CD Reviews

1-3-01

MUSIC

Gary Steel

Does anyone seriously expect ROD STEWART to ever make another record worth hearing? It’s about 25 years since the bottle blonde caterwauled his way through his last really great one, after all. Even so, ‘Human’ (his first for the label responsible for so much great soul and r’n’b, Atlantic) does have an unusually sincere feeling. There’s the usual Stewart problem of too many faceless collaborators to produce a distinctive sound (this one has a galaxy of producers, and was recorded all over the show), but by letting his employees get on and do all the instrumental parts without his input, and concentrating entirely on his vocal performances, Stewart has hit on a good thing. Any rumours of voice loss after his recent surgery are maleciously fictitious: unlike the worryingly epiglotal Jimmy Barnes, or the powerless latter-day Joe Cocker, Stewart’s voice here is at its best since his prime, and really does come across with the kind of soul that he hasn’t mustered in years. Boasting a song written by flavour-of-the-year Macy Gray (actually written by Macy and three others!), and a duet with someone fetchingly called Helicopter Girl, at its worst, ‘Human’ sounds like a too-milky version of the dreck that passes for contemporary r’n’b. And I get enough of ‘I Wanna Sex You Up’ blasting out of K’Rd whorehouses on my walking route every day.
Another old duffa getting an airing after decades in mothballs is Dan Hicks (& The Hot Licks). Beatin’ The Heat (Surfdog), despite the scary collaborative vocal billings (Bette Midler, Elvis Costello, Tom Waits) is a record like they just don’t make ‘em anymore. Yes, it’s actually FUN. Hicks sings songs in a somewhat offkilter, droll fashion that’s always sardonic, and his Hotlicks are delightfully light and old-fashioned (you even hear the occcasional squeezebox and plenty of fiddle). Features a fine rendition of Waits’ ‘The Piano Has Been Drinking’, and a re-run of that great Hicks number, ‘I Scare Myself’.
While we’re dealing with old crusties, the new one by Eric Clapton is worth a passing mention. ‘Reptile’ (Reprise) uses the backing group from his disappointing duet album with BB King, with the addition of pianist Billy Preston, and the Impressions on harmony vocals. It’s a back to basics blues affair that, while hardly breaking new ground, may well be regarded in time as one of Clapton’s finest. The material - an uninspiring collection of old standards and mild originals - is ordinary. What makes it stand out is the playing. No-one younger than 40 remembers that Clapton was once called ‘God’ for his fearsome guitarring abilities, and he’s done his best to bury the fan worship over successive decades. But here there are some truly wonderful moments of scintillating electric fretboard flurries and nimble semi-acoustic runarounds. Nice.
You know that a group has used its allotted shelf-life when their new record is proudly launched with a loud sticker proclaiming ‘as featured in the Ansett TV Commercial’. Simply Red were always flaming targets for critical brickbats: the perfect 80s (s)wine bar schmooze group, it’s difficult to muster a defense. However, ‘It’s Only Love’ (Warner) - a kind of ‘best of’ - does reveal that Mick Hucknall and his sessioneers had a real knack for blue-eyed soul, slick arrangements and memorable sing-a-longs. Never hip, but not as godawful as their critics would have it, either.
Sometimes it’s the critically acclaimed acts that, in retrospect, turn out to be godawful. Highly rated 70s glamsters Sparks have been given the kiss of life for Balls (Festival), a record that just dilutes the outrageousness of their early work and ups the poofy quotient... here they come across like the bastard children of Queen and the Pet Shop Boys, with all the disco ball rhythms and diva affectations you would expect. Odd.
No divas in sight at The Gathering, the South Island’s premiere trance event. Out there on the perimeter, repetitive beats and unknown substances drive semi-naked nouveau hippies wild. But it also attracts those who prefer beatless atmospheres, and ‘Leading A Horse To Water: Gathering Ambience’ (independent) is an attempt to represent that side of the festival. Lo-tech cover reproduction and so-so mastering aside, it’s a fair swipe of Kiwi soundscapes of the young generation, from Ben Harris’s electronic spatials through to Bruno’s garden of serene delights, Charlotte 90 Degrees’ glitchy post-classical constructions to SJD’s odd yet soothing backwards acoustic loops. Everything is segued for maximum flotation tank effect.

1-4-01

‘Around The World Of Music Live At The Loaded Hog’. Now that’s a title that fair drips off the salty old tongue. The indefatigable KELVIN ROY (with the BlueStars in tow) run through adept renditions of thirteen jazzy standards (on his own label Martian Music), the perfect memento for all those who weathered the group’s polite cocktail grooves while witnessing waterfront wonderment at America’s Cup. So then, it’s not the Friday night Hog when loads of horny 18-year-olds get up and boogie in tube-tops to the latest trashy pop songs. No, it’s polite, fortysomething jazz, r’n’b, blues and Latin-influenced tinklings with a few of Roy’s own compositions thrown in for good luck. Oh joy.
Praise the Hog, I mean the Lord, that the DEEP FOREST concept of the ‘Pacific’ goes no further than French-oriented territories. Their latest Euro-beat travesty travels to Tahiti where they sample the Tahitian Paparai Choral, but otherwise pretty much conform to the usual mix of tepid electronica and vague, melancholic melody. On ‘Pacifique’ (Sony), Eric Mouquet and Michel Shanchez still appeal to one’s fruity sense of exoticism by combining gorgeous sampled ‘ethnic’ voices and those cocktail lounge piano lessons. Mind you, they might put a few mums and dads off their sausages with those few songs which buck the formula by going all pots and pans crash bang in the beat department.
JOSHNA has no need to use sampled voices: she is owner of a deliciously pure, honey-flavoured vocal apparatus capable of expressing both great joy and sensual longing. Somehow, this Auckland singer has worked in relative obscurity since the mid-80s, when she released the heartbreaking Kiwi classic, ‘Thread Of Gold’, with her group Turiiya. That song gets a slight reworking on ‘Magnificence’ (Acoustic Wave), an album of off-centre power-ballads that the singer-songwriter occasionally allows to be disrupted by an almost Euro-house club backing. While the music is often accomplished, the arrangements suffer through the sheer cheesiness of the programming. For me, the talent and the soul shine through, but I wish this hugely gifted woman would choose a more tasteful road.
Some would argue that Kruder & Dorfmeister are ALL taste and no substance. These Viennese kings of the slow groove have defined a new aesthetic of perfectly cool musical opulence. From their first records in the early 90s, where they stylishly posed in mimicry of Simon & Garfunkel, everything this duo has touched has turned to gold. Primarily known for their groovealicious remixes, the Kruder & Dorfmeister/Vienna sound incorporates dub, funk, jazz, techno and drum&bass influences in a way that few have successfully replicated. ‘The G-Stoned Book’ (G-Stone) is a luscious indulgence: a compilation of Kruder and Dorfmeister’s record label, together with a cd-sized 338-page book. The book is an odd compendium of essays, cover art and rather dubious photographs (scantily-clad girlfriends, various faces of sub-porno sleaze). The cd is Kruder & Dorfmeister’s personal selection of their best, including side projects Tosca and Peace Orchestra. Undeniably over the top, but beautiful, and maybe the easiest way to get a helpful contextual grip on the K&D thing.
While Kruder & Dorfmeister trade on their smooth grooves, the latest MANIC STREET PREACHERS album is all ‘up-yours’ snottiness and nasty, distorted guitars. Destined to go into the public memory as the band whose guitarist went missing and was never found (presumed dead), Manic Street Preachers really deserve better; they’re a talented trad-rock ensemble, and the essential ingredients (James Bradfield’s pining tenor, the tuneful, soulful pop with a little dash of militant punk) remain with the group as they grow chubby in middle-age. ‘Know Your Enemy’ (Sony) somehow eludes classic Manics status by trying too hard to be angry. They up the garage/punk quotient here, proving that they have lost none of their wayward sense of injustice about the world and its many and various stupidities, but they needn’t have bothered; the group’s militant days are over, and I can’t help but wonder why they don’t just roll over and enjoy the passionate, melodic aspects of their muse.
BETCHADUPA have an immediate problem: Neil Finn. That Kiwi icon’s teenage son, Liam, is the focus of Betchadupa, whose second short player, ‘The 3D EP’ (Flying Nun) is, um... not bad. What I mean, if you get my drift, is that this is enthusiastic, energetic, playful, occasionally engaging power pop/rock. But it’s short of being fully-fledged, or fully developed. In other words, Betchadupa may one day be essential, but right now they’re simply promising.
If it’s old-fashioned soul you’ve got a hankering for, ‘Soul Makeover’ by NICOLE WILLIS (Sanko) should do the trick. This is a beautifully old-fashioned funky soul stew with all the right analogue references, but it’s got at least one slinky foot in the 21st century courtesy of Finnish wacko Jimi Tenor, whose subtle electronic tweaking spruces things up with synth esoterica. Recommended.

3-5-01

One month. Four extraordinary Auckland-made albums.
With a cluster of innovative releases led by the Cloudboy cd already with us in 2001, island life has never seemed so sensually pleasurable for those whose inner ear is attuned to the subtle tweakings of the audible universe.
Dimmer, SJD, Dooblong Tongdra and International Observer have accidentally engineered simultaneous release of their new projects, each one offering a different approach to the mechanics of grappling with leading edge technology; each of them finding a way to force feed their rich personalities through the sometimes ungiving rigidity of circuit board, synthesiser module and computer programming.
And each is essential listening for anyone looking for a way to have a shot at joining the present musical tense.
Shayne Carter has already featured in Metro’s pages, but his first post-Straitjacket Fits release as DIMMER deserves further analyses. I Believe You Are A Star (Sony) is a work of unbridled control, determinedly reigning in the available elements, and honing everything down to the most perfect, necessary detail. Despite its seeming simplicity, the music resists harnessing within a short review, but it’s a record that is sure to garner Carter significant international praise for his unique vision. It’s not the odd collision of influences (soul, funk, minimalism, psychedelia) that make this album, it’s the numerous small gestures which are rendered with such poise that the listener starts to magnify the many perfect morsels into a garden of sonic delights. Sometimes it’s the way a woody-sounding acoustic guitar will rub shoulders with a mellow electric line, or a deeply funky bass riff; other times it’s a spooky multi-tracked Carter vocal or the strangely strafed rhythmic trickery or the colouristic keyboard washes. Mostly, it’s a terrific conquest for man over machine. Carter has shown that it’s possible to exploit new technology to a creative end, while redefining the role of traditional singer/songwriting. An astonishing achievement.
Like Dimmer, SJD is a voyager from the singer/songwriter school. The first time I encountered Sean Donnelly, he was giving a solo folksinger-style performance with acoustic guitar in the kitchen of a grubby student flat; mere months later (in 1999) the first SJD album, 3, appeared in selected retail outlets. Donnelly had embarked on a journey to the centre of the sampler: James Last horns were audaciously plastered over racy funk grooves and fruity lounge, and that was just the start of his education in the art of collage. Having garnered appreciative reviews nationwide, SJD set about mastering the medium on Lost Soul Music (Round Trip Mars), which is a quantum leap from the playfully ragged transpositions of 3. Like Shayne Carter, Sean Donnelly has found a way to combine his unforgettable heart-on-sleeve songs and gorgeous singing with state-of-the-art technology. The big difference is that SJD shows a curiosity for pure electronics, and a tendency to go hogwild with sampling. Lost Soul Music is a stunning and complex second album which takes multiple listening sessions to get to grips with. Occasionally, it feels as though everything but the kitchen sink is being thrown into the pot, and sometimes the transpositions of sounds and styles are just too great, while always entertainingly audacious. Crucially, it’s the numbers where Donnelly allows the pure songwriting skills to seep through that have the greatest impact; there are a couple of ballad moments where his eery, almost Roy Orbisonesque vocal delivery sends shivers up the spine. There’s nothing else quite like the best moments of this record happening anywhere in the world. We should be proud.
DOOBLONG TONGDRA is another clever clogs with - as the name suggests - a funny bone that just won’t let up. Discontinued (Why Bother?) is much more overtly electronic than Dimmer or SJD, favouring the clipped and clinical clicks and cuts of synthetic sounds, with judiciously chosen sampled dialogue and a predilection for electric piano melodies and the odd mutant killer guitar riff. If Frank Zappa had grown up in Titirangi and was currently in his mid-20s, he may very well have been making music like this: sometimes knotty, always smart and decidedly off-centre, Dooblong Tongdra favours twisted time-signatures, bubbling synthesisers and a wanton desire to provoke its listener. This second Dooblong disc takes some lessons in dubology and ends up being a twisted - yet relatively accessible - emission from the parallel universe.
Building up an enviable reputation for epic live sets over the past three years or so, INTERNATIONAL OBSERVER have finally gifted us with a sample of their graft on Seen (Different Drummer internationally; independent locally). The duo of Tom Bailey (in another life the man behind the Thompson Twins and Babble) and turntablist cohort Rakai are prone to deliciously engaging five-hour marathon sets, where their slow, languorous, smoothly beautiful dub-engineered electronica can display all its colours. Seen is fairly true to the dub aesthetic, while subtly and unobtrusively interjecting clever, tasty morsels of electronic debris to add to its abiding flavourfulness. While the world is switching on to dub-influenced groove music like Kruder & Dorfmeister, there’s still a shortage of albums on the world stage that sustain those low-down’n’sexy grooves for a whole hour on shiny disc. Auckland is indeed lucky to be graced with one of the tastiest additions yet to the dub-groove milieu.

August 2001

A huge segment of the music industry is dedicated to persuading us to spend our discretionary dollar on reliving our yesterdays. For those who find the 21st century just a little scary, it’s possible to find any number of cosy corners of music nostalgia through which to escape our contemporary neuroses.
This month’s nostalgic blast comes from THE POGUES, whose ‘The Very Best Of...’ (WEA) will reignite a few memories of drunken nights and wasted days for many ex-punks. At their peak between 1983-85, the rough-as-guts Irish rootsiness of The Pogues was a welcome antidote to pop charts that were drenched with the slick new romantic makeup boys. Leader Shane MacGowan had hit the headlines as a young punk rocker in the late 70s, when someone nearly bit his ear off at a Clash gig; as the creative force behind The Pogues, Shane’s ruptured groan of a voice carried with it a certain poignancy that was reflected in his best lyrics. You just couldn’t help feeling like this bedraggled, stray tomcat needed some looking after. Most of the time, however, the group were simply a good excuse for an unpretentious knees-up, and it’s ironic that their most memorable song was written by others (Ewan McColl’s ‘Dirty Old Town’) and that the most fondly-remembered (‘Fairytale Of New York’) is a duet with McColl’s sadly late lamented daughter, the wonderful Kirsty McColl.
Shane McGowan always sounded like he had just woken up in the gutter after a long night drinking and fighting. Grubby. ELEVATOR, on the other hand, are clean, clean, clean. It’s in the sound, and in the message. ‘Music’ (Grass Roots) is an impressively produced debut by an Auckland group that mixes the skittering, programmed rhythms of drum&bass with honest-to-God real instruments. God? He’s pretty big in their picture. Singer Julia may emote in a style not unlike Portishead, but these songs are mostly about her relationship to the big guy in the sky. Well wouldn’t you know it!
Very brave are the people behind Monkey Records, who have released the decidedly odd and rather unique ‘The Wisdom Of Insecurity’ by DYSTOPIA. This Auckland-based ensemble includes the spoken word ruminations of Liz Maw, with keyboards, sitar, and environmental sounds coming together in long droning pieces. It has a kind of meditative yet depressing feel, and it’s certainly one of a kind, though perhaps of very limited appeal.
BEN FULTON’s ‘Stronger Than Love’ (Magic Theatre) is a singer/songwriter affair (guitar and voice, with some acoustic bass, cello and percussion) which goes for an eery Nick Drake-style melancholy sound. I mean, the very first song is called ‘You Will Suffer’, the third ‘Melancholy’. Fulton communicates his pain well, though his lithp can be a bit offputting.
If you’re genuinely distressed, or depressed, please don’t listen to KRISTEN HERSH’s ‘Sunny Border Blue’ (4AD). The ex-Throwing Muses singer, whose celebrated bi-polar condition recently led to an incident in which her children were seized by the state, has made a record that reflects her torture. As always, Hersh’s emotive voice and elliptical but expressive words touch the listener, but why would anyone in their right mind want to stand this close to madness?
Doomed and dead is JEFF BUCKLEY, who made only one album in his lifetime. Since his death, his record company have released a studio album the artist never intended for release, together with a bunch of rough demos; followed by a double live album. And now, yet ANOTHER live album. ‘Live At L’Olympia’ (Columbia) gets problematic for those who have played the tiny Buckley catalogue to death (hrmph) already. Then again, these slightly hissy 1995 desk recordings of his triumphant Paris concert were Buckley’s favourite, apparently, and there are moments: every Buckley song calls for some vocal improvisation, so things never become boring... his songs required a real balancing act, vocally. Special moments include the Robert Plant imitation, the Edith Piaf imitation, and the beautiful ‘What Will You Say’, featuring Alim Qasimov.

TURKEY SHOOT

* TOPP TWINS - Grass Highway (Topp Twins): strident Patsy Cline emulations that sing with the rustic sensitivity of a hacksaw blade cutting through corrogated iron.
* ELECTRIC LIGHT ORCHESTRA - Zoom (Epic): reunited practitioners of bombastic symphonic dross. Not needed, not wanted.

BEES KNEES

* Various - Indian Masala Mix (Ecco Chamber): Hindi/Tamil filmsongs given the good groove treatment by Viennese djs Kulisch and Vana. Hot.
* TOOL - Lateralus (Zomba): Heavy yet astonishingly skilled concept album for mixed up guys in need anger therapy. Not exactly the most Oprah of mindsets, if you know what I mean.

1-11-01

STELLAR*
MAGIC LINE (Epic)
The candidly-documented ‘difficult second album’ by one of the best-selling groups in the history of NZ pop turns out to be not half bad. Really. Boh Runga and her boys have attempted to make a record that more accurately reflects the group’s live energy than that excellent but often moody debut. So... how to make a galvanising listening experience out of a unit who so easily betray their somewhat plain pub-rock background? There are no magical new directions, the songs are largely formulaic, and between the notes it’s easy to detect the sweat and rigour that went into the months of hard graft that gave birth to the record. But somehow, despite it all, ‘Magic Line’ is a solid, well-crafted pop-rock artifact that has a good share of tricks up its sleeve, little production flourishes that, to this reviewer, hark back to a pure pop aesthetic that seems delightfully naive and attractive in this cynical post-pop environment.

TORI AMOS
STRANGE LITTLE GIRLS (Atlantic)
From the singer-songwriter whose piano-stool gyrations could reduce a man to blithering wretchedness, an unashamedly eccentric collection of uniquely rendered cover versions, all written by guys (some with a decidedly misogynist streak) and sabotaged to her own balmy ends. Not to forget that Amos made one of the most fetchingly bizarre 90s covers with her ballad version of Nirvana’s ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’, this album takes this idea a whole conceptual leap forward by transmutating several of the pieces Tori-style to the point that it would take a genius to recognise the song’s origins. By hiring sonic whizzkids like King Crimson’s guitarist Adrian Belew, and sticking so religiously to her personality extremities, Amos has fashioned an album that, while a difficult listen at times, effectively rewires and comments on songs by artists as stylistically opposed as Eminem and The Beatles, Depeche Mode and 10cc.

SAM PHILLIPS
FAN DANCE (Nonesuch)
Sam Phillips was a recent defector from the white Christian gospel circuit when I interviewed her a decade ago, having made the
choice to swap evangelising for the more abstract domain of heathen expression on brilliant albums like ‘Cruel Inventions’. I asked what Christianity meant to her at that secular point, and her apt and astonishing response was: "What does love require?" Now, if Bush and Bin Laden were to walk around with those four words on their minds, then the world might be a safer place to live in. As it is, Sam Phillips has quietly maintained a small but fervent fan base around her slim volume of recorded work, all of them produced by her husband - another muse worth exploring - T Bone Burnett. ‘Fan Dance’ isn’t the greatest album Phillips has ever made, or will do. For better or worse, it moves away from the Anglo-pop influences of previous releases to a more earthy, stripped-down approach featuring the considerable talents of guitarist Marc Ribot. But it hardly matters whether this is a world-beater or not: there’s something about Phillips that defines her as a marginal yet special presence on the music scene. I would call it the willpower and ability to communicate truth through music. But while her songs vibrate with integrity, her quirky presentation and disarmingly simple yet cryptic lyrics mean that, unlike so many other well-meaning singer-songwriters, she’s never a crashing bore.

AJ BELL
HI-BISCUIT
Cow Records
It’s worth noting the superficial similarity between Kiwi singer-songwriter AJ Bell and Australia’s critically acclaimed Paul Kelly. On his second album ‘Hi-Biscuit’, Bell has crafted an an hour of low-key excellence that has everything that dull Australian could wish for but never achieve; Kelly’s voice is tuneless and monotone, Bell’s has a natural sing-song quality and real grain; Kelly’s songs and delivery are without wit or humour or colour, where Bell’s has those things in spades. Peppered with unselfconscious Kiwi references (one song is called ‘Jonah, The Comeback’), the arrangements of these songs are rich, and the whole damn thing was put together in the heart of Sandringham, surely one of Auckland’s most neglected but rockingest suburbs. There’s nothing hip or of-the-moment about these diaries of life at the world’s bottom, and that makes it an even more unexpected, delicious pleasure.

SURFING USSR
SURFADELIC (Proper)
Perfect Summer fun! Bearing only a passing resemblance to the more Shadows-influenced of surf music instrumental groups of the 60s, Christchurch ensemble Surfing USSR (who must be a hoot on stage) present a cd jam-packed with sixteen guitar-led tunes that are more Jewish kletzmer than Beach Boys, and a riot of odd fun from start to finish. Featuring incredibly skillful fretwork and tightly-controlled performances that have a real intuition for the required poise and pounce of such styles, ‘Surfadelic’ is one of those records that is either the life of the party, or gets short shrift from style nazis who always want the latest Euro-trance nonsense at their Christmas knees-ups.


HOT & NOT ON DISC


HOT

Shapeshifter Realtime (Kog)
Reportedly, this Kiwi drum&bass collective whip up a real storm in the live arena, largely because they’ve successfully converted a machine-led musical genre to a real-time, energetically performed phenomenon. Unfortunately, the human interface isn’t all that apparent on their debut cd; happily, their blend of slamming, relentless beats and jazz-inflected textures is quite sufficient to produce the intended euphoria. Someone should tell them how to spell ‘saxophone’, however.

The Beta Band Hot Shots II (Regal)
Destined to remain on the fringes because, stylistically, this group are impossible to pigeonhole, the Beta Band have fashioned an exquisite second dose of their mercurial brilliance that veers from sublime loose grooves to songs expressed in an impressively foppish singing style that hasn’t been heard since the prog-symphonic era of Caravan and the Moody Blues. Yay.

The Clean Getaway (Flying Nun)
Overrated in their prime as one of Flying Nun’s earliest, terminally hip successes, these days the members live all over the show, and come together when time permits. Despite this ‘hobby’ vibe, ‘Getaway’ is an enjoyable album that meshes surprisingly well, with many moments to surpass their early work. Or perhaps they’re just getting older and so am I. No-one, however, should have allowed Robert Scott near a microphone.

NOT

Mercury Rev All Is Dream (V2)
One of the most critically-acclaimed groups on the face of the earth strain
hard for the teary fragility of Neil Young at his emotive best… and fail to
muster even a passable pastiche of the old dog-haired rocker.

Starsailor Love Is Here (Chrysalis)
Another wretched attempt to emulate the strangulated vocal gyrations of Jeff Buckley (RIP) that usurps its name from Tim Buckley (Jeff’s dad, RIP) best album, and backs it all up with contrived songs and a typically unimaginative, shoe-gazing English strum. Horrid.

The Feelers Communicate (WEA)
I don’t care that heaps of dosh was thrown at this followup to the massively successful debut; or that these Kiwi boys felt they had to get ‘international’ producer Gil Norton on board. A boring album is a boring album is a boring album. So nothing has changed on planet Feelers then.

gary steel can be harassed at beautmusic@pl.net

















4-11-01

If we were under attack from an airborne army of frisbeed cd releases, there’s no way that even a crack team of ground troops with the latest firepower technology could take them out before they starting slicing heads off. In the last ten years, the number of new releases has got out of hand, making it impossible for even the most dedicated music follower to keep up with any specific genre... and pity the musical generalist! Each month, Metro provides you with a selection of the hottest releases, but it’s inevitable that some of our reviewer’s most treasured finds don’t make the page. Here, then, are ten albums from 2001 that you may have missed (we almost did!) and that we think would make your Summer listening time more intense, more pleasurable, more durable!


1. NEOTROPIC
La Prochaine Fois (NinjaTune)
Riz Maslen (aka Neotropic) is known primarily as one of the too-cool crew at London label Ninja Tune who works at breaking down the barriers between contrasting musical styles, aided by electronic gadgetry and sampling technology. But her third album is a revelation, mining the rich seams of impressionistic classical, pastoral English folk, and noirish jazz. Maslen is unafraid to use unsettling spatial effects, backwards vocals and any manner of sound combinations to create that rarest of artifacts: a genuinely experimental record that is a beautiful, magical, witchy experience for the home listener. Accompanied by Maslen’s ‘ambient road movie’ on cd-rom.

2. HERBERT
Bodily Functions (K7)
Similarly elegaiac, occasionally upbeat, dj/composer Matthew Herbert has fashioned an extraordinary album out of samples of surgical procedures and beats from his unborn child... and it’s a truly beautiful, moving experience! One of the few genuinely genius House music djs on the planet, Herbert here moves off the dancefloor to ruminate on relationships (the body politic), on a disc that - with the gorgeous vocals of his wife Dani Siciliano - would seem to be paying tribute to 40s torch song as it subtley updates the genre. Lovely, rewarding. Honest!

3. TALVIN SINGH
Ha (Island)
Originally brought to attention with his tabla work for Massive Attack, and his Anokha club for young London-based Indian drum&bass exponents, Talvin Singh is fast becoming a cross-cultural ambassador of Peter Gabriel proportions. His second album is a bright surprise after the disappointing debut, ‘Ok’ (and that’s all it was, folks). ‘Ha’ is a fantastic pan-global fusion featuring a galaxy of enchanting vocalists and instrumentalists (both traditional and contemporary), all of it propelled along by breakbeats that turn it into one of the most entertaining musical travelogues since Brian Eno and David Byrne’s seminal ‘My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts’.

4. DIMMER
I Believe You Are A Star (Sony)
The close-to-legendary ex-Straitjacket Fits man Shayne Carter may have taken an age to come up with this initially underwhelming and rather short Dimmer debut, but every second counts on this near-perfect winner, an album that captures its moods perfectly, and pummels them into submission using layers of subtle sonic integrity and expressionist savvy and a veritable world of poise: Carter is constantly the cat about to pounce on its target, making ‘I Believe You Are A Star’ the kind of artistic rumination that keeps you on your seat. Not The Feelers, that’s for sure.

5. SJD
Lost Soul Music (Round Trip Mars)
Unlike Carter, Auckland chap Sean Donelly wears his heart on sleeve. Like Carter, SJD expresses his songwriting muse through the current computer/sampling/electronic interface. This second SJD disc is a stunning work, integrating Donelly’s surprisingly Orbisonesque vocal pitch with dashing, surprising snippets of modern classical, groovy lounge and a kitchen sink’s worth of entertaining sideways glances.

6. SIGUR ROS
Agaetis Byrjun (Fatcat)
One of the big surprises on the alt.rock/post-rock map, this hauntingly different Icelandic group has been hailed as the Next Big Thing (expect the anti-reaction soon!) but ‘Agaetis Byrjun’ almost lives up to the hype. It’s an otherworldly thing, with alien-angel singing, an attractive ethereality, together with the occasional firepower of Neil Young-style guitar fury.

7. ROOTS MANUVA
Run Come Save Me (Big Dada)
If it’s firepower, energy and pure fun you’re after, try the second album from British-based hip-hop exponent Roots Manuva. Rapping with a pronounced difference, the Roots lyrical vision is pure wackiness. But the real genius of this album is in the way it strays from the typical funk backing tracks into techno territory to produce an amalgam that sounds like the freshest thing you’ve heard all year.

8. FLANGER
Inner Space/Outer Space (Ninja Tune)
Two German electronic dilettants working in Santiago, making a third duo project that is influenced by the funky electric jazz of Herbie Hancock and Weather Report, but takes it to entirely new and brilliant cyber planets.

9. INTERNATIONAL OBSERVER
Seen (IO)
Auckland-based duo make an electronic dub-based album that’s so beautiful, so perfectly melodic and meditative without being soporific, that listening to it repeatedly is like the process of falling in love. Kiss-kiss!

10. THE DINING ROOMS
Numero Deux (Guidance)
Two Italian chaps with impeccable taste and the ability to put all their influences into a hat (influences that are heavy on Italian film music and lush grooves), swirl it around and come up with something that, while making for a superior espresso experience, also pays off with some thorough repeat plays. Yum.

gary steel can be harassed at beautmusic@pl.net

January 2002

RADIOHEAD
I MIGHT BE WRONG
(EMI)
You can sense the collective cry of relief from record company and conservative critics as Radiohead seem to backtrack from the impressive experimental introspection of their last two albums to that safe place: the concert podium. ‘I Might Be Wrong’ is a live album matter-of-factly drawn from four shows, and though it might at first appear a safe bet and a nice Summer delight for fans of the group’s more conventional rock drama ‘OK Computer’, it’s not quite the easy ride some might envisage. Yes, Radiohead do boil down the studio ingredients into an elemental energy suitable for the immediacy of instant communication between artist/fan, but that doesn’t make for a boring, old-fashioned concert documentation. Instead, there’s a real sense of both the classic rock foundations and the boundary-stretching being inherent in the band’s personality, and finally, the performances themselves are positively riveting.

KYLIE
FEVER
(Mushroom/FMR)
This old fool has always had a soft spot for wee Kylie, the former Neighbours girl-next-door who didn’t seem to have a hope in hell of forging a career in nasty London, let alone the ability to reinvent herself over and over again; the flimsy pop starlet of bubblegum producers Stock, Aitken & Waterman to that awesome Nick Cave duet, and inbetween, attaining the dubious distinction of diva supreme with the gay parade. Here she is again, wiggling her nude rump and crooning an utterly lifeless, generic series of thirteen disco pop songs. Pity: while Madonna was at least clever enough to employ and exploit some of the leading innovators of contemporary music technology, Kylie’s comeback is so devoid of risk-taking that there’s no edge, no stimulant in this product. It would have been so easy to satisfy everyone, simply by employing some talented git to add a little wit and piss-taking humour here, or some audacious musical backgrounds there. ‘Fever’ doesn’t even break a sweat.

GREG JOHNSON
THE BEST YET
(EMI)
It’s irritating, and ultimately depressing, but one of the inevitable consequences of living in a country with a comparatively small population is that ‘middle-tier’ artists haven’t a shit show of making a living out of their craft, no matter how talented and worthy. Greg Johnson has been beavering away for decades now, both as a quality pop singer/songwriter, and in his workingman’s guise of jazz crooner/trumpeter/bar-prop. ‘The Best Yet’ is a stunning collection of Johnson’s pop artistry. Full of fine hooks, bitter-sweet lyric observations and memorable melodies, these songs have stood the test of time just as well as those by our more celebrated pop heroes (Dobbyn, Finn, etc). Perhaps what kept Johnson from the top echelon wasn’t lack of edge, but one of those strange quirks of place and timing. Perhaps in the more amenable contemporary environment for Kiwi tunes, ‘The Best Yet’ will instigate a resurgence of interest in one of our finest.

PAUL McCARTNEY
DRIVING RAIN
(Parlophone/EMI)
McCartney unintentionally pointed out his major problem in an episode of Beatles producer George Martin’s fascinating ‘Rhythm Of Life’ documentary. Discussing the magic confluence of inspiration and good luck involved in coming up with an original-sounding melodic sequence, he explained how easy it was to come up with melodies that already existed. While other artists spend their days trying desperately not to copy their heroes, McCartney can’t help repeating himself. ‘Driving Rain’ sounds like an album McCartney at least felt compelled to write, containing as it does a level of intent and angst not felt since the early days of his early 70s group, Wings. Most of the pat, too-comfortable aspects of his typical solo work have evaporated with this release, and it’s a convenient presumption that the coming to terms with his wife’s death has renewed his vigour. Tragically, the songs sound like pale shadows of his work in the Beatles and Wings: it’s not that they’re lacking, just that there’s an awful lot to live up to, and unlike (say) Bob Dylan, McCartney hasn’t developed a craggy old-guy persona to match the youthful version the world loved to love.

LEONARD COHEN
TEN NEW SONGS
(Columbia/Sony)
Speaking of craggy old guy personas, groaning Cohen (or Laughing Len to his admirers) has sounded septuagenarian for his entire thirty-three-year recording career, so it’s no surprise that he sounds no older now that he’s in his late 60s! No-one could call Cohen’s poetic muse ‘uplifting’, but his fans take a great delight in wallowing in the carefully orated melancholic sing-speak poetry of the Canadian legend. One person’s depression is another’s perfect moment, and Cohen is full of perfect moments: his grainy voice, beyond time, somehow finding (with great simplicity) a way to impart wisdom about love, sex and the psychogeography of the soul. Having emerged from seven years of silence in a Buddhist monastery, one might wonder what Cohen would have to say. Plenty, as it happens, though there is an air of gentle resignation here that was nowhere to be found on the anger of his previous album, ‘The Future’. Sadly, Cohen has relied totally on Sharon Robinson to produce, programme and co-write the compositions, rendering a musical offering that lacks spit and mettle. But Cohen’s music backgrounds have often been strangely geriatric; get over that, hear the voice.


HOT

Bent
Programmed To Love (EMI)
Idiot dance magazine ‘Mixmag’ called this the ‘first great chill-out album of the 21st century’ and sadly, they’re probably right. The work of electronic groove duo Simon Mills and Nail Tolliday, it has a gorgeous, languid feeling that should make it a barbecue favourite this Summer.

Alicia Keys
Songs In A Minor (J-Records/BMG)
Sickeningly talented child-prodigy-turned funky teen r’n’b diva. Personally, I’m not big on what passes for r’n’b these days, but Keys’ effortlessly impeccable singing/writing/arranging, and production that sounds like a million bucks (oh, baby, that bass!) has me involuntarily grinding my rheumy hips.

NOT

Robbie Williams
Swing When You’re Winning (Chrysalis/EMI)
Only an gibbering fool or a megalomaniac or someone on a serious cocktail of unhinging substances could convince themselves that they could get away with something as garish, unconvincing and, well... AWFUL as this album of misjudged torch-oriented, orchestra-accompanied cover versions. As a pop singer, Robbie, you rocked. This, on the other hand, is a stinker.


Various Artists
Pils On Tick (Kog/Universal)
Docked a sinister notch or two for the stupid drug play of the title, this latest taster from Kingsland name brand Kog is a somewhat shapeless exercise in conformist ordinariness: lashings of mundane house (Cuffy & Leon, Subware) and drum&bass (Shapeshifter, Concord Dawn).



April 2002

CORNELIUS
POINT
Matador

Imagine if the post-pop genius of England’s XTC (anybody remember XTC?) was resurrected in Japan, and refashioned to fit the times. Romping home as album of the year so far, ‘Point’ is that rarest of beasts: a retro-fitted pop concoction with a dazzling array of references sculpted to perfection in a cyber-laboratory that allows any kind of combination, no matter how audacious, without the whole coming out sounding like the audio equivalent of Frankenstein’s monster. Cornelius – known as Keigo Oyamada to his mum - has a long history in the creative underworld of Japanese pop, but this is only his second release in the West. And what a scorcher: somehow the cultural distance from most of his influences allows him to reach recombinant contextual conclusions that make for good entertainment and good art. Try putting creamy vocal harmonies against a bombastic Led Zeppelin riff. Ah-ha, sounds good! These combinations are brought to life with such skill that they work wondrously, and they never fail in their capacity to bring a smile to the lips. It’s when Cornelius puts an astringent acoustic guitar alongside the perfectly tuned and timed accompaniment of cricket song and makes it work that I give up and say something simple: go get one.

ALANIS MORISSETTE
UNDER RUG SWEPT
Warner Music

I could tell you that Alanis is quite endearing in her overtly wordy, brainy press release (in an age of chronic record industry illiteracy), and that the concern she shows for cultures and countries and men and women working together to solve their problems in the personal politik is strangely fetching. And you wouldn’t buy the record. I could tell you that Alanis has re-emerged shorn of those sneering vocal mannerisms, and that her new record finds her finding a natural freedom as a singer-songwriter, self-producing and self-determined and surrounding herself with friendly guests that add warmth and make the whole thing sound wondrously relaxed and surprisingly non-corporate. And you still wouldn’t buy it. (You wanna know a secret? Sorry Alanis, but neither would I). Alas, poor Alanis will never escape the ridicule resulting from the mass-culture saturation of her kazillion-selling Jagged Little Pill, and its moment-defining mid-90s angry young woman schtick.

VARIOUS
BUDDHA-BAR IV
George V

Destined to find its way into the homes of adoring urban sophisticates with more cash than cred, this double cd is segued and sequenced by a chap called David Visan who, it must be said, is a taste-free zone. Okay, so you fawned over Enya and romanced to Enigma and shagged to Deep Forest, and eventually found your way to the garish chillout grooves of the Café Del Mar series (Ibiza with a hangover). Buddha-bar is an outrage: as if the title concept wasn’t significantly sacrilegious, insult is heaped on in spades as various world musics are mangled by a succession of nobodies without an iota of cultural understanding or musical context. Two tracks (by Nitin Sawhney and the Gotan Project) stand out from the swill of swelling, sugary strings, together with unholy combinations of ouds, sampled divas and beats. Disc 1 is labeled ‘dinner’; disc 2 is ‘drink’. Is that a bottle in front of me, or a frontal lobotomy?

VARIOUS
NOW THING
Mo Wax

Reggae is so enmeshed in the Kiwi cultural mindset that its origins as an alien import from the politically turbulent island of Jamaica seem downright odd. But when mainstream New Zealand thinks of reggae they think of his High-ness, the late, the honourable, Bob Marley. Contemporary Jamaica is saturated with ragga or dancehall (ragga being to dancehall what rap is to hip hop), a perky, rhythmically insistent music form that is, as the name suggests, geared towards getting up and wiggling one’s bottom. The problem with most ragga is the overtly misogynistic lyrics, with the added difficulty that the best dancehall tunes tend to circulate via that antiquated medium, the seven-inch single. ‘Now Thing’ – subtitled ’15 Dancehall Instrumentals’ – finally offers a solution, by compiling a compelling platter devoid of any substantial vocal intrusion (except for grunts and effects). There’s a simple sense of playfulness and fun here that should put a smile on anyone’s party spirit.

TOSCA
DIFFERENT TASTES OF HONEY
G-Stone

These are confusing times for those of us who are old enough to remember when an album was… an album! When Viennese duo Tosca released the phenomenally popular ‘Suzuki’ in 2000, who would have thought that subsequently, two remix albums would ensue: ‘Suzuki In Dub’, and now a project in which one particular Suzuki track (Honey) is remixed thirteen times. It’s almost as if the album has been structured to accompany a particularly sensual romp between the sheets: what passes for a vocal here is essentially a sexy moan, and you get to hear it hundreds of times during this unbroken ebb and flow of moist electronic dub action. Given any quibbles about paying full price for many versions of only one song, the various mixologists have created a beautiful and surprisingly varied set of takes that carries us through from deep, woofer-shredding dub to uptempo house. And the sheer attention to detail in every piece (and the sonic space they move in) quickly impresses with its sheer superiority.

HOT

Royksopp
Melody AM (Wall Of Sound)
Tasty little number from a country that UK musical colonialists Wall Of Sound have recently discovered, Norway. In the past couple of years, the frozen country has been responsible for some of the most intriguingly playful electronic music in recent memory; Royksopp are playful, alright, but their orbit is a freshly minted funky groove/lounge sound.

Dead Famous People
Secret Girl’s Business (Tripping Usherette)
Imagine if The Chills, circa ‘Pink Frost’, had conquered the known universe. In that environment of fairground organ, marijuana melancholy and slightly sozzled pop nostalgia, Auckland girl group Dead Famous People might have been huge. This compilation from the 80s and early 90s gathers the group’s shambolic, naively charming back catalogue into one convenient package.

NOT

RemyZero
The Golden Hum (Elektra)
Just another bunch of bleating, self-important, utterly humourless Radiohead (circa OK Computer) soundalikes. That is, filtered through mid-American sensibilities. Which makes it all so much worse.

Sade
Lovers Live (Epic)
Don’t get me wrong, this old sucker’s got a huge soft spot for ‘Your Love Is King’ 80s caramellow crooner Sade. But this live album is interminable, and who needs concert renditions of very intimate songs in front of a noisy crowd of thousands. Pointless.

May 2002

BLACK REBEL MOTORCYCLE CLUB
BRMC
Virgin America
They say these guys could be the first big new thing of 2002. Black Rebel Motorcycle Club are two San Franciscans and one expat Pom making rough-edged, post-garage rock that, unlike the White Stripes (though just as retro) have a definite accessible pop edge. There’s resoundingly nothing new here, but perhaps its refreshing for kids these days to actually hear what a group is supposed to sound like when its rehearsing and getting excited about the primal surge of rock'n’roll, and they do capture some of that, being influenced by groups like The Who and early garage-to-psych bands. Does the job.

BRANDY
FULL MOON
Atlantic
No doubt about it, this is fluff, but 23-year-old Brandy’s third album is an example of the alarming craft going into contemporary R&B. For all the mind-boggling stats on display on the epic record company press release, and a bio that asserts the former sit-com actor’s newfound individuality, this is nowhere near the top end of the genre (Jill Scott, Missy Elliott). However, production methods that ten years ago would have been considered avant garde have been seamlessly integrated (as they have with new generation hip hop) and it gives the clichéd cooing a twist of lemon that makes it quite palatable. And full marks – in a culture that endlessly promotes junk food lifestyles – for promoting the benefits of healthy veganism.

EPSILON-BLUE
WE HAVE A RESPONSIBILITY TO OUR SHAREHOLDERS
Kog Transmissions
Just when the House music cultural pond is becoming increasingly vermin-ridden and stale smelling, Auckland-based Leyton goes and releases… a House album! But wait: say what you will, this is phenomenally accomplished stuff. Combining his ambient electronic roots with the dub echoes of the Berlin minimal techno scene, and an easy to love lushness that brings in trance-inducing congas and a scattering of guest stars, it’s an album with just the right dimensions of texture, groove and fresh’n’fruity zing. Very clever, is this chap, inviting the gorgeous Josephine and Black Seeds’ Barnaby Weir to provide for all those who find mesmerising dance-orientated instrumental tech-house too taxing. On the evidence of this oddly-titled album, Leyton (also the man behind ambient project Rotor+) will not be amongst the underground innovators of Kiwi electronica. Instead he can be proud of his masterful command of the medium, and a recording that would win hands down in a contest with most international exponents of the genre. Shit, it’ll go far.

MARIANNE FAITHFUL
KISSIN’ TIME
Virgin
Call me sexist (or ageist) if you will, but there’s something faintly embarrassing about a 50-something-year-old woman rasping out disco songs intoning lines like ‘it’s time, for sex, with strangers’. That’s on the opening track which, as with several other songs on this disc, is co-written by the very hip Beck. It’s on a track conspired with Jarvis Cocker of Pulp that it all becomes cringe-inducing, with a line that alludes to the infamous ‘spit on my snatch’ lyric from an album of genuine power, 1979’s ‘Broken English’. (In this case, ‘Now everybody wants to kiss my snatch/To go where God knows who has gone before’) Believing her own hype (not the footnote in pop groupiedom alternative viewpoint), Faithful has enlisted the likes of Blur and Billy Corgan (Smashing Pumpkins) to help her through, but it’s half-arsed (even her ‘poignant’ tribute to femme fatale Nico) and mean-spirited and ego-driven, just like her autobiography.

TIM FINN
FEEDING THE GODS
What Are Records?
Following relatively hot on the heels of his back-to-basics, Nashville-recorded ‘Say It Is So’, this time Finn has tried to keep it simple and raw by loading his hard-drive in Auckland and Waiatarua. ‘Feeding The Gods’ refers to the songwriting process, and it could go down as the least pretentious ‘concept’ album in the history of contemporary music: the songs all explore aspects of singing, songwriting and performing, without once complaining about life on the road, the venereal diseases of groupies or the price of illicit substances. Uh no, folks, Finn’s on a quiet bender about finding his bliss, and that’s the impulse the semi-legendary ex-Enzer has to write and perform. But is it any good? Well, the first half may appeal to those who – like Finn – are feeling a need to explore the rootsy woods of US alt.country. For me, the worthwhile stuff kicks in half way through, where Finn’s natural, endearing awkwardness and fetching eccentricity rears its head on a bunch of numbers that feature weirdly stretched singing effects, subtle electronic treatments, Don McGlashan playing his fabulous euphonium… and where his voice enters history as a kind of Kiwi cousin to England’s awe-inspiring iconoclastic singer, Robert Wyatt.

JOOLS HOLLAND & HIS RHYTHM & BLUES ORCHESTRA
JOOLS HOLLAND’S BIG BAND RHYTHM & BLUES
Warner
Put these old coots out to pasture, will ya? Your worst nightmare: take a bunch of rock’n’roll legends, most of them certifiably geriatric, and accompany them with the ingratiating tv host (and ex-Squeeze pianist) Jools Holland (who gets to get pictured with the stars at every turn, smiling nerdily while they scowl) How to ruin reputations. Sting, an ailing George Harrison, Van Morrison, Eric Clapton and many others are along for the ride, but it’s the women (Sam Brown and Mica Paris) who slightly redeem things. That and Welsh madman John Cale, who fakes it through an outrageous almost-camp Johnny Mercer composition.

HOT

Fatcat & Fishface
Dogbreath (Jayrem)
It’s become a cliché, but the best ‘made for kids’ art is basically INSANE. The human species never loses the desire for play and total silliness, and adults who tap into that make the finest works for kids of all ages. Fatcat & Fishface are obviously demented, and they ROCK.

Various
Waves (Crydamoure/Virgin)
Anyone enamoured with the French twist Daft Punk give to mechanical techno will enjoy this segued collection of 12” singles brought together by Daft Punker Guy-Manuel De Homem-Christo, and a chap called Rico. Dance your nuts off.

NOT

Frank Sinatra
Romance (Warner)
I’m sure Sinatra’s classic Reprise albums are every bit as artful in their schmaltzy ‘songs for doomed romantics’ way as all the critics say all the time, but this double cd compile is scrappy, predictable, and highlights all the most bullish aspects of the Mafia’s favourite crooner. And record companies wonder why punters are downloading.

Rod Stewart
The Story So Far (Warner)
Two good cds could have been got out of a generous combination of his Mercury label years (‘Maggie May’, etc) and his decadent American ascendancy (‘Tonight’s The Night’, ‘Do Ya Think I’m Sexy?’). Instead, this is an abysmal trope mostly through his later years. One word about those 80s synthy songs: PARP!

June 2002

CRAIG ARMSTRONG
AS IF TO NOTHING
Virgin
I’ve no doubt that this will be an astonishing crossover hit. What a waste, therefore, to report that what sounded like an intriguing project, drowns in its own sentiment. Armstrong wrote the string parts for Massive Attack, and has become an orchestral arranger of some repute. On this huge, expensive, lusher than lush album, strings vie for attention with an impressive grab-bag of guest stars, including Bono (U2), Evan Dando (Lemonheads), drum’n’bass ‘legend’ Photek, and Glaswegian rockers Mogwai. Despite moments that hint at what could have been (Swati Natekar’s spine-tingling Hindi vocals), too often the sugar content is just too high, and this unfortunate situation is just reinforced by Richard Claydermanesque piano parts. Armstrong unwittingly points out his own failings by sampling progressive rock group King Crimson’s ‘Starless’, in which the purposefully artificial ‘fake orchestra’ of the mellotron provides the perfect foil for Robert Fripp’s indescribably aching guitar melody.

THE BEES
SUNSHINE HIT ME
Wall Of Sound
Some of the best Kiwi sounds have come from the isolation of being out of the pop culture slipstream. It must be nigh on impossible to achieve the requisite, necessary distance from the prevailing trends anywhere on mainland England, so it’s heartening to hear an album from the Isle Of Wight that does just that: The Bees is primarily the work of a fellow called Paul Butler, a 23-year-old who already has a startling musical resume in a discography of independent releases with likeminded funk-electronic-jazz-fusion groups like Fretless AZM. Teaming up with pop conceptualist Aaron Fletcher, Butler and Co have fashioned an intelligent pop confection that defies any sensible attempt to define it. Always a good sign! But basically, Sunshine Hit Me is, indeed, a worthy dose of blue skies in Winter, as it eschews electronica for a polished home-studio take on the kind of classic pop that appeals to the hardcore music cognoscenti: between the two members there’s a musical world that spans Afro-funk jams and Beach Boys harmonies, and a host of other influences that may be less detectable, but all go towards making this one of the most intriguing pop releases so far in 2002.

BRYAN FERRY
FRANTIC
Virgin
It’s like science fiction, really. To think that a man with the name ‘Bryan’ could have been considered the epitome of style and class back in the 70s. After a long layoff, the voice of Roxy Music steps forward with a disc that anyone but a dwindling dinner party of die-hard fans will find hard to forgive. For a start, that instantly recognizable, effete croon has gone and got craggy and old. And while Ferry may have benefited by bringing his sound up-to-date, he has chosen to surround himself with equally craggy compadres in the likes of Dave Stewart (Eurhythmics), Chris Spedding and Mick Green. With Roxy, Ferry effortlessly combined style and content in a unique setting; ‘Frantic’ sounds like the work of a man who once wore tuxedos to every engagement, and now can’t be bothered stepping out of his house slippers.

SILVERCHAIR
DIORAMA
Virgin
Calm down, Gary. You’ll end up sounding like a record company press blurb. Oh, what the hell! Diorama is a stunning, superlative power pop fusion that sets new standards of craft, adventure and ambition for a trio who are barely in their 20s. Obviously they picked the innards out of their parents record collections, because this album (their third) takes 60s symphonic pop and melts it together with some fine hard rock riffing to make a record that is perfectly of the year 2002, yet is also an instant classic that harks back to previous eras of pop and rock. And all with a degree of skill, and barefaced honesty that avoids the usual pitfall of young musicians trying way too hard to sound cool. Silverchair aren’t cool, but they don’t care. Despite their youth, they do care about pop art. And to think, they come from Newcastle, that dire distant suburb of Sydney.

SMITH & MIGHTY
LIFE IS…
!K7
It’s difficult to be a connoisseur without being a snob, but where fellow Bristol collective Massive Attack were a connoisseur’s band who crossed over to a big audience, Smith & Mighty are like a Lion Red version for the masses; all the ‘right’ moves are made on a third album that mixes up good-time dub, break-beat and soul influences and overlays them with sometimes appealing female vocals. Which isn’t to say it’s all tepid nonsense: there are some fine moments of deep-end dub and every now and then, Rob Smith, Ray Mighty and Peter D. Rose really hit their stride. The serious music person will be annoyed by the obligatory ‘get up and dance’ lyrics, cheesey keyboards and vocal moments that sound at times like wannabe Destiny’s Child. The rest of us will look past that and simply enjoy. Gulp.

HOT

Cornershop
Handcream For A Generation (Wiiija)
They once sounded like Oasis with a Hindi accent, so it’s quite gratifying that – even if it does feature a 14-minute epic featuring Oasis man Noel Gallagher – that this one is almost impossible to get a handle on, so wide is its ambit round its interests (funk looms large these days).

Georgina Zellan-Smith
New Zealand Piano Works (Zellan)
Returned expat Zellan-Smith gives spirited solo piano renditions of often gorgeous works by David Farquhar (who was born in Cambridge, New Zealand, studied at Cambridge, England, and eulogises Cambridge, New Zealand on this cd), and Edwin Carr (who lives on Waiheke and writes about Waiheke on pieces like ‘Sea-shore’). Not exactly chart material, but…

Various
Simply The Best Songwriters (Warner)
Overdue double cd celebration of the singer-songwriter genre, starting with the folk-influenced crew of the mid-60s, and moving right along to the present day. It’s great to get Nick Drake, Tim Hardin, Tim Buckley and Donovan on the same disc; a minor quibble is the addition of recent wannabes like Jewel, Ryan Adams and Alanis Morissette.

NOT

Rinocerose
Music Kills Me (V2)
It will appeal, believe you me: how could a band go wrong with fruity French groove locked to a live band with guitars? If it sounds different, it is. It’s also rather dull.

Matty Warmington
Flow (Loop)
It’s horrid having to niggle about local releases, but ya gotta be honest. Warmington’s folksy (sometimes epic) songs are impassioned and even quite accomplished, but a vocal style modeled lock stock and barrel on Jeff Buckley gives it no reason to breathe.

July 2002

PRINCE
THE RAINBOW CHILDREN (NPG)
So… Prince is back being Prince. As if anyone still cared. Actually, if anyone DID still care, The Rainbow Children might be getting the kind of ‘comeback’ album accolades it probably merits. Okay, it’s docked for the freak’s tendency to propagandise his new religion (Jehovah’s Witness, unfortunately), but otherwise, this is the kind of sprawling, somewhat directionless semi-masterpiece that if produced in the 80s, would have set the royal empire alight. This time, Prince has finally discovered 70s jazz-fusion, so in amongst the typical daffy voices and tight, soulful arrangements, there’s a smattering of showy instrumentals and incidentals that could come from a Weather Report or Return To Forever record. The sad thing is that musically Prince is at last venturing out and the level of musicianship here is extraordinary (flutes and mallet instruments rule!), but of course the world’s ears are now closed.

PATTI SMITH
LAND (1975-2002) (Arista)
Patti Smith is undoubtedly one of America’s justifiably iconic, legendary, important figures. And for all sorts of reasons above and beyond her musical contributions. With her classic 1975 debut, Horses, she rewrote the book on women in rock, helping to define a new genre, punk rock, in the process. Tough, streetwise, with an ambiguous sexuality, she was as mean and nasty as any guy, and twice as clever. This is a tough review to write, because Land is a necessary and overdue assessment of Smith’s career and artistic legacy to date; a lovingly assembled double cd with sizeable booklet. It’s great that her latterday return to the stage is acknowledged, too. While those records have failed to grace the world’s charts, they amply demonstrate that there’s still anger and passion and intellectual gravitas post-marriage and motherhood. However: I never rated Smith’s work after Horses, mainly because that record’s gritty, agile, powerful rock was all-too-soon co-opted by a big American, anthemic rock sound that always seemed like too much bluster.

VARIOUS
COMING HOME II (Stereo Deluxe)
Call me a grumpy old curmudgeon, but there’s something in me that wants more from music than functionality, background or purpose-built sounds. I want magic. If it’s magic you’re after, go elsewhere. But despite a title that makes me want to puke (‘Here is the new sound wallpaper that gives your home a fresh glance… Coming Home II is the compact universal furniture that creates atmosphere, warmth and cosiness in any space’ goes the rancid press blurb) German label Stereo Deluxe have come up with another of their post Kruder&Dorfmeister tasty treats. There’s a Latin feel to quite a bit of this, but also those deep dub-influenced grooves that bring in the odd bluesy vocal. It’s all impeccably flowing, beautifully presented and sounds gorgeous. I really shouldn’t dig it, but after a hard day of slog, Coming Home (II) sounds like a titillating proposition.

VARIOUS
GOOD ROCKIN’ TONIGHT
Sire
There’s something delightfully sweet about this album. Sure it’s nostalgia: subtitled ‘The Legacy Of Sun Records’, contemporary artists from Paul McCartney through Chrissie Hynde, Elton John, Bryan Ferry and Chris Isaak do their mostly faithful renditions of classics from the birth of rock’n’roll; a birth that came about as a result of the pioneering 50s label, Sun. That original Sun sound (the artists included early Elvis, Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis) still retains its simple, naïve charm and strength over 40 years later, and it’s immediately apparent that these artists (most of whom are not exactly young themselves) have a tremendous love for the label and its artists/songs. The only time things don’t sound quite right (that is, just like the originals) are when Matchbox Twenty rock it up, or the Howling Diablos featuring Kid Rock go a little crazy right at the end. (Oh, and there’s that chap Dylan, who sounds increasingly like a castrated duck). Not a touch on the originals, but still lovely.

VARIOUS
SIDEWAYS TOO (Round Trip Mars)
As you would expect from Stinky Jim (host of 95bFM’s long-running Stinky Grooves show), his second label compilation distills the real oil out of the kind of freaky fruit-bat blends that he plays to perfection every week. Except that this selection consists of local discoveries (apart from Aussie friends-of-the-groove Tooth). While the key three tracks are by local legends who appeared on the original Sideways project – International Observer, Dooblong Tongdra and Phelps & Munro – the lack of killer new discoveries doesn’t stop Sideways Too from being the most persuasive pack of funky-ass Kiwi electronic grooves to have been compiled and presented to the public ever-ever-ever. Suddenly there’s a plethora of homegrown recordings on retail shelves, but few of them show the kind of smooth-flowing, yet intelligently left-of-centre distinction that emanates from every sweetly-scented, perfumed pore of Sideways Too.

HOT

Various
Latin Deluxe Vols 1&2 (Cinq Etoile) Don’t usually go for this sort of immaculately blended Latin beat nonsense, but these two discs are so consummately produced and packaged and every tune selected by DJ Monte La Rue just morphs so smoothly into the next that this makes for the perfect wallpaper.

Desmond Williams
Delights Of The Garden (ESL)
Subtle blend of groove styles that reflect Williams’ genesis (hails from Jamaica, lives in New Jersey) intricately weaves easy to love, good-time influences of reggae, dub, Afro-beat, Latin and contemporary breakbeat. Tasty concoction from the label owned by Thievery Corporation.

NOT

Van Morrison
Down The Road (Exile)
Oh dear. Poor old Van is ready for the rest-home, on the evidence here presented. The whole thing is woefully nostalgic, from the cover (a photograph of a shop dealing in ‘Memorabilia & Records’) to the sleepy boredom within. Senile, if not completely demented.

Trinity Roots
True (Trinity Roots)
Apart from a few moments of appealing lysergic drift, there’s nothing on record to justify the hype the Capital city roots rock/reggae contingent are getting, and this trio play a fuzzy, ill-defined blend of catch-all clichés that would once-upon-a-time have been dubbed ‘pub rock’.

Le Kiwi
A New World (Mystic Dawn)
Oh deary me! New Age aesthetics meets mangled fruitbat guitar, cheesey keyboard pre-sets and even a fake South American flute. Kiwi old-guard musos (ex-Underdogs man Doug Thomas) make a record mum might like.

THE CARS
Complete Greatest Hits (Elektra)
Completely undervalued because they never were quite hip enough, Ric Ocasek’s group of American New Wave popsters may have a sound that has its routes planted firmly in the late 70s/early 80s, but its stood the test of time, due to its infectious synth-driven riffs, power pop melodies, and sheer enthusiasm.

JONATHAN BESSER WITH BRAVURA
You Got Your Wish (Atoll)
Gorgeous, delicate tangos and instrumental miniatures from Besser’s Auckland-based band of three Nzers, two New Yorkers, one Londoner and a Russian. Besser’s swinging yet sweet response to his move to the humid climes of Auckland, it’s a worthy release with a couple of poems by the original Afghani poet, 13th Century poet Rumi, an intelligent response to last year’s twin tower attack. Spoilt only slightly by Jackie Clark’s sometimes shrill vocalese.

August 2002

DAVID BOWIE
HEATHEN
(ISO)
It’s a pleasure to hear the old ponce letting his Scott Walker-ish torch inflections shine forth, on good songs, uninhibited by the overreaching of his recent uninhabitable concept conceits or the masks he felt necessary to don for most of his star-studded career. Like his best balladry (Ashes To Ashes), the key tracks here (Slip Away) click right into that forward-backward anti-gravity device that finds a way to chart space while making a nostalgia of the future. There are a few boo-boos (the gratuitous guitarring on some songs… bring back Robert Fripp!), but who would have thought that Bowie would cover a Neil Young song (I’ve Been Waiting For You) with interpretorial zeal AND make a stone cold classic of it?

ELVIS COSTELLO
WHEN I WAS CRUEL
(Island)
Never been much of a Costello fan – that adenoidal vocal style, those contrite lyrics – but When I Was Cruel plays up all the best traits of the veteran singer/songwriter. Bearing the energy and memorable songs of his early years as a thin tie guy with the Attractions, it’s a subtle but effective updating on the sonic front, using contemporary sampling technology for added wobbly fun. But most importantly, this is a sharp songwriter/performer whose new songs are smart (as always) but also have heart. And the old duffer even has the cheek to use an extract from Abba’s Dancing Queen on one track. How cool is that?

MOBY
18
(Mute)
Let’s forget about Moby’s self-righteous and contradictory personal politics (an animal rights vegan whose songs have been sold lock stock and barrel to the evil empire of the advertising world) and his little spat with Eminem (as if any of that mattered one iota). We’re talking music here, and Moby’s biggest crime in my estimation is to have done what hundreds of other mega-hit artists have done before him: make records that are mundane, half-baked, turgid, derivative excuses for new sounds. The only possible consolation in Moby’s conceptually shaky and imagination-lacking pillaging of blues and gospel over weak grooves is that people might be led to find better examples of the genre. Unfortunately, Moby’s exposure through ads goes to prove a musical truism: people tend to confuse genuine attraction to a song with a sickly nostalgic memory of having heard it somewhere before.

MESHELL NDEGEOCELLO
COOKIE: THE ANTHROPOLOGICAL MIXTAPE
(Maverick)
One of the first signings to Madonna’s vanity label Maverick in the early 90s, in hindsight the unpronounceable Ndegeocello could be credited with having kicked off a whole new wave of conscious, sensual yet righteous soul and funk (Jill Scott and Missy Elliott followed a full decade later). Yet despite the bootylicious bottom end (she’s an applauded bassist) there’s something willfully intellectual and politically right-on about her four albums that can turn off those who don’t like being hectered. Still, the topics and treatments are complex and the music’s low-end funk of an alternative MaiFM style. A nice antidote to Eminem.

BIC RUNGA
BEAUTIFUL COLLISION
Sony
Understandably, the fetchingly naïve teenage confessions of Runga’s platinum debut have vanished from this world-weary followup. Committing the cardinal sin of writing a song about the drudgery of life on the road (Get Some Sleep), Beautiful Collision bears all the awkward signs of an artist trying too damned hard to write an album to convince her corporate bankers that she’s making all the right moves. If that sounds harsh, it’s worth pointing out that despite Runga’s predictable co-option by the dinosaurs of the multinational record industry - which in real terms means too often resorting to clichéd melodic progressions and too many lyrics with allusions about the weather – there’s still an unforced beauty to Runga’s central style, and her innate charisma and smouldering soul shine like a beacon through the corporate maneouvres.

HOT

Wilco
Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (Nonesuch)
Critical fave, US rockers go all avant garde round the edges, sign to prestigious label, and make one of those classic intellectual rock albums that ends up on magazine ‘best of year’ lists, and sells like a dog.

Neil Young
Are You Passionate?
(Reprise)
Despite manufacturing an excrable jingoism in the wake of the Trade Towers fiasco, Young’s latest is a rather pleasing dabble in Stax-style grooves with Booker T on hand to up the soul quotient.

NOT

Various
Electric Lotus
(Milan)
DJ Baba G, Dan The Automator and DJ Swamp share duties on this thoroughly regrettable desecration of Indian/Pakistani music that puts a dj spin on things that hasn’t half the charm of the silliest Bollywood soundtrack.

Subware
(Kog)
Patriotism is about as poor an excuse for supporting something as I can think of. Joost Yangeveld’s collaboration with Jason ‘Rockpig’ Hall is slick enough, but it’s carbon-copy ‘funky’ House with no distinguishing characteristics, except for the track featuring Sandy Mill’s sassy diva vocals.

September 2002

AUDIOSAUCE
DIVERSECITY (Capital Recordings/Rhythm Method)
So the process and outcome are fairly predictable: get some nice drum sequences, some funky bass lines, a bunch of hypnotic keyboard washes, and steal small snatches of vocal fragments (either orgasming divas or tv-speak) which are distorted and looped to increase the hypnotic effect. By now, these cafe-friendly sounds are familiar. As with any genre, however, some do it better than others, and this Wellington project (his name is Miles Tilly) - while not achieving one whiff of originality - has made a sonically superior, stunningly sleek album that works perfectly in its chosen area. I long for the humour and wonky fusions found in the more innovative electronic groove releases, but this no-surprises cd is like eating your favourite dish in your favourite restaurant for the 100th time: just as good as the first.

DOT ALLISON
WE ARE SCIENCE (Mantra/Shock)
It had to happen. Every era gets its revival eventually, and what's happening with the 80s right now is that the Manchester scene - from Joy Division/New Order through to the Happy Mondays - is being dusted off and re-appreciated. None better to provide an update on the dark drugged dance of those bands than electronic chanteuse Dot Allison. Dot's onto a winner with this self-produced mini-masterwork, on which her ice-cold coo nudges up against rock angst and the perfectly inflexible rhythmic spew hammered out by ancient-sounding synths and drum machines. But it's the songs themselves that nudge this into must-have land. After the first listen, like the best pop, the memory of these songs nags until once again, the play button must be activated for a repeat performance.

LUCID 3
RUNNING DOWN THE KEYS (Lupin/Global Routes)
One of the great things about Lucid 3 is that they're not hip enough for 95bFM. This Kiwi three-piece, featuring the gorgeous vocals and songs of Victoria Girling-Butcher, writes intelligently and provocatively about the sexual diaspora, summoning the ghosts of Tori Amos, Joni Mitchell, Kate Bush and Kristen Hirsh without ever aping the open heart surgery of those great female artists. Bic Runga could well take a leaf from Lucid 3: while the songs are soaked in traditional methodologies (where they work to their advantage), there are also drum machines and artificial textures where they work as mood or textural colourings. Okay, so there's a little of the strident psycho-babble of Alanis Morissette in evidence at times, but for the most part this is an exceptional, world-class record that's executed with the kind of conviction that artists only have when they know they're damn good.

1 GIANT LEAP
1 GIANT LEAP (Palm Pictures/FMR)
I still don't get it. Two English guys record backing tracks, then take them all over the world, and con everyone from Baaba Maal to Michael Stipe, Shrinvas to Robbie Williams, Whiri Mako Black to Maxi Priest to do their thing and add to the stew. All in pursuit of some vague, feel-good concept like 'explore the unity in diversity'. This should be horrid stuff, willing ethnic suckers putting their talents onto the producer's Apple Mac and having it mauled to suit their pre-recorded rhythms. Um, it's actually very enjoyable, sorry to say old chap. Why does it cut the mustard, against all odds? Probably because just about all the star cast keep things subtle. There's no grandstanding, just a willingness to do whatever is required. Sure, it is a ropey concept, but as an alternative to all those execrable 'chill out' albums, this one fulfills that function, yet is a kind of titillating aural travelogue with a themic, cinematic tone.

THE VINES
HIGHLY EVOLVED (Capitol/EMI)
Debut album from young Aussie band that has led to inevitable comparisons with lauded garage group The Strokes. The Vines, however, have come up with an irrepressibly hook-filled album that perfectly balances its raw, slight Nirvana-esque moments with gorgeous Beatles-influenced melodies... along with a touch of Brit-pop via Supergrass. There's nothing fundamentally new here, but perhaps the group's Australian origins give them a perspective that can allow instant access to the most delightful moments of both their American and English influences, taking in thirty years of pop and rock and coming up with one of those semi-classic first albums that are filled with a kind of glorious, energised naivety. Moreover, there's a genuine musicality for arrangement and instrumentation that contrasts nicely against its rough edges, and goes against the monochrome ordinariness of so much backwards-looking pop.

HOT

Te Vaka - Nukukehe (Spirit Of Play/King)
World-acclaimed, Titirangi-based Samoan/Pacifican ensemble with a third album that somehow manages to be both mainstream and irresistable. Devoid of the try-hard hip-hop apings of much contemporary Polynesia, Te Vaka update traditions, write their own material, but keep the central dynamic alive with great choral work and percussion.

Various Artists - Pacific Hotel (Oceania/King)
How to do the chill-out groove thing right. Lusciously-packaged double cd which gathers a surprisingly diverse - yet still eclectic - selection from Australia, France, Hawaii, New Caledonia, Fiji and gold ol' New Zealand. Kiwi acts include Salmonella Dub and Big Belly Woman.

NOT

Various Artists - Buddah-Bar Presents Living Theatre Vol. 2 (Kunduru/Border)
How to do the chill-out groove thing wrong. Faked compilation actually by Joseph Baldassare, this grooveless hour-long preamble is drenched in cod-Euro sensibilities. Demis Roussos revival, anyone? We not need!

The Hives - Your New Favourite Band (Shock/Border)
Yeah, like we really need a bunch of snotty Swedish tossers pretending to be the answer to everyone's Iggy & The Stooges and Buzzcocks dreams. Yeah, it has a calculated rawness. It pushes the right buttons. So what?

October 2002

NATACHA ATLAS/MARC EAGLETON
FORETOLD IN THE LANGUAGE OF DREAMS (Mantra/Shock)
The orgasmic Arabic vocals of Natacha Atlas are enough to send any grown man into wormy squiggles of delight. Firstly as a guest with mid-90s ethno-fusion group Transglobal Underground, then on similarly electronically altered solo albums, Atlas has continued to wend her remarkable, perfectly pitched and paced desert dramas around contemporary dance styles. With her latest, she takes as inspiration Sufi poets and transcontinental philosopher Gurdjieff, and fashions an almost beatless album for quieter moments. Her voice is still mesmerising, but this time, the musical accompaniment is fathomly rich in its ambient, evocative textures, featuring such unlikely musical bedfellows as zither, clarinet, sitar, violin and various ‘computer malarky’. Gorgeous.

GILLES PETERSON
Worldwide 2 (Talkin’ Loud/Universal)
Not a double marathon collection like the first, but a more controlled selection by the UK dj. Peterson has impeccable credentials, and knows how to choose the crème de la crème of tracks, though it should be noted that he does straddle that fine line between harbinger of sophisticated contemporary soul, and flaccid acid jazz. By including deceased solar righteous jazz icon Sun Ra alongside a similarly conscious jazz/funk piece by the Cinematic Orchestra, Petersen redeems himself, and there’s plenty of other tasty niblets here, but one has the suspicion that groups like Jazzanova, 4Hero and Nu Spirit Helsinki are standing ground rather than moving things forward.

GRAMSCI
OBJECT (Machine/Universal)
Napier-based singer-songwriter Paul McLaney is now up to his fourth release, and what a progression from the barrel-fermented melancholy of the debut to the arty abstractions of ‘Object’. Those abstractions – computer-powered interventions creating weird sonic spaces - proved a barrier on initial plays. ‘But where are the songs?’ I asked. Like Radiohead, McLaney is pitching for a pop music that works in ways that pop music isn’t supposed to. It’s not immediate. It gains depth and lustre with successive listens. For all its nods towards experimentalism, however, this IS pop music, and it’s pop music soaked in the kind of heart-on-sleeve emotional punch favoured by the likes of U2, all powered by McLaney’s remarkable voice. Those songs are there, alright, like little nuggets of gold.

SLIM VOLUME
COME ON IN (Braille/Global Routes)
David Long gave The Muttonbirds many of the group’s best moments; his elliptical guitar work and odd ideas helped to keep them from the meat-and-potatoes rocking chair rockers they later became. Long – now Wellington-based and more famous for his production of Fur Patrol’s hit album – has come up with the kind of record that just doesn’t get made anymore. Harking back to a point in the late 60s and early 70s when the music industry famously failed to stop a flood of esoteric releases with ‘no commercial potential’, ‘Come On In’ is characterised by its bold eclecticism and its surplus of ideas, which means it’s a publicist’s nightmare. At first, I was disappointed by its ragged folksiness, but across the album’s ten tracks there’s a wealth of intoxicating diversions (try the mellotron-wig-out of ‘Hurtle’). One for those nuts who enjoy ‘adult oriented pop’ that resists definition.

SPACEMONKEYZ VERSUS GORILLAZ
LAIKA COME HOME (Astralwerks/EMI)
Last year’s Gorillaz debut was one of those unexpected hits that gives the seasoned music buff hope in a future for a vibrant pop culture. Who would have thought that an almost anonymous collaboration between hip-hop, dance and rock fiends with a stylised cartoon look would capture the public's imagination? This time, thankfully, Blur’s Damon Albarn is virtually discarded in a classic dub-style reinvention of the original album. This is great stuff: ignoring the current vogue for lame remixes, they’ve gone for a full, rootsy, 70s-style dub mix, which means lots of unfathomably deep throbbing bass and a beat that will have even the least pigmented human being skanking in their boots. It’s overflowing with a warm, flowing lava of friendly grooves, and happy enough to bring a smile to the face of the most hardened grump.

HOT

Layo & Bushwacka – Night Works (XL/Border)
A genre album so far above its game (tech-house, they call it) that you forget what kind of music it is, and just get off on the grunty, funky, yet always pleasingly textural grooves. Bold but intricate, this makes for a satisfying listen as much as a butt-shakin’ dance.

Piano Magic – Writers Without Homes (4AD/Border)
Good to see the 4AD label getting back to what it does best: ethereal, ambient mood music for those quiet, reflective moments. Piano Magic is a beguiling mixture of old-style, Cocteau Twins-inflected sheen, and a more contemporary rapture.

NOT

Splitter – Devil In The Detail (Double Happy/Zomba)
There are some cute parochial touches on this Auckland group’s second album, but these guys sound like they’ve just studied the manual on how to write and play like a 60s pop/rock band. All the right references (Beatles, Kinks, spot your favourite) but what’s the point?

Bruce Springsteen – The Rising (Columbia/Sony)
The Twin Towers bombing may have motivated the most overtly ‘American’ of singer-songwriters to look out of his New Jersey mansion and pen odes to empty skies and buildings that no longer blot those skies. Unfortunately, inspiration failed to show its beaming face.

JACK JOHNSON
BRUSHFIRE FAIRYTALES (Modular/EMI)
Fans of the laconic, anaesthetised, acoustic-oriented folk-blues singing/writing of Ben Harper (who appears as a guest) and Keb Mo will go for Johnson's schtick. Pleasingly wry observations are made from hum-drum situations, and Johnson's simple application of softly grained voice, mildly funky bass and drums and bluesy guitar make for a perfectly unthreatening record you can learn to enjoy with ease.

November 2002

50Hz
CARBON (Loop/Border)
Wellington sound designer Jeremy Geor seems to easily conjure the kind of musical alchemy that eludes 90 percent of the contemporary beat brigade. The arrangements on his second album are sometimes jawdropping: the guy has a natural sense of the drama that can resound in the interstices between beats, swelling strings, and other components that in less talented hands would sound routine. Oh deary me. If only I could be as positive about guest vocalists who think it’s alright to come up with lyrics as cliched as: “How can you do this to me?/Feels like I’m going crazy/I just can’t take it no more”. Some pruning, together with some personality infusion, may have turned these often impressive tracks into an album with a sense of totality and purpose.

MR SCRUFF
TROUSER JAZZ (Ninja Tune/Flavour)
Does humour belong in music? Of course! There’s not enough of it in our miserable attempts to emote through organised sound, so here’s Mr Scruff to redress the balance, with his second longplayer (and eccentric groove label Ninja Tune’s first foray onto the British charts) of playful funk and jazz-influenced pate. Trying to put this one in a particular bag is asking for confusion: I’ve heard it described as House, due to its danceable beats, but Scruff’s inventive approach nips any stylistic straitjacketing in the bud. Like the first, thematically it’s full of fish references, and it’s the kind of loopily eccentric disc that manages to press all the charm buttons.

PLAYGROUP
DJ-KICKS (K7/Border)
Anyone out there remember the outrageous surge of post-punk fun in the early electro-synth jingles by the Human League, Soft Cell, and the like? Playgroup’s Trevor Jackson has built his project around his filtered memory of the era, and this dj selection is a great party choice for those old enough to have been there. Not that its 24 tracks are all old stuff, but Jackson has captured perfectly the bouncy, naïve party vibe, the cheap synths and drum machines, and the way that punky electro, early hip-hop and avant-disco all collided to make for party anthems that somehow have a whole lot more charm than the collected works of Ibiza.


QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE
SONGS FOR THE DEAF (Interscope/Universal)
The perfect bridging of the generational divide, QOTSA make hard rock the way it was built to last in the late 60s, but with (of course) a very ‘now’ take on the form. Importing just enough of former group Kyuss’s crud heaviosity, duo Josh Homme and Nick Oliveri have lucked on a brilliant cast/extended family to support ‘Songs For The Deaf’, including former Nirvana drummer Dave Grohl. It’s a record that has the kind of tunefully urgent singing not heard in rock since Cream’s ‘White Room’, brilliantly set against the chunkiest guitar slinging and the most grinding drum/bass axis imaginable. In other words, it’s heavy but rich in its song form and texture in a way that has eluded this genre for years.


UNDERWORLD
A HUNDRED DAYS OFF (V2/Zomba)
Given the revival that’s underway for the cheesey, yet somehow assuringly melodic dance music of the 80s, it seems somehow pertinent that back then, Karl Hyde and Rick Smith comprised the briefly big Freur. In the 90s, they changed their name, added DJ Darren Emerson, and came back as post-acid house ravers Underworld. Chartwise, they were undisputed kings of the scene. A Hundred Days Off is their first longplayer since the departure of Emerson, and it’s the best thing they’ve ever done by a country mile. Proving themselves masters of the medium, Underworld turn out a disc that relishes in the speedy euphoria of its hypnotic club thumpers, and adds some unexpectedly gorgeous ambient pieces just to tantalise. Next time, let’s have more of these.

ALSO NOTED

DUB ASYLUM
SHE DUBS ME, SHE DUBS ME NOT (Antenna/EMI)
Former Hallelujah Picasso man Peter McLennan’s part organic, part cyber project lurches in so many directions that it’s sometimes hard to get a grip. Aside from the obligatory ‘shake yer booty’ vocal urgings, however, it’s a rip-roaringly enjoyable ride that keeps it as floral and fun-based as McLennan’s Hawaiian shirts.

NEKROS
BOURBON AND RAZOR BLADES (Club Bizarre)
The funniest sendup of Goth culture, period. And it’s from Auckland, of all places. The guitarist is called Ego, the keyboardist is Morgana (why not Morticia?), and brilliantly, the drummer is simply known as Unknown. It’s the most morbid, miserable, barely in-tune thing you’ve ever heard. What’s that? It’s for real? You’re effing joking!

VARIOUS ARTISTS
FRESH JAMS (She’ll Be Right/Global Routes)
Subtitled ‘A Collection Of Fresh Down-beat Jams’, every song here involves curator, Chrischurch lad Jody Lloyd. Mixing up music styles that shouldn’t belong (dub with Celtic, anyone?), sometimes it’s all a bit much, but Lloyd must be commended for his attempt to bring in some Kiwi flavours to these global grooves.

VARIOUS ARTISTS
CAFÉ DE FLORE (Universal)
Sub-titled ‘Rendez-Vous A Saint-Germain-Des-Pres’, it’s the perfect sexy Summer compilation for those looking for a dose of French style. Mostly drawn from the vaults (Serge Gainsbourg, Nina Simone, Eartha Kitt, Brigitte Bardot), the 21st century is nominally represented by Diana Krall, Lakasha, and others).

December 2002

THE JOHN BUTLER TRIO
THREE (MGM/Global Routes)
Three reasons to dislike Butler: 1) He’s Australian. 2) He sings in that distractingly self-obsessed wounded-dog style so beloved of contemporary Americans, 3) He’s Australian. But now we’ve got that out of the way, I can report that Three is really very good. Critics have likened him to Ben Harper on account of the acoustic rootsiness of his lineup, but that doesn’t get close. Where Harper chooses a monochrome sound, Butler’s is rich, layered and full of dynamic interplay between the instruments. The dynamic is the thing, because Butler’s outfit can go from a folk-style amble to a full-on power-crunching rock climax. Luckily, he doesn’t capitulate to the American hard rock hegemony that insists on angsty verse/bone-crunching chorus, but plays around with more old-fashioned concepts of power and velocity.

FETUS PRODUCTIONS
REPRODUCTIONS (Antenna/EMI)
From a dark, seldom revisited corner of the early 80s Auckland music scene comes a welcome whiff of Fetus Productions, a long-awaited official compendium of the group’s seminal tracks. Despite Fetus Productions’ infamous outrageousness (explicit autopsy footage projected at their gigs, singer Jed Town’s extreme aspirations extending to having his teeth filed to points) their music is more often than not replete with a post-punk take on psychedelic 60s song, and their instrumental sides are shot through with gloriously atmospheric cinematic drama. A classic, noteworthy, and resolutely Kiwi group, Fetus Productions represent a whole post-punk scene in NZ that desperately needs historical revision and reassessment.

LEMON JELLY
LOST HORIZONS (XL/BMG)
Sometimes cleverness can kill. Lemon Jelly know this, so they create their beautiful, poised, picture-perfect sound art with a sense of serene simplicity. Like both Marc Rae and Saint Etienne (see below) there’s something about Lemon Jelly that makes them quintessentially British, and despite their particular skills springing from the detritus of contemporary technology (theirs is a hybrid between sample-based music and electronica) there’s a feeling of old-fashioned English countryside about their followup to the equally colourfully-packaged debut, ‘KY’. Sporting a gorgeous sense of melancholy, laced with a lightness of touch and an ability to choose the most sublime (yet on the face of it, often quite stupid) vocal samples and melodic fragments, ‘Lost Horizons’ will put a smile on your face. Now everybody sing: ‘All the ducks are swimming in the water/Fal-de-ral-de-ral-da’…

MARC RAE
RAE ROAD (Grand Central/BMG)
Dance duo Rae and Christian were always just a little polished and safe. Sometimes you have to split the atom to explode the talent, and it would appear to reside in Mark Rae’s musical orbit. His debut solo album is inexplicably, unexplainably, brilliantly groovesome. Like Mr Scruff, Rae has got a thing about fish (check the hilarious artwork), and the whole project is wearing a mile-wide smile. Essentially a producer/ideas-man, like many of today’s dance-oriented artists he takes the postmodernist seat and hires those he wants to bring his project to life. Who cares how it’s done, it all swoons along on the best bubbling funk grooves, summery melodies and instrumentation, and guest turns that are never allowed to derail the Fun Train (female vocalist Veba gets a few soulful turns, as does ragga rapster Joseph Cotton). Raw and with an inspired, sure-footed sense of its own groove superiority, ‘Rae Road’ rocks.

SAINT ETIENNE
FINISTERRE (Mantra/Shock)
Four years since their last outre dish and it would be entirely reasonable to expect the sideways-steeped pop of the slightly twee Brit threesome to be sounding a tad 20th century. Not so. Is the current musical climate really such a dull pastiche of real life as to imbue this early 90s combo with rich hues, style to kill and and enough depth to sink the fangs into? Finisterre finds Saint Etienne in deliciously loungey mode, and Sarah Cracknell’s voice has developed the kind of slightly smoke-inflected rasp that made the late Kirsty McColl such a delightfully droll English songbird; just the right touch for a record that’s consummately a product of Blighty, replete with lashings of wit and a few bawdy squirts of eccentricity.

THE CRANBERRIES
STARS: THE BEST OF 1992-2002 (Island/Universal)
Ireland’s dreariest group celebrated on a disc that seems to last forever, AND a day. What was it we ever liked about these faceless dickheads and the yodelling diva?

DIANA KRALL
LIVE IN PARIS (Verve/Universal)
You know jazz is in a bad way when someone like Krall musters critical acclaim, and notches up the kind of sales that make her one of the few jazz acts in the 21st century the major labels are willing to foster. This is inoffensive cocktail jazz, primarily standards, with a few concessions (Billy Joel and Joni Mitchell covers) to pop mainstreams outside the jazz slipstream. Oh, and she’s not bad to look at. Yawn.

TWINSET
IT’S A SUMMER FEELING (Capital/Rhythm Method)
The instrumental lineup (organ, sax, flute, drums) deprives the album of tonal variety over the length of a longplayer, but this Wellington group have been given a particularly fruity recording that captures all of the throatiness of the Booker T-like low-down funky grooves. Throw it on on one of those late afternoon barbies. Just don’t try and understand the liner notes: your head will hurt afterwards.

VARIOUS ARTISTS
LOTUS BEAT (Visitors)
Assembled by German-born Kiwi electronic keyboardist Peter Haeder, this ambitious project (also featuring the trilling vocals of Jyosna) incorporates Buddhist chanting and singing. Devotional techno surely has scope, but it’s marred by beat sequencing that might trance the dancefloor, but in no way conforms to the subleties required.

January 2003

DEATH IN VEGAS
SCORPIO RISING (BMG)
Depends how seriously you take your rock, really. Death In Vegas are steeped in the rock trash mythology, which means that, while it’s taken seriously, it’s also taken with a dash of lemon and tequila and a sly wink. On their third album they celebrate the Kenneth Anger/Satan/Cult angle that’s been a part of the rock nexus since evil bastards came along and influenced gullible hippies in the 60s. As ever, their combination of real rock band and loopily sampled stuff makes for an addictive if sometimes sharp listen. On closer inspection, it’s really a bunch of stylish love songs, with vocal contributions from Hope Sandoval (Mazzy Star), Dot Allison, Paul Weller, Liam Gallagher and others. The sound of India – a very hip sound these days – also gets infused, with the help of elderly Indian violinist Dr L. Subramaniam.

FANG
SOMEWHERE OUT THERE (Arch Hill/FMR)
The D3 album was great because it was a garage rock record with a really chunky, ‘produced’ sounds at odds with the scratchy lo-fi associated with the genre. Now, the sound associated with NZ’s sacred-cow label Flying Nun has undergone a revision with this shiny, impressive second album from Fang. All the classic Flying Nun hallmarks are in place: the ‘we’re too cool to be clever’ pose, the dark side of pop jangle and barely there vocals. Sonically, it’s great, mainly because there’s real detail in the recording, and the record has – like the Chills before them – lashings of the most uncool instruments in rock: keyboards. In this case, it’s loads of organ and other sounds that add up to a picture rather than a monochrome world of angst, though the angst is all in place, with a little bit of Nick Cave-style post-gothic shadowplay as well. If Goldenhorse just made the classic Kiwi pop record with a little bit of Phoenix fizz, then Fang have just made the old tawny port version of that record.

GROOVE ARMADA
LOVEBOX (Jive)
Tom Findlay and Andy Cato are two more producer-types who concoct their music by taking a little from everywhere. They’re like seagulls who happen to like music: musical scraps, that is. Their first three albums were popular but, to my ears, undistinguished chill-out grooves. This fourth album is an attempt to spurn the genre they helped popularise (but never did anything creatively substantial with). It’s a major defection, plumping for a rock/soul hybrid that takes in all sorts of influences, including psychedelia and English folk. There are guest stars like 80s soul hybrid Neneh Cherry, and 60s folk Woodstock icon Richie Havens. In other words, there’s no real link to the previous incarnation of Groove Armada. This is a song-based defection from the land of nod-groove. It still doesn’t cut the mustard, and if they had the courage of their convictions, they would have changed the group’s name.

NIRVANA
NIRVANA (Geffen)
Chewing over the best of a band that only managed three albums in its short lifetime, this self-titled compilation further confirms what a brilliant, if limited songsmith and band leader Kurt Cobain was. Songs like ‘Come As You Are’, ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’ and ‘Lithium’, mired as they are in the scurf of grunge, are just about as perfect pop/rock records as you get. Limited? Yes, there are limits to the potential of rage expressed in song after song, and the soft/loud dynamic featured in most of their songs, while powerful, is a formula that palls over the long-distance. The real jewel in the crown of this album isn’t the spiffing remaster, or the unreleased single mix of ‘Pennyroyal Tea’, but the previously unheard song ‘You Know You’re Right’. In the light of Cobain’s miserable fate, the ragged vocal and howling repetition of the word ‘pain’ sends shivers up the spine.

VARIOUS ARTISTS
HI-FIDELITY DUB SESSIONS CHAPTER 4 (Guidance)
You’d think that at sequel number four, this compilation series from Chicago-based label Guidance would be getting a little tired. Not so: this is possibly the strongest one yet, with the usual quality choice of material, careful placement and attention to getting just the right mood to proceedings. And of special significance this time round is the inclusion of two tracks by Auckland-based electronic dub acts, Sola Rosa and International Observer, the second of which was recently released as a vinyl-only single in the UK. Forget those execrable chillout compilations; this is chilled enough, but it’s got the requisite soul and sweat as well. Summer barbie hit all the way.

BOND
SHINE (Decca/Universal)
Oh deary me. A bunch of anonymous string players botching up the classics (and Led Zep songs) by putting horrid club-footed beats through everything. Sure, the Indian flavourings are fetching, but what a crock of doggy doo. Really!

INDIA.ARIE
VOYAGE TO INDIA (Motown/Universal)
A fine contemporary r’n’b album (nout to do with India, by the way) that derails itself because it’s oh-so-po-faced and serious and doesn’t have a funny bone. Earnest all the way, it could do with just a little dirt under its nails.

UNIQUE
JERRY 4 W.A. (Dirty/Universal)
Momentarily entertaining, if irrefutably awful Henderson Hip-hop. Who would have thought? My mum would want to wash out his mouth with soap, such is the filth emanating from this white Westie. But the problem isn’t the vocabulary, it’s the monotone of his delivery. Even a bunch of refreshingly nutty instrument samplings can’t save him from the bores bin. Good for a laugh, though.

VARIOUS ARTISTS
DUB COMBINATIONS 3 (Kog/Universal)
Another worthy instalment of an instrumental tradition that’s inevitably going to continue to grow while the song-tour based aspect (Salmonella Dub, Trinity Roots, Rhombus) goes from strength to strength. The first and last of those are both featured on this very delicious Sunday afternoon roll a joint compilation. But who is this ‘Harry Steel’?

VARIOUS ARTISTS
RADIO ACTIVE 89FM 25 SILVER SELECTIONS (Loop/Border)
Beautifully packaged (as are most Loop label compilations) double cd commemorating 25 years of Wellington’s student radio station. But it’s non-historical: a contemporary selection, with the ‘groove’ acts on the first disc, and roughly rock-oriented acts on the second, although many of those (Zuvuya, Black Seeds) also have the groove factor (via reggae/dub/electronic leanings).

VARIOUS ARTISTS
SUN RECORDS: THE 50TH ANNIVERSARY COLLECTION (BMG)
Double cd, and everything you could possibly need from the legendary seminal label that spawned Elvis Presley, Roy Orbison, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash and more. It sounds inbred to you, too? That only adds to the charm.

February 2003

MASSIVE ATTACK
100TH WINDOW (Virgin/EMI)
Let’s admit it: they’re legends. But despite having established the template for a decade of sampladelic groove delights with their epochal 1991 debut, Blue Lines, the Bristol collective’s schtick has always been a good deal darker than that of their contemporaries. By 1998’s rock oriented Mezzanine, they had slimmed down to a business-like core of Daddy G, 3D and Mushroom, and at the time it seemed no more than a workmanlike plod. Five years on and its followup treads an even darker path, and confirms the grim beauty of that earlier album by wallowing in the mire one more time. Minus the rock moves, 100th Window does follow a similar format, except Sinead O’Connor replaces Elizabeth Frazer as the featured female vocalist. Not exactly in sync with our glorious Summer, this one will be glued to many turntables as the days grow shorter, and the cosmos seeths with the desire for bloodshed.

JOHN PEEL
FABRICLIVE 7 (Fabric/Rhythmethod)
John Peel is Britain’s most respected dj, but he belongs to a different breed (and era) of dj to the sort normally promoted by the Fabriclive releases. Peel has been soaking up new sounds and broadcasting them on his BBC show for 30 years, so rather than the typical beat-matched dance set, his Fabriclive is a fabulously eclectic selection of 24 of his favourite songs. Though he’s been broadcasting since the psychedelic era, Peel specialises in what can broadly be termed a punk aesthetic: from the spiky, literate vitriol of The Fall to the gorgeous reggae of Culture or the faster-than-the-speed-of-sound rapping of MC DET, Peel selects a set of energetic songs that somehow holds together with the glue of hardcore fandom. It’s almost enough to restore your faith in the craft of dj. If only more djs were as expansive and diverse and era-inclusive as Peel.

JOE GIBBS & THE PROFESSIONALS
NO BONES FOR THE DOGS (Pressure Sounds/Chant)
We’re right into the old reggae down here on New Zild. Reissues of crusty old Jamaican music from the 70s are devoured with an alarming degree of enthusiasm. Like any archaelogical dig, there’s going to be a lot of very ordinary stuff found. Because of the enthusiasm surrounding those awesome years of Jamaican reggae and dub experimentation, much crud gets reissued and acclaimed as the work of genius. Every now and then, however, a genuine nugget of musical brilliance gets unearthed. This is such a case. Adrian Sherwood’s reissue label Pressure Sounds has done a sterling job on this compilation of sheer wonder, which grabs some of the dubbier rare sides from ‘The Mighty Two’, producer Gibbs and engineer Errol Thompson. This is the kind of dub reggae that has sonic depth, and a righteous beauty that’s joyful and just plain deep. A balm for the soul.

JAGA JAZZIST
A LIVING ROOM HUSH (Ninja Tune/Flavour)
A clever clogs reviewer described this album as ‘Thelonius Monk with Aphex Twin up its arse’, and he’s got a point. The Norwegian collective have made one of the best jazz albums this reviewer has heard for a long time. Not content to sample obvious horn lines and grooves from the Blue Note library, they’ve come up with an intriguing concoction that luxuriates in the kind of gorgeous, smokey unison horn arrangements, depth of composition, and subtle twists and turns that are rare even within the greater canon of jazz. Think of the more inward-looking moments of Horace Silver, or the beauty of some of Herbie Hancock’s 60s work or – more blatantly – Frank Zappa in his jazz guise. Like Zappa, Jaga Jazzist play it just straight enough to subvert the medium to their own ends, with the canny introduction of electronic trickery, which allows compositions to veer off the travelled path and osmose into something outside conventional templates. A killer.

ADD N TO (X)
LOUD LIKE NATURE (Mute/Virgin)
Barry 7, Ann Shenton and Steve Claydon are Add N To (X), and Loud Like Nature is about as much fun as anybody could have with pop in the 21st century. As an electronic band they were always different from the pack: how many bedroom circuit-gazers ever got picture spreads in The Face? Their fifth album shows them to be one of the cleverest bands on the planet, as they dissect the glam scene of the early 70s in a way that avoids the trap of merely aping their forbears. It’s a wild, crazy ride that makes it impossible to find any convenient bag to file them in: their famous analogue electronic equipment buzzes and throbs, 60s legend Kim Fowley howls away on two vocal appearances… it’s a dumpster full of forgotten musical trash, and Add N To (X) know how to get each component working and (more importantly) working together. Don’t go figure, don’t even try: just soak it up in front of the mirror, and watch the spreading smile on your face.

DJ BROKEN WINDOW
PARALLEL UNIVERSE #1 (Violent Turd)
Violent Turd is ‘Made In New Zealand’, apparently. Um, no. This American release is part of the ‘bootleg’ phenomenon (bedroom djs slamming several songs together that simply don’t belong, either in style or era) and it’s a hilarious non-stop party mash-up mix from start to finish. If you want to hear the Thompson Twins mauled by gangster rap, or the Cookie Monster vying with contemporary electronica, this is a fun ride.

JEFF BUCKLEY/GARY LUCAS
SONGS TO NO ONE 1991-1992 (Knitting Factory/Rhythmethod)
Some trips to the vaults are more valid than others. This one captures THAT VOICE with Gary Lucas (New York guitar virtuoso). Forget those endless live recordings; this is what led to his one album, Grace, and it’s full of exceptional moments, from early gigs to versions of unreleased songs and two remarkably fully realised songs from that debut album. Worthy.

GODSPEED YOU BLACK EMPEROR
YANQUI UXO (Constellation)
The most critically acclaimed ‘post-rock’ group on the planet, this Canadian group have limited their popularity by staying staunchly independent from the music machinery. Why? Take a look on the back cover, where each of the ‘major’ record companies are implicated in arms manufacturing. The music? These dirgey, riffy epics remind me of some of the less musically proficient, yet self-important 70s groups. The Electric Light Orchestra springs to mind. Still, that back cover is a revelation.

March 2003

BLAK TWANG
KIK OFF (Wall Of Sound/EMI)
Short of classic status it may well be, but the first full length by Cockney hip-hopper Tony Rotton has an irrepressible, cheeky spirit that hasn’t surfaced too many times since the hilarious cheese of Rebel MC in the late 1980s. Instead of guns and booty gals, we get a footie obsession, colloquialisms like ‘geezer’ and ‘ard bastards’, and even a much deserved Ibiza pisstake. This is hip hop with that annoying American ‘urban’ slickness substituted by hints of joyful ragga and a refreshing lack of self-importance or pretension.

FLASH HARRY
FLASH HARRY (Capital Recordings/BMG)
Flash Harry is Barnaby Weir, vocalist with The Black Seeds (Wellington’s very own UB40), and it’s the kind of indulgent vanity project that even the least distinguished members of superstar bands got to make in the 1970s. Ringo Starr’s solo oeuvre, anyone? The collected works of Rolling Stone Bill Wyman? But is it any good? There are plenty of small pleasures smattered all over the show, as Weir shows off his wilful eclecticism, but there’s a down side: ‘I Love Lo-Fi’, for instance, tries hard to forge a link between slow, grunty funk and dirgey rock, eliciting a shrug from the attentive listener. ‘Alright’ boasts a nice, low-slung funk groove, but the lyrics are cliched, and the crusty horns and synth shrieks sound out of kilter. Again, ‘Morning Rush’ has a pleasant groove, but a one-line lyric about the grind of the morning rush doesn’t make it, mate. As the disc wends its way to completion, there’s a sense of many tasty ideas slung over slight and often woefully inadequate songs and lyrics. Not enough meat to warrant the bite.

PAUL McCARTNEY
BACK IN THE US (Capitol/EMI)
You expected surprises from THIS? There are few from this solid double cd record of McCartney’s 2001 American tour, unless you count Macca’s refreshingly humorous ad-libbing when he forgets the words of The Beatles’ ‘Carry That Weight’. Or the sing-a-long-a-ukelele version of ‘Something’, which puts solid weight behind the idea that George Martin production on Beatles records masked the old-fashioned music-hall influences on McCartney’s writing. There are a LOT of great songs here though, and better that McCartney should be giving new life to his old songs than the jukebox treatment from some corner bar band. Tracks that crept up on me this time were ‘Maybe I’m Amazed’ and ‘My Love’. Smoochy, but so much better than I remember them. But how are you supposed to react to an old dude singing “She was just 17/You know what I mean” (‘I Saw Her Standing There’)?

DAN SPERBER & LUKE CASEY
RELAXOMATIC PROJECTIONS (Antenna/Virgin)
Dan Sperber – formerly of Auckland jazz fusioneers New Loungehead – is capable of some beautiful guitar playing, and he does quite a bit of it here. His nimble fretwork is never flashy, just exquisitely tasteful and effortlessly lyrical. Perfect moments suggest that this collaboration with percussionist Casey has much to offer: the lazy afternoon groove of ‘Every Other Sunday’ with its snatches of Denis Glover verse, the gorgeously evocative psychedelic ethnicism of Gabor Szabo’s ‘Mixrab’, the deliciously downbeat ‘Pre-Loved Goods’, the tender pop of ‘Just’. The problem with this much-hyped project is a typically Kiwi one, where the best ideas are still in germination, and too many malnourished ones are let out for public consumption. For every sublime moment, there’s an equally cheesey sax line, a weak lyric or an unconvincing vocal, or in Casey’s case, underwhelming compositional ideas. With so much to offer, there’s too much that is half-assed about ‘Relaxomatic Projections’.

VARIOUS ARTISTS
BLACK COFFEE 5 (Ecco Chamber/Border)
Oddly subtitled ‘Booty Cooler’, the fifth instalment of the German latte groove series is a classic. ‘Connected and cut’ (compiled and mixed) by eMU and the unpronounceable Klangwirkstoff Scheibosan, it’s that rarity in an overcrowded market: the mix compilation that fits together seamlessly, making a whole that’s probably much better than the sum of its parts. Finally, today’s electronic groove alchemists have hit on the wonders of the progressive rock era (1969-73), and the disc fittingly gets underway with Open Door’s version of Pink Floyd’s ‘Dark Side Of The Moon’ Westy favourite, ‘Breathe’. Other titillating samples (Emerson Lake & Palmer, anyone?) crop up in this album of ambient expansiveness that makes it perfect for any number of lazy Sundays.

Oceania
II (Universal)
A great pity that this sad project – a second collaboration between ex-Killing Joke singer Jaz Coleman and singer Hinewehi Mohi – will be the first exposure many will get to Maori culture, by dint of its international release. Uninspired Euro-style easy listening grooves (which are fundamentally lacking the funk) kill it stone dead.

Temple Of Sound
First Edition (Wagram/Border)
New group formed from the ashes of world-groove pioneers Transglobal Underground, Temple Of Sound make a more organic, more vital and essentially, a funkier mashup of their numerous influences on this all-star release. Featuring Natacha Atlas, Jah Wobble, Linton Kwesi Johnson and ex-Stranglers man Jean Jacques Burnel, amongst many others.

Unity Pacific
From Street To Sky (Moving Production/Rhythm Method)
Rooted in the sweet reggae-flecked soul of Herbs, Unity Pacific is the work of Tigilau Ness, whose debut is a refreshingly old-fashioned slice of Kiwiana which makes up for its limited ambitions with its community vibe.

Various Artists
Lazy Sunday 3 (EMI)
Why anybody would want this kind of corporate idea of a compile is beyond m