Albums of The Year, post 1

One of the things I'm most looking forward to about this Christmas holiday is the chance to listen to some of the music from this year that I've not yet managed to hear, taking various 'albums of the year' lists as my guide.

So this morning I woke up, had a piss, went back to bed, opened up Spotify on my laptop and then reached for my copy of the new RockARolla, very kindly donated by my girlfriend, who just gave me a subscription for Christmas. Lovely stuff.

I won't list the mag's top 10 here yet, but for now will start by saying that two of the top 5 aren't on Spotify, so I will have to find some other way of sampling those. Of the three that are, I already own Neurosis' Honor Found in Decay, and have blogged about Neurosis recently.

Which leaves me with Baroness's Yellow and Green and Goat's World Music. And both start very promisingly musically but are then, for me, quickly ruined by their respective singing. Baroness musically are more like what I would be inclined to listen to often than Goat, although Goat perhaps have the edge in terms of novel interest for the same reason. In fact I found the Baroness pretty exciting for a couple of minutes, but then? Harmonies, and bad, bad lyrics... No.

And then when I stick on the Goat and it's again the singing that turns me off, more because of irritating repetition this time, I start to wonder whether there might be something wrong with me. Am I that misanthropic that while I can enjoy instrumentation, so direct a reminder of other people as the human voice is too much to bear?

But then I remember that the Neurosis album has lyrics too, if not exactly singing, as does plenty of other stuff I like. So no, it's just that I don't like Goat and Baroness. Phew.

Bonus PS
Spotify also doesn't host another of RockARolla's top ten, which I decided to check out after the disappointments above - Amenra's Mass V - however, it does have 2011's Mass IIII (not IV apparently), which I am listening to as I type, and this band, happily, could well be a grower.

Til later...

Neurosis and Godlfesh at Kentish Town Forum

I'd seen Justin K. Broadrick once before, in his Jesu guise way the hell out in Kilburn. I was right at the front, and the shredding immensity of JKB's guitar came closer than anything has before or since to ripping my ear drums apart. Shamefully I left before the encore, genuinely afraid that I might never hear again. 

That experience came back to me somewhat harshly as Godflesh started playing this evening. My enjoyment went up a solid few notches with the second track performed, Like Rats, but then it slipped again somewhat on commencement of the almost equally good third track Christbait rising, and I couldn't escape the fact that I was struggling to get involved. 

I soon realised that I just couldn't really get into two guys strumming along to a drum machine, no matter how superb the sound nor how much effort JKB was putting into wringing the neck of his tool and torturing his vocal chords. For me, not only does drumming drive most music, but a drummer also drives most live performances, and without that beating heart, I realised, I just wasn't getting hooked.

At this point you're probably thinking that I'm an idiot who simply doesn't understand industrial music, and you'd be partly right. But if I told you that Hymns is perhaps my all-time favourite album - I think it's utter genius - I hope that would go someway to placating you and bringing you back on board with what is, after all, just one man's experience.

Still, my inability to get on with the drum machine struck me as weird, even if I am learning to play myself, given that I love drum and bass and have no such complaints there. It wasn't until the pace picked up in the final fifteen minutes of Godflesh's set that I realised that was exactly the point.

I know that JKB writes from a place of despair and pain, and that is what drives him, but if his music made me despair I wouldn't listen to it. Well, not as much as I do, anyway. Much of the music of his that I like - because he's a prolific fella and I don't like all of it - I like because it elates me, and when the pace picked up I suddenly realised that I wanted to fucking move to it, not just stand there nodding my head. Heavy pounding beats and throbbing bass light me up, and so as the pace picked up so did my pulse, so did my adrenaline, so did the muscles either side of my lips, and I wanted to express that enjoyment with full-on physicality. I wanted to dance to that mother like I'd dance to drum and bass, without inhibition. If I couldn't have a drummer to drive me on, I wanted at least to be able to drive myself on. But I couldn't, because the place was rammed, and because nobody else was dancing. Plenty of people were banging, but dancing? No. And I know: this is industrial, you fuck head, not techno, but there's joy in movement, and I know that JKB has dabbled plenty in techno spheres, so I don't think it's as crazy an idea as it might first seem.

Anyway, that was my experience of Godflesh live. I know it wasn't everybody's - far from it, because everybody else seemed to love it - but me, I wanted to throw myself around a little. To each their own...

I'd also seen one-fifth of Neurosis before, when I saw Scott Kelly play his part in Shrinebuilder's Scala gig of late 2010, in what may well be the most enjoyable damn thing I've ever attended. I've never experienced anything quite so techtonic, quite so collossal, quite so symbolic, and probably never will again unless the guys bless us with a second record or I pluck up the courage to squeeze myself into a tiny gap in some Swans gig somewhere.

For me Neurosis aren't quite Shrinebuilder, but at times tonight they weren't far off. Return readers of this blog will not be at all surprised to learn that my experience of Neurosis stretches only as far as their most recent album, purchased about a month ago. Hence, their performance of At The Well was my personal highlight, it being one of the tracks I was familiar with as well as being just sheer goddamn bliss anyway, to the point where I think my eyes may have rolled back into my head for a while there. One of the reasons Neurosis aren't quite Shrinebuilder for me is that they have regular moments of quietness between their bombast, which is fine, although in my current phase of getting to know Honor Found... those moments go on just a little too long for my own tastes, and live they're somewhat ruined by being drowned out by chattering idiots all around.

Nevertheless, this performance was probably the third most enjoyable I've seen this year, after Down and Mastodon, and definitely one to savour. I've spent more time on Godflesh here than Neurosis  purely because of my own greater familiarity with the former - I intend to acquaint myself better with Neurosis in the very near future.

Finally, honorable mention must be made of the fantastic poster art of Simon Fowler. How bloody good is that?