From the Matador newsletter:

Mark Tranmer and Richard Roger Quigley from Salford near Manchester have created another chef d'œuvre of wistful reserved chamber pop. Their first album Seventeen Stars drew me in immediately after ten seconds of listening to the song pro-celebrity standing around and I wrote a glowing review for amazon.de which I later translated here in my old blog sax & sunshine.

The World Is Flat is full of outstanding tunes and lyrics (please feel free to suggest corrections, I didn't get all of them). It has a perfect flow. Up to now my album of the year. By far by the way.

In the past months I was a little fed up with current music and wanted to stop buying CDs. This album has kindled the fire again and now I am back into music.

The World Is Flat is a soundtrack to a film on a love gone wrong. Extremely romantic and irresistible for me. In one word: precious. Everything is simple about this music:

• the magic minimalistic tunes
• the sensitive striking words
• the soothing and captivating voice of Quigley

An intimate tender record I prefer to listen to with people who are very close or entirely on my own. Listening to it with strangers seems to be like an intrusion into emotional private territory. Almost frivolous in a sense.

It is one of those CDs I am afraid of ruining by playing it too often. I don’t mean the physical CD trace of course. Like all really good things in life be it sex, drugs, food or whatever this music has to be consumed in moderation to appreciate it for a long time.

The voice of Quigley and his lyrics are a very important part of this music. Gnac, ie Tranmer doing ambientish instrumentals on his own is not as thrilling.

The melancholic mood is close to Belle and Sebastian and Nick Drake but more mature and calm. If Nick Drake had lived a little longer and had had a broken up love story to sing about it would probably have sounded very much like this record.

In places the Montgolfier Brothers make me think of the baroque pop of Divine Comedy though their music is not as lush and orchestral. They don’t suffer from production overkill.

Purely instrumental music in a similar vein was made by Durutti Column though Vini Reilly doesn't have the tunefulness.

Beck who covered similar ground this year in Sea Change in comparison sounds tired and lifeless. A syrupy and sticky album, over-produced. Music just passing by, not holding the attention of the listener. A failed attempt to redo Harvest.

Coldplay, another inhabitant of this part of the musical landscape are even paler in comparison. I will never and actually don’t want to understand how a band with an insupportable falsetto singer with empty embarrassing lyrics and average tunes can have such a success as Coldplay. Whereas a nice intense voice coupled with simple but profound lyrics about relationship and breathtaking melancholic melodies stays an insider tip. That again reminds me of Nick Drake so much. I nevertheless hope and think that unlike Drake Tranmer and Quigley can live with their non-success.

A song by song account:

1 2.55 newbury It all starts with street noises again which segue into Quigley humming a light and sunny melody and the guitars and ambient synthesizer/keyboards slowly joining in. At the end a young woman with a strong Northern accent says

2 the understudy This is already slower and sets the theme of the album, the ending of a relation which was doomed from the beginning.

3 be selfish One of the highlights. It has this Cocteau Twins otherworldly night music feel. I find it astonishing that the melodic line is so simple and repeated about a million times without ever getting boring or annoying. In the beginning the guitars have this liquid cembalo sound. Together with the dominating piano they breathe a lightness into the music which is confronted by a certain gravity coming from the bass and synthesizer. The Montgolfier Brothers take all the time of the world to create a relaxed beautiful sentimental tune with a forward looking optimistic take on the situation.

4 the world is flat The title track and centerpiece. It starts as a calmer more settled guitar song. Rather down to earth and rational. Quigley sings of how the relation was meant to be.

5 the second takes forever A meandering instrumental. The piano plays a sort of scale up and down. The atmospheric acoustic guitars are wrapped around.

6 swings and roundabouts This is something like a crossover of a lullaby and a ballad. It starts with this simple musical box theme and then the bass kicks in and this daydream chorus comes on:

and it finishes with these rather mysterious lyrics with new age keyboard background

7 dream in organza Another intermezzo instrumental. An instrument sounding like an electric xylophone and later the piano are like colour blobs in a repetitive soundscape. Very nice background music.

8 i couldn't sleep, either A bukolic nostalgic song about the end of the relation. All which is left are memories and the question what went wrong.

9 think once more One of the most impressive instrumentals I have ever heard. Calm and with a simpleness of the melody reminding me of Satie though it has a very melancholic undertone. It must be one of the musical pieces with the most chord changes. In the first two minutes I counted about fifty. They sound like a briefly screeching door and add a human almost painful touch to the track. The repeated chord changes are like a never ending hiccup.

10 inches away A worthy closer in slow motion. The album condensed into one song. It sounds like watching a rose opening its petals in the morning. Beauty unfolding very slowly. Music and lyrics can only be referred to as perfect. The metronome which can be heard throughout the song gives the song this transient character. After the end of the lyrics the song turns into an instrumental with the tune blossoming in full bloom.

I have to quote the complete lyrics as they can't be split. A love song to the beloved who leaves you.

Cherchez la femme Yesterday Neu!'s first self-titled disc from 1972 arrived in the post with some other CDs which I couldn't listen to properly as I was too much immersed into the six tracks on the Neu! album. How could I miss out on that album before? It is absolutely stunning and didn't age at all after thirty years. A propos 1972, I just saw that cos from monkey puzzle is currently listening to Giant Sand's 62 seconds guitar freakout 1972 from their last real disc Chore of Enchantment. A song I didn't get neither but probably like because of that. When checking the database with my albums I found out that I had 36 (!) records from that year. 1972 was an amazing year for music: there was the first Big Star, Nick Drake's Pink Moon, Neil Young's Harvest, Lou Reed's first self-titled and Transformer, Genesis Foxtrot, Little Feat's Sailin' Shoes, Curtis Mayfield's Superfly, Joni Mitchell's For the Roses, Oregon's Music of Another Present Era, the first Modern Lovers, which was released three years later, the first Roxy Music, Exile on Main Street, Paul Simon's self-titled, Sun Ra's Space Is the Place and Velvet Underground's Live at Max's Kansas City was released.

Back to Neu!. What I said about Autechre's version of Weissensee a couple of days ago still holds nevertheless. The original which may well be the weakest track on the album doesn't grip me as much as the cover. It is extremely slow and sounds like dark ambient. Additionally there is the beginning of a sugar-sweet melody at around 1:20 which kind of destroys the track for me. It comes back later as well. That alluded to tune reminds me of Pink Floyd but I wouldn't know which album (maybe from Dark Side of the Moon? which came out two years later). I am pretty sure that this melody comes from Michael Rother, who became quite popular in Germany later with the romantic instrumental guitar/synth album Flammende Herzen and who didn't really fit into Klaus Dinger's Neu! with his rather conventional guitar playing. What actually is missing on that track is Klaus Dinger's endless constant drumming which became Neu!'s trademark and can be heard in all its trancelike glory on the 10 minute opener Hallogallo. It has been referred to as motorik but Dinger sees it not as machine-like at all but rather as a human beat. He talks about it in the extremely enlightening interview he gave to the Swedish magazine Pop in 1998:

Instead I called it "lange Gerade" or "endlose Gerade". It's a feeling, like a picture, like driving down a long road or lane. it is essentially about life, how you have to keep moving, get on and stay in motion. (lange, endlose Gerade = long, infinite straight line)

It wasn't by chance that Dinger gave one of his rare interviews to a Swedish magazine. Apparently Neu! and the Neu! beat were inspired a lot by a love story (actually the love of his life) Klaus Dinger had with a Swedish girl called Anita which started in the summer of 1971, to whom he also sang the last song on the album Lieber Honig (dear honey, but in German we don't usually use Honig as a term of endearment). It is one of the strangest vocal deliveries in music history. I couldn't find out what he sings (impossible to understand the words by listening only, they sound like children's gibberish). There is a later version on La Düsseldorf's last album Individuellos where the words are different. Dinger's voice on the Neu! version is hoarse and extremely high at the same time. It reminds me a little of Chet Baker singing but much less accomplished, more crude if you want. I found it hardly bearable at first listen as it is rather disembodied and false in places but I am getting used to it. At the end of Lieber Honig there is the sound of a rowing boat which can also be heard on Im Glück (In Happiness) including some people talking. One of them is Anita and the song tries to retain the moment of perfect harmony and bliss Dinger experienced in that Swedish summer in 1971. The long road trips in Sweden are probably also responsible for the Neu! beat in Hallogallo and Negativland. The second piece Sonderangebot is a sound collage with gong sounds and features the most avantgarde noises on the record. The outstanding track of the album for me is Negativland which later gave the name to the ironic experimental media music collective and foreshadows Einstürzende Neubauten with its drill sounds and probably the whole genre of industrial music. It is the hardest rocking song on the record.

What I like about Neu! is that they were not the typical Krautrock outfit like Amon Düül with their long stoned collective jams à la Grateful Dead or Tangerine Dream with their purely electronic soundscapes. Both these bands haven't aged well whereas Neu! as the name implies did something new. Their music is the missing link between Krautrock and what was later to come. The bridge between the then and now. They integrated an almost tribal but still modern repetitive rhythm into their music which is as fascinating now than it was then. And all songs on the first Neu! album are distinctly different and each one almost spawned a new genre of pop music. Further reading: Junkmedia on Neu! and Neu! 2. Michael Rother interview and Music for Mind & Pants ("The Shock of the Neu!") from Perfect Sound Forever. An interesting list with Julian Cope commenting on his 50 krautrock favourites and the feature The Guitarists of Krautrock.

Meta: By the way the Google search often leading to this site finally dropped to #27, Google seems quite unstable in its results after the dance, so though I intend to move away from blogger one day this probably won't happen too soon as I am much too lazy to do a new page somewhere else. Phil Ringnalda with a round-up of Blogging Ecosystems, i.e. programs which analyse the link structures in between blogs. In the ILM thread Plug your Blog you can find enough music blogs to read for the rest of the summer.

Montgolfier Brothers - The World is Flat (Poptones) was released yesterday. Their first album Seventeen Stars was one of my favourite records in 2000. In its intimacy and delicacy it conjures up the mood of Nick Drake's first album Five Leaves Left with more open space in it. Via DJ Martian I found a striking announcement of the new album by Pinnacle Entertainment: "Like its predecessor 'Seventeen Stars' (Poptones first ever release), The Montgolfier Brothers' second album 'The World is Flat' combines six vocal songs with four instrumentals, and was recorded and mixed in various flats in Manchester and Salford. Those after reference points might try Michael Nyman, Johann Pachelbel and the Durutti Column for the music and The Smiths, Momus and late 60s Sinatra for the lyrics. Hardly an album you'd reach for at a party, more one you'll visit when everyone else has left you alone and gone home." The new album has also been praised (by doomie who writes for the NME) at I Love Music.

Coming back

• Josh blog is back: Ideas for an unwritten review of the new Tom Waits CDs
• Two years after their last album Yo La Tengo released the underwater movie soundtrack The Sounds of the Sounds of Science recently. You can only order it via their website for $10 plus shipping. It consists of eight instrumental tracks to eight short films on underwater life by Jean Painlevé. The evolution of Yo La Tengo from Post Paisley Underground to noisy drone rock and then to the warm and mellow songs on And then Nothing... seems to have come to a logical end here. Yesterday morning I tried to listen to the new CD in the car but realised that it is definitely evening or night music. Too slow, too impressionistic, too soft (except the noisy "Liquid Crystals") in the morning. Some tracks are close to ambient but the drums always play an important role though Hubley's drumming is refrained and unobtrusive. When you think about it it seems quite a challenge to make music for a film on a world of silence. I think Yo La Tengo have succeeded here. The album is still growing on me. Yo La Tengo played the score live on tour last year while the films were screened. A live review is here. The album is reviewed in the Dusted Magazine. A long interview with the band about the project in the Independent Weekly.

I think I will give up the titles soon

• Luke known as Captain Fez in the tiny blogworld has been fired from his job as he blogged during working hours. Blog or job that is the question. And the terrible thing is, a blog which would be paid and could replace a job wouldn't be a blog anymore.
• I don't have to write my review of Wilco's phantastic Yankee Hotel Foxtrot anymore. It has been written by James Surowiecki in the New Yorker already: "But 'Yankee Hotel' is more about things holding together than about things falling apart. The sonic chaos heightens the sense of order that's embodied by the melodies and, ultimately, by Tweedy's voice." What is so amazing about this album is that despite its refined production with loads of sounds and instruments it is down to earth (how I love that expression) and simple. It is full of surprising bends. It is pop and experiment at the same time. I have been listening to it in my car stereo going to work (about 2x20 minutes per day) for about four weeks now (except one week of Tom Waits interlude) and I am still not tired of it. There is a lot of sun and a lot of darkness on that album. It is like real life.

Connecting to the outside world

• Guardian: Face it - punk was rubbish. Sure, it had energy and attitude. But punk's importance has been hugely exaggerated, says Nigel Williamson, who was there at its birth (via wherever you are). Mmm. Today I received the Warsaw CD with the early stuff of the band later to be known as Joy Division. The last five bonus tracks were recorded in July 1977 and they are punk as hell. Sounding like a garage version of the early Clash. Especially Ian Curtis shouts his head off. Hooky is already playing the tune (if there is one) with the bass. It was all there already. Ok except Morris magic drumming. The only official Joy Division release missing in my collection now is the Live at the Electric Circus EP from October 1977 with At a Later Date plus tracks by The Fall, The Buzzcocks and other punk bands I don't know. Any idea where I can get it? On CD if possible.
• Interesting graphical metasearch engine linking the result sites in a map: kartoo : les cartes de recherche, An example is "music blog" where Josh (unfortunately still busy in school and therefore on weblog vacation) who inspired me starting a weblog and me are on the same map. I don't know any of the other weblogs on that map though.
• German webloggers unite: Neu im Bloghaus: Bloggerkarte, dem Globe of Blogs nachempfundene schöne Darstellung deutscher Weblogs in einer Deutschlandkarte nach Bundesländern und Orten.

In my car stereo: Tom Waits - Alice (still growing on me)

Reviewing a review I received the new Wilco CD from Amazon this morning together with Houellebecq's first novel to exceed the 20 € shipping costs limit. Quite a good performance by Amazon. I had placed the order on Thursday 14h29, they sent it out yesterday 17h53 and it arrived this morning around 10. Even though I was not always happy with them in the past there is no doubt that Amazon is one of the best online shops. So right now I am listening to Wilco's Yankee Hotel Foxtrot for the third time. I had very high expectations concerning that album after what I had read in Badger's blog, at Pitchfork and in the German Rolling Stone. And I have to say that I am not disappointed. A rock album with a song mentioning Jesus (cf. the 3rd VU, the first two House of Loves, Cohen's 1st, Big Star's last, Tom Waits' "Bone Machine", Giant Sand's "Chore", Nirvana's "Unplugged" etc.) very often is a milestone. I was afraid that Tweedy's voice which I found a little feeble after 2-3 mp3s and some clips of Wilco songs I had listened to before would put me off but it doesn't at all. YHF is a real album which should be listened to from beginning to end. The last album in a similar vein I know was Blur's excellent somber "13" from 1999. Though YHF is a little softer and I don't know if Tweedy is coming to terms with the end of a relation like Albarn was. YHF is not about sunshine neither and seems very controlled in places. I haven't found a really weak track, the outstanding one after the first listens is obviously the pop gem "Heavy Metal Drummer" followed closely by the sentimental closer "Reservations" which hits a similar chord in me as "All Across the Universe" by The Beatles. The record has nothing to do with alt-country anymore which is a good thing in my eyes. It is slightly experimental guitar-driven pop with Jim O'Rourke (from Tortoise who is a full band member of Sonic Youth now) responsible for the mix and electronics.

Actually I am getting carried away here. I didn't want to write a review. How could I after only three listens. I wanted to comment on a review by one of the foremost rock critics, Greil Marcus who subtitled his latest "Real Life Rock Top 10" column in Salon: Wilco signify something... I am curious what uncle Greil will tell us about Wilco's long-awaited new album on CD, its message and the meaning of the music. The cover features photos of Chicago skyscrapers, Thanks a bunch I thought those were huts in the African bush. and the first four words, "I am an American," That sounds very promising. Like the beginning of an in-depth analysis of the lyrics. Go on Greil. are the same as those of Saul Bellow's 1953 "The Adventures of Augie March": Isn't he smart this man? He is not only an expert of rock but also of literature. Chapeau! "Chicago born," Bellow The connection to the cover. That's brilliant. said after a comma: "aquarium drinker," Wilco leader Jeff Tweedy says without one. That's what I call deep insight into rock. As a rock critic you have to be meticulous. How could anyone take you seriously if you'd skip a punctuation mark? The difference between literature and rock is a comma. It's easy. That must have taken a lot of scientific research. One small annotation: didn't Bellow write that? And didn't a character in the book say it? Didn't know Bellow said it as well. But I trust you Greil. Last question: did Bellow say the comma as well? But Augie March knew how to walk against the wind on the streets, to go right past you with such force you turned around and watched his back, wondering who he was -- The literature pope speaks. He knows a lot about me. Didn't know I would try to watch the back of Augie March. Usually backs don't turn me on. Never heard of that character neither. Have you? Do you watch backs? while Tweedy's singing, never strong, Objection, your honour! That is a subjective statement which is not founded on any evidence. I bet Tweedy sings better than you Mr Marcus. At least you have almost arrived to the object of your review, the music, now. here recedes into a dithering miasma apparently meant to signify thinking it all over, What a careful choice of exquisite words in the first half of the quote. I'll try to remember "miasma" for my next review. It sounds very cool and clever. Even after looking it up it doesn't make sense to me here. Plus the key to the interpretation of the record. Marcus can read minds. But isn't too sure. Why "apparently"? If I understand well, according to Marcus with his way of singing Tweedy wants to show that he isn't too sure neither. Of what? Of anything! That's a strong philosophical statement, but a genius like Marcus can't be wrong, can he? plus sound effects apparently meant to signify the modern world. That's one "apparently" too much, isn't it? Marcus is losing the ground under his feet. But we are in the modern world. So maybe that's understandable. How old are you Greil? In other words, it isn't against the law to redo "Revolver", 100% agreement here. That could have been the beginning of a nice adequate praise of this album, but I am a dreamer, I guess. YHF as the "Revolver" of the zero years would have been a little over the top nevertheless, I suppose. but that doesn't mean it's a good idea. Especially if you're an American. And you record in Chicago. That's missing, Mr Marcus. It would have been so nice to close the circle.

Thank you very much for this amazing piece of critic Mr Marcus. I think you have almost arrived to the perfect rock review here. You could just try to write a little less about the music next time, couldn't you?

Howe Gelb: Confluence My contribution to Freaky Trigger's second third birthday in 102 Beats That, 102 words on Howe Gelb's Confluence album from last year: "Howe Gelb has a twisted mind. In his world capacity, dilemma and gazelle are sisters, conformity is a saint and the 'blue marble girl shoves the day into the night'. These surreal lyrics are accompanied by Howe’s bluesy guitar, drums, bass and occasionally farfisa, pump organ and wurlitzer piano. The music is a laid-back blend of country, bar jazz, blues and rock. Its rough charm opens itself only slowly to the listener. In the exemplary lo-fi 'Hatch'delays and breaks lead to the unstoppable pedal steel finish. The album ends in a three guitars desert storm: Howe throws the sand in our ears."

The real question is not whether machines think but whether men do. (B.F.Skinner) As promised some impressions of Califone's Sometimes Good Weather Follows Bad People Califone are from Chicago. In the recent past Chicago has become known for avant-garde rock music made by groups like Tortoise, The Sea and the Cake, Gastr del Soul etc. But whereas those bands till the field of mainly instrumental electronic rock music Califone blend American rural styles like blues, bluegrass and country to create their highly original experimental music . They make me think a little bit of the Chicago Blues, the electrified tamed urban version of the original animalistic Delta Blues. Tortoise and co. on the other hand often indulge in masturbatory 70s jam sessions reminding me often of l'art pour l'art. In one sentence Califone's music is very human and has got a soul whereas the music of those other bands from Chicago feels sterile and artificial in comparison. That is not to say that what Califone is doing is easy listening. They decompose the heritage of American folk music with percussion and synthesizer. Most songs are slowly flowing rivers with Rutili's restrained mumbled sprechgesang accentuating the relaxed atmosphere. Like the Beta Band in slow-motion. Electric Fence is a good example of their music. Trembling programmed effects merge with a rattling steel drum sounding like the beating of rusty wings, keyboards and a distorted guitar. Lyrics like "you sleep like an angel with sparrows beneath your eyelids" add to the mystery. The percussive sound collage to hush a sick transmission involving a trash can and a bag of nails(!) as instruments on the other hand is close to things Tom Waits has done on Bone Machine. Occasionally Rutili's voice becomes nerve-racking (st.martha let it fold) but overall it fits very well with the music. The versatility and the imaginativeness of the band is shown on tracks like down the eisenhower sun up w/mule where the guitars could be taken for sitars and the listener feels like being on a fair. This record is like a cashew nut, hard to crack but very nutritive and addictive once the shell is opened.