We’re kind of off then, kind of, three albums that have come our way ad we ease into this still kind of rather new year and before we start to unpack the new Slift album. We are still being as picky as ever, maybe even more so? It was always a bit of a folly and well…
Lucidvox – That’s What Remained (Glitterbeat) – Now if Lucidvox’s new album had landed here last year (it came out in mid November) it might well have figured in our end of year lists or the best of ’23 radio show but it didn’t and we, as much as we’d like to be, can’t be everywhere and so here we are at the start of January 2024 and once again better late than never ever. It was the colour of Wandering that caught ears first, the gentle drama that turned heads and sent us looking for more, those horns or piper or whatever they are, the kind of eastern promise of them, the different way they have of putting it together, the slow build, the power, the colour of Wandering caught ears first and sent us in search of more. They have this rather beautifully warm harmonic things going on, slightly folky, heavy, dramatic, think-bodied, full, Georgian maybe?
Vast, swirling, a touch ritualistic? Formerly based in Russia, for their new album That’s What Remained, the all-female quartet have apparently added additional sonic thrust (horns, keyboards, strings, atmospheric textures) to their “already acclaimed and impassioned psych-rock”. They’re new to our overworked ears
Speaking to Vogue in 1970, the 20th century modernist writer Vladimir Nabokov stated that, “The best part of a writer’s biography is not the record of his adventures but the story of his style.” This is an easily transferable maxim; style often being – if inadvertently – a clearer mirror to the soul than other artistic considerations. – Nabokov’s words, as someone else has already pointed out, could have been said of Lucidvox’s second long player, That’s What Remained: here, style reveals the soul. Soul is the right word,there’s a depth here along with the ambitious bigness of it all, a heart, a warmth, a need. I have no idea what they’re singing about but it feels like they saying something positive, something born of hope, s feeling of better thing somewhere in the glorious painterly detail of it all. And it does feel like nothing is ever places by accident, that this is very considered, composed, every warm detail, every tiny twist properly considered.
Lucidvox, s owe are told, are a tight-knit, democratic band, used to making music together, alone. But when formulating this record they turned outwards, and asked trumpeter Timur Mizinov from Wooden Whales, violinist Dasha Avramova, guitarist Dmitry Chesnov and multi-instrumentalist Ella Bayisbaeva as a back vocalist to contribute; alongside a children’s choir. Guitarist Galla Gintovt mapped out the reason. “We wanted to have a bigger, more powerful sound. And when many people make music together, we can come together as one in the group; it’s different, an interesting experience for a musician when you are one of many.” The results were such that Galla, and drummer Nadya Samodurova both quipped they wanted to rename the band Lucidvox Orchestra. Samodurova noted: “Dima [Dmitry] came to the rehearsals and tried to make a bigger sound. Dima is magic; he has a good ear for music and plays his guitar instantly, to find the correct point where to add to the sound.” Vocalist Alina Evseeva: “All the musicians who played with us created their parts themselves. It wasn’t us suggesting it. It was coworking and co-curating.”
It is a rich album, a rewardingly dense album, a hopeful album, something that feels a little bit special, a big piece of work that feels rather right…
Folly Group – Down There! (So Young) - You can’t stop now, this has already begun, this rather fractured review I mean, it has to be written now, didn’t really want to do it, we do like to be picky, their pusher does keep insisting this is one we should be covering, he won’t give in, we have ignored his messages several times now. Well no, not ignored, nothing is ever ignored, the album has been listened to quite a few times over the last few weeks, he’s just insisted again though and well it is the new year and the wind and rain are both keeping us in, that and the price of life, let’s give the album one more go.
Folly Group, ah well, I really don’t know? They sound great in small doses, a spiky track on a radio show that might catch an ear, I mean, that start to that one really does catch you, it sounds good and too late, it is a part of you now and throw it down the well, watch the water swell. Folly Group sound good when you catch a one off track somewhere, a track strategically placed on a Spotify playlist maybe (we’ve had them on our own playlist several times or did we take them off again? Did that pass the test of time? Can’t remember now), they sound good is small doses, maybe a track on one of our five pieces of music pages here on this fractured website (that has happened a number of times over the last couple of years hasn’t it?). Do like them, not sure I want to eat a whole album though? Do keep on dipping in to Down There!, quick bites here and there, and we do keep getting told how experimental and out there the East London band are when really are they? This sounds pretty straight forward to us, their pusherman and his emails tell us they’re a “really interesting band and definitely something a bit different – their two-drummer set-up has seen them earn quite a few live plaudits but also translates really well on record with lots of programmed drums and live drumming / percussion intertwining with samples of band members hitting chairs, fire extinguishers and more” – hitting chairs! Well whooopyflippindo no one ever hit a fire extinguisher in a studio before! Sounds pretty normal and rather straight forward to us, I mean they’re okay, I like them, I think I like them, I mean, i really want to like them but really, they’re not that radical or maybe they are to people who just listen to Radio 6 all day? They do sound like a typical Radio6-friendly indie band to these ears, they’re not Historically F*cked or PoiL or Saddam Webcam are they?! And I’ve been listen to Aunty Rayzor far too much today so this polite East London music really ain’t sounding that radically experimental to me Mr Pusherman, it is all blurry memories and one day, on a weekend, one one day I was just a young man and they sound like one of those bands Pitchfork would think were radical and invite to play their oh-so-radical festival of self-congratulation, they sound like a million self-proclaimed Post-punk things, they sound like an East London band who think they’re far cooler than they actually are, they sound like a band who think they’re too cool and way too important to follow anyone on Instagram, they sound rather annoying actually and as much as I want to like them there is just something stopping me really liking them and this album has been on repeat for a goof few hours now and well..
Oh look, we can’t stop now, the review has already begun, if this was Pitchfork we’d give ’em 6.9 or maybe 7.2 at a push and one day I was just a young man and now I look again I can’t see what’s different but hey, Joe from Idles really likes them so what the flip do I know eh? They’re young and hip and I played the new releases of both an 82 year and then an 89 year old on my best of 2023 radio show the other day and straight away someone (probably from East London) told me it was all about the youth now and playing old people on the radio was not where it was at. Everyone else should move on over she said, might have been someone from East London’s Guts gallery actually, probably was. Hey, who cares if we like Folly Group’s album or not? What the hell does it matter? I do kind of like them, it small helpings, on a Spotify playlist maybe, but hey, who cares, Joe likes them, he thinks they released the track of 2023, and their musicpusher keeps emailing us to tell us Radio 6 are playing them and Pitchfork like them, he keeps telling us things like “Musically the record draws from everything from post-punk, dub, trip-hop, dance music and traditional Afro-Cuban rhythms, this bracing, complex record lends a genuinely original voice to a familiar theme: alienation in modern Britain – touching on mental health, financial pressures, disenfranchisement, dejection, anxiety, and Life in London. This is illustrated in the 3D cave network on the album’s cover art: it features 10 points, lifted from a to-scale map of the 10 most important places in London to the record’s creation”. Do rather like the art.
When it all comes down to the push thuogh, when it is all gathered in, to these ears Folly Group just don’t sound that complex, that original, they just don’t sound that differentto the many things like this we’ve heard before. Hey, living in East London is bringing out my cynical smile more and more and my mum would say they sound nice, “they’re nice” she’d say, “why can’t you play them on your radio show instead of that horrible experimental noise you played the other night?”.
Does that bit there about the hole in the city sound like The Cure? Actually lots of it sounds like bands from the 80’s, like musical places we’ve been before and I hope they have insurance because I don’t have insurance and stalactites and falling straight into your lap, is this review backed in to a corner now? is there any point? Are we going to joins February’s teeth? One day we’ll wake up starving, this is no new world and it sounds like they are right outside my door, it sounds like a thousand so called post-punk bands we heard back there when it was first a thing, I kind of like them, but don’t be trying to tell me this is something radically different or experimental or ground breaking, they’re kind of nice, I kind of like Folly Group, if they were neighbours, we’d say hello, sometimes, if this was Pitchfork we’d give .em 7.2, they deal our a radio friendly take on post punk, but don’t be trying to tell us they’re radically different or experimental or pushing the boundaries as they bang on their fire extinguishers, , they’re not. do rather like them though. (sw)
Lana Del Rabies – Becoming Everything: Strega Beata Remixed – Lana Del Rabies, as we’ve said quite a few times over the last few years, is the rather rich, rather dark electronic, genre-bridging solo project from Phoenix-based musician, producer and multimedia artist Sam An. “With origins as an experimental project that re-contextualized the more ominous aspects of modern pop music made by women, Lana Del Rabies’ incorporates industrial, gothic noise and metal, with experimental, darkwave and ambient elements”. This is a rather full-on album of Re-interpretations of tracks from Lana Del Rabies’ third album Strega Beata by some of “today’s most interesting experimental and dark-genre artists”.
The deliciously named Lana Del Rabies made her comeback in 2023 with her first record in five or so years, Strega Beata, it was more of her electronic maximalist apocalyptic angst, more of her art-fuelled confrontation laced with that rather clever rather seductive undercurrent there always is
Becoming Everything: Strega Beata Remixed transforms the source material through the lens of gothic industrial noise manipulators Tassel and Plack Blague, electro-techno from the mastery of artists like Terminal 11, Still Geist, and MVTANT, lush darkwave from the synthesis of Hallows, Bara Hari and Bestial Mouths, and the cadenced experimental opera from the mastery of White Boy Scream and Cruel Diagonals. The mix of mixes is good, the flow of the whole album as one wholesome piece is strong, the sometimes very lush conversations between the tracks are healthy, the different shades of interpretation work well together. Of course some of the reinterpretations leave a bigger finger print than others, some of the pieces remain more familiar that others, it all feels like a strong Lana Del Rabies album, it feels like hers, it feels good but then if you like you industrial sized electronics with a little moe that than the usual colour then Lana Del Rabies is always more than good…
THE ORGAN 