i finally know what year it is in ayr! 2004

and i chose not to go because the sunday lineup wasnt interesting me enough.

the sunday lineup has louis theroux showing us movies all day now. fuck you london.

this batch is like 4 weeks in the making but ive been too busy studying to listen to music and actually think about it but on the plus side, ive only been able to count 6 albums in that time that interest me (and one by jack white because ive not found much that i dont like but i feel is probably worth a listen. musical masochism). also (i had written this and saved it and i have no idea what i was going to say after ‘also’ so i kept it in because i dont like ending on full stops. it bothers me, aesthetically. this isnt a fucking book yo)

Spiritualized - Sweet Heart Sweet Light

q: do you like spiritualized? a: who the hell are they? <—this is my opening because lets face it, if you like spiritualized youll know theyve never made a bad album (look in your heart, you know it to be true) and this isnt any different. but if you dont know who they are youve got an excellent jumping on point here. spiritualized used to do “space rock” back in the 90s with psychedelic influences, a wide variety of instruments and styles, long, droney passages and lyrics about love/god/smack (delete as many as necessary to fit the song). now theyve (its just the one guy but he calls himself j spaceman and its a bit silly for a near-50 year old man come on now) written what is as close to a pop album as theyll ever get. its so pop that i could easily have seen this album being quite big about 10-15 years ago. its got good rock n roll, good ballads, good everything really. and despite the songwriting being very tight and very pop, its also got enough room for some experimental noise sections too. very well done JASON 8/10

De La Soul - De La Soul’s Plug One & Plug Two Present… First Serve

de la soul are maybe my second favorite rap group of all time (they switch with ATCQ who are first atm but thats subject to change yknow) (also the rest of my top 5 is beastie boys, cannibal ox and outkast/deathgrips (i cant choose) just if youre wondering. yeah no wutang, solo efforts supreme) and this is as close as were getting to a new de la album for a little while. its actually a side project i guess because its dave and pos but no maseo, and the plugs play characters here in a concept album about the rise, fall, and reunion of a hip-hop duo. so the concept is maybe a bit much but it serves as a decent narrative for whats pretty much a traditional de la soul album - good songs and (always a highlight) good skits. its the production thats different - handled by some french dudes who i cant remember (google it!), it backs pos and daves excellent rhymes over a very old-school funk aesthetic, but modernised. its very very good. maybe a bit too long and a few of the tracks fall into a filler category. it also doesnt have maseo so while the production is good it doesnt feel as… i dont know how to describe it. the production suits the vocals here but on other de la soul albums the three of them produce amazing work. its good de la are branching out but they really know each others strengths and play to them. its a lot of fun though, and rather funny at points. its well worth your time if you like de la soul. or anything like de la soul. or hip-hop in general. and if you dont youre a big dumb shitbird 8/10

Death Grips - The Money Store

oh my. death grips. what a band. cant remember if i reviewed exmilitary last year (their debut) but to bring us all up to speed it was a mix of hardcore punk and some incredibly aggressive rapping. its loud, noisy, angry, scary shit. and heres the best bit: L.A. Reid signed these motherfuckers. the money store is their major label debut (no, really, if you want proof go watch their videos on DeathGripsVEVO) and they dont really seem to change. at all. well, they do, just not in a manner one would expect for a band to get major label coverage (allegedly la reid fucking loves them so eh fair enough i guess). gone are the punk samples and in are the electronic, distorted beats. they go into near-disco/electro material at points (rather well considering its death grips) but its 40 minutes of being yelled at (or yelled with) with some really good noise as the backing. i cant really review death grips. they are a force of nature. they will come to your music listening device of choice and give you a headache and youll be like “ive been wasting my time with fucking sleigh bells” and they cancelled their tour dates so they could finish their next album. dicks. 9/10

Jack White - Blunderbuss

i dont really like jack whites work. the white stripes were…ok, the raconteurs are…ok, and the dead weather are…ok. his lengthy discography spans over a decade of consistently mediocre americana-rock. so points to him for his first solo record, blunderbuss being just as mediocre as expected. its all the same. blues-country-rock with a few decent guitar solos. it just sits there, awaiting (and somehow receiving) heaps of praise. i mean, im not asking him to reinvent the wheel but if all his projects didnt all sound pretty much the same maybe this would stand out more. its long, monotonous and unexciting. usually a mediocre record would get a mediocre score but im taking into account the long history of jack white not being anywhere near as good as people think (including himself) 3/10

Mystery Jets - Radlands

i rather liked mystery jets last record, i think i gave it a 10. after a few more listens id probably rerate it to a 8 but its still very interesting - it does old synth ballads but it has its own spin and nothing else is quite like it at the moment. radlands (oh dear) is similar in execution but it instead goes for a country feel. and it fails. well it doesnt really, but mystery jets sound about as english as possible without being horrible racists (sorry england) - they come from a place called eel pie island for fucks sake. so youve got all this americana but with english accents and it just feels rather forced. the albums mostly a slowly paced affair but when the songs tempo reaches a level of “foot-tapping” it just turns into a rather embarassing parody of country music. heres an analogy: know how the decemberists did a country album, it sounded like country music but also still sounded like the decemberists? this is the same, but the key difference is the decemberists actually pulled it off. its a half-hearted embrace of americana. unwilling to go all the way and have fun, it keeps a maudlin tone. and not all steel guitar has to be maudlin yknow, guys 6/10

The Cribs - In The Belly Of The Brazen Bull

i like the cribs. sure, why not. ive only ever heard “men’s needs” and the video for that was good (it was better until i learned there was an uncensored version. i felt it was making a good point about the censorship of nudity but not violence but oh well death of the author) but now here we are, a few years later and with a new album. its ok. dave fridmann produced it and he does good work, but he also does stuff like the flaming lips and ok go and a lot of other bands that use more than three instruments. or more than three instruments with the same settings. it gets monotonous very quickly. so its good for about 3 songs then it gets progressively more boring until by the 4-track suite that ends the album (not as wanky as it sounds to be fair on them) ive lost interest entirely. but its not like its front loaded. im sure if any 3 songs were on first i would have liked them the most. the lack of range expressed by the band here isnt helped by the production, and they combine to form a whole so engaging i played computer solitaire for 45 minutes and felt like i got more out of that than i did out of this record 4/10

i shud probably buy it more than once a year

like, where else do you find info on shoplifting gangs and quality speculation on who killed gerbil?

the avengers movie looks like it was made for tv. i dont care if he did toy story!!1111 (also this is either very late or 2 weeks worth of albums (lets say the latter) because really, 1 album a week is not enough for a long rambling tumblr post about music ha ha ha)

Clark - Iradelphic

chris clark is a relatively busy idm musician. like old aphex twin or non-existent boards of canada (if you listen to more of this sort of music you can ignore this bit cause youll know already). i find myself drawing parallels to campfire headphase (bocs best album fuk hataz) with this record - likely because its a chris clark take on folk music. its all very soft synth and while easily very listenable i dont find it sticking with me. it passes. hardly the most memorable clark work (hello totem flares) but its worth a listen if you like his stuff. in years to come this will be the epitome of “for die-hards only” 6/10

Graham Coxon - A+E

graham coxon is the 1/4 of blur that doesnt piss me off regularly (damon albarn cant stop putting out genre tributes that sound terrible/writing musicals i dont particularly want to listen to (petty but the first point is acceptable, no?), james rowntree might still support new labour (oh dear) and alex james is a shitbird) and its nice to see coxon here making an  excellent experimental bit of rock music. its a rather eclectic collection of songs which all share a few key elements - coxons excellent guitar work being woven into different styles and moods, and er, coxons name on them in the ASCAP directory i guess? is that still a thing? regardless, im very very impressed by this work. songs jump between dark brooding pieces like City Hall to the blur-esque Ohh Yeh Yeh (blur-esque isnt a fair term but its the closest hes got to them on this record) to the synth heavy turn of What’ll It Take. these arent singles though, its a work with no real entry point - you need to put it on and listen to it all at once cause coxon seems to be enjoying this whole “play whatever you want” idea a lot atm. his guitar work really ties the (album, not room) together so well. its nice when a solo artist can rely on other things rather than voice or name to create a signature sound, its such a solid collection of songs i feel maybe hes struck lucky - his other recent records arent as cohesive or original as this but for the moment he should riding high on this p good success story of an album. well done graham.plus im going to see him tomorrow at the garage and hell play these songs, much better than going to a large arena to see 40 year old men play blur songs for fat stacks 10/10

Quakers - Quakers

quakers refers to the term “earthquake” ie a shake up of the hip-hop world this is all stuff i got from the press release, its like im actually a real journalist now, simply rephrasing press releases and awarding 4 stars at the end nah fuck that lets talk about portishead and ‘trip-hop’. trip-hop is a phrase used to describe the bristol sound and other downtempo white people music from the 90s and i dont think it has much use other than being a handy tag for my music library when i cant be bothered differentiating between downtempo and electronic and fuck knows what else but it is very handy as a point of reference for music that sounds like it could be rapped over very well if you just cut the vocal tracks. this is quakers at its core - geoff barrow of “writes all the music for portishead, who sound exactly like what i said in the last sentence” fame is one of the three producers on this record (i have no clue about the other two but they worked together on the whole album) and it shows. this is an excellent piece of work, a cohesive hip hop album featuring tons of different mcs on each track, the only dominating contributor being the three producers, creating a unique production tone (hint it sounds like portishead) over the varied subject matter and verses. it calls back to the 90s era of hip hop, lots of crackly lp samples and drum loops (sounds like portishead doesnt it) and is overall a very solid effort for something so big and sprawling - the press release claims over 30 different collaborators appear on the record and its over an hour long -the sprawl really pulls it down though. every song is really short and i dont feel like we have much time with anyone actually on the record - the stellar production ties it all together but until i hear something less all over the place, regardless of the high average quality, its not exactly earth shatteringly amazing (lets not be too harsh cause of the name tho) 7/10

The Futureheads - Rant

it would probably be a good idea to go look at what i said about the last futureheads album but that would require effort. what happened to the futureheads? they were big around the time of their debut but everything after that has slipped into semi-obscurity. unfairly. theyre certainly the band that have held up the best since that uk post-punk “angular guitar” movement and its a shame they havent been more succesful. theyre probably doing well enough to give us this record though, a very obscure work - entirely acapella renditions of their own works, some traditional tunes and covers of the black eyed peas and kelis and sparks. its actually very very good. theyve always done vocal harmonies in a very interesting way and this is that aspect of their talent put to its best use. they actually made a black eyed peas song listenable! its not a big step forward for them seeing as its covers and new version of old songs but its certainly unique. and very listenable. id like to see them do more of this stuff, it would be interesting to hear songs they write with this style in mind but until then this is unfortunately a minor work from what should have been a major band (hey maybe theyll have a comeback. not that they need it. futureheads are good regardless of sales figures) 7/10