Something for the Weekend: Hoovers and Sledgehammers "Joyridin'"

Hailing from Dublin, Hoovers and Sledgehammers were manic artists Earl Mustard and Igor Honey. For several years, the duo simply didn't give a shit and produced some of the best (and funniest) lo-fi music in the process; with several albums often consisting of around 15-20 songs, all recorded in one or two takes.

A stand-out from their earlier days is the truly wonderful "Joyridin'" - a song dedicated to stealing cars and Joyriding in the rough Dublin suburb of Tallaght and suffering the consequences thereafter. Influenced by the likes of Bill Hicks, David Lynch and David Byrne definitely gave the band an edge over other so-called comedic acts and unlike their contemporaries, the attempts at humour in the face of a shitty Dublin hit the mark more often than and never grated.

Gig: Mia Sparrow / Earl Mustard (Toner, Dublin; July 30th)

Tomorrow night will see the wonderful Mia Sparrow and Earl Mustard play a free gig at Toner's on Baggot Street (Dublin).

With songs crafted via wiry guitar hooks and lines, tangles amongst occasional blips and electronic cuts, Mia Sparrow have formulated a sound that is vaguely familiar, but not so much so that deja vu occurs. Sitting on the rims of electronic entangled guitar music, the three-piece intrigue rather than bore, as their aural manglings skip around the usual trappings of such a common genre. Nice.

Following the break-up of Hoovers and Sledgehammers last year, guitarist, drummer and vocalist Earl Mustard has been earning his keep outside Brown Thomas on Grafton Street by banging out covers of Richard Ashcroft and mid-90's Radiohead; all the while being pelted with love shaped rotten tomatoes.

This gig will apparently have a "relaxed atmosphere", but I don't believe that for a fucking second and neither should you. Fun will be had.
Doors are 9pm and admission is absolutely nowt!!
Mia Sparrow MySpace

Road Records

Later on today, Irish independent music store Road Records will close its doors for the final time. Citing growing debts and and other ongoing problems, they have decided, sadly, that it is time to stop. It cannot be easy running any business in such a fragile economy, especially when the industry in question is as fraught as the music industry.

Road Records were the only shop in Dublin to pick up LPX releases when they came out in 2006 and 2008. Where I was kindly told where to go by other stores, both Julie and Dave were kind enough put up with my aural mess and even said some lovely words about them too.
On August 27th, the chap's from u:mack will be hosting a farewell party for Road Records at the Button Factory in Dublin. Details have yet to announced, but will be planted here when they come available.

I wish Dave and Julie all the best in the future. Ireland will never see the likes of Road ever again.

Something for the Weekend: Kate Bush "Running Up That Hill"

In 1978, English singer-songwriter Kate Bush became the first woman to have a UK number 1 with song "Wuthering Heights", propelling the Kent native into the limelight - indeed the following year, Bush became the most photographed woman in Britain at the time. The end of the decade saw Bush perform the only tour of her entire career and in the time since has remained essentially a studio based artist, with very rare live appearances.

After the success of "Wuthering Heights" and its partner album, The Kick Inside, Bush released several more long players with British label EMI, before releasing the mid-eighties classic, Hounds of Love. Withdrawing somewhat from the gothic leanings on her previous effort, The Dreaming, and falling towards more baroque / art pop tendencies, Bush scored her biggest commercial success to date.
Showing that it was as out of date then as it is now, the NME printed a "where are they now?" article some three weeks prior to the release of Hounds of Love, give Bush the last laugh over music journalism's choice of toilet paper.

Hounds of Love went on to produce four very successful singles - "Cloudbursting", "Hounds of Love", "The Big Sky" and of course "Running Up That Hill (A Deal With God)", which is featured below.
With a series of great singles, innovative videos and memorable albums, Kate Bush remains one of the true stand-out artists of the latter part of the 20th century and will continue to remain far more influential than many of the rabid Bush-lites that inhabit that music industry of today.

Something for the Weekend: Clor "Outlines"

When the south London electro-pop band, Clor split-up in May 2006, the five-piece left behind a painfully small body of work - one album and four singles to be precise. Their self-titled album is one of my favourite albums of the last decade, but it is quite telling that rather than a horse through a further few years of pointless and less and less relevant releases (Kaiser Chiefs), they decided to call it a day less than a year after its release.

Although the band as a whole split, there could be no denying that the main focus of the group were singer/guitarist Barry Dobbin and guitarist Luke Smith and in the time since, Smith has garnered a number of producer/remix credits (Depeche Mode, Shitdisco amongst others), while Dobbins has started a solo project called Barrington, although it appears to currently be inactive.
Clor picked up some glowing reviews from the media for being a good electro-pop album that wasn't afraid to throw-in an occasional curve-ball, but while "Love and Pain" was the first single from the album, it was the follow-up "Outlines" that truly garnered public attention and was eventually picked up for rotation on MTV and its various music television clones.

Review: Bombay Bicycle Club "Flaws"

Rather than the more active début of 2009, Bombay Bicycle Club's second long player, Flaws, takes a more subtle approach. Awash with folk touches, the London three-piece have created a body of work that seemingly swims in a river on a mid-summer’s day – how quaint. Creating such reflections on rippling water, this is an evening tide as opposed to one’s own stream, yet maintains an active approach that makes me wish I had a pogo stick.

While not necessarily in a Thrills sort of way, Flaws plants the seeds of apple trees and bottles of cider, while flirtations of banjo’s sweep amongst a spread of running acoustic guitars – not moving like s juggernaut in any sense, yet still always moving from one frame to the next.
There are some elements of the Beach Boys in the way they arrange their harmonies, yet so sombre are parts of this album that this could be an alternative soundtrack to Midnight Cowboy – I bet Jon Voight would love this.

The likes of “Ivy & Gold” make me want to bounce up and down on a giant rubber ball, while the Autumn tinged browning leafs wither wistfully in the background; yet as Flaws clicks off songs, its monochrome life is reflected once again in the downbeat “Leaving Blues” and “Fairytale Lullaby”.
The album sweeps and turns into the night, culminating in the closer “Swansea”, dripping in a melancholic arpeggio, as percussion and vocals struggle amidst swarms of short delay and other effects. A blackened sky comes and Bombay Bicycle Club fall away, like conscious thought in the night.
If this review makes no sense, then I wouldn't worry - it wasn't supposed to.
Bombay Bicycle Club MySpace
Buy Flaws here
Rating: 4 out of 5

State Vs Out on a Limb

The wonderful chaps from State Magazine have recently being running a spate of gigs, unhumourlessly titled "State Vs..." whereby they do stuff with eachother that means sound gets played, people go "yay", alcohol gets consumed and some chap called Peter gets taken away in an ambulance to have his stomach pumped (again).
In order to facilitate such unholy debauchery, the Mercantile on Dame St has opened itself to the folly that is "State Vs..." on a somewhat regular basis and this month, their guests is the DIY label Out on a Limb.

The Limerick label were kind enough to give the world Giveamanakick, Crayonsmith, Hooray for Humans, Ten Past Seven and a few other non-office drones; however on Friday the clean cut Limerick chaps will bringing Windings (played with them once; rather decent actually), while State will be hosting the Funeral Suits - I don't know who they are.
Also this month, State will be introducing Meljoann who is apparently a wonky R&B / electronic producer type person. I fucking hate the word "wonky" - it makes me want to punch a rabbit in the face. A fucking rabbit!!
This is free in by the way. And it's on Friday evening from 9pm too. Down in the Mercantile as already written. Deadly job.

Something for the Weekend: Kylie Minogue "Confide in Me"

Generally when pop stars ditch their writing/production team, the world for the most part rolls their collective eyes, full in the knowledge that the ego has finally surpassed the talent - a recent case would be Robbie Williams, whose career floored when he began to write his own material. So, when youthful pop queen Kylie Minogue made a similar move in the early-90's, it was assumed that her career would disappear into a cloud of smoke as well.

That Kylie Minogue is as good an album as it actually is, is a credit to both Minogue and Deconstruction Records. With Stock, Aitken and Waterman gone, the label were able to bring together a team of producers and writers that, with Minogue, confidently crafted an album steeped in exquisite dance-pop. The key release from Kylie Minogue was the fabulous "Confide in Me" - a song that couldn't be more different to some of the output from here previous four albums.
Running with string samples and touches of middle-eastern instrumentation, the approach to "Confide in Me" is several steps removed from the works of Stock, Aitken and Waterman - probably for the best in the end; the trio's string of successes ground to a halt around the same period. Later collaborations with Nick Cave brought the Australian further kudos, until she made a jump into the stratosphere with Light Years at the turn of the century and then the mega Fever one year later.

(July 2010) Easy Music for Difficult Ears Spotify Playlist

It's July, it's very hot, sticky, sweaty and I am dieing of a cold; something not helped by the excessive humidity in this bloody city. Here's something that may (or may not) help people like me through these long summer months.

July 2010 Playlist

1. Depeche Mode "Never Let me Down Again [Digitalism Remix]" (The Best of Depeche Mode, 2006 Venusnote Ltd / Mute Records) Buy it!
   
2. Heartsrevolution "Ultraviolence [Streetlife DJ's Remix]" (Kitsune; Ultraviolence, 2008 Kitsune France) Buy it!
3. Blur "Me, White Noise" (Think Tank, 2003 EMI Records) Buy it!
4. Suicide "Rocket USA" (Suicide, 1977 Red Star Records) Buy it!
   
5. Sexy Sushi "Princess Voiture" (Marre Marre Marre, 2008 Sexi Sushi) Stream it!
6. Soulwax "NY Excuse" (Any Minute Now, 2004 PIAS) Buy it!
7. Clor "Hearts on Fire" (Clor, 2005 EMI Records) Buy it!
8. Goose "Black Gloves" (Black Gloves, 2006 Skint Records) Buy it!
9. DAT Politics "Step Back" (Are Oui Phony??, 2006 Tigerbeat6) Buy it!
10. S'Express "Theme from S'Express" (Themes from S'Express, 1989 Mute Records) Buy it!
11. The Durutti Column "Otis" (Vini Reilly, 1989 Factory Once,) Buy it!
12. A Fine Frenzy "What I Wouldn't Do" (Bomb in a Birdcage, 2009 Virgin Records) Buy it!

June 2010 Playlist
May 2010 Playlist
April 2010 Playlist
March 2010 Playlist

Something for the Weekend: Fad Gadget "Collapsing New People"

When Frank Tovey emerged at the very tail end of the 1970's, he found himself instantly fitting into the fledgling new wave and avant-garde electronic music scene. At a time when the likes of initial line-ups of Depeche Mode and the Human League were still crafting their own forms of difficult music, before sliding towards more commercially minded endeavours, Tovey - as Fad Gadget - continued to write some wildly experimental and expressive songs in a tiny house in London, using simple tape machines and other random bits of nondescript instrumentation.

Signing to Mute at the beginning of 1980, Fad Gadget released his début album, Fireside Favourites (an Easy Music favourite...); however today's song, "Collapsing New People" is taken from his fourth long player, Gag. Tovey was never a commercially successfully artist and one can claim that he was maybe never meant to be and Gag was proof of that. Mute essentially let Tovey do as he felt creatively and the commercial disaster that was his 1984 album scuppered any future Tovey had with the label.

As many new post-punk/new wave/indie artists artists began to come to the fore at the beginning of the last decade, Fad Gadget received something of a short-lived resurgence and Tovey restarted the Fad Gadget title in order to support Depeche Mode on their Exciter tour. Sadly, the return of Fad Gadget was far briefer than anyone could have possibly imagined - on April 3rd 2002, Tovey suffered a heart attack and died at the age of 45.
Below is a performance of "Collapsing New People" people from 1984 - if you were still unsure about Fad Gadget, then this video will tell you everything you need to know.

Fad Gadget Spotify
Fad Gadget Amazon.co.uk

Fad Gadget "Collapsing New People"