Here's My Card Records - 'Board Meeting'

These last few records have all been a bit nice. It’s time for some noise.

I am, of course, drawn, moth to flame, by the very idea of Here’s My Card records. They combine admirable kitchen table enterprise with a neat format. What they do is produce credit card sized CDs, home-burnt, in home-made covers, which they then sell on their website for not very much money. It’s an irresistible idea, which they justify with some knowingly pretentious twaddle about the pressures of modern living, the shortness of time and the over-availability of everything requiring a new formula of “quick and cheap”. A couple of quid via Pay Pal buys you 300 seconds of noisy fun. Because, you see, you can only fit about five minutes of music on a credit card sized CD. That makes them, as they’re proud to call themselves, the world’s smallest record label.

Of course it’s the sort of music you couldn’t listen to all day, but what isn’t? I’m always bewildered by sub-genres, so I don’t know what you’d call this. I’d take a stab at electronic noise.

Now, I don’t want to be forever banging on about how much I still miss John Peel, because in music I’ve always looked to the future instead of the past, but time was when I’d get to hear this sort of thing while listening to his show. I always felt I didn’t need too much e-noise in my life, and I got sufficient of this stupidly fast, ultra-repetitive and deliberately irritating music while Peeling, waiting to hear something else. Now it’s in danger of slipping from my musical palette. I can’t be sure of chancing on it. I have to seek it out.

To be fair, it was chance radio airplay that led me here. Huw Stephens on R1 the other week played a quite glorious manic cut and paste job by the Nailbomb Cults. It’s a name you tend to remember, and a bell rang, they having previously appeared on an interesting sample of music from Oxford, A Catholic Education. Their website was a gateway to the strange world of Here’s My Card records. By the way, go to the Nailbomb Cults’ website and download some of their supreme noise. It now seems my life was incomplete without Disneycore.

In a spirit of utter recklessness I lashed out £4.50 for two records. One, inevitably, was from Shitmat, long (to embrace cliché) Peel favourites. The other is an eight track compilation – eight different outfits, including Shitmat and the Nailbomb Cults, eight different tunes, all 45 seconds under, blended seamlessly. In the spirit of the thing my review of the eight tracks is as follows: 1 – squelchy; 2 – bang-bang; 3 – cheeky cut-up; 4 – shrieky; 5 – slidey; 6 – horsy; 7 – ferocious noise; 8 – post-noise.

It took me longer to write this paragraph than listen to it. Clearly, you need this in your life. Best buy two, for when you inevitably lose one.

Antony and the Johnsons - 'Hope There's Someone'

Good grief, but this is something special. I confess I had given this lot little heed. They garnered rapid praise in glossy music mags for the middle-aged, of which I am naturally distrustful. (Look, I only buy those mags for plane and train journeys, and because there’s always something good on the CDs, okay?) Plus there was the involvement of usually reliable negative indicators, like Lou (didn’t you used to be good sometime in the last Century?) Reed and Boy George. (Actually, what I do like about Boy George is that whatever he does, he still looks like a fat brickie who should be idling away his afternoon in William Hill’s, only in a stupid big hat. His life has been a triumph of fantasy over corporeal reality.)

Anyway, here’s this 10” on Rough Trade (and by the way, I’m beginning to think that the 10” single is the best of all formats, and wish there was a lot more of them), arty cover with no writing on, picked up with no real enthusiasm while I was buying a pile of other things and it didn’t feel like I was spending enough money. I played it, and then I did that rarest of things: I immediately played it again. It’s a strange and rather unsettling record. There’s a piano and an odd, high, wobbly voice, one of those voices you have to buy into you, where you have to get over the hurdle of thinking it’s a bit ridiculous before you realise it’s something special. There are parallels to be made with the Tindersticks during one of their more soulful moments, before some symphony orchestra or other kicks in. Subject matter is stunning, too, pulling me up short: “hope there’s someone who'll care for me when I die.” Bloody hell. Don’t we all? Then, just when you’re trying to keep yourself together, the piano soars to the fore and swamps the song, loud, echoing, a tunnel of sound. If there was an afterlife, this might be what the journey there would sound like. I was left floored.

I suspect I wouldn’t much like Antony, or his Johnsons, if I met them, and wouldn’t want to hang out with the trendy New York art crowd that provides the milieu from which this apparently springs. I wanted not to like this. Now, damn them, I’m going to have to buy the LP.

James Yorkston and the Athletes - 'Song to the Siren'

I reckon Song to the Siren is that rarest of things - a 'classic' that actually is a classic. This song is timeless and indestructible. Now along comes James Yorkston, a man for whom I have a certain amount of time, without quite being able to put my finger on why, and he only goes and makes this song his own. He turns it into a Scottish folk song, complete with fiddles and nameless folky instruments (but thankfully no bagpipes). Somehow, this works. It makes me feel I'm back sitting in that pub in Tobermory, whisky in hand as the rain lashes the windows - but with someone good singing instead of Runrig xeroxes.

Anyway, it's a b-side of a 7" only - shove that up your ipod - and it's out on - oh here we go again - Domino records. Why don't we just rename this site the Domino fan club and be done with it, eh?

Juana Molina - 'Salvese Quien Pueda'

Two things brought me to this record. First, there was the involvement of Four Tet. I am, on the sly, a bit of a Four Tet fan. He always strikes me as someone who understands how music is put together, and in his records the right things generally happen at the right time. Second, it’s on the Domino label, the most reliable musical indicator of our era. You rarely go wrong with a Domino record. If I ran a label – and I can’t say I haven’t thought about it – I like to think it would be a bit like Domino.

So to this 12” from someone called Juana Molina, with a couple of Four Tet versions on one side. And do you know, it’s bloody lovely! I play this on return from a stressful day spent selling off small, irreplaceable, parts of my soul in exchange for not very much money at the coalface of pointless administration, and my troubles quietly subside. A Radox bath and a mugful of something soothing – like malt whisky – couldn’t work this magic. For your money, you get three versions of Salvese Quien Pueda (this is Spanish, apparently, and her rather cute website is also in this language, with Molina evidently hailing from Argentina… hmm, does this make this ‘world music'?). There’s two from Four Tet on the A side, an ‘ugly’ version, which is crunchy and liquiduous, and about which there is nothing wrong, and a ‘pretty’ version, which is the real gem here. It isn’t pretty; it’s beautiful. Imagine walking through a gorgeous, sunlit meadow with the girl of your dreams on your arm. She sings to you softly, while make-believe animals low in the distance. You’re there. Towards the end the drums come in, at which point the whole thing leans back, lifts off and gently hovers.

On the other side Ms Molina adds her own version, wherein the song stretches out and gives itself a little room to let things develop. Murmurous noises and sleepy sounds are joined by some pleasant acoustic guitar, and we end with my favourite ‘la la las’ so far this year. I’m never terribly au fait with genre boundaries, but it’s possible that this is ‘folk music’. But if this is folk music, how come everyone isn’t doing it?

Scout Niblett – 'Kidnapped By Neptune'

This is glorious and quite unnecessary record. I’m scared of analysing it, because really there’s not much there. It’s simple and ultra-repetitive, in some ways a brainless footstomper, a mantra woven from the milk, bread and potatoes of drum, guitar and voice. (You can still work magic with those basic ingredients.) An army could march to this. Every so often a sleazy-sounding woman interrupts the proceedings, the whole thing grinds to a halt and then starts up again. By the end she sounds somewhat exercised. This fits in somewhere between Stereolab if they were any good and Solex if she could occasionally resist the call of wackiness.

Once again I will betray the fact that I live in some kind of musical vacuum built out of endlessly reissued Fall CDs by shamelessly confessing that this woman had never previously crossed my path before I heard this on some radio show or other. Oh hang on, I just checked the website, and this is the person who did that loathsome cover version of Althea and Donna’s rare gem, Uptown Top Ranking? Glad I hadn’t realised that before, or this one would probably have lingered in the shop unpurchased. Anyway, it’s quite rightly a 7” only, and it’s on Too Pure, which is even kind of a proper record label, so there can be no excuse.

Sunnyvale Noise Sub-Element - 'Techno Self-Harm'

Since the death of John Peel and the disappearance of all manner of outré music from the radio, I find I've been buying more and more records on spec, unheard. Fortunately I earn more money than I used to - just as well because records are expensive and it costs me an absolute bloody fortune to keep up. How much easier and cheaper it was in the days when you could hear stuff, find out you liked them and go out and buy them. These days I follow hunches, read reviews, hack my way through record shop e-mails, then listen and sift. The crap quickly sinks to the bottom of the pile, never to be heard again. The good stuff stays on the top. The weekly e-mail from the great Norman Records of Leeds (the best record shop on the web, bar none) is a more reliable guide than most. Refreshingly honest, if they really think a record stinks and you’d be a fool to part with your cash for it, they'll tell you, which makes a change from most record shop e-mails that clog the in-box, which like to pretend that every single thing they sell is fantastic.

And so to this one, which I bought from Norman Records purely on the basis of their description. Never heard of these buggers, although according to their website they've been around for years, making ‘improvised electronic music’. No, don’t go, this is actually good. Norman Records said it would appeal to fans of 65daysofstatic, and it’s an observation that’s hard to fault. This is more in that 'glitch rock' / post-post-rock vein, but going much further than the abstracted and pretentious meanderings such a description usually bring to mind. Basically, as the title track demonstrates, Sunnyvale know there are few records that can’t be improved by collision with a filthy great guitar riff, as happens about one and a half minutes in. Once that happens, there can be no looking back. Truly this is the new wave of moody fucked-up techno rock you can shake a leg to. The only complaint can be that, at just over five minutes, I wouldn’t have minded a bit more of this.

Techno Self-Harm is the best song on this five track CD, which also boasts a longer live version. Despite their stupid name, not all elements of which I can hold in my head at once, Sunnyvale also prove they know how to make a good title with There Are Already Enough Photographs of People and Doors. And how right they are. It’s on Field Records – no, me neither – and you can buy it on their website. This one’s staying on the top of my pile.

The Concretes (and the Fall)

It seems very escapist to talk about music at the moment, following the latest, large scale reminder of the general fragility of life. Things I've listened to in the last week have tended to sound a bit hollow. I know things have gone wonky when I go back to listen to old stuff by the Fall. This is my default, my musical magnetic north. I retreat here when all is confused. Lately, I've been listening to a lot of Fall stuff, particularly early 1980s live recordings.

But this Concretes record, it's been about a bit, and I've played it a fair bit, but only recently did I come to really appreciate it. It was sometime over Christmas, somewhere between night and morning. I lay in bed rigidly awake with night fear, head filled with a forest of worries, unable to sleep but too tired to do a thing. So I slipped the headphones on and listened this through. Perfect. These are cute songs, sugar coated but with a sad centre. They're tuneful, but the singer can't sing a note. I think this girl is the latest in a line of great singers who can't sing, something I've always fallen for (see also: Mark E Smith, Julian Cope, Edwyn Collins). The Concretes sound like you always hoped Saint Etienne would.

It did the job, this record. I listened to it, then slipped back to sleep. Perhaps music still retains its power after all.