Download: Gabrielle - Call Super

in ,


Gabrielle (or Gabriel as it later became know on re-release) is regarded as a classic piece of house. With heavy but loose bass and lots of reverb it eventually became a bit of a poster child for UK Garage, despite originated from the US.

Here Call Super takes disperate elements from the original to make a entirely new cut-up chillwave epic. It feels like early days of summer, encapsulating a deep sense of yearning that ran through the original and, as the press release rightly points out, makes the whole thing feel way more Ballearic.

Call Super is Berlin based Joseph Richmond-Seaton and this follows the Staircase EP from earlier this year. Check out his Tumblr for more. Call Super resides on London label Five Easy Pieces.

You can stream and download Gabrielle by Call Super on the Soundcloud player below:

Call Super - Gabrielle by Five Easy Pieces 

BP x

Album Review: On the Water - Future Islands

in ,

Last year's Future Islands album was a pleasant surprise - an early highlight from a new band unknown to me up until that point. On the Water is Future Islands' third album and it pretty much plays its cards just right.

As a band I'm surprised that Future Islands haven't had more success. Their blend of shoe-gazing fuzzy indie and 80s synths is undeniably very 'now'. And whilst singer Samuel T. Herring's vocals are deliberately abrasive this isn't an inaccessible band. Perhaps this fact hasn't escaped their notice either, as On the Water definitely feels like a play for the mainstream, as demonstrated by first single 'Balance', which recalls the Cure's ability to combine melody with angst.

Whilst On the Water's Future Islands have a rounder sound they start off by almost sinking. Compared to In Evening Air's kick start of 'Walking Through That Door' the opening title track here falls a little flat. It is all noise but with little to say and far too slow to not be saying anything at all. In comparison the duet of 'The Great Fire', with Wye Oak's Jenn Wasner, shows this is a band capable of applying softness amidst a raw aggression.

It is the latter portion of the album that really wins me over however. 'Where I Found You' is gorgeous synth pop with what could almost be a heartbeat for a rhythm. Appropriate for a song that wears its heart on its sleeve so proudly. 'Give Us the Wind' is even greater - a song that starts softly, as if to trick the listener this isn't a race, before breaking into soaring vocals that feel like the aural equivalent of a heavy foot on the accelerator as you fly into the corner.

When On the Water comes together it has some moments that outshine the best bits on Future Islands' last album. It may not have the impact I felt upon hearing In Morning Air, but that is probably just because I knew more of what to expect. Future Islands continue far more than much bigger bands.

BP x

On the Water is out tomorrow on Thrill Jockey, available from Amazon.co.uk on CD and LP [affiliate links].

Steve

in

This is a music blog. Forgive me whilst I pay brief tribute to the man that was Steve Jobs.

There are not many strangers whose deaths touch me in the way that Jobs' has. It is a perculier feeling, like that felt as a teenager when your favourite musician died or band split up.

People tend to say that you are either an Apple person or a Windows person. With Jobs' passing this feels like a bizarre sentiment. We are just people and these are just products. But the thing that sticks with me is that Jobs approached design with a view that only the best is good enough. Sure, you may not be able to take it apart, upgrade it or use Flash on it (God forbid). But everything you can do on it will (almost) always just work. And it will be easy and intuitive to use. That approach has a lot of appeal - over the years so many people that used to berate my love of Apple products have become almost as fanatical about them as I.

Steve didn't see design as beautification, although his products were and are beautiful. He saw design as being concerned with how you use something, not how it looked, whilst relying on timeless clean lines (and Jonny Ive) for visuals.

Steve was a rock star. He may have made a lot of money and helped a lot of CEOs, but he also did a lot to piss a lot of people off. Good enough was never good enough and it was this mentality that saw Steve tear apart and revolutionise the music, mobile and now arguably personal computer markets. And, most importantly, give people a better experience as a result.

Thanks Steve.

BP 

Image source: Wired.

And yes, I wrote this on my iPad.

Album Review: Late Night Tales - MGMT

in , ,

Having filled a gap between the Klaxons' first and (disappointing) second album MGMT's debut album became somewhat of a perfect pop filler. It may not have been nu rave, strictly speaking, but it came from the same jumping off point.

Unfortunately the follow-up left many cold and it now feels a little as though MGMT have come somewhat adrift. I can't help but feel it is unclear what they represent as a band any more.

This compilation in the Late Night Tales series probably won't help. What it will do is help reinforce that, if nothing else, here is a band with some taste. In fact this is a bit of a disconcerting release because it feels so very distant from the band's own material. This is particularly evident on the obligatory exclusive track, a cover of Bauhaus' 'All We Ever Wanted Was Everything', a dusty psychedelic cyclical track that sits midway through the album and is not like anything the band have produced before.

That one track is an appropriate representation of the mix as a whole - both ageing and psychedelic. The Late Night Tales albums usually consist of their fair share of older tracks but this is even more so the case here, with tracks from The Velvet Underground, Suicide, Julian Cope and the Durutti Column amongst others. The mixture of tracks is, however, pretty spectacular. The album opens on Disco Inferno's ghostly and lost sounding 'Can't See Through It' - a track by a band I had not heard before but that perfectly kicks off this floaty, folky mix.

Suicide's 'Cheree' blends in perfectly with the looping waves of melodic distortion, giving the mix a seafaring feel. The Durutti Column's 'For Belgium Friends' is full of tripped out dreamscapes that represent a heavy contrast to the dirty blues of Charlie Feathers' 'Mound of Clay'.

And the contrasts here are worth touching on - the Late Night Tales albums have always attempted to capture those times when it is so past home time that a collective denial is the only path and whilst this captures that feeling, it feels like it comes at the cost of a cohesiveness or any consideration to sequencing. There are beautiful instrumentals that grind harshly against folk music laced with punk and there is a definite lack of progression throughout the album.

But the songs themselves, and the conclusion at home time, are beautiful. And to these ears at least, unknown enough that this probably shouldn't matter. Indeed Dave Bixby's 'Drug Song' is staggering - listening to it you can't help but wonder if he has borrowed a few ideas from Richard Hawley (he hasn't, unless time travel is possible). It is a hard man that doesn't marvel at this kind of songwriting, it is glacially slow, powerless and shot through with pain.

Similarly Spaceman 3's 'Lord Can You Hear Me?' feels like an incredibly fitting close, with massive epic vocals that struggle to be heard over the much more pedestrian guitar work and distortion. It sounds like neurosis and melancholy brought on by a come down that is uncompromisingly brought into stark relief by the realities of morning daylight. And then the album squeezes in one last track, 'Morning Splendor' by Pauline Anna Strom, a touching instrumental of heavy eyelids and the final surrender to sleep.

Messy and ramshackle it is, but for nights lead astray you couldn't find a much more fitting or touching album.

BP x

Late Night Tales selected by MGMT is out now, available from Amazon.co.uk on CD and MP3 [affiliate links].