Pantha Du Prince & The Bell Laboratory at Queen Elizabeth Hall, London, 15/02/2013

The evening began as it would go on: a surreal mix of the deadly serious and the absurd. As if heralding the opening of some esoteric religious ritual, six figures, clothed in white aprons, filed out onto the stage at the Southbank’s Queen Elizabeth Hall, ringing hand-bells with droning regularity. Accordingly, an awed hush descended. Bizarre, perhaps, but in retrospect what was remarkable about this opening was that it actually wasn’t that remarkable in the context of the evening up to that point. Before this mystical entrance I’d sat for about fifteen minutes staring at a vast, ten foot tall glass tank housing over fifty bells of sizes ranging from large to very large to clock-tower large. The instrument, situated towards the rear of the stage, was the carillion: an object exuding such an aura that it may well have been more at home a few hundred metres away in the Haywood Art Gallery. There, it could stand aloof, singular, and, perhaps most importantly, silent. But I’ll return to that later.

This wasn’t going to be an evening for the non-campanologically inclined, that much was clear. Alongside the carillion was an array of gongs, steel drums, tubular bells, and an orchestral xylophone. But there was also a drum kit and, centre-stage, a table strewn with laptops and electronics. As a venue usually home to contemporary classical performances, such a concoction of electronic and acoustic instruments didn’t seem out of place within the QEH, although the same couldn’t be said for the evening’s performers. Amongst the mysterious collective emerging from the wings was dance music producer Hendrick Weber, his less than supple wrist action with the hand-bell – coupled with a generally awkward demeanour – giving him away as a new-comer not only to the practice of bell-ringing but to the concert hall setting itself.

Just how this long-time proponent of dance music had come to be apron-clad and hand-bell-laden in the Southbank Centre requires some explanation. The last decade has seen Weber’s music under the Pantha Du Prince moniker trace a steady trajectory northwards from hips to head – gradually widening in scope, deepening in texture, and slowing in tempo. Long since having broken from the austere cinctures of minimal techno and house, the German producer’s developmental arc culminated in 2010 with the album Black Noise: an intoxicating symphony of shimmering bells and glockenspiels submerged in the all-encompassing throb of sub-bass. With his latest project, though, Weber seems intent on following this logical progression ad absurdum.

Which brings me to his five accomplices: The Bell Laboratory is a Norwegian group of self-styled bell scientists who have recently collaborated with Weber on the album Elements of Light, released in January this year. Armed with the Laboratory’s considerable arsenal of pitched percussion instruments, Weber appears to be making a final push towards a full-blown fusion of techno with the minimalism of middle- to late-period Steve Reich (think Desert Music, not Drumming). The evening’s performance consisted of a slick, no-nonsense rendition of Elements of Light, followed by an encore of ‘Lay in a Shimmer’ from Black Noise. Yet, despite the performance’s undeniable competence, I couldn’t help thinking that the inclusion of the Laboratory has had the lamentable effect of pushing the Pantha Du Prince project over the edge – from the sublime to the ridiculous.

As I intimated earlier, the inclusion of the carillion into Weber’s music is not only jarringly anachronistic but somewhat musically dissonant. Where the constellations of pitched percussion adorning Black Noise remained cloaked and elusive within the shadowy soundscape, the clanging of the carillion made no attempts to integrate with Weber’s beats. Instead, it brought an almost brazen religiosity to the evening’s proceedings, conjuring a faintly comical atmosphere that was only reinforced by those aprons – more Rick Wakeman than esoteric scientist. The whole affair was made yet more baffling by the sheer po-faced sincerity of the performance; with the six musicians failing to acknowledge each other let alone the audience, the lofty space of the QEH was imbued with the stuffy atmosphere of the sternest of classical performances. All of which left me with the dilemma of trying to work out just what stance to adopt towards the performance: was all this really to be taken at face value?

Yet, perhaps this concern was merely symptomatic of a more fundamental issue. Perhaps the difficulty of finding a suitable way to receive the music was indicative of the impossibility of working out exactly what this performance was supposed to be. Is not the possibility of such a seamless marriage of dance music and contemporary composition mere fantasy? No matter how grand the vision, no matter how baroque the instrumentation, Weber’s music still has its roots in a genre that remains bound to the logic of the dance-floor. And the programming of such a project in a concert hall setting, with its accompanying preclusion of bodily interaction with the music, only served to highlight the deficiencies of his attempted hybrid. Pantha Du Prince’s music remains structured and contained by the rigidity of four-to-the-floor beats, additive textures, and repeating melodic motifs – all features that yearn for spontaneous physical reaction. Some of those around me at the QEH appeared to find solace in the age-old combination of head-nod and foot-tap, but I couldn’t help feeling distinctly dissatisfied by this proposed solution.

Introducing: Twigs

Things we know for certain about Twigs: the project is based somewhere in the UK, is fronted by a female vocalist, and has recently followed up its debut eponymous EP with the new single ‘How’s That’. It’s not exactly a long list. But anything else I could say at this point would necessarily be conjecture: the vocal spotlighting and singular focus of the musical vision suggests that Twigs is the solo project of the unknown singer; I’d also venture that it’s likely she entertains something of a penchant for nineties trip-hop. Of course, it’s not uncommon for a new artist to obscure themselves behind a veil of anonymity. In fact, it’s in danger of becoming something of a cliché – to the point that this apparent rejection of the superficiality of the media begins to seem like precisely the opposite: nothing generates coverage like a touch of mystique, right? This rather cynical line of thought aside, Twigs’ music comes with its own seductive pull. ‘How’s That’ is a stately, perfectly formed three-and-a-half minutes of R&B-inflected abstract pop: the bassy throb of its sonic texture is adorned with off-kilter, metronomic rhythms, the lyrics unfolding incrementally in a series of fragmentary clusters. The song’s video, directed by Jesse Kanda, is no less striking; perhaps thematising Twigs’ anonymity, Kanda’s visuals display a series of naked, headless figures – hanging in graceful stasis along with the music – disintegrating into abstract forms at once amorphous and angular. The combination is quite simply captivating, an intoxicating mix of sound and vision – expect more from this intriguing artist.

Originally published by Peel Apart

Introducing: Death Rattle

Following a cursory listen to ‘Fortress’, you’d be forgiven for dismissing Death Rattle as somewhat uninspired – yet another synthy twosome primed and ready to stand in as blog fodder for a week or so before quickly returning to anonymity. The track’s monochromatic soundscape – all murky keys and robotic drums, complete with a lacing of forlorn vocal melodies – certainly traverses a similar territory mined by the numerous artists in the past who’ve situated themselves at the confluence of goth and electropop: Silent Shout-era The Knife sans the personality being my first tentative description of the group’s music. But perhaps there’s more at work here than first meets the eye (/ear). It’s not exactly that a series of closer listens will expose anything revelatory about ‘Fortress’; the track has modest linear structure, the initially skeletal texture steadily gaining in density across its five minutes. Rather, the allure of this track lies in what lurks at its periphery, that which remains elusive and ambiguous. Vocalist Helen Hamilton’s lyrics skirt themes of a doomed love-affair, her direct, unadorned language coloured by the dark undercurrents of words left unuttered. And the sparse arrangement – augmented by a menacing guitar squall as the track progresses – seems surrounded by a cavernous void, the spaces between the instruments as integral to the aural texture as the sounds themselves. ‘Fortress’ is the title track from Death Rattle’s second EP, released at the end of last month on Frontal Noize, and with this darkly graceful record, the young duo have begun to demonstrate a refinement that reaches beyond mere early-career promise.

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Introducing: Wise Blood

Pittsburgh-based producer and songwriter Christopher Laufman has recently pulled off something of a rebirth. Having released his debut EP as Wise Blood, These Wings, in late 2011 Laufman fell inexplicably silent, seemingly destined to be relegated to obscurity as a mere curio. Yet, Wise Blood always felt like more than a mere one-hit wonder: These Wings’ dense layers of samples seemed to herald the arrival of a distinctive, though still embryonic, new musical voice. The EP not only exhibited Laufman’s acute melodic sense but also his extensive expertise as a producer: expansive collages of sampledelia enveloped his chameleonic vocals, fusing nods to gospel and blues music into a single, kaleidoscopic swirl of sound. Now, following his extended absence, Laufman has returned with a new single ‘Rat’ and the announcement of his debut LP id., set for release in late June on Dovecoat Records. And a lot seems to have changed in the last 18 months: ‘Rat’ has none of the psychedelic sweep of Wise Blood’s earlier work. Instead, this song is taut and precise, centred on an endlessly cycling, and stupidly addictive, hip hop beat. The track’s vocal hooks sit firmly in the lineage of Avey Tare’s eccentric melodicism: instantly infectious yet still somehow alien. But perhaps there’s the rub; where These Wings seemed to exist in a vacuum – a sonic world unto itself – ‘Rat’ is easily heard in the context of post-Merriweather Post Pavillion freak-/weird-indie pop. Yet, what Laufman appears to have lost in singularity, he may well have gained in melodic directness: ‘Rat’ remains an intriguing first glimpse of this exciting artist’s inaugural large-scale statement.

Originally published by Peel Apart

Introducing: Valleys

“The water’s rising, eclipsing ocean reaching that diamond crown that you like to wear.” This enigmatic phrase opens Valleys’ recent single ‘Hounds’, Tillie Perks’ breathy, (dare I say it) ethereal vocals obscured within the listless, yet strangely captivating, synthscape. This evocative snippet of lyrics is more broadly indicative of the group’s aesthetic as a whole: Valley’s music comes cloaked in an elusive mystique, creating an uncanny, both-there-and-not sensation that is as unsettling as it is seductive. Recent signings to Kanine Records (which includes Grizzly Bear amongst its alumni), this Montreal-based duo slot neatly into their city’s long line of rather po-faced artists making rather po-faced music: from nihilism of post-rock collectives like Godspeed You! Black Emperor and Set Fire To Flames to the more festival-friendly, but still deadly serious, sentimentalism of The Arcade Fire. Valleys fall somewhere between these two poles: the group’s music seems both gloom-laden and dreamy in equal measure, conjuring a slightly disquieting atmosphere not dissimilar to Matthew Dear’s dejected melantronica. Listening to Valleys’ music is something like talking to someone who can communicate only through metaphor and allusion: the duo perpetually circle around their subject, burying their voices in accumulating layers of synths and hazy reverb. Valleys’ debut full-length for Kanine, Are You Going to Stand There and Talk Weird All Night, is set for release at the end of this month: expect a precise and modestly expansive record of melancholic dream-pop.

Originally published by Peel Apart

Introducing: The Uncluded

The pairing of the naïver than thou singer-songwriter Kimya Dawson with MC Aesop Rock is as curiously intriguing as it is utterly baffling. On paper, it’s impossible to gauge whether these two artists will come together in harmony or discord. On the one hand, perhaps Kimya Dawson’s overly trite brand of twee acoustic singalongs would benefit from the introduction of an external compositional voice; a handful of inspired moments notwithstanding, her songs in the past have tended to come off as ironic parodies of the vérité that she is (presumably) aiming for. Yet, is it likely that Aesop Rock’s is the external voice lacking in Dawson’s music? Although he can hardly be called a conventional rap artist, it is somewhat difficult to see how any hip hop aesthetic could mesh with Dawson’s self-consciously small-scale melodicism. The duo’s first single ‘Earthquake’ probably raises more questions than it answers: Kimya does her thing and Rock does his, but it’s not clear from this short track whether the two have succeeded in forging a cohesive unit. Dawson’s melody is catchy in that way that makes you wish it wasn’t and Rock’s verse is lyrically intricate – word play, interrupted rhyme and irregular phrasing abound, all delivered in a characteristically laid-back flow. Yet, against the backdrop of softly strummed acoustic guitars, Rock’s voice can’t help sounding awkwardly isolated, lending the track something of a rushed feel. Still, with a full length album pencilled for release in May on Rhymesayers, it will certainly be interesting, if not necessarily uniformly rewarding, to hear this project unfold.

Originally published by Peel Apart

Introducing: Young Fathers

If, in 1994, Nas was taking rappers to a new plateau through rap slow, then it might be argued that Young Fathers’ glacial flows have taken us full-circle to land back in approximately 1987. Certainly, this Edinburgh-based trio aren’t exactly in a rush, but their lyrics eschew the homely mix of brags and straightforward story-telling that characterised the genre in its infancy. Instead, Young Fathers weave a dense web of poetic, abstract imagery, their voices submerged in the surrounding lo-fi haze of druggy synths and samples – recent single ‘The Guide’ opens, ‘The guide on the road is the drips of blood / the book unfolds with a touch of love’. The group’s debut mixtape, the accurately titled Tape One, first surfaced back at the start of 2012 and was treated to a physical release by Anticon Records earlier this year. Where that collection fused reggae influences and world music samples into a glorious swirl of melody, ‘The Guide’ finds Young Fathers in a more sinister mode, evoking that same sense of creeping dread that haunted Shabazz Palace’s stellar 2011 album Black Up. The melodies are still there – the song’s entire second half is devoted to a hypnotic wordless refrain – but the claustrophobic closeness of the track’s opening stages persists right up until its dying moments. Set for release on their second mixtape, the equally accurately titled Tape Two, in June, ‘The Guide’ is yet more evidence of Young Fathers’ ability to probe the boundaries of contemporary hip hop to forge a captivating and understated musical poetry.

Originally published by Peel Apart

Introducing: Saltland

For years Rebecca Foon has dealt in the achingly beautiful, the breathtakingly sweeping, the gracefully heart-wrenching. Now, before any of you start wincing uncontrollably at this banal stream of lazy journalistic clichés, these descriptors were chosen carefully. See, Foon’s music is the sort that inspires precisely this kind of goofy emotive effusion. But that’s not to say that her music itself is trite or hackneyed, rather it’s the sort of music that makes you drop all of your anti-naïveté defences and fully embrace, and whole-heartedly mean, phrases just like ‘achingly beautiful’: it speaks directly to that part inside of you that deals solely in cliché. This Montreal-based cellist’s CV is impressive in displaying her post-rock credentials: co-founder of post-rock meets minimalist chamber music ensemble Esmerine, former member of post-rock gets personal behemoths Thee Silver Mt. Zion, and former member of just post-rock collective Set Fire To Flames. But this is the first time that Foon has decided to go it alone, adopting the moniker Saltland for the release of her debut solo record I Thought It Was Us But It Was All Of Us which is set for release in May on Constellation records. Perhaps predictably, the first track to be released from this forthcoming album, ‘ICA’, is, at least in its modest scope, closer to her work with Esmerine than with either of the mammoth post-rock collectives she’s played with in the past. Built upon layers of droning cello tones, ‘ICA’ has a seductively muted air, Foon’s vocals barely penetrating the dusky soundscape. It’s the sort of song that subtly softens the edges of perception, creating space for reflection rather than forcefully imposing itself on the consciousness: although it’s probably too early to be throwing around time-honoured clichés by adding an ‘achingly’ here, this track most definitely qualifies as beautiful.

Originally published by Peel Apart

Introducing: Jerusalem In My Heart

Jerusalem In My Heart sits uneasily at the confluence of two cultures. A loose collective of musicians and visual artists, now solidified into a core trio lead by Lebanese musician Radwan Moumenh, the group fuses traditional Arabic and contemporary (Western) electronic music in an dramatisation of the inexorable march towards global homogenisation. If this all makes the project sound a little po-faced then, well, that’s because it is. Released last month on Montreal’s Constellation records, the stern demeanour of the group’s debut album, Mo7it Al-Mo7it, will hardly come as a surprise for anyone familiar with the label’s previous output. What binds many of the Constellation’s musicians together is an anxious preoccupation with the problematic role of art and the artist within the (post-)postmodern milieu. Jerusalem In My Heart are no different: the coalescence of traditional Arabic singing styles with modern (and, until not so long ago, uniquely Western) production techniques serves a deeper programme than mere gimmickry. Of course, the Western ear is likely to hear the steadily lilting vocal lines of the album’s lead single ‘Yudaghdegh El-ra3ey Walal-Ghanam’ simply as providing a surface-level gloss of exoticism: a Gracelandian sprinkling of extra-cultural seasoning. Likewise, the group’s use of the “mobile” Arabic script, developed for text messaging, is likely to be read in the context of the music blogosphere’s current penchant for stylised text. But a degree of miscommunication is somewhat inevitable with any such project attempting to situate itself at a boundary between cultures. Indeed, Jerusalem In My Heart’s work could be seen to be exploring precisely the difficulty of mediating between contrasting forms of cultural communication. And if the group appear to remain somewhat ambivalent in their stance, then that only serves further to bestow their music with an irresistible allure.

Originally published by Peel Apart

Introducing: Furrow

Since their inception in early 2012, West Felton two-piece Furrow have made an admirably sustained effort to convince us of their rural credentials. Their recent show at Dalston’s Power Lunches was accompanied by an art piece comprised of old Barbour coats, their releases thus far have sported titles like Country Slide and Field Study and, of course, their chosen moniker comes with more than a hint of the agricultural. What’s more, the duo’s bandcamp page describes their music as ‘field-gaze’; now, shoe-gaze is made whilst staring at one’s own feet, so presumably Furrow’s music is made whilst looking at farms? Or something like that. In fact, it’s probably made after the inaugural ocular event since it seems that whilst partaking in said field-gazing one is also required to listen to copious amounts of No Age. Echoes of that duo’s music, particularly that of their early collection Weirdo Rippers, reverberate throughout the sonic fabric of Furrow’s own taut nuggets of lo-fi art-punk. Yet, despite their obvious indebtedness, it seems that Furrow are abundantly capable of adopting this aesthetic for themselves: their music is simultaneously urgent in its punk expressivity yet explorative in its continual probing of the duo’s sonic boundaries. With a staunchly DIY approach to recording, Furrow’s moments of experimentation are naturally rather small-scale and understated; yet, as the assembly of lilting melodies conjured by bassist Thom Snell at the opening of ‘Gravitate Towards You’ quickly becomes drowned in the song’s accumulating texture and momentum, it can’t help but feel like a miniature epiphany.

Originally published by Peel Apart