ALWAYS EVERYTHING

A ROUND UP // SOME RECORDS WE LIKE

So we’re in 2011 now, and it’s been a while since we’ve written much. That’s set to change in the next few months, subject to the usual life-based delays… At least until the (belated, as ever) move to a proper ‘non-beta’ phase, we’ll keep acting as a space for thoughts and words on the same sounds as ever. More musings, links, free stuff and discussion to come.

In the interim period, here are some recent records we’ve had on heavy rotation.

Tim Hecker – Ravedeath, 1972 [Kranky]

In a fit of extraordinary oversight, AE managed to miss Tim Hecker and Ben Frost’s show together in Bristol last month; with that in mind, his upcoming new album (with assistance from Frost) is a blessing. It’s a typically dense, all-encompassing listen, hitting the heights of what Hecker does best, but there’s a pillowy warmth to it that sets it slightly aside from much of his more abrasive back catalogue. Recorded in a church in Reykjavik using a pipe organ as primary instrument, it ends up as an ideal companion piece to Frost’s feral, overbearing By The Throat, capturing perfectly Iceland’s sense of chaotic wilderness kept just at bay by the glow of city lights. The ripples of heat that cut through ‘In The Fog’ and triumphant, buffeting waves of opener ‘The Piano Drop’ are simply huge and dramatic in scale, and seem to scream for a soundsystem far larger than any bedroom could hope to hold.

In the context of a church and the record’s religious/sacrilegious overtones, the idea of Ravedeath itself taps into the modern world’s dissection of the sacred and the dismissal of spiritual rapture, forming a residue left behind long after the reality has dissipated.

James Ferraro – Night Dolls With Hairspray [Olde English Spelling Bee]
Monopoly Child Star Searchers – Bamboo For Two [Olde English Spelling Bee]

Is there any mind working in modern music that can rival James Ferraro’s for sheer, bloody-minded individualism? The whole H-Pop phenomenon gathered momentum in 2010 – largely, I suspect, as a result of its central trappings being brought together under David Keenan’s divisive title – but the loosely thrown around ‘nostalgia’ tag was not only a simplistic interpretation, it also led to seemingly endless waves of watered-down, vapid ‘chillwave’ imitators: all style, no substance. Ferraro can hardly be accused of that. Everything he put out last year brimmed with an excess of ideas, regularly spilling over into the usual glorious mess – check out the molten guitar plasma of On Air, or the horizon-gazing, scorched rock of Last American Hero (a shoe-in for perfect soundtrack to that iconic opening gambit “We were somewhere around Barstow on the edge of the desert…”).

There’s certainly little of the copyist in Ferraro. What with his constant dodging of direct media attention and tendency to throw massive sonic curveballs out at any given time – along with his music’s own eerie, self-contained rabbit hole of a universe – it’s hard not to suspect he’d be continuing to tread the same paths regardless of whether or not people were bothering to listen.



Night Dolls With Hairspray, his latest solo transmission, is pretty solid proof of that notion, not least in the sense that it’s simultaneously his most pop-worthy and most terrifying yet. A trashy, hypersexualised teen dream of a record, it raises unnerving questions about what on earth wallpapers the inside of Ferraro’s skull while simultaneously tossing them aside like so many hastily scribbled exam papers. One crucial element of Ferraro’s music lacking in many of his lightweight imitators is criticism. While he’d never confirm or deny the notion personally, even swift listens through the foggy collages of old and new that make up his Live At Slimer Beach record (as Grippers Nother Onesers) and this new album reveal a questioning, probing mind. Half the time, what might initially come across as nostalgia instead reveals itself to be a withering, sardonic, glazed look back at a time so swiftly glossed over as tinted with rose and sepia. His appears to be a critical eye; in that light the disturbing high school sexuality of Night Dolls… is both joyous and disgusted in tone, reveling in the seedy detritus of a youth-obsessed pop culture while also shuddering at just how far it’s possible to push fantasy into reality.

As befits Ferraro’s sheer productivity, he’s also involved in OESB’s other recent release, Monopoly Child Star Searchers’ humid-as-fuck Bamboo For Two. It’d probably be possible to describe them as a ‘supergroup’ of sorts, did the term not immediately conjure up dodgy rockist images of balding men spraying clichés across a mass of bored-looking onlookers – MCSS apparently also involve Ferraro’s fellow Skater Spencer Clarke and members of Dolphins Into The Future and Orphan Fairytale. To be fair, all of this pales into disinterested insignificance when faced with the record itself, which takes percussion as melody and bends it into pretty bracing new shapes. A US-centric daydream of days on a sun-soaked island, hitting the rum and calypso hard while nuclear chaos kicks off just over the horizon. Lovely, florally suggestive stuff, particularly the closing ‘Canal Of A Bogonia’s Oracle’.

Altered Natives – No Mortgage EP

Danny Native’s history in broken beat continues to creep through the thin cracks in his current output. He’s had a winning run of releases of late – the awesome Tenement Yard Volume 1 album and tuff-as-hell 3024 two-tracker The Bitch established him as one of the small (but growing) group of UK producers offering a wider angled, heavy and occasionally militaristic take on funky’s soca-fied grooves. Alongside people like Breach and the Deep Teknologi collective (check out J. Bevin’s wonderful free remix of T. Williams & Terri Walker’s ‘Heartbeat’ – it sprawls out like the suburbs in all directions) he’s less grime-oriented and more attuned to a wider range of house influences, alongside an ever-present, West London jazz slink. We’ve been loving his new No Mortgage EP for that exact reason: rather than staying within the confines of the UK for inspiration it drags soulful deep and Detroit house into the equation. Like Joy Orbison’s ‘BB’ it’s a distinctly local take on an international sound, and totally beguiling for it.

Domeright – Yours [white]

This emerged recently as a white label transmission from the Hardwax school of anonymity: unnamed, unmarked except for a capitalized ‘YOURS’ stamped across one side. It consists of three wonderful, deeply melodic slices of Panoramabar vocal house for those early-hours moments when the sun’s growing rays begin to throw buildings into sharply silhouetted relief, scattering dappled light through the grubby windows of abandoned warehouses. The record’s pretty hard to find kicking about, thanks to its anonymous self, but the A-side features on Steffi’s upcoming Yours & Mine album, due on Ostgut Ton next month (or grab it at Juno).

Kassem Mosse – EP5 [Kinda Soul]

More decaying transmissions from the Boss(e), this time skimming over the dreamscape austerity of his Workshop 12”s for a straight-up, immediately successful experiment in how to make dilapidated techno sound like the most inviting thing in the world. Like his anti-anthem ‘578’, lead track ‘2D’ sets up an infectious, low-slung groove and allows repetition to elevate it to ever-greater heights, and ‘Thalassocalyce’ functions as its inverted self, dancefloor energy halted in favour of an extended period of elated stasis.

Jay Weed – Prism/The Naos [502 Recordings]



We shouted a little about this new 12” from France’s Jay Weed a couple of months back, but it’s finally arrived. His new release on Oneman’s 502 label is another example of the chaotic broken house sound the likes of Deep Teknologi and Fis-T are making their own at the moment, but with the fidelity pushed through the floor and synths turned up to ‘eighties’. Like Oneohtrix Point Never making UK funky, or a doorway to an alternate universe where Mark McGuire performs with Cooly G, ‘Prism’ lands squarely on AE’s axis, somewhere between the experimental underground and the requirements of a packed floor. One of the finest little records to emerge from the dying embers of 2010.



We’re back on the radio tomorrow evening!

Always Everything Radio
www.Hivemind.fm
From six pm until eight, expect the usual blizzard of new and unreleased sounds alongside some weirder and older gems. I haven’t quite found time to dig through everything I’ve been piecing together for the last few weeks so it’ll be a bit of a haphazard one, but tune in and hit the chat for comments and hellos.

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Photos by Nico Hogg.

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Rory