Agness Pike - Mimum Vitae EP

(Rivet Gun Records, 2011)

Agness, oh Agness. In a wave of humourless, testosterone-fuelled punk and metal, Agness Pike blow a huge musical raspberry at the entire scene and simultaneously become one of the best bands in it. Anyone who has caught them live in the past year will have seen this band, who have more than their fair share of experience between them, grow in confidence and improve with every performance. They are without question the most entertaining band to watch in Oxford right now. Their performances are normally enhanced by the looks of confusion on the faces of mean-mugging metal fans in the audience when frontman Martin Spear takes to the stage.

Indeed, the pull of Martin Spear’s onstage persona is comparable to the affect that the crazy old man at the bus stop has on people – you want to avoid his gaze, but you can’t stop looking at him. With a Hula Hoops packet stapled to the lapel of his military jacket, and a handbag round his arm, he espouses etiquette tips from a book that may or may not actually have words written in it. It’s all an act of course, but he gives in so completely to this character that it’s spellbinding, not to mention hilariously funny.

His voice is also an unexpected shock to those expecting a high-pitched caterwaul or some kind of grunt. Instead, Spear goes for a campy vocal delivery that combines Jello Biafra, John Lydon and the ‘Monster Mash’. It’s brilliant. To top it all off, Spear is a wonderful lyricist, playing with double meaning in his deceptively simple lyrics (even referring to this in ‘Taking Control’). As a lyricist, Spear seems to be as obsessed with magic, voodoo and the cosmic as with more earthy problems like delusions of grandeur and distaste for disco music. ‘Ruthless’ is a haunting tale of sacrifice, and we wonder why more songs don’t have choruses like ‘Disco’ and ‘Spellbound’ because they’ve been stuck in our head for sixth months now. We can only speculate what ‘Rubber Love’ is about, but it certainly sounds rather kinky.

That’s not to say that Agness Pike don’t mean business musically. In fact, the humour and theatricality of the vocals is strikingly juxtaposed by the relentless, driving metal that carries it along. And it works beautifully on songs like ‘Rubber Love’ and ‘Now is the Time’ where Spear punctuates his words to the internal rhythm of the riffs. The band is ridiculously tight and handles changing rhythms, time signatures and dropping in and out of half time effortlessly in the highly capable hands of drummer Mike Brown. Pete Marler’s bass sound can only be described as gnarly (particularly when leading the way on ‘Taking Control’ and ‘Disco’) while Chris Brown’s guitar sound is crunchy and menacing throughout.

There are hints of Black Album-era Metallica in the songs and a few brief moments even recall early System of a Down, so you couldn’t call Agness Pike a wholly original band, but the songs are well structured and full of interesting dynamics, elevating them far above the majority of their peers. Their songs play off of one another so the EP rolls along like one long, exhausting nightmare. A freaky, old-school metal/punk romp… if you’re into that kind of thing.

[Originally published on Musicinoxford.co.uk, 18/08/11]

http://www.musicinoxford.co.uk/2011/08/18/agness-pike-mimum-vitae-ep-rivet-gun-records/

Efrim Manuel Menuck - Plays "High Gospel"

(Constellation Records, 2011)

In his nearly two-decade-long career, Efrim Menuck has distinguished himself as an innovative musician whose work with Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Thee Silver Mt. Zion has, at times, led the post-rock movement and inspired countless imitators. In those bands Menuck always managed to maintain a certain degree of anonymity and mystery, allowing us as listeners to disregard any sense of musical ego or individual personality in favour of enjoying the group effort of Menuck and his band members. On the contrary, Plays “High Gospel”, his first solo album, is perhaps the first chance we’ve had to examine Menuck’s own personal sensibilities completely on his own terms.

And the subject matter on the album indicates that Menuck is welcoming us into his world with open arms as he celebrates his Montreal neighbourhood (“Our Lady of Parc Extension and Her Munificent Sorrows”), remembers his lost friends (“Kaddish for Chesnutt”, an ode to his sometime collaborator Vic Chesnutt) and experiences fatherhood for the first time (“I Am No Longer a Motherless Child”).

Opening song “Our Lady of Parc Extension and Her Munificent Sorrows” features a life-affirming multiple-part harmony floating atop a gorgeous sea of droaning guitar feedback. This constant drone bleeds into “A 12-Pt. Program for Keep on Keepin’ On” but here it takes on a more menacing tone, lying underneath the creeping bassline and the layers of overlapping vocals before ending on a manic note with feedback and frenetic drumbeats.

“August Four, Year-of-Our-Lord Blues” is a gorgeous, instrumental ditty that will be familiar to fans of Menuck’s other projects. Likewise, “Heaven’s Engine is a Dusty Ol’ Bellows” starts the second half of the album in atmospheric fashion with a high gain guitar drenched in tremolo and reverb over the recurring bed of droning guitar. “Chickadees’ Roar, Pt. 2” is a haunting collage of screeching strings and a distant, echoing melody. All songs sound like staples of Menuck’s previous work but in the context of this album the overall effect makes the songs feel more intimate, gives them a meaning that the song titles may never reveal to us listeners.

“Kaddish for Chesnutt” is, as the title suggests, a commemorative prayer for Vic Chesnutt, the partially paralyzed cult singer-songwriter whom Menuck had played with on two of his albums. Perhaps the most emotional song on the album, it’s also the song where Menuck’s uses his less as an instrument and more as an actual tool for delivering his personal message. The results are heartbreaking and beautiful and at times it sounds like Menuck’s voice is ready to break with emotion.

Album closer “I Am No Longer a Motherless Child” starts with a lengthy sole guitar part before tapes loop in and Menuck begins to sing the song’s mantra: “Look at my boy/ Look at his smile/ I am no longer a motherless child.” The layers build up, more harmonies are laid atop one another, an infectious drum beat kicks in, a guitar plays a lilting solo, strings swell and all is well in the world. It’s as beautiful an end to the album as you would have expected from the man.

Plays “Holy Gospel” might not be the kind of album that fans of Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Silver Mt. Zion were expecting from Menuck; perhaps they might not have expected him to produce an album that is quite so straight-forward and direct. But the album definitely fits into his body of work and it really is quite an accomplishment as it feels like Menuck is taking us on an emotional journey through a few eventful years in his life, something that many songwriters are unable to do. What’s more he does this without relying on telling the story with lyrics (indeed most of the lyrics on the album are obscured by noise) but instead creates moods and suggests emotions through the album’s soundscapes and musical collages. One can sense the joy in the opening and closing songs, the sadness in the ode to his lost friend and in between it all there are moments of mixed emotion. “Heavy Calls & Hospital Blues” is a sad piano ballad that features the ambiguous lyric “Your pretty daughter’s sleeping/There’s beauty in this world” for example. Likewise, the various sound collages are certain to suggest different things to each listener. This is by no means an easy listen but it will draw you in to a very personal story.

[Originally published on the Sleeping Shaman, 08/08/11]
http://www.thesleepingshaman.com/reviews/album-reviews/e/efrim-manuel-menuck-plays-high-gospel-cdlp-2011/

[Later reposted on the Roadburn Festival website as their "Album of the Day", 08/08/11]
http://www.roadburn.com/2011/08/album-of-the-day-efrim-manuel-menuck-plays-high-gospel/

Pikacyu*Makoto - OM Sweet Home: We Are Shining Stars From Darkside

(Riot Season, 2011)

We're not sure where to begin with this one so let's start from the outside and work our way in to the contents of the CD. Firstly, this is a side project of Kawabata Makoto, the illusive leader of Japanese pysch-rock lunatics Acid Mothers Temple, and drummer Pikacyhu. Formerly of noise-rock duo Afrirampo, Pikacyu is now the current drummer for Acid Mothers Temple off-shoot Acid Mothers Temple & the Cosmic Inferno. And last but not least, the CD artwork features Makoto and Pikacyu cuddling up to an elephant... in Space. Hopefully that should begin to give you an idea of what you might be able to expect from the pyshedelic duo.

And yet OM Sweet Home: We Are Shining Stars From Darkside starts ominously with a chilling mantra being repeated over and over for two minutes, gradually warping and becoming more distorted before pyschedelic epic “Birth Star” kicks in in a way that will be familiar to fans of Makoto. It's actually Pikacyu who takes the lead vocal role however and she manages to make pleasant melodies, chanting and punky shouting coexist in strange chaotic harmony.

In fact this balancing act characterises the entire album – the tracklisting allows time for punk ditties (“Pop! Spece! Jump!”, “Oscar No Hope” and the Zappa-like “Pigamelan-Magamelan”) to play alongside space oddities like “Birth Star” and “Back to Your House Over the Rainbow”. In between there are moments of calm and contemplation where all that is needed to create a pyschedelic atmosphere is Makoto's beautifully reserved guitar playing and Pikacyu's lilting voice hovering over the top of it all. The duo are sensitive to the other's impulses and successfully alter their own playing style to fit the other's mould. Even better is when they combine to create a sort of hybrid of the two's styles. An example is “Wild Rise” which features some impressive drumming, combining the pyshedelic wig-outs usually more assosiated with Makoto and the aggressive, shouty punk of Pikacyu's former bands.

Elsewhere they attempt to evoke “the full of love from the Universe” (according to the presspack) and apparerently the love of the Universe is a fucking terrifying thing. “The Ginger Chai” starts beautifully but the repetitive guitar melody soon becomes disconcerting over time and it feels like we're either staring down a tunnel of madness or we're listening to the enchanting sound of a parralel universe eminating from a rip in the time-space continuum. As the song fades out a bellowing, deep sound rings out like the call of some space colossus which only adds to the sense of unease. “Oscar No Hope” is 25 seconds of schitzo punk that feels like the duo are excercising their demons onto tape. And remember the ominous chanting I mentioned at the start of the review? Well “OM Marijana FU pt. 2” is the second part and here the eponymous mantra is stretched out for five minutes. Over a manipulated sample of a bagpipe-like instrument. All very strange indeed but incredibly atmospheric, the highest praise for the creators of a bizarre space opera.

“AWA no UTA” is one of the understated highlights of the album – a calm lullaby – while “Back to Your House Over the Rainbow” kind of acts like a companion piece to the similarly long “Birth Star” and gives the album a pleasing symmetry. Finally the relaxed, unwinding “I'm In You” completes the cycle and this peculiar, charming, and at times frightening record comes to a close.

Fans of Makoto and Pikacyu's previous work won't be disappointed by OM Sweet Home but for all those of you who are on the fence make no mistake – this is an oddball release, albeit a strong one. Throughout the album Pikacyu proves to be the perfect companion to Makoto, punctuating his excellent guitar work throughout with some punchy drumming and providing the majority of the audible vocals (Makoto sometimes grumbles underneath all of the chaos). True to the apparent theme of the album, the band manages to blend light and dark, weaving a coherent whole out of the chaos across these thirteen tracks. A Japanese pysch-rock concept album about “the cosmic shaman Pikacyu vs the master of the darkness Makoto?” Yeah, why not?

[Originally published on the Sleeping Shaman, 05/08/11]

http://www.thesleepingshaman.com/reviews/album-reviews/p/pikacyumakoto-om-sweet-home-we-are-shining-stars-from-darkside-cd-2011/

[Latest reposted as the Roadburn Festival's Album of the Day, 12/08/11]

http://www.roadburn.com/2011/08/album-of-the-day-pikacyumakoto-om-sweet-home-we-are-shining-stars-from-darkside/

The Dreaming Spires - "Everything All the Time"/"In Our Lifetimes"

(Clubhouse Records, 2011)

It’s now been nine years since Oxford’s Goldrush released their Americana-tinged debut album Don’t Bring Me Down. This eager young record-buyer had hoped that the album’s title, like the music within, was some kind of portmanteau of Neil Young’s ‘Don’t Let it Bring You Down’ and The Beatles’ ‘Don’t Let Me Down’. Regardless, it was inspiring at that point in time to see a local band that wasn’t Radiohead or Supergrass reaching a national audience. In the years since, core members Joe and Robin Bennett have become prominent movers in the local and national music scene, organizing the ever-expanding Truck Festival which has just celebrated its fourteenth anniversary. The Dreaming Spires is the Bennett brothers’ latest musical project, and they are joined here by Loz Colbert of Ride on drums – which is presumably where their self-proclaimed ‘shoegaze country’ tag comes from. However, those of you expecting My Morning Jacket or Lift to Experience should be prepared for a distinctly clean-cut, West Coast sound on ‘Everything All the Time.’

Like Goldrush before them, The Dreaming Spires wear their influences on their sleeve, and it’s not simply lazy journalism to say that they sound like Big Star and Teenage Fanclub. They really do. To their credit, the band and producer Sam Williams have managed to nail that Grand Prix sound perfectly. Like Charly Coombes & the New Breed, The Dreaming Spires ooze a kind of accomplished professionalism, and theirs is a familiar, radio-friendly sound. Unfortunately, this slickness seems to prevent them from displaying much of a personality of their own.

The opening chords and verses of ‘Everything All the Time’ absolutely smack of Teenage Fanclub, before Robin’s Tim Wheeler-eqsue voice lends itself perfectly to an infectious chorus akin to Ash’s ‘Shining Light’. It’s a solid summer tune and has just as much hit potential as you can hope to expect from a guitar-based band.

B-side ‘In Our Lifetimes’ fares less well, however. In fact, it sounds like one of the weaker Flight of the Conchords songs with its nostalgic ‘Tiny Dancer’ feel, good-time guitar licks and overly earnest and simultaneously simple lyrics that verge – presumably unintentionally – on being satirical. Throughout the song, Robin sounds shaky, singing “Will our children’s children understand/How we gave them such a losing hand?” – and while the environmental message is a worthy one, the overall execution is a bit, well, naff. (And we hate nothing more than having to resort to using the word “naff”). On the plus side, the swelling strings and life-affirming brass section in the outro positively recalls latter-day Gorky’s Zygotic Mynci.

Before anyone begins to suggest that we’re hating on the Dreaming Spires because of their pedigree, let us assure you that the opinions stated here have nothing to do with that. ‘Everything All the Time’ is, as we’ve stated, a well-crafted and executed pop song that will likely do well. It’s already been spun by BBC Radio luminaries like Steve Lamacq. However, the quality of songwriting and originality on display here is lacking compared to at least a handful (maybe two handfuls) of other local bands; perhaps it’s unfair to expect so much from a fledgling band.

Having said that, the accompanying press pack asserts that when The Dreaming Spires played their songs at Wood Festival earlier in May they were cajoled into doing three encores – but that’s a less impressive feat when you’re the organizer of the whole shindig…

Poet Matthew Arnold is attributed with giving Oxford it’s affectionate nickname, describing her as “that sweet city with her dreaming spires”, referring to the beautiful, iconic architecture. This proves to be a fitting moniker for the band; the songs here show that The Dreaming Spires can attempt to construct a gorgeous pop song in the same vein as pop masters Big Star, but as long as they continue to do so they continue to do themselves a disservice, as we can just listen to #1 Record, Bandwagonesque or Radio City. The Dreaming Spires show promise as writers of anthemic pop songs; let’s just hope that they can become masters in their own right rather than masterful imitators.

[Originally published on Musicinoxford.co.uk, 01/08/2011]
http://www.musicinoxford.co.uk/2011/08/01/the-dreaming-spires-everything-all-the-time-clubhouse-records/

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/