TRISH KEENAN [R.I.P.] BROADCAST - live Melbourne December 2010 + Haha Sound LP (2003) + Pendulum / The Black Cat / America's Boy videos

The third tragic death early in 2011 is a difficult one to consider. Commenting on the passing of artists who have meant so much to me at a distance is hard enough, but to do so about someone I've known personally is far harder. Trish Keenan, singer with experimental electronic band Broadcast, died in Warwick hospital on January 14th from pneumonia after contracting swine flu on tour in Australia. She was just 42.



Since their first singles appeared in the mid-90s on Stereolab's Duophonic label, Broadcast steadily built a small but devoted cult following across the world. Their first album The Noise Made By People was released on Warp Records in 2000, followed by Haha Sound in 2003 and Tender Buttons in 2005. The rarities compilation The Future Crayon was released in 2006, and their last outing was the mini album Broadcast and The Focus Group Investigate Witch Cults of the Radio Age in 2009.



Their sound is hard to categorize, chock-full of competing currents - Stereolab to psychedelia, loose avant-garde abstractions to tightly disciplined krautrock, cut-down minimalism to lush soundtrack sweeps - all held together by Trish's beautiful voice. The band attracted attention from fans across all musical genres and some celebrity endorsements; among them Blur's Graham Coxon, singer/actress Zooey Deschanel and Simpsons creator Matt Groening, who included them among his choices when curating summer 2010's All Tomorrow's Parties festival in Somerset.


I knew Trish through non-musical circumstances, having taught her at Birmingham university on the Creative Writing BA. It's to my eternal regret that when she told me she was a singer I assumed - based on my own careless stereotype of her personality formed through assumptions about her writing style, mode of dress etc. - that she was in a folk band and gave it little further thought. Only after she had left the university and I saw her on the cover of The Wire magazine in 2009 did I realise she was in Broadcast; indeed, from 2004 she was one-half of the band with her partner James Cargill.



She was fiercely proud of her Midlands working-class roots, had strong opinions and could be forthright in presenting them, but she was so unaffected and egoless that it's no surprise she didn't mention Broadcast in our discussions. I wish she had; we had a far greater musical appreciation in common than I'd suspected. Although I wasn't a Broadcast fan at that time I'd heard a couple of tracks and would certainly have delved into their back catalogue to discover earlier just how good they were. It only registered after looking through their youtube videos that I'd actually caught the band's appearance on Jools Holland's TV show back in 2000, but of course I'd forgotten all about it when I met Trish several years later. After reading the Wire piece I did get their albums and became a fan belatedly.

One always assumes there will be time and opportunity to catch up again and rectify old mistakes but alas, in this instance there is none; a further example, should it be needed, of our precarious and fragile grip on this existence.


THIS is a link to download a single 66 minute mp3 file of Broadcast's penultimate concert, at the Hi-Fi club in Melbourne on December 9 2010. Sincere thanks to youtuber insleepsound for providing.

You can download the tremendous Haha Sound album HERE.

BROADCAST - HAHA SOUND
01. Colour Me In
02. Pendulum
03. Before We Begin
04. Valerie
05. Man Is Not A Bird
06. Minim
07. Lunch Hour Pops
08. Black Umbrellas
09. Ominous Cloud
10. Distorsion
11. Oh How I miss You
12. The Little Bell
13. Winter Now
14. Hawk

The following videos are: Pendulum, from Haha Sound; The Black Cat - directed by Trish herself - and America's Boy live at KCRW, both from Tender Buttons.

- pendulum





Lastly, links to a couple of the better print tributes; from Pitchfork.com and Fused magazine.


Cheers for the music Trish. I wish I'd got to know you better.

MICK KARN [R.I.P.] - Titles (1982) + Sensitive + JANSEN BARBIERI KARN - Bestial Cluster live 1997 + JAPAN - Gentlemen Take Polaroids live 1982

I had to put the blog on hold for a long time because of insane work commitments but here it is again after a sad start to 2011 with the unfortunate, untimely deaths of three music luminaries. First, MICK KARN:


On January 4th, multi-instrumentalist Mick Karn died from cancer, aged 52. Born Andonis Michaelides on July 24 1958 in Cyprus, Karn will probably be remembered as Japan's bass guitarist but he also made a number of memorable solo and group project albums following Japan's acrimonious split in 1982 after a falling out with singer/frontman David Sylvian. His life and career have been eulogised widely, and rightly, but to me his passing is wistfully symbolic of the gradual severing of connections to a great and misunderstood era. Japan were widely dismissed as style-over-substance 'New Romantics' by commentators who couldn't see past the extravagant clothes and make-up, or listen past the first few notes, but there was much more substance to them than almost any other band of their type.

JAPAN: Steve Jansen, Richard Barbieri, David Sylvian, Mick Karn

Japan were a little too cerebral to match the success of their more commercial electro (Gary Numan, OMD), or New Romantic (Duran Duran, Adam & the Ants) peers, and a little too 'artistic', i.e. complicated, for the pure dance crowd; that said, they had a large and devoted following, and were of course huge in Japan. They moved away from their initial glam-tinged post-punk spikiness, reducing guitars in favour of atmospheric electronics, but their sound was always centred around Karn's inspired, mesmerizing, fluid fretless basslines.



Mick Karn's first solo album, Titles, was released on Virgin in 1982. He retained the services of two ex-Japan colleagues - percussionist Steve Jansen and keyboardist Richard Barbieri - with whom he would continue to collaborate regularly. More esoteric than Japan, Titles pivots upon Karn's unique bass playing, often situating it as a lead instrument, and features his virtuosity on woodwinds and keys.

Download the album here, link courtesy of Totally Wired blog.

MICK KARN - TITLES
01. Tribal Dawn
02. Lost Affections In A Room
03. Passion In Moisture
04. Weather the Windmill
05. Saviour Are You With Me?
06. Trust Me
07. Sensitive
08. Piper Blue
09. The Sound Of Waves

The magnificent single Sensitive is below:


After guest slots with the likes of Gary Numan (Dance) and Bill Nelson (Chimera), Karn's next album The Waking Hour was the fruit of a 1984 project called Dalis Car with ex-Bauhaus frontman Peter Murphy. It's strange, quirky, sparsely minimal, hypnotic, with tinges of Karn's solo arrangements behind Murphy's trademark vox, and it's a grower.


Karn produced his second solo album Dreams Of Reason Produce Monsters in 1987; certainly up to the quality of Titles and well worth seeking out. In 1991 the members of Japan reunited briefly for a one-off album as Rain Tree Crow - Sylvian did not want the old name used, and the music was very different from their previous incarnation - before, under Mick's name, Jansen, Barbieri and Karn released the stunning jazz fusion album Bestial Cluster in 1993. This video of the title track is from Dutch TV in 1997 and showcases three immensely talented musicians, augmented by Steven Wilson on guitar. Barbieri later became a member of Porcupine Tree, Wilson's art-prog rock band.

Karn continued to make music for as long as he could, both solo and a string of eclectic side projects. His final album The Concrete Twin was released in 2010.





Lastly, a dose of the mighty Japan in their heyday, with one of my favourite tracks of the era, Gentlemen Take Polaroids live on the Oil On Canvas dvd:



Karn was a tremendous musician/composer/arranger and I can think of no-one remotely like him, both in his overall stylings and the diverse musical paths he trod. Although he was a true virtuoso he couldn't read music and said he didn't really know what notes he was playing; it was just instinctive. I was lucky enough to catch Japan a few times and they remain among the greatest live experiences. One of my most spine-tingling memories from that period is of Karn, fretless held upright in front of his face, in jumpsuit and karate slippers, moving gracefully across the stage in a heel-toe-heel-toe motion. When the strobes shone on him it looked like he was floating from one side of the stage to the other.



That his latter years should have been lived out in relative poverty - so much so that a campaign was raised to bring him back from Cyprus and pay for cancer treatment in London - is a tragedy. In a just world he would have been at the very least comfortable through his musical talent and legacy. The guy could make a bass guitar sit up and talk like very few others and deserved much more recognition for it. The world is just too slow to tune into such innovators.

R.I.P. Mick. Your music enriched many lives, including mine. Thank you.



To find out more about Mick's music, and his sculpture, visit his site at http://www.mickkarn.net/ His autobiography, Japan and Self Existence, is recommended and available to buy from lulu.com here.

THE METRONOMES - Multiple Choice LP + Justification + A Circuit Like Me

Back in 1980 the best way to encounter new wave, post-punk, synthesizer, avant-garde and all kinds of non-mainstream sounds was to listen to the late, great, much lamented John Peel. Peel's Radio 1 show (10pm-midnight Mon-Thur) was THE showcase for anything off the commercial radar and he introduced a few generations including mine to all that was interesting in contemporary music.

One evening he played a cool slice of electro heaven called A Living Person by The Metronomes, a quirky Aussie band that mixed weird and melodic electronics, topped off with a supremely disinterested but sexy spoken female vocal. What wasn't to like?

Not for the first time nor the last after listening to Peel, I rushed to get the album and it didn't disappoint. Some lovely synth work - melodic string washes, bleeps, sequences, alien noises and FX - complemented by guitars, inventive vox and basic but effective drum machines. A dark humour shone through this elegantly crafted album, especially on cuts like The Ballad of the Metronome and Sex II, while the gorgeous A Living Person and Music For Lounges just oozed composition and production class. My favourite piece, Justification, provided the crossover between styles with its simple bass step-sequence, delicious strings, swirling high leadline and repeated spoken mantra "At least it has a steady rhythm."
A cover version of this is in the offing sometime; it's on a long list.

The album followed two 7" single releases, 1979's Saturday Night/Sunday Morning and 1980's A Circuit Like Me/Closed Circuit (video below).
The Metronomes did produce another album but not for another five years, Regular Guys (1985). It certainly has its moments but lacks the inspiration and style of its predecessor. The band members are still musically active but no further releases have been forthcoming - the links to new tracks on their website are dead.

Like so much of the music I loved then, I thought it a crime that bands like The Metronomes flew so far under most people's radar. Synthesizers were fast becoming the new guitars but, with few exceptions, only the most commercial acts broke through and shifted enough units to make a good living from the business. Most of my favourite artists were fated to languish in obscurity or achieve limited cult 'success', get stitched into dodgy record deals, release a couple of albums that were largely ignored, and sooner rather than later, find something else to do. Thirty years on, it's amazing to see so many of them reunited and back on the 'scene', often enjoying hindsight reputations they never achieved first time around.

The Metronomes: Multiple Choice, Cleopatra Records CLP 210.
01. A Living Person
02. Sex I
03. The Ballad of the Metronome
04. Commentator
05. The World Is My Oyster
06. Music For Lounges
07. Sex II
08. Hey Coach
09. Justification
10. Bad Timing

Main personnel:
Ash Wednesday - rhythm programs, synthesizer, random syncussion, treatments, some lead vocals
Andrew Picouleau - bass guitar, synthesizer, random syncussion, Milo tin, some lead vocals
Al Webb - rhythm programs, synthesizer, guitar, random syncussion, backwards hurdy gurdy, some lead vocals

Let's face it, in 1980 those were credits to make any electronic music fan drool.

I'm indebted to excellent blog Capa Nostra Syndicate for the album download link: Capa Nostra Syndicate: Multiple Choice mp3 download

For further info about The Metronomes, go to the band's website, Ash Wednesday's website and Andrew Picouleau's biog.

From Multiple Choice, here's Justification:


And finally, the rare and wonderful single A Circuit Like Me.