Khuda - Iecava

(Field Records, 2011)

Leeds' Khuda are an instrumental post-rock duo that create brooding, angular music with some heavy rock overtones but for the most part they build complex layers of guitar with the aid of digital delay and a loop station, all over some pretty sturdy drumming.

Opening track 'Seia' is a simple start to the album, one that will give you a taste of what is in store, and for a band that has a great live reputation as a heavy band they surprise us by not using distortion pedals very regularly. Khuda manage to be heavy using clean guitars and when they do bring some fuzz to the table it's usually to add a grimy overtone to an otherwise pretty assembly of chords as in 'Boreas'.

'Luka Mesto', with it's demented off-kilter riff shows that other skitzo rock acts such as Hella and Lightning Bolt may be an influence, but the second half of the song plays into more familiar post-rock territory with moments of quiet melodics giving way to explosions of noise. 'Don Benito' is similar – it's a great, emotional, kinetic song based around a slowly unfolding riff. On the other hand 'Marchmen' and 'Tyche' rock pretty hard but a sense of inertia pervades both songs and they fail to do anything particularly memorable. It's like they're both on a one-way road to nowhere.

That's the problem with the album; Khuda do what they do well, but some of the songs are a little bit anonymous. 'Seia' doesn't make itself intersting enough and ends so abruptly that we thought the CD had skipped and title track 'Iecava' suffers a similar fate, washing over us without leaving much of an impression for better or worse. Some of the songs are too content to provide slight variations of the same riff for upwards of five minutes and while this occassionally demonstrates the diversity of their musical influences it doesn't show much in the way of innovation. It is hard for instrumental bands to grab (or maintain) a listener's attention; bands like Tortoise and Do Make Say Think may stretch an idea out for a long period but they reward patience with interesting diversions, subtleties, unexpected layers and well thought-out structures and while both those bands have more members to contribute to the creative process and the overallsound, Khuda could do with thinking more about structure and keeping things interesting for the listener.

Conversely, 'Haikyo' is the best example of what Khuda do well. Throughout the song they build subtle new layers upon a foundational riff to create a beautiful tapestry of sounds then change it up about half-way through to add some variety to the whole song so it feels like we're going somewhere. When the song is about to erupt into what should have been a huge distorted outro they bring it back to the opening foundational riff – they play with our expectations and then throw them back in our faces wonderfully.

Any criticisms that I have thrown at Khuda should be taken with a huge pinch of salt and a shot of tequila. Instrumental music can split opinion like no other and there is no shortage of musical and compositional skill of offer here. Iecava is an album that you could definitely have on in the background and let fill the room but don't expect it to grab your attention. There is a whole contingent of music fans that will love this album because it sticks to a formula but this reviewer would like to see Khuda innovate a little more as it feels like we've already heard this album before. You may have noticed some contradictory comments in this review but they effectively reflect how I feel about Khuda. I like them – they're very good – but there is something missing from Iecava that prevents it from being as good an album as it could be.

[Originally published by the Sleeping Shaman, 14/07/11]

http://www.thesleepingshaman.com/reviews/album/Khuda-Iecava.php

Seabuckthorn - In Nightfall

(Bookmaker Records, 2011)

Andy Cartwright, aka Seabuckthorn, has long been one of Oxford's most exciting, talented yet relatively unknown musicians. Perhaps his anonymity is of his own design but it's strangely fitting that such an insular artist could top readers polls and have only 35 likes on his facebook page (that most quantifiable indicator of popularity). Under the Seabuckthorn moniker, Andy has already released three albums as well as a handfull of home-made, self-released CDs and In Nightfall, his fourth album, is essentially a condensed hit of what he can do.

For an album with only seven songs that clock-in at only twenty-three minutes, In Nightfall is a truly cinematic affair and, as we've come to expect from Seabuckthorn, breathtakingly beautiful and evocative. The imagery that supports Seabuckthorn's releases has always provided us listeners with a starting point, or a spring-board, from which to mentally traverse vast, hushed landscapes, unforgiving deserts, solemn forests, ancient temples, hot dusty roads; locations that most of us never get to see. And the music provides us with the soundtrack for our journey.

'Address the Night,' with its slowly descending, overlapping guitar figures sets the stage for 'Journeyed Road,' a more enigmatic and energetic piece, and the album's most immediately engaging and kinetic song. 'Carrier' shares a certain tone with some of the more guitar-led songs on Four Tet's Pause, an album that evokes a similar mood. Like Pause, In Nightfall is awash with Asiatic and South American colours, crazed flamenco flourishes, arpeggios and looping guitar repititions ('The River Answered') while maintaing a kind of innate spirituality, as if the music on this album were the religious songs of an ancient civilization.

While much of the album could serve as the soundtrack for exploring arid foothills and exotic forest temples, “Gone Estray, Being Circled” is the soundtrack for entering a long-forgotten, foreboding shrine and being descended upon by malevolant spirits (you know the feeling). It is the atmospheric high-point of the album, the section that most explicitly creates a vision and a mood in our minds and where Seabuckthorn best demonstrates his skill as a cinematic composer, weaving woozy wind instruments together with deep, sparse piano notes and short, quick flurries of guitar.

“Burnt Offering” is the perfect ending to a stunning piece of art. A peaceful, lulling arpeggiating waltz – romantic 7^th notes and all – plays the album out, while notes so thoroughly drenched in reverb ring-out and bend that you can practically see and smell the smoke circling up into the ether.

As David Murphy wrote of Seabuckthorn's previous album A Mantra Pulled Apart, “picking favourite tracks is academic, your best bet being to let the record wash over you whilst staring out of the window into the evening.” You can scan In Nightfall for the most dynamic songs (“Journeyed Road”), the most atmospheric (“Gone Estray, Being Circled”) or the most beautiful (“Burnt Offering,” “Carrier”) but, as is often the case with artists like Seabuckthorn, the album seems to be a thematic whole that doesn't benefit from being segmented and broken apart. It feels like there is a natural progression in the tracklisting, like the songs are steps in a list of directions to some forgotten place.

You simply must listen to Seabuckthorn, a most transcendental artist.

[Originally published on Musicinoxford.co.uk, 09/07/11]

http://www.musicinoxford.co.uk/2011/07/09/seabuckthorn-in-nightfall-bookmaker-records/

The Graceful Slicks - Demo

The first time I encountered the Graceful Slicks was more than a year ago in the Port Mahon, where they were somewhat awkwardly wedged between an experimental instrumental artist and a local sludge outfit. In this context their keen take on the trippier, dronier side of sixties psychedelia was a little out of place. More than that however, their songs seemed to lack direction, and the vocals were nothing more than the various members mumbling into the microphone in between five minute wig-outs. Part of this might have been down to the less than excellent sound system in the Port Mahon at the time, but it nonetheless left a lasting impression of the band with me. There was certainly something promising about them, but so early in their existence they were a little clumsy and clearly happy to accept gigs with bands that didn’t necessarily compliment their style.

Since then their name has continued to pop up in the Oxford music media regularly, and with each performance and recording their sound seems to be getting more clearly defined, their songwriting more focussed. This is without a doubt the best sounding recording the band have so far proffered, and while there was a rugged charm to the previous (presumably home-recorded) demos, this new emphasis on making their songs sound good does their songs wonders.

‘Bul Bul Tarang’ is the side of the Graceful Slicks that I remember from that night in the Port Mahon: hypnotic, slow, groovy, repetitive riffs, but where there was once a barely audible vocal there is now an assured, confident vocal performance from Patrick Coole, one that is reminiscent of Gomez’s Ian Ball. In fact ‘Bul Bul Tarang’, with its Indian overtones and subtle groove, would fit well into Gomez’s early catalogue, and when the drums crash in the combination of atmospheric guitar shimmers and bending lead parts suggest a slight Happy Mondays influence. Or perhaps it’s just a coincidence of mutual influences, as the Graceful Slicks strike me as the kind of band that would sooner smoke a joint than pop a pill. Either way, the song strikes a great balance between melody and drone, fitting for a song inspired by it’s namesake, an Indian banjo with one string for creating drones and another for playing melodies.

‘Fire’ is the most impressive song in the collection; something about the way the song segues from the driving beat of the instrumental section and descends into the riotous, bouncy chorus is infinitely pleasing. The call-and-response vocals screaming “There’s smoke and there’s no fire” is reminiscent of the Monks and, in the spirit of such things, this band manages to recapture the energy of those they seek to emulate. The same could be said for ‘Jalapeno’, which sounds like a combination of early Rolling Stones and 13th Floor Elevators – it’s kind of a throwaway song, but it’s fun.

The best compliment that I can offer the band is that while I was listening to these songs, I was able to forget that they were made by a bunch of young guys from Oxford in 2011. On repeated listens their attention to detail reveals itself, and their obvious love for sixties pysch and garage rock bands is so genuine that I was able to trick my brain into thinking that this was one of the many long-lost sixties bands – and that I had just discovered them.

On the other hand, this does mean that for the most part the songs sound like rehashes of existing songs and sounds. ‘Bul Bul Tarang’ certainly seems to take some cues from more recent bands, but the other two songs here could be outtakes from Nuggets: Original Artyfacts from the First Psychedelic Era, a compilation that the Graceful Slicks have clearly immersed themselves in. But there is never any pretence that the band is trying to create anything new, so if they’re happy to keep making summer-of-love garage rock then I’m happy enough to hear it.

[Originally published on Musicinoxford.co.uk, 04/07/11]

http://www.musicinoxford.co.uk/2011/07/04/the-graceful-slicks-demo-3/