Robot Sex Machine: The Vince Noir Project

I'm a pretty big fan of The Mighty Boosh. Though I used to find Noel Fielding quite endearing, my favourite half of the duo is Julian Barrett and his character Howard Moon (with whom I share a kinship of cockerel eyes and surreptitious Chinese burns). Having said that, when I discovered there was a band out there named The Vince Noir Project, named for Fielding's character, I still stopped and took a listen. I only became aware of this Phillippines-based band a few weeks ago, but I was rather surprised at what I heard. Their self-titled album, which released earlier this year, isn't filled with the whimsy of motorbikes of jealousy or man-sized kingfishers pecking you between the eyes. Instead, it is some rather great low-key electronic music (dare I use the term trip-hop) with a fantastically detached female vocalist akin sometimes to Tahita Bulma from New Young Pony Club and sometimes to Pip Brown of Ladyhawke. Not so much affable quirkiness in skinny jeans and white cowboy boots; rather more a femme fatale robot in heat. In fact this band may bear more resemblance to Fielding's girlfriend, Dee Plume's band Robots in Disguise (at least their debut album).

Vocalist Alessandra Tinio provides a cool, emotionally distant voice that often shifts into a staccato rapping of sorts. The album begins with Release It To the Wild, featuring Tinio at her seductive, lowest register as the track slinks along to a laidback downbeat until it descends into laser chaos. This is followed by 6 Million Gigabytes, a kinky, euphemistic song about...computers. Alter Ego uses rather grunge-sounding guitars, but paired with the dreamier side of Tinio's vocals, they don't seem out of place on this record. Market Love features chugging, stuttering rhythms and some deliberately vacant rapping a la Sarah Nixey that recounts a distinctly London narrative, which eventually declares that the artist scene is too much and that the narrator is "gonna get out of Bethnal Green." Metallic guitars slice through Alavet as Tinio references The Stranglers and Joe Strummer before the song starts to bounce along to a cheeky, punky beat and it oscillates between the two for the rest of the song before it's revealed that "alavet" is the phonetic spelling of "I love it." Taste the Rust starts with murky noise bubbling under scratchy guitar strings and Tinio raps again in her laconic fashion.

The only song explicitly about Fielding's character is Who's Vince Noir?, which is littered with Mighty Boosh references galore, including Cheek Bone magazine, mirrorball suits, affairs with polar bears, ponchos, Carlos Santana exercise suits and real French dukes. It is also the most upbeat, synthpoppiest track on the album and is built for being the perfect novelty song for Boosh fans. One of the released singles, Wha' a Git begins with the lines "This song reminds me of losing my virginity" as bass synths burble infectiously beneath minimalist drums; apparently Tinio caused a stir with her duct tape bra in the original music video, which then had to be censored. Tinio's vocal delivery switches between breathy sing-song and more tongue-in-cheek, matter-of-fact rapping that self-proclaims the narrator as a slapper. There's a slightly schizophrenic feel to the song as cool violin-like synths come in and a lounge feel kicks in. The record takes an unexpected turn with Rainbow in the Ocean, a twee-inflected, acoustic guitar-led track that namechecks Phil Spector and eventually tapers into a pleasant chorus of "shoop, shoop, shoop doo lang doo lang." The album concludes with Don't Need Anything From You, which sees the band switching back into buzzing electronic elements. The album also includes radio mixes of Release It To the Wild and Wha' a Git.

While this album could have descended into one-note novelty, it ends up maintaining your interest through the unpredictable variety of songs and genres. The Vince Noir Project, like their namesake, are good fun with a flashy facade that belies the wit and intelligence behind the fashionable, eye-catching exterior.

Release It To the Wild - The Vince Noir Project

Who's Vince Noir? - The Vince Noir Project

You Will Not Be Spared From Thinking: Stroszek's Manufacturing Consent EP

I first fell in love with The Clash, which led to a passion for political, intelligent lyrics, and eventually to bands like the Manic Street Preachers, Gang of Four and McCarthy. Then I fell for Joy Division, which led to an intense admiration for lyrics and music that documented a fraught inner life and the turmoil and starkness of reality in a minimalist monochrome never heard before. The Clash tore down what music was the first time with punk. And Joy Division did it again with post-punk. Now the Glasgow-based band Stroszek, having fused the power of both bands into an ambitious, inspiring art and aesthetic, have a chance to bring music to its knees once more. It's been well over a year since Stroszek released their first EP aptly entitled Demonstration, an unapologetically political piece with funereal undercurrents pulsing beneath all four tracks (for more information about Demonstration, see my earlier post about it). This month sees the release of their second EP entitled Manufacturing Consent, a nod to Chomsky and Herman's seminal work on propaganda and the not-so-free press in "democratic" nations.

Featuring photography from Miron Zownir, an artist who has managed to expose the beauty in nihilism and deviance and to champion those on the periphery of society, this self-produced EP is more about personal politics and inner struggles against a world deafened by entertainment and simulacra. These tracks also reveal a keener desperation and energy than those on Demonstration; this time round it's a bit like Stroszek have turned into Nietzsche's madman, frenzied with knowledge they need to communicate to people who have never realized nor cared that their lives are governed by rhetorical forces. Stroszek simply know and feel too much and it's burning up inside of them. I'm glad that the four tracks on Manufacturing Consent finally made it to a proper release - these songs have been a fixture of Stroszek's live sets for quite some time (I, myself, witnessed Burning Libraries and Dancing on the Motorway firsthand over a year ago). They break down those borders between passion and reason that make us stubbornly human - their music makes you feel the thought behind the lyrics, words become palpable on a level beyond language.

The EP opens with the aforementioned Burning Libraries, a song built on a brilliant metaphor for destroying your own history and purging memories. It is Stroszek's most frenetic song with its unrelenting drums, disorienting reverb and tiny twitches of electronic clicks, and it truly feels like you're in an inferno of information overload before a collapse into feedback. The reprieve comes with the gentle, spine-tingling line "We'll be hand in hand/Ruining ourselves with fear," a lucid, yet no more comforting, moment amongst the anxiety and chaos. Burning Libraries is followed by live favourite Dancing on the Motorway, which features a viral bass line that grooves beneath the sonic bliss of guitar and relatively militant vocals: "Will you argue that it's fascist/If I want to kill the fascists?/I don't want your cold shoulder/I want you on the hard shoulder...Oh, whose side are you on?!/Are there any more souls to save?/While we are all just dancing on the motorway." This juxtaposition of danceability with accusatory, intelligent lyrics emphasizes the disconnect that you feel when you step outside of the masses and view them amusing themselves to death. Richey J. Robertson's straining, breathless vocals try to overcome the catchy oblivion of the beat in this Huxleyean generation, grasping for any of those he can pull to safety even as they sway to his own song. Knowing that the headlights are coming as a fatal dose of enlightenment arrives too late.

The sound of torrential rain signals the transition to This Town Revisited, which springs to life with cascades of Cocteau Twinsesque synths and another fantastic bass line. This song beautifully encapsulates the expression "you can never go home again" as the narrator comes to terms with the reality of his/her past against a backdrop gorgeously reminiscent of The Cure's A Forest. The song concludes with the plaintive line "Potential is never good enough/In this town, revisited." The final song on the track listing is the truly epic Sound the Last Post, one of the most poignant songs I've ever heard about war. The haunting guitar soars and chimes over the solemn bass, working once again in perfect tandem as the song marches through a forsaken sonic landscape of withered poppies as red as the carpet Agamemnon follows homeward. Referencing the Last Post Ceremony at Menin Gate in Ypres and the chief of police, Pierre Vandenbraambussche, who spearheaded the daily ceremony, this song scatters the noble image of soliders and the patriotism of fighting for your country like ashes to the wind. The second verse, which declares "Falling for your soil is NOT the question/But whether, for this dirt/You could ever kill someone" also reminds me of the quote from Bertrand Russell which stated, "Patriots always talk of dying for their country and never of killing for their country." It ends with lines from the film adaptation of Orwell's 1984 to drive home the point that we are still living in a world framed by propaganda and by terms cock-eyed and loaded and poised to subdue us all. There is also a hidden track attached to the end of Sound the Last Post called A Vision of the Future. I won't lie; I'm not a fan of hidden tracks because there never seems to be a point to having them. I will forgive this one, though, because with its use of more of the script from 1984, it definitely coalesces with the track it is following; however, it reveals a sharper electronic feel rather than the atmospheric electronics of Stroszek's established sound. In effect, Stroszek intrigue me until the very last second of this EP.

Manufacturing Consent is already available for download from several places - you can access those links when you go to Stroszek's MySpace. The physical copies of the EP will release soon as well. You can also download two previously unreleased tracks (Sleepwalkers and Maybe Find a Stranger) in their live versions at Threads of Sound. I fervently hope that a full-length album and new material will be forthcoming. We all need a thought-provoking, stylistically-challenging band like this. I think it's rather criminal that Stroszek doesn't have a higher profile when bands like Glasvegas get accolades for hackneyed stabs at played-out, comfortable themes and styles. I reckon that Stroszek are yet another one of those bands out of their time precisely because they see their time all too clearly. And those bands will always matter.

Stroszek's Web site: http://www.stroszek.co.uk/

Dancing on the Motorway - Stroszek

This Town Revisited - Stroszek

Brain Tattoos and Doublethink: The Japanese Popstars and Jon Ryman

This post is another double feature to showcase two different electronic records that I'm excited about right now. The first is the debut album from Northern Irish trio The Japanese Popstars (We Just Are due to release in North America in January 2009) and the second is the fifth album from Jon Ryman (Nineteen Eighty-Four which just released this year). The former has gritty, dirty beats akin to Justice, Boys Noize and MSTRKRFT while the latter emulates smoother synthpop similar to The Human League, Depeche Mode and New Order.

Consisting of Declan McLaughlin, Gary Curran and Gareth Donoghue, The Japanese Popstars are exactly what I want to hear on the dancefloor. We Just Are begins aptly with We Just Are (Intro) - a confident declaration that pulses with metallic starbursts around the simple vocal sample. From here, you are taken into a world of fantastically brash and hypnotic electro, where you are under their purview and held in compliance with your will. The first track proper, Sample Whore, built around samples of "ohs" and "ahs," is a perfect blend of the lusty and clinical while Face Melter does just what it says on the tin (I'm still trying to mop up the remainder of my face from the floor). Then Delboys Revenge kicks in with a jackhammer insistence, but a needle-like precision soon backed by lasers that slice through your cranium.

As a refreshing reversal to the assault of Delboys Revenge, B.C.T.T. provides a gentler, poppier side with breathier rhythms and the heart rate comes down for awhile as the delicacy of the track washes over you like cool antiseptic. Dr. Frenchy Bernard continues the gentler arc with springy synths and old-school bleeps, creating a mini electro symphony. Anthepic (We Have Taken Over) begins to bring back harsher, dirtier beats, smudging up the otherwise pristine technicality of the track, and by the point the wispy vocals that declare "Just like you asked us to, we have taken over you" increase into a hynotic maelstrom, you realize that they have indeed taken over. Rising slowly from beneath the previous track, The Smile wends its way insidiously and surreptitiously into the folds of your grey matter.

However, it only serves as an introduction to the epic Rise of Ulysses, a whizzing, buzzsaw return to the grimier earlier tracks of the album. With its demonic chant of "rise!" at various points, it injects a darker pigment into the heart of the record. With rapid metallic beats and clipped cymbals, Total Distorted Mayhem, like Face Melter, is rather self-explanatory. A barely detectable "Come in, just jump in" pulses between rhythms like a shadow of an Id. The next track, F19b (Droppin' Bombs), definitely sounds like bombs dropping in a constant loop, ultimately merging to sound like a siren against gritty, hollow beats. Like most of the tracks on this record, it puts you into a rather pleasurable trance. To tie the album up in a consistent circuit, it ends with We Just Are (Finalizer), once again deliberately declaring their existence. It builds from a low hum into scales of fuzzy tonalities before bursting rather unexpectedly into sunny, jubilant melodies, like pure endorphin being shot into your veins. The Japanese Popstars have also just released a free download of an unreleased track called Electronic Poet, which is equally as brilliant as the album and which I've made available below. If I opened my skull right now, I have a feeling The Japanese Popstars would be tattooed all over the surface of my cerebrum.

Unlike The Japanese Popstars, Jon Ryman's music is on the softer, synthier side of electronic music. I was actually made aware of the Brighton-based artist several months ago via MySpace, but I didn't take a proper listen until now. Ryman has been creating music since the '80s (including under the name Interloper) and has also worked on music for television. This particular album - Ryman's fifth studio album - is loosely based on George Orwell's 1984, the book that has spawned many a song and record. However, rather than seem clichéd, this record breathes new life into the seminal story, especially with its classic analogue feel. Somehow it is hugely fitting that an old novel set in the future, which is now the increasingly distant past, is set to new music in a style that was considered futuristic decades ago. Ryman also pushes Orwell's ideas into the 21st century, demonstrating how visionary Orwell was in predicting that everyone would eventually experience information overload to the point of apathy, a world where everything is propaganda and everything is under surveillance.

The album begins with an introductory message delivered by a voice from a retro computer that promises to play a happy song for you. The first track proper is New Corporate Mass, which ticks away like a hollow machine before pulsing with sparkly waves of synth and a rather robotic Latin hymn sung by a vocoderized human in a world in which the new religion is controlled by the corporations via the government. The album then shifts into Humanized, one of the catchiest tracks on the album. It slinks along to a cabaret feel and features one of my favourite lyrics: "a paper tiger in a cage." Overexposure places the Big Brother-induced paranoia against a relatively deadpan vocal and a backdrop of some of the best New Wave synthpop I've heard lately. Its sentiments display the ever-present (and ever-realistic) problem of minds being inundated with unwinnable wars and loaded terms that mean nothing to keep them from thinking critically. Breaking through this noise, Julia, an ode to the protagonist, Winston's, love interest in the novel, is full of crystalline synthesizers, reflecting a New Wave dancefloor beneath a discoball made of ice and circuitboard. The narrator of the song, who we can assume is Winston, appears to be experiencing a reawakening, shaking off apathy for a moment and attempting deeper thoughts, including rather profound ones like "maybe I'm just circumstance, nothing more." The next track, Autocue, flows along to a beat reminiscent of Tears For Fears' Everybody Wants to Rule the World as what sounds like telephone rings tinkle in the background. It becomes the perfect atmosphere for lyrics telling how the monolithic corporation assumes its own impersonal, singular soul, acting as an individual driven by greed and drained of humanity while running on automatic pilot. Autocue drifts seamlessly into Stars Fall, which returns to vocoder and beautiful, soaring melody.

Breaking this dreamlike mood, Rhythm Machine begins with the same computerized voice from the intro asking you to enter an access code. The song then moves into clinical vocals paired with razor-sharp precise rhythm worthy of Kraftwerk, contrasting with the free-flow of the movement in Julia - this is what dance music is when computers create it on their own. Oneohone, which is named for the dreaded Room 101 of the novel, begins with echoey snatches of voices and random sounds before ominous synths slip in to create an air of nightmare and imprisonment. Beginning with whizzes and static, Omnipresent continues the dark, horrific feel of Oneohone, setting a scene in which fear is palpable. Nowhere Left To Run follows with a rather restrained rhythm framed by further whizzes as a rather resigned vocal sings the song's title over and over. The record concludes with Acid Music, a bouncy, scrambled track that sounds like both a mental collapse and a system failure, poignantly demonstrating our propensity for treating machines like humans and humans like machines: machines get viruses while humans break down. Nineteen Eighty-Four is retro, but never cheesy, which is quite an achievement, and I hope Ryman gets more of the attention he deserves for this record.

Currently, you can order We Just Are from Amazon UK and you can purchase Nineteen Eighty-Four at CD Baby. Oddly enough, both albums, though very different, reinforce some similar notions of technology and humans and how we are both just made of information, whether DNA or binary code.

Face Melter - The Japanese Popstars

Electronic Poet - The Japanese Popstars

Humanized - Jon Ryman

Julia - Jon Ryman

Missing Wales: Mechanical Owl's Snowdonia EP

I'm not sure how I first stumbled across Mechanical Owl - it may have been an e-newsletter of some sort, but all that really matters is that something led me to Mechanical Owl's slightly off-kilter folk-electro-rock and it was like stumbling through the trees in Snowdonia National Park and discovering a hidden waterfall in the mountainside. Mechanical Owl is the solo project of Mike Payne, who recently moved back from Leeds to his hometown of Mold in Northern Wales, and who also participates in the bands Mrs. Dice Feet and Crayon. Payne's self-produced, self-distributed six-track Snowdonia EP is a lovely combination of the pastoral and the technological as electronic buzzes and ambience bolster plucked guitar strings. And Payne manages to weave music that captures and distills the magic and majesty of the Welsh landscape, often sounding like The Radio Dept. at their wispiest.

The first track of the EP, Brittle II, begins with an insistent guitar riff and then Payne's dreamy vocals kick off with evocative lyrics like "Rain rivers flow through your kitchen cupboard." Title track, Snowdonia, uses with the sounds of plucked strings, somehow sounding like Asian influences while still maintaining a driving rock melody. If I close my eyes, I can see the Welsh countryside in its hyperreal green glory. Row Your Boat spins around like dust in a sunbeam, sounding like an Air song, and it's my favourite track off the EP. Somehow, with its lackadaisical three-four rhythm, it also reminds me of the hypnotism of Heaven is Inside You by I Monster. Make It Last is a more rock-propelled tune with thrumming guitars and smashed cymbals, and the refrains of "ooh la la's" makes it all that more anthemic. Our Loss Their Gain takes light organ strains and skipping drums and Payne's vocals can get unwieldy in a Frightened Rabbit sort of way, emulating the cascade and spray of Welsh waterfalls between the misty hills. Gravel Grain is a slower affair with gentle electronic pulses, and Payne's plaintive plea of "I hope that it does not start to rain again" melds with the music into a hovering fluidity like mist hanging in the air. There is also a bonus track, which is a reprise of Make It Last, replacing rock bombast with thicker, slower sounds.

If you like what you hear as much as I do, you can purchase the Snowdonia EP at Mechanical Owl's MySpace. And if you live in the UK, Mechanical Owl is playing a few dates this summer, including ones in Manchester, Leeds and at the Good Times Festival in Wrexham. Even though I'm probably not technically allowed to feel hiraeth, the homesickness specific to the Welsh, the way Mechanical Owl makes me miss Wales feels pretty close. However, at the same time, the Snowdonia EP is like stretching the vista of Welsh mountains and valleys through my mind from headphone to headphone.

Mechanical Owl's MySpace: http://www.myspace.com/mechanicalowl

Snowdonia - Mechanical Owl

Row Your Boat - Mechanical Owl