This Weekend I'll Mostly Be Listening to: 12.5 for Summer 2012

Okay, it’s that time of the year again, a quick look and listen to some of the tracks that have been played and replayed already in the year. I’m intrigued to see an hint of post-punk/goth creep into the mix. And a musical? The usual complement of electronica of one sort or another is now represented by about a third which seems to be less than previously. Of course, as a look outside the window demonstrates this isn’t much of a Summer weatherwise. So if there’s actually some, y’know, sun this list might change radically.

1 Beroshima w/Ulrich Schnauss White Coffee

German DJ and producer Frank Müller and Ulrich Schnauss team up to produce one of the best electronica albums of the last two years. This is nicely typical of the output. And political note, any album with a track entitled Tory Scum is good in my book (can I also recommend anyone who likes this to listen to Feuer In Die Glut which is the missing link between glam and techno, should one wish to find such a link, and is available in audio on this site).

2 Steppin’ Out With My Baby

This is an ear worm. That’s all I have to say.

3 miserylab Fear for the Future

The video repeats a simple question you may have heard before.

How would the ruling class of our planet prepare itself for the end of capitalism?

And the answer?

It wouldn’t.

Sounds about right. Politically inflected (inflected? what am I saying, it’s entirely political) post-punk/industrial.

4 The Soft Moon Parallels

The ghost of New Order, the Cure, Joy Division, John Foxx and a raft of others haunts this album. A slew of instrumentals, some individual vocals. The odd pop song (“When It’s Over”). A lot of descending bass lines. Some wonky keyboards. This is sort of goth, sort of post-punk.

5 Sammy Hagar Heavy Metal

Those with long long memories will perhaps recall how once upon a time Heavy Metal, the fantasy/SF magazine, went and had an animated film made based on their output. An animated film that in this Pixar age seems so primitive as to have been beamed in from the early 20th century. This was the theme song. Hagar – who was in Montrose and also served his time in Van Halen – I can take or leave, at least he’s not as grim as the truly dismal Ted Nugent. But I like the song.

6 Gaye Bykers on Acid Motorvate

You know, once upon a time there was a musical movement called grebo…

Yeah. Well, that’s enough about that.

But GBOA, well, they too were once the future. For at least three or four issues of the NME around 1986. And then they weren’t, but this is surprisingly good to my ears (and weirdly sounds like nothing so much as The Three Johns gone metal). Later they turned up in Apollo 440.

7 Rush Clockwork Angels

A trio of men in their late 50s and early 60s. And a new album, a concept album no less, which is almost as good as the early 2000s Vapour Trails and better by far than anything else they’ve produced in two decades. Very prog-like, and in this instance that’s not an insult.

8 Trembling Blue Stars The Rainbow

Ex-Sarah record miserabilists – the sort who make miserylab seem like the most optimistic crew ever -
formerly in the Field Mice. They’ve produced a series of albums which oscillate between soft techno and acoustic ballads. This is one that tries to straddle the two to good effect.

9 Protoculture Dawn Razor

South African psytrance – this isn’t as cheesy as some of his more recent output and all the better for it. Weirdly, or not so much, I hear echoes of System 7 in this.

10 Secret Colours Lava

If you like Spiritualised or the Jesus and Mary Chain chances are you’ll really like this crew from the US. If not chances are you won’t.

11 Reporter Khanada

Similar to Jon Hopkins and from that school of soft electronica/dance.

12 The Church Warm Oily Voices

This is an outtake, supposedly from 1987. The sound quality is crap, but it’s a nice tune reminiscent of the Icicle Works or Echo & the Bunnymen, and in particular the latter’s Villiers Terrace.

Man Ray (Peter Hook) Making Ways
And because there’s no YouTube video of this one it doesn’t count as one of the 12. But if you go to this link you’ll find three tracks from Peter Hook’s Man Ray outfit (a vastly superior effort than his current Joy Division redux project whose pointlessness is something to behold) who concentrate on producing an homage (or parody, depending upon your taste) of late 80s rave. “Making Ways” is particularly excellent but it’s all of interest.

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