Anika - Anika (2010)

Do we live in a post-modern age of recombination? Apparently so, judging from a recent review which unfavourably contrasted one fresh-minted album with another – the failing of the first in contrast to the second was that, using the same set of influences, the musicians hadn’t managing to do anything which one might appreciate. But perhaps there’s nothing really so post-modern about recombination as an activity – it’s more that it’s now the acceptable face of a dominant paradigm. So for those of filled with ‘satiable cultural curiosity our task becomes not so much to distinguish, even in passing, what is original from what is unoriginal (or to distinguish between pleasurable and unpleasurable unoriginality), but to ask about process – about how recombinations take place, not only about the materials from which they are formed.

Unlike other new music where enjoyment lies in the faithfulness of its recreation, Anika assumes the work of recombination seriously, taking as its main elements a Nico-esque chanteuse; dry, dubby drum & bass (as in, the instruments, not the genre) employed with organic synth touches and an emphatic No Wave sensibility; and covers of sixties and seventies classics from Twinkle’s Terry to Bob Dylan’s Masters of War (plus a few originals, and a much-appreciated inclusion of a dub version of the latter). These elements turn out to be a much more likely match than one might consider – turning out pieces which, far from multi-genre novelty tracks, add a gravitas to the originals, and a sense of nihilism, of the end of history as farce not as triumph.

Of course, as a fan of dub reggae, no wave, Nico, and sixties pop, I’m biased, but this was far from an album I had ever previously envisaged (in contrast, say, to synthabilly, which I’m still waiting for – with the possible exception of the ill-fated Silicon Teens). We might speculate that the glue holding all of this together is the Beak production (Geoff Barrow of Portishead) and – although the connection isn’t immediately obvious – in the use of dub influences, in a certain sweetness (more usually provided by a creamy soulful voice, but here by the nature of many of the songs themselves), and in the adoption of the depressive position so in evidence upon Portishead’s self-titled album, we see a dark development of the signature elements of triphop – not in the more well-known dubstep direction spearheaded by the likes of Burial, but into something in quite a different tradition.

But while we’re with tradition and points of comparison, Nico’s criminally under-rated, John Cale-produced masterpiece Camera Obscura must be mentioned; and speaking of criminally under-rated work, for those who like any of the combinations of names and styles mentioned here, if you don't know them already Sally Strobelight and Judy Nylon are both points of reference. Finally, the darkness lurking behind renditions of folk-pop songs more usually associated with girlish wistfulness may evidence the skeleton of Shirley Collins lying unquietly in the closet.

There is a sense here of the dark side of the decades of socio-cultural rebellion, of the burn-outs that they would leave behind, of their failures and co-optation; echoes, also, of contemporary events, as in the moving soldier’s testament on Iraq which is sampled in the closing moments of Masters of War (and anti-systemic politics are also in evidence, though never heavy-handed, in the two originals). But we also experience a personal ennui, a more interior feeling of end times, in covers such as ‘End of the World,’ ‘Sadness Hides The Sun’ and ‘I Go To Sleep’ (made popular by Skeeter Davis, Greta Ann, and The Kinks respectively). There is a sense, too, of the crumbling saudade, the feeling of social claustrophobia but also of the dissatisfactoriness of the possibilities of empowerment, inherent in the British kitchen sink realism milieu, so beloved of Morrissey (another Twinkle fan).

The choice of covers (which also includes Yoko Ono’s ‘Yang Yang’) is inspired here – rather than songs which were brilliant but have become culturally ubiquitous (‘Tainted Love’ or ‘Hallelujah’), the choices on Anika are defamiliarising not only in performance, but also in selection. We are in territory which is purposefully but defiantly Unheimliche. Indeed, as with Nico, dislocation and liminality are very much the appropriate tropes: upon entering the environs of Anika, we find we are trapped in a desolate ennui which at the same time is both angry and melancholy – a landscape which is found not only internally, as is so often the case with much pop music, but in which particular constellations of internal emotions and external socio-political conditions reflect each other.

James Pants - Seven Seals (2009)

Biblical occultism – via Kabbalah – may be the new age fad du jour (although isn’t it getting just a little, well, so noughties?), running the culture fiend through a gauntlet beginning with Dan Brown and ending with Madonna, but that’s not to say that the resurge of interest in Judeo-Christian mystical traditions doesn’t have anything to offer. Before Brown there was Umberto Eco’s labyrinthine Foucault’s Pendulum (Eco argues that Dan Brown himself is, in fact, Eco’s own creation) and after it comes James Pants’ magisterial Seven Seals.

In an unexpected leap from his first album, Welcome, which was much more of a workout in downtempo electro lounge, funk & r’n’b (not to mention the intriguing and inaptly named library music exercise All The Hits), Seven Seals is a concept album exploring Revelations, mysticism and the oc/cult in general. It is to Pants’ credit that he manages to do so while maintaining a light touch, rather than straying into the leaden, satire-ready seriousness of most music dealing with the darker side of the occult. In putting the album together Pants holed up in a cabin for two weeks, and if his cultural reference points are anything like mine then the mood that that created – from Evil Dead to Antichrist – has been shaping here. In other words, the ‘70s synth sleaze which garnished Welcome – reminiscent of Pants’ idol, legendary outsider Gary Wilson – is here transmuted into scuzz, the darkness of exploitation deepening into that of psychological-religious alienation (with gratuitous angst thankfully absent). The forceful fuzzy beats of tracks like I Live Inside An Egg give this album an emotional contrast lacking from Welcome – which, in comparison, seemed altogether a work more promising than fully realized – while the synthesizers which permeate tracks like Thin Moon (the first single, and perhaps the highlight) add touches of gorgeousness tinted with melancholy (here and elsewhere we find distant echoes of the abandoned sensuality and electrofunk touches of Welcome).

In evoking these moods, one might think of the noughties post-punk revival (guitars are indeed in evidence here, and Joy Division has been frequently mentioned in reviews), and the recent flowering of the rediscovery of minimal wave. Both of those tendencies are definitely present, but both the vehicle of the concept album (always a risk, but one which pays off here), and the music itself, mean that this is a work of reinterpretation rather than imitation. In terms of a synthesizer synthesis, the other major point of reference here, both musically and thematically, is Bruce Haack’s seminal Electric Lucifer – although here we are dealing not so much with powerlove as a Totentanz. On the topic of genre, while I hesitate to use the phrase ‘witch house,’ fst becoming as reviled a term as ‘chillwave,’ in the combination of lo-fi synthesizers and DIY occultist imagery (in the album art no less than the lyrics) this album definitely picks up on that trend, but again, without the pretension or purposeful obscurantism which can be dangers of ‘witch house’ in particular and the ‘instant genres’ of the blog house age in general.

Ultimately these seven seals, as a counterpart to a half hour silence in heaven, are a heavenly forty minutes on earth.

Six-Six-Sixties: the number of the angel?

God Help The Girl - God Help the Girl (2009)
The Magic Theatre - London Town (2010)
The School - Loveless Unbeliever (2010)

While 1960s pop of the kind pioneered by Phil Spector with African American girl groups brought to England’s shores the brash and brassy Lulus, Cilla Blacks and Sandie Shaws, to my mind it was at its finest in the more melancholy fragility of a (vastly underrated) Twinkle or a Marianne Faithfull. But this isn’t to say that these two tendencies can’t be profitably combined.

I’ve recently become enamoured of a number of groups doing just that – the revival of the English brand of sweet orchestral 60s girl-group pop. Revivalism, as I may have written before, is a double-edged sword – on the one hand, I might prefer to listen to something more original (whatever that might be), but, on the other, given that historical material is ultimately limited (even if the quest to unearth entire genres is more than a lifetime’s work), why not enjoy yesterday’s sound today? And if it’s done well, a self-consciousness and quality control can be brought to styles which may have been somewhat lacking in that regard during their heyday – a latterday perfection of the essence of the sound, so to speak.

The first of these is God Help the Girl’s self-titled album, essentially a side-project for Belle & Sebastian frontman Stuart Murdoch. But while I’m a big fan of The Boy With The Arab Strap (which itself is deeply indebted to Nick Drake’s 60s masterpiece Bryter Layter), I haven’t been particularly taken with the rest of Belle & Sebastian’s work, or with their performance as a live band. This album, however, while certainly not without its flaws, crystallizes some of my favourite aspects of their work – the gorgeous melodies, sense of vulnerability and a barely perceptible edge of darker melancholy. When I first listened to the album I thought that it was all a little too much the same, with no standouts except the title track (a perfect pop tune which remains by far the finest moment) but the other tracks reveal themselves more gradually as the plot unfurls – the story, which is outlined in the accompanying booklet, is a ‘musical film’ which Murdoch plans to shoot in 2011, though there is no clear narrative arc that I can ascertain. Catherine Ireton’s vocals are gorgeous, smooth but by no means devoid of personality (compare her version of Funny Little Frog to Murdoch’s own from 2006’s The Life Pursuit), and bring a freshness to the music itself – so, while the album suffers from flaws including Murdoch’s tendency to insert himself vocally a little too much into a project which is ostensibly not Belle & Sebastian, as well as a lyrical habit of straying into an irritating faux-naivete which is not always held as well in check as it could be, this is nonetheless a work which is undemanding and pleasurable in the best possible sense.

The concept album theme continues with The Magic Theatre’s London Town, a fascinating album of chamber pop which owes its existence to a strange story of market capitalism, the music industry and the struggling artist. When Ooberman, the previous band of Magic Theatre duo Dan Popplewell & Sophie Churney, failed to sell enough copies to pay their wages, despite support from John Peel and other indie luminaries, the band split up and Popplewell found another way (of the very few remaining) to make a living from music creation: library music. Ultimately, this became a career, and one in which he could explore new musical directions (hence the involvement of the Slovak Radio Orchestra and the Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir on this album); but at the same time, the pop sensibility began feeding back into his work, until he was writing library pieces which were also backing tracks for the London Town album songs.

From these extraordinary beginnings comes a narrative, according to their website, is “a time-travel love story set in 1968 and 1888, where the young 60s hero falls through a hole in time in The Magic Theatre in the Old Victorian Steam fair, to find his one true love in 1880’s London.” Even if the music is entirely different, I can’t help being reminded of Momus’ awe-inspiring track London 1888 – one which strikes the same lugubrious note as the conclusion of this story (which, however, is by no means so throughout, but rather follows a quartet of seasonal moods). While the band suggest that the sounds are chosen from the 19th century as well as the 60s, it is undoubtedly the second which predominate. Standouts include the hooky opener, Steamroller, and the subdued rush of the title track.

The pick of this endearing litter, however, is without a doubt The School’s addictive and flawlessly realized Loveless Unbeliever. Packed with bittersweet, upbeat 60s-influenced indie pop gems, and without the nagging twee ingenuousness which haunts God Help the Girl, there’s little to say about this album but to praise it. A point of reference might be Saint Etienne’s Good Humor (my personal favourite of SE’s work – and indeed the album is produced by Ian Catt of both SE and the Field Mice), but here we are in more straightforward territory genre-wise, and in a milieu which is much less enamoured of the atmospheric panoramas of American leisure. The lyrics, dealing with themes of love’s vicissitudes, are completely appropriate while never clichéd or unintelligent. Highlights include Let It Slip, Valentine and the 50s-bop Hoping and Praying. As The Essex might say, ‘they’ve got everything.’

All of these albums work with a joy/melancholy musical dynamic which I must confess is one of my favourite registers, and all recapture – or create – a nostalgic 1960s England of kitchen-sink dramas and funfairs, bright skies and sudden showers, one which thus far has existed mainly in the imagination of Morrissey, but which is certainly worth a (re)visit.

Music: Briefly Noted

Mulatu Astatke - New York, Addis, London: The Story of Ethio Jazz 1965-1975 (2009)
Addictive ethio-jazz which miraculously combines a dark, smoky feel with a soulful gutsiness, reminiscent in mood of the concurrent-ish work of Augustus Pablo.

Manuel Göttsching (Ashra) – New Age of Earth (1976)
A fluid creation of electro(guitar) ambience which, like all the best work of the genre, is both interesting and complex as the subject of attention, while also forming a pleasantly atmospheric background wash blending warm and cool textures, and employing repetition and variation as central elements. Göttsching’s work is a unique historical bridge between krautrock/kosmische, thoughtful dance (more evident on his seminal E2-E4) and ambient.

Cold Cave – Love Comes Close (2009)
Imagine that Ian Curtis, rather than committing suicide, had remained the lead singer into Joy Division’s New Order period. And got into some seriously dancey beats – without losing the melancholia or the atmospheric guitar jangle-n-fuzz. Not highly original, but highly recommended nonetheless.

Lawrence – Lawrence (2002)
The Sight Below – Glider (2008)
Dark, ambient beats with an influence from minimal techno and drone/shoegaze, whilst also infused with an eighties indie miserablist sensibility. Points of reference: Wolfgang Voigt, Bowery Electric, The Smiths. See also: Mikkel Metal - Victimizer.

‘It’ bands the obscurantist in me doesn’t want to admit loving: Neon Indian (chillwave: could it be the best genre ever? See also Millionyoung, Small Black); Grouper (if some reverb is good, more must be better – and she was so right about that).

Honourable mention in 'It' band category: The XX (fantastic music, shame about the lyrics).

Cluster - Qua (2009)

As far as krautrock goes, I’m more a fan of the kosmische, the ambient and the motorik moments than of the riotous long-form hippie-era free jams in which the genre had its inception – apart from Cluster, other favourites include Neu! (a band whose full potential is sadly only realised in a few songs), Harmonia, Kraftwerk’s Ralf und Florian, and Manuel Göttsching/Ash Ra Tempel’s New Age of Earth (not to mention the wildly influential E2-E4). But if one was to think that the creative force of this movement, if movement it can be termed, was largely spent by the early eighties, Cluster’s 2009 album Qua (their first in fourteen years) demonstrates that this was not the case universally.

Despite the seminal quality and historical importance of their earlier work, in particular Zuckerzeit and Sowieso, Qua is, I think, Cluster’s finest moment (although After the Heat is a strong contender). This is an album which manifests their finest qualities – a pop melodiousness which is filtered through a lens of experimentation which means that it never manifests in the traditional song form but rather lends a quality of the unheimliche, the familiar residing in the unfamiliar (and/or vice versa) to their work – along with an understated musical sensibility in which the content of the music unfolds itself at the listener’s pleasure, equally amenable to playing the role of Satie’s furniture music (and Satie, for me, is a key reference point for Qua), but also, like the work of the corduroy-suited composer, to serious engagement, a fascination with the intricacies of ambience and minimal (though not necessarily repetitious) sound. On this note, one is reminded of the way in which David Lynch’s early work draws one into the microscopic world of the everyday, and there is a similar cinematic quality here, though without the overtones of melodrama and anxiety which haunt Lynch.

Rather than the more usual lengthy explorations of the krautrock oeuvre, the pieces on Qua tend to be short (with the exception of the stunning 'Gissander,' which clocks in at just under seven minutes), and in this they bring to mind found objects, whose purpose remains indeterminate and mysterious, but also not a question of importance. In these electronic explorations, there is nothing resembling a hook as such – this is music which dissolves as one listens to it. I’m reminded of the cover, and indeed the mood, of Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s Touching Feeling (a work concerned with scale and texture) – a photograph by artist Judith Scott – or of Foucault’s memorable description of aphasia in the introduction to The Order of Things:

‘when shown various differently coloured skeins of wool on a table top, [they] are consistently unable to arrange them into any coherent patterns … within this simple space in which things are normally arranged and given names, the aphasiacs will create a multiplicity of tiny, fragmented regions in which nameless resemblances agglutinate things into unconnected islets: in one corner, they will place the lightest-coloured skeins, in another the red ones, somewhere else those that are softest in texture, in yet another place the longest, or those that have a tinge of purple or those that have been wound up into a ball. But no sooner have they been adumbrated than all these groupings dissolve again…’

In other words, there is something deconstructive happening here, but also a sense of order inasmuch as that is both implied and denied by objects in a space; and it is in this paradoxically peaceful space of tension – which could also be viewed as the tension between observation and affect, and the in-trinsic directed exploration of spaces in which the two processes coexist parasitically – that Qua locates itself, and into which it draws the listener.

Tigercity - Pretend Not To Love (EP, 2008)

While animal names have flourished in recent times – Grizzly Bear, Panda Bear, Wolf Eyes, Deerhoof, Fleet Foxes, Animal Collective, and, trending back a little further, Cat Power – and have been a marker of ‘alternative,’ not to say art-school experimental, musical sensibilities, the ‘tiger’ moniker has mostly been spared this trend – and, indeed, outside of these stylings, Tigercity aren’t the only band for whom I have a lot of time to have made use of the panthera tigris (who now, sadly, number among the world’s most endangered animals) – cf. Tiger Baby. Also, while we’re playing the name game, the animal-city construction (that’s animal, not anorak) bears fond memories of Louis Sachar’s delightful Pig City – contrary to received wisdom, is it the case that, in the zoology of musical fauna, all animals are equal but pigs are less equal than others?

But I digress… Tigercity’s EP is a sparkling work of synthesis, bearing synth-pop, light funk and eighties electro influences lightly on its sleeve. Names to be checked would include Hall and Oates, and early Prince (particularly in the falsetto, which however is never shrill, but silky smooth), as well as revivalist acts like the addictive Chromeo, but what we have here is a work which maintains the crystalline pop sensibility and romantic preoccupations of these artists, but adds more than a dash of mystery and artiness (in the best possible sense, for want of a better word) – apparently, before their current incarnation Tigercity were postpunk revivalists, and this is still apparent in the spiky guitar textures and riffs which make their way into the fabric of the songs, as well as in the lyrical crypticism. This is a delightful combination which forms an EP that is heartfelt but not clichéd, easy but never simple, a sonic pleasure.

Donald Fagen - The Nightfly (1982)

I must confess that on first listening to I.G.Y. (named for the International Geophysical Year), the first track on The Nightfly and perhaps that which most encapsulates its themes and concerns, I was not taken – nice, I thought, but a little too commercial sounding. However, the sheen of polish, the feel that every note and lyric is a precisely-placed piece in a well-oiled machine, is one of the purposeful aspects of this album, production which is not only a vehicle but also an expression of its essence (and the album is one of the first fully digital recordings). Hence we can see this as a conscious choice in the same manner as Green Gartside’s abrupt and complete change of direction on Scritti Politti’s Cupid & Psyche 85 – and there’s also a resemblance in the synthetic funk and reggae which serve as shaping, yet low-key influences (while, unlike Gartside, for Fagen, jazz and, to a lesser extent, Sinatraesque swing and lounge are musical touchstones). Indeed, the subtle way in which this move is accomplished is a testament to Fagen’s intelligence and his painstaking approach to producing work with an effortless, yet highly mannered sensibility.

While ‘steampunk’ has come to be a common descriptive, we’re still lacking (at least as far as I’m aware) a phrase to describe the science fiction world envisaged between the 1940s and 60s, an art deco, Grecian (or, on the dark side, noirish) vision of the shining future – of the kind depicted in Alphaville, Forbidden Planet, innumerable pulp magazine stories and illustrations, and more recently the odd but interesting film Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow – a world perhaps best explored in William Gibson’s seminal short story The Gernsback Continuum, a perfect written accompaniment to Fagen’s album. Another point of reference might be the artificially-coloured past, hyper-real yet at the same time veiled in deceptive nostalgia, depicted in Dennis Potter’s The Singing Detective – or, to take our references further back, to the soundstages of musicals like Singin’ In The Rain. In the context of the music of the 1980s, we might also think of the Suprematist and cubist Soviet stylings beloved of the early incarnations of bands like Depeche Mode and Orchestral Manoeuvres In The Dark among others. This is a space of ‘graphite and glitter,’ a best of all possible worlds in which, in contrast to contemporary society, utopian optimism about the future – and, in particular, the role of technology – remains general currency; but at the same time it is a digital version of a Waitsian or Hopperesque milieu in which romantic dramas take place against a vaguely sinister backdrop of dives and lowlives.

Fagen, in the detached tone which is apparent throughout the work itself, describes the album (in the liner notes) as 'certain fantasies' that might be entertained 'during the late fifties and early sixties' by 'a young man ... of my general height, weight and build,' and there is a sense here of the mingling of possibility and melancholy, a nostalgia for a world that never was (perhaps not unconnected is the long period of creative barrenness he experienced after The Nightfly’s release). At the same time, there is a sense of an ultimate accommodation which is not without its pleasure, epitomised in the almost-showtune final track, Walk Between Raindrops. An album made for late-night driving, The Nightfly (and here we see the emerging possibilities which would continue to be explored in synthesized music) is a triumph of an artificiality which nonetheless contains space for affect – indeed, in which the very quality of artificiality reveals affect as a construct, but one which is entirely experienced and hence never less than real – or, perhaps, never less than concrete.

...while the moon is on the sea...

The Vanduras - In The Dark (2002)
The Blue Hawaiians - Savage Night (1999)
The Aqua Velvets - Guitar Noir (1997)

While some surf music epitomizes the visceral pleasures of brute physicality, of the heat of the sun, the cold of the ocean, the rolling epic thunder of the waves, there are also shadowy corners of surf, places where the instrumental guitar takes us into more sinister and exotic locales, without losing the crystalline clarity and echoing sense of atmosphere which characterize much surf music. The laid-back approach, the re-envisioning of the wave ride as a night cruise in a finned car, has its fruits, as these albums demonstrate.

Each is atmospheric - serving as excellent background music for late-night activities from cocktail parties to back alley transactions, while at the same time rewarding more detailed listening which reveals the beauty and skill at work in putting these pieces together. On that note, the Vanduras’ unlikely cover of Stereolab’s 'Cybele’s Reverie' would have to be one of my favourite covers of the year, setting the gorgeous melody in such a way that it takes wing – or perhaps wave. Indeed, choice of covers is also a strength for The Blue Hawaiians in the dark, excellent versions of 'A Cheat' and, particularly impressive, a slowed-down, spinetingling yet still somehow deeply funky 'Shakin’ All Over' – as well as a somewhat less successful version of Tom Waits’ 'Jockey Full of Bourbon,' which nonetheless is a choice demonstrating impeccable taste. The vocals, reminiscent of Chris Isaak, work perfectly in this context, and the few vocal songs weave in and out of the mix in a way which creates an integrated whole. There are touches of lounge swing and exotica to be found here and on Guitar Noir, which are mostly well chosen but occasionally mood-breakers; overall, however, these albums, taking instrumental surf guitar as a starting point, each create a moody atmosphere which traverses themes and styles of the forties, fifties and sixties. For something a little darker and more elegant – the Shag cocktail party, perhaps, thrown after a hard day at the waveface, after the last of the sand has been rinsed and the lava lamp lit – here is the perfect soundtrack.

See also: Don Tiki, The Tikiyaki Orchestra, Psycho Beach Party

Lou Reed - Coney Island Baby (1975)

Reed’s Berlin and Transformer have long been favourites of mine, and the justifiedly mythical status of the Velvet Underground goes without saying. So how is it that it has taken me so unforgivably long to listen to Coney Island Baby? This is a compelling album which combines the joy and humour of Transformer with the darkness of Berlin – all set in Reed’s familiar undercultural milieu, and veering between the personal and the narrative. The first track and the last are standouts, bookending the album with moments of – sweetness seems an inappropriate word, but there is a low-key, unsentimental beauty and here which is the best of everything that word represents, one which re-emerges in evocative later works like Bowie’s Bring me the Disco King, or even Gary Wilson’s more romantic and less stalkeresque moments – while the addictive A Gift (unlike the Velvet Underground’s earlier manslaughterous take on that theme) is a slow-motion epitome of the uncomplicated guilty pleasure of sexual egotism. Meanwhile, we move into more disturbing – and experimental – territory with Kicks, a low-key thrill killers’ tale which reveals itself on repeated listens, replete with chilling rushes and sharp bites of sound. While some tracks are just a tad too close to other works – in particular 'Charley's Girl,' which is essentially a re-run of 'Walk On the Wild Side' – this is an album which easily stands with Reed’s finest work, a piece which, like Hubert Selby Jr’s Last Exit To Brooklyn, takes us on a journey through the tragic and sleazy beauty of the decadent and decaying American sixties and seventies underground, where tragedy and redemption become virtually indistinguishable but remain leavened with humour, and, despite the world-weariness and self-destructive tendencies, with a fundamental lust for life.

The Mermen - Krill Slippin' (1989)

I’d dismissed surf music for years as realistically represented by Dick Dale’s track on the Pulp Fiction soundtrack, remembered from my teen years (not that I’d dismiss Dick Dale presently, but good-time Misirlou doesn’t really give a sense of the potential of surf for atmosphere, and the combination of driving joy and senseless euphoria with beauty and intricate technicality).

However, in the last year or two I’ve begun to realise the error of my ways and the many joys offered by bands old and new from The Ventures and Australia’s very own Atlantics to The Space Cossacks and Laika & The Cosmonauts – among others (not to mention those delectable areas where surf overlaps with tiki exotica, space age pop, and with darkwave and psychobilly). However, in terms of the genre overall, I would have to pick The Mermen as the unique cream – or perhaps foam – of this crop.

The sound of their early albums – their first, Krill Slippin', in particular – is unmistakeably surf – the monumental guitars, the echoing atmospherics, the rolling pull of the sound – but is also deeply psychedelic in the true sense – not the faux psychedelia of sixties and seventies rock with its clunkily naïve mysticism, its sitars and picturebook lyrics, nor the irritating melodiousness of psychedelic trance, but a psychedelia which combines dreaminess, insistence, the evocation of unfamiliar mental and physical states, the sense of a journey both embodied and transcendent. The bizarre beauty of the ocean documentary - one of my favourite televisula genres - is definitely an appropriate reference point.

As much as being a soundtrack to a white-plumed voyage above and within rolling waves populated by mer-creatures and horses of foam, Krill’ Slippin is also a soundtrack to a bedazzled, lazily drifting state of beach becalmedness infused with mild melancholia – in other words, perhaps the perfect summer music. While their later works tends towards being heavier and more experimental, Krill Slippin’ (with their second album, 1993’s Food For Other Fish, running a close second) is their masterpiece – a masterpiece of navigation between crests and lulls, the evocation of a half-mythical, echoing space of flows, located somewhere in uncharted waters.

Vivian Girls - Vivian Girls (2008)

While there is a lot of new music that I listen to and appreciate, I do tend to think that there is a process going on whereby the vast majority of music that has been released since the mid-1990s rehashes old genres rather than doing anything new. I don’t want to think this – it sounds like the kind of cliché produced by every grumpy old curmudgeon since the inception of recorded music – but when I think about new genres which have come about since, say, trip hop, I have to wonder what really counts as such – Folktronica? Dubstep and grime? Glitch? Many of the currently lauded acts seem to be those who are very successful rehashers of olds genres, particularly when those genres were little known in their original incarnations and thus sound new to the majority of listeners and critics (for example, The Horrors = The Chameleons, The Knife = Switchblade Symphony).

However, sometimes an act comes along which surprises you. There is a question about whether taking old genres and melding them together produces something which is actually original, or which only seems so – that is, is it more than the sum of its parts? When I first listened to Vivian Girls, I liked them a lot, but I felt like I had definitely heard this sound before – and that seemed to be the general critical consensus. But the more I listened to their work, the more I couldn’t really think of any other act which had this sound – rather, what I was actually experiencing was a sense of familiarity which the music contains which is not a result of a lack of originality, but rather of the artistry with which these songs hook into your brain while nonetheless never being obvious. The sound itself, to take the lazy path of description, is a combination of garage and girl groups, shoegaze, punk and no wave: fuzzy scuzzy guitars, distortion, catchy hooks, often-indecipherable vocals and beautiful harmonies, all with the rough-edged sense that this was thrown together in a few days (which was, apparently, the case) and a delightful raucousness which precisely balances those hooks and harmonies.

While their second album, Everything Goes Wrong (2009) has some wonderful moments, the first, clocking in at twenty-two minutes or so (and that’s ten songs, folks) is a masterpiece, an absorbing, joyous and cathartic experience which also happens to contain individual tracks which will worm their way into your brain and groove around there without giving rise to the slightest hint of irritation. The lyrics tend to the exploration of love and its loss, but given the sixties influence, this is no problematic thing, and their shoegazy incoherence also means that this sweetness does not cloy – having said which, perhaps my favourite track, ‘No,’ consists solely in repetitions of that one syllable. The darkness which can also be found at times is foreshadowed in their chosen moniker, a reference to the work of outsider artist Henry Darger whose work combined sweet kitcshiness with graphic brutality and an obsession with the child – a combination which seems quite appropriate for the contradictions which are balanced and embodied here. The finest qualities of the album are embodied in a sense of irrepressibility – the undemanding demandingness of the Vivian Girls’ bubblegum atavism.

Cowboy Junkies - Whites Off Earth Now!! (1986)

Cowboy Junkies' first album has remained underappreciated in light of the success of their later work. But despite its flip title (Cracker From Another Planet, anyone?), Whites Off Earth Now!! is a mesmerizing and beautiful album, one with a great deal to say, and with hidden depths which reveal themselves on repeated listens.

There is only one original track on this album – and the loose theme is blues, but a unique blues in which Margo Timmin’s smooth, emotionless voice creates a sense of disconnection and menace which gives a new edge to the melancholy and despair inherent in that genre – while the gender disconnect in the lyrics adds to this sense of disquiet - a later comparison might be found in Martina Topley-Bird's work on tracks like Black Steel or Bad Dream. This is a highly atmospheric album – the songs evoke late-night driving both in their slow, loping rhythms and in the lyrics of tracks like 'State Trooper'. There is a sense of quiet threat here, an understated coldness, a hint of the precursor or aftermath of violence, which may be little apparent on cursory listens but which deeply informs the entire work and forms its central sensibility. Timmin’s vocals haunt the songs, floating above them, while the non-vocal work on the one hand creates an hypnotic atmosphere as figures and rhythms repeat, minimalistically, with a slow but building insistence, and on the other disrupts this very atmosphere with unexpected shivers, tones and caterwauls – an effect which reminds me of the way in which dub uses the tension between repetition and the dropping of unexpected intrusions into and out of a work to create aural landscapes.

While covers include such Americaniac icons as Springsteen, John Lee Hooker and Lightnin’ Hopkins, if there is a figure presiding over the proceedings, it is Robert Johnson (whose tracks 'Me and the Devil Blues' and 'Crossroads' are both featured) – and, looming behind Johnson, the devil himself, but a devil personified within and without the figure of a sorrowful, vengeful protagonist making his way (and, as mentioned above, ‘his’ is the appropriate pronoun) through an updated Hopperesque landscape of urban ghettoes and murky swamps, striplit highways and backwoods hovels. You’ll never get out of these blues alive…

Iggy Pop – Préliminaires (2009)

It seems odd that, despite Iggy Pop’s prominence and importance in the musical landscape, his breathtaking new album has arrived with little fanfare or critical attention. I couldn’t buy it, for example, from any of the mainstream music retailers and it hasn’t featured in any music of 2009 roundup that I’ve come across. But perhaps this only adds to its subtle charms.

Pop – both his work with the Stooges and his solo output – is clearly a hugely influential musician, but one who, for me personally, hasn’t been central, with the exception of his album The Idiot (1977), a work far ahead of its time. But Préliminaires changes all that – and changes what we can expect from Iggy. The menace and sexuality that characterises his work are still present, but here they are sublimated, swathed in a world-weary, self-deprecating and sophisticated atmosphere which is still, paradoxically, raw. The influences here are French chanson, orchestral lounge and jazz, cabaret and touches of electronica, and this combination, combined with Iggy’s guttural delivery and deeply original lyrics, creates a completely unified album (purposefully belying its title in a stroke of characteristic irony) which is an unlikely departure and a stunning success.

The album (with cover art by Marjane Satrapi of Persepolis fame), is loosely based around Michel Houellebecq’s novel The Possibility of an Island, but, to my taste at least, outshines its progenitor, exploring in more intelligible ways not only the themes mentioned below, but the concept of reproduceability in the age of (post)industrial capitalism. Another point of reference for me would be the eroticised biomechanical criminal underworlds of William Burroughs – and the other aspect of this album which is in tune with the sensibility of a Burroughs (in works such as Queer) or Hubert Selby Jr. is the vein of melancholy which runs through it, particularly manifest in the covers of 'Les Feuilles Mortes' (known in English as ‘Autumn Leaves’) and Antonio Carlos Jobim’s 'How Insensitive,' memorably sung by Astrud Gilberto (among many others). The raw side of Pop remains in evidence on tracks like 'King of the Dogs' – the figure of the dog being another theme, stemming from Houellebecq’s work. As with that work, Pop is evidently engaging with the themes of aging and mortality, their relation to emotion, physicality and sensuality, but where I usually find that exploration of these issues produces work which is deeply banal in artists who have otherwise been known for imagination, in Pop’s case I venture to say that the reverse is true. One can only hope that this deeply original album is truly a preliminary…

Jamaica Funk: Original Jamaican Funk and Soul 45s (Soul Jazz, 2007)

We're lucky to have Soul Jazz, which covers a rather eclectic selection falling into my own musical taste - that area covering post-punk and new wave as well as reggae, disco, and funk - and they've given us such post-punk gems as The Sexual Life of the Savages and New York Noise, as well as various Studio One compilations and releases by personal favourites including Konk, ESG, Arthur Russell, Mantronix and A Certain Ratio. And that's just to name a few.

This particular compilation, which collects tracks from 1972-1978, falls into the basket of recent releases of Jamaican music from the 60s and 70s falling outside the traditional reggae canon (other notable works include Trojan's Work Your Soul and Blood & Fire's Darker Than Blue.

Like those releases, the tracks featured on Jamaica Funk aren't actually reggae-free, so to speak; there's a clear musical influence on most of these cuts, which are for the most part more closely wedded to the reggae tradition, and then to soul, than to, say, the funk of James Brown or George Clinton. There are some familiar names here (testifying to the diverse talents of Jamaican musicians): Augustus Pablo (with two instrumental cuts of 'Ain't No Sunshine,' a version of which also appears on Original Rockers), Derrick Harriott, The Heptones and Big Youth, among others.

Like other Soul Jazz releases, this is a very well put together selection, which flows nicely, dud-free, and an interesting range of sounds, showcasing this soul-funk-reggae fusion area. As Soul Jazz suggest, there's a three-way fusion of Jamaican, American and British trends in the work featured here which made itself felt both in the music musicians were listening to, and in the nature of emerging markets for the Jamaican sound in the UK and the US. Particular highlights are the moody instrumentals: Cedric Brooks' Silent Force, Winston Wright's Jam #1 and The Rebels' Rhodesia. I was also very taken by Sydney, George & Jackie's cover of perennial favourite Papa Was A Rolling Stone (while various other covers of funk and soul tunes are also in evidence). For a different slant on Jamaican popular music, uncovering connections which may not be obvious or well-documented; or, on the other hand, an excellent selection and construction of a bunch of funky reggae numbers; it's well worth your while taking a look, or rather, a listen.

Infantjoy - Where The Night Goes (2005)

Infantjoy is the creation of James Banbury (of The Auteurs) and British music journalist Paul Morley. Where The Night Goes is definitely a cerebral album, but one which is never pretentious, and which is also eminently listenable. These qualities echo those of its inspiration (whose work is heard 'haunting' the album), Erik Satie.

Musically, the album is - well - I'd say downbeat electronica if that didn't sound like something you'd play in a trendy cafe, which this work is emphatically not. There are glitch influences, occasional elements of a harsher, semi-industrial sound, and also, among the other non-vocal tracks, a cover of Japan's Ghosts (a song which also makes an appearance on another favourite album of mine, Tricky's Maxinquaye). Atmospherically, the music is reminiscent of Japan - dark (or, perhaps, 'grey' in the very bet sense) and understated without being melodramatic or angst-ridden. Satie is here, too, in the nature of the music, in its complexity and elements of the experimental without being 'difficult'; with a concern for form, for loops, repetition and return, for motifs and themes; and in the way in which it lends itself equally to close listening or to being played as 'incidental' or 'ambient' music. A soundtrack to late afternoon, on a rainy day, reading snatches of theory in between drifting in and out of sleep...

Grace Jones - Private Life: The Compass Point Sessions (1998)

I've been familiar with Pull Up To The Bumper and Warm Leatherette for a long time, but it had somehow escaped my notice that the fabulous Ms. Jones (star of such films as Conan The Destroyer and the chronically under-recognised eighties bloodsucker flick Vamp) had an entire art-pop oeuvre which placed her well apart from her contemporaries.

Private Life, a double-disc set, encompasses most of the tracks from the three definitive albums that Jones recorded with the legendary Sly and Robbie at the Compass Point Studio in the Bahamas - namely, Warm Leatherette (1980), Nightclubbing (1981) and Living My Life (1982) (for those who aren't familiar with Jones' oeuvre, the first two consist chiefly of covers, from The Normal to Roxy Music to the Pretenders and Iggy Pop). I'm a big roots reggae fan (if you can stomach the dancehall homophobia), and also a fan of what we might term alt-disco and of eighties synth beats and eighties electrominimalism. So this album, on which the three combine, had me salivating from the first time I played it.

The tracks range through the above genres, adding some soul and funk ; the emotional palette ranges from cold and disconnected, the epitome of knowing, sexualised eighties veneer, to quietly intense, to joyfully psychotic. All of the three albums mentioned above are great, although I prefer the first two, but for some reason this album comes together in a way that none of them do.

The tracks are mostly extended versions and/or dub versions (apparently these are all played live, rather than extended remixes), which really bring something out of the tracks which extends and deepens them and allows them to create an overall soundscape of fragment and repetition, running tracks into each other in a way, unusual for a compilation, which makes the album an experience as a whole rather than a bunch of songs that stand or fall on their individual merits. Even the tracks that I'm not quite so enamoured of fit perfectly into the aesthetic and the listening experience. The mastering itself is crystal clear (necessary for this kind of beaty, extended endeavour where the sound quality is make or break) and foregrounds the breathtaking art of Sly & Robbie.

Particular highlights are the long and dub versions of The Pretenders' Private Life, and of Joy Division's She's Lost Control; long version of Roxy Music's Love Is The Drug; a demo of the Cash classic Ring of Fire; and a soul-inflected cover of the Motown hit The Hunter Gets Captured By The Game (which i'm also, incidentally enamoured of in the version by the underappreciated Mary Wells). Overall, though, the album is an experience which drags you into Grace Jones' twisted, genrebending world and doesn't let go 'til you're grooving your art out.

Arthur Russell - Calling Out of Context

Arthur Russell is one of those musicians who I came across only recently, and couldn't imagine why I hadn't encountered years ago. Frequently name-checked in lists of music by eccentrics and outsiders, Russell (1952-1992) was known as a disco musician and also a cellist who collaborated with such countercultural giants as Philip Glass, David Byrne and Allen Ginsberg. In February, a documentary film on Russell, Wild Combination, was released.

Calling Out Of Context, a 2004 compilation of Russell's more dance-oriented work, is the first of his albums that I've come across, and I'm absolutely addicted to it. I was surprised to find that it was a compilation, given the way in which it hangs together perfectly as an album, both musically and in terms of emotional palette.

The album consist of synthy, dance-beat-oriented, reverb-drenched eighties art-pop melancholia. A reviewer's description, 'New Order meets Nick Drake,' isn't too far off the mark (given the general inadequacy of shorthand description by comparison). Though there's a definite pop flavour, and echoes of more pop-oriented eighties acts like New Order or even the more introspective moments of Jimmy Somerville's work, the songs are not pop songs as such; rather than traditional verse-chorus structures the listener is presented with sometimes-inaudible, haunting phrases drifting in and out of a musical landscape. Indeed, rather than a collection of songs, it's a landscape that's created here, or perhaps a marine-scape (given the frequent references to water and the feeling of the liminal, of surface and depth); a place in which one finds oneself adrift...