Anyone Who Had a Chart

Watching Top Of The Pops was a big part of my life; it was the first television programme I was allowed to “stay up” to watch, and I would sit attentively for half an hour, enraptured. I loved finding out what songs had gone up, what had gone down, and best of all, spotting the new entries in the chart.

As I grew older and my interest in chart music waned, the Top 40 became less important. Then, in 2006, Top Of The Pops was cancelled, and since then I’ve hardly been aware of what was at the summit of the charts.

So, this week, I decided to listen to the Official Charts in their entirety, on Radio 1. Three hours later, I was exhausted and suffering from pop music overload, but what had I learnt? I’d discovered that a young man named Bruno Mars would go to such lengths for his beloved that he makes Meat Loaf look uncommitted; I’d found out that twelve years after his chart debut, Eminem was still unfeasibly angry about something or other; and I’d realised that a bright young thing called Jessie J has a fairly loose grip on the difference between the genders.

Recently chart music was described as “variations on the same shade of beige” but that’s not really the case. While there were similarities between many of the tracks, to call them “beige” would be to suggest they were insignificant and content to blend into the background.

That couldn’t be further from the truth; most songs demanded attention from the moment they began. Every possible space was filled with sound, leaving the songs strangled of any semblance of character; instead conjuring a relentless assault.

Music is so ubiquitous nowadays; you want to make yourself heard, and heard now. Today, music is often heard through MP3 players and faces tough competition from outside noise: traffic, and the general hubbub of daily life so it’s no surprise that the average chart entry displays all the subtlety of a seaside kiss-me-quick hat.
The leading example in this week’s crop appears to be Jessie J, whose debut hit, ‘Do It Like A Dude’ displays an approach to production that is akin to banging your head against a wall; repeatedly.

The singles market has actually experienced a renaissance in recent years, largely thanks to the advent of online music stores, like iTunes and in 2007, with eligibility rules relaxed, songs could enter the charts based on downloads alone, regardless of whether they’d ever been officially released as a single.

However, there will always be loopholes, and the latest to benefit is the mysterious American rap troupe ‘Hype Squad’ who have capitalised upon the buzz surrounding the as-yet-unavailable Wiz Khalifa track, “Black and Yellow”, and rush-released their own version (which sounds strangely similar to the original). Those who pine for the Wiz Khalifa version can’t wait, apparently, it for its UK release so Hype Squad’s ingenuity has given them a Top 40 hit.

Frighteningly, the average age of artists making up the Top 10 this week is less than 22, with the aforementioned Hawaiian, Bruno Mars, representing the old-timers, clocking in at a not-exactly-decrepit 25.

The lack of what we’d probably call traditional bands is striking It’s no secret that dance and R&B are the sound of the 21st Century generation, but there are only two acts, Foo Fighters and Noah & The Whale, who have a classic pop/rock line-up consisting of a guitarist and a drummer.

Does all of this mean it’s time to denounce chart music and claim things were better ‘back in the day’? Well it’s true that the trend of (perceived) “maximum impact” production is a little unsettling, but there is always room for invention and experimentation in pop music.

It may not be to everyone’s taste, but the exhilarating dubstep of Breakage shows promise, and the collaboration between Tiesto, Diplo and Busta Rhymes is oddly thrilling. For anyone wishing to write off the class of 2011, it’s worth bearing in mind that the current number one is Adele’s ‘Someone Like You’, a timeless piano-led ballad fit to top the charts of any era.

Of course, looking at the charts of one week in isolation doesn’t provide a watertight conclusion. It’s a snapshot.

The charts of 2011 are brash, an indictment of our obsession with celebrities, and display a severe shortage of guitars, yet the Official UK Top Forty still provides surprises and a few traces of gold amongst the silt.

Sunday at 4.00pm on Radio One – bring your own sieve.

Valhalla Dancehall

British Sea Power - Valhalla Dancehall
released 10 January 2011 on Rough Trade


British Sea Power have always been a better band in theory than in practice. On paper, they should be adored - they put geology and nature references in their lyrics, they often decorate the stage with assorted foliage, and they self-effacingly titled their debut The Decline of British Sea Power. However, giving their records a spin is often a disappointment as they reveal themselves as little more than a competent but pedestrian rock band. At this point, it would be fantastic to proclaim that Valhalla Dancehall is a triumph, a breakthrough, the album that would finally win over the doubters. Sadly, that’s not the case, and this record is just more of the same.

The attitude running through Valhalla Dancehall is an intriguing one: the aforementioned allusions to nature (“there are interstellar clouds on the Sussex Downs”), the dedication to creating huge, anthemic tunes, and the resolute Englishness that pervades the entire album (“I’m a big fan of the local library”). It’s a towering rock behemoth, make no mistake; it’s just a bit hard not to feel jaded by it all.

It starts off so well. First track, Who’s In Control, fair roars out of the traps. As album openers go, it’s a bold mission statement as lead singer Yan wishes “protesting was sexy on a Saturday night” against a wall of electric guitar and rumbling bass. The chorus chants of “over here, over there, over here, every-fucking-where” are just waiting for a hands-aloft crowd singalong.

From there, it’s almost uniformly downhill. The tracks fall into two categories: one-dimensional, reverb-heavy songs that try and fail to replicate the winning formula of Who’s In Control, and trite, over-long ballads, where Yan’s reedy vocals sound strained. The main exception is the stellar Living Is So Easy, which contains both the features Valhalla Dancehall otherwise sadly lacks: melody and restraint. If said subtlety was evident in more of the record it could have been a good deal more substantial, but as it stands, in spite of the band’s evident acumen, it’s a plodding, unremarkable effort.

So. Same as it ever was. British Sea Power: the band you want to like but who don’t do themselves any favours. Valhalla Dancehall will quickly disappear from your radar and there’s a chance that in two or three years, we get to do it all again. Let’s hope they confound expectations for the better next time.

The King Of Limbs

Radiohead - The King of Limbs
self-released on Friday 18th February
I wrote two reviews for this record. One for The Rocking Vicar and one for No Ripcord. Both are posted below:


ROCKING VICAR
Whether you’re a fan of Radiohead or not, you have to admit they’re no slouches when it comes to marketing. Already known for pioneering the “honesty box” payment method with 'In Rainbows' in 2007, they’ve got everyone in a tizzy again with 'The King Of Limbs'. As if an out-of-the-blue announcement of an album release in just five days time wasn’t enough, they then brought the date forward by 24 hours with no warning.


On the day itself, bloggers and web journalists tripped over themselves - and each other - in an attempt to be the first to review the record, but now the dust has settled, The King Of Limbs can be seen in context, divorced from the brouhaha surrounding its release. What we’re left with is an album which is striking on first listen, promises a great deal, but ultimately fails to deliver.


The King Of Limbs is very much an album of two sides. The first five tracks display a more prominent dance influence than any of their previous work, while the last three (yes, there are only eight songs) are more sedate and genteel, as if the band have exhausted their capacity for intensity.


The “dance” side is propelled by twitchy, off-kilter rhythms and wandering basslines, but it’s too often a case of style over substance. Opening track, 'Bloom', is unsettling enough to hold the listener’s attention with its bursts of white noise and backward looping effects, but subsequent numbers are too similar. Feral is the worst offender - an urgent, breathless song with a soupçon of dubstep that sounds like a work in progress. Chord stabs are barely there, hints of melody are snatched at and the threat that something interesting might happen is never realised.


Whether you’re a fan of Radiohead or not, you have to admit they’re no slouches when it comes to marketing. Already known for pioneering the “honesty box” payment method with 'In Rainbows' in 2007, they’ve got everyone in a tizzy again with 'The King Of Limbs'. As if an out-of-the-blue announcement of an album release in just five days time wasn’t enough, they then brought the date forward by 24 hours with no warning.


On the day itself, bloggers and web journalists tripped over themselves - and each other - in an attempt to be the first to review the record, but now the dust has settled, The King Of Limbs can be seen in context, divorced from the brouhaha surrounding its release. What we’re left with is an album which is striking on first listen, promises a great deal, but ultimately fails to deliver.


The King Of Limbs is very much an album of two sides. The first five tracks display a more prominent dance influence than any of their previous work, while the last three (yes, there are only eight songs) are more sedate and genteel, as if the band have exhausted their capacity for intensity.


The “dance” side is propelled by twitchy, off-kilter rhythms and wandering basslines, but it’s too often a case of style over substance. Opening track, 'Bloom', is unsettling enough to hold the listener’s attention with its bursts of white noise and backward looping effects, but subsequent numbers are too similar. Feral is the worst offender - an urgent, breathless song with a soupçon of dubstep that sounds like a work in progress. Chord stabs are barely there, hints of melody are snatched at and the threat that something interesting might happen is never realised.


NO RIPCORD


Announcing a new album on a Monday, setting the release date to Saturday and then bringing it forward to Friday – Radiohead sure know what they’re doing. On Friday 18th February, the internet was a tornado of activity with bloggers and journalists alike all desperate to be the first to hear and judge The King of Limbs. For Europeans, a hilarious afternoon followed with people waking up on the other side of the Atlantic, heading online and exclaiming, “Radiohead did WHAT?!”

It’s unlikely a band has ever been so good at promoting their output under their own steam, but there are two sides to this coin. Sales-wise, Radiohead couldn’t fail, but as for critical reception, they couldn’t win. The hype surrounding The King of Limbs – which the band were more than partially responsible for – had snowballed to such an extent that anything less than a genre-defining masterpiece would be seen as a disappointment.

So, now we’ve lived with the record for a while, we can see through the white noise that characterised the unleashing of the record and assess it in context properly. And you know what? It’s a disappointment.

Or, at least, it’s a disappointment coming from the band that brought us Kid A, In Rainbows et al, if not an outright bad record. While the willingness to go off-piste and experiment happily remains, Radiohead seem to be going through a fallow period for ideas.

The King of Limbs is very much a rhythm-driven album; skittering, off-kilter beats underpin the majority of the songs on show. While this is all very intriguing – as well as being the kind of thing most hugely popular and successful bands aren’t going to attempt in a hurry – it doesn’t always equate to “good”. Many of the cuts appear half-finished, as if the band have spent so much time and effort on the percussion that they’ve forgotten to write a proper song. Feral is the prime offender here, with snatches of chords and the odd vocal phrase, but little to actually enjoy.

However, Radiohead have never put out a terrible record and they’re not about to start now. They masterfully conjure an unsettling mood on Morning Mr. Magpie, leaving the listener constantly on edge, and the haunting theme also makes an appearance on opener, Bloom. Interestingly, the best song on the album is the most atypical of The King of Limbs sound: Codex. With most of the other tracks so sparse and drama-free, the warm, reverb-drenched piano of Codex is a revelation. Easily the most compelling and melodic cut on the record, the human, emotional side of the band really shines through.

Otherwise, it’s largely cerebral music to appreciate rather than adore; music for the head rather than for the heart or feet. Sadly, The King of Limbs – while a brave side-step – is a case of style over substance. It’s still superior to a lot of the material currently being released, but we know they’re better than this. They’ve enough goodwill in the bank for this to simply be a blip rather than a disaster, but with The King of Limbs, Radiohead have taken their eye off the ball.

The Brits: LIVE BLOG

For the 2011 Brit Awards, I decided to run a live blog for No Ripcord. This mainly consisted of me glued to the television for two hours, typing at a rate of knots, furiously clicking the 'Upload' button, and constantly flicking between Facebook and Twitter.


Still, it was fun, there was some good interaction with other people watching the event, and it provided a decent traffic boost for No Ripcord (over 500 page views on the evening itself alone). It's too tortuous to copy and paste the whole thing here, but for a re-cap, why not visit No Ripcord and see for yourself.

James Blake

James Blake - James Blake
released 7 February 2011 on Atlas

The new artist hype machine is a very powerful force, but it’s difficult to remember a time it’s gone into overdrive in such a way like it has with London-based producer James Blake over the last few months.

Two observations about this seemingly insurmountable wall of hyperbole. First, despite having just released his debut album, the backlash has already started, with industry commentators already denouncing his work (presumably because it’s yet to solve world famine). Secondly, as you may or may not know, there is a professional tennis player also named James Blake. That James Blake has had a twelve year career, achieved a ranking of World number 4 less than five years ago and has earned in excess of $7million in prize money. However, do a Google search for “James Blake” and which one comes up first? The successful sportsman or the barely-out-of-his-teens producer? What do you think?

 

This hype isn’t without basis though. Two of his EPs from 2010, CMYK and Klavierwerke received plaudits across the board. It’s fair to say that James Blake is eagerly anticipated.

 

So, it’s cards on the table time. James Blake is an astonishing record, an early contender for album of the year and could well change the face of popular music. That may seem like wild exaggeration (and after the previous three paragraphs, I appear to be revealing myself as just as bad as the rest of them), but it truly is that good. It’s inventive, it’s brave, it’s bursting at the seams with ideas and it’s a captivating listen.

 

So, how to categorise James Blake. The short answer is that you can’t. He’s obviously influenced by the dubstep movement that’s come to prominence in the last few years, and he employs the studied, sparse minimalism of fellow Londoners The xx. However, this only goes some way to describing the sound. There’s shades of ambient music, drum and bass, hip-hop, soul, and DJ Shadow style cut-and-paste work. However you describe it, you’ll do better than British tabloid, The Sun, who saw fit to bestow upon Blake the frankly horrendous new genre of “posh-step”.

 

Within a few seconds of first track, Unluck, it’s clear this isn’t your ordinary album. Simple beats are brushed aside by a burst of stormy noise on the off-beat, immediately making you sit up and take notice. This is followed by ticking percussion, a high-pitched hiss, heavily treated vocals, harmonies, a crackling crescendo and the track falling in on itself. That’s more drama than most artists pack into an entire album, and we’re three minutes in.

 

What’s most striking about James Blake is the use of silence. Leaving space in your work is commendable, but this is on another level altogether. The way silence is inserted into tracks makes you yearn for the next note or beat. It’s almost disconcerting how affecting it can be; the barely-there Lindisfarne I has periods of seven seconds with no sound whatsoever.

 

Another recurring theme within James Blake is tracks darting off where you least expect them to. Why Don’t You Call Me appears to be an unremarkable torch song, then veers into a haunting soundscape that seems to have been cut up and reassembled in the wrong order. The Feist cover and recent single, Limit to Your Love, uses a rattling, helicopter blade of a bassline that’s so commanding, it vibrates your entire body and rattles the fillings in your teeth. It’s extremely rare to find an album that’s so challenging and boundary-pushing while remaining such an enjoyable listen. The first few spins will blow you away, but once you’re used to the odder traits of the album, the melodies shine through and it’s quite a traditional LP in parts. Lindisfarne II has an understated, almost pastoral undercurrent running through it, but the juxtaposition between that theme and the tuned vocals is a real delight.

 

If you were to encapsulate what James Blake is about in one song, I Never Learned to Share would be it. Blake isn’t exactly prolific with his lyric writing, and this song contains repetition of just one line - “My brother and my sister don’t speak to me, but I don’t blame them”. It begins a cappella, before a second voice accompanies, sometimes echoing the melody line, sometimes slightly discordant. Warm synths lead to a quasi-triumphant false climax, before beats enter and the layering begins in earnest. The tension is ratcheted up bar by bar, with white noise creeping in around the edges before becoming more prominent, louder, and then louder still. The track seems ready to explode, and it does, into a primal, cathartic disco riff, dripping with effects and, somehow, sounding almost magnetic. The melody line oscillates and twitches, the beats pulse and the track ends on a thrilling high.

 

It’s not a perfect album, sadly. Give Me My Month, in particular, is a disappointment; sub-Anthony Hegarty warbling and a baffling inclusion. But nearly everywhere else, there’s joy to be found. There’s the stereo effects on The Wilheim Scream, where the vocals in one channel are marginally behind the other, there’s the multi-part harmonies in soul-influenced Measurements and there’s a sudden rush of calypso drums in I Mind.

 

James Blake is an absolute treat for the ears. He straddles genres at will, plays with perceptions of what pop music is about and is clearly prodigiously talented. In fact, for a debut record, James Blake is ridiculously assured. It’s enough to make you green with envy, how someone so young can absorb so much and make it wholly their own in a way no-one else does. Ladies and gentlemen, a star has arrived.

 

I bet his two-handed backhand is rubbish though.

Rolling Blackouts

The Go! Team - Rolling Blackouts

released 31 January 2011 on Memphis Industries

In a recent interview with The Guardian it was put to The Go! Team founder, Ian Parton, that the band burst onto the scene with such a well-defined aesthetic, they may struggle to break free of the blueprint they’d created. It’s certainly a theory with legs - debut album Thunder, Lightning, Strike was a breath of fresh air upon release: cut and paste sampling, Double Dutch chants, a healthy dose of nostalgia and enormous fun. When second album Proof of Youth arrived showing few signs of progression, responses were lukewarm at best.

In this interview, journalist Alexis Petridis went on to say that The Go! Team had, against the odds, managed to add something to their repertoire third time around, and that Rolling Blackouts clearly showed the group trying to do something different. Having lived with the album for a while, it transpires Petridis’ comments were somewhat on the generous side.

 

That’s not to say The Go! Team are stuck in a creative rut. Rolling Blackouts is probably the most experimental and diverse of their three albums, yet it’s still unmistakeably a Go! Team record. They’re no longer so reliant on lead vocalist Ninja, collaborating this time round with, among others, Satomi Matsuzaki of Deerhoof and Bethany Cosentino from Best Coast. There’s something of a Far Eastern influence in some of the tracks too: Back Like 8 Track and Secretary Song have something distinctly Japanese about them, and Ready To Go Steady has a kitsch, Hello Kitty vibe with its twee, sing-song lyrics (“We’ve only just met but I am ready to go steady”).

 

And there’s more. Yosemite Theme is lighter than we’ve come to expect from The Go! Team and achieves the Morricone-influenced, widescreen sound Parton has claimed the band are striving towards. The Running Range is perhaps the biggest surprise yet; it’s probably the most acoustic-sounding, guitar-driven song The Go! Team have put their names to, and it’s not just any guitar sound, it’s a Country and Western guitar sound.

 

Yet somehow, despite the obvious attempts at diversity, there’s still a nagging feeling that they’re re-treading old ground all too often. Even when seemingly making roads away from what they’re best known for, there’s still the deliberately lo-fi production, the huge, distorted drums, and a kitchen-sink approach to instrumentation. In fact, on Apollo Throwdown, Ninja’s lyrics are not too dissimilar to those of Thunder, Lightning, Strike’s Bottle Rocket, and Super Triangle shares significant DNA with Everyone’s a V.I.P. to Someone.

 

The relentless, full-blooded Buy Nothing Day aside, Rolling Blackouts is at its best when it messes with the formula. All thirteen tracks are perfectly adequate in isolation, but listening to them in sequence can get wearing. There’s enough within Rolling Blackouts to suggest that The Go! Team can move forward and expand upon what they’ve created previously. But, to go back to the original point, The Go! Team sound is now so entrenched that any radical departures may be best received if not under The Go! Team moniker.

 

Rolling Blackouts is a Technicolor, kaleidoscopic riot of a record but, put in context, it can’t fail to be tinged with a hint of disappointment. There’s a real risk that The Go! Team may have painted themselves into a corner (albeit with various shades of eye-wateringly luminous paint); it will be intriguing to see where they go from here.

The Go! Team Interview

The Go! Team seemingly came out of nowhere to take the music world by storm with debut record Thunder, Lightning, Strike in 2004. Its intoxicating marriage of samples, chants, rapping and childlike enthusiasm won them many friends and a Mercury nomination. Proof of Youth followed in 2007, but as early as January 2009, founder member Ian Parton was talking excitedly about The Go! Team's third album. That album, Rolling Blackouts, is finally here, and as well as the vocal stylings of frontwoman, Ninja, The Go! Team have worked with such varied artists as Dominique Young Unique, Lispector, Satomi Matsuzaki (Deerhoof) and Bethany Cosentino (Best Coast).

The Go! Team are about to head out on tour around the UK, but first, Ian Parton found the time to drop No Ripcord a line and give us an insight into the world of everybody's favourite team.

Lots of adjectives and genres are bandied about by journalists to try and accurately characterise the Go! Team sound. How would you describe your music?

I generally try and avoid describing it if I can but I guess its eclectic, occasionally cheeky, halfway between catchiness and trashiness, occasionally brassy, lots of ladeee vocals and sometimes featuring recorders.

What artists do you enjoy listening to and who would you say your main influences are?

My Bloody Valentine, Public Enemy, Velvet Underground, Boards of Canada, Sonic Youth, Roxanne Shante, David Axelrod, Curtis Mayfield, Ennio Morricone, The Shangri-Las, Deerhoof, Serge Gainsbourg...

There’s a joy and a playfulness to your music. Is this a conscious thing or do you naturally write songs with that feel?

No, it's never a conscious decision to write a happy song. I do like stuff that's kind of triumphant with blaring trumpets and stuff like that; I think we're treading a line with The Go! Team and never want to dip into Coke advert territory. For me, its genuine, there's no irony - I'm definitely interested in making music with personality and feel; I put that above professionalism and perfection.

Previous albums made heavy use of samples, but the songs on the new record were primarily written on guitar and drums. What prompted this change in the songwriting process and do you think you’ll be sticking with it in the future?

Well, I like to think we've never been too reliant on samples. People might assume we just put a beat on top of a sample and call it a song but we've always tried to apply songwriting to a sample, if you know what I mean. This album's definitely driven more by songwriting and features more singing, rather than the Double-Dutch chants people know us for. I wanted to make strange little pop songs; I've always been really into catchiness and melody because its the hardest thing to do, but not to have a hit or get into the charts. So on this record I was really putting melody first and letting it run the show. When you've got something you think is watertight, that's when you can start fucking it up. The record's different for a few reasons; it's more sing-y, more melodic, more panoramic, has more bass, it's more eclectic, plus it features a live teenage community brass band!

In interviews, you’ve mentioned you wanted the new album to have a “more widescreen” sound. How did you achieve that?

It's partly the production - to make it "sound" wider. Partly it's the songs; some have touches of Ennio Morricone and make you think of deserts and driving and stuff like that. This record is less lo-fi than the last two but its still not exactly Starbucks. In fact, I mastered the whole record onto a C90 cassette at the very last stage to give it a more fucked up quality.

You’ve worked with a wide range of artists on this album, including Satomi from Deerhoof and Bethany from Best Coast. How did those collaborations come about?

I would write a song and then think about the kind of voice that would suit the song, so it was back-to-front really. I had one song called Secretary Song which made me think of a 60's office in Tokyo and secretaries all typing in time, hating their jobs, and it had a melody in the chorus which reminded me a little of Deerhoof. Because we kind of know Satomi - they asked us to play a festival they were curating in Belgium earlier this year - it was easy for us to ask her and I knew it would work perfectly. With Bethany from Best Coast I had a song called Buy Nothing Day that had a Californian girl group kind of feel; I discovered Best Coast on MySpace and loved her voice. This was about December 2009, so before all the Best Coast hype; maybe I should be an A&R man!

When Thunder, Lightning, Strike started to do well, you had to put a band together in order to go on tour. Did its success surprise you? Were you caught off-guard?

Yeah, I never dreamt we would be together 6 years later. It started off as a hobby and I didn't have any idea of how people would react. All I remember is listening to Thunder, Lightning, Strike and thinking, "I can't think of anyone else that sounds like this." We might have been hyped too quickly; we were playing sold-out shows in Manhattan when we weren't actually very good.

You don’t allow your music to be used in adverts. Why is this and what do you think of Go! Team-like music being written specifically for ads?

There have been a few cases where it's totally obvious some advertising executive has given a Go! Team CD to someone and said, "copy this"; a Google ad in Russia clearly ripped off Junior Kickstart. I have said no to lots of stuff and sacrificed a lot of money - mainly because I know it ruins a song when all you can think about is some yoghurt or something. Iggy Pop has fucked it doing those insurance ads. I have had to mellow a little on ads though; in the US we have a song on an NFL ad - it's actually quite a good ad though. It's these massive American football players with headphones on sitting on a bus, rocking out to the Go! Team. It's pretty funny because I'm the least sporty bloke ever.

You’re on tour in the UK throughout February - what can people expect from your live show?

Lots of swapping instruments, lots of jumping around, lots of fucking noise. Our drumkits have flashing light-up stars on the front of them now and we have a typewriter on stage with us too!