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Rubble & Scree – a rage of politics, music, film, literature and general catharsis.

Frightened Rabbit, harking from Wales and one of my favourite indie bands running around,  have released a new album of recent, which had me much excited. Their last album arrived at my ears at a time when I probably could have used more cheerful music but I thrashed it until the mp3′s wore away. The bitter result of a horrid break up, it reeked of pain, rancour and sadness… and I loved every moment of it. The new album is growing on me after two listens so far, but the broken heartedness seems to have faded away.

Due to forcing myself (or more to the point, being forced as a result of my ready admittance of ignorance) to read Emily Bronte’s Wuthering Heights, I’ve gained a slight obsession with Kate Bush’s Wuthering Heights. There’s something about her extreme soprano wailing that lifts me, lets me crash and then throws me around again. Plus it makes me want to break out into her strange arm throwing dance in the red dress video and I don’t even like Heathcliff or Catherine as characters. Heathcliff, It’s me, Cathy, I’m coming home now. It will get stuck in your head.

Hip hop wise, I’ve been revisiting old Def Jux records and am re-in love with Cannibal Ox – The Cold Vein. The now defunct duo of Vast Aire and Vordul Mega released the Cold Vein back in 2001 (produced by El P) and its abstract hip hop was well received by most critics, especially those versed in the underground scene. Musically it’s dense and abrasive (something I am indeed partial to) and lyrically, it is verging on genius… especially tracks such as ‘The F Word’, ‘Pigeon’ (these rags-to-riches words will break bones/Like the assassination of two birds with one stone/That’s why I don’t associate with bird brains with their beaks in the air/Pelicans with wide jaws yap names for fish heads/You’ll get tossed in the flames/Where some archaeologist will find your skeletal frame) and ‘Battle for Asgard’ .

The other day I stumbled across Bigg Jus’s song – Illustrations of Hieronymus Bosch – from the album Poor People’s Day. I hadn’t realised he’d put an album since Black Mamba Serums. This track is a furious indictment of US policy circa 2006 and post 9/11 world on Mush records and on first listen, the album is incredible. Check it out.

DJ/Rupture’s album ‘uproot’ is also getting a lot of listens. And I just discovered I can stream his radio show on WCMU (I think that’s right) which would be well worth listening to. Uproot’s mix of dubstep, ragga and hip hop becomes addictive quickly, as it slides across tracks seamlessly, and I’m finding the tracks that I like least are still growing on me.

One of the finest albums, though definitely not to everyone’s tastes, that I’ve heard in a long time is Fuck Button’s Tarot Sport, a frenetic, pulsing mix of post rock, drone, and I suppose, trance (though I’m not to knowledgable on trance’s style). I’ve been regularly visiting this album since summer last year and I find that it’s incredibly hard to remove once caught up into the steady beat, swirling keyboards. Hailing from Bristol, these guys are putting out some of the best music out there.

Finally, I found Amethyst Rock Star by Saul Williams hiding away in my hard drive, which I hadn’t listened to since my iPod died. This album, like the artist, is drastically underappreciated. Lyrically, it is perfect. Resting somewhere between hip hop and spoken word, Saul spits themes of manhood, life, responsibility, love, hope, god, race with an intelligence that few people could. If you’ve never heard of him, I urge you to pick up an album and listen to it – brace yourself for abrasion but endure it – and if you can’t endure that then search youtube for his spoken word or amazon for his books or just watch ‘Slam’. The man is one of our few modern-day geniuses.

Go on. Listen. I dare you. Dance. Make love. Read books. Read Poetry. Read Plays. Let it all consume you. And above all, wear headphones.

Chance has graced me with a gift /grasp at gold before the dark descends / sun beats down and panic reigns / in this time of ending.

I will always have a soft spot for metal. There is something about blisteringly heavy riffs that seep into my veins causing me to cavort in chaotic thrusts, fists ready to pump the air. I can feel my blood boiling from deep within me. From the toes to the tips, the knees trembling in anticipation.

Isis came to me from New Zealand. Not that they’re New Zealanders. But a friend on return from working in NZ had discovered Oceanic and Panopticon. These were incredible albums; I was tired of metal and absorbed in a world of post-rock, new folk and indie hip hop. I had left my metal roots far behind and couldn’t see anything coming from that direction. Sitting in the living room, my friend slid Panopticon in and it’s neo-industrial repetition and gutteral growls had me in seconds. A year or so later, I had the pleasure to see them play their ‘In Absence of Truth’ tour in Adelaide, and was crushed by their power, their ambience and their absolute heaviness.

Wavering Radiant has been floating around my iPod for a couple of months now. The last few weeks, though, it has received some fairly heavy rotation. Then, the other night, I played it just prior to closing the bar in which I work. Another friend couldn’t really get it (although I don’t think she was giving it a fair listen). ‘It sounds so angry… that’s why I can’t get into metal’ she said. Or at least words to that effect. But this is what I don’t get. Isis isn’t angry. Sure, it’s loud. Riffs distort endlessly. Drums pound and Aaron Turner’s vocals rip his lungs and chords to shreds. But there’s an unending beauty underneath it all. Their music could, of course, be considered bleak, dark, but somehow I find a hopefulness within it. A hope for what – I’m not sure. But a hope, nonetheless.

Isis aren’t your average metal band. Don’t look for finger-destroying riffs here – you won’t find them. Look for the dynamics of soft-loud, of, for want of a better turn of phrase, the calm before the storm. The gentle, clean guitar lines mixed with the symphonic, droning keyboards underneath spread a beauty through the music which is offset and reinforced by the blast of each song’s crescendo peak.

Unfortunately Isis have often been compared to Tool. Why unfortunately? (Will this generate the barrage of criticism that I expect?) Isis are a band that seem to be growing. Their early albums were brutal and beautiful in their battering simplicity. In the Absence of Truth demonstrated a gentler, post-metal side, which I put down to Turner having destroyed his vocal chords. But Wavering Radiant shows a culmination of both these sides, embracing both the heavier and softer sides of their sounds. The comparison to Tool, whilst understandable, frustrates me (as a Tool fan) mainly because I see Tool as a band that has failed to grow, that caught the scent of successful sounds and stuck with it – each album beating the dead horse a little further. Tool died for me with Lateralus, and whilst I blindly hope for some new salvation with each new release, they only continue to disappoint. (There. I said it). Isis, however, are moving forward. And I hope this will continue.

I mentioned that I had stumbled across a couple of bands while I was in Budapest that had blown my mind like it hasn’t been blown for a while. Unfortunately, I left one of the disc’s in a friend’s computer which may mean I never see it or hear it again. But luckily, I carried Esclin Syndo back with me.

They were playing an old Ukrainian war ship, which lies docked in the Danube River. It’s not a small venue – Henry Rollins was speaking there a few weeks later; Sunn O))) had recently played there. But I had no idea what to expect. After downing a few beers and a strange drink called Unicum with a number of friendly Hungarians, and laughing hard at a left-over Depeche Mode wannabe band, still trying to maintain a misguided image of ‘rockstarness’, I stepped forward almost as soon as the opening sounds trickled out of the stage speakers.Within half an hour, I was won. And determined to find the album.

Esclin Syndo are apparently triphop. I wouldn’t agree. Rock-Electronica, maybe. But there’s too much hard rock pulsing through their veins. A five piece led by the intriguing Dalma Berger and Huba Ratkóci on vocals and guitars respectively are mesmerising to watch. Dalma’s vocals ring out like a strange mix between Skin (Skunk Anansie), Björk and Beth Gibbons – at times, gentle, forlorn, and misgiving, at others, furious, scathing, haunting. She is quite the incredible vocalist.

Likewise, the songs blend a mixture between gentle rock electronified by bass reverbs and synths slipping underneath through to a hard rock, Tool-influenced, riff heavy abrasiveness. (See Highways ‘You’re a Voyeur, a victim, a perfect circle…’ chorus.) The bass, drums and electronics drive the music onward, not in an industrial abrasion, but rather as a climactic culmination of complementary sound.

At first listen, admittedly through shitty computer speakers, I didn’t like the album. I didn’t feel it captured the power of Dalma’s vocals, nor the camraderic rivalry for frontman presence she seemed to hold with Huba. But since returning home to friendly Madrid, and embracing it on headphones, it continues to impress and grow on me. Lyrically, Dalma shows a grasp of English far superior to most native rock musicians. And musically, they have evolved a sound that, whilst demonstrative of their influences, is truly their own.

And the Folklore video is great!

I hope these sounds escape the East.

Why post an entire verse of Sole’s lyrics above? With Sole, you have two options… either take him for his one-liners or listen closer and try and unravel the meanings that run through his chaotic, at times stream of conscious rap.

While trying to work out how to review this album, I stumbled across a blog that, although I did not agree with the review, I agreed with one sentiment. And it’s a sentiment that I’ve argued with people about many a time. Punk. What is it to be punk? I was reading some Spanish university paper yesterday, where they lamented the loss of the ‘true’ underground with the end of the rock of the late 80s and early 90s… and how this was the death of punk. But this is crap. Punk hasn’t died. It just changes forms. And it depends how you interpret it. If punk is a sound, and a sound alone, then bury me now. But if punk is an idea, an attitude, an understanding of creation, destruction and everything in between then what we have in Sole is punk.

Punk is the embodiment of anti-establishment, of DIY, and of refusal to give into the expected norms. Whilst this hasn’t been happening much in mainstream alt. rock circles of late, in the twisting lakes of the underground over the last 10 years there have been numerous bands taking the punk sceptre and holding it high… God Speed You Black Emperor, A Silver Mt. Zion, and others in the post-rock movement embodied punk rock ethos and in underground hip hop, Sole raised his head. He co-starts his own label, puts out his own form of music, he refuses to join majors, and he pushes the agenda of revolution over apathy. How is he not punk?

Now the two movements have conjoined forming Sole and the Skyrider Band. A paranoiac mix of frantic apocalyptic rap slammed across the tense post-rock jammings of Skyrider. And the two fit extremely well together. They blend, they break, they peak – just listen to how the music swirls into Sole’s chaotic chant ’100 light years and running, the universe is shrinking, how do you feel when your meteor is crashing?´ – at first building gently arounding it, coaxing the verses out and then allowing Sole’s harrowed call to take centrepoint.

This has to be Sole’s best album since Selling Live Water. Live from Rome was good, but lacked depth at times and I’m still trying to work my head around Desert Eagle Vol. 1. Not only is this a good album – it also pushes rap in new directions, forcing it to see how it can evolve with other forms of music (apart from nu-metal). Lyrically, he’s dark… but older, wiser, and less hopeful. That call to arms that seemed to lie under so much of his earlier music – now emerges as a call to drop out, because there’s nothing else you can do. We are crashing, withering and dying and there’s nothing we can do to stop it. Funnily enough, as I rode the metro home the other night, I read the same sentiment in literature. In reading Kurt Vonnegut’s ‘A Man Without A Country’, I found much of Sole’s sentiment echoed. Reiterated.

we are not the future. we couldn’t catch the sun.

You learn more when your mouthpiece retreats!

How do you write a review of an EP that you know back to front? Aesop Rock’s Bazooka Tooth was a life changing album and possibly my favourite album of 2003. Portishead is, well, Portishead. The two combined on this 5 track mashup EP are, at moments, divine.

Take Babies With Guns – the original version was a tense, bouncy critique of gun rap that would get your head nodding in seconds. Trumpets circle under almost reggae beats. Bring Portishead underneath and instead you have a brooding, dark, sinister sound. Aesop’s rhymes, whilst still warnings, have an ominous feel and are made even more so with Beth Gibbons’ crooning ‘How can it feel so cold?’

The other standout track is We’re Famous – El P and Aesop’s underground assertion of confidence, flying over Portishead’s Over. The slow Portishead loop circles underneath El P’s fiery first verse. Then Beth slides in underneath El P’s closing rants before Aesop is thrown amidst the tumble of drums and loops. It is only when the song ends with the last five words spat at you ‘Fuck you in 3D. Easy’ that you realise that you’ve ceased to concentrate on anything but the repetitive loop, driving drums and hypnotising rhymes.

Download this if you can find it. Not every track hits the spot – the most difficult being NY Electric/Cowboys, but as a whole, it is possibly one of the best mash-up EP’s I’ve ever heard. It certainly doesn’t dampen the careers of either Aesop or Portishead.

‘Holding you. Good at being alone. Loving you. Good at being alone. Kissing you. Tell me how can you. Tell me I belong. It’s not why I trust you.

The cover intrigued me. So I downloaded it. And then didn’t listen to it more than once. Then one night, talking music, a guy turns to me and says ‘Have you heard the Burial album? You know, Untrue. Listen to it while you’re walking cold streets in the dark.’ Another time, different city. A 4.30am train home with a friend who only ever listens to jungle, drum’n'bass and dubstep. I’ve now listened to it a few times and decide to test it out on her. ‘Here listen to this. You might like it.’ The headphones are in place and her eyes glaze over. There’s no more talking coming from that corner tonight. Not even as we leave the station to walk through Hungarian cold do the headphones get removed. Not until we reach the door. And then ‘yeah, I love it.’

For me, these are the best recommendations of music. The immediate impact of music upon someone else. The initial response. And so I began to listen to it more deeply, letting it wash over me.

This is difficult to write as a review. I’m not an afficionado of dubstep, of dance music in general. I’m a novice. To others, it has soul whilst I like to dance to it in a club but to walk around listening to the beats of dnb or jungle seems purposeless. But Burial is different. (I have a feeling this is going to change, though).

It’s slow. It washes over you. The vocals feel like they’ve been sent through thousands of effects until they’re coming at you from behind you, around you, and you’re not sure if you’re hearing a man or a woman anymore. Underneath the two step beat, pulses of sound push through ebbing left and right then fading away as they emerge to be replaced by the ebb of something else. Riding home tonight, eyes closed, the rushing of the train tunnel seeped into the music like it was supposed to be there.

I can’t decide exactly why I like this album. And I don’t think I have the vocabulary to articulate it if I did. It gets under your skin until you find yourself singing the little melodies while you work. It’s sad, it’s beautiful and at times, achingly so.

I’ve been listening to new sounds and once I’m back from my short stay here in Hungary, expect a riot of posts.

Sounds I’ve been listening to (old and new):
El P
J. Kingz remix of Aesop Rock
old Atmosphere
Iron and Wine
Fuck Buttons
new Bonnie Prince Billy
DJ/Rupture

plus.. Eastern Europe has discovered two new bands for me… and album hunt through the streets of Buda and Pest starts tomorrow. Esclin Syndo and Pozvakowski. Wow

*Side note: I speak nothing in Magyar (like nothing, not the numbers, not my name is…,although I can say Thankyou.) but thought I’d tell the guitarist (Hubu??) from Esclin Syndo that I really enjoyed their show. He spoke about the same amount of English as I do Magyar, which resulted in 5 minutes of awkward smiles and gestures. But maybe someone who knows him will read this. So, Hubu, MAD SET!!! from the Australians.

What were you doing in 1999? I was still in high school, listening to music that, looking back now, I cringe at a little. You know, the normal 17 year old fare – Nine Inch Nails, Manson, Placebo. But I was also discovering bands that today I still love and long for new albums. God Speed You! Black Emperor, At the Drive In, Fugazi (yeah, so I was a little late). In Australia, from what I remember, Triple J was still playing a lot of the late 90s Australian indie rock – Something for Kate, Jebediah, Grinspoon and the like. And in Washington, D.C., the home of US hardcore, a little indie rock band (which never made it to my fatal shores or ears) put out an album called Emergency & I.

I came across this only a few weeks ago. It’s the newest album in my collection. They were mentioned in some review I read and it sounded interesting so I found it, downloaded it, put it on. Having never heard of them before, I listened with fresh ears. A quick search of the internets revealed that there had been quite a lot of hype about these guys way back when… and then they died in 2003 – broken up and never much heard of again…

…which is sad, because this album is really, really, very good. I can’t quite put my finger on what is it about it. Is it the frenzy? Is it the lazy Sunday vocals? Is it the discordant piano? Is it the pop beat and sound? Is it that I can’t quite find other bands that I could compare them with? Or all of the above.

This is indie rock. But it’s not indie rock like mainstream indie is. You can hear elements of ‘fugazi’ or ‘at the drive in’ in the guitar work, at times. But then you can hear the post-rock of ‘Slint’. For some reason, vocally, They Might Be Giants emerges as a possible comparison, but these guys aren’t in it for a laugh. They wouldn’t have been out of place against Australian indie bands of the same time and ilk. I can hear Something for Kate or a softer Jebediah playing alongside them quite easily.

The songwriting slides across numerous styles -gentle indie guitar rock, post-hardcore jerked riffs, buried squeals, circling guitars, frantic drumming, hammond organs riding along. Each song exists in it’s own aura – different and unique. A gentle ditty will be followed by chaotic post-punk stutter (see The City followed by Girl O’Clock). It keeps you guessing… what will come next?

The Dismemberment Plan are well and truly on my best finds of 2009. Like Bon Iver. Only 10 years too late, I guess. There’s something for any rock fan here. The straight up indie rock of ‘What Are You Trying To Say’, the electronically hazed ‘You Are Invited’ the chaotic ‘Girl O’Clock’. This is a classic. And should be better known.

I remember sitting in a university class back in 2002, in a course entitled ‘The Idea of Youth: Film, Fiction and Music’. I failed the course as a result of my refusal to submit any papers due to the absolute distaste that the music section left in my mouth. Not that it was a bad course – I mean, it was post-modern critical theory and thus, for the most part, a load of tripe – but the ideas and texts they were pushing were interesting. It was the day we hit the topic of music and feminism and were played Bikini Kill that I decided that the course was not for me. As discussion began in the following tutorial, a number of the girls in the class spoke up. “We didn’t get it. What’s feminist about making tuneless noise and throwing your instruments around.” OK, maybe it’s just me. Maybe, it’s having spent a lot of my teenage years listening to bands like Nirvana, Mudhoney, Big Black, Black Flag and all those masculine punk bands of the late 80s and early 90s but my reaction was ‘What the hell is there not to get?’ Here we have a group intent on wrestling an essentially male sound in an essentially male scene and smashing it to pieces in the name of Girl Power – and NOT the Girl Power of later pisstaking groups like the Spice Girls – but real Girl Power. The Riot GRRLS. Bikini Kill lived and acted and demanded their wants and desires.

So to the album. It’s a noisy affair, this riot grrl. It’s dirty, it’s dangerous and it’s angry. From the opening riffs of Double Dare Ya to the closing grunge pop of Outta Me, this album grips you. It’s there to shake the system. It’s attacking patriarchy. It’s daring women to rise. To challenge men. And to lead their own way. ‘White Boy. Don’t Laugh. Don’t Cry. Just Die!’ they scream in White Boy – while later calling out to the Rebel Girl and letting men know how little they need them.

Don’t need you to tell us we’re good
Don’t need you to say we suck
Don’t need your protection
Don’t need your dick to fuck

As a man, I sometimes find myself questioning whether or not I should like this. But I can’t not like it. I mean the constant theme throughout the album is an attack on patriarchy. It could be seen as borderline misandrist. But it’s not misandrist. It’s anti-idiot, it’s anti-inequality but certainly not anti-men. Rather, it’s PRO-women. And why not? Too often throughout life, women are discouraged, sexualised, commodified, maltreated and manipulated. Fifteen years later, this is still the case. In fact, perhaps backwards steps have been taken. Taking a real life example, a facebook status update I just received read ‘ ……….. readily admits women are the inferior sex.’ Bikini Kill would be fuming. And so they should. And as a man, I should be fuming with them.

Everything about this album is great. The raw production, the guitars coming through amplifiers that sound like they’ve been thrashed to death, the tinny drums, this is punk rock at it’s best. It’s not friendly music. Your mum will still hate it. Your boyfriend or girlfriend will probably too. But if you for a moment think that there isn’t injustice between the genders – or for that matter any injustice at all in the world – put on this record. You will have your fist in the hair, ready to tear down hierarchy, patriarchy, domination and despair in the name of humanity.

Rebel Girl, Rebel Girl, You are the Queen of my World.

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