Decal "Ultramack 006" (promo copy): You know that you're reached the
dizzying heights of being a true music journo when you get a promo copy
of an LP.. Decal thankfully have not made a drum n bass LP, although it
has encorporated some aspects of that genre. The opener "Phunk City" which
you should all know of course, having bought the split 12" still around
the shops, is a slow chugging.. house?
number, not really typical of the LP. "Snake Hips" moves the LP up
a gear and sets the tone, breaks and techno merged together into one ball
[incidentally for all you trainspotters out there this is not the same
track as the FSOL number of the same title from the "Far Out Son Of Lung
And The Ramblings Of A Madman"]. "Darkstar is pretty heavy on the breaks,
still maintaining that distinct Decal sound, quite dark, the scarier side
of their music. "Undersea by Rail" is a more house influenced track, with
4/4 beats.. just picture yourself in the chunnel, the
beat of the track + train and all the metallic strains of the pipes
from the sea above are ringing around your ears.. maybe that was what they
were trying to create with this track, thats the feeling I got anyway.
"Zerostar" again like its cousin Darkstar, leans towards breaks, stopping
throughout for ambient cups of tea, its very poppy and light but not in
a bad way, and who is the mysterious female voice at the end of the track?
Haunting, distant vocals, more of the same
please. "The Bastard" for the opening two minutes threatens to explode
into jungle madness, tempting you with chip pan breaks, drilling up to
the familiar sounds, still has that unique Decal keyboard echo, with a
very wobbly dark melody stretched over frantic Bassbin-esque beats halfway
through the track. "Penthouse Suite": what the fuck is that voice sample?
Horribly distorted and warped, very scary, bound to set any acid head at
a gig into a terror-induced coma.. this track
loops and jumps, fades back and forth from clarity to muffled bass
and snare emissions, while "Colussus" is much more ambient, a majectic
FSOL type excursion. "Lo-Lite" is very lo-fi and dubby, and the last track
"heavy vibes" is strained
and disconnected, clanging and hard, at times difficult to listen to.
"Dead Boy" is pure blissed out ambience.. overall this LP is brilliant,
even though its been three years since Ultramack 004, Decal have shown
that they are still capable
of producing above average techno music. Although this LP is more formulaic
than the very off-centre Ultramack 005 by Anodyne, it still takes in various
styles and works well on the floor as well as in the living room. This
LP is set for a late summer release and could well be the Irish LP of the
year, if not the best release anywhere. Decal have a very distinctive sound,
and they use this to their advantage. The tracks are very different yet
still have hallmarks that you can immediately identify as being Decal in
origin. I think that with some good publicity and some gigs around town,
Decal should be well on their way to breaking the UK market. S@E predict
big things for them.. if someone like Orbital or Leftfield (both of whom
we would consider musically inferior to Decal) can get 8000
people in the point for a gig, then theres no reason why within two
years there shouldnt be another 8000 punters in there for this lot. Hows
about it? An all Dublin night, Decal headlining the bill, Anodyne + Rob
Rowland live sets, and various DJs doing opening slots? It could happen,
and on the strength of this LP it just might. Contact Decal/Ultramack Records
at PO Box 5417, Phibsboro, Dublin 7, or email them at ultramack@connect.ie.
Venus Envy "Four To The Floor": This 7 track CD ep has been out a while
but we didnt pick it up until recently. We wouldnt have done so either
but that our paths crossed with Maura from VE on the Internet, and we bought
it out of the goodness of our hearts (aaawww..).. and yowser!! Is this
a fucking class piece of work
of what? Could "passes by (without a word)" be the best song of the
year? Indie/guitar heaven with female vocals, beautiful rich deep vocals,
the kind of voice you could fall in love with. This is more a personal
thing than anything else, I generally prefer the female voice to the male
voice, maybe its some sort of Freudian thing but I just think it sounds
so much better. Having said that however,
the mix of male and female voices on "butt of a joke" work extremely
well, very good harmony between them. The lyrics are also excellent - "I
feel like the butt of a joke, when I wake up, hungover and broke/I feel
like the butt of a smoke, when I wake up, bitter and broken down". I can
picture the morning after in my minds eye perfectly.. not that I've ever
regretted anyone I've ever slept with you understand <ahem>. Coming
more from a techno background we generally wouldnt appreciate lyrics all
that much [the female voice in techno works some times,
other times not, take for example the absolutely atrocious Extremis
by HAL featuring Gillian Anderson from the X-Files.. is there a worse song
in existence?] but these lyrics are pretty damn cool. "Disposable" is very
mellow and relaxed for a while, and breaks into guitar noise occasionally..
mmm give us more of that
voice.. its pure class. "2", "4" and "6" (all untitled) are short little
instrumental pieces, "2" is very quiet and well produced, a slight ambient
edge to it (or maybe not.. but we always see the techno in things) perhaps?
"4" is straight out of black hip hop central, and "6" sounds like a CD
skipping, with these
strange samples over it, very avant garde indeed. "alien interference
interlude", the closing track, is another instrumental, shame, I would
have liked to hear more of Maura's voice. It's an interesting track however,
slow and relaxed with this slightly edgy guitar coming in and disturbing
the relative calm, the sounds have also been treated in production, giving
it an alien edge. This EP is actually very well produced, there's lots
of different sounds going on in the background that
you have to listen out for.. theres a much greater sound to it than
a three piece. This is still available around the shops for about four
quid, you should buy it. You can get in touch with Venus Envy at ve@connect.ie.
Double Club Review: Thursday the 12th of June at the Kitchen saw one
of the last nights of the very popular club Influx, before it moves off
to its Saturday night slot in the Mean Fiddler. First DJ of the night was
Glen Brady, who was playing more run of the mill hip hop, not bad I guess.
Not exactly my scene. Jon Carter (incidentally I had never heard of this
bloke before and didnt plan on going to the kitchen this night but loads
of people I knew were going so I went along anyway) was the main DJ, he
does a regular slot in some place called the Social over in London. I hadnt
heard of this place either.. someone expressed shock at
my lack of knowledge of this club, but come on for fucks sake. I dont
have time to be reading the face or mixmag or any of this shit all the
time. Who cares whats going on in London anyway.. this is Dublin. Anyway
Carter's set was cool. He started off where Brady left off with hip hop
and then moved into more Chemical Brothers territory, sort of techno with
breaks in it, big beats. Then from the big beats he drifted into house,
fucking hard house with plain good old four to the floor bass, I love this
stuff, just shows how something simple can be brilliant and you dont have
to be "innovative" all the time to be good. Saturday the 14th saw Bassbin
hosting Boymerang (ex Bark Psychosis) in the Temple Bar Music Centre. Rohan
and Naphta were doing DJ first but I was sitting outside in the bar area
having drinks and talking shit when they were on. Decal were up next and
played a load of stuff from the new LP (which at the time I hadnt heard).
I have seen Decal play about eight times live now and each time
has been pretty cool. The start of the set is slower, and then they
build it up to dancing levels, and everyone really gets into it. Its a
welcome break as well in jungle nights cos jungle is normally so full on,
and then they come on and theres more of a build up and then the atmosphere
gets better as well. Boymerang was on last and IMHO was disappointing,
first of all he was only DJing (I thought it was going to be a live set)
and that way you didnt get to hear any of his own tracks, secondly I was
expecting some serious warped out experimental shit
that was going to blow the head off me and it didnt, it was nothing
more progressive or unusual than anything you hear in any jungle night,
and third of all the chap is WHITE, so then that means of course that he
cant be cool. Not a bad night overall though, I got to meet some very very
nice people, they know who they are..
Random thoughts: <sigh> I made a rare excursion to the southside
there recently, for a 21st on the hill in Dalkey. I used to be a real money
grabbing fucker and over the last year I've slowly but surely cared less
and less about material things and more about meeting new people and having
a good time, going out, finding love, and all the other things that are
supposedly free in life.. and then when I go out on the
Dart to these places it corrupts me completely. I want it all. I want
to be stinking rich. I want a Nintendo 64, I want a fucking huge big tv
screen with mad big cinema speakers that rumble the floor when the bass
comes in, I want to live in a place that I dont have to worry about having
my shit robbed.. has anyone
ever been to Dalkey? The place is beautiful, and its so quiet. Theres
no little bunches of screaming kids running around on their fucking roller
blades, the streets are always deserted.. in some ways its a bit scary..
the thing is I would
consider myself middle class, and then when you go out to the Southside,
and you pass through all these places on the Dart like Blackrock and Monkstown,
etc, and these people call themselves middle class, yet what they earn
would be at least five times what my parents make in a year.. guess I should
re-evalue? I've always considered my life reasonably comfortable and then
when you see these places, such luxury, such decadence, I want it all..
I want to live in a place with a
view of the sea, where its quiet.. and hopefully not step on anyone
in the process of getting it.. on a different matter all the way
back in S@E 2 then then authors talked about a growing scourge of racism
in Phibsboro at the time, and now it seems like the whole thing is blowing
over again. It is hard not to be racist at times.. like the other day I
was at a bank machine getting a tenner out and this Bosnian woman came
up to me and started pushing me and shit.. for a while I was thinking all
the usual shit, you know, what the fuck are they doing here,
can they not fuck off back to their own country, isnt the war over
there, and then I passed by this poster that said "Remember the Famine,
Say to no to racism against Refugees" or something along those lines, and
I guess it is a pretty serious thing to have to move from where you are
from, leave your whole life behind,
to come over to a strange place.. it must take a big step to do such
a thing, and if I was in their position, as relatives of mine were 150
years ago, how would I like to be treated? When you're being hassled for
your hard earned cash it is hard to see the bigger picture but sometimes
you have to look beyond the immediate.. what can we say but fight it, dont
feel it.
Right, I spent a quarter of a hundred quid to go and see Radiohead,
and
I put it on my S@E expenses account, using my American Express gold
card that all S@E contributers get. Want to
know why Massive Attack's sound was so quiet and shitty ? Well I met
up
with this bloke that works with Massive and he said that their sound
engineer had spilt a load of water or something all over the mixing
desk
just before Massive came out, so their sound was fucked. And they didn't
have time to change to another mixing desk or anything so they just
played on with their knackered sound system. Their sound engineer was
fired straight after the gig !! So they would have sounded better,
trust
me.
Oh and Radiohead were pretty darn good too. I'm
not a real indie head
myself (and they're not a real indie band) but there was a great buzz
going around the RDS. Sure with thirty five thousand seventeen year
olds
why wouldn't there be ? And it was outdoor, and it rained !! But nobody
noticed because they were too busy jumping around and sweating a lot
and
singing along to a good bit of the new LP (OK Computer) and a good
slice
of The Bends and about two or three from Pablo Honey. Funny bit of
the
gig was when Thom York says "Right, now for a bit of kareoke." To which
they started playing Creep, and wouldn't you know, everybody sang along..
And for all you underground heads that are moaning about some bands
being
commercial well fuck off and stop shopping in Skate City if you want
to
remained untouched by the capitalist's evil shiny claws that some call
commercialism. Or something.
Global Goon "Goon" Yet another questionable release on the Rephlex label,
but of course being the dirty filthy consuming trainspotters we are, we
had to buy the thing. Its a mix of annoying horrible tracks, like the garish
pink opener, "St. Martin", which like that uniform from the girls school
around the top of Dominic Street, you cant bear to look at it for more
than ten seconds; or the unsightly green and yellow curtains of "Der Kipper",
with as much co-ordination as an
eighties bachelor pad. "Chime time" is a skanda jacket clash of orange
and bright blue, even the most bare faced philistines will not be able
to appreciate this repulsive, hideous, gaudy, showy piece of degenerate
ridicule. "Skip Glider" is a bright luminous yellow, a big fluffy feathery
thing from some tacky shop, but
strangely enough it grows on you, somewhat happy in its intense colour.
Tracks like these have you reaching for the skip button (sorry to be buying
CDs again but this had 3 more tracks on it than the vinyl version), but
then you listen to the Ford Puma metallic silverness of "Metal Buffalo",
or the jarred stainless steel clanging mixed with throbbing purple bass
of "Pagan Relict", and you think that this album just might match your
sitting rooms carpets. The dirty charcoal
grey of "Cleaning song" also saves this album from going in the bin
with those Japanese lampshades from Habitat. Overall a mixed bag of textures,
no blacks or whites or other extremes, mostly hues, tints, auras, shadings,
shadows, blurred impressionism, a pure lack of right angles. Not a brilliant
album.