Autechre—SIGN

With SIGN, Rochdale duo Autechre has de-invented itself. The album’s back-to-basics approach stands in contrast to the disruptive and demanding work Autechre have become known for. Their last studio release before this was the eight-hour NTS Sessions—a challenging listen even when leaving its length aside. This was followed by the simultaneous release of nineteen live albums which, to a casual listener, were largely indistinguishable. Autechre had become a stereotype which lives in the heads of electronic music’s detractors; impenetrable, cold, and faintly ludicrous.

For better or worse, SIGN is their most accessible work in a decade—perhaps ever. Long-term fans are likely to be divided. Those who saw 2001’s Confield (when it all went weird) as an artistic renaissance may think this a step back or a compromise. Those missing the warmth of Incunabula and Tri repetae may rejoice. Neither camp saw this album coming. A quasi-extension of NTS Sessions’ final couple of hours, SIGN reconfirms the duo’s strengths as soundscapers, as their focus moves away from glitch and back towards the inviting ambiences they cut their teeth in.

The compositional simplicity of SIGN has rustled the jimmies of a few Autechre fans. Perhaps mourning the band’s status as a pleb-filter, SIGN isn’t getting their usual rapturous reception. But in eulogising Autechre’s formal craziness, these fans are chewing everything but the meat of SIGN. Some of this music is the most no-strings beautiful of Autechre’s career—closing track ‘r cazt’ is among the greatest ambient tracks I’ve ever heard. Like thrash or prog listeners, emphasising formalism above all else, fans have been taught by twenty impenetrable years of Autechre’s music to close their hearts.

It’s a great shame—given the time of day, SIGN reveals itself as another essential work in a beguiling and near-unrivalled discography.

SIGN is available for purchase and streaming here.

Words: Andrew O’Keefe

Joji—Nectar

The career renaissance of George Kusunoki Miller surprised everyone—none more than Miller himself. He cut his teeth in risqué youtube satire as “Filthy Frank”, a defiantly un-PC amalgam of the worst that humankind has to offer. Miller preached hateful rhetoric with such gusto that its absurdities were thrown into a revealing light. Something about the project transcended shock value or leftist critique—it seemed as though Miller was exorcising his own profane demons, confronting his audience with secret, forbidden, but ever-present ideas that they would otherwise self-censor.

For this reason, despite its extremity, there was a sincere vein running through Filthy Frank. Arguably, the project revealed more about Miller than his more recent hustle in neo-soul as Joji. Miller’s music was once his most closely-guarded secret—but the only thing scandalous about it was its expectation that we see him more as man than meme.

Nectar, Joji’s first album, relaxes into conformity. Its lyrics are emotionally raw—but calculated in their universality. An intentional distance is created between Joji and his listeners through muffly and subdued production (think ‘lo fi hip hop radio – beats to study / relax to’). No corners are too sharp. While this doesn’t obfuscate Joji’s intent or individuality, it does slightly deaden his music’s impact.

Exceptions include ‘Run’ and ‘Tick Tock’, tracks which add welcome variety to Nectar’s 18-song tracklist. ‘Run’, an unashamed power ballad, is perhaps the only song here which allows Joji to really cut loose as a singer. It’s frankly surprising he has such a voice in him—the breathy, bedroom-performer approach he takes elsewhere feels like it’s disguising a lack of ability. And ‘Tick Tock’ is quite bizarre; a fence-sitter between banger and ballad, it samples Nelly’s ‘Dilemma’ to ghostly—albeit comical—effect.

For the most part, Nectar’s songs are rather more timid. It feels like Joji and his musical peers find inspiration in Marvin Gaye’s revolutionarily and singular whispery timbre. Perhaps a more likely inspiration is Lana Del Rey. Either way, the gentle emotiveness of their voices suggests a mood rather than forcing it. But—and this should shock nobody—none of these vocalists has Gaye or Del Rey’s range, versatility, or character. The result is a kind of bedroom-soul; a melancholic and lonely genre too scared to walk the streets, instead looking at them through a closed window or a laptop screen. Soul once celebrated in the face of sadness and adversity—neo-soul cleans up after the celebration; it sounds like emptying ashtrays, crushing cans, rustling binbags on a hungover morning.

Perhaps this narcotic effect results from listening to Nectar straight through. The album’s length is likely a tactic to maximise Spotify streams—not the result of some unifying theme or album-wide concept. Nectar feels intended to be listened to piecemeal; one track at a time, or shuffled. That’s for sure how its demographic, raised on the ephemerality of streaming services, consume music. It therefore feels disingenuous to knock points off for the album’s fatiguing effect, even though that’s somewhat tied up in its manner of presentation.

Joji’s greatest strength seems to be a lack of vanity—he has welcomed a host of guest producers and vocal features, all of whom are used very well. Lil Yachty in particular is surprisingly well-deployed, taking to Joji’s sadboy aesthetic like a fish to water. There has been a suggestion that by bringing on so many personnel, Joji’s playing sideman to his collaborators—but Nectar’s tracks feel too consistent in both tone and quality for that to be true.

Nectar is a passable effort which frustratingly fails to take off. Flickers of talent burst through its runtime—but Joji doesn’t have the confidence to follow his best ideas yet. In future releases, more risks will hopefully be taken—perhaps Joji can channel some of the courage he used when dressing up in a pink morph suit and antagonising members of the public for pranks. That this album plays things safe will no doubt earn it the label ‘commercial’—but this is a rather meaningless and unhelpful term. The same tastemakers levelling this accusation probably praised Solange’s releases on Columbia Records. If anything, Nectar emblemises a rags-to-riches story. Very few had even heard of 88rising a few years back—now they’re huge. Joji has blurred the line between superstar and next-door neighbour more comprehensively than anyone before him. Whether that’s a good or a bad thing simply depends on your outlook.

Nectar can be purchased on all formats here.

Words: Andrew O’Keefe

The Unbearable Shiteness of Idles

Reviews of Idles’ Ultra Mono hit like déjà vu. Just as in 2018—when the band released their sophomore album, Joy as an Act of Resistance— the words “important” and “political” are being tossed around. But who exactly are Idles important to? Like many “political” acts post-Blair, the band makes gutless appeasements to neoliberal coke-snorters and suburbanites. In fact, the only political facet of Idles’ act is their absolutism. They reject engagement with their ideological opponents, instead finding strength in their own belligerence. This single-mindedness is both their greatest source of public appeal, and their Achilles heel. If you only speak to one side of a debate, you may as well be screaming into your pillow. And every day, you will struggle more to differentiate principles from populism.

The limitations of Idles’ worldview have never manifested as clearly as in “Model Village”, one of Ultra Mono’s four pre-release singles. The track paints the U.K. as a spattering of enlightened metropolitan strongholds poking from a smog of bigoted backwaters. Any non-university town holds swathes of Range Rovers, hunting caps and Barbour jackets; rabbits slung over hairy shoulders, thick knuckles curled around pints of Old Rosie. City-dwellers can relax! Our country’s ugliest –isms, its excesses and acts of exploitation, are the sole remit of cartoonish countryside caricatures. Anyone else is modern and clever enough to dodge responsibility.

Such oversimplification works against Idles’ positivity. Peace, love and unity are on offer—but only for a specific type of person with a specific value structure. The message is further dulled by frontman Joe Talbot’s shtick. He is figure of comical hyper-masculinity, who screams through clenched teeth about putting homophobes in coffins and—in the case of Idles’ live shows—stabbing Tories. It seems that 43.6% of U.K. voters are exempt from Idles’ brand of love, better served by being murdered like battery hens.

Revelling in bitter identity politics like this invites conflict, not unity. The band stretches in two opposing directions, employing the language of violence to invoke peace. The difference between Tories and modern Labour is so minimal that Idles’ hardline take on things is bizarre. This “my-way-or-the-highway” attitude is one of many ways Talbot and co. resemble televangelists. They are blusterous, froth-mouthed know-it-alls whose theatrics disguise the hollowness of their views. You can’t help but suspect, too—like those televangelists—when Idles say “unity” they mean “uniformity”. People should come together…as long as it’s under this ministry. The other churches can fuck themselves! They’re all going to hell!

What’s worse is that band don’t even embody the ideology they describe. They champion immigration, but not immigrant voices in the arts. Why let them have a share? Instead, just shout platitudes about hard-working Poles and keep all that industry money for yourself. Talbot’s lyrics are basically a kitchen-sink reimagining of the noble savage. In Idles lyrics, immigrants’ presence in the U.K. is justified by their hard work and the strength of their characters—not that most basic of things, their humanity. So are we unconditionally welcoming immigrants, because we love them, or is it a meritocracy? Of course, we welcome the brave and beautiful ones, but ugly cowards apparently don’t deserve a mention. We’re one album away from Idles dropping the pretence entirely, and setting a minimum income threshold.

When questioned on the lack of female supports on their tour, Idles cited a drought of female acts, and suggested “Government legislation” to ensure bookings better represented the scope and variety of working U.K. artists. But anyone paying even the slightest bit of attention knows this is horseshit. The industry is chock-full of amazing women who can’t get bookings. Idles’ deflection of responsibility, and their disinterest in diversity within the arts, is disgusting in the face of their big talk. Living by your credos can be costly and inconvenient, so might as well abandon them ASAP—as long as it’s only those beautiful immigrants and women getting shafted.

The disconnect between words and actions gives listeners a free ride, too. Listen to Ultra Mono and you can keep shopping at Amazon, keep paying £6 for a can of Red Stripe at Hammersmith gigs, keep purchasing tech that uses conflict resources in its manufacture. When all the immigrant businesses have to shut because you buy your fruit in Waitrose, when the entire community have been forced out of their homes, when the suicide nets go up in third-world sweatshops, we’ll blame the establishment and the racists in some village 200 miles away.

Elsewhere, the band are even more vapid. Ultra Mono’s “Ne Touche Pas Moi” (yes, really) is a stirring track about sexual respect with a powerful pre-chorus in which Talbot screams “consent, consent, consent”. On the face of it, this feels like some sort of a statement—but only in imagining counterarguments can we see how little the track actually has to say. “As a dedicated pro-rape activist, I must contest Idles’ extreme stance that rape isn’t good”. These tepid non-arguments are nothing but a bid for mass appeal. You are not the second coming of punk if you have nothing to say.

In a 2017 debate between pop-philosophers Slavoj Zizek and Jordan Peterson, Zizek described the hyper-moralisation of identity politics as a “silent admission of defeat”. Above Joe Talbot’s big voice, Idles’ amplified guitars and thundering drums, hangs a silence which is impossible to ignore. Punk is an ideology which became neutered and obsolete in the 1980s, diminishing as its power to shock faded. Its radicalism was assimilated into mass culture, its ideas repurposed and mass-marketed. Idles are here for the dregs—a radio-friendly tribute act selling their dead genre to the same dickheads it used to hate.

Words: Andrew O’Keefe

Mint Field—Sentimiento Mundial

The cover of Mint Field’s Sentimiento Mundial is unassuming; a camouflage of desaturated pastels mustering semi-coherent suggestions of shape. But the longer you look, the more it reveals a plumage of vibrancy and fine detail, a Klimt-like depiction of fog-swathed blossoms. The album itself works similarly, gathering like mist until it utterly engrosses you.

Sentimiento Mundial feels modest, ascribing a greater value to listeners’ experiences than displays of virtuosity. Vocalist Estrella del Sol performs stunningly in every song, but barely raises her voice above a whisper (channelling of the tender power of legendary vocalist Jarboe). Callum Brown’s drumming is tight as a whip and invisibly energetic; a heartbeat which has been assimilated into the other assorted gurglings of the body, but without which the album’s vitality would be lost. Sentimiento Mundial as a whole gestures towards krautrock—in groovy repetition, but also in understated, seemingly effortless precision. It’s the introvert’s version of the guitar solo; a performance in which not a foot is put wrong from start to finish.

Precision isn’t everything, though—and krautrock is a limiting comparison. Sentimiento Mundial is freakier and more lysergic than most music from that scene. If Mint Field have exhumed the bones of neu!, rather than slavishly piece their skeleton back together, they’ve made a pagan effigy and slathered it in flying ointment. The entire album is peppered with unassumingly bizarre touches. Opener ‘Cuida Tus Pasos’ has a shade of Jandek’s “first acoustic phase”; pitting its vocal and guitar melodies against each other for a tone of isolation, miasma and malaise. This easy dissonance can be heard throughout, and later cleaves ‘No Te Caigas’ into discrete halves. ‘Nuestro Sentido’ feels—impossibly—like an MTV Unplugged version of My Bloody Valentine’s Isn’t Anything.

Not only do Mint Field pull these excursions and experiments off, they preserve beauty and coherence through them. A great vocabulary serves both scientists and poets alike. The tools don’t dictate the job. Some musical experiments are like sitting through a linguistics lecture; Sentimiento Mundial is like reading Emily Dickinson.

Sentimiento Mundial is available for purchase and streaming here. Releasing 25th September.

Words: Andrew O’Keefe

Kelly Lee Owens—Inner Song

Following “the hardest three years of [her] life”, Kelly Lee Owens delivers Inner Song, an album as cathartic to listen to as it must have been to write. Owens’ self-titled debut featured a layered and eclectic tapestry of instruments and production techniques. Here, those edges are whittled. An increased focus on lyricism is favoured, and Inner Song consequently comes off much more personal than its predecessor.  

There are upsides and downsides to Owens’ new methodology. In many cases, the album’s stripped-back sound is lean and focused—but it can, too, feel somewhat incomplete. The centrepiece of Inner Song is a ‘Corner of My Sky’, a collaboration with the great John Cale. Cale’s vocal contribution is (predictably) stellar, but feels ill-served by Owens’ instrumental, which slightly outlives its own ideas. When compared to Owens’ own track ‘8’ (replete with zany instrumental choices and tracks stacked miles high on each other), ‘Corner of My Sky’ doesn’t quite nail its slow build-up or cathartic crescendo in the same way.

But elsewhere, the simpler approach works wonders. ‘Melt!’ disciplines itself in a way that solidifies and strengthens its theme. ‘Night’ uses Owens’ (now trademark) formula: an ascent from balladry into ecstatic techno—but feels like a more complete realisation of that potential than before.

Lyrics are strongest when implicit and minimal. ‘Re-Wild’ and ‘L.I.N.E.’ may be too on-the-nose and sneaker advert-y for some tastes—but that just comes with the territory. Owens is an earnest and forthright songwriter. For anyone who remembers ‘Evolution’ off the last album, her very slight propensity for cheese will be no surprise. In their own way, these lyrics support Owens’ new-agey vibes—a former nurse, she was partially inspired to create music as an investigation of its healing properties. Nine times out of ten, her lyrics are perfectly fine—but the superb music around them makes every single clanger resonate that much louder.

‘Jeanette’ is the most emotive this album gets—and not a single lyric is spoken. The track testifies Owen’s nigh-unmatched talent as a producer; it balances its warmth with steely temperance, swaddles its beat in exquisite shrouds of sound. The track feels like a real-time transfiguration of pain into joy—an affirmative centrepiece, which says more than words ever could. It’s the overflowing heart of an album which shelves old experiments, instigates new ones, and seeks throughout to lift the spirit and body.

Inner Song is available for purchase and streaming here.

Words: Andrew O’Keefe