5 Tewns Vol.23
Read Time: 3 mins
Bom Dia, Bore Da, greetings, earthlings. It’s time for our weekly listening roundup. It has been an absolutely gorgeous week here on the farm, and we’ve been listening to some amazing tunes from the likes of Dead Can Dance and Persian, which I will now summon and share with you. Let us begin:
Persian – Knight Rider Plate
As a chubby dad of a certain age, particularly one who was raised partly in 1980s West Germany, there is a tiny part of my cerebrum entirely reserved for Knight Rider, muscle cars, Hasselhoff, and, of course, Stu Phillips’ Knight Rider theme. Obviously, I love a good version and have, over the years, collected a fair few of them: Panjabi MC’s anthemic “Mundian To Bach Ke”, So Solid Crew’s “Ride Wid Us”, and of course Busta Rhymes’ “Turn It Up, Fire It Up” — and now this absolute belter from the legend Persian, cutting it together with a nice breakbeat. Clocking in at one minute sixteen, you’ll need to loop it up or mix quick, but it’s well worth your money.
Plant 43 – Cloud Monolith
Originally released on the wonderful Future Massive label a few years back and now reissued as part of Plant43’s self-titled imprint, this arpeggio saga is so beautiful it makes me weep. And now, as I sit in the garden, on the farm, watching the clouds move over the mountains, it’s even more epic. I’m a huge fan of Emile Facey’s hyper-emotive take on electro and ambient music, and Cloud Monolith, with its low ominous drones giving way to a murmuration of playful arps, is one of the best examples.
Jannis Carbotta – Pop ( Unter Spannung)
Jannis Carbotta’s “Pop (Unter Spannung)” is released as part of Billo’s new compilation cassette of experimental music, Experimentelle Welt 1, and I can’t get enough of it. Its drifting, lacklustre dreampop guitar, devoid of ego, hangs like a pound shop smoke machine at a school disco, and its scattered percussion layers until it sounds like a fireplace crackling away in the corner of your mind. It sounds like a dream.
QUAGGA – Just Gotta Get Out
I remember the late, great John Peel talking on the radio about how his favourite music always sounded unhinged. When I heard this particular album by Quagga (Joshua Mackie), I thought of John Peel straight away. Supposedly recorded using GarageBand in his basement, this brilliant tape is all over the map, with Velvet Underground-style lo-fi romanticism, kosmische experiments, and post-punk arse-rippers like “Just Gotta Get Out”, which sounds like a musical pile-on between the Stooges, the Ramones, and Devo, with a guitar refrain that sounds like early Pavement. It’s brilliant.
Dead Can Dance – Death Cults
Dead Can Dance return with the hauntingly beautiful lament “Death Cults”. A lone, sparse drum machine runs for a few bars before the iris opens onto undulating synth bass and soaring leads, punctuated with what sounds like a synthesised steel drum, all of which creates a psychological landscape for Brendan Perry’s lush vocals, which invoke the uncanny soul of Sarah Vaughan’s “The Mystery of Man”, while inverting its optimism for our war-obsessed times. The tragedy of man, perhaps.
Bye…