Twenty Terrifying Songs
Twenty Songs, 30th July 2006
Wow. How late is this. Bah. I'm also doing this write up on the back of a wash out night. With early shift hours to blame I totally missed the Marquis Cha Cha night last night at the Thursday regular. My dancing partner and I were supposed to be arriving en mask (ho ho ho) but instead I slept on the sofa in front of Goodness Gracious Me. The lateness of this also contributes to the fact it was hastily completed although, to be fair, you can't tell.
Not least because we crack on with Harvey Danger. Harvey Danger. One of my first "who are they" purchases with Flagpole Sitta back when the NME could do little wrong. Not a complete classic but a smile inducing bit of nonsensica and randomly played last Friday Night. Crazy.
been around the world and found that only stupid people are breeding, the cretins cloning and feeding and i don't even own a tv
Last night after waking up and realising I'd missed the night I saw Van She on MTV2 and the song was pretty weak. Their remix of Klaxons was pretty weak too. However, The Presets Are You The One? (Van She NYC Rush Mix) is pretty damn hot. It makes their single a pretty complete package. We can't say we loved so entirely the recently purchased Smalltown America Public Service Broadcast 7 compilation. It was good though, and Neat People were one of the standout artists thereon with Standing Next To Rose, a quirky brit-pop track in a quite contemporary mould.
Less immediately the now are Amusement Parks On Fire, one of those plough their own furrow acts. We're waiting for their latest album to come into our local HMV but in the meantime we've been going back and enjoying Blackout, their last EP (I believe). We're not waiting with such baited breath for The Cooper Temple Clause's next LP, except to see if they've managed to inject a bit of energy into their increasingly brit-pop radio friendly mildly dissatisfied new material. The closest we've heard so far is Damage, which as a bit of bite, the rest are a far cry from classic pissed off Cooper. Unlike Serena Maneesh, who inhabit a far from green and pleasant land even in their most serene moments. Beehiver II isn't one of their more serene moments, though. Nope.
On a more friendly note we have the inoffensive Mumm-Ra, who Panthra would have ripped to shreds ages ago on this form, with the mildly infectious grower Song B, lead from their recently EP. Not the best song ever but an interesting start to our acquaintanceship with the band. Also in the bottom twenty are The Knife with We Share Our Mothers' Health, again here in no small part due to my dancing partner's love of the band. There are a few too many moments in this that sound wholesale lifted from other songs and periods for our liking but the song on a whole is a good one and you can't help but love that vocal delivery.
Which can also be said of Lovvers, who we love in general, thanks to be just that little bit rawer than everything else. In a strictly still-beating, dripping with blood, scaring your sister kind of way. I think we've settled on A Good Book being our favourite from An Impossible Object but that could still change yet. Of the few songs we've heard of The Twilight Sad Untitled was the first - the first of a series of untitled tracks, to be fair - and still remains the theme tune because we're in love with the way he says a strong, father, figure, and with a heart of gold. a loving mother. a loving mother. Could anything be so idyllic and so set to crumble? The perfect family portrait.
Next up is Doloroso with High Times In Middle Management (Simian Mobile Disco Remix). Apparently Doloroso include an ex Simian member. However, Doloroso are not anything like the progressive, future Simian that Simian Mobile Disco embody and this remix by their former bandmates is far and away the best thing we've heard with Doloroso taking artist credit. Ripping up from that we get the MASSIVE Terror Danjah production job Cock Back V1.2, featuring the likes of Hyper and D Double E. Whatever happened to grime? I was hoping by now I'd be able to get singles like this from HMV. Bah.
Speaking of v1.2, the first remix on The Presets single is Are You The One? (Simian Mobile Disco Remix) and in here at eight you can imagine our love of it. It's not as meaty as the original, it doesn't have the lurgie, but it certainly drop some mad digitial science and flicks little bytes of off-disco joy at us with certainty. Which certainly can't be said for Low, who could start at one end of a disco and not make it to the other by the time everyone else had packed up and left - or at least, that's what they were like circa our favourite work of theirs, Trust. One of the standouts from that, (That's How You Sing) Aazing Grace came to us in a dream last week and thus finds itself in the Twenty. Purely breathtaking minimalist downtempo. Yum.
We had a few issues with Kano's album but there was a time when he could do nothing wrong, at all. It's the voice, it's the flow, it's the lyrics, it's the attitude, he just gets away with it all. We Have A Problem isn't the sharpest production he's rhymed over but it's still a dark tune and he's still a hot MC. More soon, we hope. As we go into the top five, the same can be said for punk funk Glasgow merchant Mark Hex, whose gutteral groove and DIY sound on Sorry (For Nothing) pitch him as circa 2004/5 but who is good enough that, if we'd heard this then, we'd still like it now so, effectively, we're just making up for lost time. We look forward to hearing more from the unsigned artist with nothing but this Public Broadcast inclusion on wider release.
Number 4 in the top five is fittingly called, or not called as the case may be, Untitled #4 and is once again by masters of no titles The Twilight Sad. It's another meaty, drenched clarion call of indie post rock flavours and drone, this time weighing in at nine minutes and immediately finding itself as one of our favourite songs of theirs and, frankly, of the moment. Similarly excellent but slightly more of a slow burner (although Untitled #4 sounds like slow fire) is Hot Chip's superb Boy From School, included here because of the single which also features a staggeringly big remix by Erol Alkan. We stuck the original here though cuz it's the real winner.
We had no bones in including the ¡Forward, Russia! Eighteen (RollercoasterProject Remix), though, as it's pretty collosal in a completely different way. Rather than - as average remixers think is the end of the story - just adding to the existing song, it's strips it right the way back to one or two building blocks and does it's own thing. In this case using those few building blocks and building and building and building until by the end you're in danger of never seeing the sun again under an avalanche of vocals and spirals of stretched guitar samples. Wonderful.
Which brings us to our apogee this month, the spectacularly gruesome death by dancefloor of The Presets Are You The One?, a track so unmentionably wide of girth it had to appear in three different guises in this week's Twenty. Another one dropped on us from a great height by our dancing partner this one stole legs from a cemetary and proceeded to wreak havoc all over our consciousness. It's horrible, frankly. Horrible like a night in a haunted house with three people you're really scared of each of whom has recently been mutilated. Like that, except while you're on LSD and prepared, frankly, to dance to anything. Like all of that, except without the horror cliches or lazy drug references. Just. Brilliant!
Wow. How late is this. Bah. I'm also doing this write up on the back of a wash out night. With early shift hours to blame I totally missed the Marquis Cha Cha night last night at the Thursday regular. My dancing partner and I were supposed to be arriving en mask (ho ho ho) but instead I slept on the sofa in front of Goodness Gracious Me. The lateness of this also contributes to the fact it was hastily completed although, to be fair, you can't tell.
Not least because we crack on with Harvey Danger. Harvey Danger. One of my first "who are they" purchases with Flagpole Sitta back when the NME could do little wrong. Not a complete classic but a smile inducing bit of nonsensica and randomly played last Friday Night. Crazy.
been around the world and found that only stupid people are breeding, the cretins cloning and feeding and i don't even own a tv
Last night after waking up and realising I'd missed the night I saw Van She on MTV2 and the song was pretty weak. Their remix of Klaxons was pretty weak too. However, The Presets Are You The One? (Van She NYC Rush Mix) is pretty damn hot. It makes their single a pretty complete package. We can't say we loved so entirely the recently purchased Smalltown America Public Service Broadcast 7 compilation. It was good though, and Neat People were one of the standout artists thereon with Standing Next To Rose, a quirky brit-pop track in a quite contemporary mould.
Less immediately the now are Amusement Parks On Fire, one of those plough their own furrow acts. We're waiting for their latest album to come into our local HMV but in the meantime we've been going back and enjoying Blackout, their last EP (I believe). We're not waiting with such baited breath for The Cooper Temple Clause's next LP, except to see if they've managed to inject a bit of energy into their increasingly brit-pop radio friendly mildly dissatisfied new material. The closest we've heard so far is Damage, which as a bit of bite, the rest are a far cry from classic pissed off Cooper. Unlike Serena Maneesh, who inhabit a far from green and pleasant land even in their most serene moments. Beehiver II isn't one of their more serene moments, though. Nope.
On a more friendly note we have the inoffensive Mumm-Ra, who Panthra would have ripped to shreds ages ago on this form, with the mildly infectious grower Song B, lead from their recently EP. Not the best song ever but an interesting start to our acquaintanceship with the band. Also in the bottom twenty are The Knife with We Share Our Mothers' Health, again here in no small part due to my dancing partner's love of the band. There are a few too many moments in this that sound wholesale lifted from other songs and periods for our liking but the song on a whole is a good one and you can't help but love that vocal delivery.
Which can also be said of Lovvers, who we love in general, thanks to be just that little bit rawer than everything else. In a strictly still-beating, dripping with blood, scaring your sister kind of way. I think we've settled on A Good Book being our favourite from An Impossible Object but that could still change yet. Of the few songs we've heard of The Twilight Sad Untitled was the first - the first of a series of untitled tracks, to be fair - and still remains the theme tune because we're in love with the way he says a strong, father, figure, and with a heart of gold. a loving mother. a loving mother. Could anything be so idyllic and so set to crumble? The perfect family portrait.
Next up is Doloroso with High Times In Middle Management (Simian Mobile Disco Remix). Apparently Doloroso include an ex Simian member. However, Doloroso are not anything like the progressive, future Simian that Simian Mobile Disco embody and this remix by their former bandmates is far and away the best thing we've heard with Doloroso taking artist credit. Ripping up from that we get the MASSIVE Terror Danjah production job Cock Back V1.2, featuring the likes of Hyper and D Double E. Whatever happened to grime? I was hoping by now I'd be able to get singles like this from HMV. Bah.
Speaking of v1.2, the first remix on The Presets single is Are You The One? (Simian Mobile Disco Remix) and in here at eight you can imagine our love of it. It's not as meaty as the original, it doesn't have the lurgie, but it certainly drop some mad digitial science and flicks little bytes of off-disco joy at us with certainty. Which certainly can't be said for Low, who could start at one end of a disco and not make it to the other by the time everyone else had packed up and left - or at least, that's what they were like circa our favourite work of theirs, Trust. One of the standouts from that, (That's How You Sing) Aazing Grace came to us in a dream last week and thus finds itself in the Twenty. Purely breathtaking minimalist downtempo. Yum.
We had a few issues with Kano's album but there was a time when he could do nothing wrong, at all. It's the voice, it's the flow, it's the lyrics, it's the attitude, he just gets away with it all. We Have A Problem isn't the sharpest production he's rhymed over but it's still a dark tune and he's still a hot MC. More soon, we hope. As we go into the top five, the same can be said for punk funk Glasgow merchant Mark Hex, whose gutteral groove and DIY sound on Sorry (For Nothing) pitch him as circa 2004/5 but who is good enough that, if we'd heard this then, we'd still like it now so, effectively, we're just making up for lost time. We look forward to hearing more from the unsigned artist with nothing but this Public Broadcast inclusion on wider release.
Number 4 in the top five is fittingly called, or not called as the case may be, Untitled #4 and is once again by masters of no titles The Twilight Sad. It's another meaty, drenched clarion call of indie post rock flavours and drone, this time weighing in at nine minutes and immediately finding itself as one of our favourite songs of theirs and, frankly, of the moment. Similarly excellent but slightly more of a slow burner (although Untitled #4 sounds like slow fire) is Hot Chip's superb Boy From School, included here because of the single which also features a staggeringly big remix by Erol Alkan. We stuck the original here though cuz it's the real winner.
We had no bones in including the ¡Forward, Russia! Eighteen (RollercoasterProject Remix), though, as it's pretty collosal in a completely different way. Rather than - as average remixers think is the end of the story - just adding to the existing song, it's strips it right the way back to one or two building blocks and does it's own thing. In this case using those few building blocks and building and building and building until by the end you're in danger of never seeing the sun again under an avalanche of vocals and spirals of stretched guitar samples. Wonderful.
Which brings us to our apogee this month, the spectacularly gruesome death by dancefloor of The Presets Are You The One?, a track so unmentionably wide of girth it had to appear in three different guises in this week's Twenty. Another one dropped on us from a great height by our dancing partner this one stole legs from a cemetary and proceeded to wreak havoc all over our consciousness. It's horrible, frankly. Horrible like a night in a haunted house with three people you're really scared of each of whom has recently been mutilated. Like that, except while you're on LSD and prepared, frankly, to dance to anything. Like all of that, except without the horror cliches or lazy drug references. Just. Brilliant!