high places, setting the eclectic toneIn this issue of Cellophane Sunset...an eclectix cornucopia consisting of Almost Live Why?, a triumvirate of Northern Soul classics from The Four Tops, Gloria Jones and The King Casuals, Hot Chip and a pathetically in-depth discussion of their new material, and much needed (and greatly contradictory) doses of El Guincho's tropicalia and Brian Eno's ambience (assonance-tastic music writing, right there). But first, Why?; Almost Live...
Why?
This is from Why?'s album Almost Live from Eli's Live Room, an album which I'd heartily recommend as highly as their 2008 studio equivalent Alopecia. Not only does this almost live album include every song from that but also several updated versions of tracks like 500 Fingernails, a personal favourite; go and download it, its hard to acquire legally. Devoted fans will note a marked improvement in percussion on these tracks in particular. A word of warning, many people don't like Why?'s hip-pop antics, perhaps because the brilliance of Yoni Wolf's lyrics is matched only by the "unique qualities" of his voice. Either way, I love it, and you should do the same. Its rare to come across music this heartfelt but still so good.
Why? - By Torpedo Or Crohn's (Almost Live)
Why? - Twenty Eight (Almost Live)
Why? - 500 Fingernails (Almost Live)
The Four Tops
this is as good as it getsI have a vinyl rip of this from a Motown LP, but this mp3 does equal justice to one of Rolling Stone's Top 500 Songs.
The Four Tops - Standing In The Shadows Of Love
Gloria Jones
but i'm sorry / i don't pray that way
You'll never regress to the Soft Cell cover again; from now on you'll view that 1981 one-hit wonder as a pap smear on the dignity of the musical landscape (I'll turn your phrase...)
Gloria Jones - Tainted Love
Johnny Jones and the King Casuals
Hendrix played with the King Casuals before he formed the Experience, and this is a really good cover, with trumpets in all the appropriate places.
Johnny Jones and the King Casuals - Purple Haze
Hot Chip
Not the first Bugged Out! Mix I've obtained; Simian Mobile Disco had a pretty good one several years ago. The first disc is mostly club-heavy and if I was being unfair and cynical I'd say that all the songs on it were chosen to throw the new Hot Chip track, Take It In, in a better light through juxtaposition of light and crap-coloured shade. The second disc is much more well-balanced, fusing a judicious selection of Hall and Oates with classics like What A Fool Believes in a glorious yacht rock-dance nuclear fusion, unlike the first disc's fraction too much fission (I'm sick alright, these are the ravings of a diseased mind, starved of Mi Goreng). That having been said, Hot Chip's newest track is pretty solid and I'm sharing it below.
Judging by the general vibe they're projecting through the media, that they'll be next album in a hip-hop direction, they wanted to use the opportunity of the Bugged Out! Mix to get the more house-oriented aspects of their music out of their collective system. I'm not sure how their hip-hop aspirations (which can clearly be seen in the Wiley cover) stock up with an accompanying desire to make more songs like Alley Cat (really bad live version shared below, just for illustration), which they've been premiering in live shows. Hot Chip's forthcoming album is looking more and more like an example of literary Leavisite tension, with discrepancies between what is said and what is meant, and aural ambiguity. I've also thrown in a Doobie Brothers edit from Hot Chip's Bugged Out! mix.
Hot Chip - Take It In
Hot Chip - Alley Cat (live)
Doobie Brothers - What A Fool Believes (Hot Chip Bugged Out! edit)
El Guincho
a beach
Only came across this recently; El Guincho's done a lot of really interesting stuff. He came out for St Jerome's Laneway fest here in Melbourne as of late, if only I'd heard of him before then, or been overage. This is from his album Alegranza.
El Guincho - Kalise
Brian Eno
eno on his ambient throne
The opening four seconds of Eno's first ambient album Music For Airports had barely entered the air before my mum's head swivelled dangerously on its axis towards the kitchen speakers and she identified it. That shocked me, that someone could remember the opening of a 17.25 minute ambient track to such an extent, and seemed to go against my dad's condemnation of Eno's work as elevator musak. He's the one who kept Vangelis' Soil Festivities and various Phillip Glass violin concertos around the house, it's all his fault anyway. Eno was on Radio National yesterday, talking about the his brand of "organic minimalism"; a perfect term.
I just went out to the piano and played the opening chords of Radiohead's Videotape and then listened to Eno's Not Yet Remembered...and I know that there is a lot of debate in the music community not only about sampling but about the borrowing of chords and their progressions, and that there are even music lawyers who have attempted to define how much is too much when it comes to "inspiration". In particular there was that famous Joe Satriani vs. Coldplay case (which Yusuf Islam offered to mediate, in true Cat Stevens style) last year. But in this case the resemblance is there for the world to see. Bearing that in mind, Not Yet Remembered is shared below, from Eno's second ambient album The Plateaux of Mirror, done with Harold Budd.
Brian Eno - Not Yet Remembered
Hockey / Peter Bjorn & John
For anyone that's interested, one of the first bands I put on here, Hockey, did a live show in Austin recently that was recorded in really high quality and if you like them you should check it out
here; its done in a track-by-track fashion rather than in annoying, Deerhunter-blog, Micromix style (they're all awesome songs on their own, gangly man, why not split them up?). Peter Bjorn & John have a new album out and what I've heard is pretty good, singles like It Don't Move Me especially.
On that series of notes and their arrangments I'm going to go sleep. I just noticed a silvery sheen in the bags underneath my sickly eyes, and that can't be good.
