The best new albums this week
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ALBUM OF THE WEEK
Calibre – Double Bend (The Nothing Special)
One wonders how Dominick Martin manages such a herculean output. Since his last album on Craig Richards’ The Nothing Special label, 2016’s Grow, he’s released no less than eight albums, and now here comes a ninth. There has been no shortage of 12”s in that time too, but Martin has spent much of his time as Calibre engaging in long-player projects to stretch out beyond the confines of the D&B scene he is still often most readily associated with.
It’s worth digging into Martin’s working relationship with Richards’ label as conversely, Richards seems particularly choosy about putting things out on a label that could quite easily be dropping five or more releases a year if they were so inclined. And yet, over the past six years, the lions share of releases on the label have been Calibre. Grow was certainly a different beast to this new triple-vinyl offering – it found Martin exploring jazzy inflections around his readily identifiable line of lean and punchy beats. There’s something in his understated approach which calls to mind Richards’ DJ sets, where the kinks and quirks of his selections are tastefully woven into sleek, elegant club frameworks to allow for a thoroughly smooth trajectory.
There is plenty of spit and snarl on Double Bend, but it’s kept on a tight leash. More than anything, the opening electro freakery of the title track actually calls to mind the second disc of Richards’ own Fabric 15: Tyrant mix, where the one-time London superclub resident took us on a spin through leftfield electro long before there was such a hype around it. Similarly, Martin’s take on electro isn’t conventional, with the synth wriggles and staggered broken beat speaking to a little of his D&B roots rather than anything more technoid in nature. ‘Savoury Skank’ also calls to mind the mid-00s electro era, this time closer to Weatherall-Tenniswood axis if they’d spent a few extra nights down Metalheadz.
The D&B comes through more explicitly in the bloated bass growls of ‘Hostage’, but the construction of the track is more akin to minimal with half the kicks removed. In this stark, gallery ambience, Martin affords us plenty of space to latch on to every nuance of the programming, but equally he displays a steady hand when riding an idea out over six minutes. The impression is one of a painstakingly sculpted loop tweaked, refined and polished to perfection until it can roll out across the timeline with only the most modest of embellishments.
There are spicier moments to balance out the restrained cuts, with ‘Grinch’ playing around with giddy string samples and a wavy carnival rhythm to create something downright playful. Meanwhile ‘Turtleduv’ taps into a 2010s dubstep tract, all 140 drive and twinkling keys swimming in processing. These swerves are craftily deployed to remind us not to second guess Martin’s MO as an artist. As his extensive oeuvre demonstrates, he’s not one to stall on particular sound and his curiosity leads him all over.
It does feel like Richards’ curation has a hand in all this, given his reputation as an aesthete and Martin’s prolificacy. Hearing the dusty house-not-house of ‘Going 2 Ground’ it’s easy to picture a brooding early evening set at Houghton, while ‘Frinzingly’ could gently slide into the woozy deep end of a b2b with Villalobos. Perhaps it’s a stretch to paint the label boss too much into the frame here, but if that is the case as it might well be, it’s resulted in an exemplary album from an artist who constantly gives us more excellent music to chew on.
OW
Today’s lesson is on how to make an entrance. Released midway through last year, Wet Leg’s debut single ‘Chaise Longue’ was, it’s safe to say, well received. The pitch has become increasingly feverish around the Isle Of Wight duo of Rhian Teasdale and Hester Chambers and they’re about to blow the roof off with the release of this, their debut album.
The premise is simple. “I wanted to write stuff that’s fun to listen to and fun to play,” offers Teasdale, who formed Wet Leg with Chambers in order to crank up some loud guitars as the antithesis to the folky introspection of a previous musical incarnation. Well, missioned accomplished.
‘Chaise Longue’ is best track here, but only just. ‘Wet Dream’ and ‘UR Mum’ are both cut from the same cloth of krautrock goodness – driving basslines, metronomic drumming and whip-smart lyrics that deal gloriously with the detritus of life.
It’s an album that’s packed with brilliant one-liners, there’s knob gags, songs about being in love, songs about not being in love, songs about really very much not being in love. The brutal “When I think about what you’ve become / I feel sorry for your mum” put-down from ‘UR Mum’ should get a round of applause, while the total fuck you of ‘Piece Of Shit’ (“Alright, you’re a good guy / alright, whatever helps you sleep at night”) is standing ovation stuff.
The album is probably best summed up towards the end of ‘UR Mum’ (fast becoming my favourite track). As the song reaches its melodic climax, Teasdale announces that “I’ve been practising my longest and loudest scream”, which is followed by, yup, her longest and loudest scream. Take a look around you, we should all feel like screaming. Teasdale just screams. And that’s Wet Leg in nutshell.
We can talk about influences if you like, but it seems churlish somehow. Just sit back and let the fun take control. We all need a bit of Wet Leg in our life.
NM
The IgG Band – Ultra-Sound (Kalita)
Kalita Records continue their noble quest to resurrect lost and hard-to-find musical treasures, this time breathing new life into The IgG Band’s solitary 1980 release, ‘Ultra/Sound’. Named after an abbreviation for the protein molecule, immunoglobulin G, the IgG band was formed in the late ’70s by a group of medical students studying at the Meharry Medical College in Nashville, Tennessee. After a few years spent practising, jamming, and performing between studies, the troupe committed a selection of their compositions to wax, capturing the album at Hilltop Recording Studios before self-releasing it on band member Clifford Becker’s Infusion Records.
Original copies are as hard to come by as they are merciless on the wallet, so Kalita once again do a service to the digging community – circumventing the need to do grubby deals with speculators to own the free-flowing music contained within the ‘Ultra/Sound’ grooves. While the quality of musicianship is there for all to hear, there’s a beautiful innocence to the jazz-funk flex that wonderfully adds to its allure. Heartfelt vocals abound across the 7-track album, which ranges in tone from the melancholic space soul of ‘Another Love Gone’ to the gloriously optimistic ‘IgG Theme’, and the irresistible funk flex of ‘Funky Music’. The pleasure enjoyed by the bandmates as they belt out their tunes is palpable throughout, adding a delightful je ne sais quoi to this most endearing of recordings.
PC
Susumu Yokota – Symbol (Lo Recordings)
Perhaps like many Juno readers – and by a wider margin, anyone remotely interested in film and music culture – the late Susumu Yokota enjoyed a love for Studio Ghibili’s cult anime films through the late noughties. His favourite was Princess Mononoke, a sprawling animated tale about the loving war between a legendary princess living deep in the forest, and a young prince trying to justify human civilization.
The analogy of the film – an intense, symbiotic struggle between natural and human poles – is well captured in ‘Symbol’, one of the albums Yokota made in indirect response to his love affair with it. Like the swelling, gushing mood of its soundtrack, allusions to the natural world shine through, which manifest as samples from various well-known baroque and classical sources, contemporary and antique. Debussy, Beethoven, Reich, Cage… everything is sifted out from old CDs and siphoned through Yokota’s subtle electronic processings, which include brightening, panning, stereoizing and cutting off. It’s as if he’s painted a surreal image of an out-of-reach summer garden or a divine mountain range, alluding to the artist’s lifelong love for the pastoral – literary and real.
Yokota’s titles do good justice to the mood of peaceful disharmony he always nailed. One niche example is ‘The Plateau Which The Zephyr Of Flora Occupies’, which refers to the ballet by famous ballet shoes inventor Charles-Louis Didelot. If Yokota was to ever reference anything so airy-fairy (before you object to the term, the play is literally about the god of wind, Zephyr, dancing with Flora, a nymph of flowers) this would be it. The performance was famous for using “flying machines” to send its dancers soaring. The track itself, meanwhile, carries a similar sense of dual uncertainty, sampling peaceful operatic vocals and tremolo’ing strings at the same time – as if to capture the winds of humanity riffing against grasses.
JIJ
IVVVO – Bleached Butterfly (AD93)
A good chunk of this week’s new LPs crop falls into the fused sounds of electronic and post-punk. That from IVVVO is certainly the cream.
We find it a happy coincidence IVVVO’s real name is Ivo; sharing a name with the founder of the seminal label 4AD, he’s doing similarly mutative work to what that camp did almost 30 years ago. In other words: like the cured electronic indie of new bands like Double Virgo or Bar Italia, ‘Bleached Butterfly’ is the latest in a recent slew of new music fusing the sounds of the contemporary club and the divey band bar. This being IVVVO, though, it’s got a much larger foot in the deconstructed club avant-garde, making AD93 a homelier label than the likes of Rough Trade or Trilogy Tapes.
His fifth album, ‘Bleached Butterfly’ comes in stark contrast to the artist’s earlier bits, like the trancier wackier affair ‘doG’ (Halcyon Veil) and the industrial ambient album ‘Prince Of Grunge’. This is by far his closest to narrative-driven electronic music yet. Femme voice (from fellow artist and vocalist Abyss X) and jangly guitar immediately appear on the self-titled opener, but instead of just establishing the riff, the guitar is ‘beamed in’ via reversing and stereoizing the sample; the vocals are indistinct, alien, and glossolalic. Barely, we can make out sexual lyrics: “demonic energy” and “between my thighs” open up into a cavernous electrogrunge apocalypse.
After the lead smash hit, the ensuing instrumental tracks lean into odder territory. ‘Ceramic Chaos’ sounds like what would happen to Ghost Stories-era Coldplay if the band had been chucked into an androgyne blender; screams and synthetic rave horns cut across a nicely glossy pluck progression, causing a strange contrast. IVVVO tries his hand at Voiski-like cut-up trance on ‘TRANCE’, yet renders it slowcorey, drenching the backing impacts in swathes of analog reverb. Meanwhile, IVVVO’s main cup of tea seems to be the bright, malleable rave synth; ‘E.T.’ and ‘You Know You’re Just Like Me’ are expert examples of this kind of synthesis, as each piece builds to timeless rapture beyond the pales of jangle and amp.
JIJ
Meshuggah – Immutable (Atomic Fire)
Swedish progressive groove metal legends Meshuggah really don’t need any introduction. Many have tried though few have succeeded in emulating the ludicrously technical, poly rhythmic mayhem the group have become renowned for.
Their ninth full-length, ‘Immutable’, signals a shift into darker terrain with its elevated elements of ambient dread and post-metal nuance. Opener, ‘Broken Cog’, sets a hush tone with frontman Jens Kidman subtly whisper-lulling over the hypnotic slow burn composition before utterly exploding into devastating fury.
That seems to be the mission statement behind this project, clocking in at nearly 70 minutes, Meshuggah’s lenghtiest work to date feels driven by a desire to exude a menacing, ethereal form of atmosphere usually only tempered with, as in the near ten-minute unsettling epic, ‘They Move Below.’
This need to expand their core dynamics only floods the heftier tracks with clinical, crushing momentum, such as ‘The Abysmal Eye’ or ‘God He Sees In Mirrors’, which combines the shattering aggression of ‘ObZen’ with the post-prog hypnotism of fan-favourite ‘Nothing.’
With its perplexing math-groove chugs, and Tomas Haake’s octopus-like drumming forced through with unnerving clarity and precision, leave no doubt, ‘Immutable’, is arguably the most important project from the metal artisans since either of their previously mentioned career defining works. A legacy only furthered and bolstered with unmatched ability and scope.
ZB
PUP – The Unraveling of Puptheband (Rise)
Canada’s PUP can seemingly do no wrong. Their battered and bruised form of emotive aggro pop-punk has kept them at the forefront of several scenes they’ve never sonically felt at home within, since the release of their blistering 2013 self-titled debut.
Their breakout sophomore effort, ‘The Dream Is Over’, doubled down on this outlier status by melding scattered, energetic compositions with frontman Stefan Babcock’s vulnerable lyricism and shredded vocal delivery.
On their fourth full-length and follow up to 2019’s exceptional ‘Morbid Stuff’, the group lean further into their melodic nuance than ever before, yet while managing to retain the dishevelled charm that’s resonated with countless screaming fans.
From the dynamic indie-punk of ‘Matilda’ that sees Babcock pay adoration to an old guitar, to the anthemic cynicism of ‘Totally Fine’ which takes aim at the hollow vapidness of the music industry, the band have never sounded so tight knit, focused or simply content in their positively vitriolic single lane, life solving debauchery.
ZB
Tool – Fear Inoculum (Sony BMG)
There was a period of time when the prospect of a new Tool album was little more than metalhead folklore. Many debated whether the prog giants would (or could) deliver on the gestating hype that had been left to boil since 2006’s underrated opus, ‘10,000 Days.’
2019 would be the year to dispel any and all notions with the unveiling of ‘Fear Inoculum’; a complex, lengthy, monolithic piece of work that continues to justify its thirteen year wait with each subsequent listen.
Following much uncertainty and speculation due to the group’s peculiar approach to physical releases, the deluxe 5xLP box set has finally arrived, and its tangible form equals the grandiose sonics on display.
Almost an hour and a half in length, no song falls under the ten minute mark. From the ever-shifting opening title-track to the newly timeless classic, ‘Pneuma’, it’s frankly bizarre how immediately essential the newer material has become to the Tool Canon, as if these cuts have been with us for years.
The ponderous spectacle of ‘Invincible’ even sees vocalist Maynard James Keenan offering insight into the anxiety of delivering on fan expectation while the endlessly entertaining five minute instrumental drumfill ‘Chocolate Chip Trip’ showcases Danny Carey in a more simultaneously sophisticated and unhinged manner than possibly ever before.
Housed in a gorgeous spot-varnished box set with hallucinatory artwork and pressed on 5 1-sided etched pieces of wax, few projects could ever merit this level of sheer scale within its packaging. This is a Tool album, however, that took over a decade to materialise, and similar to its hypnotic song structures, mammoth length and heady concepts, this immortalised version is no half measure.
ZB
Rolo Tomassi – Where Myth Becomes Memory (EOne)
2018’s ‘Time Will Die & Love Will Bury It’ wasn’t simply the best album of Rolo Tomassi’s career, it was a pivotal moment in UK metal and punk that saw the London based outfit transcend any preconceived boundaries.
Their journey from frenetic, synth-laden mathcore kids to barrier-shattering auteurs dealing in a nuanced blend of ethereal post-metal, hasn’t been necessarily simple.
Vocalist Eva Spence and keyboardist brother James have weathered lineup shifts and label issues whilst managing to expand and reinvent their core sound with each project.
‘Where Myth Becomes Memory’ exudes a delicacy merely tempered with on their previous effort, pushing the serene elements to the forefront on lush soundscapes such as ‘Almost Always’, or the tranquil ‘Stumbling’, while momentous devastation awaits on the other-worldly epics, ‘Cloaked’ and ‘Mutual Ruin’ which showcase the dichotomy of their styles in warring unification.
While still rooted in emotive, provocative aggression, Spence imbues enough muted beauty to layer the pieces with an air of hopeful abandon. Arguably one of the most endearing and rewarding metal/hardcore adjacent releases your ears shall encounter this year.
ZB
This week’s reviewers: Neil Mason. Patrizio Cavaliere, Zach Buggy, Jude Iago James, Oli Warwick,