Tag: bandcamp

I always enjoy it when a label that’s known for a very specific type of music veers into what, for them, might be considered leftfield, perhaps even the avant garde. Warp did so with the late Nick Talbot’s Gravehurst project, and Mo Wax with South.

Ninja Tune, one of the labels most synonymous with electronic music and founded by the duo Coldcut in 1990, also likes to step outside its main focus while remaining centred on its original motivations for being. Artists such as Fink have shown that even though their roots may have been in genres such as jungle or experimental electronica, as they mature as artists and their focus shifts, the label continues to support them. The label, via its Counter Records imprint, was also responsible for bringing a folktronica-style artist to my attention back in 2011: Jono McCleery.

I’d heard Jono’s self-funded debut while working in the advertising industry. Music was a huge part of my agency life and with a wide range of creative people around it it’s inevitable that different music gets shared or played in the studio late at night. Jono’s Darkest Light was one of those albums in 2008.

Fast forward a few years and I found myself on week-long creative sprint in the French Alps, off-season and in a chalet with about 12 others. My art director and I would often work to music, each of us playing an album the other may not have heard. I’d been gifted an early release copy of Jono’s album from one of the client services team whose childhood friend was Simon Green, better known by the moniker, Bonobo. This was an album called There Is, which was due for release a few months later. I’d not had a chance to listen to it, but took a chance that it would be ideal to work to.

It wasn’t. The reason was the best reason: this was an album that deserved to be listened to actively. And so we did. For almost an hour. It served as a reflexive exercise and ignited a love for Jono’s music that continues to this day.

It has electronic elements, including some glitchy beats, but front and centre is Jono’s gentle guitar playing and outstanding voice. It always reminds me of those jazz-inflected drum and bass tracks on chill out albums of the 90s. Opener, Fears, has that laid back, smoky club feel. Plucked chords against a snapped beat and double bass. And then Jono’s voice, all buttery and smooth, note perfect but emotionally charged and vulnerable.

McCleery uses his voice as an instrument. As the drums pick up, the strings build (bringing to mind Scott Walker), so he does what Robert Plant was able to do in the early days of Led Zeppelin – taking his voice beyond performance and words. And yet there is no warbling fanfare so beloved of modern day singers. It’s understated yet without it the song could be lacking. I’m always astonished by the fact that McCleery was deaf for the first five years of his life. It’s pure conjecture on my part, but I find myself wondering if he didn’t hear voices not as communication devices but as a melody? This isn’t just ad libbing, it’s texture.

Second song, Garden, feels the most commercial song on the album, with its synth backdrop and upbeat four-four beat, and yet that vulnerability that Jono brings to each song keeps it grounded in its jazz-folk electronica world and away from pop. Because, even when Jono does pop he takes the song to a new place, an unexpected place.

McCleery has form when it comes to covers. Across his entire career, he has recorded songs by other artists. Without fail they live up to, and in some cases transcend, the original. On There Is, that cover song is Wonderful Life which was originally recorded and released in 1987 by BLACK. I loved the original song, but McCleery’s version seems to reduce its bleakness and instead make it a more sensitive record. And that ability to convey darker emotions without the need to resort to desolation and despair, is a balancing act that he has down to a fine art. Nowhere is this demonstrated that on the track, It’s All. It feels like a lament, which could have slipped into something quite self-indulgent in the wrong hands.

Folk legend Vashti Bunyan makes an appearance on the song, Only. It’s a gentle lullaby of a song, played on piano and guitar, with searing strings that cut through behind the two singers adding a discordance and a shadow of sadness. I think it gives off the vibe I get from the album as a whole – that there is a sense of loss accompanying the songs. Although I don’t feel sad when I listen to the album, quite the opposite in fact. I find it soothing, like a balm on sunburn.

I’ve found solace in listening to to repeatedly as I write this piece, particularly against the backdrop of what’s happening around the world.

Raise Me, is like a softened gospel track. McCleery backs himself with his voice across the minute-long track. And then, finally, we’re delivered the penultimate song (on the original release), The Gymnopedist, with its film score qualities and more use of that exquisite voice as a backing instrument as the track opens into what appears to be an instrumental. The way it builds in layers at its halfway point is nothing short of astonishing to my ears you’re waiting in anticipation for the lyrics, which never come. It’s the perfect way to introduce the repetitive hypnotism of the stanzas sung in the final song on the album, She Moves.

There’s a meditative state this album puts me in. I feel relaxed, energised and yet also infused in some way with a pain and loss that is inherently human. In my head, credits roll. This is a film soundtrack without the visuals, which the listener provides themselves. Perhaps that happens to everyone with all their music choices. For me, this is the album that delivers sharp imagery, emotions and a longing for something that I can’t quite articulate to myself. Which means, all that’s left for me to do is play it again.

For reasons unknown, the album is not available on vinyl. Hopefully someone at Ninja Tune is sorting that out, or if the rights belong to Jono he’s willing to consider doing it himself. The following YouTube playlist contains all the album tracks and a bonus, plus an advertisement I cannot remove. Ignore that, or better still buy the album on Jono’s Bandcamp.

BONUS CONTENT
It’s worth stepping aside here to talk about McCleery’s cover of Ingenue by Thom Yorke (recorded under the name, Atoms For Peace). The only time I’ve heard this song done better is when Thom performed it live on the Jonathan Ross Show on the piano. Both versions are astonishing pieces of art.

I often come to bands at a point in their trajectory that isn’t the first iteration of that group, or the music even. I enjoy diving deep, not only into their back catalogue – if there is one – but also into their musical heritage and its various offshoots.

One of those bands I’ve been doing that with recently is Califone. I knew Tim Rutili had come from Red Red Meat (RRM), a more bluesy-sounding version of his studio project but ultimately similar in sound. I’d heard a few of their tracks. And yet, that experimental aspect of Califone’s music seemed a bigger leap from those origins. To my ears, at least.

How did Tim arrive in such a place? I naïvely assumed there were slowcore beginnings to this journey. However, I was blown away to discover he’d been part of Friends Of Betty, a one-album punk rock blues band from Chicago who were playing in the late 80’s. They recorded Blind Faith II and released it on vinyl and cassette in 1988 on Underdog Records. I’ve never seen their album in real life, where each cover is hand-painted and therefore unique – although the UK edition dispensed with this idea and went with a collage-style cover of a half-naked woman on a backdrop of blue sky and fluffy clouds. As far from Califone as you might imagine, but no less experimental it would seem.

This is what would become Red Red Meat. A clean, more acoustic version and more of a focus on that bluesy sound.

And this is where I think things got more interesting and the more liminal period between RRM and Califone brought about something that connects to the traditional American folk music while also bringing in the future through the use of sequencers and loops. So, yeah, banjo and samples might be one way to think about it; however, that’s not even close to the music Loftus would come to make.

Slowcore is perhaps most closely related to The National in a modern sense. It’s roots stretch back to the Grunge era, though, with bands like Codeine. A slowing down and more folksy way of making rock music. Rex is a band I’ve heard a smattering of songs from over the years through friends and friends’ stereos. They were contemporaries of Red House Painters and alike in the early-to-mid nineties and their drummer, Doug Scharin clearly loved to experiment with sound – an aside: Doug makes feedback music, a genre I dipped in to thanks to the five or so minutes at the end of The Smashing Pumpkins’ track Drown, which featured on the soundtrack to the film, Singles.

(Forget about Billy’s vocal whine, those last four-plus minutes of feedback are something special. But this isn’t about the Pumpkins and ego, this is about Loftus. Let’s get back to them.)

So, Doug’s band, Rex, happened to be on tour with RRM in the late 90’s. While the UK media was full Britpop (ugh!), under the radar bands from the US, in particular Chicago, were setting out on more interesting journeys. Experimenting in taking their slowcore roots and expanding it into the electronic landscape that the city of Chicago was famous for. Or mixing a musical cocktail of infinite dreams to suit multiple tastes. Inventing and innovating for their own sake while remaining indie enough for their audiences to dig it.

The Loftus Wikipedia page suggests that once the 1997 RRM/Rex tour was done, the record label execs from A&M Records had an idea to contrive a loose, experimental set of songs by pulling various members of each band together and giving them studio time to write and record. This kind of freedom provided by major labels sounds, to me, like some sort of magic land that simply didn’t exist unless you were a huge star.  

Regardless of the origin story, the idea of picking from a larger group of talented musicians interested in experimenting and seeing what happens is a solid one. The resulting Loftus album has breadth and depth for the listener, although what you might call ‘songs’ feature amongst sketches of sounds and sonic landscapes that pull ideas from drone, blues, country, electronica, and indie rock to form hazy, nebulous musical interludes, often instrumental. Almost like the musicians had jammed for a while and the resulting sounds held enough substance to be considered finished.

What this means is the Loftus album is like a piece of art, a concept that cannot be grasped in its individual parts and yet somehow makes a coherent whole. Fans of Royal Trux will know that feeling!

Tracks like the hypnotic King Carp in a Dan Ryan Ditch that explores loops and samples before crashing into your face like a speeding truck with its drums and noise, or more singularly focused tracks like the banjo-led Theme From Loftus Nine serve as gateways to the more ‘obvious’ songs such as Cake, or Stolen From a Rifle Clean Brothel. And then there are the songs that flit between both, such as Haywine which is catchy in an almost indescribable way.

It’s not ‘easy’ music that you can sing along to, or even hum; and yet, it remains a compelling artifact of its time, showcasing the liminal state through which Tim and his collaborators moved to become the acts we know today.

The album was reissued by Jealous Butcher Records on vinyl in 2013, with its screen-printed sleeve and hand-finished sandpaper and jawbone motif keeping that thread of unique art coming through that was present back in the punk blues days of Friends Of Betty. And you can stream it via the Califone Bandcamp page – which I recommend you do.

Well, if it’s a trilogy then we need to have three blog posts. Having written about the original album in the first post, and then brought you ‘bang bang’ up-to-date on what’s different for the vinyl debut, now it’s time to talk about costs.

This won’t be a long post, but it’s also a part of the process that very few people talk about. And with this being the most expensive album put out on Unspun Heroes by quite a long chalk, I think it needs to be addressed.

Pressing vinyl is not cheap – and for runs below 500 it’s even less so. As a physical medium, it involves a lot of energy and different materials to make. And if you want to do it well, then making sure what you put in is the best it can be not only takes the skills of a professional engineer to remaster old tapes and digital files, it also means having a lacquer cut well so that the stampers made by the pressing plant will transfer the grooves to the finished product.

Not everyone does this. Some will skip the mastering phase and use CD files in production. Some won’t bother re-doing the artwork, or adding commissioning new liner notes, or even bothering with an insert. Some of these albums are £26 retail or more. I could do things cheaper by cutting out things like inserts and dropping the paper quality, or not redoing the album artwork so it doesn’t look like a poorly photocopied facsimile.

Ultimately, if you’ve listened to an Unspun Heroes vinyl release you’ll know that I care a lot about making them sound and look amazing.

The Tracksuit Trilogy is a special case for me. It required a few days of the engineer’s time to get it sounding the best it could possibly be. And that don’t come cheap. It made the manufacturing cost more than double and I did have a little bit of a weep when I got the invoice. Yet, having listened to it (several times now) it is worth every penny. It’s like hearing a new version of the album.

I decided to pay for the extras out of my own pocket, too. There is almost no profit margin after payment processing costs and Bandcamp’s fees are taken out. I’m actually losing money on each sale really. But I don’t want pity – any and every sale of anything I offer on Bandcamp is more than enough!

You see, I ensure everyone gets paid – those who write liner notes, the designer, Anthony, who works tirelessly for hours making minor amends late in the day, the printers and pressing plant employees, and in this case the artist, Renee, who produced over 50 pieces of work from which myself and Davey had to select two – for the sleeve and poster (signed for preorders).

It cost £35 per unit to do all that. For some perspective, it usually costs about £16 per unit.

So, while I understand it’s a big ask, especially when you include international postage costs, also know that everything has been done to the highest level to ensure when it reaches you it’ll blow your socks off. The extras are my gift to you for shelling out a lot more than I’d like to charge. It’s a work of art as much as a product you can enjoy. Money is a weird subject to write about. And yet, rather than shy away from saying what it costs to bring an album to bear (on average, it’s about £6k) I think it’s important that you know someone has bothered to put in the effort to make something sound, look and feel amazing. Something to cherish. That’s the love I say sits at the core of what Unspun Heroes does. Every time I sell one, I know I’ve found someone else who understands that.

You can read Part 1, which is a blog post overview of the album, here. Part 2, below, deals with the vinyl pressing itself and details some thoughts on the tracklist that the vinyl album contains.

For its debut on vinyl, the album was completely remastered using the original desk output from the sessions with John Parrish, and included were two additional tracks not previously released. Alongside these, a new set of tracks were discovered by Davey while rooting around in his garage, shed or attic (or perhaps all three) and these are included as a set of eight additional digital tracks, although one, Life (French Version) did appear briefly on the Special Edition CD from City Slang back in 2001.

This was the starting point for the reissue. However, in chatting to Davey I discovered that there were many aspects of the original release that he wasn’t overly happy with. The cover art was one. The final mix of certain songs compared to those around them was another. The lyrics weren’t quite right, either. So, we set about doing it as he would have wanted.

New Experiments
Cover art isn’t as easy to decide upon as you might think. We needed a concept to hang things on, so art direction was talked over first. Davey was a fan of collage-style artwork, which was useful as a friend of mine does exactly that as part of her practice. Renee Vaughan Sutherland is an Australian artist living on the south coast of England, and I got in touch with her with a brief, supplied her with mp3s of the album and left her alone for three months. She came back with 22 different options, from which we quickly shortlisted seven. A bit more chat and we had two we couldn’t choose between. One of these is the new cover artwork, the second will become a hand-printed poster (signed by Davey for all pre-orders).

A second piece that is new is the fabric bag that holds the download card and some other pieces of ephemera that have been created for this release, such as a small handmade zine and some printed photos. Why fabric? The inspiration came from separate conversations with Davey and a good friend – once a writer for Smash Hits in the 90s, no less – Tristan Fitzgerald. The idea of making a fabric feature somehow relates to the tracksuit of the title. Shiny and polyester. And so Tristan chucked in some design ideas and one of these was taken forward and printed on recycled polyester. I did attempt to get it properly woven, but the cost for a small run was budget-breaking. Instead, I decided to create a care label, like the ones you get with washing instructions, and sew the bags myself. These are truly bespoke items that you only get with the vinyl.

Yes, you might argue these are pointless additions (like some people consider an obi strip to be – superfluous and annoying) and perhaps those who think that might be right. However, the cost was minor and the idea of being ‘arty’ with this release and just doing something a bit mad and quite different meant once the idea was put out there it simply had to happen. Again, it adds to the limited nature of all Unspun Heroes’ projects, and provides those who buy the vinyl with a unique piece of work that you can’t get anywhere else. This is a feature not a bug.

Anyway, shall we look at the tracks?

Tracklist for The Tracksuit Trilogy
I’m sat listening to the test pressing of The Tracksuit Trilogy for the umpteenth time. It gets better every listen, which I find happens with every release. I like to immerse myself in the songs as much as possible, although I’m always playing my own releases months after they’ve come out.

With The Experimental Pop Band’s third album, the vinyl has the original 13 tracks and includes two additional bonus tracks – a version of one was on the special edition CD release from 2001, but the second is a previously unreleased track.

As the album is not available to stream, the only way to hear it is one of the test pressings, or from the original CD. That said, I’ve had the 15 tracks that appear on the vinyl remastered. Some from the original source, others from a master CD that was cut for City Slang and the band after the sessions wrapped. Because they’re all from different places, it took a lot of time and effort for Guy Davie at Electric Mastering to make this into something that was coherent, even though the music is eclectic in terms of its sound, ranging from straightforward art rock tracks to filmic soundtracks to disco-beats and trip-hop samples.

I thought it would be worth picking out some of the tracks to highlight the kind of music you’re going to get to hear if you buy a copy – vinyl or digital.

1. Bang Band You’re Dead
   The use of samples kicks off this track, but as with all the uses of samples scattered across this album, they enhance rather than become a focus for the music. TEPB were always about making music as a band in the studio rather than just with a computer. It’s not Kid A, people. However, the film score quality of the songs is kicked off in style on this languorous, almost dream-pop track. The tone shifts right at the end, though, as the song morphs in the way that soundtracks do – there is a part of me that thinks Tarantino would probably select this song for one of his movies, were he still making them.
   
2. Emotion
   Disco beats and a rise in tempo as the high hat hiss and thumping bassline bring a vibe that could best be described as unexpected. And yet, Davey’s cutting observations about the state of the world mean it’s less gloss and rollerskating-lycra-wearing dudes than it is a blunt take on the world as we entered the new millennium. Quite something when you consider where we’re at 25 years on.
   
3. Narcotic Days
   When the harpsichord refrain begins, and the cymbal shuffle over simple synth chords, you’d be forgiven for thinking you’re listening to The Velvet Underground with a different singer. There’s plenty of the Velvet’s inspiration in this album. The shimmering guitar is pure pop, though. But it’s not a song about upbeat things, as you’ll read when the song notes get published
   
4. Hard Enough
   Post-punk guitar-driven noise. In the original mix, the vocals were low and the guitar was right in your face. The remaster remedies this by balancing the overall track, so Davey’s sardonic lyrics can be heard. It’s like The Stooges met The Fall and this came out of the session. Thankfully, on the remastered version you can turn it up to 11 and you’d be right to do so.
   
5. Remember
   A hazy love song. But one that makes you feel like you’ve dropped several Tramadol® or whatever the equivalent drug is in your world. A morphine drip of a song. If you’ve never been stoned, grab some toast and laugh at nothing in particular while this plays.
   
6. Somethingsaremoreimportantthanmusic
   Beats. A dark piano chord repeated. The words ‘First Love’ chanted. More slightly atonal piano. And then, wow, what a surprise when the Western soundtrack bit drops two minutes in.
   
7. Satan’s Friends
   Fuzz and wah-wah. Like some sort of psychedelic jam session combined with a catchy bassline moment and full on metal vibes to the guitar solo. The drums crash and you’re pinned to your seat for two minutes. The violin brings in more of that Velvet’s sound as the song nears its crescendo. Congratulations, you’ve made it to the end of Side One.
   
8. I Like It
   A shopping list of reasons to love someone. But with that weird Davey Woodward twist. It’s a little bit grubby like I imagine dogging is. And imagining is enough for me, so thankfully this song makes it easier!
   
9. All Hang Out
   If you’ve never been to Bristol and wondered what it’s like to mosey on down through some parts of it, then this is it. And done in the style of The Kinks.
   
10. Casual Sex
    The beats are back and you need to get your dance pants on all while listening to the kind of thing that happens when two people get their pants off and bump uglies.
    
11. The Bereaved
    A science fiction soundtrack springs to mind. Just before something happens that makes you jump out of your skin. Doctor Who might benefit from using it in an episode, for example.
    
12. Alcudia
    And then we’re into sunny trip-hop pop. I song that makes you want to have a boogie around your kitchen while making cocktails for friends who’ve popped in. It’s got a sound that is immediately familiar and yet could be from any era. Destined to be a favourite track that you play loud just before you head out for the night.
    
13. When The Music Ends
    The Magic Roundabout and any seventies sitcom with a thank you message over it. Or a Hollywood movie ending with the credits playing. The whistling is inspired. A fitting end to an album. Except we added two bonus tracks.
    
14. (Life (Duet)
    A French film with a scene where the two bank robber lovers have a dance before the explosive finale. This is the song that plays in the background.
    
15. L1
    A love letter to Liverpool written after you’ve spent a couple of days wandering round the city. The twinkling samples over post-Britpop guitars – the way the bassline comes in makes you think of a certain Essex band. It’s a sunny, singalong song, but has some punch that makes it pop more than just Pop songs tend to do.

And then the vinyl ends. However, a selection of songs are included in the digital download. There are eight more to listen to. One of these was later reworked into a new song, there are also two different versions of Life to enjoy and the final song that graced the 2001 Special Edition release from City Slang: The Experimental Pop Band Theme. If any band deserved to have its own theme tune, it would be this one. It’s a fitting end to a digital listening experience, I think.

What do you remember of the turn of the century? Y2K. Dotcoms. New media. Free and easy money. The dawn of the computer age and, perhaps, the tech bro, maybe? A hopeful and optimistic era, still, even as the shine of Britpop faded along with that of New Labour. A new century, though. A time to reset and start again anew. Different. To do things unexpected.

Could the same be said of pop music?

Pop tends to be formulaic. It always has. A conforming style of music in many respects, although not always. I’ve said before that I consider The Cure to be a pop band, yet they conform in ways that are not mainstream. Few, though, take the pop sensibilities and throw out the rule book. Yet, in 2000, perhaps the most non-pop of pop albums was released. The band that did it weren’t shy of showing their workings either, as they called themselves The Experimental Pop Band (TEPB).

For their third album, The Tracksuit Trilogy – which is finally out on vinyl through Unspun Heroes – the experimental was turned up to 11. This is a truly eclectic album, and yet it has all the hallmarks of the same band even as it hurtles from disco-tronic beats to art rock guitars, sometimes within the same song.

In the original City Slang press release, the album was described as “Adamantly refusing to stick to one style, THE TRACKSUIT TRILOGY embraces a wild variety of influences, but somehow offers a unified collection of songs that are as innovative as they are entertaining.”

On first listen it sounds, to the unaccustomed ears, like a compilation. The second listen brings a coalescence that wasn’t as discernible on that first run through; by the fifth listen and beyond, you begin to understand how it all hangs together. The fact that Davey Woodward and his bandmates resolutely refuse to conform to the standards many people apply to the ‘pop’ moniker, while making what is undeniably pop music, could well be the turning point where genre fluidity really hooked itself into the public psyche. Or maybe, as someone said to me recently, it’s all just prog?

That ‘prog’ label is as helpful here as Yacht Rock is to anyone attempting to understand Steely Dan. A chocolate teapot in an album review: fucking useless. And it doesn’t do the album justice, particularly in the extended digital version available for the first time ever after previously unreleased and – quite probably – unheard tracks were unearthed in the process of bringing it all together for its vinyl debut.

Of course, the band had a pedigree for those ‘in the know’ thanks to cult band The Brilliant Corners. Chris Galvin joined Davey Woodward in forming TEPB before succumbing to that shitty disease that is cancer after second album Homesick, making The Tracksuit Trilogy the first album written and released after his untimely death – accompanying song notes reference this sad event, as they provided grist to Davey’s songwriting mill on certain songs.

I saw The Brilliant Corners at the tail-end of their run, in the early 1990s, gracing the stage at Reading Festival. While I was sad that I’d missed out on the previous decade – and many of their sought after singles which now command a decent price on the secondhand market – like others I didn’t have long to wait for TEPB to arrive.

From the get-go they proved difficult to pin down when it came to genres and peers. Weirder than Beck, as easy and fun to dance to as Prince, yet as abrasive as The Fall and as oddball as The Velvet Underground, they still made music that you could sing along to. They made the Pop so obvious there in the band name and yet so obviously overlooked by many. This is the musical equivalent of Ronseal before they came up with their advertising tagline then.

Besides that knack for a catchy melody, the thread that clearly runs through every track on this eccentric and quintessentially English record is Davey’s wry, sardonic observations of life on this planet. And while some lyrics snap you back to that pre-century fervour, much of it remains relatable to 2025. Certainly musically. It sounds fresh and new, almost as if the rest of the world has finally caught on and caught up.

The album debuts on vinyl on 25 July, 2025. A little over a quarter of a century from when it first came out, it’s a different beast in many ways – more on that later – and yet it remains as experimental as it ever was. Wayward but focused, serious yet playful, it’s as wild a ride now as it was 25 years ago. And like all mavericks, the distance between its original release means it should finally be recognised for the genius it is.

And with just 222 copies of the vinyl available, it might be the rarest of gems for some time.

Female-fronted alternative bands in the late 90s. Garbage had set the template and, whether unfair or not, others were judged against them. So it was with Fetish, and unfairly I think.

Hailing from South Africa, this is a band that mixed the ‘goth’ of bands like Evanescence and, yes, mixed in those melodic moments Shirley Manson and her band of merry men did so well, but there’s something else that takes this album beyond a Garbage soundalike.

For one thing, there’s a yearning, tinged with a subtle anger. I’m partly reminded of Julianne Regan’s performance from All About Eve’s third album mixed with elements of bands such as Cocteau Twins and The Mission. They certainly stood out in the musical landscape of London back in 2000 when I was first introduced to them by a colleague from Cape Town. Part nostalgia, perhaps, but they had more than enough interesting aspects to their sound and composition to break through.

Take Leah, for example. The jazz-inspired bass notes break through the acoustic guitar strum to catch the ear, while Michelle Breeze’s ethereal vocals add a melancholic air to proceedings. And that melancholy and, in places, malevolent vibe, carry through many of the tracks. Yet they are not bleak or depressing. And they are also not full of clichéd gothic stories.

The band also makes liberal use of electronic music in their final sound, merging it with slide guitar or finger-picked arpeggios to create atmospheric soundscapes that suck the listener in. On opening tracks, If and Permanent, these electronic elements really bring a different perspective and depth to their brand of alternative pop-rock music that other bands of their ilk never had. On Mind In Two, they recorded a song that could sit alongside Teardrops from Massive Attack’s Mezzanine and it wouldn’t sound inferior, yet was out a full year before.

The band clearly enjoyed bringing different genres and sounds to their music. A cleverly integrated rap midway through A Reels Romance is just one of many examples. It’s hard to imagine the song without this moment, which serves to strengthen the song rather than feel like it’s been shoe-horned in because it was ‘on trend’ for the era.

The sign of a great album is when a song drops in the last third and lifts it up higher than you thought it would. This is exactly what Ground Below does. A lesser band with fewer solid songs would have put this track in fourth spot, but on So Many Prophets it’s perfectly placed at number nine. A deceptively slow number, with a scratchy fuzz guitars over a picked acoustic with its elegant slides, and a wistful piano accompaniment as it draws to a close, it’s a real highlight among many.

The album ends as it started with an introspective and moody piece, although Fear Of Hurting washes over you with bright guitar phrases and pop ballad sensibilities, yet retaining the brooding atmosphere that kicked off the album. And Breeze’s vocals continue to mesmerise right to her final soaring notes and breathy sighs.

Originally released by Virgin/EMI on CD only, one can only hope that there are enough people who would line up for a vinyl release – especially if it were the special edition that also contained the four-track Shade Of A Ghost EP. You could count on me to be there, maybe even leading the way.

No matter how complex life is, a simple song can shine the light on it. The darkest places become seen, the hidden surfaced so you can’t pull your eyes away. It takes something special to make you feel that combination of chills down your spine and a sense of unease as a song unfolds – or unravels.

elie zoé has the ability to force you to confront uncomfortable feelings and also has the chops to salve the wounds, often in the same track. Their debut, recorded in 2015 and released the following year, Dead-End Tape, is an accomplished set of songs from this French-speaking Swiss artist. They have surely been listening to PJ Harvey’s earliest EP. Additional echoes of early Radiohead, rivulets of Soccer Mommy – and yet without the angsty layers of the latter, or the ‘progestations’ of the former. It’s a gem, one that comes with talons which hook into you.

The opener, My Shadow On The Wall, is so stripped back, it’s all metronome and plucked acoustic guitar. Many of their songs don’t even get that complicated. But punch above the weight of their compositional lightness they most certainly do.

There are shadows here, though. Something unsaid, or that cannot be brought forth. Like a stutter. Or the hiding of scars. Looking back from recent events related to their name and pronoun changes (you should read about what led to those changes here) perhaps it was always in plain sight, or perhaps it’s discolouring the brightness a little – because there is a lot of brightness here, once the contrast is reduced. On The River it is the tinkling bells towards the end of the track; on Hold Me Tight, it’s the fast pace of the music pulling against the relative slow release of the lyrics.

And there is also a ruggedness, something shaped by harsher elements. This is first heard in Chop Me Up and resolves itself in the final track, It’s Only Me on a Dead-End Tape. And yet, in that first touch of heaviness on Chop… are angelic vocals that soar above the grumble of the staccato guitar riff. It’s fucking catchy, too. Especially as the fluctuating cadence in response to those rising vocal lines.

It’s affecting music without the affectations you might expect of the darker brooding tones, though. That’s the simplicity making itself known. Perhaps it’s the youthfulness of the artist just needing to get their songs down, to relieve themselves of the burden of these words and their accompanying music? This urgency is present in I Found A Girl, which is a poignant moment when considered against the backdrop of elie’s recent transition, but also a point on the album when tempos change even as the early intensity is never relinquished.

On Last Night We Talked, we actually get to hear a softer side to elie’s output, which continues into I Cried in My Beard – although there is discordance in the chord changes and finger-picked strings. Again, I think of PJ Harvey, but this time I would reference White Chalk rather than Dry. Lines are repeated as poetic undercurrents beneath their voice and the harmonies they have created with overdubbed vocals.

Just as we reach the final chapter on this album, so listeners are rewarded with some further experimentation, using backward recording techniques and simple synth melodies as the scaffold for Do You Still Sing. It’s a track that could be played out at the end of a dark thriller, or to accompany the reading of a disturbing graphic novel. It’s glitchy in places, but the voice is almost sweet. Almost. The repetition of the song title keeps the level of malevolence high enough to make you shudder, yet with that shiver of excitement a good ‘scare’ can give.

And so, with the final two tracks, Zara and It’s Only Me on a Dead-End Tape, so the album concludes. The songs slow down again, yet that intensity previously mentioned rachets up somehow! It’s like turning over the final page on an engrossing novel only to be left dangling by an unforeseen cliffhanger which can only be resolved by skipping back to the beginning and reliving every second of every moment. If that sounds like you’ll be left unfulfilled, it’s not true. The detuning slowdown-speed-up warp of elie’s guitar on that final song adds purpose. It’s slippery, like emotions.

You will be changed by these eleven songs. It is absolutely impossible to listen and not have this album leave its mark on you.

When the duo, Lamb, burst on the scene in the mid 90s, it wasn’t only the frenetic and interesting beats from Andy Barlow that commanded attention, the vocal talents of Lou Rhodes were instantly recognisable as a new voice worth paying attention to. And when Lamb split, as Rhodes did with her partner at the same time, there was no inkling of what might come next. But what did demonstrated that Lou Rhodes was more than a backdrop in an electronic band.

Widely acclaimed on release, Beloved One was shortlisted for the Mercury Prize in 2006, and from the opening bars of Each Moment New, it’s clear that this is very much not Lamb and also very much a personal album. Its naked honesty marks the album as a standout piece of art, marrying minimal percussion with more organic instruments such as Rhodes’ beautiful acoustic guitar playing, a piano, and also double bass. It’s not just stripped back, it’s laid bare – both Rhodes’ own view of her life, and the music itself.

Because of the emotional upheaval that any ending brings – be it personal or musical relationship – the listener is drawn in deeper with each track. Lou Rhodes delves into her own pain along with her well of optimism of a future, as yet unknown to her or us, to deliver an album that is as much a rebirth of her own self as it is a call to arms for us to love the world in which we exist. There is real optimism to be found in her lyrics, rather than simple or shallow platitudes. Rhodes takes us on a journey with her, by inviting us into her world, and it would take a cold-hearted brain-dead moron to not be moved by that.

Just the circular refrain of Fortress, played impeccably on the acoustic guitar, would be hard to resist continuous playing. The love song – perhaps to her children, maybe to herself – that is the title track, Beloved One, is so rich in both instrumentation and lyrics, with space and quietness built into the composition through its incorporation of natural sounds of birdsong, the call of the flute in the opening moments before voice and guitar work together begs for a stylus to bring it’s delicacy to your ears.

Then there is the percussive guitar playing on Tremble along with Rhodes’ trademark voice that is as close to her previous work in Lamb as this album could offer; and yet, it’s melody could have been plucked from an obscure 60’s folk album beloved of so many these days. It’s an unforgettable album in so many respects that only listening to it can really do it justice. So do that.

Originally released on her own Infinite Bloom label, it was reissued with additional tracks on CD by Cooking Vinyl. However, somehow this album has never been committed to vinyl. And yet, if ever an album was made for that format, it’s this one. The songs are so good, you’d want to be jumping up to turn this record over, again and again, until you wore through the plastic. I’ll be doing everything in my power to have a conversation with Lou Rhodes about putting this out as on Unspun Heroes.

EDIT: Lou’s Bandcamp page has been taken down. In a conversation with her recently, she said she was hoping it would be back up soon. In the meantime, here’s a link to a YouTube playlist of this album.