The corona virus pandemic brings out the devastating inequalities in British life. You have people forced to used food banks because they cannot get government aid after losing their jobs; you also have the rich talking of the utter misery of not being able to play golf for six weeks.
Nothing But Flowers
March 22, 2020
Which is worse?
Wishful thinking?
Or wishing, with hindsight, that you had been more careful what you wished for?
FSOL - A Controlled Vista
March 19, 2020
This is a surprisingly good album, harking back to those incredible broadcasts they use to do back in the day. It has all the copyright watermarks etc to give it a real archive feel.
While there are quite a few new pieces int this continuous forty-nine minute piece, they cleverly sprinkle in lots of old early 90s samples that had me misting up.
Great stuff.
Surreal
March 12, 2020
Got a copy today. Very solid release which will please Skam fans everywhere. I think I'll be playing this quite a bit.
It's slightly surreal working on stuff while a BBC News Feed plays on one of the office monitors. And I'm listening to 'The Fear Ratio' whose latest album is called 'They Can't Be Saved'.
Castelvania on iOS
March 4, 2020
Completely out of the blue, Konami have released a port of the classic 1997 game. It's available on the App Store now. It appears to be based on the PSP and PS4 versions of the game rather than the PlayStation original.
There’s support for external controllers, achievements, and a new continue feature. It can be played in six languages: English, Japanese, German, French, Italian, and Spanish.
Lucy In Disguise - Unknown Frequency
March 3, 2020
Catchy hooks, dreamy pads, broken beats & thumping bass take you back to the 1980s.
The Caretaker - Deleted Scenes, Forgotten Dreams
March 2, 2020
The Caretaker has abandoned darker and hard to grasp memories in favour of an altogether warmer journey which upon exposure invades the very core of your being. This is a very personal album for the listener, pre-soul music from a bygone era which will attack your senses in a way both comfortable and uncomfortable all at once.
Available from Bandcamp.
The Quietus reviews Lame Impala
February 27, 2020
It took Kevin Parker five years of reclusive writing before The Slow Rush was ready for human consumption. His group Tame Impala started off at the dawn of the 2010s as a charming psych-revival curiosity, but second and third albums Lonerism and Currents saw the group slowly mutate into something far bigger; an escapist pop act capable of headlining festivals.
Notoriously, Parker is one of these musicians that spends literal years labouring over fine details to ensure everything is the best it can be. He rigorously considers every single drum sound, piano loop, and vocal texture, and pours unimaginable quantities of energy into the signature Tame Impala sound. Parker is clearly a talented producer, and has shown in the past that his musical graft often reaps satisfying melodies. It is this perfectionism that defines 2015’s smooth-but-insubstantial Currents, and new LP The Slow Rush is certainly cut from the same cloth.
So that begs the question; if Parker is such a perfectionist, how come all of his songs are fucking terrible?
Tame Impala frustrate throughout The Slow Rush. Whilst Parker’s talents as a producer certainly flicker throughout, his limitations as a songwriter prevent any songs on the record from really catching light at any point. The Slow Rush is background music, it’s supposed to bring good vibes but it dims every room that it is played in.
New Stuff
February 13, 2020
Picked a new album from Sign Libra - channelling that mid-80s Laurie Anderson vibe. Also some dark ambience from Radere. These two albums are really polar opposites. Also managed to get a nice discount on the new Tom Ford Beau De Jour - a clean, lavender fragrance that will be great in the coming months. I'm about halfway through the new William Gibson novel, Agency but I haven't (so far) found it particularly engaging compared to The Peripheral.