Fans of The Apples In Stereo’s earlier garage-jangle pop masterpieces (e.bloody.g., “Seems So”) might not have imagined there would ever be a sun-snogged patch of ELO’s picnic area where the band could be seen flinging a frisbee around and sipping cold ones with The Feeling.
But such is the vision their more recent stuff brings to mind, thanks to a 70s sensibility which, thankfully, does nothing to diminish the melodies which main chap Robert Schneider apparently produces more easily than you do saliva.
New album Travellers In Space And Time beams down several such tunelets. Get your listening tackle round “Told You Once”, f’rinstance:
The bonniest tune you’ve heard about nabbing someone’s girlfriend in a while, I’ll wager. While there will be lots of folk who have never hoid the thing, there will be many others who recognise it from a computer-based music simulation experience called Rock Band.
There’s something tantalizingly confusing in hearing music that doesn’t appear to belong to any recognised genre, and I found myself experiencing such beweirderment listening to Lorn‘s album Nothing Else.
Lorn probably won’t appear on a summer mixtape anytime soon. His oeuvre contains elements of dubstep, electronica and the kind of seductively woozy instrumental nausea Ratatat tend to favour. I don’t know how or where you’d dance to it, aside from performing some kind of lobotomised swaying in a very dark, very claustrophobic cave.
He employs the kind of basslines that people on SoundCloud tend to comment on with missives of the “SICK!”, or “HEAVEEE!” or “I JUST PUKED UP ALL MY KETAMINE AND IT FEELS LUSH” variety. Which is not to say he doesn’t have his accessible moments – “Cherry Moon”, embedded below, wouldn’t sound out of place over the credits of a Michael Mann “flick”.
So what it is, yeah, is I moved flat, yeah, and lost internet, yeah, and then when I got internet back the server broke, yeah, and then my laptop broke, yeah, and then the one I got to replace it broke, yeah, and then the World Cup was on, yeah…
But now all these things are out of the way, and all I have to worry about are the disasters yet to come. Marvluss.
So if you’re one of the three people who read this thing on a semi-regular basis, hello, back now.
To celebremate, let’s enjoy a spot of Aloe Blacc. This song is called “I Need A Dollar”*, it soundtracks some TV show or other in “the States”, and if you don’t like its hard-luck-uplifty charm you deserve to have your ears confiscated by whoever it is who’s in charge of doing that.
*There’s a chance erryone on the globe has loved and got bored of this song already, but I wouldnae ken because I’ve been “out of the loop” of late. Anyway, if you come here looking for the very latest “leaks” yooz kind of in the wrong yard. Lovely to see you, though.
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admin on
Tuesday July 13th, 2010 at
8:14 pm
There are plenty of World Cup albums and playlists knocking about, all with the same old nonsense with which you get bombarded every four years. I like a bit of “Vindaloo” as much as the next psychopath, but there are other countries, cultures and musics out there worth sampling before that unavoidable moment when you start necking the fizzy violence juice and screaming at foreigns on TV.
So I made an unnecessarily lengthy playlist that would serve the hellishly noble purpose of supplying listeners with music they probably haven’t heard before, but which they might (hopefully) actually enjoy listening to. It has little if anything to do with football (one New Order track notwithstanding), and has music from every nation playing at the World Cup Finals in South Africa in 2010.
Er, the North Korean one’s right at the end. Never mind human rights, those guys are playing catch-up big time when it comes to choonz.
From South Africa’s version of electro – kwaito – to Swiss art-pop, to Greek hip-hop, to Ivorian soul, to Slovenian trance… Oh dear. I’m not doing a very good job of selling this, am I? But look, I’ve listened to all of these tracks, and think they each have something to recommend them beyond Eurovision-style LOLZ. So I hope you will too.
Day three was all about imbibing a spot of Johannesburg’s kultcha, in keeping with the spirit (arf!) of the Smirnoff Be There initiative to step outside of one’s usual everyday experiences. Accordingly we visited Museum Africa in Newtown, where an exhibition called “Space: Currencies in Contemporary African Art” was taking place.
It was reassuring to find that contemporary art in Johannesburg (as in London) can be totally impenetrable, and that the pieces are accompanied by equally bamboozling explanations:
The exhibition title alludes to and embodies the two notions of space and pace, which signify sites or contexts and tempos or energies that are part of societal make up. Space is wherein ideas are negotiated and meaning produced through various human activities and social practices.
Sweet.
Somewhere along the way during the day’s activities we encountered a demonstration by the striking South Africa Municipal Workers’ Union, whose Zulu-informed chanting could show UK industrial actioners a thing or two:
After seeing some pretty breathtaking street graffitti in the area we went for lunch, where I sampled what I think was my only genuine South African dish of the trip (shame on me). It was called Bobotie, and wasn’t a million miles away from good olde English Shepherd’s Pie, except it uses egg instead of mashed potato as a topping. With the addition of a delicious, tangy chutney, it was noms o’clock.
After lunch it was time to hit the very pretty area of 7th Avenue in Melville, something of a hipster hotspot. This was confirmed when I saw laidback creative-looking types lounging with their laptops in the local cafes. We browsed a few shops, with Niall and Jonny (from Irish music mag AU) investing in some new trainers. Then we went to a nearby bar to meet some of the city’s musical talent.
Jozi are the country’s most popular homegrown rap group, and a couple of their members stopped by for a chat. I performed filming duties for Darragh’s interview, and they seemed like confident yet humble guys, keen to get their music to as many folk as possible. When asked what one song people should listen to to get a taste of their style, they said “Muthaland” from their first album – so here it is:
What I find interesting about “Muthaland” is that it sounds a lot better if you listen to it without the video, which is a bit heavy on hackneyed American-influenced hip-hop visuals.
The evening saw us going to a bar and meeting the chaps from BLK JKS, who were all approximately 75,000 times cooler than any of us, but nice with it. Later we went to a party they were holding in a loft-style club, but to be honest by that point I was flagging worse than a flag with an insignia of a flag on it. I was comforted somewhat in the knowledge that those around me were as well, and so didn’t feel too bad about hopping in the minibus and heading back to the hotel.
Oh, I forgot to mention in my last entry that our bodyguard that night – Leo – has previously guarded the bodies of the likes of 50 Cent and John Legend. That made us feel pretty special. Unfortunately I can’t share the libellous gossip we managed to get out of him regarding one of those two artists.
Posted by
Stuart Waterman on
Thursday May 20th, 2010 at
8:13 pm
Note-y thing: Yes, I’m a bit behind on this diary thing. But let’s pretend I’m not, huhkay?
Day two of my Smirnoff trip to Johannesburg began with clear evidence that I’d enthusiastically filled out a breakfast order for room service the previous evening while slightly inebriated:
I didn’t manage to finish it all, or even half of it. Such delicious excess would be put into a fair amount of perspective later in the day when we took a trip to Soweto. *seriousface*
Now, you read the word “township” and you probably imagine dreadful suffering and misery. The generations that grew up in township shacks didn’t choose to do so – it was a living condition enforced by the country’s lengthy apartheid era.
And while I’m not going to pretend Soweto is now an up-and-coming area likely to attract London’s sharkiest property developers, as we cycled around parts of the community in our blue helmets – to the obvious amusement of the locals – I think most of the blogfolk came to the conclusion that it wasn’t as grim as we were expecting. Continue reading »
Posted by
Stuart Waterman on
Monday May 17th, 2010 at
4:30 pm
One day into my blogger’s trip to Johannesburg courtesy of Smirnoff, and I’m a shut-in.
OK, not really. But it’s pretty tempting not to leave a hotel room that:
- Has a TV that greets you by name
- Has a shower room with a window that lets you watch TV while you condition your locks (it even has a speaker in the bathroom)
- Has a pool area and deck that makes you feel like you’re in Entourage
Oh yeah, and the staff at the Radisson Blu Gautrain smile and help you and stuff. Whoever invented pleasant service should export the idea to Britain sometime. I could do without the hammering from the construction guys in the morning – the hotel has literally just opened – but at least it means I don’t have to arrange a wake-up call.
Sorry, am I supposed to be a bit more blas
Posted by
Stuart Waterman on
Thursday May 13th, 2010 at
8:43 am
Sorry to say, the worldwide recession seems to have hit Brazil’s tenuously musical pre-World Cup TV ads. Check out this effort which, despite featuring stroppy genius Robinho and being set to Beyonce’s “Single Ladies”, is puh-ritty budget:
Lest we forget, in 2006 Ronaldinho and pals were part of this balletic masterpiece set in an airport:
That’s quite a drop in quality over the last four years. If the Brazilian Football Confederation’s marketing department were a band, they would be The Killers
Fans of The Apples In Stereo’s earlier garage-jangle pop masterpieces (e.bloody.g., “Seems So”) might not have imagined there would ever be a sun-snogged patch of ELO’s picnic area where the band could be seen flinging a frisbee around and sipping cold ones with The Feeling.
Tomorrow, volcanic ash guffs permitting, I will be flying to Johannesburg in South Africa to check out something called 
