Alt J: An Awesome Wave - Roscoe: Cracks - The Maccabees: Given to the Wild

It's become almost a tradition now to go out and buy a pile of new pop cds to keep us company on the long drive to our holiday destination. This year I spent three days on (very) small roads on my way to pick up Ann in the Alps and together we added another day crossing France East to West. Later we pushed on to Asturias in Spain. And then there was the long trip back north. It's refreshing to travel slowly, avoiding the numbing monotony of the motorway. 

The musical harvest was pretty good, with three outstanding albums that have seen a lot of rotation in the last few weeks. All three are by bands I hadn't heard before.

The Maccabees are a British indie rock band that has been around for a while. Their first album was released in 2007 (Colour It). Given to the Wild is their third and most recent production (2012). It's a fast-paced and breezy album that grasps back to 1970s alternative rock and 80s Britpop tunes. The close harmony choruses that feature in many songs remind me of the Moody Blues' distinctive sound. Altogether a very entertaining collection, ideal for long stretches on the road.

Roscoe's Cracks was a surprise. A moody and sophisticated debut recording by a Belgian, nay Wallonian band. The quintet hails from Liège. After the first few auditions I was enthralled. Now, after having heard it many times my judgment is slightly more reserved, if only because it strikes me that the album suffers from a certain monotony. Maybe I just need to put it aside for a while as there is no doubt that this is a most promising debut. The sound is quite distinctive, with a solid folkrock backbone that spills over in the expansiveness of Sigur Ros, and occasionally hints of the earlier, classic Radiohead. The songs have substance and depth. The production is positively luxurious, with several tracks featuring added strings and exotic instruments such as mandoline and Indian harmonium. The whole thing flows seamlessly. The CD is excellently recorded to boot.

The third revelation was An Awesome Wave, another debut by a Leeds-based alternative indie band with the enigmatic name Alt-J. This is likely the album that has been listened to most often over the past weeks as it found favour with all members of the family. The music is very difficult to pigeonhole. It reminds me somewhat of the sultry sparseness of The XX and the androgynous eroticism of the Wild Beasts. But it surpasses both in terms of its waywardness, imagination and poetic precision (the origami-like folded holder for the cd aptly captures that spirit). At first hearing the album presents itself misleadingly innocuous. But after hearing it again and again its wonderful layeredness unfolds. Our favourite track no doubt is the very last one - Taro - which is in fact a moving threnody for war photographer Robert Capa.

The other albums varied from the palatable to the merely dull. Moby's Last Night is a 2008 album that captures the mood of a Manhattan night of clubbing. So predictably it's rather dance oriented, with a trademark quiet finale. All the vocals are done by female guest singers which sets it apart in the burgeoning output of the Moby-factory. There are a few good tracks but as a whole the album does not come close to his best work. However, it's prettly listenable, which is more than I can say of his most recent release, Destroyed. I only listened to it once but found it impossibly trite.

Radiohead's King of Limbs seems to be a transition project. Are they genuinely exploring new artistic avenues or are they merely trying too hard to be smart and artsy ? This 35 minute, acerbic spiel of obsessive rhythms and delirious vocals didn't really capture my imagination. We'll have to wait for the next Radiohead installment.

Band of Horses' Cease to Begin is an ok folkrock album that stays demurely within the stylistic conventions of the genre. Again, not a highflyer.

DEUS' surprise release Following Sea continues the path taken since Pocket Revolution. There's really nothing to fault here. These guys are masters at their game. They can do anything. The songs in themselves are excellent, the lyrics are top (as always), the arrangements and mixing leave nothing to be desired. But the whole damn thing misses soul. Whilst the music reminds me in more than one way of their early work and the band worked hard to impart the album with a gritty urban feel, it doesn't capture the epic flow of an album like The Perfect Crash (which I must have listened to literally hundereds of times in my commuting days). Is DEUS going the same way as U2: a collection of stellar professionals who are perfectly capable of putting together a very polished but ultimately banal entertainment product?

But all in all it was not a bad harvest. Meanwhile I've also purchased the fabulous Autumn Chorus CD The Valley to the Vale (previously only available via download). And now I'm looking forward to discovering the new Elbow, XX and Mumford and Sons albums, all recently released or due in the next few weeks.

Hovhaness: Sonata for Harp, Sonata for Harp and Guitar - Autumn Chorus: The Village to the Vale

 I've been travelling and working intensely over the past two weeks so very little came of listening. The best I could do was to snatch a few bits in a train compartment or in a hotel lobby. Whilst travelling I'm unlikely to listen to unfamiliar or difficult music. This time I had two travelling companions in the form of a Hovhaness collection for harp I transferred from my father's collection to my iPad and the Autumn Chorus CD (The Village to the Vale) I downloaded earlier this year. The latter I find still a magnificent piece of work and an astonishing feat for a first recording. My favourite track is certainly the epic, 16 minute long Rosa. A gorgeous wash of sound, particularly when you are looking out of a train window whilst travelling through central Sweden on a bright midsummer evening ... Autumn Chorus produce a sound that is hybrid between the Moody Blues and Sigur Ros. I just love it.

The Hovhaness CD (a Telarc production from 2005) offers a mix of pieces for harp and various ensembles. There is a Concerto for Harp and String Orchestra (with the orchestra part played by I Fiamminghi) which I haven't really listened to yet. The excellent soloist is Yolanda Kondonassis. I keep returning to the Sonata for Harp solo and a Sonata for Guitar and Harp 'Spirit of Trees'. It's not particularly probing music, but the faintly orientalising harmonies and haunting sonorities offer a contemplative bubble to escape from the buzz of airports and planes.

I'll be leaving soon on an extended bicycle tour through France, as an opportunity to learn more about the future of Europe. I have my iPad with me, loaded with a number of new CDs. It remains to be seen to what extent I'll be in the mood for listening on this challenging tour.

Sigur ros: Valtari - Paul Buchanan: Mid Air

We are living in times of crisis and these two new releases betray the spirit of the times in their mood of withdrawal and melancholia. Both albums have been long in the offing. Sigur Ros last dates from four years back and Paul Buchanan and The Blue Nile didn't release anything new since High in 2004.

I immediately connected to Valtari's strangely melancholy atmosphere. It's a very contemplative album, suffused with an autumnal, post-apocalyptic glow. In a way, the music feels almost liturgical. I'm reminded of Saramago's wonderful Stone Raft in which a group of people traverses the Iberian peninsula on foot after it has dissociated itself from the European mainland. The small band is suffused with a state of grace, the sheer gratefulness of being alive in this weirdest of worlds, and yet there is also a dark undercurrent that speaks of something lost for good, of inadequacy and imperfection. That, for me, captures Valtari's expansive feel, supported by interminable lines on synths and strings, Jonsi's luminous falsetto and the occasional children choir.   

Whilst Sigur Ros' music evokes the vast expanses of a primeval landscape, Paul Buchanan withdraws with us to the late night intimacy of his own studio, with only a piano and a simple synth as companions. Mid Air is composed of fourteen short and simple ballads, wrapped in the most discrete accompaniment. Although the album has since its recent release met with rapturous response, I am personally less convinced. I'll take a Blue Nile album any time. Buchanan knows hows to create and sustain a mood with his wonderful, soulful voice. Taken individually, the songs are nice enough. But stringing fourteen of them together makes the album tilt towards the dull side of simplicity. As all songs are cut from the same cloth, there is very little contrast: same slow tempo and humdrum rhythm throughout, hardly any sense of development, and after a while the accompaniment becomes rather monochrome (not a nice piano he is playing on, or it's badly recorded). So, likely it's an album that has to be savoured in small dosages, two, three songs at a time. Time will tell whether I'll warm to it.

The Blue Nile: High

A few days ago High arrived. It's the fourth and likely final album of The Blue Nile in my collection. Released in 2004, there hasn't been any news from the Scottish band ever since. Although surprisingly enough a new solo album (Mid Air) has been announced from Paul Buchanan, the band's frontsman. I'll certainly follow that up.

High a fine album but to my mind not as memorable as Hats (1989) and Peace at Last (1996; probably still my favourite). The ambiente is rather relaxed with mostly downtempo, thoughtful tracks. In contrast with the earlier albums I feel that the songs are not as well crafted. A few come even across as perfunctory and underdeveloped. In any case, there is nothing that really jumps out, as did, for example, Over the Hillside on Hats or Tomorrow Morning on Peace. But there are plenty of good things on this CD too. Paul Buchanan is in fine form and his voice continues to mesmerise. The arrangements are tasteful, as always. And the recording quality is at the stellar level of the other albums (although it was not recorded by Linn, as were the earliest releases). It really sounds glorious. So all in all it's a good, but not too demanding album. Good for long rides in the car, or for drowsy late evening listening sessions.

Paddy McAloone: I Trawl the Megahertz

On Friday I had to drive to Arnhem in Holland to deliver a training session and decided to give McAloon's Megahertz another spin in the car. I listened to it three times back-to-back. The impression I had after my first audition persists: hard to tell whether this is a piece of supreme kitsch or an attempt at enchantment based on yet another version McAloone's 'yawning caves of blue'. Anyway, it's the right kind of aural backdrop for long rides. And yesterday, as I was working through a 70 km cycling tour (accompanied by WvdH), this weird and soothing stuff persistently echoed in my head. It's that kind of music.  

Nils Frahm: Live Concert, Felt - Ansatz der Machine: Heat

Last Saturday (Feb 18th) there was an opportunity to hear Nils Frahm live, just next door at the Leuven STUK arts center. The evening was kicked off by Belgian band Ansatz der Machine who presented their recently released CD Heat. An intriguing setup with 8 band members on instruments as diverse as mandoline, guitar, steel guitar, French horn, sax, violin, percussion and synths. A discrete female vocalist complements the opulent electro-acoustic background. Heat struck me as a coherent, accomplished and sophisticated effort, a darkly suggestive (and occasionally very loud) score to an imaginary David Lynch-movie. Definitly worth rehearing.

Nils Frahm, then. What to expect live from this intriguing pianist, composer, improviser? I didn't dare to imagine how fragile fabrications such as his Wintermusik and Felt would fare under glaring stage lights. I'd seen a few live performances of his on Arte TV, none of which really captured the magic of his studio recordings. However, the Leuven concert was a captivating experience enlivened by Frahm's boyish enthusiasm and his unforced communication with the audience. Frahms worked with two keyboards (computer-enhanced buffet pianos), set perpendicularly to one another, his back to the audience. In addition, a synthesiser on top of one of the pianos. The set was different from anything I'd heard from him before. Sure he started with Said and Done (from The Bells), which he has been doing for ever ('a running gag' as he calls it) as it helps him to master his stage fright (again in his own words). But improvisiatonally he transformed it into something barely recognisable from the recorded version. I'm sorry I didn't tape the concert as I have difficulties remembering what he exactly played. But it was an enchanting mix that brought one dimension of his art very clearly into relief and that is its fundamentally hymnic character. Frahm's music is deeply celebratory, a youthful and poetic homage to the wonder of being alive. It puts him in the league of fellow pianists like Jarrett, Tsabropoulos and Mehldau. It seems to me that there is a minimalist streak in his music that is coming ever more clearly to the fore, stressing rhythmic complexities brought about by phase shifts, and slow but very effective modulations. Harmonically his music is rather 'safe' and sometimes I wish he would stray off into more adventurous territory. But there is no denying that Frahms has an uncanny ability to stay at the right side of the delicate line between  poignant art and mawkish kitch. One of the songs was played on synthesizer only. In another he asked the technical guys to progressively dim the light until he was playing in pitch darkness and then to gradually re-illuminate again, as if we were living through an artificial sunrise. Another surprise was the penultimate song in which he suddenly was joined by an alter ego at the keyboard, sharing an intricately embroidered 4-hand toccata amongts the two of them. For the final song he requested a suggestion from the audience but as a coherent and audible response was not forthcoming he proceeded with an extemporisation on the beautiful Ambre from Wintermusik. After the concert he dashed to the back end of the hall (where altogether we had been sitting for almost three hours on our bums!) to personally sell his CDs. 

Paddy McAloon: I Trawl The Megahertz - Nils Frahm: Felt - Autumn Chorus: The Village to the Vale

I fell into the ambient trap again. Well sort of. And not that I'm particularly minding. How did it happen? A few weeks ago, after having listened to Prefab Sprout's Let's Change The World With Music, I ordered Paddy McAloon's I Trawl The Megahertz. It took ages to get here and I'd forgotten about it when it came in the mail. What a surprise when I dropped it into the CD player. The album starts with a 22 minute long extemporisation. Female voice over a minimalist chamber music accompaniment (soloists of the Scottish Chamber Orchestra, apparently). A long, dreamlike story. A sequence of poetic vignettes from a life. It fits and doesn't fit together as dreams are wont to do. And then the story behind it. Somewhere in the late 1990s McAloon was diagnosed with a medical disorder that (temporarily) impaired his vision. Pretty much immobilised he resorted to listening to radio shows. He started recording them, picking up isolated phrases or even words, splicing them, weaving them into the backbone of a narrative, which he proceeded polish and pad. Then he started to set the words to music. And so, by trawling the ether, the album was born. The long title track - narrated by mysterious Yvonne Connors - is followed by eight other, shorter tracks, most of them instrumental, some with voice. Paddy himself is only heard on the beautiful ballad Sleeping Rough. I need some more time to make up my mind about this weird album. The sophistication of the recording and the overall mood reminds me somewhat of Pat Metheny's Secret Story, although the music is at first sight very different. But just as the latter I Trawl seems to sway between enchantment and kitsch. An Amazon reviewer says you need to hear I Trawl The Megahertz at least a hundred times in order to get to the bottom of it. I'm certainly willing to give Paddy McAloon the benefit of the doubt. So I'll be returning to this album soon.


Ever since I got to know Nils Frahm's Wintermusik and The Bells, I'm holding this young German composer, pianist and improviser in high esteem. Again, we're in the shadowy realm of high art and bathos but Frahm seems to have an uncanny feeling for staying on the right side of the fence (which colleagues such as Dustin O'Halloran and Max Richter are not always able to). I'm always deeply touched by his music. This little video, in all its simplicity, I haven't quite been able to forget. Next week, Frahm is coming to Leuven, again, and I was happy to get one of the last available tickets. I hadn't listened to Frahm's latest album, Felt, and I have been trawling YouTube to get an idea of what this has to offer. I haven't been able to dig up all the tracks, but what I've heard did please me and provided me with solace whilst I was pulling together this big, complicated, unwieldy report during late night shifts this week. Felt is a very intimate affair, oozing a velvety nocturnal atmosphere that keeps you wrapped nice and warm in your aural cocoon. Allegedly the album came into being quite serendipitously. Frahm was looking for ways to play his piano very late at night when he had the idea to dampen the strings with a piece of ... felt: "Originally I wanted to do my neighbours a favour by damping the sound... If I want to play piano during the quiet of the night, the only respectful way is by layering thick felt in front of the strings and using very gentle fingers." The music was recorded by putting the mikes as closely as possibly to the hammers of the piano, with Frahm playing the instrument pianissimo with the most delicate touch. The result is a whirring, microscopic, intimate soundscape from which the piano sound emerges in a dreamlike fashion. Some tracks feature other instruments too, such as tintinnabuli, synths or tapes. The atmosphere is beautifully caught. The 8-minute final track, More, is for the time being my favourite. The rhythmic buoyancy of its first section connects to Wintermusik, but the improvisatory passage that follows upon it transports me back to the more elated Bells. There is a fine coda which reminds me of the music we used - what is it: three years ago? - to accompany our final slide show in the masterclass with Lorenzo Castore. Truly memorable, that experience. I look forward to listening to the full album very soon. And I hope the live performance will not disappoint me.

Listening to Nils Frahm's Felt I started to look up some other ambient-feel music. I hit upon the beautiful YouTube channel of untitledesigner: a feast for the ears and the eyes! Another find was Benjamin Vis' now defunct blog Nieuwe Geluiden. The first tip I picked up from BV was a hit: Autumn Chorus' The Village to the Vale. The album is a first and is only available for download from Bandcamp. This band of 4 Brightonians produces an expansive, richly layered and mellow sound that strikes me as a slightly friendlier version of Sigur Ros. It's post-rock that is drenched in nostalgia and an intimation of transitoriness. A British lineage that goes back to Pink Floyd and the Moody Blues is very much in evidence as well. I would have sworn that Marcus Mumford, from the folkrock band Mumford and Sons, was taking the lead vocals, but it's not the case. The resemblance between the voices is uncanny, though. I ran through the album a couple of times and fell particularly for the wonderful finale, consisting of the 16 minute track Rosa and the final Bye Bye Now. The long stretch is impeccably paced, lending it an almost symphonic feel and taking the listener on a tantalising journey that feels like reading a Murakami novel in one go. Amazing what these guys pulled off in their first album. This is a definite keeper. Thanks, BV.

Pop Medley

The sequel. I started with another spin of the complete Blue Nile Peace at Last. Then a series of songs by Randy Newman from a rather awfully remastered 'Best of' CD. Followed up with

• Jah Nuh Dead, Marcus Garvey (in both the original and dub versions) from Sinéad O'Connor's Throw Down Your Arms,
• Tango Cancion and Paris, Texas from Gotan Project's Lunàtico (a spectacular recording), 
• Matta, Signals and An Ending (Ascent) from Brian Eno's Apollo, 
• most of the first disc of Eels' Blinking Lights and Other Revelations,
• If I Was A Tap Natch Poet and Reggae fi May Ayim from Linton Kwesi Johnson's More Time,
• Let There Be Music, Ride and I Love Music from Prefab Sprout's Let's Change The World With Music,
• Hope There's Someone from Anthony and the Johnson's I Am A Bird Now, 
• Ground on Down from Ben Harper's Fight for Your Mind,

From LKJ's beautiful Reggae for May Ayim (an Afro-German poet who killed herself because she was diagnosticised with MS):

wi give tanks
fi di life
yu share wid wi
wi give tanks
fi di lite
yu shine pon wi
wi give tanks
fi di love
yu showah pon wi
wi give tanks
fi yu memahri

The Blue Nile: Peace at Last

Gave The Blue Nile's Peace at Last another spin. This was one of the very first CDs that was swapped with PC in our over-a-decade long exchange project. I'm still very fond of that album. It has always been a recording to reckon with but with the PPP now in place it sounds just jaw-droppingly awesome. I could go on about the bass that has more slam and a soundstage that has widened and deepened and the voices and instruments that sound more timbrally authentic. But the bottom line is that it is just very immersive and moving to listen to music where everything 'fits' and that just sounds 'right'.  In progressively upgrading the hifi set, the improvements in sound become ever more subtle but the pleasure one derives from them seem to increase in an inversely proportional way.

Pop Medley

Today I connected the digital and analogue sources in my hifi setup to an AC regenerator. This takes polluted AC from the grid, turns it into a DC signal and then back into a much cleaner sine wave. The result ought to be increased 'blackness' of the musical background, greater soundstage, and smoother and more relaxed sound. After a first listening round I wasn't totally convinced. Sure, I noticed how the soundstage widened and how the music became more distant and relaxed. The drawback, I found, was that it seemed marginally less involving. The whole sonic experience snapped into focus, however, when I isolated the regenerator from the rack with three spare Boston Audio Design TuneBlocks. Suddenly I had soundstage and focus. Over dinner then we briefly came to speak about Joy Division and so I proceeded to listen to two of the band's favourite tracks. From one thing came the other and 2,5 hours later I emerged dazed but re-energised from my listening session. If the proof of a new audio component's worth lies in the extent to which it is able to persuade you to put on that next CD, the Power Plant has passed the test with flying colours. Honestly, the sound from my system is at this point heart-wrenchingly beautiful.

This was my playlist of the evening:

Joy Division - The Eternal (from Closer)
Joy Division - Decades (from Closer)
The Blue Nile - Happiness (from Peace at Last)
The Blue NIle - Tomorrow Morning (from Peace at Last)
The Blue Nile - Over The Hillside (from Blue)
The Blue Nile - Headlights on the Parade (from Blue)
The Blue Nile - A Walk Across the Rooftops (from A Walk Across the Rooftops)
The Blue Nile - Tinseltown In The Rain (from A Walk Across the Rooftops)
Burial - Untrue (from Untrue)
Sigur Ros - I Gaer (from Heim)
Sigur Ros - Von (from Heim)
Scott Matthew - Black Bird (from Gallantry's Favorite Son)
Scott Matthew - True Sting (from Gallantry's Favorite Son)
The XX - Crystalised (from The XX)
The XX - Night Time (from The XX)
The XX - Stars (from The XX)
Wild Beasts - Invisible (from Smother)
Wild Beasts - Albatross (from Smother)
Johnny Cash - If You Could Read My Mind (from American V - A Hundred Highways)
Johnny Cash - I'm Free From The Chain Gang Now (from American V - A Hundred Highways)
Max Richter - Maria, The Poet (1913) (from Memoryhouse)
Max Richter - Laika's Journey (from Memoryhouse)
Elbow - The Birds (from Build A Rocket Boys)
Elbow - The River (from Build A Rocket Boys)
Elbow - The Birds (reprise) (from Build A Rocket Boys)
Elbow - Dear Friends (from Build A Rocket Boys)
PJ Harvey - Beautiful Feeling (from Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea)
PJ Harvey - The Wind (from Is This Desire?)
Anthony and the Johnsons - Hope There's Someone (from I Am A Bird Now)
The Blue Nile - God Bless You Kid (from Peace at Last)
The Blue Nile - Soon (from Peace at Last)

Prefab Sprout: Jordan. The Comeback - Let's Change the World with Music

I was lucky to find a very decent vinyl copy of Prefab Sprout's Jordan. The CD is wonderfully recorded, really punchy and vivacious. I was startled to hear how different, in a way, the LP sounds. The overall sonic image is similar, but the LP is much more luscious and airy. And the resulting listening experience is different. The whole thing comes across as much more laid back and mellower. Which works well with the wistful undertone of the LP. I really like them both, LP and CD, and it will depend on mood whether one or the other will see rotation.

I have been reading up a bit on what happened to Prefab Sprout after Jordan and the story about their follow-up CD is really intriguing. In fact, the work didn't see the light of day until 2009 and was long regarded as 'lost'. Why this happened, is not clear. Wikipedia writes this:

During an interview (...) McAloon explained that in 1993 at a meeting with Sony he presented a tape of about fourteen songs as the follow-up to the lengthy Jordan: The Comeback. Apparently there were too many people in the room and the meeting did not go well. Although Sony wanted him to trim the record down to a more manageable length, for whatever reason there was a misunderstanding and McAloon understood that they wanted him to expand on just one or two of the ideas (rather than just trim 1 or 2 of the songs from the album). He then went away for a year and a half and developed one of the 3 minute songs into a 30 song piece of music. After a period he realised that was not what they wanted, but by this point it was too late.

In the sleeve notes, McAloon writes:

Now it goes without saying that I would have liked to have recorded Let's Change the World with Music with Marty, Wendy, and Thomas; I believe they wanted to, but we missed our moment so it wasn't to be. Why? I have no idea. Beats me. Anyway, one day in May '93 we made a poor move. But hey, water under the bridge. I blinked and went back to the drawing board. Back then, all that really mattered to me were those yawning caves of blue.

Tantalising. The 'yawning caves of blue' McAloon refers to go back to his fascination for the Beach Boys' 'lost' album Smiles. In a magazine he read about the experimental music on this album as 'containing glitter and sunshine, yet there were profound shades of blue like yawning caves or climbing through thick ivy". This phrase stuck with McAloon and it was this that animated him when he sat down to write the follow-up to Jordan:

I put everything I had into the songs, some which employ - funnily enough - overtly spiritual metaphors: music as a consoling force, an inspiration, even - perhaps - music as the voice of the sublime. Occasionally I leaned on the kind of language and imagery you might find in gospel music. I was trying to capture some of the stuff that makes soul, or gospel by that kind of language, would you? You would have seen what I was up to . That's right. I was talking about transcendence. Transcendence through music. Yep. That's what I was up to seventeen years ago.

Paddy McAloon wrote all the songs and performed, recorded and produced the lot in his private studio too. What kind of album is it? It is an animated album and draws life from the same spiritual vein as Jordan did. It is an album about a deep, abiding love in the force of music to heal and give meaning to our lives. McAloon wears his love, almost naively so, on his sleeve. The song titles speak volumes: Let There be Music, I Love Music, Music is a Princess, Last of the Great Romantics, Sweet Gospel Music ... But despite the lyrical outpourings it's an album that is propelled forward by an energetic beat. Most of the material is decidedly uptempo. Ballads there are almost none (Great Romantics, perhaps). The arrangements are surprisingly luscious, given that McAloon did it all by himself. But it's all synths; there is almost no acoustic instrument to be detected in the thicket. Hard to say which are my favourite songs: the introductory trio - Let There Be Music, Ride, I Love Music - is a great opener, but I'm also very fond of Earth: The Story so Far, Falling in Love, and the absolutely infectuous beat on Sweet Gospel Music. The only letdown, maybe, is the very end where neither Meet the New Mozart nor Angel of Love are able to capture the poignant mixture of impermanence and hope that makes Jordan such as memorable experience.

The recorded sound on Music is compact and rather heavy on the lower and mid range of the spectrum. But it's not at all displeasing. I've spent some very enjoyable hours glued in my chair whilst Let's Change the World With Music washed over me at high volume settings. Thanks, Paddy.

JM Jarre: Equinox - ELO: A New World Record

I started the new year with some rediscovered vinyl, from the old days. That means the late 1970s when as a teenager I started to spend some of my pocket money on LPs.

Jean-Michel Jarre's Equinox has always been one of my favourites. It's probably the best he has ever done. It's a beautifully sequenced suite of very atmospheric tracks. The LP still sounds great. Soon after, however, I grew disenchanted with Jarre. His China concerts were a rehash of the Equinox/Oxygène/Chants Magnétiques stuff and his later work - Zoolook (1984), En attendant Cousteau (1990), etc - struck me as significantly less inspired. In the 1990s I lost track altogether. Also I never took to his penchant for Babylonian laser-and-fireworks shows which he unleashed all over the globe. Nevertheless, it is difficult to deny that JM Jarre has made his mark and his wikipedia lemma makes for fascinating reading.

The Electic Light Orchestra's A New World Record dates from 1976 and has seen years of heavy rotation. I believe I also had the double album Out of the Blue, but that has disappeared from my collection. It's been 30 years at least since I have last heard the stuff. I still know many of the lyrics by heart. I think most of the songs have aged gracefully. And certainly, this kind of symphonic rock was instrumental in nudging me gently towards the real thing which I discovered just a few years later. Sadly, this LP has been dreadfully recorded: an overproduced, 'radio-friendly', muffled sound with clipped dynamics.

Pink Floyd - The Final Cut

This was something very special. Today I listened twice to Pink Floyd's The Final Cut, on vinyl. This recording has always been very dear to me, as it came in the wake of and very much extends the reach of The Wall. The latter, and particularly the 1982 Alan Parker film that was inspired by it, was one of the most formative musical experiences in my life. It struck me when I was at a vulnerable age, full of doubt and not a little anguish as I transited into adulthood. I went to see the movie four times in a row. Its strong images reinforced by Pink Floyd's larger than life music continued to haunt my early adulthood for many years.

The story behind The Final Cut is well known, of course. It was, in fact, Roger Waters' first solo album, so to speak performed by Pink Floyd (that's what the record sleeve says). Soon after finishing the recordings, the band split up, for good. Similar to The Wall it's a rock opera, but on a more modest scale. You have to listen to it front to back; there is no other way. Musically, for me it reaches similar heights as The Wall. I was aware of the superb quality of the recording (very much in evidence in Waters' later albums too), but today I was really struck by the amazing, holographic quality of the music, the vividness and the raw power of it all. It's just perfect and I can't see how my experience today could be superseded even if you threw hands full of money at the hifi setup. Incidentally, the album is recorded using the Holophonics technology, but allegedly the effectiveness of this has never been validated. Well, for me it works wonderfully and for 45 minutes I was in audiophile heaven. But it's more than just about nerdy indulgences, of course. Waters' evocative sound effects, the fantastically sophisticated orchestral arrangements (signed Michael Kamen), the trenchant lyrics, Gilmour's stratospheric guitar solos and the wonderful overall flow of the drama make for a superb listening experience. A great start of what will hopefully be a serene and restful Xmas holiday week.

Vangelis: Chariots of Fire - China

The revitalised Michell Gyrodec has driven me back to my LP collection. I took it from the easy side by relistening to some of the specimens that date from the time when I was just starting to buy music. I must have been around 14-15 or so. At that stage I was a lot into mainstream electronic music, including JM Jarre and Vangelis. But surely these concept albums put me on track of a more sophisticated listening capacity that was able to grasp the architecture of longer works.

I listened to the B-side of JM Jarre's Oxygène album (his first). Mine is the original LP, dating from 1977. Whilst it does somewhat show its age, it is still wonderful to listen to. You can really  'hear' into the sonic signature of Jarre's electronic toolbox.

Then onwards to Vangelis' Chariots of Fire (1981), the A-side of which is a series of shorter pieces that were used as aural backdrop for the eponymous film. I only listened to the B-side which consists of just a single, spacious, 20-minute track. Whilst Vangelis piano sounds pathetic, the overall recording is quite good. I love the filigree patterns of electronic effects that create a vast, friendly sense of space, nicely projected by the Michell and all its downstream acolytes. Edelkitsch, but I enjoyed it anyhow.

China (1979) is another matter. Musically it is more cogent than Chariots. Again I only listened to the B-side, with Yin & Yang, Himalaya and Summit. Oh, how often have my thoughts drifted towards those magnificent giants when listening to these tracks. Himalaya and Summit together make for a very evocative 15-minute symphonic poem. If one tries to imagine how it might sound performed by a symphony orchestra, it becomes pretty avant garde. Xenakis comes to mind! The recording is quite good and I felt the Michell allowed a much better appreciation of the subtly layered soundscape conjured by Vangelis than I ever remembered hearing. All in all these were great rediscoveries, so thoroughly enjoyable because of the great, lively sound extracted from the worn vinyl by the revitalised Gyrodec.

Prefab Sprout: Jordan The Comeback

Earlier this week we had new shelves installed for our expanding collection of philosophy books. Whilst filling them with the stuff that had been trailing all over the house (a blissful diversion in itself), I listened to an old favourite. Jordan The Comeback is the only Prefab Sprout recording I have but it has seen a lot of rotation over the many years it's been in my collection (the album dates from 1990). It's impossibly 'poppy' and lightweight. Some will find it even saccharine. But I find there is something touchingly bittersweet in these songs. 'Sentimental and spiritual' I read somewhere and in my opinion that seems to hit the nail on the head. It's a huge album too, with 19 songs clustered in 4 sections giving an almost symphonic feel to the whole thing. I've always had a weak spot for the uptempo second 'movement' with the funky and uplifting title track and the 'Jesse James' songs. The final section collects a series of beautifully eloquent ballads (One of the broken, Mercy), the rapturous Scarlet Nights and the concluding Doo Wop in Harlem, heartbroken and heartening at the same time. The stellar recording quality makes this beautiful album all the more enjoyable.

Sigur Ros: Takk ...

Following up on the Heima film, I listened to Sigur Ros' Takk ... , their fourth record (from 2005) and debut with music mogul EMI. Meanwhile I was taking care of a big pile of dishes. The 65 minute long CD stopped spinning just when I had cleared the last pots and pans from the sink. I must say it is not a burden to do the dishes whilst this kind of music spills from the speakers at a petrifying volume. One is carried away by an oceanic current into a liminal state. Takk ... is one giant, uninterrupted soundscape, often subdued and occasionally rising to blinding climaxes of distorted, sandpapery guitar clusters. It's unwise to want to sample individual tracks from such a work. You have to let it gush forward, in one whirl. I'm looking forward to the next pile of dishes (but I have to be alone in the house ...) 

Sigur Ros: Heima

Yesterday I watched a DVD devoted to a documentary film on Sigur Ros' 2006 Iceland tour. The band had been touring all over the world and when they came back to Iceland they added a string of 14 concerts in small cities and tiny villages all over the island. Heima ('home') blends live performanes, short interviews, and evocative nature stills into a surprisingly intimate, reflective whole. These are skillful musicians that are capable of producing something more than average pop drivel. It has taken me a long while to get into Sigur Ros, but as time goes by my appreciation waxes. I'm also intrigued by their way of working, which, as the film hints at, is very organic and also strikes me as very down-to-earth and authentic. I wonder when their 'indefinite hiatus' that started in 2008 will be suspended with new work. Soon a double live CD and film will be issued (Inni) but that too predates the hiatus. We wait with keen anticipation.

Holiday Pop Medley

 Holiday, at least whilst being on the road, is more a time for casual listening. As last year I blindly bought a stack of pop CDs to entertain us while we were away. The highlight from the previous crop was The National's High Violet, a sterling disc that catapulted the band high on my list of favourites.

This year I hit the bull's eye with Mumford & Sons' Sigh No More (which is this London band's first and as yet only album). In fact, my son (who is otherwise not very much in to music) had brought it already last year to my attention, but I left it, at full price. Now, at a mere 5 euros it was a no-brainer. I thoroughly love M&S's brawny kind of folk rock (or country rock). The songs are raw and relatively uncouth but they are really well composed, full of interesting twists and turns. This is more than just packaging some nice tunes. There's not a weak point in the whole album. But pressed I'd single out White Blank Page, Little Lion Man and Thistle and Weeds as highlights.

Scott Matthew (not Matthews, who is someone else) is an Australian singer-songwriter I hadn't heard about. His Gallantry's Favourite Song is, however, a very atmospheric and intelligent album that has given me considerable pleasure. The music comes across as very simple and straightforward, wrapped in sober acoustic arrangements. But it is surprisingly subtle. I am particularly struck by the harmonic niceties that are woven into the music. As a result it sounds more playful and urbane than Bon Iver's For Emma, for example. And Matthew's distinctive, nasal voice does the rest to keep the listener spellbound. The nocturnal phantasy True Sting is no doubt the absolute highlight of the album. Very nice artwork too, by the way, with mysterious pictures shot in some Corsican palazzo.

Talking about Bon Iver, I also bought his much anticipated second album, with the rather uninspiring title Bon Iver, Bon Iver. This was a bit of a downer. For my taste this sounded a little bit all over the place. It misses the coherence and the winter sky transparency of the debut album. I could live with the too clever, top heavy arrangements and the kitchy reverberance if the songs were truly distinguished. But they aren't. It's all rather flat and clichéd and sometimes outright irritating. Even in scattered highlights such as Michicant and Wash there is atmosphere but too little substance. We'll hope for better next time.

PJ Harvey, then. An album she co-wrote with John Parish in 2009: A Woman A Man Walked by. This is PJ at its wildest and wackiest. Not for the faint-hearted. Scatological lyrics wrapped in punkish extravaganzas. But somehow it speaks of real artistry. The more I listen to it, the better it gets. It's much, much better than her latest, the rather phony Let England Shake (also with JP, by the way). This may end up there with Is This Desire and To Bring You My Love.

Three more to go. Johnny Cash's last recording before he passed away is a nice collection of wistful songs of the ageing, tired American bard. I listened most often to his moving take on Gordon Lightfoot's classic If You Could Read My Mind.

Elbow's Sleep in the Dark was their debut, in 2001. I have it already since last year. But now the album really hit me. It's a fantastic collection that doesn't have to stand in the shadow of its more popular successors. Perhaps a little more hard-bitten than what was to follow, it provides solid, rowdy listening pleasure. Highlight certainly is Newborn, which starts like a hymnic ballad and after 2 minutes morphs into a darkly obsessive extemporation, stretching the song well into the 7 minutes.

A few years ago someone mentioned Mogwai to me. 'Wall of Sound', he said. I never came round to listening to it. But now I was seduced by the nice urban photography that graces the cover of their latest album with the rather sophomoric title Hardcore Will Never Die, But You Will. Someone else said: 'Post-rock, like Sigur Ros, but without the fairy tale element." Maybe, but give me Sigur Ros any time. I don't think Mogwai delivers the goods. I love the broad soundscapes but then again it's all surface and little meat. At least I haven't been able to detect up to now. It's not terribly well recorded to boot. This is, in fact, a double album including a bonus CD with 25 minutes of music for the film 'Monument for a Forgotten Future' (again that bombast). I'd have to give it a little bit more time, but it seems to me the bonus might be the thing that draws me back to this music. We'll see.

Muse : The Resistance - Wild Beasts: Smother

Briefly: over the weekend I had some great fun listening to Muse's  'edelkitsch'. But look at this: in 1830 we had 'La Muette de Portici' that led to an uprising and ultimately to Belgian 'independence'. Today maybe Muse's Uprising is the soundtrack of revolutionary ferment?

Wild Beasts - Smother

I picked this one up whilst I was browsing the shelves at the Bozar shop in Brussels. The shop assistant had put it on the speakers. Didn't know it. Never heard of the Wild Beasts. It appears to be a British band that has been making some waves over the last 3-4 years. Smother is their last album, issued just a few weeks ago. I haven't listened to it very carefully but it looks like a very good catch. Reminds me a little of Prefab Sprout, in its melodic invention and use of synths. The lead singer's falsetto also connects to Paddy McAloone's voice. The other association is with Muse's Matthew Bellamy. Wild Beasts have two front men, in fact: Hayden Thorpe (the falsetto, also on guitar) and Tom Fleming (a more husky voice, on bass). The latter at times sounds uncannily like Elbow's Guy Garvey (see the third track, Deeper).

What has particularly attracted me in these first few auditions is the finale, consisting of three tracks - Reach a Bit Further, Burning, End Come to Soon - which nicely fit together (also thematically, from a certain angle, if you consider the three titles in succession). The first is a fairly short and bubbly track propelled forward by an irresistible beat. Burning moves somewhat in ambient territory and makes the connection with Prefab Sprout quite obvious. The final track is a brilliant 7 minute epic (relatively speaking) that traverses different vistas (even some Dark Side of the Moon reminiscences) and evokes disquiet and anticipation. Goosepimples! It's all that pop music needs to be.

Finally, the album is excellently recorded (an exception with pop albums these days): it's genuinely dynamic and for once doesn't smother the richness of the voices and acoustic instruments involved.