Clipse vids

57. Clipse - Hell Hath No Fury (2006)

Brothers Malice & Pusha T formed in Virginia, an area not previously known for it's hip-hop credentials. During the 00's it would produce two of hip-hop's most innovative producers, Timbaland & The Neptunes, both of whom grew up in the same community as Clipse.

When dirty south style crunk took over as the underground hip hop sound, Timbaland, Neptunes & Clipse recreated the old NY hip-hop, as a modern, ultra syncopated, pop flavored beast. NY couldn't compete then, and is still struggling to produce a great hip-hop act, relying heavily on old favorites like Jay-Z. In fact many states now have better hip-hop than NY; New Orleans, Texas, Georgia, Atlanta, Detroit etc.

Lord Willin' (2002) introduced the Clipse/Neptunes sound, and remains classic, especially the minimal funk of Grindin. Acclaim went largely to the production, however the Clipse would develop their Re-up, coke rap tales, and the next album would see the lyrics and rapping shine equally.

Clipse signed to Jive records, a label not known for supporting hip-hop.Then Jive got brought out by Sony, thereafter Clipse's second album was put on hold, frustrating the Clipse enormously. They released two great mixtapes We Got It For Cheap Vol 1 & 2, showcasing the extended Re-Up Gang, rappers Ab-liva and Sandman. Both these rappers have infectious styles, contrasting Pusha & Malices' nasal twang to Sandmans blunted drawl.

Hell Hath No Fury finally came out in '06, and was a darker and more bitter proposition. The coke tales spiked with paranoia, anger at having to return to the streets to make a living. Super focused rhymes dealt with the hypocrisies of coke dealing whilst trying to escape the ghetto, the benefits, cost, temptations of the lifestyle, and many veiled references to their disappointments with major label Jive.

In contrast the cocky swagger of Grindin' 'I move cain like a cripple, Balance niggas through the hood, Kids call me Mr. Sniffles, Other hand on my nickel, Plated whistle, One eye closed I'll hit you, As if I was Slick Rick my aim is still an issue, Lose your soul in...whichever palm I'm holdin', One'll leave you frozen, The other, Noddin' and dozin, I'm grindin' Jack'.

Following release the Clipse's manager was jailed for 35 years as part of a cocaine cartel, Clipse is the closest you can get to an audio version of The Wire TV show.

'No serum can cure all the pain I've endured, from crack to rap to back to sellin' it pure, And i don't know how then other niggaz built, And I don't know if ever they feel guilt'.

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Bonnie vids

58. Matt Sweeney & Bonnie 'Prince' Billy - Superwolf (2005)

                                                        

Criticisms of Will Oldhams output are often well founded (i.e. inconsistency, not able to self edit, doesn't reveal true self). However this mid decade gem found Bonnie at his best in vocal power, experimentism and unfettered emotion. Teaming with Matt Sweeney, who allegedly challenged Bonnie to some kind of songwriting competition, which may have appeled to Bonnie's not inconsiderable perversity. Sweeney had been doing the rounds in various indie combos including Guided By Voices & Billy Corgan's Zwaan. What Sweeney provided Bonnie with was a kind of mid period Dylan/Band/Allman Bros wild mercury choogle, with a minimalist slant and dark southern gothic edge. My Home Is The Sea is sung delicately by a duo who could only be landlocked lubbers wearing cut offs and mousey moustastes. Superwolf contains love songs promising rough sex, Bonnies 'horney horn', mournful dirges with inappropriate jokes etc.

Blood Embrace is the albums centrepiece, a tense cheating song, Bonnie's strong high vocal interplays with gently stroked electric guitar, and film samples to tell a tale of a woman who has cheated and confessed to her husband, the sexual tension and ominous, dangerous environment created remains one of the decades finest musical moments, and seals this albums position in this list.

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To The Drift in 10 steps

59. Scott Walker - The Drift (2006)

Repeated themes crop up in The Drift. Silver. Torture. Genocide. That terrifying feeling when it suddenly dawns the body you are looking at is dead, injured, deliberately disfigured. Cossacks Are..."The teeth are too small", Cue..."Bones closing - too soon at the tips". Multiple voices, perspectives muddled. David Lynch style crawls around shadowy corners, doorways.
The violence of retribution, witnessed, enjoyed by crowds, the mutilation of a hanging Mussolini & wife, tribes decapitating each other, Sadaam Hussein hung to baying, mocking audience.
It's not inconceivable once immersing yourself in any recent (i.e. the last 30 years) Scott album that it took 11 years to create. The 30th Century Man doc provides some insight into the mental effort required by Scott and his cohorts to make these monstrous records, where you can see a man hitting a large piece of raw pig with a stick, and Scott visibly anxious about the quality of sound made by hitting a large handmade wooden box.
The Drift is not a comforting listen, it is adult, dark, challenging at times downright scary. It is also original, majestic, endlessly fascinating and hideously beautiful, in the way that Lynch's, Herzog's, Bergman's, Chris Morris' and Frances Bacon's art can be.
Each lyric and block of sound in The Drift is there for a reason. The song Jesse offers the premise of Elvis speaking to his stillborn twin, it begins "Nose holes caked in black cocaine" and ends with the pained cry of "I'm the only one left alive" in Scott's unique mad mock rock goth operatic baritone. Jolson and Jones contains the call "I'll punch a donkey in the streets of Galway" complete with braying donkey noises, whilst managing to be entirely serious. Cue seems to be about viruses. Hand me ups, despite having a reasonably jaunty rhythm contains the most explicit images of torture and war on the album. Buzzers again perhaps concern violent political revenge, and begins with a quote about Milosevic. The Escape is as scary as shit, and almost has a rhyme scheme, at the close of the track a huge evil Donald duck repeats "What's up Doc", I have heard this numerous times and I still get nervous when I know it is coming. This moment reminds me of the stories of American troops blasting US cultural pop and cartoon sounds at war prisoners as a torture device during the Gulf wars. To be listened to with teddy bear to hand.
Finally, A Lover Lovers almost offers respite in a beautiful acoustic ballad, however Scott manages to undermine this by going "Psst Psst Psst" between each line. Truly perverse.
I'm sure you'll enjoy it. Roll on 2023!

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Boredoms vids

Vision Creation Newsun

60. Boredoms - Vision Creation Newsun (2000)

One of the greatest live music epiphanies for me, was witnessing a then unknown to me & pals, Boredoms on a baking hot hazy Friday morning, opening the Other stage (then the NME stage) at Glastonbury in 1995. An unexpected outer space mix of free jazz, Napalm Death, and early Sonic Youth, performed with utter precision, power yet complete abandon by this Osaka Japanese group. One possible future music stood before us, making sense of the noise, Krautrock, thrash, electronic elements that our generation had been absorbing via underground record shops, John Peel. All of a sudden the leaden Britpop mob sounded duller than ever, and contemporary exploratory groups like the post rock Tortoise, Mogwai and Godspeed seemed painfully naval gazing and self conscious compared to the exploratory, outward looking, and joyous Boredoms. This is how music would be in the new millennium. Battles, Animal Collective, Black Dice, Lightning Bolt, Fuck Buttons, the embrace of trance within the rock jam, these have Boredoms to thank.
Perhaps Super AE (1998) is the more experimental album, certainly it has more post production, it's more fragmented, and more immediately thrilling. Vision Creation Newsun however completed Boredoms new direction. The whole album is really one long percussion jam (although not really a jam, as there is little improvisation, the whole thing is massively detailed and precise, a Japanese trait?), set around complex and uplifting grooves, Amon Duul II type chants, electronic effects, melodic touches from synths, guitars, all aimed straight at the sun.
Japanese groups such as Boredoms, Acid Mothers Temple, Melt Banana & Boris often get criticism for lack of originality, that they are essentially highly skilled pastiches of classic styles of music. Often these groups have gone one stage further, by venturing far beyond what their musical ancestors were able or prepared to do. They will ask questions like what if King Crimson were punks who liked raving, or imagine if the stooges had heard death metal, or imagine Alice Coltrane jamming with Hendrix and Ya Ho Wha on the moon....on ketamine.
These exploratory avenues appear like uncompleted bridges in the sky, and perhaps only when these bridges are complete, will the future again await us.

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Derek Bailey vids

61. Derek Bailey - Ballads

This is the first time I've used the phrase genius in my blog.
Bailey learned guitar as a child, then went on to play in northern club jazz bands, big bands, TV bands through the 60's. He could play pretty much any style he wanted to, expertly, and did, until he found his own style.
Bailey was instrumental in the burgeoning improvised jazz scene in 1960's London with Spontaneous Music Ensemble, Evan Parker & AMM despite being fiercely critical of improvised jazz styles. During the prog, crossover jazz era Bailey used minimal effects, relying on his virtuosity on guitar to produce new sounds and ideas. Bailey fought genre labels by calling his sound 'non-ideomatic' i.e. if playing within the realms of a genre or style of music, how can that be truly improvising? as style has impinged upon the imagination of the individual playing the music. Bailey was happy to work with all types and players of music, noise, drum'n'bass, whatever, to expand his vocabulary and produce creative friction, he was a huge enthusiast of all field of music, or as MES puts it, ' the grist that curtails the mill, will make us strong'.
Ballads, sees Bailey improvising on Jazz standards in a way no other guitarist could, a sensitive, clear, but full frontal sound, keeping a hang on melody, but in a new language we have not yet understood. If you have never heard him, give the record some listens and you may find the artistry and imagination within quite awesome. Forget jazz lineage, Bailey stands amongst Bach, MES, James Brown & Beefheart as individuals who are able to create a music immediately arresting yet strange, like a human muscle we weren't aware of until we were shown how to use it.

                                                        



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Flower-Corsano vids

62. Flower/Corsano Duo - Radiant Mirror (2007)

Chris Corsano is a vital cog in current underground music, as a mercurial drummer from New England with a hand in many groups and a pivotal role in widening the possibilities for instrumentalists in the 2000's from many genres, from his background in community punk/hardcore and free jazz fire music. He helped to introduce jazz to free folk to pop etc.. from the ecstatic jazz of Paul Flagherty's duo to worldwide touring with Bjork, his is a singular path, successful because of an astonishing virtuosity and imagination on the drums. I can't think of another drummer I would listen to solo!
Radiant Mirror was his first collab with Mick Flower of Vibracathedral Orchestra, Leeds based improv drone merchants.
This stands as a peak of many with Corsano on drums/percussion, Flower on Japan Banjo aka Shahi baaja, according to Corsano's website a cross between a dulcimer and drone harp, or a sort of electrified bulbul tarang. None the wiser huh! well then it sounds like an electrified drone heavy sitar.
Separated into 3 movements, Earth, Wind & Fire, Radiant Mirror both rocks out into heavily psychedelic peaks, whilst allowing for exploratory passages of sound whilst never letting your interest wane, and aimed directly at your third eye. Corsano as ever when given the space, uses the kit in a way that you can easily forget is percussion, using tuning, tabla and somehow wind rushing effects, reconfiguring time with rhythm and poly rhythm, casting time into detonations, burning voids and ultrasonic vibrations of Earth.

Black Dice vids

63. Black Dice - Beaches & Canyons (2002), Cone Toaster 12" (2003)

 Originating from Rhode Island, Providence and attending the school of design which brought us Lightning Bolt. Black Dice were at the vanguard of a change in sound and attitude that affected future thinking pop and rock at the change of the century.
Early Black Dice were a thrash group specialising in particularly violent and noisy gigs, as they developed improv crept into the sound and early skunk infused meetings with the nascent Animal Collective and Wolf Eyes produced lengthy industrial soundscapes. In fact despite the face value disparity between these groups, they all admit an influence on each other.
Black Dice's new found experimentalist tendencies and creativity, along with the huge influence of Boredoms, whose sounds, live sets and design, cannot be underestimated, and rips through all of this scene like a large scale epiphany, contributed to the creation of Beaches & Canyons. Also in their favor Beaches & Canyons was picked up by James Murphy's DFA label, adding a cool element attractive to followers of LCD/Rapture etc.
Thoroughly modern Beaches & Canyons combine heavily treated guitar, primal vocals, heavy percussion and loops oscillators, ring modulators etc, into a music that builds and crescendos repeatedly, imagine a disco Sun Ra covering Melvins. Occasionally bird like modular feedback squeaks faze into lopsided beatbox rhythms disturbed by bullfrogs. Epic album closer 'Big Drop' fades in from the sound of waves, kicks up a shitstorm of vertical drumming and ends with excellent screaming, none of which seems angry of negative, in fact the whole record is exploratory and euphoric. Somehow the overall feeling of the record has something of the majesty and power of nature about it.
Cone Toaster followed Beaches & Canyons, and displays a less organic, patchwork, dance influenced sound, but remained amazing in it's textures. Yamatsuka EYE was listening, as he provides a B-side remix of Endless Happiness from Beaches & Canyons, which unsurprisingly finds detail in the percussion.
Black Dice continue to be fascinating, and I'll be seeing their LOUD show this weekend at ATP! Woop Woop.

White Stripes Influences

White Stripes vids

64. The White Stripes - De Stijl (2000) & White Blood Cells (2001)

The White Stripes were obviously, proudly retro. However that is not the whole story. Jack & Meg undertook the most successful re imagining of American electric blues and rock since Led Zep or Grunge. This was partly due to them finding the best or essence of rock, keeping it simple and having a bitchin rhythm section, which had been neglected by previous post punk rock groups who tended to concentrate on innovations in melody, grunge included. If musically they retroactively distilled what was great about rock and blues, thematically and aesthetically TWS provided something new, using the red, white & black line art and uniforms, name checking the Dutch De Stijl art movement. Alongside Jack's gentlemanly, old fashioned and critical stance; often in opposition of the original rock subject matter, which could be deliberately disrespectful to drive that generation gap wedge home. Jack however is not twee and is able to reference the value of friends and being nice to parents with bollocks a thousand fringed indie types could never muster.

The White Stripes stood out in a Detroit surrounded by a garage revival, Soledad Brothers, Detroit Cobras and the Von Bondies were peers of TWS and following the first run of records kicked off a shitstorm of by numbers garage types, culminating in the likes of The Hives and that other group I can't remember.

Of the two albums, De Stijl their second after a raw bluesy debut has a more garage pop element, despite containing more blues covers of Son House and Blind Willie McTell. It came out on Sympathy for the Record Industry, who brought us Rocket from the Crypt no less, true ancestors of this music, a smaller audience awaited this release and TWS are more reveling in knowingness, namedropping art and philosophies in the liner notes. The cerebral psued in me always prefers De Stijl, although over time, sonically speaking TWS breakout third White Blood Cells has to be the best.

Actually the best WS experience is to see them live, as I did post De Stijl in a small venue. The energy, guitar noise and supernatural levels of non verbal between Jack & Meg are spellbinding and is in my top ten gigs. Otherwise try the John Peel Maida Vale sessions recorded throughout this period for a ferocious, fast and loose WS.

At the time White Blood Cells correctly anticipated with it's artwork the fame, adulation and ostracism from the Detroit scene they helped to birth, and also introduces a Morrissey like paranoid element from Jack, often shown in those who feel out of time. This adds to the albums interest, and sets TWS on the fame trajectory which has culminated in Jacks current liaisons with models, superstars etc.

Elvis in Hawaii 1973

Who By Fire

65. Bonnie 'Prince' Billy - Ease Down The Road (2001)

Everyone knows how Will Oldham was an unsatisfied actor, hanging with Slint, then became Palace, paving the way for the alt country music of the 90's. He built from the bottom up a new rural American music referencing the old weird America of Harry Parch and 'I wish I was a mole in the ground', with the underground DIY attitudes of 90's groups like Pavement and Sebadoh. Well in 1998 Oldham began to use the moniker Bonnie 'Prince' Billy and has never looked back. Whilst the Palace records contained rickety songs of rambling, depression, sex, love, violence and death; Bonnie sang similar subject matter but in a more accomplished, fun, and humorous way. Some songs are goddamn laugh out loud funny. With the song 'Death to Everyone' from masterpiece I See a Darkness (1999), Bonnie sang 'death to me, death to you, tell me what else can we do die do'.

If Palace then is Oldhams Songs of Love and Hate, then Bonnie's records start with New Skin for the Old Ceremony, and like Leonard Cohen the subject matter is similar, the humour is black, and by far the most common theme is relationships and sex, and like Leonard, Bonnie never reveals his true motives even in the most tender ballads. Also like Leonard, Bonnie's voice can inhabit a song with remarkably minimal backgrounds, the voice is what you listen for.

Bonnie's second outing 'Ease Down the Road' allowed Oldham to finally shed the shackles of indie underachievement and Lo-fi Pavementations, and in this way Bonnie was more able to be like Oldham than Oldham ever could be, embracing jackass style comedy, R&B and cheese. The character became three dimensional. Ease down the road mainly concerns, relationships on the move, masculine power and sex. The opener 'May it Always Be' plays out like a declaration of love, but mischievous Bonnie has to add 'come with me when I go into the bedroom, and we'll play bride and groom'. A King at Night meanwhile has resonances of Neil Youngs Thrasher where friends and relationships are left in the dust as the protagonist goes his singular selfish way, Bonnie understands the consequences as the King in the song is prepared to face the bloodshed to come for the fun, power and glory at his disposal.

Interestingly Oldham is a big fan (along with Nick Cave) of very late period Elvis, seeing no artifice in elaborate costumes, flowers, massive choirs, sentimentality and country funk; Oldham sees only honesty and truth, so honest that sometimes we have to look away.

At Break of Day is Bonnie in search of a certain night time company, 'Dawn is mine and I will share it, with whatever bird will wear it, on her body bare and pink'.

The centerpiece of the album is the title track, a story where Bonnie takes a woman to see her firefighter husbands family, and seduces her on the journey, persuades her to have sex with him then eases on down the road. Bonnie begins the journey with ill intention 'answering the call of awkward and true feeling'. Bonnie has little care for the husband and boasts he 'duly tied to light a fire, upon his rightful booty', Bonnie may admit to 'a little guilt and some guilt spilt' (hmm). However deep down Bonnie is a fun but lonely guy, as the most revealing line suggests 'strange is good if it is kept, a secret with "the lovers", who love their mates, and love themselves, and need the love of others.

Related vids

Cecil Taylor
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cP5L8tjnB6w
Curtis Roads
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajdRGF5NHIs
Coil
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T7xEOgRazg4
Bernard Parmegiani
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sk86s3v-iLA
Stockhausen
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XfeWp2y1Lk
Cubic 22 - Night in motion
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYBlxKP0bXU
Hassim - al-naafiysh the soul
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7H_gGA7Qr4

Autechre vids

Dropp (1999)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hWGUnrIiOoI
Ganz Graf (2002)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s4ZwTUUue1w
Lentic Catachresis (2001)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7b2Wp9wELq8

66. Autechre - Confield (2001)

Rochdale sons Rob Brown & Sean Booth make up Autechre, who along with Aphex Twin, have best represented the ethos of Sheffield's Warp records. Especially as when recent years have seen Warp increasingly interested in indie stylings Autechre remain resolutely forward looking and future focused. The sci-fi future of techno that Autechre envision is complex and demanding but repays effort and has at it's centre a human heart and surprisingly transparent influences.

Autechre were 80's kids into b-boy culture, electro, graffiti and breakdancing outside the local Morrison's on a cardboard sheet, then came of age during the 91 Ardkore scene, when they had already a white label pressed. The sound progressed through techno, ambient but quickly became too complicated for dancing and so was labelled IDM, possibly the least attractive moniker for a musical style ever. John Peel had the best quote on IDM, 'I just want to hear the really stupid stuff'.

Late 90's Autechre began to stray from established techno templates by using atomised sounds, tuned polyrhythmic drums, imagine if Belgian Ardkore crew Cubic 22 was programmed by Cecil Taylor. Whilst melodies became oblique washes of colour, electro references were there in abstract timbres and rhythmic flourishes.

Confield is considered the moment where Autechre are at there most brain scrambling and esoteric, taking influence from Coil, granular synthesis, Musique Concrete & Bernard Parmegiani, best heard in final track Lentic Catachresis. Ten years on Confield remains just as rewarding and confusing as ever and is also remarkably visual music as evidenced by the videos, the tracks always put you in mind of a shape, colour, mood. Opinion remains divided about post 2000 Autechre, as either the point they became unlistenable and left the audience behind, or fans of the current era, such as I, who believe there remain codes and puzzles to be cracked from the steely maze of Confields grooves, we may even discover the missing quark.