Mix Tape Action

Hello all. Yes it is true, I am slowly fading into nothingness, my blogging potential is being drained from my very being by outside forces. New music has been coming to me drip fed, with a backup of must buys sitting in my little black book, but Winter is coming and dark nights staring through condensation filled bus windows always makes for perfect musical listening experiences, so hopefully things will pick up.

In the meantime I have crafted this gift for you all. It is badly wrapped in my messy, hurried and uncaring mixing skills, but once you open the present you will find it rammed full of precious jewels, items of dark wonder and glowing potions for the soul.
Go ahead. Open it. And should you wish to make it portable, which I would highly recommend, you can do so by clicking here.

And now, while you either click on another page or listen and read, I shall witter on brimming with witless gorm about the tracks I have chosen. Well Basically its because they are what I have been listening to on and off over the last wee while.

1. Fabrizio Paterlini – The Stars That Fell Over That Night
Something still and beautiful from the master of evocative piano. Fabrizio’s music has been a real inspiration to me this year and recently, while I suffer the new music drought, he has been providing me the soundtrack to my days with his free downloadable Autumn Stories, which I suggest you fire over to his website and check out immediately.
2. Caught in the Wake Forever – Fragments Turn to Dust
I was always wondering why countries like Iceland could knock out music that clung to my headspace by the ton, yet there was nothing happening here in my back garden. The answer is really just because I wasnt looking hard enough. This is bus-window simplicity in all its joy, from a wee record label in Edinburgh, Mini 50 which I would again suggest you check out.
3. Bon Iver – Holocene
Aye, bit dissapointed in the old Bon Iver album after tumbling over myself through the love/hate/dispair cycle of the first on a great many occasions. It was all going ok until the U2ness kicked in, then I lost the will to adopt it into my heart. However, Holocene is fantastic, and shows that still as a writer, he is a great talent.
4. Chris Tenz – Another Glass
Another Mini50 artiste and a cracking track. Its flow, going from frantic and engaging, seamlessly through to ambient and adding mental colour to your surroundings, is a work of extreme craftsmanship, one to be commended and has had a spot in my ears for many a month.
5. Jonsi & Alex – Happiness (Irrelevant Mix)
Yes, still going on about Jonsi and Alex after all this time. Still deeply in love with the original, but this Irrelevant Mix adds a beat so subteranean that it blends incredibly well with the original tune. A combination of moods which works very well.
6. Dustin O’Halloran – We Move Lightly (Pataphysical Mix)
Again, a wonderful track to start off with, but there is something nice and spacey about the remix. Strangely, the first song that my new child ever heard (another reason for the long hiatus in posting) as it started playing in my pocket in the hospital by accident. For this it will aye have a place in my heart, but romanticism aside, it adds a sort of bleak sadness to this powerful track.
7. M.J Cole – Be Sincere (Nero Mix)
A classic track and no mistake. Remixed by a bunch of chart topping goons who are adding to the pile of generic facelessness that is sadly the Prodigy’s leagacy. However, they done a good job on this and when the bass comes in, you know all about it.
8. Rival Consoles – I Left the Party
Wrote about it before, deserves another mention. Though its roots may be in another track, it still excels and shines as a work of emotive electronica loveliness. Again, the album review has been lost in the mire of my life, but suffice to say I enjoyed it thoroughly.
9. French Tragedies in Color – Ganik
God knows where I found this, but I am very glad to have done so. A lot of free downloads on Soundcloud and this is the pick of the bunch. Makes me think of vintage colours and lens flares. Makes me think of Manitoba (not the place, the Caribou before Caribou business) and for someone who just fires up the occasional tune it is a lovely bit of kit.
10. Totally Enormous Extinct Dinosaurs – Household Goods
Aye, well. I just love it. I dont know how you couldnt. Full of mad energy, great use of space vs someone hoovering your brain and a narrative with enough vagueness to make it fit in with any form of self induced melodrama. Love it.

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I wrote all that gubbins in September. Meant to flesh it out more and click publish, but I never did until today. I do have more plans for writing, but I have said such before and it has not come to pass. we shall see!

Weezer must die! Must they?

James Burns gained a modicum of web fame over the last month by putting together a campaign to raise $10,000,000 to donate to Weezer if the agreed to split up. Though he has now renounced this as a little bit of internet jocularity, a great wheeze (oh sweet pun, how bitter your sweetness) the whole affair got me to thinking a little and rather than the run of the mill review I thought that I would philosophise instead as what the world needs now is more half arsed philosophy.

I first found out about Burns’ campaign from an article in the Guardian a couple of weeks ago. It was not the nonsense about the proposed payoff to Weezer that grabbed my attention as you can generally spot a cry for attention when you see it, but it was the line ‘ Claiming the band has never improved on their 1996 album Pinkerton’ that stuck in my mind. I remember Pinkerton well, I still have its tactile, beautiful vinyl stashed within my collection, but it was the fact that they were claiming that Pinkerton was the pinnacle of Weezer’s achievement that made the gin soaked braincells kick into gear. Pinkerton was good, but without any shadow of a doubt it had already been bettered, by the untouchably good Weezer. Eh, the first album, Blue album, whatever you want to call it.

My first encounter with Weezer was in the void that was left in the world at the departure of Pixies. Fair enough, many people thought that they had jumped the shark by that point anyway, however more on this idea during the philosophical rant later in the garbled article. My first encounter with real emotive rock music, not just good music, not just technical grace or songs from the heart, but music that drove you from deep inside, this is what I had discovered by coming in late to Pixies. And then they were gone, the stage collapsed at the gig I went to see them play, they promised to return and then 2 weeks later split up. So sadly I sat and indulged in some hate TV one night by watching The Word, a terrible yoof programme on late Friday nights on Channel 4. And lo, this happened.

They had exactly what I was looking for and unlike Pixies, they were mine, nobody had passed them on to me. I could covet them as my own secret discovery. (Ok so they were on national TV, but you know how the mind is prone to fits of fancy.) The ridiculous crowd of people desperate to be on television blended into nothingness, the music pierced the screen and made a permanent home in my brain. As soon as it came out, the album was mine and still to this day is one of the greatest listening experiences of my life. It still all adds up, still produces the key notes of emotion in me that it did when I was 21. It took my imagination onto a different plane, here were lyrics that bore little sense, producing far more meaning than any song from the soul. The loud/quiet, the harmonies, the sudden shift from joy to pain, it still has it all in abundance. With Only in Dreams I learned to love the build-up, the long slow orgasm of build that I now get to love in a mass range of music, from drum n bass and electro to the tiny notes that begin a 10 minute build-up in some jazz and classical.

Then came Pinkerton and I was disappointed. It wasn’t the same, it just didn’t have it. I still liked it, I still thought it was a good record, but I couldn’t connect the same way. This is what struck me about James Burns’ words. I know that Pinkerton made people love Weezer, gelled the love that people had for the first album and fused it into an unbreakable adoration for the band. But not for me, why did I have to be the one to miss what was going on?

I imagine there are a generation out there whose Blue Album is Hurley, just as my Surfa Rosa is Bossa Nova. Pinkerton was perhaps musically as good, but it didn’t capture the time, the essence of my life at that point and this is a lot of what music is about. Of course it has to have the initial hook and talent to get you in there in the first place, but it is the musical framing to a point in time that really adds the eternal love for an album.

So, even though there will never be another Blue Album, I still listen to everything that Weezer put out, for even just a momentary reflection of the joy of that album is enough to make good listening for me. Hurley is not my Blue Album, but I would still recommend people listen to it. Memories is a fantastically glib remembrance, so endearing due to its nonsense factor, the things that Weezer remember from their rock lives. Personal favourite has to go to All My Friends are Insects on the deluxe edition, a delightfully tight little number that cites invertebrate friendships as playing a key role in this chaps life. Though the emotional hook might not be in the songs for me anymore, I still wholeheartedly appreciated everything Weezer do and their high paid removal from the world of entertainment would damage the musical eco-sphere irreparably. A future of music uninfluenced by Weezer would be a dark place indeed.
To get your hands on any of the albums mentioned in the blog including the new Death To False Metal album, simply click on here.

Service Interupted

Hello, due to HP producing technology that doesnt work properly and having potentially the worst customer service in the world, I am currently without laptop and means to sit and write a full post.

My apologies for this and as soon as the helpful people from Currys deem my laptop fixed or decide that it is a useless piece of crap and give me something new, I will be mostly absent.

clive onions massive easter mixtape

Hello all. With the coming of the Spring and the joy of the lightnights I bring you the Happy Easter mixtape. I have put on tunes from all the lovely people that I have reviewed over the last couple of months. I tell thee, tunes so dynamite that its worth peeling yourselves off the crucifix or rolling back the stone and getting yourself headphoned up. Just click on the attractive tape below to access the free playlist and have a listen while you fanny about on the internet. It’s all good.

click me

Omissions from the tape are the wonderful We’re Only Afraid of NYC, but when you can get their whole ep for free by clicking on THIS word, why bother being put on a mixtape. Fever Ray is the other omission, but again you can check her tunes on Myspace HERE and I would have put on Concrete Walls, just incase you have the remotest speck of interest.

April will be similarly rammed with musical delight, so keep eyes peeled, or just use them if peeling sounds too painful.

Welcome

Welcome

Welcome to cliveonionpresents with me, clive onion.  Yet another music review site, but guaranteed to be definitely slightly better than at least 12 of the other ones.

The desire to start writing this has all come from a new lease of musical life thanks to discovering rich veins of new music and letting me see what is out there rather than sitting back and delving into the past to discover something new.  Music seems to be in rude health despite the implied horrors of illegal downloading.  The internet seems to be offering so many channels for getting your music out there, building a worldwide following and being able to take it on tour.   I always want to see whats round the corner, never really content with the here and now and the internet seems to be giving me this consecrated opportunity to do that with music.

Keeping your finger on the pulse seems to be an impossibility and to be honest I don’t really want to keep my finger on any pulse, lentil or lifesign.  This site is not an attempt to prove how cool it is that I know about bands that other people don’t or to try and push my opinions on anybody.  In a way, at the moment at least, it almost feels like I am enjoying listening to all this music so much that I want to write some kind of extended thank you note, let people know that their endeavors are helping make the grey rainy walk to work worthwhile.

So basically what I am driving at is that there is not going to be much of a rhythm to the blog.  Its not going to be all about new releases or keep track of exactly what is ‘happening’ now, its just going to chart what I have been listening to or going to see.  The tunes and recommendations may be old hat to many, but if it is getting new music even to a couple of earholes then its worth proving myself ridiculously out of touch.

Right……………..