Okay Human by Mega Bog.  It’s reallly really goood!!!!  Listen to it here:

http://cllct.com/release/okayhuman

Touring with these Seattle kids in October/November.  Looking forward to it immensely.

As the title in a way announces, they came onto the scene as the forebearers of a new wave of soul.  Unfortunately, I think many of my contemporaries don´t have a clear idea of soul in their musical vocabulary.  I found it´s not untypical for somebody to see saxophones and horns and erroneously jump to ska as a point of reference.  Soul comes from gospel and R´n´b and leads directly into funk.  There were many regional flavors across the States and even in Britain (in Detriot for example there was “motown”).  Bands such as the Animals were heavily influenced by soul.  And so, before moving on, here´s a point of reference:

Dexys was a band that was always very image conscious, but with an image as distinctive as its sound.  Kevin Rowland, the band´s singer and visionary, said “we didn’t want to become part of anyone else’s movement. We’d rather be our own movement.”  And so without further adue, here´s a brief tour through the bands distinctive phases:

“There There My Dear” from Searching for the Young Soul Rebels:

Also check out “Geno,” also from Searching For The Young Soul Rebels, which is about Rowland when he was a kid seeing Geno Washington (top video in this post) perform.

Most of the band then quit due to problems with Rowland´s personality quirks (which included a press embargo).  At this point the band starts working out and running together.  ”Show Me” is a single that came out during this period:

I´m sad that this short-lived phase didn’t yield an album.  [But I guess the live? compilation The Projected Passion Revue, which I have not heard, captures this line-up.]  What happened instead is this.  One of the former Dexys, guitarist Kevin Archer, had started a new band, The Blue Ox Babes, which mixed folk into the soul mix.  Rowland stole his fiddle player and likewise infused a celtic folk sound into the Dexys soul.  Again, with the new sound came a new, right-off-the-farm look.  Their next album even introduces the band with a new name, “introducing the Celtic Soul Brothers and featuring the Strong Devoted.”  It was this phase that produced what the world remembers them for, “Come On Eileen” from Too-Rye-Ay:

Once again, there were big line-up changes, with horn players leaving feeling their role was diminished with the introduction of fiddles.  And another image change.  ”This is What She´s Like” from Don’t Stand Me Down:

Then the band breaks up.  ”Concrete and Clay” from solo Kevin Rowland album “My Beauty” (album sells only 500 copies):

Rowland´s myspace page promises another Dexys album, and even has a demo track from it.

Here´s some live footage of them performing “It´s a Sin” which appears on their 1987 album, Actually. While this song deals with oppositions between Christianity and natural human desires, most of the album thematically surrounds the effect of money on romantic relationships, from it being a source of protection to one of manipulation and power inequality — overall leaving us with the sense that the capitalist system makes prostitutes of us all. I´m blown away by the imaginativeness put into this set, costumes, projection, performance — it´s completely otherworldly. I have a weak spot for fantasy.

This next clip is from their surreal full-length film, It Couldn’t Happen Here. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AirH5lZ9Hhk (embedding was disabled.) I really like the movie.. tells a story of sorts piecing together the songs, lyrics, and themes of their songs from the Actually time period. Some of it is a little over the top goofy, but some of it paints and portrait you couldn´t do without the surreal and impossible. This track, “You Were Always On My Mind” was recorded for an Elvis tribute and was the bane of the Pogues, as it beat out Fairytale of New York for the #1 spot for the Christmas top 40.

Another song that stands out to me is Being Boring. Perhaps musically it´s a little dull, but the Bruce Weber video is great, and thematically the song resonates with me. We must make the value in our life. It´s our choice to be boring, self-centered, or lazy rather than daring, caring, inventive, inspiring, enthralling, … If we´re not doing and creating with our time, then we won´t have these things in our lives. I feel fortunate to have had people in my life who have taught me this through their example and have forever inspired me by it.

This is my favorite track from the album:

Here´s them performing the song on the Old Grey Whistle Test: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SMybt5__9QA

Ah, and here´s another track from the same album:

Berndsen photo by Wenjing

The first thing I noticed when seeing them play live is that what may have been expertly sequenced tracks on the album, there was no backing track — everything was played live.  Obviously the result was not as tight as their recorded output but nonetheless much more impressive to see — the intricate synth parts, saxophone solos, guitar and bass work, vocoder, and drums being performed.

I apologize that I messed up recording these tracks so they’re not as clear as they could have been.

Recorded at Sódóma in downtown Reykjavík on April 23, 2010.

Photo by Wenjing.

For this installment we have Reykjavík’s very own delta bluesman, Johnny Strongarms.  The track I managed to record happens to be his tale of a recent birthday night out on the town during which though he tried with nine different prospects at the end of the night did not manage to get laid.

Recorded during the Grapevine Grassroots festival at Hemmi & Valdi on March 19, 2010.  Audience was particularily noisy this night.  One of the PA speakers keeps cutting out, but if you even notice it in the recording it mostly just sounds interesting.

Johnny Strongarms may not be doing anything new with blues, but he captures an admirable amount of its original character.  His love and appreciation of the old genre shows, and he pays it a good tribute.

Though I don’t in earnest know much about blues–I never listen to it myself–I feel it is a genre that’s been badly abused — typically distilled of its soul down to cliches, played by people applying generic principles instead of the nuances of the culture in which blues is really embodied.  I guess that happens to everything extracted from its roots into larger civilization.  But in blues it can be so exceptionally bad — in my head typified by four lame dudes in a bar playing A7 D7 A7 E7 D7 A7 E7 on modern rock instruments and belting lewd things.  To me, Johnny Strongarms recalls the likes of Robert Johnson, bluesmen from a time when it still had inventiveness and earnestness.

If you’ve ever seen the footage of the tsunami as it hit Thailand, then you have an image of what this band delivers. Slowly and steadily, wave by wave, the girth of the ocean encroaches upon the land until you’re hitting the bulk of civilization–its desperate protests ignored and engulphed by what’s no longer a series of waves but rather an unstoppable flow. The land in this case being a desert; the vacationing Swedes, cactii; the spas, Cadillac graveyards.

Introducing to the world, The Heavy Experience. Third and final song of their first ever live performance, 4 mars. 2010 at Sódóma in downtown Reykjavík.

Sódómas overcompensated sound system saw rare good use during this set. You can’t feel it on your home speakers, but this slow meditation did indeed get heavy. While not loud to the point where it sounds indescernably bad and kills your ears (which defeats the whole point of music, duh!), it really hit a sweet spot where I could hear everything, even the sax, and could feel as each wave crashed into me. Also goes to show that the key to intensity is dynamics–a technique I wish were more widely applied.

This last weekend I was filling in on keys for James Rabbit, and we played with one of my favorite bands, Pangea!  They were freakin’ amazing as always.

They’re from the Los Angeles area.  They’re a part of an association of friends that call themselves the Griznar Collective.  They play some raw, stripped down, keyboard-y, energetic, and dancey-as-all-hell pop.

Here’s a couple videos to give you an idea:

Last year they self-released an EP called OUTTA YER SHELL into my mouth. From the openning track, “You Sleep Too Much,” onwards, it is absolutely amazing.  Before that I think they did a self-titled full-length that I remember being pretty damn good as well, but I don’t have it any more.  Now they just released a 7″ called Never Not Know Nothing, which is great too!

Here’s my favorite of their new material:
Pangea - Not Anyone Knows

If you don’t know James Rabbit, it’s time that you do.  Tyler’s recorded 40+ albums in 10 years, in his bedrooms, with his friends.  He writes elaborate, sincere, meaningful, positive pop albums, each of which he has given away.  The two previous albums, Colosusses and Coloratura were both exciting and new in their own ways.  The former was a fabulous set of concise pop songs recorded over a layer of pots and pans.  The latter was a triumphant and heartfelt ode to the importance of friends.

Perfect Waves is the most recent; it came out this year on the first day of spring.  Here’s a video we put together last winter with footage from the recording process over clips from the album.

It’s a 20-song journey.  It’s distinctly James Rabbit, but also breaks new ground once again.  The best way I can describe it is sophisti-pop.  It’s a mix of pop, new wave, indie, with bits jazz, funk, African music, musical.

The fidelity is the best of any James Rabbit album hereto, and I’m very proud of having a hand in that, especially the bass tone.  It was magic how it came together.  For the final EQ we analyzed a Dexys Midnight Runners song and matched that.

You can download the full album for free.

I’m a big fan.

“Oh, the Places We’ll Go” by LAKE

Brian Echon from Santa Cruz showed me this band, but I never really had a chance to check them out until after I’d left.  I guess they started out as a Fleetwood Mac cover band.  I’m glad they moved on to their own material.  These songs all work really well together as an album.  They even put the titular track on there twice!  (I love it when bands do that, but Heart still have them beat–Dreamboat Annie occurs 3 times.)  There’s a guy and a girl singer and they trade off.  Lots of good syncopated rhythms, and a precise soft pop sensibility.

“White Tiger” by Tremblexy

This is such a cool band!  I’m a huge fan of the sights and sounds that come from this duo.  Futurist pop?  Borrowing from early avant garde electronic music, ’70s-flavored basslines, psychedlic pop, shoegaze, they create a soundscape at once alienating and enlightening.  Like like stepping out your door and finding your are on the planet Mars.  Their music is sort of reminiscent of the band Air.  Sara’s vocals are haunting.

You can download the album for free from their website.

“Clangour” by Sin Fang Bous

I discovered Sin Fang Bous while living in Iceland last month.  I have no idea how to pronounce the band name, which is a problem when trying to tell people about it.  I heard the track “Catch the Light” on his music profile page and was instantly hooked.  This is a fresh album.  His voice is soft, the rhythms driving, the guitars organic, the keyboards glitchy.  It’s pop music–little folky, but pretty dynamic, and with a western flare to it.

You can listen to his tracks on gogoyoko.