EMINEM - Our House, Green and Gold, The Showdown

EMINEM - Our House, Green and Gold, The Showdown (all MP3)
The thing I like best about Eminem is (cue universal amazement that I can say such a thing) the fact that he’s true to himself. He could very easily pretend that he has the instant, easy vocal flow that is supposedly necessary to succeed as an emcee, which he clearly does not. When I hear his voice, I hear a man turning his geeky, gawkish, overgrown-schoolboy vocal funklessness, which all hip-hop orthodoxies dictate to be a bad thing, into a good and positive thing (to criticise the milieu of this music as “white trash” misses 100% of the point, because his triumph is to widen the scope of hip-hop beyond its cliches into his own experiences). To hear his direct, ill-timed, unfunky speech over incredibly tight, demanding rhythm tracks is a fascinating contrast, but Eminem consistently wins the battle.

It was this man who provided the most unequivocally extreme moment I’ve ever heard on radio (Blue Jam had nothing on it), while appearing with Tim Westwood (who he could teach a few things about turning allegedly negative qualities into positive ones). All accepted means of expression were beyond him, it was simply unbridled, uncontrolled, unordered shouts and screams, a private, internal language understandable only to those few completely removed from the restraint and lack of expression that once characterised British people (and, as such, very close to the linguistic and emotional heart of pop music itself). And therefore the closer he gets towards the norm of hip-hop (”The Showdown”) the less incredible his music is (although still very, very good). It’s “Our House” which is the great moment here, a metallic, half-deranged screaming suburban dystopia which is the most extreme example of Marshall Mather’s genius, as the first great emcee with no sense of The Funk. Some will doubtless say Eminem-by-numbers, I say it renders the whole suburban fratboy rap-rock explosion instantly obsolete, exposing it for its amateurism, appalling production and atrocious emceeing (there are a few exceptions, but very, very few). Not that we didn’t know that anyway, but it’s good to have one of pop’s great sensationalist genii confirming it for us.

DEAD PREZ - “I’m An African”; “Behind Enemy Lines”; “Be Healthy”

DEAD PREZ - “I’m An African”; “Behind Enemy Lines”; “Be Healthy” (From the Let’s Get Free CD)
Tom was right to identify the harsh, stripped-down, drone-based “Hip Hop” as one of the few “undie” tracks where the production equals the integrity and high standards of the artist (though I’d still say Super Human Powers have an astonishing sound). Brilliant as it is, “Hip Hop” isn’t quite the highlight here - that’s the desperate rage of “I’m A African”. The excitement it brings on is that of a people trying against everything to rediscover themselves and articulate their roots to form a new identity, and it couldn’t be more poignantly meant. The first six tracks here - concluding with the mournful “Police State” and wickedly ELO-quoting, flute-driven “Behind Enemy Lines” - are exhilarating and as good as you’ll hear this year. The problem is that the rest of this album epitomises all the worst aspects of “undie” production values - from “Assassination” onwards syrupy female backing vocals become more and more present, “Mind Sex” has an irritatingly twee 70s-ish funk backing, and “Be Healthy” is a real nadir, with its rather offensively and crassly “rootsy” acoustic guitar sound. The sound gradually becomes more and more predictable - “The Message” is quoted (come on, we’ve heard that one too often) on “Psychology”, “Happiness” and “Animal in Man” positively boast how “real” they are with their ostentatiously “classic” flutes and orchestral backing … you can’t fault anything they’re saying, but you wish for a touch of Kool Keith’s irreverence and sense of fantasy … and as for the tedious 70s funk “jam” “You’ll Find A Way”, don’t get me started (although the second of the two unnamed bonus tracks is a partial return to the incredible early form). It seems that when they move from the grimly realistic “Today” side to the well-intentioned idealistic “Tomorrow” side, they regard it as an excuse to sugar-coat and sentimentalise their sound. Depressing.

If the only criteria for appreciating and evaluating pop music was how worthy it all was and how ideologically relevant it was to the problems faced by those creating the music concerned, then this would be the greatest hip-hop album for 10 years. But if I used those criteria and applied them to my political views in a UK context, Billy Bragg would be the best British songwriter of the last 20 years. There are many other elements involved - like modernity, apparent relevance, appreciation of the other elements that go together to create great pop music … and from Track 7 onwards, most of this album falls short. The verdict has to be: worthy and important but …

KOOL KEITH - “Rockets on the Battlefield”;”Livin’ Astro”;”I Don’t Play”

KOOL KEITH - “Rockets on the Battlefield”;”Livin’ Astro”;”I Don’t Play” (from the CD Black Elvis / Lost In Space)
Tom was right - Kool Keith is one of the great refusers of pop, the sort of figure we need for his utter rejection of all conceptions of “hipness”, his recognition of the weaknesses of whatever may surround him, be it the overt inarticulacy of “street” rap, its tendency to reduce its every expression to something completely beyond most human speech (but lacking the elation and escape of great post-articulate pop), or the “authentic”, “rootsy” excesses of the conscious element (of which more soon, sadly). The Prodigy connection that briefly pushed Keith into more widespread consciousness didn’t increase his sales the way it did for the Wu-Tang collective, probably because he was simply too beyond for the indie audience that picked up on “…Forever” at the precise moment the Clan’s consistency and credibility faltered.

These are three of the best moments from last year’s album, which I’ve discovered far too late. “Rockets in the Battlefield” has the best production anywhere here, an excess of radio interference and vicious digital screaming. “Livin’ Astro” is the best track of all - startling computer-game sounds over impossibly tight modern funk, Keith’s voice reaching an exact halfway point between aggression and enviable knowledge (”statues in the rock museum” is the most tantalising concept). “I Don’t Play” is the best conclusion imaginable, and Keith’s emceeing is the most confident and direct it is anywhere on the record. All are utterly removed from, somehow above, the wars that rage alongside them, and all the better for it. Whatever is important to know, this man knows it.

BLACK BOX RECORDER - Brutality

BLACK BOX RECORDER - Brutality (from CD single The Facts of Life, Nude Records)
Chris Morris references are, I admit, unhealthily recurrent in my contributions here. But the calm, polite, cut-glass tones of Sarah Nixey intoning such calm, gentle words, not her own, which conceal so much frustration, anger and outright rage beneath, can only be compared to Jam. Those office workers displaying such under-the-carpet perversions in such “normal” tones … the destruction-from-within of the most repressive practices of the English middle class orchestrated by Haines, Moore and Nixey is its musical equivalent, and all the more addictive for that.

“The Facts of Life” is in the consciousness now. UK Top 20, it’s done its job. Look behind it and you find “Brutality”, the harshest shock I’ve heard from them yet, written by people who clearly look at the Daily Telegraph letters page with disgust and contempt but, like me, can’t let it go, feel drawn to chronicle further its illusion, delusion and epic self-destruction. Sarah’s audibly disgusted by what she’s chronicling, she can’t be part of it, she looks back at its historical association with her own social class and background with deep contempt. But she has to carry it through, and what comes out is 2 minutes and 19 seconds that best distil what Haines has aimed at for nearly 10 years now. Chronicling what you despise, the pill sugared but still dominated by lacerating cynicism.

HUNDRED STRONG feat ASPECTS - Paranoia

HUNDRED STRONG feat ASPECTS - Paranoia
HUNDRED STRONG feat GRANDMASTER GARNER & BEANZ OBE - Prayer
HUNDRED STRONG feat OBSCURE DISORDER & A-TRAK - Superior Raps
HUNDRED STRONG feat ASPECTS - Transcontinental
(all from the LP “Hundred Strong - Strength of a Hundred”)
A slightly belated return to the hip-hop debate which infected this blog about a week ago and which I must plead guilty to having instigated. This album is determinedly “undie” - released on the UK’s ultra-hip Hombre label - and as such, many of the production values are somehow “grainy”, almost “smoky”, with old-skool samples, scratching etc. throughout. Six months ago, this was the sound I chose unequivocally. Even now, it’s still my preference, but I’m beginning to open myself more to the incredible physicality, the unrelentingly horrible sonic assault course, that DMX et al have thrown into the mainstream. Something of me would love to like street rap’s distancing of itself from the music’s past (DMX ultimately has more in common with Black Sabbath than he does with any hip-hop from 15 years ago) and I think I would if the emceeing was more skilled.

The emceeing here is on point throughout the album, but there are times where you feel the production’s pushed down, forced endlessly back to earth by its clearness and lack of embellishment. The highlights here are “Paranoia” and “Prayer”, the best production (respectively, slow-draining piano-led funk, and halfway between a bassline and a cry) and the sharpest lyricism anywhere here (the Aspects mention the year 1893 in “Paranoia”, which admittedly makes it easy prey for a historically-obsessed cultural magpie like myself). “Superior Raps” is more thuggish than anything else here and, perhaps unsurprisingly, has the deepest reverberation of the bass, and “Transcontinental” has an effortless swagger. But elsewhere you feel as though it’s getting lost in an imagined past of “real” music, “solid” funk - the instrumental Al Green feel of “Headz Instrumental” and the orchestral “Hundred Strong Outro” are unhealthily assimilable by the dreaded Macy Gray industry.

38 years after the fact, and 33 years after Joe Meek’s final self-destruction, those involved with my favourite single of all time, The Tornados’ “Telstar”, seem destined to forever intrude on my life. I read in the current edition of Britain’s dullest and most bafflingly enduring music publication,

38 years after the fact, and 33 years after Joe Meek’s final self-destruction, those involved with my favourite single of all time, The Tornados’ “Telstar”, seem destined to forever intrude on my life. I read in the current edition of Britain’s dullest and most bafflingly enduring music publication, Select magazine, that Tornados guitarist George Bellamy is the father of Matt Bellamy, a member of tedious, grinding rock band Muse. While this might reveal a generational decline - father otherworldly futuristic in the grey, repressed Britain of the early 60s, son a depressingly prominent living fossil in 2000 - the death of Tornados bassist Heinz Burt from motor neurone disease at 57 is a minor tragedy that has gone almost completely unreported.

This Guardian obituary isn’t really the best way to be remembered, portraying Joe Meek as a “mad svengali” whose Fake Plastic Elvises are represented as being on the same level as those perpetrated by Larry Parnes and Norrie Paramor. Someone reading this who’d never actually heard “Just Like Eddie” would take it to be a gentle, maudlin tribute of the type Cliff Richard might have given us - in fact, it’s a fizzing, flowing pop production which sounds like rock’n'roll remade by the Owen Luder Partnership as they built the Tricorn Shopcentre (and which Momus had never heard, despite appropriating its every turn for “Spy On The Moon”).

Those in search of Joe Meek’s real legacy could do much worse than …

BROADCAST - Come On Let’s Go (from the album “The Noise Made By People”, Warp Records)
This album’s been seducing and destroying me for the last 24 hours, attracting me with its luscious poise and analog folk songs, almost pushing me away with its utter coldness, loneliness and devastation, but always winning me back with the *use* of the electronics and Trish Keenan’s voice (every cliche is true - she does sound like a lost child, and the whole album evokes the forbidden childhood most of us hide, where Plone’s “For Beginner Piano” generally evoked the joyous childhood most of us remember). “Come On Let’s Go” is one of the best moments - Meekish pop at its most evocative, its most suggestive of a new world beyond the trap of forbidden childhood (indeed, it’s probably the only really optimistic song here). In a perfect 1962, all pop music would have sounded this good. As it is, we had one genius whose influence is acknowledged, but not yet, it seems, in a mainstream media which continues to worship mid-60s Rockism as though it was the birth of everything, and conveniently ignore the thwarted futurism that somehow managed to flourish at the start of the decade. Broadcast sound as though they still live in this world, and there are few more appealing places to be.

BUTTERFLY CHILD - Drunk on Beauty

BUTTERFLY CHILD - Drunk on Beauty (MP3)
This is the very essence of luxuriant. I vaguely remember Joe Cassidy being hailed (especially by David Hemingway, one of the great lost Melody Maker writers) as one of those epic, expansive lush pop genii back when he was ensconsced in Belfast, as a man who could seduce us into a relaxed, celebratory pop heaven based around unaggressive, girlish values, back when Britpop’s aggressively male, laddish Rockism was at its most dominant. The idea attracted me, but the music passed me by, for the most part. Sean O’Hagan’s High Llamas (an easy comparison point) always seemed more attractive. They had concepts, visions, evocations, lyrics that placed ideas of sunshine and relaxation, and what happens when they fall, in my head, rather than simply vaguely describing a few concepts.

So now we meet again, and “Drunk on Beauty” is luxuriance-by-numbers, really. I still find the title appealing and the concept something I want to immerse myself in, but there’s something missing with this song. Somehow, it’s almost too luxurious and too MOR, almost redolent of an Oasis stadium-slower. Maybe Joe Cassidy’s relocation to Chicago has blunted his sense of romance and intoxication. Or maybe it’s just that he no longer has Northern Uproar to oppose.

SUPER HUMAN POWERS - Intellectual Extra Terrestrials

SUPER HUMAN POWERS - Intellectual Extra Terrestrials (MP3)
I know I’ve talked at length about their “West Evil Rhymes” (and rightly so, a mutation of Geography and Time even Momus might have dismissed as absurd, incongrous and unworkable) but I think this might be even better. It isn’t so much the emceeing, skilled and harsh though it is, or the ever-rising threat of a new form of humanity of superior mind and mental prowess, it’s the sample. One particular 60s / 70s AOR / MOR hit, infuriatingly familiar, used by Chris Morris in BBC Radio 4’s On The Hour over his mutation of the Vietnam war (“the Vietcong, who then started dropping ‘Look behind you’ leaflets on the GIs”), irritatingly unplaceable, which just works perfectly.

I increasingly feel under pressure in my gentle campaign for so-called “undie” rap, as my former heroes and inspirations write long euologies for those obsessed with The Streets (pop’s falsest and most illusory concept), seemingly unapologetic paeans to the ideology of the Thug, the Hot Boy and other concepts which actually appeal to, strengthen and reinforce the UK right-wing press’s reductive vision of all black American people, and try to excuse themselves off the back of a few production traits which make them, admittedly, the strangest-sounding records to enter the Billboard chart at Number 1. Not that that excuses them, really. Simon Reynolds can draw analogies between the Cash Money stable and the theories of Walter Pater and Georges Bataille, but they’ll always be Fur Qs to me.

YOROKU SAKI - Tech-Scientific (Alpha Version) / Goodtimes (Demo Version)

YOROKU SAKI - Tech-Scientific (Alpha Version) / Goodtimes (Demo Version) (MP3s)
Maybe it was the reference to the predictions in George Orwell’s 1984, and their historical presience, that attracted me first (but then it almost inevitably would). Maybe it was Eighth Wonder’s flow, incredibly aspirational, endlessly pushing towards new heights of learning (shame on you Reynolds for that voyeuristic celebration of “street” rap, at least as far as the lyrical content goes). But then there was Yoroku Saki’s production, cold, middle-European, almost Arctic, based around a glockenspiel. It might fit almost too easily into the developing cliches of “articulate” rap, but it’s still had me addicted for the last few days.

Forgive me for veering into Momus fetish territory here, but Yoroku seems almost too Japanese, in that this music can make me (dishevelled, shambolic) feel impossibly cool and self-confident. “Goodtimes” is a reinvention of 60s bubblegum - essentially the Fifth Dimension or the Lovin’ Spoonful as a garage band - and that particular dichotomy recalls a certain genius compatriot of Yuriko. While nothing here reaches Fantasmagorical heights, there’s enough to have you lurking for a while with this ever-changing pop aesthetic. Keep up.

LAURENZ

LAURENZ - Forever Comes (MP3)
This is a strange one. From Cologne, referencing Momus, Smog and Gastr del Sol. Deliberately tinny drum machine, slightly cheesy arrangement, vocals trying not to sound mainstream-romantic beneath a sensitive-indie facade. I quite like it, but there’s an edge of embarrassment around this song, the way that, with a different arrangement, presentation and vocal style, it could easily have fitted on BBC Radio 2 in 1982.

It’s almost an MOR song, really, disguised in the clothing of a kind of Sarah Records flashback (see Tom’s Heavenly piece below). Don’t know why I find it so perversely appealing - maybe I just like a German virtual singalong of something Dan Hill or Randy Edelman could have recorded on a good day.