JENNIFER CARDINI : Get The Curse / Resident Advisor (2012)

I've written about Jennifer Cardini before. A long term resident at Paris's legendary Rex club, she's been one of my favourite DJs for several years now, & on a good night she's arguably one of the best in the world (seriously). She's been very quiet on the production front for the last year or so - just playing out & making a little money I imagine? - but a couple of podcasts have popped up recently which suggest, having relocated from Paris to Cologne (& given up drinking!), she might be entering an exciting new period of increased activity.

Her appearance on Get The Curse comprises a stunning mix of cutting edge electronic dance music, while her (highly recommended) Resident Advisor podcast takes the form of a wide-ranging, surprisingly intimate interview, touching on her past, her present & her possible futures.

Better still, her voice reminds me of Nico's (I could listen to her all day!).

DENIM : Summer Smash EP (1997)

It must be "a sign". The sun came out this afternoon - for the first time in weeks it seems - & then this prescient pop gem randomly popped up while I was shuffling through iTunes. So it's only natural that I should post it here, right?

I'm sure you're au fait with the whole agonising story by now. Back in August 1997, Denim were poised to unleash their surefire "top 10 with a bullet" masterstroke, the radiant "Summer Smash" 45. The band had recently completed a highly successful tour support with Pulp (themselves at the peak of the notoriety, Jarvis having wittily clambered onto the Brits' stage a few months earlier), & Radio 1 had added "Summer Smash" to their all-important daytime schedule. Thousands of coloured vinyl 7"s, CD & (I've been led to believe) cassette singles had been pressed & were stacked in EMI's warehouse, ready to be shipped out to the country's record shops (& there were still rather a lot of those back then remember). At which point... Diana, Princess of Wales' chauffeur driven limo slammed into the Pont de l'Alma underpass at high speed & EMI, in an incongruous display of "good taste", cancelled the record's release for fear of further upsetting the grieving nation. All copies of "Summer Smash" were recalled & swiftly incinerated, & the band's completed 3rd album - the elusive Denim Take Over - was subsequently aborted, while Lawrence unceremoniously dropped. Rumour suggests that - actually - EMI had been wanting to off load Denim for some time, & opportunistically used The Queen Of Hearts' untimely passing as a convenient excuse (surely not!). Having vanished overnight, "Summer Smash" became an instant collector's item (copies now fetch £50+ on eBay), while the Denim Take Over master tapes were spirited away to a maximum security vault, several miles beneath Abbey Road (though glitch-ridden mp3 are available online if you know where to dig). A handful of "Summer Smash" EPs fortuitously escaped the rout however, & Lawrence himself claims to have liberated a box of each format before they were junked, so perhaps he's allowed a few to leak out over the intervening years for posterity's sake, & to help perpetuate the myth?

It's strange to think that, if "Summer Smash" had made it onto Top Of The Pops, we might now fondly look upon Lawrence as an eccentric one hit wonder, a momentarily amusing 90s equivalent of 70s chart chancers Sailor or Chicory Tip, rather than the Lieutenant Pigeon-inspired Syd Barrett figure he's since been idly painted as? And it's chilling to consider that he may have become a staple of those ghastly "100 Hit Songs Of The 90s"-type compilation shows that have littered the nation's t.v. schedules for the last decade as a result - a narrow escape, sir! (It's a tragedy that Lawrence's proposed appearance on Ant & Dec's show, driving a dodgem in Mozart attire, never transpired though.)

So then, here's "Summer Smash" in all it's sunburnt splendour, backed with the "Sun's Out" (bed & breakfast weirdness in Paignton with Little & Large) & a wholly appropriate Moogie cover of Terry Dactyl & The Dinosaur's "Seaside Shuffle". As usual, I've tossed in a couple of interesting, contemporaneous extras: the instrumental edit of "Internet Curtains" (b-side of "It Fell Off The Back Of A Lorry" & employed throughout the current Lawrence Of Belgravia documentary), the promo-only "Glitter All Over Again" (recorded with The Glitter Band - Lawrence must've been in Glam Rock Heaven!), & the unreleased "Lorra Laughs Cilla". The latter is taken from the suppressed Denim Take Over tapes, but has since been rehashed as "At The DDU" for Go-Kart Mozart's Tearing Up The Album Charts LP. It took me a l-o-n-g time, but I warmed to the gloriously absurd Go-Kart Mozart ("the world's first b-side band") eventually, despite Lawrence's reckless attempts to sabotage the affecting pathos of his lyrics with teeth-grindingly garish & contradictory "novelty rock" accompaniment - "He made The Smurfs sounds like The Blue Nile", as the NME once put it. In case you haven't been taking notes, almost all of Denim Take Over has been plundered for the Tearing Up The Charts & the imminent On The Hotdog Streets albums, albeit with a careful few lyrical amendments ("Denim Take Over" becomes "Lawrence Takes Over", "City Of The Dead" becomes "Mickie Made The Most, etc). Lawrence's songwriting remains stunningly poignant on occasion, bleakly hilarious (or downright barmy) on others, further proof that he didn't senselessly scupper his muse after Back In Denim, it was merely downsizing & self-medicating. That said... I'll always prefer The Splendour Of Fear to Denim On Ice, OK?

Canada Briggs & Her Problems Down There

OPPOSITE SEX : Opposite Sex (2012)

Believe it or not, curating as poorly written & seldom updated a blog as this one still doesn't deter cheerfully demented folk at obscure "austerity measure" record labels from sending me -albeit very occasionally - gratis copies of their latest releases. I choose to ignore them on the whole, as I don't want to waste time & space writing about music I'm not 100% enthusiastic about, but Opposite Sex's eponymous debut is simply way too good to let slip by without a mention (huge thanks to "micro independent" Fishrider for the promo copy).

From Gisborne NZ, Opposite Sex's unorthodox, accidental pop songs have already acquired the unguarded approval of Marc Riley, so chances are you may have heard a song or 2 by them already, providing you're Radio 6 inclined (I'm not). Musically, they're informed & motivated by Rough Trade's fertile 1978-80 period, & the entire LP is a glorious kaleidoscopic collision of many of the principal Peel-endorsed bands from that first "D.I.Y. aesthetic" era. The influence of The Raincoats, The Homosexuals, Mo-Dettes, Delta 5, Flowers, & Family Fodder is particularly evident, but they also hark back to the Flying Nun-instigated Antipodean underground too - particularly the brilliant Shoes This High, & lesser known Marie & The Atom - while, elsewhere, their faltering melodies & stumbling rhythms suggest a more than passing knowledge of the C-86 movement's unkempt angularities (e.g. the Ron Johnson junta). Several tracks sound like Dolly Mixture grappling with a thrift shop copy of the Cabaret soundtrack - faintly bizarre, but rather magical - Weimar influenced songwriting is that last thing I would've expected a Kiwi post-punk band to indulge in, frankly! Semi-randomly, Opposite Sex's general disposition reminds me of The Shop Assistants devil-may-care dash through their untutored cover of Mötorhead's "Ace Of Spades" (from their November '88 Peel session) - i.e. a band totally undaunted by it's lack of conventional "ability", eagerly playing to absolute limit of it's talents in a triumph of catalytic amateurism. Enthused, witty, arty, risk taking, & with a conspicuous lack of pose, Opposite Sex sound near perfect to me right now. And Peel would've adored them, most definitely.

A loose trio, formed around Lucy Hunter's tumbling basslines & unaffected vocals, Opposite Sex's ingenious bricolage of skewed guitar mauling (Fergus Taylor), frenzied drumming (Tim Player), & Nuggets-style organ scree (dunno) scrambles along, raw & unfettered, with a pulsing naiveté borne of a remote & hurried gestation. Following a brief exploratory visit south to support The Puddle, Lucy & Tim have since moved islands, relinquishing Gisborne's Northern seclusiveness for Dunedin's less remote, & far cooler (in both senses of the word) Southern climes. Fingers crossed, their relocation won't infringe on the guileless "home made" simplicity (& relative lack of expertise) that makes this debut LP so outstanding?

The album has been picked up by Occultation for British release. No chance of live dates here just yet however, according to Fishrider the band are so skint they can't afford to travel back to NZ's North island for gigs, let alone the U.K. - another reason why you should buy the LP & not just rip it off from some dodgy blog.

You can listen to the album here: oppositesex.bandcamp.com

CYNTHIA DALL (1971-2012)

I'm shocked & saddened to hear of Cynthia Dall's sudden & unexpected death, at home in Sacramento last week. As renown for her transgressive photography (showcased in Lisa Suckdog's peerless Rollerderby magazine) as her sporadic recordings (her most recent, Sound Restores Young Men, was released back in 2002), Cindy's tenure as a member of Bill Callahan's Smog culminated in what, for me, is still his finest album, 1995's Wild Love. Later that year, when Smog stopped off at Nottingham on their first international tour, I was spellbound by Cindy's luminous presence & quietly intense performance. It's an evening I've never forgotten.

Cindy's debut solo LP, 1996's Untitled, was recorded with Callahan & Jim O'Rourke & perfectly complimented the better known Wild Love. A short suite of stark low-fi confessionals, it's desolate beauty is truly haunting, & I urge you to seek it out if you've not already heard it.

GROUPER : Grouper (2005) / He Knows (2006)

Interesting live shows have been few & far between here recently, but Grouper's performance at Nottingham's "naturally resonant" Contemporary gallery last weekend was definitely worth leaving the house for...

Steered by Portland, OR's elfin Liz Harris, Grouper operates in shadowy alcoves that might, until a few years ago, have been defined as "dark ambient", though her work effortlessly eludes all of the gauche clichés any mention of that conceited genre now tends to evoke. On Saturday evening, employing just a couple of dictaphones, a handful of boxed effects, & a small mixing desk, her thoughtful, meditative transitions (derived largely from heavily processed organ loops & rural field recordings I believe) fleetingly brought to mind the Arcadian drift of Eno's Ambient 4: On Land, though her tenebrous atmospheres were even more crepuscular, the vapourous hiss of her fogbound synths suggesting, at times, an intangible pastoral evil, or a chimeric journey beyond the mirror. Grouper's recent releases have found her experimenting with embryonic acoustic song structures - haunting semi-folk melodies immersed in a sunless brume of reverb & delay, overwhelmed by oblivion. Her outstanding Dragging A Dead Deer Up A Hill album is the finest example of this spectral methodology thus far, & is probably the best point of entry for anybody unfamiliar with her work. Her entrancing Nottingham performance, Violet Replacement, recalled the foreboding, overcast dreamscapes of her earliest & most abstract work, all of which is now frustratingly out of print (as is, already, Violet Replacement itself).

Her tour support, the hitherto unknown (to me) Diamond Catalog, were somewhat less convincing: two shadowy figures (yawn) huddled around a laptop in furtive conversation, tentatively prodding an alien piece of software at apparent random & with little obvious idea of what direction it might be leading them. Their music - an annoying sonic bricolage of rasping basement yatter & clumping techno beats - & their persistent fiddling with the otic palette (some form of laptop-engendered ADD no doubt), merely irritated. Not dismal exactly, just ill conceived & curiously unengaging.

So, I'm posting two of Grouper's earliest releases - her eponymous 2005 debut, & the following year's He Knows EP. The former, a slightly reticent self-released CDr, reminds me of both Zoviet France & Le Mystere des Voix Bulgares (i.e. not bad for a first attempt!). It's 8 tracks, like the disc itself, were all originally unnamed, but were subsequently attributed titles by The Wire's David Keenan, on his Volcanic Tongue mail order site. The latter, another limited edition CDr, was released the following year on Collective Jyrk (r.i.p.) &, though quite short, is a personal favourite.

Black Hole

THE BILLY CHILDISH : The 1982 Cassetes (1988)

Suspending disbelief for a moment, & imagining that Discogs isn't just an opportunistic flea market free-for-all for aspiring Del Boys, then The 1982 Cassetes is without a doubt the most "valuable" record I own. There's a copy for sale on there at the moment, a snip at £500, though I suspect a generous pinch of salt might be in order? I paid £1.99 for my copy, at Nottingham's much-missed Selectadisc, in the mid 90s, along with a stack of other, equally neglected, late 80s Childish releases, all of which have since become stupendously "rare", though I doubt many of 'em would fetch anything like half a grand...

Released in 1988 on Billy's own Hangman label, along with a torrent of other similarly low key &/or esoteric vinyl-only titles, The 1982 Cassetes (Billy's spelling, not mine) was the fruit of an advantageous non-profit production deal with Revolver - the gist being that R.T. would press up & distribute a small run (300-500 copies) of anything Billy delivered to them, on the understanding that he would relinquish his royalties (or something to that effect). As, throughout the late 80s & early 90s, Billy was content to live a frugal life of painting & signing on, supplementing his meagre income with an occasional Thee Mighty Caesars or Thee Headcoats show, it must've seemed an ideal artistic arrangement. And the result, in time, was Hangman's enviable back catalogue. The label eventually folded in the mid-90s, partially due to an unfortunate incident involving some unlicensed Link Wray demos, which had allegedly been obtained in exchange for an answering machine!

Despite looking like it might've been taken with a Kodak Coloursnap circa 1962, the striking cover portrait features, of course, Billy & then-girlfriend Tracey Emin - another reason why used copies of the album currently command such an inflated sum, perhaps? As it's title suggests, The 1982 Cassetes' budget didn't extend far beyond the cost of a blank tape - adequately recorded using a couple of tracks, Billy often sounds like he's improvising his lyrics, while accompanying himself with some very primitive guitar (i.e. it's a bona fide "condenser mic in the bathroom" affair). Though I doubt it's anybody's favourite Childish-related release, it's nonetheless a particularly interesting one, offering rare insights into his elementary production methods, his austere breadline lifestyle, & the beginnings of his self-mythology. I found it very hard going when I first heard it, nigh on 20 years ago, but I've grown to really love it.

Seriously though, isn't it about time somebody started reissuing this stuff?

Dog End Of A Dog End

THE HEADCOATS : Girl From '62 7" (1990)

A Monday morning quicky. "Girl From'62" is a song that Billy has returned to on several occasions since it's initial 1990 release, as a 7" on Issaquah WA's short lived Regal Select Records. This original incarnation is certainly still my favourite - a loathsome (& wild) blast of blistering basement rock'n'roll. Thee Headcoats were a garage combo sans comparez at this point, & released a heck of a lot of 7"s 'round this time - I have loads but I'm sure I must've missed a few. "Girl From '62" is definitely one of the finer installments, however.

n.b. I'd always assumed that The Girl on question was a certain Ms. Emin, but it transpires she was actually born in 1963 - the plot thickens, etc. The flip side, incidentally, is not a cover of The Shadows Of Knight raver, more's the pity...

No.13