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Mount Eerie at The Dome

Nov 18 2008

Last night I had the plea­sure of seeing Phil Elv­rum live for the third time in Lon­don, this time at The Dome near Ken­tish Town, with High Pla­ces and Parenthe­ti­cal Girls supporting.

I loved the High Pla­ces set; their music is inc­re­dibly invi­go­ra­ting and refreshing, with a strange sort of aggres­sion and tri­ba­lism when pla­yed live — suf­fice to say I bought their self tit­led 12″ at the close. Parenthe­ti­cal Girls were not really my sort of thing, some stand out tracks, an inte­res­ting voca­list and ins­tru­ment rota­tion made it worthwhile though.

Phil’s set was, as usual, mes­me­ri­zing and won­der­ful, des­pite his obvious exhaus­tion from traveling.

Down­loads

Just for good mea­sure, here are two down­loads of the com­plete per­for­man­ces the last time I saw him live — recor­ded with per­mis­sion by Sonny (via MEPS); first at The Lumi­naire and the next day at the Lon­don School of Eco­no­mics library. Yesterday’s show didn’t top these, but to be honest that’s pretty hard ’cause they were awe­some; there was even sin­ga­longs and peo­ple sat cross leg­ged around him on the stage; it was all very inti­mate and beautiful.

Mount Eerie — Live at the Lumi­naire, May 23rd 2006 (my high­light from this one is track 28, Voice In Headphones).

Mount Eerie — Live at the LSE library, May 24th 2006

Media from The Dome

M83 Gig at Scala, 22nd Oct 08

Oct 23 2008

Raise your arms the highest you can, so the whole uni­verse will glow…

Last night I had the pri­vi­lege of seeing M83 live at Scala in Lon­don, with The Domino State sup­por­ting; and oh how superb it all was. Of course there was a strong focus on the new album, Saturday=Youth, but they didn’t for­get the old songs, mixing it up beau­ti­fully with Dead Cities and Before the Dawn Heals Us. As the rising drums, gui­tars and rhythm of “A Gui­tar and a Heart” crashed through the venue with ever inc­rea­sing furor and energy, a shi­ver shot down my spine and I hoped it would never end.

Here is some crappy foo­tage I shot on my camera just for my own nos­tal­gic pur­po­ses. Note how the camera can’t hold its auto focus in the light levels, giving the impres­sion I can’t focus anything.

Review by There Goes The Fear:

Nor­mally the words shoe­gaze, pop, 80s, rave and enjo­ya­ble shouldn’t be put next to each other, let alone used to desc­ribe the same 90 minu­tes. Howe­ver, those are just the words I’m going to use to desc­ribe last night’s M83 gig at London’s Scala.

Taking to a stage cove­red with enough cables to give even the most sea­so­ned of elec­tri­cians a heart attack, Anthony Gon­za­lez (who’s much sma­ller and more elflike in real life than I had rea­li­sed…) made it clear it was his night, and with the help of a few sup­por­ting artists ploughed through an impres­sive selec­tion of his work from the past 7 years.

Natu­rally, the focus of the eve­ning was on new album Saturdays=Youth, with tracks like Cou­leurs, Gra­ve­yard Girl and Kim & Jes­sie get­ting some of the big­gest cheers of the night. Howe­ver, whilst his new pop direc­tion was the rea­son Scala was so pac­ked, he didn’t for­get the diehard fans from his early days (and there were a few…), thro­wing in some har­der dan­cier num­bers which cul­mi­na­ted in the encore with an almost full-on rave. Well, for about 5 minutes.

Shoe­gaze was the theme of the eve­ning really though, with many songs blu­rring into one, and for the casual fan (like myself) it was easy to lose your­self in the music for 10 minu­tes, totally entran­ced by the team­work and the skills of everyone.

Catherine Howe

Apr 18 2007

Wow, this Numero Group keeps get­ting bet­ter and bet­ter. I truly recom­mend their collec­tions. This is a track from disc 12 in their reper­toire NUM012, the album is called “What a Beau­ti­ful Place” and was ori­gi­nally relea­sed in 1971 but fell into obs­cu­rity until now.


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Title: 13. In The Hot Sum­mer

Artist: Cathe­rine Howe

Album: What A Beau­ti­ful Place

The first ever com­pact disc issue of Cathe­rine Howe’s bri­lliant debut album. Pro­du­ced by legen­dary jazz pia­nist Bobby Scott, the album is a pas­to­ral blend of English country­side folk and Lon­don orches­tral pop, not unlike Bry­ter Lay­ter or North Star Grass­man And The Ravens. Ori­gi­nally relea­sed on Reflec­tion Records in 1971, the much sought after album disap­pea­red before ever hit­ting the racks. Boo­klet inc­lu­des half a dozen unpu­blished pho­tos and an ano­ta­ted his­tory of the album’s brief exis­tence. The fully remas­te­red album inc­lu­des an unearthed bonus track ori­gi­nally inten­ded to be inc­lu­ded on the album.

Numero Group: The Majestic Arrows

Apr 14 2007

…Enter the Numero Group. Foun­ded by Tom Lunt, Rob Sevier, and Ken Shi­pley in 2003, the three self-proclaimed “record obses­si­ves” deci­ded to approach the record busi­ness back­wards. No cor­po­rate hie­rarchy; no com­pany sta­tio­nary. Just a big pile of music that no one had ever heard of.

The mis­sion was sim­ple: to dig deep into the reces­ses of our record collec­tions with the goal of fin­ding the dus­tiest gems beg­ging to be relea­sed from their exile on geek street. No lon­ger would $500 sin­gles sit in a temperature-controlled room dying for a chance to be pla­yed. No more would the artists, wri­ters, and entre­pre­neurs who made these records hap­pen go unk­nown and unappreciated.

Numero relea­ses are sound with subs­tance, living at the nexus of song and story. Scru­pu­lously researched, pains­ta­kingly re-mastered, and with an atten­tion to detail that is unmatched in the reis­sue field, the end result is a top-of-the-line com­pact disc.

There is no “Numero” sound; ins­tead, Numero offers an aesthe­tic. A shelf of Numero discs feels less like a “record collec­tion” and more like a library. The library to date is a mix of thrift shop soul, skinny tie pop, Beli­zean funk, and hill­billy gos­pel. Numero makes records for peo­ple who may have everything from indi­ge­nous Cen­tral Ame­ri­can drum­ming to Cana­dian chan­teu­ses stac­ked next to their CD players.

This track is from their third release “Eccen­tric Soul: The Ban­dit Label” and this par­ti­cu­lar track is towards the end — merely a rehear­sal. I ins­tantly fell in love with this song, I implore you to lis­ten to it.


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Title: 18. If I Had A Little House (Rehear­sal)

Artist: The Majes­tic Arrows

Album: Eccen­tric Soul: The Ban­dit Label

Halim El-Dabh

Nov 14 2006
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Much like in the dis­co­very of the deca­ying Victorian-life films of Mitchell and Ken­yon, came the unearthing of a series of expe­ri­men­tal sounds by Halim El-Dabh recor­ded through 1944 to 1959. The par­ti­cu­lar elec­tro­nic con­coc­tion res­pon­si­ble for my wide eyed grin is the “Wire Recor­der Piece” (1944), a two minute para­nor­mal head-fuck (to be frank) that pre­da­tes the first known ‘techno’ track by two years, this is the track avai­la­ble above. A sur­mise of the ghostly atmosphere seems futile; it is the sound­track of an asy­lum; echoes of lost voi­ces rebound from cold ste­rile sur­fa­ces as if evo­ked by the dead. Indiana Jones has unvei­led the holy grail of noise; it is ghastly and awe-inspiring.

A collec­tion of these old tapes were relea­sed under the mis­gui­ding upbeat moni­ker of “Cros­sing into the Mag­ne­tic Elec­tro­nic”. The first nine tracks con­ti­nue in the same vein as the recor­der piece – an explo­ra­tion of the ins­ti­tute if you will. “Michael and the dra­gon” pas­ses an ope­ra­ting thea­tre tes­ting a new electro-shock-therapy pro­ce­dure – a deathly wail is detai­ned by the rever­be­ra­tions of alter­na­ting current that char­ges and con­demns; “Medi­ta­tion in White Sound” sees a pad­ded cell and straight jac­ket, a drug­ged out inva­lid ree­ling from wha­te­ver it is he is ree­ling from. “Pirouette” sees a rus­ted whee­led bed pass us com­plete with res­trai­ning cuffs and stai­ned sheets. The tall murky win­dows, high cei­lings and smell of disin­fec­tant are all too appa­rent in “Ele­ment, Being and Pri­me­val”. To say that I am pain­ting a pic­ture too bleak is to say that medi­cal holes in the trenches of The Great War lac­ked hygiene. “Elec­tro­nics and the word” is our final the­rapy ses­sion with the doc­tor before “Venice” sees our brief epiphany.

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