Music Alliance Pact – January 2012 Issue

SINGAPORE: I’m Waking Up To…
Riot !n Magenta – CTRL
Do androids dream of electric sheep? One thinks of such things when the contrast between the organic and inorganic meld together into a primordial blur of passion. Riot !n Magenta gently slip into the stream of your thoughts with Hayashida Ken’s dark, pulsing rhythms and Eugenia Yip’s wispful and forlorn vocal delivery. There’s tension in every stem as the words haze through: “I try to take it slow, you go faster…You need control…”. Definitely hoping to hear more from this special duo. - Brian.

To download all 36 songs in one file click here. MAP is published on the 15th of every month, featuring a showcase of music handpicked by bloggers from all over the world.

#378 Josef K – Crazy to Exist

In the annals of post-punk otherness, Josef K has long held a rather exalted place and here’s one of the reasons why. The jagged perfection of “Crazy To Exist”, one of only a handful of songs this Scottish band recorded in their short existence during the early eighties, still sound singular and not the least dated. I first got exposed to their music quite a few years back via the reissue of The Only Fun in Town, and the unrelenting sonic deviance of Josef K’s sound remains lodged in my head ever since. And every time I plug into the crazy rhythms of “Crazy To Exist”, a song filled with absurdities and the pale flowering of alienation, reality disintegrates. - Keith.

mp3: Josef K – Crazy To Exist

#377 Julianna Barwick – Prizewinning

My occassional fliratatons with new age music, if you could even call it such, brought me through musicians who today aren’t quite known for that genre even if lasting streams of those influences clearly remain in their subsequent work. And I never quite enjoyed it. Sarah McLachlan’s debut album Touch (1988) surely looked the part with the ornately (and of course slightly eerily) decorated sepia toned cover art. I found myself liking her subsequent albums more, probably owing to their stronger rock and pop leanings, and soon gave away my copy of the album to a friend who appreciated it much more. Another point of contact was probably Brian Eno’s Ambient 1: Music for Airports (1978), which I never got into as much as I know I should have, preferring instead his weightier Discreet Music (1975).

It was thus with some trepidation that I approached Julianna Barwick’s The Magic Place, released earlier this year on Asthmatic Kitty, a label not impartial to spiritual(ised) music. The album had all the ethereal and flighty aspects of music that I’ve remained rather guarded about (where is it all headed?), but yet it contained such a strong authorial presence that drew me in, even without a discernable lyrical narrative. The difference for Barwick is that focusing on the experiential has not hindered her from producing works of great force and direction, with tracks like “Prizewinning” challenging the “nothing ever happens” stereotype of new age music by first subjecting her own glowing vocals to the discipline of a rigid looping bassline and later setting it free with the gloriously triumphant call of a marching band. - Dan.

mp3: Julianna Barwick – Prizewinning

The Magic Place is available on Asthmatic Kitty.

#376 Television – Marquee Moon

Television’s “Marquee Moon” is an epic of a song, bringing together such muscle and grace in its ten-minute form. Compositionally it builds majestically as the guitar solos weave their interlocking lines. Yet, more than the solos, it is the duelling guitars from Tom Verlaine and Richard Lloyd that make the song the achievement it is. The tight interplay between the two guitarists foreshadow the democratic relationship of other guitar duos – Thurston Moore and Lee Ranaldo, Jonny Greenwood and Ed O’Brien – who share the work between lead and rhythm, between melody and mood. Moving between the propulsive rhythms of the verses and the freer wanderings of the solos, Verlaine and Lloyd trade lines that bait, hide, and seek, impressing me even as someone who isn’t particularly interested in guitar solos. “Marquee Moon” is a ten-minute song, but makes me wish it was twenty. - Song-Ming.

mp3: Television – Marquee Moon

Song-Ming Ang makes art about music.

Music Alliance Pact – December 2011 Issue

SINGAPORE: I’m Waking Up To…
Sonicbrat – Bed Of Forty Winks
Sonicbrat is the enduring moniker of sound artist Darren Ng, whose work is characterised by an intricate tapestry of field recordings and found sounds, strung together by subtly processed acoustic instrumentation with a classical bent. Gentle, stirring and complex, Ng’s music is the sort that invites itself into and comfortably inhabits one’s imagination. His latest release, Hana, is his musing on the life of a flowering plant and is available as a free download on the Totokoko label. - Dan.

To download all 36 songs in one file click here. MAP is published on the 15th of every month, featuring a showcase of music handpicked by bloggers from all over the world.

#375 Justin Bieber – Baby

“Baby baby baby ohhh like, baby baby baby nooo like, baby baby baby…” Great pop songs have great hooks, and this is why Justin Bieber’s “Baby” is one. In terms of great pop songs called “Baby”, it’s right up there with Os Mutantes, who gave us their very own in 1968. And if the chorus isn’t catchy enough, check out Ludacris’ backup vocals. “Yo, uh huh. Yo, uh huh.” Yo, you know what I mean, dawg. Two great hooks for the price of none, right here on Youtube. Uh huh. - Song-Ming.

mp3: Justin Bieber – Baby (Live on David Letterman)

Song-Ming Ang makes art about music, and recently received the Young Artist Award in Singapore. Congrats Song-Ming!

Music Alliance Pact – November 2011 Issue

SINGAPORE: I’m Waking Up To…
Magus – Riders On Psychedelics
Magus is a new collaboration between Mark Dolmont and Leslie Low, the latter best known for his work with Humpback Oak and The Observatory. Their debut effort is fittingly the first release by Ujikaji Records, a new independent label and distro focusing on experimental music in the region. The album, titled Sun Worshipper, presents a dark and spiritual brew of kraut-inspired psychedelia which makes for an addictively harrowing pilgrimage through the deepest of valleys. - Dan.

To download all 35 songs in one file click here. MAP is published on the 15th of every month, featuring a showcase of music handpicked by bloggers from all over the world.

#374 WU LYF – Spitting Blood

Most of the dust has settled following the mid-year hype and fashionable mystique surrounding young Manchester outfit WU LYF, but it seems never quite completely. I needed some distance from the flurry of media attention surrounding their self-released debut Go Tell Fire to the Mountain, but within a couple of months I couldn’t resist sneaking a peek, finding myself drawn instantly to the band’s stirring rallying call, manifest primarily in Ellery James Roberts’ ravaged, war-battered and often indecipherable (at least to my non-Mancunian ears) vocals. “Spitting Blood” is arguably the finest example of their radical brand of primordial, fist-clenched urgency, especially when deployed with the devasting force of a church organ and spat out in a most joyously combative manifesto. - Dan.

mp3: WU LYF – Spitting Blood

Go Tell Fire to the Mountain is out now on LYF Recordings.

#373 B-Quartet – We Vacate

Of course I’m sad that it’s going to be B-Quartet‘s last gig this coming Tuesday, as they vacate the niche they’ve comfortably carved for themselves at the intersections, on one hand, between post-apocalyptic poetry and (most recently) the philosophy of Theodore Adorno, and on the other, across an astounding diversity of musical genres. With only two albums and an EP released in over a decade, their’s may seem a less than-prolific career and the impending infinite hiatus coming a tad too soon. But the upcoming Lasalle gig, together with White Shoes and the Couples Company from Indonesia and SayCet from France, sounds less like a farewell and more a homecoming shared with new friends. There’s a time for everything, and I’m looking forward to this one. - Dan.

We’re going home, we’re going home.

mp3: B-Quartet – We Vacate

B-Quartet’s last gig is, coincidentally, the first by organisers Figure8. The concert takes place on 8 November (Tuesday), 7pm, at Lasalle College of Arts Main Theatre in Singapore. Please visit the official site for more details.

#372 Silver Tongues – Ketchup

Black Kite is by no means a perfect album, but this debut from Silver Tongues shows skyward ambition, opening with a prayerful exhortation and closing with an angelic vision. In between, the effervescent vocals of David Cronin echoes through the songs, sometimes with the church hall ambience of a Fleet Foxes hymn, and at other times booming with the polished bombast of My Morning Jacket. It’s very much still a work in progress, with the band searching for its identity through the album, prompting the listener to look out for and witness the moments where they do find their voice. One such glimpse is offered on “Ketchup” – their most focused and intense but somewhat shortlived effort which perhaps because it ends so abruptly hints at greater things to come, be it through highways from above or stories told on shining, silver tongues. - Dan.

mp3: Silver Tongues – Ketchup

Black Kite is out now on Karate Body Records.