be pleasantly surprised by the band’s genuine exuberance, warmth, and positively infectious energy. In fact, MEATDRAW do a great job of uplifting, rejuventating and brightening the heck out of their audience. With a larger than life cast and an unmistakable big band / big sound feel, MD are certainly living up to their moniker as carnival companions. Just as the musicians of MD are likened to a ‘zombie army of freaks and gypsies’, so too can the host of shifty, and menacing undesirables, so deftly depicted in the tales of Fin Du. Mix this with a heavy dosing of Page France cuteness, a sprinkling of Herman Dune’s Parisien twang, a spattering of The Unicorns indy-pop goodness, and a mickey full of Win Butler vocals. Then chuck in a full bodied chorus of merry singers, punchy show tunes, bleating horns, accordian, and ukelele, and voila! You have yourself a most generous and succulent serving of MEATDRAW.

 oooooooooooooooh gawd!!!

It’s the Dirty Projectors strummin their schizzle with the might of Byrne! Dang, this is one hell of a show tune…..

Palace Brothers

 

I’d be riding horses if they’d let me
Sleep outside at night and not take fright
I would ride the range and never worry
I would disappear into the night

Jean Tinguely

Today I went to the Tate, Liverpool and saw Michael Landy’s co-curated exhibition Joyous Machines: Michael Landy and Jean Tinguely. Landy pays homage to his predecessor, presenting some of Tinguely’s earliest works which simultaneously explore notions of movement, space and time through sketches, paintings and intricately crafted sculpture. Tinguely’s sculptures incorporate junk metal and other found  or unwanted objects. These disparate pieces are forged together; rehashed into new and (by all intents and purposes), ‘useless’ objects. The collection of works are thought provoking and to me; suggestive of the advent of industrialisation; the increasing role of mechanical machinery; the development of the mass consumerist market, and the subsequent influx of technology and new media, versus the decrease in manual skills, labour and craft. These pieces seem to reflect on the link between capitalist society; our fixation with mass consumption and our eventual [and often, premature], disregard for commodities.

For more information, have a look at this brilliant, Liverpool based blog:

http://www.artinliverpool.com/blog/2009/06/tate-joyous-machines-michael-landy-and-jean-tinguely/

Arthur Russell

 

My friend Mike just turned me onto this guy. He is truly awesome

I was dancin in the lesbian bar a-woo

 

Me and Andy went to see Jonathan Richman play a show in The Deaf Institute, Manchester, this past Sunday. It was just him and his geetar, with Tommy Larkin playing on drums. Jonathan stood there in the spotlight with his uniform striped T and those familiar, black cotton Chinese shoes that he always seems to be wearing, and that you can buy from the Chinese market for a few dollars. (I have a pair, and they’re very comfortable.) Jonathan was incredible – still kooky as hell. A little awkward, very childlike and full of smiles for the audience. At one point, I looked around the crowd, and we were all smirking; giggling with delight. Jonathan hadn’t said anything, he was just eyeing up the stragglers, with his wide eyed and goofy, slack jawed grin. There was a spattering of funny, self reflexive interjections from Jonathan, and of course, he whipped out those unforgettable, Latino  / dad-at-disco moves.

This song has gotta be one of my all-time favourite Richman songs. Im just gutted he didn’t play Kookanagan

Flying contraption

 

Last night I dreamt that I was given a  magical flying device. This consisted of a hat, much like an old RAF cap from the 1940’s, a bulbous, and fully inflated red balloon, and a huge set of wings. I was offered my wings by an old time flyer – an ancient looking guy with a face covered in patches of grey whiskers and a strange, ancient smell about him, that seemed to hint at his magic and wisdom.

I soon found myself walking by a freeway, carrying this huge set of wings, made of wood and material, with pieces of loose silk thread, feathers and dark worn leather trailing from them. I approached a woman who was sat on a wall with her young children. I asked if she may help me put on my wings as they were heavy and not easy to haul onto my back. The children wore animal masks, a tiger, an elephant, a monkey. They marvelled at my magnificent wings and stroked and tugged on them, as I hauled on the last arm. And then, with a hop skip and a stumble, I was off..swooping low over a lake and skimming my feet above a mass of leafy tree branches..

Love is the Devil: Study for a Portrait of Francis Bacon

Three Studies for a Crucifixion – 2

Tonight I watched Love is the Devil: Study for a Portrait of Francis Bacon. Directed by John Maybury, Love is the Devil is a stark, disturbing and emotive depiction of Bacon’s working life. The film centres on the artist’s tempestuous and tragic relationship with lover and muse George Dyer, while providing an insight into his private world and tortured, complex psyche. As a child, I was introduced to Bacon’s paintings, having found a postcard of Triptych in an old cupboard in our dining room. To this day, I still find it extremely distressing to view Bacon’s work. His studies of human figures are a terrifying portrayal of life – at once raw, passionate, violent, and filled with macabre illusions. They are hell incarnate in the human form. And perhaps it is this - their overt truth – and Bacon’s ability to capture the futility of existence - that makes them both fascinating and utterly repelling.

Here is a memorable interview with the artist, produced for the Southbank Show in 1985

http://www.ubu.com/film/bacon.html

(Memories) Lost and Found

Looking back and reflecting on the past has long been a strange and disorienting experience. I feel so detached and so far removed, that all those endless nights, bizarre happenings and hazy, dreamy days feel like they belong to another part of me; an old, lost me. Perhaps she lies festering in the cob-webbed recesses of my teenage mind, or else is broken and weathered, rusting and decomposing in a junkyard scrapheap somewhere in Speke. She might be a mass of seaweed hair and bloated blue, washed up along the shores of the River Mersey. Or maybe I left her sleeping soundly in a corn field in Sussex? Or sat at the top of the old tripping tree, where she is eternally stuck, never to come back down.

Pissed Jeans

King of Jeans,

Sub Pop

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Admittedly, this music has its qualities, but they’re pretty hard to detect after the first listen, and maybe even harder after a further ten listens. These are the kind of songs you spent your early teens po-going to, as drunk and flaying as a Shane MacGowan caricature. So drunk, that you no longer care to look cool - can no longer dance, or see straight for that matter. And of course, you have no interest in good music - you just want to get seriously messed up and annihilate all. If it serves no other purpose, this is a great album to have a sweaty work-out to. As in, work out the sweat, work out that deep lurking primal angst, and work out those goddamn demons while you’re at it. King of Jeans is your archetypal dark, grungerock album. You’ll barely be able to hear the lyrics, but dammit, you’ll be too busy thrashing and doing high kicks off your couch to actually notice. When the singer isn’t droning and making little to no sense with his tuneless reverbing wails, he occasionally sounds a little like Nick Cave doing a soliloquy for Grinderman. At other high points – one might think they detect the alcohol imbibed vocals of Mark E Smith. Big swooping rock guitars, combined with thrashing cymbals and banging, crashing drums. All this topped off with a singer who sounds like he’s half drunk, half dead, or perhaps, like he’s pissed his jeans, and he’s pretty damn mad.