A Distorted Reality.

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The Veils MySpace

Finn Andrews is a revelation: throughout the backcatalogue of The Veils’ material, he’s always managed to produce a variety in his vocals pretty much unmatched by their genre’s peers.  From warbles to cracking of the voice to animalistic screams, there’s always been that little spice in their music to make them instantly separable from would-be contemporaries: Sun Gangs is no exception.

The introductory track, Sit Down by the Fire, starts with the delicate tinkling of piano keys and the lightest of percussion: this combination soon to be met by a warbling Andrews. In comes the full band, and with full effect: the plodding percussion so typical of the Veils is soon introduced, but not in a manner reminiscent of any of their prior work: there’s more of a seeming purpose to it. Rather than taking a back seat as it had in prior efforts, the percussive element of the music is brought to the fore, and with a wonderful effect of creating a sense of minimalism admist the complexities of multitracked music. Sun Gangs, named (quite obviously) in a fit of eponymism, is a step down in tempo and demontrates further Andrews’ range: fragility being the face card here, replete with the most endearing of vocal faults. Piano and bass lines lead these most wonderful of flaws into a simple, yet somehow rousing, chorus of ‘Where I am going you can’t save me.’

The Letter and Killed by the Boom are the more typical fare of hypnotic guitar mixed with prominent percussive instrumentation, yet still find a niche of their own through their somewhat innovative use varying tones to accompany the state of the vocals perfectly: the guitar manages to somehow flit from sounding angry one moment to fragile another; distortion and delay shown to be the most useful of tools for creating moods. It Hits Deep is probably the weakest track on the album and may well have only served as a vocal masturbatory act for Andrews: whilst his ability to shift moods in tone is admirable (I may have made my appreciation clear by now), this track just seems to labour upon this one trick, when it’s clearly apparent that the band are a pony of multiple finesses.

The vivacity and sheer energy of the band are once again adroitly demonstrated by Three Sisters: the resonance of the guitars amidst a minimal drum pattern create a wonderful depth for the wails of Andrews to find a home in. In a horribly incoherent lack of foresight, The House She Lived In brings the reader back down to a low-tempo state with a shock and really does rather interrupt the flow of the album: even if it is a delicate and (dare I say it) ‘pretty’ song with male-female multi-layered vocals in the chorus creating a warm atmosphere.

Scarecrow, however, does flow well on from this with simple, high guitar notes accompanying a subtle   in a delicate mesh. Larkspur is the peak of the album: its instrumentation is simply divine and Andrews’ voice reaches each and every one of its multiple facets and the music touching on every one of the Veils’ disparate influences. The song is almost post-rockish in scope and the intensity of its build up and break down amidst the screams of ’something’s got a hold of me.’ Begin Again ends the album well and with balance: whilst less texturally thick than Sit down by the Fire, it has some deal of symmetry with it and serves to round off the experience of the album as a whole.

Truly, this is definitely a peak of 2009 thus far: no other band captures my imagination quite the like The Veils, especially with their unique brand of ‘indie’ which takes a little from everything within the confines of a genre which lacks definition. They’re a wonderful way to find eclecticism in a single place.

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Honesty and earnestness: two qualities missing from mainstream music in this current day and age with emphasis being put on what would sell well rather than that which matters: heart and motivation. What we have here is most definitely a return to these ideals of truth in art; coming from a band whose tagline is ‘commercially unviable since 2000.’ Perhaps a pedant would point out a possible irony and hypocrisy over them releasing an album for commercial consumption, as they have here with Lighting and Electrical, but it is their first, and they have yet to be tainted by the allure of the grandeur of life of rock stars. This is simple, honest folk music with no purpose other than artistic expression. It is pure.

The initial sole guitar chord strums of Old Souls are the first sign of the style to be demonstrated on the album: minimalist yet effective accompaniment to heavenly vocals. The harmonies of dual vocals over this simplistic chord strumming and pedal-steel plucking create a calm, almost serene, soundscape, with its termination into a sole female voice in the outro being a soul-wrenching way to go about things (of course, this could just be my predilection towards female vocals).

Dragonfly only has one thing in common with Old Souls, and that being in the use of an acoustic guitar. A new dynamic of male-female dual vocals is added, and comes close to sounding playful amidst the tales of indifference, accidents and modern communication. The introduction of electric guitar and percussion in this track also goes a certain way to showing them to be more than one-trick ponies. Sharpening a Blade is a wonderful song demonstrating willful separation from an ex-partner in a non-cliché manner, with the duality of acoustic and electric guitars being shown once again in its full glory.

Feelin’ Blue starts in the downtempo, quiet manner which has become expected of the music of Friends of the Stars by this point in the album, but slowly develops into a forceful (by their standards) song of devotion in the wake of pseudo-depression. It is really quite wonderful – the voices and instruments blend to form three minutes, eighteen seconds of perfection.

Nobody’s Out There serves to show the sheer range and skill on offer from the one female vocalist: her vibrato when sustaining notes is eccentric yet ever so endearing, and just furthers the lovesick message of the song. The (Out of) Jail Fire shows a marked departure from the tone of the album thus far: uptempo and bright, as opposed the previous downtempo subtlety, whilst still telling a tale of love lost. The male vocals and music here are somewhat reminiscent of Tim Kasher’s work with The Good Life – that, coming from me, is a very favourable comparison. Fork in the Road continues in this vein, and continues to draw possible conclusions most favourable. The next track, Been Down, returns to the male-female dual vocals and simplicity of the rest of the album: and it is a most welcome return to the previous beauty.

Monday Morning is another song with beautiful female vocals over simple, effective guitar strumming and plucking; and Why Are There Movies of Jane Seymour? ends the album on a high note: this one songs demonstrates everything wonderful about the band: honesty, earnestness, simplicity, paradoxical dichotomy – a certain complexity in simplicity. I hope that success finds them.

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People just have to try to bend the barriers of genres of music, don’t they? It makes the job of any would-be music critic infinitely more difficult: you immediately can’t pigeonhole bands to be a complete snob or to express your indie cred anymore. Here, with All the Pictures, a new monster is born: a blend of folk, electronica and pop unlike all such blends I’ve heard before. Nuances of the music of Patrick Wolf, Get Cape Wear Cape Fly, Four Tet and even the playful eccentricity of Kid Carpet can be seen in the delightful music on display.
Even so much as the opening bar first track on the album (Fingers) lets you know what you’re in for over the course of the I Have A Brother! album: guitar lines bordering on the twee of early Death Cab for Cutie songs lead you in to a song of the most quaint of vocal deliveries and varied instrumentation smacking of influences which I have already mentioned; however, the music has a certain quality all of its own – it’s both playful and serious; dark and light.
The next two songs on the album, The Deaf Boy’s Dad and Pretty Green Shoes tell more sombre tales, and the music reflects this whilst remaining generally uptempo. Twice more, a lack of inhibition with experimentation with varying timbres and textures is shown: perhaps so much so to demonstrate what could almost be a disdain for the now almost ‘standard guitar + bass + drums + whiney, accented vocals = music’ formula so many bands are seen to follow nowadays. All the Pictures break from this mould and aspire for better, more noble things. It is music for the love of music, and it shows.
Kings is a song of, once again, dramatic instrumentation, with a slight bias towards synthesiser parts reminiscent of the toy keyboards we’ve all had at some point: they provide a lovely hook to an already excellent song. For JFK, For You is a nice demonstration of All the Pictures’ sampling ability and love of simplistic yet catchy melodies. It also serves as an interlude and part introduction for the next track Fish.
Most definitely my ‘stand out’ track of the album, Fish starts with a hook which won’t let go and features such memorable and (as much as it pains me to use the adjective) ‘sweet’ lyrics such as ‘if I had the money, I would buy you the world; but I don’t, so I steal it instead’ in combination with tambourine percussion and keyboards sharp enough to cut through the drumbeat is enough to make this song become an instant favourite of anyone with a heart. Catherine of Aragon is much the same as far as poppy hooks are concerned: they latch into your brain in an almost viral manner and never let go. Never.
Fish Reprise is indeed little more than a repetition of the instrumental themes of Fish, but knowing my thoughts on the original, it’s an easy conclusion to make that that didn’t bother me in the slightest. The Man Who Saved the World is the most instrumentally thick of the album’s 11 songs, but it suits the almost vehement nature of the vocals most well. From its pleasant start, the song gradually builds up over the first two minutes to form an almighty crescendo, and then declines again to the end of the song. It’s as close as this album gets to ‘shock-and-awe’ tactics to maintain the audience’s interest, but it most definitely works.
Hymn for the Titanic is another small instrumental track most befitting of the type of music on display, and introduces Smile! Smile! Smile Today!, the final track of the album, with great splendour. The song itself is strong: very strong. It’s not one of those final tracks which will be forgotten due to its monotony and the listener’s decline in concentration: if yours had declined, it would be pulled back by the upbeat, engaging and (most importantly) danceable nature of this fine display of Birmingham creativity. It’s twee, it’s happy: it’s everything that you want from folky electronica. It’s the future, and I hope it doesn’t go by unseen.

Even Flowers Kill’s MySpace

You have to love a band who can reference pop (or otherwise) culture, and do it well: Graf Orlock made their entire fame on it. Coventry’s Even Flowers Kill begin, on paper, in very good books with me: with an EP titled in reference to the enigmatic Schrödinger’s Cat and a Fight Club reference in the title of I am Jack’s Smirking Revenge. The music, from its offset, is no disappointment either: Ruth has Information That Will Destroy You starts with delicate candour – a sonar-esque sound is emitted from what I can only assume to be an effects-laden guitar or synth, whilst a five-note lead part is played above it. After forty seconds, a gentle ascension in volume reaches its peak and is met with a gut-wrenching scream amidst the introduction of pounding guitar chords and drums. A second of chaos, and the prior delicacy is restored. And again. And again. This is repetition, but not repetitive: the juxtaposition of heavy and soft serves merely to keep the listener guessing as to the intention of the band, and fortunately for the impatient, this is soon made clear. Chugging rhythm parts intertwine with the smooth lead vocals and more harsh background screaming. It’s a rich, complex texture befitting of a band labelling themselves as ‘experimental’. Fast-paced, technical drumming is demonstrated throughout, and never seems to let up. There is an almost ska-like instrumental section at around 2 and a half minutes into the song, which the lets into the viscerally of the song prior to this point.

I Love You Kerry McKenna, Please Come Home is immediate. To say the least. In fact, immediacy may be too loose a quality to use to describe the sheer intensity and suddenness of the musical onslaught which comes from the outset. A scream-chant dichotomy is established ridiculously quickly and takes the form of  a question-answer-question-answer dynamic rhythmically. It is divine noise; it is a waking call to the gods themselves. Sensitivity is not a quality which this song is devoid of however: the silky lead vocals make an appearance again, and it is Good. We face another transition into the heavier side of the band’s music once again, and another question-answer session is set-up between smooth and hoarse. An Envy-alike talking vocal session finds a home here, and it fits so well with the pauses in guitar playing.
Dick Wang is a Stinking Liar: a scream followed by the almost archetypal shredding of guitars into harmonics which can only be considered unholy. It’s really a horrible sound, but one with an almost pitiful appeal. Once again, we see the ever-transitory movements between heavy and soft; smooth and grainy. It has to be said that this song is truly the weakest on the album, with no real innovation present, but it’s still pleasant to listen to, even if one does feel that one has heard it all before. Machiavelli vs. The Little Prince is a step back onto the Path of Righteousness for the band: slight syncopation in rhythm and bright, trebly guitar leads introduce the cacophony which is bound to come. And when it comes, it truly does come: it comes with no ability to relent. Screams, bass drums, deep riffs: they all find a home here. A chant which can only be described as ‘epic’ develops and carries the song along to its conclusion, even in its absence. Clever little lead parts come into and out of hearing with a technical bombasticity bordering on the pretentious.

I am Jack’s Smirking Revenge caused me to become Jack’s sense of glee and mirth: blending technicality and brute force will do that for me. And I think that there’s an accordion in there. Whilst some of this EP borders on the hackneyed and overdone, there’s more than enough innovation to tide anyone over, and more than enough to make them winners in my eyes.

Crash Repeat’s MySpace

‘Synthesiser with a predilection for arpeggiated leads seeks like-minded vocalist and overdriven guitar for good company, good fun and maybe more.’

The ungodly combination that this Lonely Hearts ad promises is the conceptual embodiment of Crash Repeat. Trebles meet bass with no room for a middle ground: this breed of electronic experimentation has no room for middle grounds. As well as the synthesised beats, the vocal delivery serves to act as a percussive device: the staggered annunciation of syllables makes the vocals both bold in terms of message as well as their role as an instrument. Superbass is a song of huge sonic proportions: a gloriously fast-paced percussion backbone meets with synthetic oscillations pitch-bent to within a metaphorical inch of their tolerances. Spinner is a song of a dirtier persuasion: nothing is clean – distortion is king here, with even glitched overtones. The vocals truly become an instrument here: they are far too quick to be comprehensible and it is wonderful – the texture is kept thick, rich and unique. Trigger is like an 8-bit flashback: Spartan synth lines bring back memories of a misspent youth with a moustachioed rotund Italian plumber; memories tainted by the distortion and drive present here, but a present enriched by it.

This is my welcome to Birmingham’s future Aphex Twin.

The Winter League MySpace

Instrumental and minimalist music are two genres which are somewhat of a taboo in certain circles: it’s seen by far too many to be the case that music has to be immediate; music has to be loud; music has to be fast. The Winter League pretty much serve to define the veritable opposites of all of the above ‘requirements.’ Here was see progression, subtlety and low-tempo music executed with a sense of freedom which could be considered irresponsible. Nods towards Efterklang abound through their use of esoteric percussion and almost choral vocals. Even at their most monotone, the vocals are expressive beyond that of many bands/artists generally accepted to have music defined as capable of eliciting emotion. Far from one trick ponies, The Winter League also compose music to suit film, and do so with a great competency. If folky, indie-esque minimalism is your bag, The Winter League are definitely to be your cup of tea.

Website.
CTTS MySpace.

Download (Megaupload)

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A lone whisper leads into shamanic chanting in a  rhythm which is to a become a motif throughout the album: even from the fifty-five second long introduction track, it’s quite apparent that this is not to be ‘yet-another’ ‘hardcore’ album from a band of talentless hacks with more Boss DS-1s than sense. This gentle start is brutally cut short by the first appearance of Drew Speziale’s vocals at the beginning of Same Shade as Concrete: the spoken words ‘rejoice, rejoice!’ make way for the cacophony of noise that is Circle Takes the Square’s rhythm guitar tone. Male and female screaming pass over one another with little care for conventional harmonisation, but it sounds beautiful in terms of an almost esoteric passion. Guitar lines vary between the urgent and the elegant with ferocity and an almost loving care in equal measure to form a song both experimental enough and of enough traditional hardcore stock to satiate snobs and stalwarts alike.

Crowquill is a song much in the same vein as Same Shade as Concrete, with lyrical highlights dotted actross its sonic landscape: it’s status as a metasong is ensured by the lines ‘nothing’s quite so pure as the written word’ and ‘nothing so puerile as meter and rhyme’. Drew and Kathy’s vocals once again come into their own, with Drew’s harshness melding wonderfully with the relatively cleanliness of Kathy’s muted screams. In the Nervous Light once again shows CTTS’ predilection for the blending of the harsh and soft with little care taken for consistence. Around half-way into the track, a harsh, cat-like yell from Kathy shows excellently the broadest end of their hardcore influence; Drew’s vocals also show an uncharacteristic turn in this song: they take an approach of sprechgesang for a short time leading to the heaviest part of the album yet. Their musical dichotomies and lack of a gradient between heavy and light make for an unpredictable yet rewarding sonic experience.

Interview at the Ruins is somewhat of a radical departure from the rest of the album thus far. What appears to be piano resonance leads into the playing of a single clean guitar and piano; and from their drums are introduced with the tell-tale bass-dominance of Jay Wynne’s drumming. Screaming is introduced soon enough, as well as an overdriven electric guitar: this, whilst similar in terms of instrumentation to the earlier songs, is a different sound; one more laid back and reflective. No eccentric chord sequences: just pretty lead playing amidst drone-esque chanting of ‘a murmur from the ruins echoes softly as the roots undo, and the branch becomes’ towards the end of the song. The motif introduced during the introduction rears its head again; and it’s that which makes this album special: a sense of concept. Track five, Non-Objective Portrait of Karma, carries on with the theme of not pandering to any expectation which may have resulted from the prior half of the album: Godspeed!-like drone introduces the discernible playing of a lone guitar, then bass, then vocals, then drums. The gradual increase in tempo of guitar playing is met to the beat by Speziale’s talking-come-screaming, and this synergy between vocals and instrumentation is met further by Kathy Coppola.

Kill the Switch boasts the potentially dubious honour of being the longest track on the album: it risks being called overwrought or overlong. Fortunately, it is neither and could be considered as a song of several movements: initial brutality and immediacy making may for a short instrumental interlude further moving into a passage of question-and-answer vocals from both Speziale and Coppola. The theme of rebirth put across by ‘I know it’s all been done before, I want to do it again’ is truly inspirational amidst the context of insistent drum beats and guitar chords. A Crater to Cough in sees the ultimate return of that motif in an almost post-rocky interpretation: accompanied by trebly guitars with the slightest of delay applied to their playing. This introduces an initial attack of Pelican-like playing to serve as the background for the vocal battle of both Speziale and Coppola.

This album is incredibly cohesive, if only for the reappearance the first thing you hear throughout the album; and it’s both better and worse for it. The use of such a motif allows for the conceptualisation of the album as being about the birth and rebirth of character and the quest for self-realisation, which is greta if you really want to hear an album. However, if you’re merely listening to it passively, it does bring with it the feeling of deja entendu. In spite of this, the album is still magnificent instrumentally and vocally and truly a milestone in terms of 00’s hardcore.

Jesu website
Jesu MySpace

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He’s a Brummie and has had such ridiculous labels as ‘avant-pop’ and ‘avant-garde doom’ used to describe his music of the vintage of this album, but one thing about Justin Broadrick which cannot be in any way derided is his musical diversity: to have gone from the doom/industrial metal of Birmingham’s Godflesh to the post-metal of earlier Jesu releases to the (oh god) ‘avant-pop’ of this release truly takes someone to whom remaining in a niche means nothing; someone to whom the art is everything and consistency but a crippled runner in the one-hundred metre sprint that is his sense of priority. The opener Don’t Dream It effectively ensures that former Godflesh fanatics are to feel disappointed, if not in some manner betrayed: M83-esque chanting of the phrase ‘don’t dream it’ replaces the former’s more feral fare with an enchantingly daring aplomb; and this chanting finds itself accompanied by dreamy piano amidst a sea of thick bass drums and distorted guitars.

Can I Go Now? takes traditionally electronic synthesised drum patterns and mates them with a second round of shoegazing vocals reminiscent of those of My Bloody Valentine. This hallucinogenic meld of the organic and the synthesised creates an atmosphere conducive to the best of ambiances: a laid-back feel with somehow  intellectual overtones; perfection in its ascent from this delicate simplicity to a slightly more voluptuous texture with the addition of Jesu’s almost trademark distorted guitar tone. Track three, Wash it All Away, opens with an increased sense of urgency: a greater tempo with more dense instrumentation. Here, a bassy percussive backbone guides the highs of a synthesiser into a symbiosis left undiscovered in much music: trebly tones and bassy tones combining without messiness. Two-tone guitar repetition carries this song to its end with effortlessness amongst the hazy backdrop of instrumental synergy.

A darker tone is set by synthstrings in the leadup to the chugging start of The Playgrounds are Empty: that ‘Jesu-and-Jesu-only’  tone of bastardised guitar finds its home once again in the wake of Broadrick’s wafer-thin voice; almost a shadow of itself in the chaos that is the plodding rhythm of guitar chords. The distortion is coupled with clean guitars as the song continues, with a more viscous percussive line rearing its head delicately in the bridges between verses. Dummy is a song reeking of Sigur Ros meeting Explosions in the Sky in a former industrial town: objective beauty corrupted by a the dreariness of the vagaries of life; truly, music of the people.

Supple Hope starts with the helical, almost hypnotic swaying of trebly guitars with only the introduction of an addictive bassline serving to disrupt their cyclic beauty. Vocals, once again, lie at he lower end of the audible spectrum and are very much used for their instrumental timbre rather than their lyrical content; and it works deliciously. These build to a climax Godspeed You! Black Emperor would be proud of by the four minute mark, and slowly fade to fragile ambiance once again soon after. Tiny Universities suffers from the complex of almost being Saturdays = Youth era M83 by numbers, and it really does lower the tone of the beauty of the song; especially given the very apparent amount of care which had gone into it.

Luckily, the end of the album is saved from unfavourable claims of emulation of other artists by Plans that Fade, a shoegaze-meets-post-rock-meets-electronica song which is something all of its own. Trance inducing and mind-unwinding, its simplistic guitar lines create the perfect atmosphere for work or play, and borders upon an experience of a spiritual nature. This song is truly a peak in the work of Broadrick and in Jesu’s back catalogue. Though th album may repeat itself in some of its sections and themes, each song is a piece of musical mastery large enough for any such feelings to be overcome by the sheer awe felt in the presence of the exposition of Broadrick’s genius.

From their very inception, most bands walk that most treacherous tightrope: balancing, on the one hand, their ideas and preconceptions of what they want to sound like, and on the other, the vocabulary of how to define that sound. So it is, once again, with a heavy heart that I have to whine about the misuse of the label ’screamo’ amongst the populace at large. Astro Reality are to screamo what Hawthorne Heights are(/were, ha) to emo: a travesty of mislabelling and essentially a bastardisation of a genre most radically different to its diluted ‘followers’.

However, a history lesson isn’t what this article is about: even if their sins of woefully inadequate genre nomenclature are to be forgotten, the music itself exposes doubt as to the validity of their self-professed status as a band. They state that they ‘want to be known across the land for being unique and keeping it Astro’, but any prior illusions you may still have about their uniqueness in the sea of their ’screamo’ (inverted commas are important) peers are dispelled as soon as you hear the first chord in any of their songs. As for ‘keeping it Astro’, I’m not nearly well informed enough to know what that means: the cool kids are probably laughing at me right now for that.
Warranty, their most recent musical foray, shows the instantly recognisable chug-chug of a distorted electric guitar and the most dire screaming I have ever heard, even in a band of this perversion. The screams are not the light accentuated growl of the likes of Tim Kasher or Geoff Rickly, nor are they the visceral-yet-high-pitched wail of Billy Werner: they’re something all together more weak, a cross of the two styles as unwelcome as a 20 year old at a Conservative Club, and just about as out of place amidst the pop-punk riffs and hackneyed lead parts.

Listening through the rest of the tracks on their MySpace, one cannot help but get the feeling of deja entendu (and no, not the Brand New album. That work is holy and should not even be sullied with a mention here), and that is because, in all sincerity, the songs do sound the same. Guitars? Distorted, with crispy overtones. Bass? There. Drumming? Keeping time in the most dull ways imaginable. Think ditchwater, mixed with Jimmy Carr’s humour: shit, plain shit. Vocals: dual and completely out of harmony. It doesn’t work. It doesn’t work. It doesn’t work.

There’s a limited school of thought (only on certain sites on the Internet, granted) that Casey Calvert’s opiate, citalopram and clonazepam fuelled death was due to the realisation that he had, almost single-handedly, destroyed a once great genre and ruined its name for the good many years of copycat bands to come. I sincerely hope that this band follow his lead, and just give up on music or find an original niche: I have no doubt of their instrumental ability. I just abhor their shitty music.

A Note: the band have split up since this was written. I’m not too bothered.

The Free Software Foundation, as part of their Defective by Design anti-DRM campaign, have undertaken something of a festive approach to their latest efforts: they are in the process of producing a ‘35 Days against DRM’ series of articles, no doubt a nod to the ubiquitously understood ‘12 Days of Christmas’. Whilst noble in and of itself, the entire effort falls down when they suggest that the most inanane of efforts be attempted in order to compaign against DRM: a boycott of the iTunes paid service. The concern for DRM being a niche concern as it is, what do the FSF really hope that this call to arms of the very small number of interested parties that it has within very limited demographics can accomplish? The best that they can hope for this that MC Chris’ label realises that sales have died for a day, and such niche artists may move to a DRM-free distribution method. This won’t change anything worthwhile, unfortunately: the biggest digital music distributor in the world won’t be held back by the readers of the 300,000th most well-read (according to Alexa) website in the world – the fact is simply that most people don’t care about these limitations.

It really does pain me to say this, especially with my fervent distaste for DRM methods, but it’s here to stay for the time being: every new medium has its own DRM methods built in, be it HDTV or Blu-ray. Of course, the ingenuity of those who would not wish to be encumbered by such draconian restrictions on their use of the media which they have purchased will always eventually triumph over the efforts of the media conglomerates: just as BD+ was cracked in a matter of months the first time, it will be again with this new revision.