Archives : all posts by Sean

Félix Lajkó - "Etno Camp". What kind of drums are these? A racket of drums. What kind of horns? A tuba. What kind of fiddle? A firestarter, a sparkspitter, a flint, a tinderbox, a live flame. Lajkó Félix and his band play for fourteen minutes and while at first they are sustained by surprise - the forthright beauty of the theme, the thrill of the harmony, the brownbottle brassworks, the rattle-thump of drums, the glimmering-glong of dulcimer, - soon these things fall away and there's just the sustained marvel of their performances, their spirits, the way their heels kick up fireflies and their instruments are generators. Fire, flame everywhere - flashing in the dusk and the dark, setting the heavy velvet curtains alight. People talk of eastern European music, of hungarian folk music, of gypsy music - they talk about it in hallowed tones, like it's always brilliant, always moving, always great. It's not. But this is. It's wounded and joyous, it's startling and unflinching. It's breathless, guys, grounded in dance but doing other things too - a moment that recalls a Bach violin sonata, another where Lajkó shreds his violin to pieces (and then makes it whole again). Round and round it goes - and how do you dance? No line-dancing here, no rehearsed moves. You stomp and shove and reel and gasp and take your partner in your whole arms (not just by the hands, not lightly round the waist: with your whole arms), and you kiss her him them on the lips, sudden and fierce, so hard that your teeth click together and in the hall they spark. A white spark in every mouth, sweat down every back, shoes that are pieces of leather tied together with thread. A band on the stage that squeezes ten years of life into fourteen minutes of feeling.

Like I said: Yugoslavian born, mostly based in Budapest. He goes through labels like he goes through violin strings. The owner of a record shop in Pest told us about how they played a big gig and the power went out and the band kept going, for an hour, more. The light had to come from somewhere.

[more info (I cannot find an online source for this cd.)]

Christian Kjellvander - "Alleluia". It's easy for a man with an acoustic guitar to record a warm song. "Alleluia" isn't just warm - it's at first the easiest sort of warm. The way Kjellvander emphasises the beginning of each line, withdraws toward the end. The way his voice is only slightly burred, only slightly twanged, the way it recalls Damien Jurado and Nebraska-era Bruce Springsteen. So the reason I love this song isn't its warmth: such warmth is almost effortlessly achieved. The reason I love it is the little distance it travels in the chorus. A chill comes to the room, suddenly. Something strange and icy, but still sweet. A spectral voice, theremin, prayer. Recalling Leonard Cohen not only in the lyric - but in the moment where Kjellvander submits to the immanent. It's a song that acknowledges something bigger than a song.

[more info / buy Cowboys In Scandinavia: The New Folk Sounds From Northern Europe]

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Good Weather for Airstrikes has done something beautiful and absurd, writing up his 65 favourite music videos of 2005. He's having some problems with hosting, but essentially all but 2 of the videos are also available to download. Remarkable.

Said the Gramophone recently wrote about Peter Case's track on the new John Fahey tribute. In some pleasing symmetry, Songs:Illinois has a few songs from the upcoming Peter Case tribute album.

Oh, and any Scots who have missed it: It seems Silver Jews will be playing Edinburgh and Glasgow as part of Triptych in April. (Also London.) Yee-haw!

Rachell Sumpter is an artist and when I saw her work for the first time, I didn't think "Ooh, that's pretty." No - her painting startled me. I felt something jolt; I don't know what. Something.

-- Sean

(Previous guest-blogs, in and out of the Said the Guests series: Hello Saferide, Edward Droste (Grizzly Bear), Will Sheff (Okkervil River), Devin Davis, Michael Nau (Page France), artist Tim Moore, Carl Wilson, artist Drew Heffron, David Barclay (The Diskettes), artist Katy Horan, Brian Michael Roff, Howard Bilerman (producer: Silver Mt. Zion, Arcade Fire, etc.), Damon Krukowski (Damon & Naomi). There are many more to come.)

Mulatu Astatqé - "Tezeta (Nostalgia)". Quinn says he was listening to this on a snowy day in Montreal, a snow-and-icy day and there in the bitter cold it stopped him dead in his tracks. And so I imagine him on rue Parc, just at Prince Arthur, across the road from the cinema, at the moment his boots come to a stop on the saltspeckled sidewalk. And he blinks and looks up at the sky, a puff of steamy air leaving his mouth. He stops breathing he's listening so hard. He stops feeling cold. He starts feeling warm. Quinn's stopped because he can't believe the tenderness of the song. He listens to the buttery sax, feels it like fingers on his chest.

I'm projecting. I'm sorry, Quinn. You told me the first part but the rest I made up. But here's a true thing. Listen: Sean's on a street in Scotland and the sun's not come up and the streets look wet but there's no rain. And he stands at the bus-stop and he imagines a man in Montreal, walking along rue du Parc and turning onto Prince Arthur and just stopping there, right in his tracks, across from the cinema. He exhales steam that rises between the apartment buildings. He listens to the slow guitar and bass, the careful piano, the dark rose of Astatqé's saxophone. And the world around him is stepping back or maybe forward, receding or appearing. Montreal's getting clearer or foggier, he can't decide. The man in Scotland can't decide. But there it is.

Mulatu Astatqé is Ethopian, and has been picking up a lot of Western press thanks to his contributions to the soundtrack of Jim Jarmusch's Broken Flowers. This song is from Ethopiques. [buy]

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Camera Obscura - "Books Written For Girls". I went to see Camera Obscura on Friday. It was at the Edinburgh student union. Since I'm not a student, I had to sign in at the door and then get lost. When I found the basement bar it was full of young people -- am I allowed to say that? "Young people"? Younger people. People just about my age. People no younger than some friends of mine. But so many of them, in one spot, that the three or four years between me and them yawned and yawned and yawned. I watched them. Groups of friends, couples. A girl on a couch surrounded by four guys in corduroy jackets and specs. A boy with hair down to his waist, with a Delgados t-shirt on. Three girls in earrings and smiles, laughing, sipping from their big lagers, looking around.

Camera Obscura got on stage. Tracyanne looked out into the crowd with a steady, steady gaze. She had a flapper bob, a black frock, a frown that twisted and twisted. What was she evaluating? Me? The rest of the band didn't look so serious. The drummer laughed. They looked like they felt old, like me, but they looked okay. But Tracyanne's mouth twisted and twisted, and she stared at us.

When they started playing, nothing else really mattered; it felt like they were pumping memories out, into the air. Songs slipped from the folds of my brain into plain view; and Tracyanne sang them. It wasn't just that there was unexpected familiarity, though. Something in their soft-then-glittering music seemed dredged out of a forgotten corner of my heart. Long days walking, music in my ears. Sitting on a long car-ride, listening. A girl's voice, wry and longing. A piano that follows you down open alleyways. And then as you're becoming glum - drums that shuffle to standing, a trumpet that pipes up, that dips and dances, that casts sunlight. A guitar solo that's gold and golden.

It felt good, suddenly, feeling out-of-place in that room. It felt familiar.

There was a couple standing near me, much older than me, older than all of us. She was silent but friendly, nodding to the beat. But he was happy, so happy. He was fucking ecstatic. He squeezed her shoulder and sang along. He was tough-looking, but he crooned. The band would start a song and he would shout "Oh!", thrusting his drink into the air.

In the silence between songs, the man said that they had driven up from northern England to see the band. Camera Obscura nodded at him, glad that he had come. So he yelled a request. "Books Written For Girls," he yelled. He yelled it again and again, in a working-class shout.

"Sorry," they said. "We- We don't really remember it."

They played some more, and whenever there was some chatter in the crowd, or another request was called, the man bellowed out his request: "Books Written For Girls!"

"I'm sorry," said the guitarist. He looked truly sorry.

"It's all right," said the man. "Where y'from, then?"

"Somewhere not as hard as you," said the guitarist. And a smile.

"Oh, I'd love if you played 'Books Written For Girls'."

"I know," said the guitarist. "But if we don't play it, would you kill me?"

"Yep! [laugh] No, no. Naw. Naw. It's all right."

Eventually, inevitably, they played the song for him. They hadn't rehearsed it. They just looked at each-other, Tracyanne still so dark and steady and glum and bitter and wry, the guitarist happy to be playing music, the pianist doubtful. Here was a man with a big pint of lager sloshing, a man with big shoulders and a hard head, a man who yelled and roared with every bob of soft twee melody, who sang along at the top of his lungs. He loved the band so passionately, this tough man. So they played it for him.

I didn't remember the song from the song-title. I wondered what song he was requesting, all night. "Books Written For Girls"? Which one is that? Me, my favourite is "Keep It Clean", which they played, and played brilliantly. And new songs, too, which were good. But what's this one about books? What's the song that brought this man several hours in the car, with his partner?

Here. It's this one. When they played it, the room went calm. Maybe it was just me - maybe just me going calm. I felt like I was floating. Tracyanne sang. I listened, and I could feel something opening up all creaky inside me. Shutters unshuttered, blinds lifted. As Molly Bloom says - Yes.

I looked over at the man-who-yelled. We all did. As Camera Obscura played their beautiful, quiet song, glances came from all over the room. I saw Tracyanne look. I saw Carey look. I looked.

He was holding his sweetheart in his arms and their eyes were closed and they were smiling, piece piece peaceful.

[buy US / europe (the latter with more samples]

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It's very important that you not miss Lavender Diamond's "You Broke My Heart", posted by Matt at You Ain't No Picasso. It's so many things I love: strident and pressing, jingling and jangling, a woman singing at the top of her range; either happy or sad I can't tell. You all listened to the Dorian Hatchet song that Dan posted, too, right? The one sung by guppies? Isn't it amazing? I'm totally ordering their EPs.

Eppy has written SOME THINGS YOU SHOULD KNOW ABOUT MUSIC CRITICS (especially if you are a member of a (local) band), and he's right.

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Felix Lajko's 14 minute "Etno Camp" will follow later this week. I'm really chuffed that enthusiasm was expressed. I promise it's good.

Ann Sexton - "You've Been Gone Too Long". Funny how sometimes it's not the centre of the song that keeps your attention. Here's Ann singing in a coffeecream voice, just the right amount of nicotine burr, but me I'm looking somewhere else. She's in the spotlight, the others are falling in love, but I'm just staring dumbly at the electric guitar. Listening to the golden over-and-over; the persistent hope; the shaking free. I feel like a dope, standing there. This is soul music! A dusky voice, bedroom eyes, noNOnos and yesYESyeses of horns! So why do I keep being drawn away, like a man chasing through a wood for his sweetheart? I dunno, I dunno. All I know with certainty is that the song's got to fade out. Because it can't end. (Thanks, Milo.)

[Buy the Ann Sexton Anthology]

Felix Lajkó es Bandaja - "Untitled". Felix Lajkó aka Lajkó Felix is a part-gypsy violinist who was born in the former Yugoslavia but has since established himself as one of the biggest forces in contemporary Hungarian folk music. One of my favourite pieces of instrumental music is his "Etno Camp", in which Lajkó seems to fiddle Rome to the ground, his band wearing their shoes out as they dance behind. But tonight I don't have the tenacity for that fourteen minute epic, that glorious and furious thing. Instead tonight I turn to the final track on Játszanak - two minutes long, more mood than song, a piece that falls away like a scene you might see from inside a bus. You drive by and then it's out of sight; it's gone.

An old woman sings in Hungarian, each phrase a tentative hop. Piano, fiddle and other stringy things set the yellow glass blowing. And it's like she's calling down a storm, inviting it quietly so that we can laugh when it doesn't arrive. Ha ha ha? (This was actually and truly recorded in a forest.)

(Let me know if you'd like to hear "Etno Camp".)

[more info / buy]

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You really oughta grab the Pineapples song at Green Pea-ness so you can italo-disco till the sun come up.

If anyone missed the message about the Said the Gramophone chalet at All Tomorrow's Parties...

I hate novelty songs. So here are two:

TBC Poundsystem - "Losing My Sledge". Yes, it's a Christmas song! I'm well out of date, aren't I? But this made me smile so persistently that I can't help but share it. There are jingle bells, there are dumb gags, but most of all there's such a good-natured imitation of James Murphy's LCD Soundsystem voice, such a successful dubbing of merry ideas onto the obssessive original. "I was there for the first canned snow / in Cologne." ... "I hear that everybody that you know is more festive than everybody that I know". If you don't know the original "Losing My Edge", perhaps this will have no appeal, but I like to think that for 8 minutes it will still make you grin - oh and still make you boogie. (Thanks Quinn, thanks Bill, thanks Santa.)

[TBC Poundsystem is a collaboration between Jeb (£50 Note podcast) and Tim B (Radioclash podcast)]

Dokaka - "Smells Like Teen Spirit". Okay we've all heard those goofy covers by college acapella groups, jazz-hands fellows doing vocal acrobatics 'round "Creep" or, yeah, this one too. But what makes Dokaka special is that he's a Japanese beatbox guy who sounds totally insane. As he loops and loops his voice, it's as if a goblin is ripping its face off, running from the dragonflies, a demon being devoured by the rock'n'roll that Nirvana brought. I do clowning when I can, I really do - a theatrical clown in the tradition of LeCoq and stuff, - and Dokaka reminds me of a clown's reaction to a tune like this. Too much feeling to keep it in - being driven gladly, gladly mad by the whoosh of music, gibberish streaming out of your voice like a cartoon-bubble of epithets and delirious grinning birds. And I swear that in the chorus he's speaking italian, offering a friendly "Bona sera!" "Buonasera!"

[Dokaka also sings the main theme of Nintendo game "We Love Katamari", and appears on Bjork's Medulla. Check his website - and download a bundle more mp3s, - here.]

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Excellent songs at Catbirdseat, lately - particularly enjoying the oldschool Bowie of the track by The Battles. And yeah, Catbird Records is coming on strong. Great work, Ryan.

If you're not sick of Best Ofs, The Big Ticket's good taste, flashy graphics and free downloads continue to impress.

It's not being advertised very well, so a head's up to any Edinburghers who missed the news that Camera Obscura are playing with Dot To Dot this Friday, for 5 quid. I will also be hitting Glasgow for Herman Düne on Thursday, Belle and Sebastian on Friday.

And finally, a return to the topic of...

All Tomorrows Parties 2006

All Tomorrows Parties is a series of music festivals where the day's events are curated by invited artists. The first one was the Bowlie Weekender, organised by Belle & Sebastian. It took place at Camber Sands, England, which is a seaside holiday village. While there have since been ATPs in NYC, LA, etc, Camber Sands is where things started. And it's the site of the two ATP weekends this May.

I will be attending Weekend 2, May 19th-21st. (There is another the week before.) Here is the deal:

MUSIC
probably 30-40 acts, who will gradually be announced as the dates approach
ANNOUNCED SO FAR:

• DAY 1: DINOSAUR JR (curator), DEAD MEADOW, BEVIS FROND, BROKEN SOCIAL SCENE, BRIAN JONESTOWN MASSACRE, THE LILYS...
  
• DAY 2: SLEATER-KINNEY (curator), MC DAVID CROSS, THE GOSSIP, SPOON, BOREDOMS...
  
• DAY 3: THE SHINS (curator), THE NEW PORNOGRAPHERS, THE DECEMBERISTS, CLINIC, BIG BUSINESS...
  

COST

• £125 + travel + some other fees
  
• includes lodging in an on-site chalet
  
• chalets include rad things like a TV whose programming is also selected by the day's musical curators

The appeal of ATP is that it's a fairly small festival and nobody needs to trek off to tents or what-have-you. Everyone's staying in chalets, on site. You can go wander on the beach and then listen to Broken Social Scene. You herky-jerky to Clinic and then go crash on your own bed. There's also a pub.

Now the trouble is that you need to buy at least four tickets at a time - that is, you need to book a 4, 5, 6, 7 or 8 berth chalet. I don't have 4 friends here who can come.

So, spurred by Nat,

I am currently considering organising a Said The Gramophone chalet.

Update: 6 February 2006: All spaces in the Said the Gramophone chalets have now been filled.

What does this mean?

Basically nothing. Just that if you are considering coming to Camber Sands, perhaps you would like to get in touch with me and maybe share a chalet with some other Said the Gramophone readers. There does exist a formal share a chalet option, direct from ATP, but who knows what kind of crazies you could get saddled with. The hope is that the StG Chalet will be a collection of kindly, music-mad, sympathetic people. Who aren't crazy.

If you're interested in reading a bit more, please follow me after the jump.

Two Gallants - "Waves of Grain". So there's this movement of furious young men who holler country tunes over a thrum and crash of noise. The White Stripes are the band that have brought this most into the mainstream, but others are fishing in the same waters, reeling up fish that are even browner, even bigger, that buck and thrash with even more spirit. There's something tremendously exciting about this genre, to me, and it feels new, like something's changed since the mediocre Pogues-derived punk-irish bands of the 90s. Now there's Sons & Daughters, Uncle John & Whitelock, Jon-Rae and the River, even Okkervil River in bits, licked by the flames of folk, blues and country; hammering against their guitars; shouting poetry into their flimsy microphones.

Two Gallants are from San Francisco, named after a James Joyce story, just a duo on drums and guitar. And the guitarist plays harmonica, too - raised on Bruce Springsteen as well as Johnny Cash, the Violent Femmes alongside Uncle Tupelo. "Las Cruces Jail" is the song that introduced me to them. It's their "Hotel Yorba", their tune for stomping and spitting. Their single. Go find it. But it's "Waves of Grain" that made me sit straight up and resolve to follow everything they do for the next five years. Because this isn't just garage-blues kicks - this is beautiful, fierce, elegiac music, full of longing. It's youth - not childhood, no, just this inbetween time that already feels full of regrets, that's simultaneously full of hopes. Here are kids like me, singing of the noisy days that make you want to rip out your heart and then stuff it right back into your chest, that make you long to be anywhere else and yet right, right here, stars popping gold-and-silver over your head.

"Waves of Grain" is nine and a half minutes but it never repeats itself. It's discovery after discovery, moment after moment. Adam Stephens snarls a poetry that's almost purple, too much!, and yet as he hurls his lyrics at you they hit and hit and hit. He plays his glittering guitar and blows long proud blasts into his harmonica. And the drums, Tyson Vogel's glorious drums! Smashcrashcrashing till you can believe that maybe this rock music means something, maybe it can break something down to smaller pieces, maybe it can help you to be. It's music that makes me wish I was better at writing about music. Maybe I'll try again later.

[What the Toll Tells is due out in February. Buy other stuff at Saddle Creek. Go see them on tour, including Edinburgh on Feb. 5 with Clap Your Hands Say Yeah.]

Today is my birthday. Do I take a day off? No, my friends, I do not. So please don't breeze on by. I have something for you.

What do I know about The Speakers? Little, so little. They have six recordings; I have heard but one. They perform live; I've never seen them. Brian Miller and Peter Musselman have played with the wonderful Jolie Holland, and she contributes sometimes to their songs; I don't know how much.

The things I know best are the easy things, but they're also the things that matter. Yeats is Greats, released toward the end of last year, is the best album I've yet discovered in 2006. I know, it's only the 5th, but the magnificent Destroyer's Rubies makes more sweeping statements difficult. So let me put it another way - in the last couple months, months when I first heard recent/upcoming albums by Jens Lekman, Islands, Belle & Sebastian, Cat Power, Konono No. 1, The National, Uncle John & Whitelock, Lil Wayne, Two Gallants, The Strokes, The Physics of Meaning, Kayo Dot, (and many many more), Destroyer's Rubies and The Speakers' Yeats Is Greats are certainly the best LPs to grace my ears.

You've not heard of it, probably. The mp3blog aggregators come up empty. Maybe that's because people already talked about them, months ago, when I was snoozin'. Or because the album opens and closes, Clap-Your-Hands-style, with a stupendously stupid spoken word goof (there's also another one in the middle). Or because most of the lyrics were written by William Butler Yeats.

But the point remains. These songs are beautiful, fragile comforts. They're not joycore, no. They're just things to lean up against on these long midwinter days. Or in the nights. Trifles, I guess, in the same way that streetlamps are trifles. Or cherry trees. Or stars.

Voices fall across each-other, whispers blossoming into smiling song, folk that's crisscrossed just enough with foreign sound, shadows of accordion or clarinet, horns and drone. Hear a bit of Iron & Wine, but better. Maybe Sufjan circa Seven Swans. Grizzly Bear without the fear, Elliott Smith with a gang of kindly friends. Like Mt. Eerie, maybe, or The Robot Ate Me. But different.

Oh fuck it - just listen.

The Speakers - "The Mountain Tomb". "Bring fiddle and clarionet" - they do. "Pour wine and dance" - okay. The song's tender as new grief, as easily opened up. We know the tomb's down there, across the bay; we took the rowboat, remember? But now we'll leave it, we'll come into this room. We'll eat, we'll smile. We'll play. We'll remember life - remember life? We'll draw the blinds and not see the sun set. We'll take shelter: horns and guitar and xylophone, your friend the singer. "Our Father Rosicross is in his tomb." Yes. All right. But for now let's persist. Let's not speak of death; let's sing of it. (Yeats' words.)

The Speakers - "Lost in a Crowd". The trick's in the way a man's persistence turns cold things warm, sharp things soft. He persists - gently, gently, - and the strings turn in the light. No more whispers of Shostakovich; no scrapes, no glares, no theremin shiver. Just glow, gleam, glimmer. And even if the closing lyrics are feel-good, trite (they're not Yeats), that's ok. Coming away from confusion, there's a role for optimism. Stepping out of the rain, sunshine's fine. Leaving the comfort of strangers, I'll take an embrace.

Go buy Yeats is Greats, the album with that absurd name, for only $14. Do, do, do!

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William Schaff, perhaps my favourite living artist, finally has cheap prints for sale. Lots of politics, lots of horrors, but I bought the one of St George.

edward o's top 100 singles of 2005 is an amazing, amazing, work.

You Ain't No Picasso has new (ok) songs by Page France.

As others have pointed out, the 2005 Bloggies are now accepting nominations. The awards mean nothing, but it probably makes the nominees feel a little happiness. So do go and nominate some of your favourites. My favourites are on the sidebar. Like Fluxblog, I very much endorse Tom Ewing for the Lifetime Achievement prize.

If for some reason you feel like voting for us, the category that would mean something is the "Best Writing" category. My favourite blog writing, this year, has been by Abby, Carl, Eppy, Paul, Ash, John, Nick, Matthew, Kevin, Tuwa, Marcello, Kelly, Matt. And Dan and Jordan. And everyone else to the right (matt, jay, neale, et al). Except the podcasts and art-blogs. Because they're not about writing, see.

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And yes, it's my birthday. This year I want only fond wishes (and maybe some art). (My address? Oh why am I doing this? Well, it's 2F2, 15 West Newington Place, Edinburgh EH9 1QU. Now stop making me feel foolish!)