Overdrive

Overdrive is an excess. Overdrive. But it’s often used on purpose in music, making it not an excess, but an effect – a deliberate distortion.

A distortion is a deviation from verisimilitude or an expected, comfortable shape. This makes immediate sense in the context of a distorted image – when one can recognise the deviation from a ‘natural’ form – or in the case of a distorted sound that is equally ‘natural’; a field recording or a note from a canonical instrument.

A voice, for instance.

(This Obnox track doesn't really have overdriven vocals, but fuck it. Most of them do).

The overdriven sound in garage punk has the effect of illusory amplification. The music always sounds loud, even when it’s quiet. Giacometti sculpted his figures to always appear distant, eluding proximity – you can’t get up close no matter how much you try. On the contrary, you can only be up close to this music. It’s invasive, confrontational.

It’s interesting when the sense of something pushed beyond its limits is applied to something that doesn’t have established or intuitive limits. Such that we recognise the exertion and distortion, without knowing what it is that has been altered. Or, more accurately in this case, we sense distortion when there is no real distortion at all, but simply an original sound with morphological similarities to distorted ones.

Abstract, artificial sounds rendered tangible by association with the concrete. A shadow cast by a 3D wireframe.

 

I suppose it's a part of the lo-fi aesthetic that’s appeared in various forms in recent decades, but Beau Wanzer, Container, Nick Klein and others don’t appear to harbour the nostalgic yearning of lo-fi’s indie pioneers, nor the overt political subversion that punk’s DIY aesthetic symbolised.

Nevertheless, authenticity, anti-commercialisation, purity and directness are all impulses that a certain strand of the underground share.

These artists – although borrowing from vintage electronica – face forward, with a futurist low fidelity that’s more like scratchy broadcasts from space than found tapes from the past. The brutish ugliness of their palette and electronic primitivism suggest a society rebuilt after dystopian end-times in contrast to the high-gloss futurism of Quantum Natives, Fatima Al Qadiri and James Ferraro.

The latter artists’ dig at commercialism lies in a strange, disorientating appropriation that’s equal parts satire and celebration. They recognise the inevitability of technological change (like the original Futurists) and play around with the glitchy, shiny, intangible quality of the contemporary digital landscape.

Maybe it’s in opposition to the fragility and disposability embodied by software, digitalia and internet muzak that overdriven electronic distortion finds its rationale. Bulk, heft, overuse, degradation – dwindling characteristics.

Friday Onions: Speed Nipples

Metal raspberries playing 3D table tennis:




Surf n Turf carpet cleaner:



Mothballs at midnight:



A cautious sniff of the mucky puddle:

Thanks for being understanding.

Horns

I find myself with less time to write and, worst of all, think these days. Or maybe I just lack the inclination. Or the ability.

In short: I'm dying.

As if the words on this blog or any other weren't already desperate scratches at the edges of mortality and loneliness, now I can't even be bothered to pretend.

Anyway, what I mean is, the rather neatly composed and thoughtful (not my words*) micro-essays haven't been flowing of late so I think I'm going to start utilising this blog to share music. Something I find comes naturally and easily. When I remember.

Where I can, I'll fit things into some sort of logical/impulsive grouping and say something interesting about them. Otherwise, I might just post a track without comment.

*My words

Horns

Horns are much maligned. They invariably ruin dance tracks and loads of people (/lesser species) hate jazz. Why? It might be something to do with their ostentation. There's no burying them in the mix - they're shrill and clear and vocal in their range - and I think this offends some people. They're so fucking chirpy.

On the contrary, horns can, of course, be all sorts of other things - from the percussive, rumbling tuba of Oren Marshall to the swirling, scattered saxophone of Stockhausen's Spiral.

Here are two recent things - from brass veterans - that do great things with horns. The first is from John Butcher. The piece I'm thinking of is at the end of this radio show - it's called Hamon from his Nigemizu recording. The sax isn't too high in the mix here, because there is no mix. It's just John frantically squeaking notes that veer in and out of the sonorous and the dissonant. It's busy and disorientating and beautiful.

On the other hand, here's something much less sweaty and frantic, but no less brilliant, from Jac Berrocal in cahoots with David Fenech and Vincent Epplay. It's a new release from Blackest Ever Black and, as the label continues to surprise and diversify, so it continues to improve. Being ostensibly an old school trumpeter's album, it seems far removed from the disquieting clatter of Cut Hands or Vatican Shadow. But there are obvious continuities - BEB have re-released classic Ike Yard cuts and Berrocal played with No Wave / Post-Punk royalty like Lizzy Mercier-Descloux and James Chance.

The trumpet is here weaved into a smudged soundscape of distant shouts and buzzing electronics, with a foregrounded sparse guitar line. It's like some sort of No Wave Western.

I'll have something on Overdrive, Repetition and...stuff in the coming days.

Masterchef Recipe Ideas

Idea 1

For her starter, Pernicious is cooking black mermaids covered in mustard.

Her main consists of chargrilled elephant bladder with confit oesophagus, a train ticket puree and Coors Light jus, accompanied by breaded glove on a bed of Brita-filtered marrowfat peas.

Idea 2

Delacroix is cooking a handful of earthworms, marinated in safety pins with chervil and linseed, 

boiled in One Coat gloss emulsion from B&Q, and served with loaded dice, ground horse teeth and confit of the nipples.

To start, he’ll serve corn on the cob flung out of an upstairs window, onto a watercress and West Wing box set salad.

Idea 3

Allspice is constructing some meat steps, with a tweed bisque, a dead skin tuille and Pocky bannisters.

Idea 4

Orrery is cooking a fennel insurance scheme, marinated in a cervix and cement reduction, served with diced porcelain, salted benefit claimants and a hot crab.

For dessert, he'll whisper quietly into your ear while spooning individual skittles into your mouth.

Idea 5

The population of Winchester is cooking a large bat in between two heated tube train doors, served on a teleported onion, Pogs three ways (melted, whole, blessed), and suspicious fish eyes, all drenched in an imaginary jus with silly croutons.

For dessert, the entire town will perform Les Miserables with home-made shortbread.

Idea 6

Slippery Pete is ignoring his parents’ advice, while fishmongers perform an ancient fertility ritual, a dirty boy rolls freshly dug beetroots across a lubricated surface, and Jenna Jameson plays drums.

For the main course, he’s constructing a scale model of the Dorchester hotel out of Hydrogen molecules and serving it on a slab of reformed ham.

Idea 7

Everyone you know and love is projectile vomiting into an airing cupboard, while Ringo Starr narrates porn through a loud-hailer and Jilly Goolden maintains eye contact with your Dad. To accompany, they’ll be breading golf balls and driving them from the 9^th at Gleneagles, served on a bed of dead kestrels.

For dessert, you can’t look directly at anyone you speak to for the rest of the week, with custard.

Best of 2014 Part 2

James Hassall Best of 2014 Part 2 by James Hassall on Mixcloud

As promised, here is part 2 of my 2014 underwear drawer.

Part 1 was a more sombre affair (listen to it here), full of melancholy tunes, eerie electronica and avant-garde noise. This creature brings together a bunch of last year's more dance-floor friendly lingerie, including some amazing second-hand tights from Bourbonese Qualk and Liaisons Dangereuse.

It's mostly machinist techno and no wave from the likes of Silent Servant, An-I and Kangding Ray but there's also a squirt of rock 'n' roll panties from Perfect Pussy; some day-glo electro knickers from Maria Minerva and Peaking Lights; downbeat garters from Swans and Tony Allen; and misshapen sports bras from Actress and Hieroglyphic Being.

Sniff them, hold them close, think of your loved ones.

I played a lot of this stuff at various Kling Klang nights throughout the year, so you may recall some of the musty odours and unsightly stains if you were in attendance.

As with Part 1, the mix closes with my absolute special favourite little pink pants that make my bum look good. Shackleton's Freezing Opening Thawing never failed to excite, with absolutely no VPL.

Here's to 2015.

Kiss me.

Best of 2014 Part 1

James Hassall Best of 2014 Part 1 by James Hassall on Mixcloud

Good morning 2015.

In place of an end of year list, here's an end of year mix.

This is part one (of two).

Do you like dust? Have you ever licked a battery? What does the sound of a helicopter mean to you? Empty submarines, spiders on keyboards, the light on your laptop blinking.

The mix is punctuated by excerpts from Marc Baron's Hidden Tapes, a fine collage of unearthed cassettes, and ends with a track from The Lowland Hundred's astonishing self-titled release; it sounds like a dream about Robert Wyatt singing in the Welsh countryside, and it's one of the most beautiful things I've heard in years.

There are also some noisy bits from Valerio Tricoli and Stefan Jaworzyn, nice songs from Peter Escott, Dean Blunt and Amen Dunes and a reissued gem from Woo.

Electronics are provided by Alessandro Cortini, Hands and Ron Morelli, among others, and there are even more things that I haven't mentioned (that you might recognise).

Keep your nips peeled for part two, which will be full of funky, dancy, sexy stuff - a lot of which has been making people smile/bleed at Kling Klang this past year.

A brilliant year for new music, as this selection hopefully testifies.

__________________________________

I'll sort a tracklist out soon

The Most Out-of-Date 'Record of the Year' this Side of J-Lo's Ass

Sorry.

It's nearly the end of two thousand and fourteen (FUCK) and I thought about writing another top 20 records of the year list.

And then I remembered that I didn't actually finish last year's.

So here's the top 5:

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5. Haxan Cloak - Excavation
4. Julia Holter - Loud City Song
3. The Knife - Shaking the Habitual
2. Tim Hecker - Virgins

1. Oneohtrix Point Never - R Plus Seven

Daniel Lopatin keeps delivering, and on R Plus Seven there’s a real sense of him trying to do something more consciously important and high-concept than previous releases. The album is more cohesive – texturally – and more overt in its groping towards grandiose sentiment in a strange and disorientating digital environment.

The album features Lopatin’s definitive jittery structure that applies on both the macro and micro scale; clipped, repetitious vocal samples that dart about the mix are woven into a fabric that never quite settles in one place. A consistent mood is achieved from extremely fragmented components – the mark of excellent abstract art of any stripe – and our listening experience is one of almost constant tension and surprise.

Inside World, for example, prods at us with really strange synthetic vocal ‘ahs’ that seem to meander and peter out, before a sumptuous string line, backed by lush digital hiss, bleeds in and – just as we’ve adjusted to its relative calm – gives way to another series of bubbling, stop-start samples. The experience borders on frustration, but it keeps the ear focused and re-contextualises every little thing we hear into a singular revelatory moment.

The aesthetic is akin to James Ferraro’s Far Side Virtual in its hyper-digital glossy sheen but the irony is stripped away to reveal some genuinely beautiful moments of euphoria, melancholy and sensuality. Zebra threatens to burst into a hands-in-the-air house track at any moment but becomes subsumed in a cascading barrage of synth layers and, once again, tantalisingly rejects the economy of set-up and pay-off for a more complex and jarring arrangement that revels in the diverse qualities of synthetic sounds.

There’s a conscious religiosity/spirituality in the effects that Lopatin utilises – uplifting choral vocals, hypnotic church organ pieces – and this feels entirely appropriate for the strange magic at work in this album. Lopatin has allowed the music to cover extraordinarily wide ground in its aural symbolism and, therefore, unlocked a sense of infinite complexity, primitive humanity and revelatory wonder in the journey through brief flashes of experience and sustained, elegiac, hymnal passages.

In utilising a truly odd combination of new-age meditation sounds, commercial muzak gloss, synthesised baroque horns, religious harmonics and jazzy erotica, Lopatin has possibly created something of a definitive album that plays on the still unknown nature of the relationship between ultra-consumerism, hyper-connectivity, spirituality, nature and humanity.

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I had only written the review for Oneohtrix Point Never's deserved winner, so there it is. I won't bother writing about the others; I ain't gonna waffle on about records that are a whole year old now. We've moved on. Andy Murray won.

Look ahead to a shimmering future with hundreds more end-of-year lists and global tragedies.

Who will it be this year?

Kanye?

Tay Tay?