The Other Section

Anyone (well, let’s be honest) everyone seems to knock out singles these days and sometimes it’s not really clear why. But Johnny 5^th Wheel does it the right way.

This is the way modern folk seems to be; on the move interweaving different traditions, not linked to one place or rigidly labelled as appropriate for a certain bunch of people.

The result of inviting 10 contemporaries to build soundscapes out of their raw material is no more immediately accessible but full of chinstroking avant garde electronic gems.

As ever with Plant Duw, melodies are strong and often take the lead role in dictating the track’s direction; and there are opalescent moments throughout...

The raw numbness, the machinelike quality at the core of this music should not be underestimated. It’s almost abrasive in its nothingness.

They are superb actors, as a listener you are sucked into their world completely, there’s no looking for approval either, and with El Circulo / La Langosta we get another stunning display of bravura.

This is the autobiography of someone who seriously knows his onions musically: someone who I can credit with giving me something to dream about and think about, someone who planted some of the canes to wrap the tendrils of my very nascent social and cultural persona around.

Still, despite the book’s disarming nature, the list of memories are incredible: blazing and funny descriptions of Mudhoney’s and Nirvana’s first UK gigs, the debunking of the Oasis fight incident, and wide-eyed recollections of the Pixies and Throwing Muses double header…

On reading this one is reminded of the essential vanity of the music business, its inability to balance hope and reality, the way that the alien nature of how money works clashes with the utopianism that doing things on impulse (such as releasing challenging records) releases.

I’m no expert as to what’s going on in terms of how the guitar is treated and what pedals are being used, etcetera, etcetera, but the end effect does sound often like a whole jumble of cut up notes spilling out of the monitors like paper after being fed into a shredder.

It’s old fashioned pop that manages to capture an audience without any ego or bluster. The singer has something of Marc Almond’s theatrical delivery too.

Deakin has an admirable way of organising his material and allowing loquacious characters like Larry Wallis and Russell Hunter their head, (not to mention Mr. Farren whose chief delight – even after all these years - is to embellish and fashion his narrative in any way he sees fit).

Despite any misgivings I may have on folk in general, I certainly finished this book admiring Carthy as a figure of some consequence.

This is a good read and a funny, sometimes enlightening book if not one to be undertaken in an afternoon.

It's an itchy work which finds some pace and momentum about eight minutes in when it decides to act as a Can tribute piece: that it holds you is testament to its inherent confidence.

Just when you think you’ve heard this stuff a lot, the refrain socks you with its arching, Valkerie-like harmonies. Truly portentous stuff.

Yin and Yang. I like this record, and I think they have talent.

Of course it’s nigh on impossible to listen to this in one go, from start to finish, but each remix has merit. Worth a listen for sure.

Hearing new stuff from the Membranes makes me realise just how much I’ve missed them. They always had a dayglo entertainer’s vibe married to an acute sense of what was going on around them, don’t be fooled by their (admittedly intoxicating) cartoon nature...

It’s a shame it’s so short.