Music Reviews
Those who Can, do
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| Kumo and Irmin Schmidt |
IRMIN SCHMIDT & KUMO
Axolotl Eyes (Spoon)
DIMITRI FROM PARIS
Return To The Playboy Mansion (Defected)
CHARLES WEBSTER
Defected Presents (Defected)
MOBY
Last Night (Mute)
KAREN DALTON
Green Rocky Road (Megaphone)
WITH an antic spirit forged in the revolutionary heat of 1968, there was never any way that Irmin Schmidt was likely to end up in his dotage performing his "greatest hits" with a Can tribute band, and so it proves on Axolotl Eyes, his latest release alongside breakbeat guru Kumo.
That same restless, exploratory mindset which drove Schmidt and his colleagues in German avant garde outfit Can to "unlearn" classical music orthodoxies fuels his current project. You wouldn't expect anything less from the founder member of a band who, to paraphrase Mose Allison's remark upon seeing the early Pink Floyd, were "doin' some outside things."
Schmidt's work is still way outside, as in the swirling "pure sound" of Umbilicus Clear, the musique concrete of the title track, the tribal drum patterns via deep space of Meteor Infected or the lurching, lopsided, itchy balladry of Etrurian Waltz.
No one has caught up with 1971's Tago Mago yet, so it may be quite some time before the collective consciousness can take on board the fearless reach and pigeonhole shunning of Axolotl Eyes...
Moving right along, I was bemused to be the recipient of Return To The Playboy Mansion, the latest compilation from French house music avatar Dimitri From Paris.
This is so not my thing, I'm afraid. Dimitri gets a lot of work slung his way by fashion houses, and that's exactly what this sounds like - two CDs filled with low-calorie catwalk creakers, split into "Partytime" and "Sexytime". Dearie me, I ask you.
I'm sorry, but Jamiroquai's Cosmic Girl is an AWFUL way to get any party started, and matters don't improve from there on either. It's bloody endless as well: It makes me feel the way I used to feel watching Kerry Katona do those Iceland idents between every advert break on the last series of I'm A Celebrity. It was as though the poor woman was trapped for all eternity at the same party - a disproportionate punishment akin to that of the Greek king Sisyphus rolling a boulder up a hill forever.
At least "Sexytime" is marginally more bearable, if hardly imaginative (Teddy Pendergrass, Marvin Gaye, Barry White). Much as I love Barry White, I can't rightly say that I'd be put in a sexy mood by him unless I was a manatee. I'm not, in case you were wondering.
Dimitri's labelmate Charles Webster, meanwhile - "the producer's producer, the DJ's DJ" - allows his compilation Defected Presents to sprawl over three CDs, but it's rather better on the whole because CD2 is, forgive the term, a chillout peach.
Webster has the good grace to knit together tracks by unlikely but soulful soulmates such as Vashti Bunyan (Rose Hip November), Black Sabbath (Planet Caravan), Kate Bush (Army Dreamers), John Martyn (Bless The Weather) and Tom Waits (The Heart Of Saturday Night).
Matters are only spoiled by the "dropouts" which are now starting to appear on review copies of albums, in which a disinterested office boy crops up every few minutes to intone "you are listening to a Defected Records release".
Yes, yes, I KNOW. Trust me, after the fourth or fifth of these you become a finely-honed killing machine.
Meanwhile in Noo Yoik, Moby is said to be offering "cash, drugs and hookers" in exchange for good reviews for his new album Last Night. A touching gesture, but I've given all of that up for Lent - apart from the cash bit, which is a habit I've never been able to acquire.
Despite being largely unmoved by his music, I've always had a lot of time for Moby himself and his witty, self-deprecating persona. Last Night has been described as an extended paean to New York disco through the ages, but to me it sounds more nightmare than nightlife.
For example, I Love To Move In Here, from its drearily unimaginative title outwards, sounds just like the godforsaken party I mentioned earlier, as though it's sluggishly going through the motions with a gun pointed at its head.
The same goes for the self-consciously "old skool" scratching and house piano of Everyday It's 1989. I suspect I'm putting my own spin on all of this, but it really does sound like a deliberate evocation of a hollow dystopia. The repetition becomes wearing as well. Just like The Chemical Brothers, too much of Moby's material just stalls instead of developing (Mothers Of The Night, The Stars). The hidden track, Lucy Vida, is rather lovely though: Brian Eno-esque, vaguely jazzy, and providing a context in which the stasis makes sense and really works.
And so to the OLD old school. Megaphone Music has uncovered some priceless home recordings (courtesy of Joe Loop) of the wonderful Karen Dalton from 1963. The results, released under the title of Green Rocky Road, are lo-fi for sure, but adorable.
That inimitable voice was right there already, painstakingly accompanied by her signature 12-string Gibson and long-neck banjo.
It all sounds unimaginably ancient, dignified and nurturing, like discovering an old well which dispenses the very elixir of life.
10:51am Friday 28th March 2008
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