Records

CAT’S EYES

HUNX AND HIS PUNX:

ZOMES

PHAROAHE MONCH

OK, we’ll get the obvious out of the way: to some, the Spaceape’s contribution to Kode9’s work remains about as appealing as sitting in a room full of squealing eight-year-olds tearing their fingernails down chalkboards. If you’re one of these people: deal with it. Stephen Samuel Gordon is here to stay and his faux-mystic

Blade Runner

-meets-

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

patter fits Steve “Kode9” Goodman’s dystopic, bass-saturated soundscapes perfectly once you allow yourself time to live with this successor to 2006’s

Memories of the Future

. Over the course of an entire album, Kode9’s arrangements, diverse sonic palette and strict adherence to sheer dread, even when it seems like he’s being playful, mark him out as still a long way ahead of the whatever-we’re-calling-it-today-step pack.

BOBO SHANTYTOWN

You know how some people hide away in cottages without internet or phone connections to write books? I feel much the same about a new Pharoahe Monch record. Not that he does records, more labour-intensive conceptual thought experiments, this time rooted in some info-war about Afghanistan, as Idris Elba (from

The Wire

) helpfully explains in the intro. The gas mask on the cover’s a giveaway, too.

BOOYA TRIKE

Nicolas Jaar is a swotty Brooklyn producer in his early 20s who takes care of business pretty comfortably on this excellent debut that goes way beyond any feared Gilles Peterson/Four Tet love-in and spirals out into some tender new cosmic realm where everything slots in place just perfectly. If Ricardo Villalobos wrote pop songs they probably wouldn’t sound anything like this, but I’m kind of hoping they would.

THEYDON BOIS

GATTO FRITTO

S/t

International Feel

Not wishing to stereotype, but if you own all the releases on Uruguay’s leading Balearic revival label International Feel then chances are you’re male, aged 35-45, bearded, and searching for something meaningful to fill the gaping void in your life. But you love good music! And this record by Gatto Fritto is very good indeed. You may remember Ben Williams for his earlier tracks on Dissident, but since then he’s somehow channelled the spirits of Enya and Neu! to forge a serene celestial union that’ll bring you to tears as you realise you’ll never ever produce anything as beautiful as this.

SUBURBAN DWIGHT

MATTHEWDAVID

Outmind

Brainfeeder

Flying Lotus too straight for you, space cadet? Bet you’ve seen

Enter the Void

five times or more, hmm? Looks like you’re ready for Matthewdavid. Blending backwards beats, woozy harp, glittering drones and (probably) snatches of “Justin Bieber 800% Slower”, you’ve got to conclude that the Brainfeeder crew have basically cornered the market in “like listening to J Dilla while on DMT”. If they keep on this way, though, we’ll be feeding them with a straw by mid-2013.

CHILL DAVE

BIBIO

Mind Bokeh

Warp

Bibio is at his best when he pastiches unfashionable genres like some sort of electronica Ween. He’s at his break-even point when his songs sound like extended outros on post-2003 Radiohead tracks. He’s at his worst when he persists with this idea that he should sing. His voice is thick with B-grade hash; it reeks of bedrooms carpeted with

Computer Music Magazine

subscription cards and half-empty cereal bowls. Then, there’s simply no disguising that he is what he is: a Warp-signed noodler a couple of rungs down the noodling ladder from Boards Of Canada. This is not a description that gets many people breaking bottles of beer over their heads in untamed excitement.

WILBUR DAFFODIL

GYRATORY SYSTEM

New Harmony

Angular Recordings

Another helping of Coltrane-does-Neubaten-while-wearing-a-creepy-Aphex-mask from this nutty London trio. Allegedly the band’s mainstay, producer and trumpeter “Dr” Andrew Blick, is a constitutional historian who used to work in Downing Street when he wasn’t cutting records with everyone from Damo Suzuki to Grooverider. If you’ve never heard Gyratory System before, that should give you some idea of what’s in store.

BRANDENBURG KATE

DEN HAAN

Gods From Outer Space

The Courier of Death

Ahoy there, me fruits! Yep, high-energy pillow-biters Den Haan finally get round to releasing their debut just as the idea of a monstrously homosexual cosmic disco album feels even more passé than it did two years ago. Seemingly constructed from all the best bits of every decent electronic disco record made between 1978 and 1984­—Patrick Cowley, Divine, Bobby O, ’Lectric Workers—

Gods From Outer Space

is camper than Alan Carr’s cardigan and in some places in Glasgow you get a complimentary jug of poppers when you buy the vinyl edition.

LES PANINI

COLD CAVE

Cherish the Light Years

Matador

Maybe it’s the difference between recording an album on your laptop all on your lonesome and piecing one together with hulking synths and folk like Daryl Palumbo from Glassjaw and noise barbarian Dominick “Prurient” Fernow at your beck and call, but

Cherish the Light Years

is a big step on from Cold Cave’s debut both in terms of confidence and skull-cracking intensity. Surging synths and S&M dungeon beats rub sex organs with big choruses, and even without being able to see any of the participants you are quite clear that absolutely no one is smiling, or has smiled, for a very long time.

WALTER DA SOFTY

STACCATO DU MAL

Sin Destino

Wierd

A rather darker, more abrasive example of electronic post-punk from New York minimal synth stalwarts Wierd, this time courtesy of Miami resident Ramiro Jeancarlo, who is seemingly out to prove the warm states do it even colder. Pieced together from primitive synths and bits of sheet metal and shrapnel salvaged from the bottom of Cabaret Voltaire’s toolbox, it’s lonely and abject even by the oppressively downbeat standards of this stuff, but pulse-racing in its brutish, roughshod simplicity.

CHARLES HANSON

WEEDEATER

Jason… the Dragon

Southern Lord

Most bands spend years spinning bogus yarns and shaggy dog stories about things like how their lead singer shot himself in the foot with a shotgun in a bourbon-addled rage just to make people think they have some cajones. Weedeater actually are that band and, yes, Dixie Dave really did blast his own toes off once. This is another platter of festering, misanthropic sludge from one of the genre’s few true practitioners. If you are suffering from Eyehategod withdrawal, look no further.

BONG HITZ

BLOOD CEREMONY

Living with the Ancients

Rise Above

Whether they like it or not, these Canadian occult rockers are the coolest band in the world right now. In 2008 Blood Ceremony saw retro metal and raised it one unironic flute. Now, with their second album for Rise Above, they keep the heaviness and add even more 70s freak-out into the Jethro Sabbath cauldron, the vocals are better mixed and the vibe is a little more evil. Blood Ceremony are hip enough to give people what they want before they even know they want it. The way things are going, they’ll definitely be supporting Gaga next year.

KILL WIZARD

THE SKULL DEFEKTS

Peer Amid

Thrill Jockey

I’ve always found the Skull Defekts far too try-hard, so it’s surprising that this alchemical union of the mundane and the magnificent should prove so successful, as His Royal Highness Sir Daniel Higgs anoints their trancelike tribal brainstem rock with his firestone fury. Their traditional bass/drums/guitar set-up is perfect for those Lungfish fans who think Higgs has veered off-message in recent years.

JAH VIKERNES

Great news for people who love metal and quietly fetishise white supremacy—Burzum is back! Again!

Fallen

is a bit like his comeback album, last year’s

Belus

, in being serviceable but unremarkable black metal that probably wouldn’t be getting the attention it’s getting if its maker hadn’t once stabbed a guy 30 times. The main difference is that whereas Varg used to screech like a goblin being fitted with a catheter carved from purest evil, now he sometimes adopts a faintly amusing operatic voice that suggests he knows he can’t sing, but hell, he’s going to audition for

The X Factor

anyway.

MILEY O’CYRUS

MAZES

A Thousand Heys

FatCat

Mazes sound a lot like the Clean. In fact, they sound a little like someone liquidised the entire Flying Nun back catalogue, gulped it down and shat it out through a busted stereo. If you feel disappointed by the majority of what people have been calling lo-fi for the last couple of years, Mazes may just change your mind.

PETER SHILTON

NEIGE MORTE

S/t

Aurora Borealis

From the deliberately crude and grim artwork, you’d be forgiven for thinking common-or-garden Black Legion BM with a blast of frosted Deathspell Omega, but the relatively no-frills package belies a myriad of treasures. The blast beats never really get behind heartbeat pace, and there’s plenty of doomish lurch to mix up the blackened proceedings. At its most out-there, a faintly Killing Joke-ish industrial cape descends and fans of Dale Crover’s neanderthal tub-thumping will fawn. A curious find.

FRITZ O’DEPRESSION

Asa Osborne’s solo project develops his instantly recognisable work as the guitarist of the mythical Lungfish. His rich tone, familiar resonance and microtonal repetition made him the most singular rhythm guitarist this side of AC/DC’s Malcolm Young. All that distinguished invention translates beautifully to the monophonic keyboard melodies and sputtering drum-machine loops here—all made pleasantly warm and fuzzy by the homespun nature and endearing clunkiness. Wonderfully simplistic.

FRED WREST

HUNX AND HIS PUNX

Too Young to Be in Love

Hardly Art

I’m a liberal, so gay love songs are fine with me. I am happy for Hunx to flaunt his so-called “alternative” musical sexuality in front of impressionable teenagers who might easily be seduced by all these whip-snap doo-wop melodies and nagging little riffs. It’s not for me to judge whether maybe he’s not adding anything to this territory that hasn’t already been done by the New York Dolls and

Grease

. I just think he shouldn’t be allowed to adopt these outrageous faux-accents. If it were up to me, he’d be sent for massive doses of ECT until he was cured of that particular affliction.

ELLIOT ROSEWATER

PETER BJORN & JOHN

Gimme Some

Cooking Vinyl

With 2008’s

Seaside Rock

, PB&J took the massive launchpad of “Young Folks” and directed it at the nearest brick wall. Swedish-language spoken-word read to an accompaniment of music-box whimsy, it was the

In Utero

riposte to their own “…Teen Spirit”. Now, long after the major labels lost interest, it appears they’re finally ready to be simple again: chaste, bouncy Swedo-pop, made for an audience of approximately no one and funded by the endless flow of royalties from “Young Folks”. Good for them.

DWAYNE HOOVER

THE STROKES

Angles

Rough Trade

The band that plays together stays together, so it’s a miracle this record ever got made. Rather than Julian Casablancas writing the whole thing as usual, this is apparently the first Strokes album that each member contributed to more or less evenly, which might be why

Angles

sounds kind of all over the place. The big news is they’ve taken a giant leap into the unknown by using keyboards, electronic drums and backing vocals on a few songs (“Games” and “Life is Simple in the Moonlight”), but mainly this is tuneful indie rock played by five guys who were hardly even in the studio at the same time, held together by their tortured genius of a frontman.

TIMOTHY DALSTON

PEAKING LIGHTS

Not Not Fun

Anyone who’s ever peered blankly into their girlfriend’s danked, red eyes while engaged in lethargic missionary will know how hard it is to be stoned and sexy at the same time. But, as with all things, practice makes perfect, and it sounds like married life has allowed husband and wife duo Peaking Lights ample time to crack the code. Who knew the answer was to soundtrack your listless slopping with gauzy MOR dub music? This may occasionally sound like the Vivian Girls slowed to a weed-ruined crawl, but the bedsit-in-the-Bahamas miasma of blowbacks and blowjobs that hangs over

is proof enough for me, as if it were needed, that the couple that blaze together stays together.

KING STAN

TUNE YARDS

w h o k i l l

4AD

Nothing screams “Slap me, please!” louder than a privileged American kid dabbling in world music. But luckily for tUnE-yArDs’ Merrill Garbus,

w h o k i l l

is super-fun. Here she rips highlife riffs from her friends Dirty Projectors and then trolley-dashes up the aisles of sweet melody and random weirdness, before whipping it all into shape while you’re still wondering whether it’s worth mentioning Vampire Weekend.

HELGA POPPIN

ARBOURETUM

The Gathering

Thrill Jockey

Baltimore’s grizzly sons lose a little of the Grateful Dead/Crazy Horseisms this time around as they shed a guitarist in favour of some keys and Mellotron, but elsewhere all is business as usual; thunderous chug and Dave Heumann’s delightfully austere melodies abound. True transcendence is achieved through the uncannily handsome cover of Jimmy Webb’s karmic cowboy classic “The Highwayman”. Stay Jung and beautiful.

TONES VAN ZANDT

CAT’S EYES

S/t

Polydor

With a new Horrors record due this summer, there’s just enough time to get to grips with Cat’s Eyes, the latest instalment of Faris Badwan’s enduring gothic melodrama. Here the big-haired Casanova teams up with Rachel Zeffira, a Canadian soprano and classically trained multi-instrumentalist, on an album of spooked, three-minute chamber-pop gems that call to mind the hazy crush of the Ronettes and Broadcast, all swaddled in curdled strings and treacly brass arrangements that add an air of psychedelic menace. When you can count the pope among your fans—Cat’s Eyes’ debut show took place in the Vatican—you know you’re doing something right. The last band Joey Ratzinger really got behind was Muse, and look where they are now.

JENNIFER JUPITER

Listening to Hype Williams can be a real crazy trip, like sniffing ketamine with the dolphins and sailing through seas of honey on a boat stitched out of Aaliyah’s hair, and then waking up on a water-damaged sofa in a squat in Clapton with slowly cooling faeces in your trousers. Still, for all that their music is essentially a brain-damaged take on R&B for the enormously pretentious,

One Nation

does actually hit on some sweetly alien moments—see “Mitsubishi” and “Warlord”, dazed ambient rave from the far side of the looking glass.

FLORENCE RIDA

BELONG

Common Era

Kranky

Marriage has its ups and its downs, and it’s easy for things to go a bit stale. So kudos to husband and wife duo Marylise Frecheville and Eric Boros, who have found a way to keep things interesting: touring all over the known world with a baby in their rucksack, playing an excellent mix of haywire gypsy folk, French opera, yodelling, delicate kora song and bits where it sounds like a drumkit is falling down an extremely long and winding staircase.

CHARLES HANSON

Coruscating white noise, feedback squalls and, wait for it, songs! Sure, the whole My Bloody Valentine-meets-Wolfgang Voigt thing is still going on here but it seems like Belong have discovered a need to finesse the sprawling noise-athons into more bitesize chunks and if anything

Common Era

is all the better for it.

BORIS YELTSIN