Strange Lights

Deerhunter - Cryptograms
Cryptograms is the second full-length offering from Deerhunter, and their first for Kranky. The album took almost two years to finish and was the product of emotional, physical, and financial strain on the group. The result is an album that finds the band shifting from discordant catharsis, and forming a sonic identity that completely expresses the place from which they have arrived. The album functions in part as a study in duality and the concept of the same experiences seen from two angles, present and past. The most obvious manifestation of this is in the chronological sequencing. The first half of the album was recorded first unsuccessfully in 2005. These recordings were a blur at best, wordless and bordering on psychological atrophy. The sessions failed to provide anything tangible, and were racked with technical and personal problems, including out-of-tune pianos, panic attacks, and a tape machine that seemed to fail to capture the full spectrum of ambience the band was exploring. The band returned home, having failed, and considered giving up. The idea arose to give it one last shot and exactly one year from the date of the recording of their first self-titled LP at a small studio in rural GA, they returned to that same studio and plugged in. The session resulted in the first half of the record which was recorded in one day and completely filled the reel of tape they brought with them. Cryptograms' first side begins with an introduction leading to the title track, and ends with the tape literally spinning off the end of the reel in the middle of a drone layered with bells and accordion ("Red Ink"). The second half of the record, also recorded in one day, in the November of 2005, represents the band in an entirely different state. "Spring Hall Convert" opens with the line, "...so I woke up..." and introduces a set of focused psyche-pop songs fixating on adolescence, illness, and failing connections.

Abriram para os Liars em Setembro no Porto Rio; eu não estava lá, mas se tivesse uma máquina do tempo, a viagem estava assegurada. E se parte significativa da aura que rodeava os Deerhunter até agora, resultava das quase-lendárias prestações em palco, Cryptograms confirma a substancia e o enorme potencial da banda. O disco mais essencial dos últimos meses.

Systematic abuse

The Fall - Reformation Post-TLC

Domino Jones disse quase tudo o que há para dizer acerca de Reformation Post TLC, o regresso dos Fall, na Playlouder. De resto, o que tenho lido é sempre positivo, e o texto abaixo ficaria completamente fechado se fosse dito, como se disse/escreveu frequentemente acerca dos 5 ou 6 mais recentes discos, que este é o melhor album dos Fall em muitos anos; again (and again and again and again...)

What is there left to say about The Fall? Thirty years of beer sodden bark and growl, twenty five albums of empirical belletrism, over thirty line-ups and a countless host of imitators and acolytes from Sonic Youth to Pavement and beyond. That people still care is testament to Mark E Smith's singular brilliance. His distrust of groups such as Franz Ferdinand and Bloc Party and his abhorrence of bands that reform and play old songs in deference to the audience does not indicate any bitterness on his part, quite the opposite. It renders him more vital, a lodestar of heretical artistry; no label can hold him and no band will outlast him. Neither bought for gold, nor to the devil sold.
'Reformation - Post TLC', like the previous album 'Heads Will Roll', is sinewy and unalloyed. There are moments, granted fleeting ones, that sound like nothing on any previous Fall album but the rest is pure Salford Smith; rhythmic, snarling and funny. The constant shift in personnel, far from being the whim of a despotic drunkard, is the secret behind The Fall's continuous vitality; the musicians are playing for their lives because they don't know how long they will last, there is no comfort zone and not even his wife is safe.
The most extraordinary track on 'Reformation' is 'Das Boat' - ten and a half minutes of fuzzed up atmospherics, dissonant feedback, wordless, rhythmical vocalisations and Smith intoning 'Das Boat' over the squelch of the electronics and the clack of the sticks. The title track is about bands that get back together because they need the money, Smith standing on top of a high rise overlooking Manchester, vexed and venting. Is he shouting 'cheesesteak' or 'two states'? The latter being one of Pavement's more obvious Fall tributes from 'Slanted and Enchanted'. "It's about all those Manchester idiots, in groups, they're all reforming". Smith recently told Mojo. "It's obvious why they do it, isn't it? Cos' they're broke. And suddenly they're your mates. And y'know, the Manchester scene never liked the Fall." Revenge is a dish best served old.
'Fall Sound' is exactly that. Rumbling bass, big beat drums and clanging guitars. "Fall Sound!" yells Smith, "It's much too late". The studio chatter at the start of 'The Bad Stuff' gives way to a classic Fall riff which turns into a rockabilly stamp, bits of sampled speech mix it up with spiked guitars. There's a loving cover of Merle Haggard's 'White Line Fever' complete with authentic Yankee backing singers, their euphony in direct contrast to Smith's off key rendition. At the end an American voice can be heard saying "Let's do it again dude" amidst much laughter, somebody yells 'Cheeeesesteak' and Smith growls 'Fall Motel', 'Reformation' still very much on their minds and then the band fall into 'Insult Song' an irrepressible groove with a storyline that references Captain Beefheart, continues the white line fever thread and is funny as fuck. He even cracks himself up.
Aside from Smith, The Fall have no past and with their future ever uncertain, we can safely assume that they exist only in the here and now. I was listening to John Peel, many years ago. He played a new Fall track, sighed deeply and contentedly and said "The Fall; Always different, always the same". As usual, he nailed it.

The Fall are the best new band in Britain.

We're The Only Ghosts Here

2007.
Um mês passou a correr e os discos, deste ano ou do ano passado, afinal o que é que isso interessa?, passam num turbilhão que a era digital não deixa cessar - para nosso bem ou para o nosso mal.
Esfuma-se o gosto pela pop, transforma-se mesmo numa espécie de náusea, depois de algumas semanas em ritmo quase existencialista.
Últimos suspiros de uma hibernação que não será previsivelmente muito longa - e que trará por certo sonoridades mais experimentalistas - são dados por Wincing The Night Away dos Shins (serão os Shins os Go-Betweens do Sec XXI?) e Disco Romance de Sally Shapiro - Glorious synthpop from Sweden's 'disco princess', as ultra-soft vocals meet a shiny Eighties beat. Sounds so fragile and beautiful, you half expect it to melt in your mouth, segundo o The Guardian. Subscrevo.
Se todos os discos pop fossem assim, não haveria nunca enjoo.

Uma nova fase-experimental começou, entretanto, e começou desde logo com aqueles que são nesta altura provavelmente os melhores de todos; acabam de lançar 4 LP’s (vinyl only!) - Ghetto Beats On The Surface Of The Sun, Vols. 1, 2, 3 e 4. Para já, ando completamente viciado em Big Black Square, EP de 2005, com faixa única de 43 minutos – tudo improvisação. Mergulhos podem ser dados aqui. Cautela; é possível que haja dependência grave e lesões irreversíveis. Tarentel, pois claro.

This is a trip

Uma possível lista dos melhores discos de 2006.

Possível, porque quis faze-la curta. Mas ao longo das últimas semanas foi tão dinâmica, que daqui a 1 hora, ou daqui a dois dias, ou daqui a semanas/meses posso mudar de opinião. Porque todos os discos que dela constam são (deliciosamente) imperfeitos. Porque não ouvi todos os que quero ouvir, e porque há outros que nem sequer sei que existem, mas existem, e poderiam fazer parte desta lista.
Em 14 de Janeiro, ao início da noite, estes são os meus discos preferidos de 2006.
O melhor de todos é Passover dos Black Angels; um regresso à noite de Saigão em 1974 - a guerra, a fuga, a roleta russa, a heroína, De Niro, Walken e o Anjo Streep em The Deer Hunter de Michael Cimino. Apocalipse.

This is a trip - a bad trip: a trip where lights hover ominously overhead and you wish to fuck you took drugs because then at least you could explain away these feelings of doom, depression, decay and despair. It's a claustrophobic trip because these twenty-somethings know that this time - their generation - there's no fucking way they can escape (…)
Everett True - Plan B Magazine, October 2006.

The Black Angels – Passover
(e a partir daqui sem qualquer ordem)
Psychic Ills – Dins
The Big Sleep - Son Of The Tiger
Sonic Youth - Rather Ripped
The Horrors - The Horrors EP
Film School – Film School
The Victorian English Gentlemens Club - The Victorian English Gentlemens Club
The Radio Dept - Pet Grief
Peter Bjorn and John – Writer’s Block
Human Television - Look at Who You're Talking To