Latitude 2011 - my first thoughts...

First to mention is that the weather wasn't all that could have been hoped for. In a strange way I'm glad that I have now experienced and survived an often rather soggy festival.  I have in truth been very lucky thus far.  On the other hand I hope that the experience did not discourage those first time festival-goers from repeating the experience. Yes there was some mud, unlike in previous years, but nothing like that to be found at the likes of Glastonbury. I took no pictures of that for it was unremarkable and merely a slight annoyance at worst.

Of course good weather is better for all outdoor activities but, judging from most of the arguments that I overheard, often from within my tiny but dependable tent, it was camping in the wet that led to most of the problems and attendant arguments; it seems to lead to frayed nerves and fractiousness that results in an irrational blame culture.

I didn't take any mud pictures and few that even made the rain seem apparent simply because that is not in the spirit of the whole affair and, in any case, Friday was a glorious English summer's day!

Just how a festival should be - chilling in front of the main stage on Friday lunchtime.

  

This next one does however capture the wetness of Saturday and, because essentially solo acts on a big stage in daylight always lack visual punch, it looks bleaker than it really was.

Suffolk lad and 2011 success story Ed Sheeran performing 'The A Team' on the Obelisk Stage.  It was a very good set indeed and there was no shortage of excellent music from my perspective across all three days.

The first act I saw, on the Sunset Stage on Friday, was Montreal's BRAIDS. 

They had been on my want-to-see list for sometime but until the Thursday I had somehow neglected to notice that they were actually performing.

I have loads more to add and I haven't even looked at 75% of the pictures I took yet!
There might be a slight delay as on Friday I'm off to Truck Festival in Oxfordshire for the first time and so once I return on Monday I should have more than enough to write about for the whole of the rest of the summer, or at least until EOTR 2011 over the first week in September by which time the first Acoustic Moon will also have taken place.

Applause, Cheer, Boo, Hiss

This is another album I've decided to buy entirely unheard but, for that matter, who would think of that title let alone consider it for their début album? Almost certainly a band that has already got through five bass players and a drummer and all that before even releasing their first album to the wider world! They are a three-piece but the one constant and defining presence is vocalist Elizabeth Powell who also handles six-string duties and, in this regard, some reviewers across the Atlantic have compared her to Charlotte Hatherley and that is no bad thing in my opinion.

Needless to say the band in question, Land Of Talk, is yet another that comes from Montreal and, quite honestly, that matters just as much as, quite truthfully, it should not.

And she did a damn good job with the artwork too...

I, for one, can't wait to hear it. Needless to say it is on order, and at a total bargain price, so I'll report back as soon as I have it.

Letters, Letters... wonderfully weird!

Once upon a time, not so long ago, letters in the mail were the main form of communication.
Letters, Letters have, on their eponymous début, messed with this perception and all the misunderstandings that words can convey...

The band comes from Montréal (how near inevitable does that seem) but they also have help from Chicago. Amazon.co.uk does not appear to know about this release yet while Amazon.com does, but only on CD. Don't however, even for one moment, think that we in the UK are on the losing end of this particular game. The album is released by 'Type Recordings', as many strange but good things are, and they have released it as a 12" LP on vinyl. This is available only in the UK and limited to just 500 copies; all of them pressed in strawberry-red clear vinyl!
The music on the album is I think, and this is after just three listens to one of the aforementioned vinyl copies, a new take on what I can best describe as dirty low-fi electronica; it has much instrumental variety and merit but also the very interesting addition of both male and female vocals, sometimes both together in the same song. That does not mean something bad, very far from it in fact, but for a 'Type Recordings' release to have any vocals at all is really rather remarkable.
Now you can understand why I'm unwilling, as I mentioned earlier this week, to be tempted into making my 'Best Albums of 2007' selection so early in the year. I'm not saying this album will be in that list but I'm certainly not prepared to exclude new possibilities just because it is the start of November.

I should have, in fact, added another 'Type Recordings' release to my post yesterday that considered music for autumn and winter nights. That is Le Fumeur de Ciel by the Parisian artist Julien Neto, who has released under various other monikers and on assorted labels, which was released in 2005 but is now available on 12" LP for the first time. It is a wonderful concoction of electronica, melded with dusty acoustic samples, and the album is entirely instrumental. France is a real, yet often unrecognised, force when it comes to this and related kinds of ambient music. I have reviewed Colleen et les Boîtes à Musique already and I am rather tempted to buy a copy of the Colleen album The Golden Morning Breaks. (These are both released on the Manchester-based The Leaf Label.)

I'm catching up; and so hopefully is Royal Mail...

It's taken me a long time to catch up after my unplanned absence and now there is so much new stuff that I want to get hold of to listen to, of which more below. To do that however I rely heavily on the services of Royal Mail, the UK Postal Service, to bring packages to my door and just recently this long standing organisation has been involved in protracted industrial action over the subject of changes demanded by the modern competitive environment. It is possible that, for all parties involved and not merely out of my self-interest, over the recent weekend a deal has been reached that will put all interested parties back on course.

Quite possibly the future of Royal Mail is at stake here and this kind of consideration somehow reminded me of the past, an increasing music collection, and then a 2003 album Give Up - The Postal Service.
I no longer even attempt to keep my CD and vinyl collections in any logical order and although this probably started as a matter of lassitude it has now become a quite deliberate policy.
By profession I'm a chemist, which seen in simple terms (that are almost always good) involves toxic cookery and, when things don't go quite so well, nu-alchemy! As an undergraduate therefore I had to go to lectures on quantum physics that left me cold and also seemed incredibly pointless and theoretical. The 'Heisenburg Uncertainty Principle' has few such simple and useful applications larger and thus more useful than the subatomic. Put very simplistically it states that it is fundamentally impossible to know "what some thing is and where it is simultaneously just so long as it is far too small to be useful in any sensible way" - but my life-enhancing discovery is that it also describes my music collection perfectly. By ensuring that remembered and sought for items regularly, but of course totally unpredictably, become mislaid a natural quid pro quo means that those which have genuinely become either forgotten or lost will inevitably come to light again!
Thus, while I was hunting for the CD Give Up, I preternaturally came across my CD of the (eponymous) 2000 album Saint Low. I had forgotten about it for several years and so I listened to that again too! In fact I found both and they are too good to be forgotten and so I'm planning to review both albums on here in the next week.

I've also got a whole list of things I want to find an excuse to order - enough to keep me out of mischief at least until Christmas - and the first few arrived on Saturday and this morning. Coming soon are my thoughts on:
iLiKETRAiNS - Elegies to Lessons Learnt
Maxïmo Park - Our Earthly Pleasures

Already on order are (yet) another two albums from the hot-bed that continues to be Montreal and they are...
Patrick Watson - Close To Paradise
Letters Letters - Letters Letters

... and that is not to mention the latest album from Stars - In Our Bedroom After The War, which I have already mentioned!
Last for now, but not least is Awyren - Cerys Matthews' first EP entirely in Welsh, which was released today on CD by Cardiff-based KungFu Records. Sorry about the poor representation of the cover art - I'll add better as soon as I can. (24 October - at least one job got done!)

Amazon.co.uk does not seem to know about this one, and I can't tell you quite what it sounds like yet either, but I have just ordered it regardless! It is available, worldwide, from sebon.co.uk; always a good place to search for all music Welsh! The price is GBP 5.50 (for guidance only - US$ 11.00, € 8.25) and this includes post and packing in the UK. For delivery abroad add GBP 1.00 (about US$ 2.00 or € 1.50).

The Besnard Lakes - what, where & who...

The Besnard Lakes are, rather unsurprisingly I suppose, lakes. They are situated somewhere in Canada and are apparently incredibly beautiful. I can't tell you for sure because I have never seen them. I expect it is true but for once Google isn't proving too helpful...
So successfully have Jace Lasek and his wife Olga Goreas made 'The Besnard Lakes' (TBL) the name of their band that the natural feature that inspired them has all but disappeared from the map!

Firstly two apologies:

• The whole musical world does not actually revolve around Brighton (HSCS release 'The Death of Nightlife' next Monday and it too is available on 12" vinyl) and Canada but in this blog it might seem like it just at the moment!
• I'm going to review two perhaps "difficult" albums in succession.

The album 'The Besnard Lakes Are The Dark Horse' has some features in common with my previous review, one being that it takes a bit of patience to see where it is going. It is about the same length, but only eight tracks long, and while 'No Shouts, No Calls' is 'atmospheric' this one falls more into the 'epic' category and even, dare I say it, induces a certain nostalgia.
In some ways it is even easier to make a comparison with Arcade Fire here, but equally unwise to take it too far!

Yes, they are from Montreal, have a husband and wife team at the front, and have a liking for lush instrumental arrangement but then the differences are apparent. TBL are a five-piece but make ready use of other artists on this album, notably Sophie Trudeau - of Godspeed You Black Emperor - on both violin and cello.
TBL however make much more ready use of Olga Goreas on female lead vocals (she predominates overall and particularly on the decidedly heavy numbers that owe much to the influence and use of techniques taken more obviously from 1970s prog-rock and even heavy rock) and while the lyrics are almost always gloomy the songs often still sound remarkably cheerful. The opening track Disaster, which she mostly sings, being a good case in point as it starts off sounding like a lullaby before Jace takes the thread and it gets complicated. It is followed by For Agent 13 that is also sung by Olga but there is much electronic distortion, particularly on the vocals, which gives it a slightly creepy edge and the lyrics are rather more urgent. It is pretty obvious by now that something strange is going on as the percussion is sometimes quite deliberately at odds with the rest (a trick Charlotte Hatherley also uses on her 2007 album 'The Deep Blue').

By the start of track three the album is in full flow and for the next four tracks it is quite unstoppable.

• And You Lied To Me
• Devastation
• Because Tonight
• Ride The Rails

They rock in every sense of the word. Only the last is less than five minutes, and then only by a few seconds, and two are well over seven minutes long. This section of the album is 'epic rock' done properly and not just a pastiche. It takes 1970 'space-rock' and firmly anchors it on planet earth.
And You Lied To Me is sung by Jace and is a fine track with a particularly good finish - even the more subdued TBL tracks tend to build to a finale. If Disaster was light-hearted then Devastation dispels the myth; Olga returns to vocal duties backed by a rhythm section consisting of three bass guitars (one of which she plays herself) and three drummers. There is usually no excuse whatsoever for this kind of indulgence but, without a shred of doubt, it works here!
Because Tonight starts rather like Agent 13 but this time more slowly and with a choral section and some strings, backed by continuing radiophonic garbling, before the track once again turns serious and the guitars make themselves known. This the most "spaced out" song on the album and Jace and Olga sing in harmony. It then ends surprisingly suddenly.
Ride The Rails is another fine track and it is more obviously down to earth than those that came before and the nearest that this album comes to narrative.
Some people have suggested that the final two tracks are "weak". I think that is a relative: while I agree that On Bedford and Grand is the weakest track on the album it is not one I would be bothered to skip. The final track, Cedric's War, I really like. It sounds that the band are just having a lot of fun but as usual the lyrics aren't in the least bit cheerful.