Scathe Reviews |
Rico Cyber-Tec Horatii New Dawn Fades Complicity
Puressence: Planet Helpless
When a band releases a first album as good as Puressence's eponymous debut, they face the danger that everything they release after it will be something of an anticlimax after having set such a high standard.
Their second album, "Only Forever", had a good shot at avoiding this, with a killer opening track and a scattering of excellent singles, but ultimately couldn't escape the tag of "pretty amazing, but not as good as the first album". Which was a shame, as by any other standard it was excellent.
The third album, "Planet Helpless", looks set to share a similar fate.
The opening track, "Walking Dead", is the current single, and is something of a departure for them, with an upbeat, almost dancey style. It caused me some consternation on first hearing it, but having had this on single for long enough to get used to it, I now actively like it, and it's certainly catchy enough.
The second track, "Prodigal Song", could have been a B-side from the era of the first album, which given the quality of their B-sides at the time is high praise indeed.
"How does it feel?", the third track, is more in the style of the second album, and not one of the stronger songs on the album.
The following track, "Analgesic Love Song", has been around the net for a while and again could easily have been a B-side from the first album. It's one of the best songs on the album, along with "Prodigal Song" and the fifth track.
This track, "She's Gotten Over You", is almost a direct clone of one of the upbeat songs on the second album, and would have fitted in perfectly on that album as one of its standout tracks. It would make a good single, as it's one of the few upbeat tracks on it and is immediately catchy with a strong chorus - ideal for radio play, I'd have thought.
"Make Time", the sixth track, was one of the standout tracks from their recent gig at Water Rats, and whilst not particularly upbeat certainly stays in the head.
"Planet Helpless", the title track, is slower and mellower and pretty much marks the theme for the rest of the album. It's similar in some ways to some of the slower tracks on "OK computer" by Radiohead, but not quite as good as that might sound (though to be honest that album took a while to grow on me, so this track might too).
Track 8, "Ironstone Izadora", is the B-side to the current single and to be honest does sound like a B-side, with something of a "lazy" feel to it. It's not a bad song, but gives the impression of ideas not fully worked out.
The last 5 tracks on the album are all quite mellow; at best ("You Move Me", "Heart of Gold") they touch a fragile beauty, at worst ("Comfort When You Smile", "Strangers") they just sound listless and bereft of inspiration.
It's possible these two tracks will grow on me, but at present I'd say the album would have been better without them.
Overall, "Planet Helpless" is a reasonable enough successor to the second album: although it suffers from a lack of momentum towards the end, they still have that spark that made their first album so brilliant, and reflections of it continue to illuminate their later work.
Queen Adreena (supporting Rico) at the Joiners Arms, 15/11/99
I reviewed Rico the last time he played at the Joiners so I won't do it again- suffice to say it was an excellent performance, if anything even better than the last one. Intense, energetic and with no Cyclefly fans to get in the way this time...
However, some people on here might be interested in the support band, Queen Adreena, since they're essentially an updated version of Daisy Chainsaw- it's Katie Jane Garside and The Bloke With The Posh Name Who Wrote All The Songs And Who Now Looks Like A Tortoise[1].
And they're really quite good- lots of tribal drumming, unintelligible wailing from Katie, scattered quiet bits and a tendency to go berserk every time you think things are about to get a bit dull.
They look good too- a very tall posey bassist bloke in a Chinese dress, a drummer who looks scarily like Maxim from the Prodigy, a guitarist who really doesn't look that much like a tortoise and of course Katie.
Who is still really thin and still 100% bonkers.
I was having quite a discussion with someone afterwards as to whether she was, er, "on something" or is just naturally Like That.
Strange girl.
Anyway, very impressive live, though I have to say they don't really deal in catchy tunes, there was nothing I walked away humming afterwards.
If anyone's interested, they've got a single out now/soon (can't see a release date on the promo) which is called "X-ing Off The Days" and is very 80s-style tribal drums & waily vocals so gets the Scathe Seal Of Approval.
[1] Well, Mike thought he looked like a tortoise, I thought he'd weathered quite well...
Rico: "Sanctuary Medicines" / Live at the Joiners 28/9/99
One of the best albums I've heard this year is "Sanctuary Medicines" by Rico- it's a dark claustrophobic mix of NIN and Tricky, but far more accessible than that might suggest.
Interestingly, it seems in a recent interview he's been labelled with the "goth" tag, which is presumably because of the sound and the depressed nature of the lyrics, which are intensely personal[1]- maybe similar to Reznor in the general feel, but somewhat better in execution IMO.
The NIN/Tricky parallels continue in that Rico is essentially a one-man band, so I was worried that live it would be a complete non-event.
Fortunately it wasn't- like Reznor, he has a full band for touring, including (to my surprise) a real drummer.
The venue, the Joiners, was packed with metal kids there to see Cyclefly (a fairly standard MTV-friendly rock band who will probably thus be huge), but this didn't detract from the performance. Live, the aggression levels are way up from the sometimes muted trip-hop sound of the album and Rico worked himself up into a frightening peak of intensity, especially during "Smokescreen" (his finest moment IMO).
For me, one of the main attractions is that the music is very much centred around the vocals- it's a million miles away from the "get a dancefloor-friendly beat, throw on a few bleeps and, oops no vocals, better chuck some meaningless Teutonic-style ramblings over the top" approach of a lot of the current crop of electro bands. And there's no Manson-style schlock-horror and/or image-over-content, thank god. As far as I could see, Rico didn't have any piercings, which is a good sign.
And there was no irony, no attempt at "hey, we're happy bunnies after all"- this was definitely a Zero Perk gig- for which full respect.
One of the best albums and one of the best gigs of this year...
[1] I'm not quite sure where the media gets the idea that goth bands go on about how depressed they are all the time, but I wish it was true...
A few months ago Marc Heal of Cyber-Tec/Cubanate was kind enough to send me the new Cyber-Tec album, "Cut". He thought I might like it as it was similar in some ways to early Cubanate and had a darker feel.
And he was right.
It's excellent- it was the best thing I'd been sent in quite a while.
I've been playing it a lot and the tunes have stuck in my head, which is always a good sign. There don't seem to be any weak tracks, either, and there's a good mix of styles.
In parts it sounds like a slightly more restrained "Cyberia-era Cubanate, especially "Brutal", "Gesellschaft", "Cut" and "Stormtrigger".
As for the darker appeal, it doesn't actually sound goth, but there are parts of it which sound similar to the sort of European "Dark Electro" bands which appeal to goths, notably on "She Left".
In essence, this sounds somewhere in between Cubanate at their peak, the older Cyber-tec material and Project Pitchfork.
Well worth searching out if that's your thing...
First, it's very different from "Riposte"- so much so that there's very little point in comparing them, rather like "OK Computer" and "The Bends". This is of course a good sign- if the Horatii had spent 4 years (or however long it is) and come up with "Riposte Mk II", it would have shown they'd spent 4 years standing still.
"Succour Punch" is less straightforward than "Riposte" and more interesting. It's also, dare I say it, less obviously traditional goth, though arguments about whether it's goth or not are of course totally futile.
What it actually reminds me of is the alternative scene which was the background to early/mid 80s goth, and in which bands like the Chameleons, the Bolshoi and the Three Johns moved around in whilst successfully or unsuccessfully evading the goth tag.
This isn't to say that it sounds 80s, it's very modern, but it has a similar atmosphere in that it sounds like it's trying to do something alternative without any fixed reference points, and thus has a "goth feel" without being immediately "goth".
Notoriously, the Horatii themselves also look less goth, and I think this is probably a good move if they actually want to get anywhere (the goth tag is still a kiler- I was playing "Heroin Lite" in one of my indie clubs last week and a friend of mine asked what it was, obviously interested. When I told him it was the Horatii, he switched off immediately as he knew they were a goth band).
Anyway, back to the album.
The first five tracks are excellent, especially "Heroin Lite", "She Bikini" and "Stickman". I've mentioned before that I prefer "Heroin Lite" to "Rolls Royce", and fortunately for me the album is more in the vein of the former track[1] - quirky, dissonant, with odd effects, but also with great choruses.
However, after "She Bikini" the album tails off somewhat- "I Hate" is a pretty good punky rant, but after that there comes the meandering ambience of "Trouble", the quirky-but-almost-chorusless "Poisoner", then "Pool", which is reminiscent of one of Bauhaus's art-noodley moments and finally "Sachets of Love", a slightly poppier track.
These aren't bad songs, they're merely (IMO, of course) not up to the very high standard set by the first half of the album.
There are constant themes throughout the album, however.
Despite the Horatii's "perky" tag, there's a pervasive tension and edgeiness to the music, and especially the lyrics- it's not depressing music, but it's certainly neither relaxing nor cheerful. The lyrics, as far as I can make out, seem to indicate that at some point Roo went out with a pervy sex-mad heroin addict- I may be completely wrong, but that seems to be the drift of "Lie On You", Heroin Lite" and "She Bikini". If I get the drift right, "Heroin Lite" is about being in a relationship where he's regarded as second-best to heroin- which may of course be fictional, but there's a definite "bad relationship" theme to about half the songs on the album.
[Note: since writing this review I spoke to Roo about it, and the "Heroin" bit is fictional...]
The next Horatii interview could be interesting if he gets asked about the lyrics... which are, I think, a major improvement on the lyrics in "Riposte".
Anyway, to sum up, "Succour Punch" is a very good album, and a very *different* album- anyone expecting another version of "Riposte" is in for a surprise...
I was in Resurrection Records on Saturday spending money I didn't have and made an interesting discovery. Most of the stuff I bought was bleepy stuff like Project Pitchfork, Evils Toy, Eco, VNV Nation, Galan Pix etc blah blah blah yawn yawn snooze which I tend to find interminably dull[1], but I did pick up one interesting CD.
I'd been told that Pink Turns Blue sounded like the Chameleons, and I asked to hear some of their music. Alas, they sounded nothing like the Chameleons, but they kept playing in the background and suddenly a track started that really did sound like the Chameleons. Turned out it wasn't Pink Turns Blue, it was an Italian band called New Dawn Fades[2].
The CD was recorded in Jan 97, which makes it 2 years old now, but I don't remember a review of it on upg at the time or since and I know there are a fair few Chameleons fans on here, so I thought it was worth mentioning. It really _does_ sound like the Chameleons, at least in one important respect- they've obviously inherited an effects pedal marked "Instant Chameleons Guitar Sound". And they have a Real Drummer, too, which gets them lots of extra Pixie Points.
However, they have one major failing- they're not too keen on vocals.
This doesn't mean their vocalist is bad at all, in fact he's a lot better than most goth vocalists- it's just that he doesn't seem very confident. So much so that only half the tracks have vocals, and half of those have a female guest vocalist instead. And the vocals are well down in the mix.
The overall effect is to make it somewhere inbetween early Disco Inferno[3] and a Chameleons instrumental album. It doesn't get lively- it's very much a "bleak and beautiful" album, with none of the passion or intensity of the Chameleons (emotionally it's quite a "distant" album, which is why I saw parallels with early Disco Inferno).
The album is self-titled and has seven tracks, with names like "Fifteen Days"[4], "A moment in time" and "In the Garden". I'm not sure what the lyrics are as they're so low down in the mix, but I think they're in English and they appear to be OK- ie at the opposite end of the spectrum to Cradle of Filth :) [5]
Now the important question: does anyone know anything more about this group and have they done anything else?
[1] But other people like it, and I don't actively dislike most of it- except in large doses, when I just get very bored. Ho hum.
[2] Who weren't, as you might expect, a Joy Division covers band. And thanks to Dave from Exile in Bath for asking to hear them...
[3] Hirez, if you knew about New Dawn Fades and didn't tell me, consider yourself avenged for me not telling you about Disco Inferno :)
[4] I think they like Modern English too :)
[5] I had an entertaining session with the staff in HMV recently involving communal reading of COF lyrics, which gave us a good laugh...
Complicity, Beatmolls and Manuskript at the Camden Barfly Sunday 4th April 99
Just come back from watching an interesting mix of bands at the Camden Barfly. And drinking lots, so excuse me if this doesn't make sense...
First up were The Beatmolls, a highly entertaining indie-punk band in the Kenickie/Dweeb/Bis/Sunshot mould. Yes, they had a drum machine[1], but they made up for it by having *three* singers- a ludicrously tall singer/guitarist bloke in leopardskin, a crusty construction worker and a cute fairy with pink dreadlocks. All this in addition to a bassist and keyboard player.
All very bouncy, and with much entertaining inter-song banter, none of which I can remember. Not goth, but great fun. (of course, not everyone saw it like this- just after they'd come on, and I was still in the bar, someone I knew exited the Band Room in a hurry. "What are the band like?", I asked. "A punk band" she replied in disgust. "Oh good", I replied, and hurried in...)
Got to admit, after The Beatmolls, I was worried that the other two bands would be a bit of an anticlimax.
Then Complicity came on.
I was initially diverted by nattering to Uncle N and an ex-member of The March Violets[2] outside, but once I got into the Band Room I was totally blown away.
Complicity are now f*cking awesome.
I'd got their EP from a year or two ago and filed it under "Quite good, has promise".
Bloody hell, have they improved since then!
They now have a Real Drummer and are a Real Band- and a bloody excellent one at that!
Their entire set was a 100mph drum-driven onslaught with Altered-States- style guitars[3] and the intensity levels on maximum. Moreover, the singer can sing, can move around and has stage presence!
I'll now give the ultimate accolade: Complicity, on tonight's form, could quite happily have fitted in with the original pre-Sisters goth scene (c.1981/3) and would have been more than a match for most of them.
This may give the impression that they're dated, but they're not- because they tap into the original punk/goth crossover they actually sound a hell of a lot fresher than most modern goth bands.
F*cking great. And bloody intense- the last song was "Intensity", which I thought just about summed it up.
After that, Manuskript were a bit of a let-down. They're not a bad band at all, they're good at what they do, but what they do is essentially 80s pop.
Which is fine, but it's not really my thing.
Admittedly they've got a slightly harder edge than most 80s pop, but I had a frightening flashback tonight to when I used to get dragged along by ex-girlfriends to see 80s pop-style bands.
It's interesting that Manuskript are classed as a goth band- back in the early 80s they'd have been classed as pop, though maybe with an alternative edge. Certainly not positive punk or goth- The Beatmolls would have been more likely to have been lumped in with the early goth scene than they would.
Tonight was like having early Rubella Ballet supporting Southern Death Cult[4] supporting Duran Duran[5]. Odd.
[1] Or whatever.
[2] The guitarist, Tom. I think. Disturbing factlet: Cleo now runs a stall in Portobello Road...
[3] Hardly surprising since they've got the Altered States guitarist.
[4] Except that Complicity are actually better.
[5] Though thinking about it, Manuskript are probably close to King- who I was once dragged along to see...