Records Make Great Pets

Manic Street Preachers - The Masses Against The Classes

I always much preferred the Manics in theory rather than practise. In terms of their “classic” sound, this is pretty weak, but it’s still probably my favourite of all their singles.

It’s just so gloriously over the top. It opens with a chopped up quote from Noam Chompsky, then some gloriously ascending “ahhs”, a fairly typical Indie Punk verse chorus kind of a thing, more oohs, another verse chorus thing, then a preposterous solo, another chorus, some more oohs, then it all falls apart and James Dean Bradfield makes a ridiculous pseudo-Marxist statement and that’s it. Over and done with.

Pop Trivia Time: This was the very first single released in the year 2000 to hit the number 1 spot, which means that it was the very first hit song of this entire millenium.

I remember buying the CD Single of this back in the day. It would have been just after they finished promoting This Is My Truth, and the first B-Side, Close My Eyes, is clearly left over from those sessions. It’s good, but obviously a left over B-Side from the Truth sessions.

Then there’s the cover of Rock And Roll Music, which is exactly what you’d expect from the Manics covering Chuck Berry. That’s another thing I liked about them. They could write and release two pretty great Marxist punk songs, and then go all Status Quo without any sense of shame or guilt, and no one ever really noticed either.

I just wish I liked more of their songs :(

Track Listing:

Side A

1. The Masses Against The Classes

Side B

1. Close My Eyes
2. Rock And Roll Music

Mystery Jets ft. Laura Marling - Young Love

This was the first song I heard by Mystery Jets and, for me, it’s hands down one of the finest Pop songs of the last 10 years. There’s not a single note out of place, it has everything. Falsetto ooohs, finger snaps, no discernable verse or chorus, slightly wonky harmonies, and a guitar line that’s fiddly but doesn’t show off.

Plus, it features Laura Marling, and her adorably awkward voice.

*swoon*

Anyway, I was very disappointed when I checked out the rest of their stuff and found it was fairly generic, cookie cutter Indie Pop, and not a much needed return to the glorious, heady days of C86 era silliness. I just want another Heavenly in my life, is that so much to ask?

Track Listing:

Side A

1. Young Love ft Laura Marling

Side B

1. Metal Soul

NoMeansNo - The Day Everything Became Isolated And Destroyed

This is compilation of their EP The Day Everything Became Nothing and the album Small Parts Isolated And Destroyed, which were released in the same year.

I was introduced to NoMeansNo a while ago by some internet friends. They’re two brothers from Canada who mix Punk, Jazz, Hardcore, Funk, Prog and even odder elements like Country, A’Capella and stoned out Southern Rock. They’ve been credited with setting down the template for Math Rock and for the harder edged Emo stuff that came out in the early 90’s.

They have a tendency to write long, sprawling tracks - more than half the songs on this album clock in at over 5 minutes - which often feature pitch black humour in their lyrics. One song, about an abusive father, finishes with the line “I’m seriously considering leaving home”.

They’re one of those oddly ideosyncratic bands that don’t have anything special about them, they just don’t sound like anyone else. They’re kind of like Swell Maps, in that they were just a Punk band, they just didn’t really sound like any other Punk band at the time. I dunno, I really like them.

Track Listing:

Side 1:

1. The Day Everything Became Nothing
2. Dead Souls
3. Forget Your Life
4. Beauty And The Beast

Side 2:

1. Brother Rat/What Slayde Said
2. Dark Ages
3. Junk

Side 3:

1. And That’s Sad
2. Small Parts Isolated And Destroyed
3. Victory

Side 4:

1. Teresa Give Me That Knife
2. Real Love
3. Lonely

The Unicorns - Who Will Cut Our Hair When We Are Gone?

You know those 33 1/3 books, where various people who should really get out of the house more often write in painfully anal detail about some classic album or another? If I ever get to the point where I become sad enough to do one of those then this is going to be the album I choose to do it on.

I dunno, it’s just the most perfect album ever. It’s silly and fun and well written and has some surprisingly interesting arrangements for a bunch of songs that largely concern themselves with bad puns about ghosts.

One of the most interesting parts about The Unicorns is that, for a band who can write some of the most fun, enjoyable Pop songs ever released, their songs don’t have any choruses. They have bits that should be choruses, they’re just never, ever repeated.

Ever.

Which is a pity, because I could listen to a 30 minute prog jam of Jellybones and it would still be the greatest song ever recorded, but instead it’s just 2:44, and that includes 30 seconds of weird noises at the start.

It’s also deceptively bombastic for a bunch of guys who like to play childrens toys as instruments. Tuff Ghost - a song about a body building spectre - features a fucking bass solo, and it’s ridiculously catchy. The Clap, which is about … clapping, I guess, features an immensely badass rock out which is over far too quickly. They also “borrowed” South African guitar styles for I Was Born (A Unicorn) long before Indie kids decided it’d be a totally rad idea bro. Not to mention the oddly Baroque, sprawling feel of Inoculate The Innocuous.

Anyway, go check out this album if you haven’t already, because it’s just glorious.

Track Listing:

Side Not Ready:

1. I Don’t Wanna Die
2. Tuff Ghost
3. Ghost Mountain
4. Sea Ghost
5. Jellybones
6. The Clap
7. Child Star

Side Ready:

1. Let’s Get Known
2. I Was Born (A Unicorn)
3. Tuff Luff
4. Inoculate The Innocuous
5. Les Os
6. Ready To Die

Venetian Snares - Filth

Breakcore is rather unfortunately full of this kind of shit, but thankfully most of it sounds pretty much exactly the same, so you can avoid it pretty easily if you want to. Yeah, I know I shouldn’t like this guy, but Venetian Snares is honestly one of those really rare occassions where ignoring the rape, murder, paedophile and retard jokes is totally worth it.

Venetian Snares, or Aaron Funk to the taxman, has released at least one, sometimes as many as 8, album every year for the past 12 year or so. This one came out 10 months after its predecessor. The vast majority of these albums are arranged in 7/4. Not that you’d notice, as the music tends to be so chaotic that it’s hard to keep track of anything.

They’ve also managed to cover a pretty vast array of styles, from Calvalcade Of Glee And Dadist Happy Hardcore Pom Poms 8-bit silliness to Rossz Csillag Alatt Született’s classical sampling Drum And Bass, to Huge Chrome Cylander Box Expanding - honest - Ambient Breakcore.

This is his contribution to the Acid Techno genre, not that it really sounds anything like other Acid, aside from the fact it makes extensive use of the TB303 synth bass. There’s elements of Hip Hop and Jungle in here too, as well as straight ahead pounding breakcore and even something approaching UK Garage. It’s also possibly one of his most “normal” albums, in the sense that he’s dialled it back to vaguely listenable extremes of Druqks era Aphex Twin.

It’s still well worth a listen though, if you’re at all interested in left of centre electronic dance music and don’t mind some fairly pervy samples from porn movies.

Track Listing:

1. Deep Dicking
2. Crashing The Yoghurt Truck
3. Labia
4. Mongoloid Alien
5. Chainsaw Fellatio
6. Kimberly Clark
7. Calvin Kleining
8. Kakarookee Hates Me
9. Splooj Guzzlers
10. Pussy Skull

Ida Maria - Fortress Round My Heart Album Sampler

I’m not a massive Ida Maria fan, I only really like her singles. Thankfully, someone saw fit to make this happen for me. How nice of them.

Also, just look at her face! Rock and Roll crush right there.

Track Listing:

1. Oh My God
2. I Like You So Much Better When You’re Naked
3. Queen Of The World
4. Stella
5. Louie

Public Image Ltd - First Issue

This is not Public Images best album. A large portion of it was recorded quickly and just thrown together after they’d spent their budget on booze and smokes.

Ironically, the three songs they spent most time on - Theme, Public Image and Religion I & II - are probably the weakest tracks here. Just boring, substandard Punk noodles. You can hear the start of the sound they’d perfect on Metal Box, but the real strength of this album lies in the rocky numbers.

Annaliisa is still amazing, and that riff will never get old. Despite being the most ‘normal” track on the album, I always really liked Low Life, a scathing, bitter and petty attack on Malcolm MacLaren, Sid Vicious and all the other people who liked being rock and roll more than making good music Lydon had encountered with The Sex Pistols.

Plus it features the lyrics “you shit your brain”, which will never not be funny.

Even better, the song that was actually just made up on the spot and a complete pisstake is one of the best on the album. Fodderstompf is a repeatative Funk bass and drums workout, which only goes on for 8 minutes because they needed 8 more minutes on the album before Virgin would release it and they didn’t have any more time or money.

It’s also hilarious.

It’s basically just Jah Wobble and Lydon, a bit pissed, sitting around a microphone and talking nonsense in deliberately annoying voices about Love, as well as just narrating what they’re doing.

“I’m going for a cigarette, do you want one?” “Okaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!”.

What’s most interesting about it is that it became a massive anthem for Drag Queens in NY gay bars. Apparently, cracking this out would lead to every Queen in the house leaping onto the floor and dancing around their handbags, which is just one of those strange things that you find out happened back in the day, like Arthur Russell becoming a huge thing in Disco circles. It’s made even more amazing by the fact that First Issue was never released in the US.

Track Listing:

Side 1:

1. Theme
2. Religion I
3. Religion II
4. Annaliisa

Side B

1. Public Image
2. Low Life
3. Attack
4. Fodderstompf

Mark Stewart - As The Veneer Of Democracy Starts To Fade

I always get really annoyed when people discuss “the heaviest albums of all time”, because it almost always boils down to “oh, such and such a Black metal band played at like 10 billion beats per minute and did death howls about how much they loved bumming satan”.

I’ll admit, if that’s how you define heaviness, then you’re probably only going to find it in those kinds of albums. However, if you want to count “heaviness” in terms of being physically assaulted by sound, then you would have a very, very hard time beating this.

So, a little back story. Mark Stewart started off as the singer for The Pop Group, who spent most of their time combining Funk, Reggae and Punk, before tearing them all a new arsehole, as well as inventing Trip-Hop along the way.

You know, as you do.

After that he hooked up with On-U Sound System, who were a loose collective of musicians spanning Dub, Funk, Free Jazz and Punk. This is when Stewart started mucking about with synths and drum machines and kind of invented a genre called Industrial Hip-Hop, which is more or less as fucked up as it sounds.

For this album, he’d started bringing along a little tape recorder to live Sound System shows, to try and capture the experience so he could listen to it again later. Due to the fact that he was using cheap recorders, and that Sound Systems have a tendency to work at volume levels most others would wince at, these invariably came out horrifyingly distorted.

So Stewart handed these recordings to Adrian Sherwood, the resident engineer for On-U and told him he wanted to release an album that sounded like that.

And so they did.

What you get is possibly the most paranoid album I’ve ever heard. The beats and bass tend to be huge, but deliberately corrupted to make them sound like they’re being played out of a boombox. Sounds fade in and out, sometimes there are just walls of noise that over take everything. Delays and Reverbs are added, seemingly at random, and instruments have a tendency to just swirl around your head, being phased and filtered as the engineers feel fit.

That’s before we get to Stewarts vocals. Mixed surprisingly low, and almost always mangled beyond belief, they range between mumbled ranting, gutteral shrieks and aggressive yelling. You only ever manage to pick out a handful of lyrics at any particular point, but that only serves to make sound even more sinister. Track 2, simply called Bastards, the only lines I can properly make out are “This is a restricted area”, “with guided nuclear missiles … this is no picnic. We will protect you” and the oft repeated refrain of “BASTARDS! BASTARDS!”.

Basically, this sounds like a live bootleg of the worlds most inappropriately funky Dub Rave at the onset of the apocalypse. But in a way that’s surprisingly listenable. The last track even brings in some strings and a Gregorian chorus, and sounds like something that one could consider to be approaching a “nice” song.

Track Listing:

Side A

1. Passivecation Program
2. Bastards
3. The Resistance Of The Cell

Side B

1. As The Veneer Of Democracy Starts To Fade
2. Hypnotized
3. Slave Of Love
4. The Waiting Room

The Best Of Perez Prado

There are two main reasons you’re likely to recognise Perez Prado. The first is because Guaglione was used in possibly the greatest ad of all time, whilst Mambo no.5 was sampled by Lou Bega for … well … Mambo no.5. He is, however, the go to guy for Mambo music, and a very respected musician in his native Cuba. Some of it sounds a bit dated and cheesy now, but it’s still remarkably fun and danceable if you’re in the mood for that kind of thing.

He also plays a mean farfisa solo. He was pretty Punk Rock for his time.

Interestingly, I used to listen to this all the time in work, because it was fun and bouncy and made my Sunday morning hangover slightly more bearable. However, one of my managers - the Slovakian guy who listened to Laibach and got overly excited by Haddaway - always asked me to turn it off. He said it reminded him of really uncomfortable Soviet youth propaganda which thought this was a really hip trendy thing that the kids wanted to listen to.

Ok, so the USSR only broke up in the early 90’s and it stands to reason most Eastern Europeans I’m likely to meet grew up under the Soviets, but it’s still weird to think about. I also know people who grew up under Apartheid, how fucked up is that?

On an even further side note, I totally want that girls skirt.

Track Listing:

Side 1:

1. Patricia
2. Ruletero
3. Mambo no.8
4. Guaglione
5. Mambo no.5
6. Paris

Side 2:

1. Cherry Pink And Apple Blossom White
2. Cabello Negro (Mambo Batiri)
3. In A Little Spanish Town
4. My Roberta
5. Why Wait
6. Mambo Jambo

Various Artists - Squidge EP

This is an EP put out by a bunch of Irish promoters caled iKaboogie. They used to put on Breakcore nights, and along with Porco Dio, were probably the most reliable names in Town for a decent night out.

So when I found out that they’d started releasing records I knew I’d probably end up buying quite a lot of it. This was the first release I bought by them, and to be honest I was a little surprised. In the two years since I’d been in Dublin they’d shifted away from full on Breakcore and Plunderphonics, and into territory that had more in common with Dubstep bassiness.

It’s quite a pleasantly varied mix to be honest. 16 Hertz is the most straight up Dubstep track, all wobbly bass and skanking brass. That Boy Tim is kind of woozy, paranoid electro. If I was a pilled out 90’s raver I would probably describe Prince Kong as “ragga”, but in reality it’s just absolute bassy filth. Lakker have some really fucked up, rzor edged bass, which ends up sounding uncannily some some of the stuff Chris Morris made for Brass Eye. But in an awesome way.

It’s kind of a pity that Ireland is so shit for music though, and somewhat predictably most of them have pissed off to Berlin by now :(

Track Listing:

Side 1:

1. Prince Kong ft Jah Balance - Rise Up
2. Lakker - Unexpected Error

Side 2:

1. 16 Hertz - 16 Tons
2. ThatBoyTim - Past The End

They quite clearly are all too small for me to link you to any full tracks, but you can listen to snippets of the tracks on iKaboogie!s website.