You are currently browsing the monthly archive for December 2007.
Hmmm.
As The Perfect Prescription is really just a blog for my rambling thoughts (and compiled writings) I guess there’s no real harm in sharing a few samples of my own music with you. For the past five months or so I’ve been working with a few other guys, trying to get a band together. We’re called Zeitgeist Tapes at the moment (in tribute to Malcolm Tucker from Armando Ianucci’s brilliant political sit-com The Thick Of It) and last night we posted our first proper demo recordings to MySpace.
There are two songs up there at the time of writing.
The first, and also the one I’m happiest with currently, is called “Dangerous Lazarus”. This is the first proper song we wrote together and it looks like it’s going to be our strongest live track. Structurally, it’s fairly straightforward affair – verse/bridge/chorus/repeat x3 affair – but I’m happy with that, I think it suits the song.
The second track, “Perfect Imperfection”, is actually a reworking of a song I wrote with a good friend called Peter nine years ago. He did the words, I did the simple (but effective, I hope) chord progression. The version on MySpace is a bit fast and a bit rough around the edges for my tastes. There’s only one guitar track and I’d have really much preferred to do two but as a representation of our live sound it’s not bad, I guess.
So if you’re in the mood for a laugh exciting new music please pay our MySpace page a visit and immerse yourself in the sound of Sheffield’s hottest new band.
http://www.myspace.com/zeitgeisttapes
. . .
On a different note, while I’m talking about my own music endeavours I may as well mention my other ongoing project, Kapitel 8. This moniker is reserved for the electronically-tinged synth-gaze that I create in my bedroom home studio. I really haven’t had a chance to get this off the ground yet, although I did pick up some new equipment last month and as soon as I get a few spare hours I’m going to record some more tunes.
There’s a demo track from last January on my other MySpace page (really, can a man have too many MySpace pages?) which one of my No Ripcord colleagues, Japie, is going to contribute vocals to. He thought the intro sounded like Radiohead’s 15 Step and I had to agree, although I was careful to point out that my track pre-dates theirs by a good ten months. Could Phil Selway have plagiarised my beat? Answers on a postcard to the usual address please…
Here’s a quick top twenty of 2007’s cinematic treats for you. Like the music list, I’ve placed the films in terms of enjoyment (looking at numbers 1 and 2 maybe that’s the wrong word…) rather than artistic merit. After the top ten the order is fairly arbitrary, too: Den Brysomme Mannen was more interesting than Superbad in many ways, but the latter had me rolling in the aisles with laughter. How can a critic really compare the two?
In order to confuse international readers I’ve used UK release dates here too. So I don’t care if you saw one of these films in 2006 (or 2005) – it opened this year in Britain and it’s staying on my list.
1. Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives Of Others)
2. Control
3. This Is England
4. Eastern Promises
5. Knocked Up
6. Indigènes (Days Of Glory)
7. Hot Fuzz
8. Death Proof
9. Ratatouille
10. 2 Days In Paris
11. Death at a Funeral
12. Superbad
13. Joy Division
14. Half Nelson
15. Den Brysomme Mannen (The Bothersome Man)
16. The Simpsons Movie
17. Sicko
18. Waitress
19. Atonement
20. Fast Food Nation
There are a few other 2007 films that might well have cracked the list if I’d seen them yet. These include (but are not limited to):
The Darjeeling Limited
I’m Not There
Mutual Appreciation
3:10 To Yuma
I would have liked to include a brief list of turkeys, too, but the only film this year that I absolutely hated was Elizabeth: The Golden Age. It even made Rocky Balboa (a January release in the UK) look like an Oscar contender. I guess I’ll have to try harder to watch bad films in 2008…
After a few days rest over Christmas, I stayed in last night and spent a good two or three hours listening to new music and writing reviews.
I polished up an article on The Warlocks’ Heavy Deavy Skull Lover (better than the name suggests) and finished my review of Heretic Pride, the brand new album from John Darnielle’s Mountain Goats project. I’ll be submitting both of these pieces to Rock ‘n Reel magazine which means I won’t be posting them here until R’nR #8 comes out.
I’m also working on a belated review of Black Lips’ Good Bad Not Evil, which I never quite managed to get into earlier in the year. It’s sounding a bit stronger now, but I can’t quite fathom how it made so many end of year lists. I think Pitchfork had at #35 which seems particularly strange.
Needless to say, Heretic Pride is the pick of the bunch. Like most (all?) Mountain Goats stuff, the lyrics are a genuine treat and the music is kind of secondary to whole thing, but it’s a consistently impressive album that gets better with each repeat listen. I’m not that familiar with the Goats’ back catalogue but it certainly seems to be less autobiographical than 2005’s The Sunset Tree, which I think introduced a lot of people to the work of John Darnielle. Hopefully this record will do the same. If my long term memory is up to the challenge, it’ll be a dead cert for my Best of 2008 list.
I stayed in on a Friday night that coincidentally happened to be my birthday to get this article ready for posting. Draw your own conclusions from that. Still, I think it was worth it – it’s my favourite No Ripcord Top 50 yet.
I have ranked the albums in this list in terms of enjoyment as opposed to a supposed worthiness. So while I appreciate that Panda Bear’s record was perhaps a bolder artistic statement than Okkervil River’s, well, I just didn’t spend quite as much time devouring it. I went a bit crazy for The Stage Names it seems. And whoever said the album was finished as a concept clearly didn’t listen to any of my top ten.
1. Okkervil River – “The Stage Names”
2. Animal Collective – “Strawberry Jam”
3. Jens Lekman – “Night Falls Over Kortedala”
4. LCD Soundsystem – “Sound of Silver”
5. Radiohead – “In Rainbows”
6. Twilight Sad – “Fourteen Autumns and Fifteen Winters”
7. Of Montreal – “Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer?”
8. Iron & Wine – “The Shepherd’s Dog”
9. Panda Bear – “Person Pitch”
10. Jesu – “Conqueror”
11. Loney, Dear – “Loney, Noir”
12. Wilco – “Sky Blue Sky”
13. Songs of Green Pheasant – “Gyllyng Street”
14. Von Sudenfed – “Tromatic Reflexxions”
15. Les Savy Fav – “Let’s Stay Friends”
16. A Sunny Day In Glasgow – “Scribble Mural Comic Journal”
17. Band Of Horses – “Cease To Begin”
18. Interpol – “Our Love To Admire”
19. The Good Life – “Help Wanted Nights”
20. Dinosaur Jr – “Beyond”
21. Adam Franklin – “Bolts of Melody”
22. Black Moth Super Rainbow – “Dandelion Gum”
23. Sunset Rubdown – “Random Spirit Lover”
24. Klaxons – “Myths Of The Near Future”
25. Rumskib – “Rumskib”
26. The Shins – “Wincing The Night Away”
27. Strategy – “Future Rock”
28. Caribou – “Andorra”
29. Deerhoof – “Friend Opportunity”
30. Pinback – “Autumn of the Seraphs”
31. Muleskinner Jones – “Alcohol Tobacco Raygun?”
32. No Age – “Weirdo Rippers”
33. Liars – “Liars”
Honourable mentions: M.I.A’s Kala, Joakim’s Monsters and Silly Songs, Battles’ Mirrored, Marnie Stern’s In Advance of the Broken Arm… the list could go on forever.
Biggest disappointment: Neon Bible
The No Ripcord Top 50 of 2007 will be going live very soon and it’s a slightly more representative set than mine. I hope you enjoy it. I might run an analytical stat-heavy piece on the list, comparing it to those from other publications if I get the time. I have a theory I want to test out about the increasing homogeneity of our music tastes. Of course, I may just sack it off and enjoy Christmas/New Year without my computer. You’ll have to wait and see.
Billed as an Eat Your Own Ears Warehouse Party, this ultimately turned out to be just another gig at Plug (which is quite a nice venue as opposed to a warehouse). Outside the venue we were informed that due to a technical problem DJ sets from James Holden, Four Tet and Hot Chip would no longer be happening. I didn’t care too much; I was there to see Liars primarily and to check out the other bands, none of whom I’d heard much from.
Flat Pack Heroes started the night off energetically enough. At their best they reminded me of Wire circa-Pink Flag; at their worst, they sounded like just another tight, young punk band.
Foals came next. I didn’t have particularly high hopes as a) my friend had warned me that they might sound “a bit like Bloc Party” and b) “Foals?!” but they impressed me from the off with a captivating set of angular and rhythmical art-rock. True, some of their more traditional soundings songs did veer close to Bloc Party territory and the unintelligible vocals didn’t add a great deal but I heard more than enough here to encourage me to investigate Foals further.
Billed as the night’s headliners, New Young Pony Club seemed to have brought in a sizable chunk of the crowd and I suspect they played third so that their fans could get a reasonably early night, this being a Sunday and everything. They played an inoffensive set of indie that you can (if you’re that way inclined) dance to and everyone seemed to love it. As some drunk guy once remarked, people are strange…
The ever brilliant Liars staggered on a few beers later and I stood at the front of the stage and basked in the noise of droning guitars and tribal rhythms. I don’t know many Liars songs by name (although I’m guessing that one or two had ”Mt. Heart Attack” and “Drums” in the title) so I can’t run through the set as I normally might. Certainly a handful of tracks from their latest album made an appearance but I was secretly pleased that a decent chunk of the material came from Drums Not Dead, which is my favourite Liars record.
It came as no great shock to me that Liars were the best band of the evening. I fully expected that. What did surprise me was just how close behind them Foals were. They have a debut album out next year which TV On The Radio’s David Sitek is apparently producing. If they can capture the energy of their live show then that’s going to be some record.
Foals MySpace / Flat Pack Heroes MySpace / Liars MySpace / New Young Pony Club MySpace
Bersarin Quartett
December 31, 2007 in Comment, Music | Tags: Bersarin Quartett | Leave a comment
When Bersarin Quartett’s press kit arrived I found myself immediately taking notice. Normally I just throw the one-sheets straight into my recycle bin but this one stood out with its stylish black paper, striking artwork and unusual character set. I’d heard the name somewhere only recently – I thought it might have been DJ Martian’s blog but I couldn’t find anything when I went back to check – but I’d never got around to following it up. Not to worry, I had the album now and plenty of time to listen to it. And listen I did.
Press releases are, by their very nature, prone to hyperbole. The introduction to this one for Bersarin Quartett sounds far-fetched, almost ridiculous on paper but with the gorgeous opening swells of “Oktober” bursting from the speakers, the words ring perfectly true:
“With some albums, you realize within a few seconds that you have come across something really special. It is music that touches you straight away.”
If Bersarin Quartett had employed me to write their press release I could easily have produced the same opening paragraph. This is a truly special album of instrumental music, the kind that so many post-rock acts have aimed for but never quite achieved. It’s out on 13 February. 2008 is looking more promising by the day…
http://www.myspace.com/bersarinquartett