Max Richter at the Union Chapel

Max Richter is a hard musician to categorise, if he didn't use loops and samples he would one of the world's most enjoyable composers of modern classical music. But he does and therefore he kind of straddles that space between electronica, classical music and music as multimedia art performance.

He has a new album coming out and on Sunday there was a gig at Union Chapel to coincide with the release. Although a huge fan of Blue Notebooks and Songs From Before I have never had the chance to catch a live performance.

The support act was Johann Johannsson whom Amazon has been recommending to me for the last year. In this case Amazon is right, it is the kind of art noise meets string quartet experience I enjoy.

And then the sun began to set and a truely magical experience began. It was partly the light and atmosphere of the old church but it was mostly about beautiful music. A swooping, haunting melody that captures so many complex feelings. All of Max's releases have a concept and narrative that binds together the fragments of themes and individual pieces and the performance, though mixing music from four different releases, had the same sense of a journey through melancoly, stasis, loss and hope.

The performance was fantastic, with the playing matching the quality of the recording but adding an emotional feeling on top of the technical reproduction of the recorded sound. Everyone on stage seemed to be caught up in emotion of the music and everyone in the audience seemed rapt (rather than doing the normal London gig audience thing of talking incessantly).

It is truly the most amazing gig I have seen since I moved to London and is really one of the highlights of my life. I'd love to do it all again.

Indelicates - Sixteen

I quite like the Indelicates but their current single is the kind of funny, catchy, clever and bitter pop song I love. The video captures the yearning, snideness of the lyrics and I think its hard not to be delighted by the swooping rhythms and rhymes of the song's chorus.

You can get more Indelicates at their Myspace page, I'm looking forward to their album but Sixteen is really their high point to date.

If you do take a look at the video (you are aren't you?) then also take the time to watch the Iggy and the Stooges Sixteen video that you'll probably get in the recommendations. It's amazing to watch some simply give themselves over to their performance with no irony and no reservations. It's mesmerising to watch Iggy at his best.

Listening to Tom Robinson can be expensive

Sometimes I listen to the Tom Robinson show on 6 Music when I am washing the dishes. Sometimes these shows can be expensive. I have ended up buying three EPs within weeks of each other due to airtime on Tom's show and at the end of tonight's show I have another five names in my notebook to follow up on.

First there is my new favourite shoegazer band, Ringo Deathstarr, you can buy their EP from Spoilt Victorian Child and you really should you know. Then there are the goth rock stomp charms of the Eighties Matchbox B-Line Disaster and the northern vaguely category defying Beneath Fire and Smoke. Listening to a radio show has never been so expensive.

That was the year that was

Okay, year in reviews are kind of obligatory in the musical world. This year I read the OMM and The Wire and realised how hopeless and useless these kind of thing are. Pointing out overlooked gems only works if you have built up some kind of relationship with the reader over the previous year and this year no-one had so I was skeptical of what unknown quantities were chosen over music I had heard.

I think that there can be little doubt that one of the most outstanding albums of the year was Radiohead's In Rainbows. It managed to blend their experimental and conventionally rocky side into a more coherent whole. Some people said it was a retreat from the Kid A era but I think they are wrong, Kid A was exciting and unconventional but In Rainbows is holisitic rather than simply ditching everything done to date.

However personally I was suprised to find myself returning again and again to the math techno of Calabi Yau Space by Dopplereffekt. I liked their previous albums but would have to say they hardly kept me coming back for more. Calabi Yau Space has never left my MP3 player this year and has been a welcome listen in all kinds of situations.

Live the experience I look back on most fondly was watching Jeffery Lewis perform an acoustic version of one of his Crass covers. Lewis is whimsical nu-folker who has some funny kitschy songs but it was a strong of genius to see that aggressive anarchist punk lyrics would more be more plantive within a twee pop setting.

Roisin Murphy Video

I've just spotted this YouTube version of Roisin Murphy's (the lead singer of Moloko) new single, Overpowered, and I think it's a bit of a gem. The track is quite good but the trip home across London is one I recognise, lots to wryly smile about. Of course I tend not to have a stage costume when I'm heading home but maybe that's just me being unimaginative.

And on a related note have a look at this mashup (it pains me to use the word, mind) which while using two similar tunes is really very good and gains bonus points for noting the similarities in the videos.

SellaBand

Like all muso Guardianistas I read the story about Sellaband and immediately jumped over to have a look at the bands I could buy part of. The first disappointment is that all the bands who are gaining a lot of traction are really incredibly dull. If Sellaband intends to be something of a focus group on music then it's a depressing outcome with folky, souly, lumpen pub rock being the main recipients of most peoples money.

I chose some electronica bollocks which I think is good but to which I am rather in the minority at the moment. When it works the system seems good, you get to listen to some interesting music and you can put a stake in the ground and say "this would be even better with some professional production". However overall the experience is a bit depressing, the musical taste seems conservative and although 5000 people does not sound a lot it is probably a lot more sales than most bands make. A CDR release probably doesn' t go above 500 copies. There also a lot of intrusive advertising on the site and some of the flash items on the jukebox player actually end up showing you an advert rather than having any function.

On the plus side though there are some truly dreadful promotional pictures on the band pages. I find it hard to understand the logic of these. You are going to display a vision of your band to potentially thousands of people so you put your dad in the picture, you can't persuade the drummer to take his glasses off and drop the pony tail for five minutes or you mistakenly think that people desperately miss Venom.

Sellaband probably just shows why most bands can't get a record deal but I do hope that it leads to something interesting for decent independent artists.

The Enemy

I had the The Enemy inflicted on me when I went to see the Manics at the Forum the other week. The Enemy are an exercise in amplified tedium and the only pleasure in watching them was the vague hope that they might stop and leave the stage and the end of the song. I'm only really mentioning this because they are meant to be playing another show at the Astoria (which is apparently going to be demolished as part of Crossrail/London Olympics 2012).

Do yourself a favour, stay away.

FLAC

So I ordered my first FLAC album from Bleep this weekend. So it is a brand new of audiophillic glory?

Well it actually sounds pretty good and it is probably worth the extra two pounds but I still suspect that for all but the most distinguished ears there is a strict law of diminishing returns.

The Blog is Over

Ever since I discovered Rate Your Music (quite randomly through a tech blog) the purpose of this blog is pretty much over. The site is easy to use and actually music is one of those things where a good indication of the quality of a piece can be obtained by simply asking a lot of people.

Reading through a couple of the reviews does have that infinite Internet monkeys vibe but it's about numbers at the end of the day with the "reviews" really just being justification for the marks (rather like Boardgame Geek).

Dresden Dolls at the Roundhouse

I was delighted to find that the Dresden Dolls gig at the Camden Roundhouse still had tickets available. I have wanted to go to the refurbished Roundhouse for a while and the Dolls seem like the band who will make the most of the venue.

Nouvelle Vague - Dance with Me Video

I stumbled across this video on YouTube which is a mash of the Nouvelle Vague cover Dance With Me with the dance scene from Bande a Part. The two fit so seamlessly that I can only assume that the music was actually set to the timing of the film.

Regardless, it's a great scene and the music is fiendishly catchy. Having resisted the charms of French lounge music until now I gave in and purchased the album from Bleep.

The Mercury Prize 2006

Why deny worthy winners? The Arctic Monkeys are clearly the act of the year and are the rightful winners of the paltry 20K prize.

However in terms of the performances it is hard to beat Thom Yorke's spellbinding spot at the piano. Editors also managed the best TV performance I've seen from them although that's not saying much and they looked like they had turned up dressed for football in the park rather than to perform at a major awards ceremony, make an effort damn it! The Guillemots did an interesting turn as did Hot Chip (although I'm not sure I understand the appeal of the latter). Sway seemed a lot more interesting than I had initially thought (I'm a bit wary of Grime in general).

Other than that nothing really stayed with me from the TV show. That said though it was a superb selection of artists and albums on the very diverse shortlist. We seem to be at a very fortunate time for music where there is no dominant paradigm and all manner of great stuff has a chance to bloom and connect with people. For all the moaning about duffers like James Blunt et al they can hardly be said to have popular music in the vice-like grip that BritPop or Stock, Aitken and Waterman did.