The Countdown to Blast-Off: 40th Anniversary Special Edition of David Bowie’s Space Oddity

I’m a cynical sort when it comes to re-releases, re-packages, deluxe editions, etc – they’re obvious marketing tactics from record labels seeking to gain the maximum mileage out of the same material, especially as they try to bolster the inevitable decline in physical sales. Having said that, I’m going to remain completely transparent here and say I received advances of both the Duran Duran re-releases and the 40th Anniversary Special Edition of David Bowie’s Space Oddity from EMI; because both David Bowie and Duran Duran contributed generously to my early music education, I felt it would be worth exploring these specific reissues (of course David Bowie also remains my favourite solo artist in the world, which will make me naturally curious in anything released under his name). Tomorrow, on November 17, this 2-disc Special Edition of Space Oddity is due for release, including a digipak with a booklet of extended notes and photographs (I can’t make a comment on that bit because my copy is just the promo copy of the music).

Space Oddity is of course the crucial breakthrough for David Bowie, allowing him to leave gravediggers and laughing gnomes behind. The title track remains a classic song that will forever be included on Bowie compilations, and it hinted at the space-tastic, alienated voyages to come. The story of Major Tom proved to be so popular that it became the album’s title in 1972 after the record had been released in 1969 under the titles David Bowie and Man of Words/Man of Music. I’m not sure about other Bowie fans, but I don’t include it in my top five Bowie records; I adore the title track and Letter to Hermione, a soul-baring, moody ballad to a former girlfriend, but rarely listen to the other songs. It’s an album that clearly shows where Bowie was coming from in terms of influences – it was a little bit folk and a little bit proggy, likely inspired by both Bob Dylan and Syd Barrett’s Pink Floyd. While Bowie has always been a sharp-eyed magpie of myriad genres and creative ideas, he seemed to find his true footing on my favourite Bowie album, Hunky Dory. Again, I really love the title track of The Man Who Sold the World, but many of the tracks from that record just don’t live up to it, whereas its successor was confident and memorable from start to finish, the first hints of glam rock stirring in its undercurrents. I think the rambling folk side of Space Oddity simply didn’t appeal to me as much as his campy glam and icy experimentalism and therefore remained less memorable for me.

Having gone back to listen to this re-mastered version of Bowie’s debut, I’ve revised my opinions a bit. If you don’t pay closer attention to lyrics, you could dismiss many of the tracks as hangovers from the Summer of Love; delving deeper, I began to realize, that like Bowie’s work and identity in general, it is not to be taken at face value. Several tracks are critical of hippie counterculture and fearful of madness, the latter being a rather constant thread throughout Bowie’s career. Album conclusion Memory of a Free Festival is now reminding me of Jarvis Cocker’s observations twenty-five years later in Pulp’s Sorted for E’s & Wizz; it seems like the disillusion and comedown of a participant in a loved-up scene is a perennial theme. One of many brilliant verses in this song:

Touch, we touched the very soul
Of holding each and every life.
We claimed the very source of joy ran through.
It didn’t, but it seemed that way.
I kissed a lot of people that day.

Unfortunately, the end of song and its repetition of “The Sun Machine is coming down/and we’re gonna have a party” still gets a little too Hey Jude-like for me; both endless finales end up lodging in my brain and irritating me. I have also come to embrace the quite epic Cygnet Committee, which tells the story of a sorrowful messianic leader who ends up violently destroyed along with all he represents; this song also very obviously points to future leitmotifs for Bowie. One of my favourite lines is: “My friends talk/Of glory untold dream, where all is God and God is just a word.” It’s a shame that, in my mind, poetry like this remained overshadowed by the musical style for so long.

The deeply rooted sense of never knowing the self and treating the self as a performance, which David Bowie took to great lengths through multiple musical genres, are some of my favourite aspects of his art, and they’re written all over this debut. Another one of the folky jaunty tunes that I generally didn’t take much interest in was Janine, but through repeated listens, several lyrics stood out:

Janine, Janine, you’d like to know me well,
But I’ve got things inside my head
That even I can’t face.

Janine, Janine, you’d like to crash my walls,
But if you take an axe to me
You’ll kill another man
Not me at all.

Several years later, he was still not up to facing himself and was much too fast to do so.

The second disc of this edition features the bonus material, which is mostly comprised of previously unreleased tracks, including early demos, BBC radio sessions, and even the full-length stereo version of the Italian version of Space Oddity re-titled Ragazzo Solo, Ragazza Sola. Despite the fact I’m a big Bowie fan, I don’t actually own any previous special editions or collectors’ sets, so I haven’t heard any of this bonus material before, including the song London Bye Ta Ta, which reminds me of The Kinks’ David Watts and by extension, Blur’s Tracy Jacks. I think I’ve stayed away from buying the special Bowie recordings all these years because his back catalogue of demos, rarities, live sessions and bootlegs seem like a staggering monster that I can never hope to master. It’s ludicrously autistic of me to think of it that way, but it’s no coincidence that I identify with Bowie’s paranoia of going mad as well.

As with the special edition of Duran Duran’s Rio, I would say this reissue of Space Oddity is something for consummate collectors (though many hard-core Bowie fans may have already ferreted out a fair portion of this material). Despite the infinite flogging of Bowie’s back catalogue, I appreciate this re-release if only because it forced me to take a closer listen to a part of Bowie’s output that I inexplicably hadn’t done so much in the past. And in the absence of new releases from my favourite solo artist for the last six years, it assuages an iota of my thirst for new Bowie material. Space Oddity was Bowie’s understated countdown to a blast-off to happen a few years later, an orbit he hasn’t come down from since.

Cygnet Committee – David Bowie

Ragazzo Solo, Ragazza Sola (Full-Length Stereo Version) – David Bowie

Everyday is Like Sunday, Except for Blue Monday and Ruby Tuesday, and…Well, Friday I’m in Love: Weekly Mix #90

Time’s whipping by so fast that I have to start planning out these last weeks of 2009 on CTRR. Last year, there were several festive year-end features on the old yuletide blog (groan if you must), including my Year-End Round-Up weekly mixes, the countdown of my Top 40 albums of the year, the Christmas weekly mix, and the New Year’s Eve party mix. And I still have to work in my Day of 200 songs before all of this kicks off.

This week’s mix will be a winter one despite the fact that it actually hasn’t felt terribly wintery here. We’ve been uncharacteristically warm and have not had any snow yet (of course I’ll write this and then a blizzard will fall on my head whilst waiting for the bus). At any rate, here it is for your listening pleasure. I’ve been told that it provides a welcome alternative to Christmas tunes. This mix is called Blow Thou Winter Wind.

The First Time You Saw Snow – Shirley Lee

Winter – The Dodos

The Dead of Winter – Martin Carr

Walk Out to Winter – Aztec Camera

Red High Heels – Jane Siberry

Il Neige – France Gall

Snowfall Sorrow – Secret Shine

A Winter’s Sky – The Pipettes

December – Teenage Fanclub

Permafrost – Magazine

Snow – Pooma

Sit Down By the Fire – The Veils

It’s Snowing on the Moon – St. Christopher

Midnight Sun – David Sylvian

Snow Country – Paniyolo

You and My Winter – Snow in Mexico

Snow – The Trashcan Sinatras

Snowfalls in November – Julie Doiron

Peacock Dance – Matt Kanelos

Eisblume – Hauschka

 

Weekly Mix #90 (Zip File)

When They Were Emperors: Duran Duran’s Collector’s Edition Rio and Live at Hammersmith DVD

Many shy away from admitting they enjoy some Duran Duran; the fact they had thousands of teenage girls screaming for them for a few years somehow degrades their pop value (teenage girl fans are apparently credibility-suckers – another argument for another time). As a band, Simon LeBon and Co generally take the flak for the sins of the 80s: excess, commercialist greed, hyperbolic style, etc. I, myself, was a teenager in the 90s when I first heard Duran Duran, and while listening to songs like Planet Earth, Girls on Film, Hungry Like the Wolf, and The Reflex, I became a fan. Later, as I realized that I was really only interested in the first few Duran Duran albums and that the band had disintegrated quite spectacularly by the time I was halfway through high school (I distinctly remember Electric Barbarella playing on the radio then), I became more interested in their contribution to early music videos. Should you so choose, you can click here to read an undergrad essay I wrote about the post-colonial issues in their Rio-era videos. So, I suppose I could add post-colonial imperialism to their list of misdemeanors, but for some reason, as you can see, Duran Duran never left me. At least, the original incarnation of Duran Duran never did. And with EMI’s release of the Collector’s Edition of Rio coinciding with the release of a DVD/CD combo of their 1982 gig in Hammersmith, I’m starting to reflect on the insane success and inevitable decline of the band and what exactly appealed to me when I first heard them fifteen years ago.

Rio, like its bookends, Duran Duran and Seven and the Ragged Tiger, appealed to me because its lyrics largely didn’t make sense. Let me explain. Like abstractions of a dreamworld, Duran Duran lyrics were often so oddly phrased that they seemed extraordinary – sure, a vague plotline that might involve pursuit of romance/sex was present, but the metaphors and diction weren’t straightforward. Examples in Hungry Like the Wolf include: “Dark in the city night is a wire/Steam in the subway earth is afire,” “Smell like I sound I’m lost in a crowd,” and “Strut on a line it’s discord and rhyme.” When the ostensibly awkward lyrics collided with the music, the songs became otherworldly. Their blend of disco, post-punk and New Romantic synthpop still stands up today; the crisp, clean drums and glacial synths glide over the organic groove, making the music feel like it could simultaneously shatter in icy shards while undulating under that elastic bass rhythm and wailing sax. Their self-titled debut leaned more heavily on cold electro and spiky punk energy to fashion a strange alien glamour that drew from the past and future at the same time, a feature that they absorbed from New Wave and blew out to its extremes. Rio, in particular, takes exoticism to new heights; not only do the videos for the record signal this quite clearly, but take the example of Save a Prayer and its bizarre ululating synth that mimicks Tarzan’s call. And my all-time favourite Duran Duran song, The Chauffeur, happens to be the finale of Rio; the haunting, Teutonic coolness is still tempered with what sounds like South American pan pipe sounds, and it continues to give me chills like creeping shadows.

The Collector’s Edition of their 1982 record is just that: for collectors. The first disc is the digital remastering of the original tracks along with a Carnival Remix of My Own Way and US album remixes of Rio, Lonely in Your Nightmare, Hungry Like the Wolf and Hold Back the Rain. It includes a second disc of bonus material, including Manchester Square demos (recorded 28 August 1981) of Last Chance on the Stairway, My Own Way, New Religion, and Like an Angel, and various b-sides and remixes. It is best enjoyed by Duranies and those who never got a hold of these alternate tracks or b-sides via other channels through the years. The problem with this re-release, as it is with many bands I’m sure, is that there just isn’t much point digging into the back catalogue for alternate versions when differences are often so subtle that it takes either a really dedicated fan or a really trained ear to care. For instance the difference between the original Rio and the US Rio is that on the latter track, there’s a looser snare and a shorter intro of TARDIS-like noises; in the end, the US mix feels softer, but I only realized this by flipping back and forth between the two until my brain smoked. Yes, the second disc of demos are more clearly differentiated from the originals, but are likely most interesting for hard-core collectors (and of course for me, I was most drawn to the alternate acoustic version of The Chauffeur). For a Duran Duran completist, this edition would be useful, and if you don’t already own a copy of Rio, you could spring for this one as something beyond the regular; however, then you may as well go for the similarly priced Collector’s Edition vinyl.

Now, to the Live at Hammersmith ‘82 DVD/CD. I’ve never seen Duran Duran live, and at this point in both their history and mine, I don’t think I want to. However, I do admit to enjoying the early live footage of tours and performances, and this Hammersmith gig is one of those. What strikes me the most about concerts like this one is the feeling of witnessing a band at their zenith. One can argue about when exactly Duran Duran peaked (the end was definitely with Live Aid), but I would contend that 1982 was the moment. They were worldwide superstars with two successful albums and videos in high rotation on MTV, the absurdity hadn’t quite overshadowed them yet (as it did in a video like Wild Boys) and the jaded strain hadn’t gotten to them at this point. It is the MTV-darling, visual component of their identity that makes these live performances worth watching. Because I’m personally drawn to androgyny and glam style, Duran Duran’s image would have always been attractive to me; the band was aesthetically pleasing, especially Nick Rhodes and his David Sylvian-pilfered look, moving like a beautiful automaton over his keyboards.

This gig is also an energetic, lean performance, by which I mean the setlist didn’t contain much filler (when a band only has two albums to draw from, it’s can be expected to be tighter). Even when doing the slower, slightly darker numbers, they appeared to come from some place of fantasy and youthful exuberance – they couldn’t believe their good fortune, and took you with them on that ride to the top. I will also say that I hadn’t been aware that Duran Duran did a cover version of Cockney Rebel’s Make Me Smile (Come Up and See Me), which they do quite admirably in the encore of this performance.

As bonus material, this DVD features the Rio-era music videos and TOTP performances, and oddly enough, I don’t remember having ever seen the video for Lonely in Your Nightmare before – it would have been helpful for that essay on visual rhetoric and post-colonialism. These videos, more than the others from Duran Duran, remain iconic in their imperialist adventurer guise, and remain fascinating to me precisely because they were shot with epic budgets on location in “exotic” locales. It becomes incredibly difficult to dissociate the songs from the video imagery, and I think it’s interesting to compare and contrast these videos with other iconic New Romantic videos like those of Adam and the Ants; by drawing on the past images of Victorian and Edwardian dandy dress, they inherited notions of British empire by proxy. And if I combine that with an appropriation of “other” musical sounds from those who would have been conquered by the British, I’ve got an extension for my original essay. Again, an argument for another time.

Despite the fact they came from a legitimate background of punk/glam rock and despite their former massive popularity, why were/are Duran Duran so denigrated? Perhaps, unlike their heroes David Bowie and Roxy Music, their artificial glamour ceased to be a pose. They showed off a little too much, they seemed to be wrapped up in their own hyperbole and absurdity. Maybe their collective pretty boy image also made it less likely they would be taken seriously by critics. And then, there were those armies of hysterical girls.

Considering the massacre that was Red Carpet Massacre and the second departure of Andy Taylor a few years ago, Duran Duran’s music now sounds like middle-aged desperation. Their breathless courting of producers like Timbaland and Mark Ronson depresses me because it signals quite clearly that Duran Duran no longer know who they are as a band and are aching for someone else to tell them who to be. All that had once been fresh energy and style has leached away into hollow attempts to stay current and hip. It’s not as though they’re the only band in this situation; not too many artists sustain a high level of interesting musical output beyond a decade or so. Being boxed in by those heavy 80s brackets doesn’t help. And so I prefer to turn my attention to twenty-seven years ago when Duran Duran were emperors of their own paradise.

The Chauffeur (Sing Blue Silver Version) – Duran Duran

Rio (Live at the Hammersmith ‘82) – Duran Duran

Everyday is Like Sunday, Except for Blue Monday and Ruby Tuesday, and…Well, Friday I’m in Love: Weekly Mixes #88 and #89

To play catch up from last week’s missed mix, I’m giving you two once again. They’re timely with their themes, the first being all German artists and the second being songs about war. In fact, in many ways these two themes are inextricably linked. As everyone celebrates the 20th anniversary of the Berlin Wall coming down, it inevitably brings Berlin’s extraordinary history, along with Germany’s more generally, back into the spotlight. And Cold War is war after all.

I’ve written about how much I love Berlin here before, and it still remains one of my top cities in the world. It was the hub around which so many ideologies and political agendas marched in the twentieth century. And that surreal wall and its solid representation of clashing ideologies will continue to inspire art. That sense of artistic freedom amidst continual opposition is also something so characteristic of Berlin. Additionally, I’m just generally interested in German history as a whole, having taken courses in university and having read several books on the subject. For a country that was historically impossible to unify, the “reunification” in 1989 was made all the more poignant. It’s definitely more complex than that and far more fraught than the fireworks and celebratory dominoes would have you believe, but I think it’s far preferable to that absurd division.

Germany will always be significant to me because that’s where my dad is from, and thus, where half of my family background lies. I’ve visited Germany twice in my life, and fully intend to do so again in the near future. And as a music fan, I can’t ignore Germany’s contribution to the electronic/experimental scene. It’s also rather fortuitous that I just viewed a BBC documentary on Krautrock a couple of weeks ago; it was actually pretty informative since I only had vague ideas of that particular music scene. I knew about Can, Neu!, Faust, Tangerine Dream and Kraftwerk, but never really stopped to think about the motivation behind that kind of experimentalism. In post-war Germany, young people were trying to make sense of the past while distancing themselves from both it and an increasingly Anglo-American present. The result was a truly revolutionary vision of music that continues to influence electronic music today; of course it also influenced musicians contemporary with them – through that documentary, I discovered that Brian Eno had gone to visit Harmonia (which included members of Neu! and Cluster), taping them before working with Bowie on those Berlin albums.

So, this mix includes several of those early bands, but also some much more current ones, and a few unique ones in between, like Nina Hagen and Klaus Nomi. This one’s called Die Mauer Wird Fallen.

Disco Fantasy – Mikrofisch

Hero – Neu!

Der Räuber und der Prinz – DAF

Pogo (The Horrors remix) – Digitalism

Jeffer (Modeselektor Remix) – Boys Noize

Yeah – Tiefschwarz

U Can Dance – DJ Hell

Showroom Dummies – Kraftwerk

Mother Sky (Pilooski Edit) – Can

Sweet Lies – Booka Shade

Nights Off – Siriusmo

Happy Go Lucky – Polarkreis 18

Tag für Tag – Xmal Deutschland

Tierlieb – Abwärts

The Twist (Live) – Klaus Nomi

Michail Michail (Gorbachev Rap) – Nina Hagen

Steh auf Berlin – Einstürzende Neubauten

Hauberg – Hauschka

Propeller 9 – The Notwist

Limelight – Apparat

Weekly Mix #88 (Zip File)

I don’t think my views have changed much since last year’s Remembrance Day post. I find all of the pomp and circumstance surrounding the day to be a bit hollow. Yes, my grandfather died in World War II, but to wear a poppy and have a moment of silence once a year doesn’t mean much when armed conflict just goes on and on around the world. Remembrance Day becomes a superficial day of reassurance – the reality of war can be painted away with the ennobling brush. Soldiers aren’t victims of the decisions of those in power, whose deaths were in vain, they’re sacrifices for a noble cause. Noble causes that continue on in places we have no business being in anyway. War is a commerical enterprise with expendable losses. We valorize to cope. This one’s called War Inc.

The Intense Humming of Evil – Manic Street Preachers

An I For An I – IAMX

New Dress – Depeche Mode

He’d Send in the Army – Gang of Four

When Ya Get Drafted – Dead Kennedys

Melancholy Soliders – The Skids

Radio Free Europe (Original Hib-Tone Single) – R.E.M.

Missiles (BBC Session) – The Sound

U.S. Forces – Midnight Oil

Poppy Day – Siouxsie and the Banshees

Straight to Hell – The Clash

Man at C & A – The Specials

Bullet the Blue Sky – U2

Soldier’s Poem – Muse

Army Dreamers – Kate Bush

My Youngest Son Came Home – Billy Bragg

Shipbuilding – Elvis Costello & the Attractions

Universal Soldier – Donovan

Voir un ami pleurer – Jacques Brel

In Our Bedroom After the War – Stars

Weekly Mix #89 (Zip File)

Ode to the Fermata of the Welsh Condition: David Sylvian’s Manafon

David Sylvian, former frontman of one of my favorite bands, Japan, has proven time and again that he is an artist to keep watching and listening to. Not only does he possess one of the most captivating voices, but he has never been content to stay put in one musical genre; he’s remained fluid and interesting for the last thirty years, collaborating with numerous experimental forces like Holger Czukay and Ryuichi Sakamoto. His latest album, Manafon, is no exception. As far as I can discern, the album was largely recorded via improvisation, yet its lyrics are mainly inspired by the Welsh poet/rector, R.S. Thomas, whose North Wales parish included the village Manafon. I read in a recent interview with Sylvian that Thomas interested him because of his seemingly contradictory beliefs: staunch Christian ideals and a violent, misanthropic nationalism. In fact, Thomas supported the Welsh nationalist movement Meibion Glyndŵr, calling for a campaign to deface English-owned homes, and he once said “what is one death against the death of the whole Welsh nation?” I, myself, don’t know how contradictory those two beliefs are, especially given Christian fundamentalism and patriotism going quite hand in glove; however, Thomas still makes for an interesting, relatively dark subject for an album. What I find so fascinating about Thomas is his melancholy in the face of a supposedly loving God and his perspective on Welsh character and its seemingly soul-destroying propensity for wallowing in nostalgia. The latter “past as a prison” idea is a point I’ve heard from other Welsh artists before, and ultimately, even the Christian misanthropy could be construed as quite Welsh when looking at the history of Methodism in Wales. This strain of Protestantism appears to have taken on the dour atmosphere of the Welsh rain. At the same time, Wales is also full of a magic that is as deep as the valleys and of a lyrical, sing-song language made for music and poetry. And Sylvian’s Manafon manages to take in all of these various tendrils of Welshness and works them into an uncompromising piece of art.

Admittedly, this album (and some of Sylvian’s other work) may not be everyone’s cup of tea – it pushes so hard at the rules and boundaries of music in such an understated fashion that some may find it tedious or boring. In other words, there is no immediacy in this record. You must arch and stretch to meet it, but when you do, it seeps into your bones and nestles there like a Pre-Cambrian fossil. Recorded over the period of three years in three different cities with fifteen artists including Sylvian, there’s a meandering quality to the music. It takes its time just as you would imagine those pastoral, downtrodden characters portrayed in Thomas’s poetry do. It comes up close around you like the penetrating isolation of a parish in North Wales.

This album is easier to discuss as whole piece rather than individual tracks because I found myself so thoroughly cocooned in it, that making separations ceased to matter. Sylvian and his band of experimental artists end up sculpting a sonic structure largely out of silence; in a way, they use silence as yet one more instrument. Like the white space in graphic design and the clean lines of modern furniture, this silence makes the album starkly beautiful and quietly alive. When instruments do finally come in, a small flutter of saxophone, some splayed guitar strings, droplets of piano, all of your attention is upon them; sometimes they actually startle you from the rich silence. Sylvian’s characteristically languid vocal style, though slightly more ragged and deeper now, is enchanting, and his phrasing for this record is a mixture of accapella gospel and a poetry reading. He draws out each line meaningfully, and makes space for the twinkling, twitching music to creep up the walls like ivy. Each track tugs at you, drawing you forward in unexpected ways, and it feels like you must follow along as Sylvian finds his own unpredictable way through his words.

The lyrical content most definitely matters in Manafon, especially considering the connection to Thomas, and it is sometimes explicit in this connection (as in the final title track, which includes the characteristically Thomasonian lyric, “There’s a man down in the valley who doesn’t speak in his own tongue/He bears a grudge against the English/A tune to which his songs are sung”), and sometimes not as explicit as in a track like Emily Dickinson. However, even when the subject matter seems to veer away from the foundation of R.S. Thomas, its mood and themes remain consistent. Emily Dickinson is a perfect complement, in a sense, because of her own darkness and isolation. The opening song on Manafon, entitled Small Metal Gods, sets up that sense of isolation, perhaps as a communication of Thomas’s own emotional state when moved to the small parish. Like Dickinson, Thomas seemed rather disconnected from the people around him, only opening up in his poetry. The mystery of the artistic process is probed and extapolated in this record.

Some of my favourite lyrics are in the track Random Acts of Senseless Violence. The following lyrics unroll over nearly seven minutes:

I’ve put away my childish things
Abandoned my silence too
For the future will contain
Random acts of senseless violence

The target’s hit will be non-specific
We’ll roll the numbers play with chance
All suitable locations unplanned in advance

Someone’s back kitchen, stacked like a factory
With improvised devices, there’s bound to injuries
With improvised devices…

No phone-ins, no courtesy, no kindness
And the future will contain
Random acts of senseless violence

And it’s not just the boredom
It’s something endemic
It’s the fear of disorder
Stretched to its limits

Not only does it seem to take in Thomas’s rather militant nationalism that bordered on terrorism, but the section on improvised devices refers quite neatly back to the actual method of the song itself. I also love that the song ends with: “And the safety of numbers is just a contrivance/For the future will contain/Random acts of senseless violence/Democracy is very…/Democracy is very, very…” As Sylvian leaves the unfinished statement dangling as an ellipse, a cipher that can’t be filled adequately.

Manafon is truly bottomless. Its pregnant silences give birth to gripping anticipation, labouring as intensely and as constantly as the stalwart, seemingly defeated figures in Thomas’s poetry. Sylvian has arranged an astounding assortment of avant-garde musicians to create a music more omnipresent than God and more mortal than R.S. Thomas. A low simmer of rage and a clammy mist of ennui combine to form a focused atmosphere of anger and surrender. An ode to the fermata that is the Welsh condition.

Random Acts of Senseless Violence – David Sylvian

Manafon – David Sylvian

“Celebrate that day alone…in sombre isolation”: Birthday Greys

I still feel the same way about my birthday as I did last year – probably even more so. A general sense of malaise bordering on abject disappointment and mild despair. I really am that maudlin. Or it’s just compounded with my regular mood trough. Another year, another jumbled assortment of unfulfilled goals. In the great words of Howard Moon, “You should celebrate that day alone…in sombre isolation.” There’s no doubt that if I had a birthday party, which I haven’t since I was a child, it would end up like Howard Moon’s; I’d be dancing away in muted clothing and an ill-fitting man-corset with one friend who didn’t really like me anyway as everyone else hoped I would leave. I will try my hardest to post one more review this week. For now, enjoy some birthday tunes. And definitely not Tusk in its entirety, with the pauses as Lindsay Buckingham intended.

Happy Birthday – Altered Images

The Happy Birthday Song – Andrew Bird

Happy Birthday – The Birthday Party

All the Birthdays – The Apartments

Birthday (Daytrotter Session) – Junior Boys

Birthday (Jim & William Reid Christmas Eve Mix) – The Sugarcubes

Burning the Golden Past Into the Wireless Future: Del Marquis’ Runaround

Back in April, I wrote a review about Scissor Sisters’ guitarist, Del Marquis, upon the release of his third solo EP, Litter to Society. The series and/or narrative of this solo project is now complete with the recent release of Runaround, more of a maxi-single than an EP; unlike the first three pieces, this one isn’t accompanied by a video, but it provides a massive celebratory finish for the cycle, delving generously into the unabashed production values of the 80s while staying organically grounded in a tight groove and deeper lyrical content.

The title track is a glossy, funky tune with plenty of drum machine, synth and bass to support Marquis’ rich vocals. It bubbles up like an irrepressible self-confidence and jubilant expression of breaking away – even if deceit covers your tracks. As he sings “Feeling so right now,” there’s a pleasurable cognitive dissonance, the vintage 80s era collapsing into the present. The next song, Lies By the Bed, uses brass and plinking piano to strut through the soulful delivery of lines like, “when you lie with the vicar it will sting the soul.” After the rather abrupt finish to Lies By the Bed, the slow burn of Each Time I Reach the Sun begins. A barrage of drums are scattered over the intro before settling into a seemingly tribal rhythm. Two minutes into the track, Marquis’ voice dramatically soars in with heart-thrumming passion as electric guitars saw away behind him. It’s my favourite song on the single as it swirls in a darkness made all the blacker for the grasping of intense sunlight. Knowledge and self-awareness can burn the retinas.

At this point, you get five remixes of earlier tracks, including three of Runaround. It could be a bit risky filling a maxi-single with so many versions of the same songs, but the idea works here, especially in light of the concept of multiplicity found in the earlier EPs. The first of these remixes is Character Assassination (BullycauRemix), which re-fashions a track from Marquis’ second solo EP. It’s a slower electro song, but it pulses with a delightful sensuality. With the added insistent and prominent bass along with some higher tones of synth, the Lifelike Remix of Litter To Society from Marquis’ third EP is a frothy, laser-caged version. I would certainly add a track like this to a dancefloor set. Then, there are the various forms of the title track, including the Baron Von Luxxury Silver Lake of Disco Dreams Remix, Louis La Roche ‘In 1995’ Remix, and Loose Cannons Supersonic Remix. The first has harsher metallic elements and some added grinding effects over the vocals, chugging forward like a fluorescent locomotive; however, space is still made for the soulful verses. The Louis La Roche remix pounds away with a more frenetic pace and adds guitar parts that remind me of Spiller’s Groovejet, hence probably the reference to the 90s (yes, Groovejet was released in 2000, but it still has those characteristic elements). In fact Louis La Roche smashes through a decade and ends up transforming something that was very 80s into something quite late 90s. The Loose Cannons Supersonic Remix is the most robotic of the three and dispenses with most of the vocals for warped synth sounds, taking the song the farthest away from its origins.

As much as I eagerly await any new material from the Scissor Sisters, I sincerely hope this isn’t the end of Del Marquis as a solo artist. Throughout this project he’s proven that he has his own distinct musical vision and vocal flair; his are definitely not throwaway pop tracks, but at the same time, they invoke older influences that deliciously resonate in a particular serotonin-soaked part of my brain. There’s also a neatly crafted identity project threaded throughout the EPs, creatively commenting on interiority and blurring the technology-human border. Even the way these EPs were released comments on society and music at the end of the noughties; convergence culture and the digital revolution is all over the project. While many others have returned to the 80s for inspiration this year, you get the feeling that Marquis really understands and embodies the essence; there’s a full-bodied warmth in these songs, nothing brittle or flimsy, and I can’t just dismiss them as Trevor Hornesque. The balance of light and dark is present in all of the music Marquis released over the past year, especially in his conception of “shadow” tracks. Marquis demonstrated that nothing is a fixed point; things can be explored from a multitude of angles and through myriad lenses. And I think we’re all questioning our interior lives more and more as our inner monologue fights to be heard above overwhelming static of the external communications that are invading our very consciousness. I think we currently have more in common with the future-focused, self-absorbed, laissez-faire 1980s than we like to think. Del Marquis is truly prescient in his solo work, burning the golden past into the wireless future.

** I would also like to add that Del Marquis has just collaborated with Microfilm on the excellent track I’ll Sing Like Billy Mackenzie in Heaven, which I’m also including for download here. Cracking song title, too. **

Runaround – Del Marquis

Each Time I Reach the Sun – Del Marquis

I’ll Sing Like Billy Mackenzie in Heaven – Microfilm featuring Del Marquis

Everyday is Like Sunday, Except for Blue Monday and Ruby Tuesday, and…Well, Friday I’m in Love: Weekly Mix #87

It’s the most wonderful time of the year! And since you’ve all been such good ghouls and boys, I’m handing out my biggest bag of treats yet. I’ve added to last year’s Halloween mix, and it is now a lurching monster of 66 tracks. You can download the entire mix as a zip file at the bottom of the list.

I will be attending my fair share of Halloweeny events this year (I already went to a book launch dressed as Sally from Nightmare Before Christmas, but that’s a surreal story for another time), including a Neil Gaiman Graveyard Party at McNally Robinson bookstore (call it bad taste…I’m going as the ghost of Richey Edwards – when am I ever in good taste?) and a Halloween wedding social (this time as a 1920s flapper).

So come and see what’s on the slab. It’s better than a thousand brooding vampires. This is Anglopunk’s Bloody Good Halloween Mix 2009.

This is Halloween – Danny Elfman

Ramalama (Bang Bang) – Roisin Murphy

Monster Mash – Bobby Pickett and the Crypt Kickers

Purple People Eater – Sheb Wooley

Clap For the Wolfman – The Guess Who

Kandy Korn – Captain Beefheart

Halloween Parade – Lou Reed

Abracadabra – Steve Miller Band

The Time Warp – The Rocky Horror Picture Show

Halloween – Siouxsie and the Banshees

Bela Lugosi’s Dead – Bauhaus

Release the Bats – The Birthday Party

I Put a Spell On You – Arthur Brown

Halloween – Sonic Youth

Don’t Fear the Reaper – Blue Oyster Cult

Halloween on the Barbary Coast – The Flaming Lips

I Was a Teenage Werewolf – The Cramps

Transylvanian Concubine – Rasputina

Scary Monsters (And Super Creeps) – David Bowie

Date With a Vampyre – The Screaming Tribesmen

Do the Hippogriff – The Weird Sisters

Secret Vampires – bis

London Ghost Stories – Shirley Lee

Vampire Racecourse – The Sleepy Jackson

Waiting For the Wolves – Daisy Chainsaw

Faces & Masks – The Cherubs

Vampire Love – Ash

Frankenstein – New York Dolls

Halloween – Dead Kennedys

Feed My Frankenstein – Alice Cooper

Vampires Pt.II – The JeanMarie

Tales From the Crypt Theme

Hells Bells – AC/DC

Nanageddon – The Mighty Boosh

Dracula – Gorillaz

Halloween With Morrissey (Ouija Board) – Cheekyboy

Magic Dance – David Bowie

I Want Candy – Bow Wow Wow

My Vampire – Soho Dolls

Vampire – Paul St. Paul and the Apostles

Lust For a Vampyr – I Monster

For Halloween – No Kids

Ghost Town – The Specials

Ghostbusters – Ray Parker Jr.

Ghosts – Comateens

Thriller – Michael Jackson

Every Day is Halloween – Ministry

Batdance – Prince

The Addams Family Theme

Halloween – Japan

All Cats Are Grey – The Cure

Scare Me – Paul Haig

Skeletons – The Sound

Lycanthropy – Patrick Wolf

Dracula – Momus

Please Mr. Gravedigger – David Bowie

Graveyard – Public Image Ltd.

Vampires – Pet Shop Boys

Theme For a Witch – David R. Prangely and The Witches

Ghost – VNV Nation

Waking the Witch – Kate Bush

Bat’s Mouth – Bat For Lashes

They Are Night Zombies!! They Are Neighbors!! They Have Come Back From the Dead!! Ahhhh! – Sufjan Stevens

Hip Deep Family – The Tiger Lillies

Halloween Head – Ryan Adams

If I Only Were a Goth – Thoushaltnot

Weekly Mix #87 (Zip File)

Everyday is Like Sunday, Except for Blue Monday and Ruby Tuesday, and…Well, Friday I’m in Love: Weekly Mix #86

It’s time for another covers mix. I’d like to highlight a couple of the tracks here. Firstly, I want to give some context for The Rest’s cover version of Robyn’s With Every Heartbeat. This cover is the first song off their new EP, which will be accompanied by an illustrated novel, The Cried Wolf Book. This book, along with the accompanying four songs, will “chronicle the life of the boy who cried wolf as an adult.” I’m definitely excited – just as enjoyable as the surreal story that complemented Allegories’ debut record, this one, which starts here, turns fairy tale telling on its head. You can’t tell me you wouldn’t be intrigued by the sentence, “Hans was tossed into a deep, claustrophobic well riddled with scantily clad mermaids, making it a damp, sexually suggestive prison.” Read more about The Rest in my previous review, and you’ll have to wait until November 1 for the next chapter in the book.

Secondly, I want to say how absolutely fantastic vitaminsforyou’s cover of No Cars Go is – just when you think the song couldn’t get any more anthemic, this re-working does it with synthy aplomb.

Next week is time for my Halloween Mega Mix (I might just build on last year’s mix). But this week’s mix is called Take Cover.

Pop Goes the World – Hyperbubble (Original: Men Without Hats)

Together in Electric Dreams – The Voluntary Butler Scheme (Original: Phil Oakey and Giorgio Moroder)

With Every Heartbeat – The Rest (Original: Robyn)

Dream Attack – Kites With Lights (Original: New Order)

No Cars Go – vitaminsforyou (Original: The Arcade Fire)

Night Vision – The Twelves (Original: Daft Punk)

Primary – The Dandy Warhols (Original: The Cure)

100% – The Raveonettes (Original: Sonic Youth)

Like a Virgin – Teenage Fanclub (Original: Madonna)

Girls Just Wanna Have Fun – The Killers (Original: Cyndi Lauper)

Womanizer – Sliimy (Original: Britney Spears)

Whole Lotta Love (Acoustic) – Prince (Original: Led Zeppelin)

Careless Whisper – The Gossip (Original: Wham)

When You Were Young – The Noisettes (Original: The Killers)

Isobel – Xiu Xiu (Original: Bjork)

Transmssion – Hot Chip (Original: Joy Division)

Down In It – Tiga (Original: Nine Inch Nails)

Love Song – The Big Pink (Original: The Cure)

Islands in the Stream – Feist and The Constantines (Original: Dolly Parton and Kenny Rogers)

When Doves Cry – Brett Anderson (Original: Prince)

Method in Madness: frYars’ Dark Young Hearts

I feel like I’ve been waiting forever for London-based artist, frYars (real name: Ben Garrett) to release a full proper album. His two EPs, The Ides and The Perfidy (the latter of which I reviewed here), were fantastically dark and odd, and so I waited patiently for the debut album, Dark Young Hearts, which just released a few weeks ago, and like Patrick Wolf’s latest, was financially supported through Bandstocks. Half of the tracks on the record are actually ones I’ve heard before whether as part of EPs, or in the case of Visitors, as a free download earlier this year. Despite this pre-emption, I still really appreciate frYars’ brand of melodramatic and wonky narratives, especially since his voice is a rich, heady mixture of red wine and rohypnol, pleasantly beguiling and dangerous. And often as mad as a bag of obtuse angles. Sure, frYars could be accused of overproduction on this album, giving some of his older material a studio gloss, but I don’t think his music is of the lo-fi sort in the first place; independent should never be equated with lo-fi. His songs have always been on the pop side of the fence (perhaps pop as warped in a baroque funhouse mirror, but pop nonetheless), and the beauty of frYars’ music is where he takes you via the seemingly accessible chamber-electropop. Identities and motives are fluid and sometimes amoral, but the lyrics are captivating, and definitely not something you would find in regular, mainstream pop music. There’s a revelling in the macabre and the strange, which reminds me of the attraction of stories like Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast, a place where the rules are nonsensical, but necessary.

The album opens with Jerusalem, a track that features a wobbly, singsong chorus about moving in circles and causing a desert storm. It very well might be about Middle Eastern conflict, but then again, lines like “I say no to hitchhikers, but all the same I’ll love my neighbour” points to a more abstract set of ambivalent moral codes or criticism of moral relativism. The next song, The Ides, is the one that initially got me into frYars; it is an incredibly catchy plinking piano tune full of bizarre betrayals and near murders, sounding like a possessed music box. In fact, perfidy, ambiguous good/evil dynamics, death and militarism permeate the whole album with an inky fog, a darkness that is occasionally broken with the blinding light of maniacal musings. The unsettling surreality continues with Lakehouse, in which heavy, bassy synths bolster a tale of a lakehouse “built by the mighty for the weary and the hungry.” Though frYars sings lightly about a “gold country sun,” it, along with the lakehouse, feel like an enticing mirage as the music sucks you into its icy depths of numb forgetfulness. With lyrics like “You can sleep here with your soft drinks,” it becomes a Hansel and Gretel story for the twenty-first century.

Earlier this year, the following track, Visitors, and its music video were revealed as was the fact that Dave Gahan was involved. It skips along like laser double dutch as frYars’ high, wispy falsetto crashes into the gloom of Gahan’s lower register during the chorus: “I’ve got a sickness/I think I need your help tonight.” Something sinister is still afoot, but never explicit as he sings, “for the price of a human heart/it’s not that bad.” With another nod to The Ides, Of March is a frantic piece with quick, swishing guitars and persistent piano. fryars’ vocals match the frenetic atmosphere with his warbly, vicious tones throughout the verses, and as he belts out the line “I will go down with this ship tonight,” he sounds vindicated in some skewed sense of honour and blood-mist. And the object of his song doesn’t fare much better as he asks him/her to remember him as he/she commits suicide. The album takes an acoustic, Latin turn with A Last Resort, a track that uses the gentler, croony side of his voice to sing a twisted love song. Lyrics like “When your vessel’s going nowhere, it’s time to forget the sea/when the mind is a mushroom, but the words come easily” make the song seem like a psychedelic breakdown. A couple of minutes into it, the overdubbed vocals form a chorus that sounds like a host of delirious cherubim, and in the end, it’s rather soothing.

Then former Perfidy EP track, Novelist’s Wife, slips in with another soft vocal performance that adds to the taunting madness of the song. As I’ve noted in a previous post, this song is about a wife that bakes her husband’s Hungarian mistress in a pie and feeds it to him. Narrating from the point of view of the wife, frYars sounds quite glib as he tells the husband to stay in his k-hole while the wife would rather stick to ethanol. Leaving the drug-addled world of the novelist behind, the sound of falling bombs, funhouse organ, and a grungy bassline signal the beginning of Ananas Trunk Railway. The lyrics’ gleeful expectation of death is eventually extinguished by what sounds like a control panel going bezerk in a shower of beeps and squeals.

There’s another return to the Perfidy EP with Olive Eyes, one of the most unlikely dance tracks ever composed. Its groovy synth line creates a New Wave hit out of a strange story of incest and murder. The mini-drama ostensibly ends with the green-eyed son stabbing his father/uncle with mirth. However, I dare you not to sing along with it. Reaching further back to The Ides EP, Happy features loads of distant rambling vocals, like the babbling of an overloaded mind, as the music neatly matches with an ambling, shambolic mess of drumbeats and banging keys. Some scrambled vocals that sound like burbling, insane Daleks complete the disorientation. Amidst the stream-of-consciousness verses, some of my favourite lyrics about societal moral expectations and arbitrary rules can be found:

We wage wars like Pascal waged wagers,
and its on Pascal’s wager we send sergeant majors to fight,
it would be nice if we took his triangle,
and we could find new angles more violent and wonderful,
I was thinking of saving the animals,
but first we save people (not animals),
just ’cause they’re almost as rare as love through marriage,
do you sometimes wish that your siblings were miscarried?

And people made evil,
we decide what it is and decide what it’s not,
if you do things illegal,
you can be pretty sure that it would be allowed somewhere else,
but we’re happy people,
so there’s nothing wrong with the state of things,
if it’s making you happy,
then there’s nothing wrong with the state you’re in.

Anyone who can combine the mathematical and philosophical work of Blaise Pascal with commentary on moral relativity in a pop song is truly impressive. More betrayal and older material with the next track, Benedict Arnold. The bubbling synths and crisp snare make a rather dreamy ballad of the traitor who was “bad when backs were turned.” The record concludes with the soulful Morning, which surges like stars poking through twilight. Pushing like a delicate lullaby, frYars sings, “This is all we have time for.” From time to time, the song turns into a wailing gospel tune as he groans, “Get mama help/A babe is born,” and all the gloom becomes a spiritual re-birth.

Dark Young Hearts is a potentially bewildering pop record, but the deeper you fall into it, the more it comes to follow its own set of rules, a point about caprcious ethics well-made. The music can be as unpredictable as the lyrics, but also weirdly satisfying in its genre-bending. fryars is one of those artists with a perverse sense of storytelling and the ability to create a shadowy, self-contained world with a cast of odd, but memorable characters so well-defined that they make sense. In a modern world of uncertainty and irrationality, frYars has crafted his own Gormenghast-like island, which is secure in its own methodical madness.

Of March – frYars

Happy – frYars