Avant-garde

New Album Release Fridays: Max Cooper – ‘Exotic Contents’

March 25, 2022 — Leave a comment
Pictured: Cover Artwork for ‘Unspoken Words’ (LP/Album) (Released on March 25th, 2022) (via Mesh Records)

Good Morning to you! This is Jacob Braybrooke, and it’s time for you to get invested in yet another daily track on the blog, because it’s always my day-to-day pleasure to write up about a different piece of music every day! Facing stiff competition this week from the likes of Ibibio Sound Machine, Young Prisms and Aldous Harding is Max Cooper, who earns the ‘New Album Release Fridays’ spot on the blog for his sixth studio album – ‘Unspoken Words’ – that he’s released today via Mesh Records. One for fans of ambitious experimental electronic composers like Phillip Glass or Jon Hopkins, Max Cooper is a London-based IDM, Electronica and Techno producer who takes his recordings to an audio-visual level. He’s received positive write-up’s from publications like Clash, and he has released a multitude of highly produced, emotive records for labels like the London-based FIELDS label and German label Traum Schallplatten. He has also remixed an exhausting list of artists including Hot Chip, Hiatus, Nils Frahm, Olafur Arnalds, Guy Andrews, FC Kahuna, Michael Nyman, Jim Wallis, Henry Green and Stephan Bodzin over the years too. I read an article all about ‘Unspoken Words’ on Creative Review recently, and it sounded very interesting. For his latest project, Max Cooper has been exploring the difficulties of communicating with words to articulate your emotions, and the music is being accompanied by the Blu-Ray release of 13 short films – to represent each track on the record and serve as a meta-narrative to inform his work. Cooper will also be performing at Cambridge’s The Junction on April 20th. Check out Xander Steenburge’s video for ‘Exotic Contents’.

Xander Steenburge is a digital specialist who specializes in machine learning, who draws on the writings of 20th century philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein for the short film of ‘Exotic Contents’. These texts were fed to an AI system, which churned out the hypnotic visuals for the video. Talking about his collaboration with Steenburge, Cooper says, “It’s interesting for me to see the incomprehensible philosophical language interpreted visually like this, full of symbolism and the boundaries between language, our selves, the world, broken down into flowing abstraction. I haven’t really taken it all in yet, I feel like there’s more to discover in it that I can appreciate”, in his own words. Going back to the music itself, ‘Exotic Contents’ may feel like a subtle departure from the more club-oriented roots of his Techno-oriented work because he dips his toes into a collage-style suite of ambient and industrial sounds, where he uses an interpretation of words for an abstract soundscape where a half-time drum and bass format collides with the sharpness of his sound design. The beats scatter and break to an assortment of high-pitched frequencies, to the point where the production feels polished but not massively excessive. It carries the mood of a relief of stress or tension as a whole, and it definitely feels cathartic in the way that squelching breakbeats and the harsher, more dissonant Drums mimic the alleviation of a surging intensity by getting the chaos out of its system, in an ironic figure of speech. My main concern is that the music may not really communicate its ideas and themes clearly without any of the visual elements to help, and it may come across as challenging or tricky to initially grasp if you’re going into the album as a purely audio experience blind. Aside from that little question, it combines the clever pacing of IDM’s traditional production with a more intimate and emotionally driven core in intriguing and expansive ways – and the distance may not feel quite so exotic after all.

Pictured: Max Cooper in a podcast recording session for Sound Motives (2019) (Photo via SoundMotives.net)

That brings us to the end of the page for another day! Thank you for continuing to support the site, and I will be back tomorrow to present my review for the newest comeback single by a Los Angeles-based rock band who are famous for albums like 2006’s ‘Stadium Arcadium’, 2002’s ‘By The Way’ and 1999’s ‘Californiacation’. They have won six Grammy’s and they just received a star on the Hollywood Walk Of Fame.

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Today’s Track: Cate Le Bon – ‘Running Away’

November 2, 2021 — Leave a comment
  • Pictured: Cover Artwork for ‘Pompeii’ (LP) (Available on 4th February, 2022) (via Mexican Summer)

Good Morning to you! You are reading the words of Jacob Braybrooke, and the time has come for yet another daily track on the blog to get brought to your attention, because its always been my day-to-day pleasure to write up about a different piece of music every day! Known for her subversive spin on vintage guitar rock music, the Carmarthenshire-born Welsh alternative folk singer songwriter Cate Le Bon is a woman of many talents and she can perform her music fluently in both English and classical Welsh. She has also toured across the globe with artists like St. Vincent, John Grant and Perfume Genius, and she has production credits on albums by Deerhunter, Josiah Steinbrick and Tim Presley. Jeff Tweedy – of the popular Alternative Rock band Wilco – has even named Cate Le Bon as one of his personal favourite musicians of the moment. She has released three EP’s and multiple singles, and Le Bon is now six solo albums into her dynamic career. In fact, we previously covered her track ‘Mother’s Mother’s Magazines’ on the blog for one of my daily posts back in the late half of 2019. It was a long time ago, so you would be forgiven for struggling to remember reading it. However, it is a good time to try and delve into her material again since her sixth full-length album, ‘Pompeii’, is on the way, and the playful songstress has set it up for a release date of February 4th, 2022 via Mexican Summer. The follow-up to her 2019 Mercury Prize-nominated record, ‘Reward’, Le Bon says that “Pompeii was written and recorded in a quagmire of unease. Solo. In a time warp. In a house I had a life in 15 years ago”, adding, “I grappled with existence, resignation and faith. I felt culpable for the mess but it smacked hard of the collective guilt imposed by religion and original sin”, as she explained in a press statement. The first single to be taken off the new LP, ‘Running Away’ is your first taste of the record. Le Bon played every instrument on the new record, and she was joined by her regular collaborator Samur Khoja for recording studio sessions in Cardiff for a pair of tracks. Let’s give ‘Running Away’ a listen below.

Speaking of her new single, ‘Running Away’, the Welsh folk crooner describes, “The world is on fire but the bins must go out on a Tuesday night. Political dissonance meets beauty regimes. I put a groove behind it for something to hold on to. The grief is in the Saxophones”, in her press notes. An enforced period of lockdown due to the Covid-19 pandemic has, according to the Penboyr-born vocalist, also resulted in a “more extreme version” of Le Bon’s studio process, making way for a collection of more “Playful, satirical and surrealist” songs than what may have come from Cate before. These themes become clear in ‘Running Away’, which is of no resemblance to the 70’s Sly & The Family Stone Psych Funk classic of the same title. Another wayward progression of her complex instrumentation style, the track immediately feels mid-tempo, yet buoyant, with some ghostly guitar strums mixing with a softly Funk-inflicted backdrop in a strange way. Observational lyrics like “It’s the sweetest thing/That you never had” and “You can’t put your arms around it/It’s not there anymore” are wise to keep their distance because, although Cate Le Bon refuses to give us many specifics within the lyrics, as you would probably expect given her experimental nature, it feels clear that all-encompassing emotions of longing and reminiscence are placed at the center of her core. The vocals in the chorus are obscure in tone, but tinged with a feeling of lethargy, with drowsy guitar melodies that slightly evoke a 00’s ‘Slacker Rock’ feel akin to Terry Presume or Mac DeMarco, and a bubbling amount of weariness in the lovesick croons of her voice. The usual trademarks of Cate Le Bon are here, but the production feels more refined with an air of Kate Bush about it. The regal blasts of Saxophone melodies and the ambient washings of the Synths are sparse enough to reveal little, but light elements of Prog-Rock and Ambient Jazz get scattered through the verses. Together, the different elements of the song feel relatively sparse and unidentifiable on paper but they are neatly buried and they place Cate Le Bon at the center of her work, as she uses surreal songwriting with great patience and sculptures enigmatic vocals on remaining unsure about whether she should seek some things that sound lost to her. In conclusion, ‘Running Away’ is a solid evolution of Le Bon’s style because it encourages her to pale back the layers of her common material. It feels slow, but never filler, ramping up her sound by shaping something so tidy and intricate, but suitably vague and mysterious.

  • Pictured: Cate Le Bon in a still from the ‘Wonderful’ music video (2016) (Photo via Colorising.com)

As I’ve mentioned, we previously covered Cate Le Bon’s track ‘Mother’s Mother’s Magazines’ on the blog a long while ago. If you’d like to remind yourself of that post, feel free to check it out here: https://onetrackatatime.home.blog/2019/09/30/todays-track-cate-le-bon-mothers-mothers-magazines/

  • Pictured: Cate Le Bon in promotional art work for ‘Reward’ (2019) (Photo by Huw Gwynfryn Evans)

I have completed my task for another day, and, on that note, I thank you for coming along on the ride. I’ll be back tomorrow for a new edition of ‘Way Back Wednesdays’ where we’re looking back at a well-known 1972 hit that was associated with a film of the same title. It comes from a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame-inducted Ska, Reggae, Rocksteady and Prog-Soul multi-instrumentalist who is the only living Jamaican musician to be awarded the Order Of Merit, the highest honour that can be granted by his government for services in Arts, as he helped to popularize Reggae music globally.

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Today’s Track: Tirzah (feat. Coby Sey) – “Hive Mind”

October 12, 2021 — Leave a comment
  • Pictured: Cover Art for ‘Colourgrade’ (LP) (Released on October 1st, 2021) (via Domino Recordings)

Good Morning to you! You are reading the words of Jacob Braybrooke, and now is the time for me to get typing up for another daily track on the blog, because it has always been my day-to-day pleasure to write up about a different piece of music every day! I honestly had not heard of the Essex-based Psych-Soul multi-instrumentalist Tirzah Mastin before hearing ‘Hive Mind’, also featuring her close knit friend Coby Sey, on a recent episode of New Music Fix that was hosted by John Ravenscroft, but I walked away intrigued. Just to give you some details, Tirzah was raised in Braintree as the youngest of five children, before she attended the Purcell School For Young Musicians with Mica Levi, who you may know as the film composer and DIY Noise-Pop maverick Micachu. She released a pair of EP’s on Greco-Roman, and her first full-length solo record, ‘Devotion’, debuted to rave reviews from the UK’s music press in 2018 via Domino Recordings. Her follow-up, ‘Colourgrade’, which was released two weeks ago on Domino Recordings once again, finds Tirzah straying even further away from the mainstream than before. ‘Hive Mind’ is also the title of a 10-minute short film edited by Leah Walker and Rebecca Salvadori which acts as a compilation of behind-the-scenes footage of a Tirzah concert from a few years ago, and it connects with her new album by exploring Tirzah’s relationships with her loved ones and her musical collaborators. By delving into ‘Colourgrade’, you are also delving forensically into Tirzah’s depictions of what the world means to her. I have embedded the short film to the bottom section of this page for your viewing pleasure. However, for the sake of convenience, I’ve embedded the basic audio for ‘Hive Mind’ below. Let’s give it a spin.

In her recent cover story for FADER, Tirzah Mastin explained, “The roughness, the accurate recording, the time it takes to get to places, it’s a bit of a statement on how things feel live”, elaborating, “It’s sort of unpolished. I’ve left it as alone as much as possible, basically, like a warts-and-all attitude towards it”, as she told the publication about how she approached the development of ‘Colourgrade’ with a raw, in-the-moment ethos to her songwriting strategies. This idea of stripping a flood of emotions down to the core is a key theme for ‘Hive Mind’, which functions as a rather bizzare and experimental duet between Tirzah and Coby Sey. The two trade intimate lyrics like “Two by two/Tethering like hive mind’s do” and “Given times we do/Sing different tunes” that feel playfully poetic over the top of a spiraling, glitched backdrop. The bassline has a gentle kick and a shuddering quality to the soulful minimalism, and the pieces are held together by a crying Arpeggio synth that feels harsh and rather abrasive in mood. The two vocalists sound intuitively tuned with one another, using lyrics like “But who we were/Do we see things through?” to add an ambiguous element to their complex relationship. The electronic melodies feel rather sparse and nocturnal, while the guitar licks and the emphasis on their harmonies create enough of a soulful backbeat for the cerebral production to feel melodic enough, although the brooding and gritty style of Tirzah and Sey’s duet remains undisturbed and fairly bleak. Their push-and-pull vocals imply a sense of kinship between the two partners through trials and tribulations. Overall, ‘Hive Mind’ is certainly not a mainstream offering, but it is certainly an intriguing one, with the steady metronomic pulse of the Synths creating a screeching bark and the icy, minimalist sketch format of the tune creating a tapestry of mood which commands your attention. Great minds think alike.

  • Pictured: Tirzah Mastin before an interview with Rolling Stone (2021) (Photo by Domino Recordings)

That’s all for today! Thank you for checking out what I had to share with the world today, and I’ll be back for ‘Way Back Wednesdays’ tomorrow, as we look back at an all-female Punk band who were active from 1976 to 1979 and became an overseas sensation in Japan. A biographical coming-of-age flick about them was released in 2010 that was directed by Floria Sigismondi in her directorial debut. The film starred Kristen Stewart, Dakota Fanning and Michael Shannon and grossed $4.6m worldwide.

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New Album Release Fridays: Lala Lala – “DIVER”

October 8, 2021 — Leave a comment
  • Pictured: Cover Art for ‘I Want The Door To Open’ (LP) (Released on October 8, 2021) (via Hardly Art)

Good Morning to you! My name is Jacob Braybrooke, and it is time for us to enjoy a deeper dive into one of the weekend’s zestiest new album releases, since it’s always been my day-to-day pleasure to write up about a different piece of music every day! October 8th. It also happens to be a Friday, and so that means new albums from the likes of the Canadian Experimental marvels BadBadNotGood, LA-based Bedroom Pop prodigies Magdalena Bay, one half of Warwick-based Alt-Pop duo Cash+David in the form of Liz Lawrence, the criminally underrated Louisa Roach-led Wirral-formed Post-Punk group She Drew The Gun and former Feels member Shannon Lay all hitting the shelves of your nearest record shop today. However, ‘DIVER’ is a gorgeous track that’s been issued as a single from ‘I Want The Door To Open’, the third solo album in the discography of Lala Lala, which is the Indie Rock project of the Chicago-based singer-songwriter Lillie West. She began making music when she attended the School Of The Art Institute in Chicago and became involved in the city’s local music scene after being encouraged by a close friend to buy a guitar from Craigslist, after she was raised up in Los Angeles and London. Since then, West has been heard on ‘Siren 042’, a collaboration with Yoni Wolf, the frontman of the Alternative Hip-Hop band WHY?, and she performed at the Pitchfork Music Festival in 2019. She has also toured the US with Death Cab For Cutie and Better Oblivion Community Center, and she has received praised for her “ability to offset sharp lyricism with shimmering guitar and singalong-worthy vocal refrains” by Adelaide Sandstrom, a respected writer for NPR Music. Her new LP is the follow-up to 2016’s self-released ‘Sleepyheads’ and her critically-acclaimed 2018 follow-up record ‘The Lamb’, with the album’s themes being inspired by a novel ‘Manhattan Beach’ by Jennifer Egan. Take ‘DIVER’ for a spin below.

The new album boasts numerous guests like Death Cab For Cutie’s Ben Gibbard, poet Kara Jackson, Adam Schatz from Landlady, fellow Chicago scene musician Christian Lee Hutson, and a few others, and West has described the project herself as “I Want The Door To Open’s a musical quest undertaken with the knowledge that the titular door may open; but is is through falling in love with the quest itself that one may find the next closest thing”, adding, “It’s a bold exploration of persona and presence from an artist questioning how to be herself fully in a world where the self is in constant negotiation”, in her own words. The sound of ‘DIVER’ certainly fits the glacial warmth of the arctic landscapes of the music video and the icy white visuals of the LP’s cover artwork, with some Baroque instrumentation and the slowly ascending backing vocals that evoke a theatrical, choir-like sound. Lyrics like “I’m Sisyphus/You’re the witness/It’s intimate, the violence/It’s palpable to want it all” feel visual and poetic too, and these sequences are tidily set against the backdrop of a lo-fi distortion and some layered, wide open drumming. There are moments of orchestral and ethereal musicality here, especially in the chorus where she uses lyrics like “Your face distorted in the window/Swimming out towards my new life” to sing about discovering a new era in your life and recognizing the swooping thematic tides of change, but later lyrics like “All my time I have is diamonds/Rolling around my head” acknowledge a struggle of developing yourself to meet your goals as one that never truly ends. It feels like a warm introduction to the rest of the ideas that West has likened to exploring on the new record, with an Avant-Pop air of Kate Bush or Tom Waites to connect the abstract musicality together, and so this is a very nice and easily consumable track overall. It’s not necessarily a criticism of her music itself, but I think that a better stage name than ‘Lala Lala’ would make me a bit more likely to take her as seriously as she would like me to as a musician, as it sounds more like she’s one of the younger siblings of the Teletubbies currently. That nitpick aside, I enjoyed the heartfelt personal reflection and the winter sound of the track and the critics seem to love her, and so I’m sure the new record will make for a fascinating listen – although she cannot stare directly at it.

  • Pictured: Cover Artwork for ‘The Lamb’ (LP) (Released on September 28th, 2018) (via Hardly Art)

That brings us to the end of today’s musical musing, and thank you a lot for your continued support with the blog. On a related note, please subscribe to my new podcast – ‘The Subculture Sessions’ – on Spotify for more regular content like this post. I’ll be back tomorrow with an in-depth look at a big new collaboration from a 00’s indie pop staple who have remixed the likes of Kate Nash and Sebastien Teller, and a rising star who sings in Spanish and English – and has signed with RCA Records.

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Today’s Track: Meadow Meadow – “Silhouettes”

September 6, 2021 — Leave a comment
  • Pictured: Cover Art for ‘Silhouettes’ (EP) (Available from September 17th, 2021) (via Practice Music)

Good Morning to you! You are reading the words of Jacob Braybrooke and, as per usual, the time has finally come for me to get the new week off to a flying start with another daily track on the blog, because it’s always my day-to-day pleasure to write up about a different piece of music every day! Meadow Meadow previously made an appearance on the blog in January with ‘Fireworks’ when I was writing about some of my holdovers from the year before, and I’ve been keeping a close eye on their work since then. This Manchester-based Avant-Garde duo is comprised of James Green and Peter Darlington, who were previously two members of Spring King, a Garage Rock quartet from Macclesfield who were once the cover stars of Dork Magazine. Since the breakup of Spring King, Green and Darlington have both enjoyed continuing to write new material together as Meadow Meadow, a process of creativity they find to be as “a constant source of peace and catharsis”. Green and Darlington cite the likes of Beck, 808 State and Neil Young as their influences behind Meadow Meadow, and the pair of producers also share a love for The Microphones and Animal Collective. The work they create now is self-described as “Music for walking, cycling and camping” because the two musicians have bonded together over their shared experience in growing up near reservoirs, forests and canals. The follow-up to their self-titled debut EP released last year, ‘Silhouettes’ is their new EP, which arrives on September 17th via Practice Music. Check out the Phone-optimized video for the EP’s title track below.

Their new EP also includes the previously released single ‘DNO’, which was mixed by Mike Lindasy of Lump and Tunng. Green explained about the new EP release, “We wrote ‘Silhouettes’ just after completing our first EP, and we both felt it set the tone of what we wanted to do for our next collection of songs. It was inspired by a drawing that was uncovered behind the wallpaper in my childhood bedroom” via his press release. Set to the fan footage visuals of fan footage from different nature spots, ‘Silhouettes’ feels like home for fans of Darkside, where Folk-oriented nylon guitar chords and playfully synthetic sounds mix with a more organic theme to create a strangely endearing equation. The vocals feel much less polished than some of the duo’s previous tunes, and this feels more akin to their roots in DIY Post-Punk as a part of Spring King. Lyrics like “I’m hoping to find peace in sorrow/A black sparrow sitting on the wall” and “I jump into bliss/I fell through the wall/Thick paint on my hands” create a visual picture of the lyrical themes of painting a picture of yourself to reflect quietly upon. We’re led to a more hushed finale, where the refrain of “Truth is beauty/And I see that now/At 3am, I’m always spinning out” is squeakily crooned to the tune of a slower musical palette. Some elements of field recordings and psychedelic textures give the experimental sounds a strange mix of a cosy campfire feeling and a more disturbing undertone where the loose Piano keys and the rolling Drums create a more percussive style. There’s a warmth to these sounds, but the more meditative anchoring process also reminds me of the more collage-based style of Art-Rock bands like Django Django, while the life-affirming brightness of the more sonic sounds harkens back to Moon Duo for me. Overall, this is a weighted mixture of Avant-Rock and Dream-Folk that feels like a well developed mish-mash of other alternative groups, and so it feels original enough by weaving these wide influences together with a warm personality that suits the visual feel of the psychedelic themes.

  • Pictured: Meadow Meadow (Peter Darlington & James Green) (2020) (Photo via Facebook.com)

As I mentioned, I also checked out a greener Meadow Meadow (See what I did there?) for the blog early in the year, and so if you liked the sound of ‘Silhouettes’, why not check out ‘Fireworks’ here?: https://onetrackatatime.home.blog/2021/01/26/todays-track-meadow-meadow-fireworks/

  • Pictured: James Green performing a synth part for “Bonzo” last year (2019) (Photo via Facebook.com)

Thank you for reaching the end of the page with me today, and I can’t wait to add another entry to the blog tomorrow as we take an in-depth look at another emerging British independent music act that comes from Wrexham, North Wales this time and she will be releasing her debut album on Fiction Records later in the week. Having drawn comparisons to Ex:Re and The XX, she is now based in Margate and previously led the Transgressive-signed Shoegaze band Deaf Club before starting her solo career.

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New Album Release Friday: Darkside – “The Limit”

July 23, 2021 — Leave a comment

The experimental duo who don’t always look on the bright side of life. New post time!

  • Pictured: Vinyl Copy of “SPIRAL” (LP) (Released on July 23rd, 2021) (via Matador Records)

Good Morning to you! It’s Jacob Braybrooke here, and it’s time to take a moment out with your daily track on the blog, because it’s always my day-to-day pleasure to write up about a different piece of music every day! Latitude Festival may be the biggest talking point of this mid-July weekend, but, for those of us who couldn’t get ourselves a ticket and need to rely on getting our music fix elsewhere, there is a handful of new records available to fresh ears. Anne-Marie, Joel Culpepper, The Jungle Giants, Emma Jean-Thackray, Leon Bridges and Mercury Prize winner Dave all have new full-length albums hitting store shelves today. My pick for this week has been eight years in the making. ‘Spiral’ arrives this morning through Matador Records from Darkside, the collaborative side-project of the insanely prolific Chilean-American composer Nicolás Jaar and the Brooklyn-based rock multi-instrumentalist Dave Harrington, a previous member of indie bands ARMS and Translations. The follow-up to 2013’s ‘Psychic’, the new record was written and recorded in 2018 and six of the tracks were largely made through an extended week-long session during that summer in New Jersey. It has a 79 on Metacritic to show solid reviews, with Charlotte Krol of NME calling it “A gorgeous, filmic record that rewards with each spin”. Check out promo single ‘The Limit’ below.

“From the beginning, Darkside has been our Jam band, something we did on days off”, Jaar spoke of Darkside’s return from hiatus, adding, “When we reconvened, it was because we really couldn’t wait to jam together again”, to the press release. Dave Harrington added, “It felt like it was time again. We do things in this band that we would never do on our own. Darkside is the third being in the room that just kind of occurs when we make music together”, to the press notes for the hype machine. Down to a tee, ‘The Limit’ is a psychedelic adventure through experimental corridors of patterns and exciting, wildly free-spirited tones that make the steadfast jolt feel like a diverse, atmospheric journey. Beginning with some intriguing Woodwinds-like sounds, Jaar laments a loss of grip on reality of life with contemplative vocals like “Don’t sow what you reap/Submit to the pace” and “The waters erase/Nothing left to see” as we build up to a lengthy instrumental that combines Folk-led guitar riffs with stiff Keyboard frames, with a driving Drum melody that adds a lot of heft to the strength. We reach a breaking point when Jaar refrains “Current with no direction”, as the steely frames take an intrusive turn to something that feels much more harsh and abrasive in setting, as the transcendant Funk beats grind to a squelching, grounded halt with grating guitar sections and propulsive Synth cuts. The finale is also dynamic enough to stay interesting on your repeated listens, as Harrington’s production cascades through jangled rhythms with an Acid rain-like quality, while Jaar’s vocals feel unphased throughout the obscure experiment of the five minutes. It’s a strange but controlled mixture of ambient tapestry overall, with an opening that reminds me of Django Django in it’s 00’s dance flair and Folk-inflicted guitars, but the following sequences of ethereal audio really keeps you on your toes and feels incomparable to much else in terms of it’s dissonant explorations of creaking acoustics. On the whole, it expertly walks the line of bizzare and frantic like a tightrope circus act, yet it never loses it’s footing to fall off the said tightrope in the analogy. It never feels like pure chaos, since the eclectic instrumentals have a coherent narrative of-sorts and the key changes never stray from the path of consistency too aggressively. It’s certainly not mainstream, but it’s good to remember that Darkside’s records are being aimed more towards an avid fanbase, as opposed to those who will just take whatever formulaic dance track the pop charts throw at them. The tune is a very cool record, with an ever-changing dymamic in sound that mixes Jaar’s virtuosic skill as an experienced classical composer with Harrington’s ear for psychedelic influences that he honed on the US DIY indie electronica scene. You can revel in it’s Jaaring nature. See what I did?

  • Pictured: Nicolas Jaar & Dave Harrington (2013) (Photo Credit: Jim Carroll/The Irish Times)

We’ve reached your destination – which is the end of the page for today! I’ll be back to do it all over again tomorrow, however, with an in-depth look into some brand new music from a popular cult UK lo-fi independent Prog-Rock duo – a married couple – who are making their second appearance on the blog with a new single that features the British godfather of Punk himself, Iggy Pop, to confirm their new set of tour dates.

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Easter Monday 2021 Special: Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds – “Jesus Alone” (2016)

April 5, 2021 — Leave a comment

Unless you’ve been living in a cave for 30 years – this guy is a big deal. New post time!

  • Pictured: Poster for ‘20,000 Days On Earth’ (Dir. Iain Forsyth, Jane Pollard) (2014) (Drafthouse Films)

Good Morning to you – It’s Jacob Braybrooke, I’ve got my morning Cappuccino coffee on the side, and that means that it’s also time for me to get typing up for your daily track on the blog, because it is always my day-to-day pleasure to write up about a different piece of music every day! Wishing you a nice Bank Holiday Monday with another Easter-themed post from a music legend, albeit more loosely than yesterday. A more contemporary track, ‘Jesus Alone’, was the lead single from Australian Garage-Rock icon Nick Cave, for his sixteenth studio album with The Bad Seeds, entitled ‘Skeleton Tree’. The elevator pitch for that record probably sounded a lot like “Cave has always played with Death – and now he confronts it”, with the album being written and recorded about the heartbreaking death of his son. The album earned some absolutely rave reviews, heralded by his fans as a masterpiece of grief and loss. I can’t claim to have fully listened to, or even understood, everything that Cave has released. However, I know that he truly is a fascinating artist and that he’s one of those rare talents that are impossible to imitate – and so I have a lot of respect for the cultural icon. The album was released alongside a documentary film, ‘One More Time with Feeling’, a pseudo-sequel to 2014’s ‘20,000 Days On Earth’, which combined interviews and videos of Cave making the album. Let’s check out ‘Jesus Alone’ below.

‘Skeleton Tree’ was recorded over 18 months and saw Nick Cave experiment with Synth technology, which was a style of production that Cave had always shied away from prior, with the Avant-Garde music techniques and unconventional structures of songwriting leading Cave to say, “What happens when an event occurs that is so catastrophic that you just change”, on the accidental cliff fall of his 15-year-old son, Arthur. It makes for some gut-wrenching subject matter, and I’ve said that Easter is a loose theme for it’s opening track because it has something of a dual meaning, with Cave juxtaposing a call of goodbye to his Son, with a call for forgiveness and closure to God. Over the top of dissonant drum machine loops and synth-oriented rhythms, Cave cries out “You fell from the Sky, crash-landed in a field near the River” above the rumbling of the bass. It makes for a graphic image, with a tense and eerie atmosphere which draws from the cinematic and the expansive. The repeating bridge of “With my voice, I am calling you” sees a taut Piano melody enter the fray, with the instrumentation sounding fittingly fractured and broken in it’s off-kilter sensibilities. Lines like “You believe in God, but you get no special dispensation for this belief now” and “You’re a distant memory in the mind of your creator” see Cave move slowly towards a religious plea for help, although he’s hesitant to accept God as his savior because he simply wonders why his son was taken by Death, and not him. The ending, however, see Cave grow slowly, but progressively, into a more impassioned voice-over. “Let us sit together, until the moment comes” seems to be the cue point for this, as swelling Orchestral sections and Baritone musings represent a slow change in instrumentation and an all-important change of tone in the process. Overall, it’s probably not for everybody – with the delivery being a methodical and slowly revealing affair, and the subject matter hitting close to home. However, that makes it seem all the more urgent and all the more intimate, with the songwriting feeling deeply personal for Cave. Yet, we’ve all had the times when we’ve suffered loss, and it’s something that feels very distant for us to talk about, and we often deal with it ourselves and in our own ways. Therefore, Cave’s musing becomes a ghostly and beautiful affair, with the chilling and ethereal sound making for an otherworldly listen. Very personal, yet easy to connect with. You know – It’s simply just really good.

  • Pictured: Cover Art for “Skeleton Tree” (LP) (Released on 9 September, 2016) (via Bad Seed Ltd.)
  • Pictured: Kylie Minogue and Nick Cave playing on the Pyramid stage on day five of Glastonbury Festival at Worthy Farm, Pilton on June 30, 2019 in Glastonbury, England (Photo by Ian Gavan/Getty Images)

That’s all for now – run along and enjoy your day off work. I’ll be back tomorrow with an in-depth look at some recent music from a Prog-Rock collective of youngsters who have already released one of the most highly anticipated albums of the year, earning praise on their way to stardom from publications like The Quietus, The New York Times, and The Guardian, often being compared to the 90’s act Slint. If you really liked what you just read, why not follow the blog to get notified when every new daily post is up and why not like the Facebook page here?: https://www.facebook.com/OneTrackAtATime/

Way Back Wednesdays: The Sugarcubes – “Birthday”

February 3, 2021 — Leave a comment

I went to Iceland before. I left with a Frozen Pizza and an Indian meal. New Post time!

  • Pictured: Bjork Guðmundsdóttir (Lead Vocals), Einar Örn Benediktsson (Trumpet), Sigtryggur Baldursson (Drums), Þór Eldon (Guitar) & Margrét Örnólfsdóttir (Keyboard) (1992) (via Pinterest.com)

Wishing you a Good Afternoon – I’m Jacob Braybrooke and it’s time, yet again, for me to get typing up for your daily track on the blog, because it is always my day-to-day pleasure to write about a different piece of music every day! I recently made my own audio documentary podcast for my MA degree coursework which explored the socio-economic impacts of Bjork as a contemporary cultural icon, and when I asked my mother and my father if they could recall her early work as the lead singer of The Sugarcubes, both of their faces looked a little too blank. On this note, I thought that “Birthday” would make a great choice for our weekly vintage music appreciation feature – here on the blog. This old Icelandic Post-Punk band were arguably where it all started for Bjork, and “Birthday” is widely considered to be her first international hit. Released as the first single from their debut studio album, “Life’s Too Good”, back in 1998 – “Birthday” is a fitting embodiment of the subversive and slightly playful character of Bjork and The Sugarcubes, and after gaining support from BBC Radio 1 icon John Peel, along with the influence and support from trusted publications like NME and Melody Maker at the time, “Birthday” reached #2 on the UK’s Indie Singles chart, and the band would find success in the US after performing the track on an episode of Saturday Night Live, in October 1998. Check out the (English) video below.

“Life’s Too Good” turned out to be a surprise success for the group of 1980’s Icelandic Punk culture producers, with the band taking elements from the Post-Punk sound that characterized both the Icelandic modernity and long-standing naturalist views of their country of the time, and they blended these old capitalist ideas with a quirky twist on the conventional Pop song structure in their compositional approach. The lyrics find Bjork singing about the character of a child who has strikingly unusual habits for a five-year-old girl. The repetition of the line “Today is her birthday” makes these themes clear, although the vocals are more based around very tight wordplay, as opposed to a clear and straightforward context. Lyrics such as “She has one friend, he lives next door/They’re listening to the weather” and “Collects fly wings in a Jar, Scrubs horse flies, and pinches them on a line” are guided through the off-key melodies created by the fairly industrial New-Wave shrills. The list of weird interests and the jumbled poetry on the imagination of the character rattle along to upbeat keyboard riffs, warm syncopated percussion and the clunking Trumpet melodies, while it never becomes very clear what the small girl is doing. Instead of following the build-up with an evident response, we instead get a very experimental method of singing from Bjork, which some listeners may conceive as yelling – as a refusal to conform to any specific style or format. The cries are guttural and expressive, and while the band follow a typical Pop song structure, there’s a noticeable touch on Dance music elements that gave this single it’s depth to stand out. The drums keep things moving along at a swift pace, and the swooping guitar melodies evoke a Cocteau Twins-like feeling of Shoegaze for me to create a more ethereal and brighter atmosphere. The sound would have been a very forward-thinking one at the time, and it was also very notable for that star-making performance from Bjork, who has a career of such longevity. There’s absolutely no wonder to what she would go on to do.

  • Pictured: Cover Art for “Life’s Too Good” (Released on April 25th, 1998) (via One Little Indian Records)

Well – there’s some nostalgia that I never could have properly had. Way Back Wednesdays will be back at the same point next week. Before then, I’ll be continuing to champion fresh new tunes on the blog. That’s true for tomorrow – with an in-depth look at a hot-off-the-press artist who has yet to even release a full length LP. We turn to the Contemporary R&B genre for our introduction to a female artist who took the bold decision to drop out of her training at the BRIT’s School, and she’s since supported Rita Ora and Ray BLK on tour. If you really liked what you just read, why not follow the blog to get notified when every new daily post is up and why not like the Facebook page here?: https://www.facebook.com/OneTrackAtATime/

Today’s Track: Meadow Meadow – “Fireworks”

January 26, 2021 — Leave a comment

The Electro-Rock duo who may prove to be the Meadow in your court. New post time!

  • Pictured: James Green performing a synth part for “Bonzo” last year (2019) (Photo via Facebook.com)

Good Morning to you – My name is Jacob Braybrooke. You know the drill by now, it’s time for me to get typing up for your daily track on the blog, and that’s because it is always my day-to-day pleasure to write up about a different piece of music every day! Here’s one that I wanted to get around to spotlighting here earlier – and I have nearly reached the end of 2020’s backlog. Meadow Meadow is the recently formed duo of two producers, Peter Darlington and James Green, who are based in London – here in the UK. This collaboration was formed after a break-up with their previous band-mates of Spring King, a Garage-Rock quartet that were together for over half a decade. Although I don’t have any familiarity with their work as part of Spring King, the demise of that project probably came as a shock to many, because I hear their sophomore LP release – 2018’s “A Better Life” – did well with critics and fans alike. To heal from the wounds of that split, Darlington and Green began to write their own music remotely across their studios in London and Manchester, where the Pop-Punk and Art-Punk ashes of Spring King have been replaced by the Lo-Fi, Psych-Pop and Prog-Pop of Meadow Meadow. Their self-titled debut EP was released in late August via Practice Music. Let’s hear a sample of their recent project, with “Fireworks” below.

The ongoing Covid-19 pandemic is to blame for the fact that Darlington & Green have not performed together, as Meadow Meadow, yet. Speaking on”Fireworks”, James Green noted: “With music, I feel that we’re creating a parallel universe where both of our experiences come together to form a new perspective or story. This began with Fireworks, as it was the first time that we both sang the lead vocal, which has since become an important element for us”, before he states, “It can be nice to write a set of lyrics and hear the other person singing them. It can offer insight and add a new dynamic to the intended message, bringing the words and the experience that lead to the words to life in a new way”. Wrapped in layers of swirling keyboard rhythms and nylon-string guitar recordings that push backwards and forwards at a continually mid-tempo pace, Darlington and Green both sing: “I keep waking up on the wrong side, I can’t get out of it” as sonic loops provide a warming backing vocal. The synth beats feel more textured in the bridge, where “Nervous, Beautifal” strike out above a precise, neatly layered electronic drums section. A swelling breakdown of field recordings lead to an absorbing finish, where “Clear pain, dull misery” provides the cue for a fluttering synthesized string section and a slow fade of keys to take us to the end. Overall, the soundscape has a gently psychedelic sound – with the electronic sounds feeling bright and pretty. The guitar element goes for a Dream-Folk element, and the keyboards clear the way for a more dynamic progression of emotive qualities. Darlington and Green have done a great job of making the production of the track feel like a journey, and these reflections make up for the relatively low, DIY sound quality. It feels renewing, with a “Breath of fresh air” style. Space-age music for the rural land.

  • Pictured: Cover Art for “Meadow Meadow” (EP) (Released on 25th August, 2020) (via Practise Music)

Well, there’s another day quickly finished on the blog! Of course, I will be up to the daily task again tomorrow, and I’m going to add a new entry into our “Way Back Wednesdays” series, where we take a look back at some of the sounds of the past that inspired the present, before the 2000’s. Tomorrow’s track is a niche favourite of popular singer-songwriter Angel Olsen’s tastes – and it comes from an English musician from Liverpool who, along with releasing three solo albums, was previously a member of three Merseybeat groups: The Kirkby’s, The 23rd Turnoff and Rockin’ Horse. If you really liked what you just read, why not follow the blog to get notified when every new daily post is up and why not like the Facebook page here?: https://www.facebook.com/OneTrackAtATime/

Today’s Track: Nadine Shah – “Club Cougar”

October 30, 2020 — Leave a comment

The latest from the Muslim Post-Punk songwriter has claws like a cat. New post time!

  • Pictured: Cover Artwork for "Kitchen Sink" (Released on June 26th, 2020) (via Infectious Music)
    Pictured: Cover Artwork for “Kitchen Sink” (Released on June 26th, 2020) (via Infectious Music)

Good Morning to you! My name is Jacob Braybrooke, and it’s time for me to get typing up about your daily track on the blog, because it’s my day-to-day pleasure to write up about a different piece of music every day! “Ladies For Babies (Goats For Love)” and “Kitchen Sink” are two singles from the latest Nadine Shah album that you may just remember reading about here on the blog, but “Club Cougar” is the slow grower that unhurriedly massages your earbuds like a Jaguar may steadily dig it’s nails into the coats of it’s prey, for the lack of a better pun. In case you did not read those two previous posts, Nadine Shah is a singer-songwriter from Whitburn, Tyne and Wear, here in England. She is mainly categorized under the Post-Punk and the Alternative Folk genres, and she identifies as a Muslim – born to an English mother of a Norwegian descent and a Dad of Pakistani ancestry. She is lesser-known in the public eye, but she always garners positive acclaim from critics, and she “pops up” a lot in the Indie music scene. The title of her latest record is “Kitchen Sink”, an album which thematically explores themes of domestic living and what it means to be a woman in 2020 through the lens of a great variety of anecdotes and characters, some more serious than others. It came out on June 26th, via Infectious Music. “Club Cougar” was recently A-Listed on BBC Radio 6Music for a number of weeks, and it tells the story of an aged “clubber” dating a younger man – Let’s watch Shah perform it below.

The concept of the album is much more fun and less try-hard than it sounds on paper in it’s execution, and the lyrical boldness of Club Cougar is about labels that are given to women that are not typically used for men. Case in point here: “Can you think of any examples of names given to men that date younger women? (Without listing off the reams of Hollywood actors). Much of this album is about contradiction. This song is especially”, explained by Shah in an interview with DIYMag. Traditionalist beliefs and piercing social commentary are the two main themes about the relationship with someone a year older – as Shah bites “One year younger – call me a Cougar” over the top of the dance-oriented Post-Punk backing of the track, which feels sharp and taut. Her vocals are oddly rhythmic due to the strangely off-kilter, witty Brass sounds of the verses, whilst Shah delivers hooks like “Call me pretty, make your manoeuvre” and “Your conversation makes me abhor you” with a low-pitched, Baritone voice that feels cold and icy, yet deadpan to a point. The second verse seems to be playing on the classic “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” track, to me, as Shah croons: “Stay a while, baby, it’s cold outside/I told you that I really can’t stay/I told you, I have to go away” as Shah’s explorations of gender issues and age status raise their heads at different timestamps. You’d expect the chorus to be more catchy or hook-driven, but instead, we get the whistles and whoops from Shah, followed up by a child-like stream of quite playful, toy-esque keyboard lines and heavy Staccato vocals, with a couple of shaking Conga drum patterns and shimmering percussion to create a slightly more upbeat, summer-friendly rhythm in contrast to the vocals from Shah that come across as fairly menacing and harsh. The verses are separated by short bursts of drum interludes and nostalgia-leaning keyboard riffs that, to me, suggest that the time of the narrative is flying past between a different love subject that the “Club Cougar” may be trying to seduce. It could just be that I am reading a bit too much into the lyrics and devices that Shah uses, but I think it’s what makes this strange track grow so progressively on you. I really understand that it’s initially tricky to connect with, definitely so on a first-listen, but it pays off with a great reward once you’ve given it the time that it needs to speak to you. There’s a great amount of depth to these ideas, and it feels both imaginative and cerebral in equal measures. This is good expression!

  • Pictured: Nadine Shah in a photoshoot to promote “Ladies For Babies (Goats For Love)” (2020) (Photo by Fraser Taylor)
    Pictured: Nadine Shah in a photoshoot to promote “Ladies For Babies (Goats For Love)” (2020) (Photo by Fraser Taylor)

As I have mentioned, this was the trilogy capper to the slowly formed, honestly unintentional, series of Nadine Shah-related posts. Make sure that you get the full story of this summer’s “Kitchen Sink” album, with my write-up on “Ladies For Babies (Goats For Love)” here: https://onetrackatatime.home.blog/2020/02/27/todays-track-nadine-shah-ladies-for-babies-goats-for-love/ and you can peruse my thoughts on the title track “Kitchen Sink” via the link here: https://onetrackatatime.home.blog/2020/06/29/todays-track-nadine-shah-kitchen-sink/

  • Pictured: Nadine Shah in a press photoshoot to promote the "Holiday Destination (2017) (via PR)
    Pictured: Nadine Shah in a press photoshoot to promote the “Holiday Destination (2017) (via PR)

Thank you very much for reading my daily blog post! I’ll be back tomorrow, with the obligatory Halloween-themed post, as we take a look back at a big radio hit from 1984 that was released on the world-famous Motown label. It is a common belief, mistakenly, that Michael Jackson is the credited artist of the track. I wouldn’t normally celebrate Halloween at all because I don’t like it, so it’s a special treat for you – dear reader. So – get your Spiced Pumpkin ready for that! If you really liked what you just read, why not follow the blog to get notified when every new daily post is up and why not like the Facebook page here?: https://www.facebook.com/OneTrackAtATime/