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| Track list: 1. Kiro Tv 2. Sick 3. Small Town Witch 4. Black Sheep 5. Loretta Young Silks 6. M'aidez 7. The Fuel 8. Bloodsport 9. Think Harder 10. Blue Movie 11. Grazes Running time: 53 minutes Released: 2002 |
This album I remember as being full of really vital songs. Great tunes, but not necessarily a great album. I always contrasted it with Splinter, which was a far more cohesive experience with good, but not so great, individual songs. I don't quite know whether the anger and fire I remember as fueling this record will still give me a kick these days, now I'm not so young anymore.
The staccato opening to Kiro TV remains fresh in the memory, and the nasal, edgy tone to Chris Corner's voice really sets the track off. The chorus is better than the rest, it seems to climax, come together in a synergy greater than the sum of its parts. In the verse its functional but dull, but with the injection of a bit more life and an extra effort or two in the singing it lights up. Grubby underground club film scene, side orders of sleaze and a certain type of movie-influenced sexuality. The confluence of factors works, whilst never leaving me comfortable listening to it.
Midweek. Busy week. My only night here at home, after a day of isolation working from my front room. And I just watched the first episode of Ben Whishaw vehicle London Spy on iPlayer. The only option for a listen and this - as well as being next cab off the rank - is a good fit. Sick uses strings and a guitar loop in place of the club-like sounds in places, a lighter touch to the music but not to themes. This is not happy positive stuff at all, but urgent and evocative. A sense of antipathy and misanthropy drips off every word, a feeling reinforced by the musical structures.
That restrained hate gives Bloodsport a vitality, an angst and a purpose that I really like in my music. It isn't screaming rage, its contained, let out with control to create something. Its a positive expression, harnessing negative emotion for effect. Whether deliberate, or just something I am inferring from the strain in his voice and the dominant tones in the construction I couldn't say, but I remember having this exact same reaction back when I first heard these songs, and having the same positive opinion of the disc. The guitar wobble in the hook of Black Sheep adds a sense of loneliness to the track, even as layering of the vocal builds a sense of a wider world. It strikes me as a very effective combination for the song, isolating and ostracizing. I really couldn't have stumbled onto a more appropriate album to listen to this evening all told. The song itself is one I remember liking but despite liking the effect outlined above, I find it a little flat as a piece of music tonight.
There are electronic beeps ending one track and making a seamless transition into Loretta Young Silks, which actually has a rather off-putting vocal staccato effect I don't remember. Once the song proper starts that fades away, thankfully, and its a head-noddy nothingness. Until, that is, the chorus hits. Like Kiro TV before it, the chorus just injects a sense of hurt, of being wronged, of disdain, into both the music and the vocal that the song takes off. The three choruses are certainly enough to drag the track up to a point where I would consider it the high point so far.
There is a significant shift in tone then. M'Aidez is a strained vocal, but the musical theme is much, much lighter, floating. There is still a darkness lurking there, but it has the impression of being to this album what How Do is to Becoming X. I suppose it works to cleanse the aural palette but I am not sure it is needed and as it goes on I am getting more and more thrown out of the appreciative mood that I was in at the end of the prior track. Thankfully it is a minor misstep; The Fuel is pure energy. The tension comes back in the second it starts, but it takes until the rhythm really establishes for it to generate the pure driving momentum I remember the track for. I see visuals of someone forcibly walking through crowds on dark, rain-swept back streets, fighting past exposed metalwork, dudes twice their size and dangerous ladies with far too many piercings. Always moving, always bobbing. I don't see it as vehicular movement, but constant personal flow. It's really hard to sit still and type with that bass. I really like this track in case you hadn't worked that out, despite never having been into the club scene, and particularly not the kind of club scene I imagine when I hear these kind of tunes.
The title track bleeds off the excess movement. Whilst still tense it is much more introspective and almost soft by comparison despite the heartache of the lyrics. "Love is just a blood sport" is a pretty epic level of cynicism that I used to share. Now I just feel too far removed from the sentiment in anything other than a familial sense to comment - I am far less bitter about this than I was when I was in my 20s. The track is catchy enough but at five and a half minutes it feels like it drags on a bit too far, so I am happy when we tick over to Think Harder. This track has the pace and energy of The Fuel, harnessed differently. It's less tense, less pent up, more act of release, the solution not the question, and - ironically - act, don't think. The image it generates is more of a chase, making snap decisions to escape. The cognitive dissonance between the image I get from the music and the content of the chorus lyric is a minor barrier, and does not impede my enjoyment of the tune.
It comes to a rather abrupt stop though and the last couple of tracks are less energetic. The sense of misanthropy returns with Blue Movie, which makes me picture a broken society living in run down neighbourhoods rather than anything even remotely sexy despite the obvious pornography references in title and lyrics. The whole piece falls flat for me, and there I must refrain from making poor taste jokes given the lyrical content. Why Amazon, from whence I pulled the track list, had the last track as "Crazes" not "Grazes" I don't know, but such things are easily corrected. This track I like despite it not having the urgency, the energy or the power of the higher tempo tracks. There is still a spirit of injustice and an air of hurt in the vocal, but the music is lighter. It remains grounded where M'Aidez floated a bit too much, a solid central structure and return to less open lines forgiving the somewhat overwrought soaring in the vocal come the chorus. I had forgotten the sonic discomfort that followed the first chorus, but it serves to offset the looseness in the long syllables and held notes. Its the simple but catchy percussion that sells the track though - strong enough to come through and create the structure, but light enough not to dominate the parts laid over it.
Overall? It's not quite the string of stellar tunes that I perhaps considered it a decade ago, but I still really like parts of it. They feel appropriate, they engender strong responses. The weak points are less forgivable than they were, and I still reckon it isn't a patch on Splinter, but it will be years before I get to cover that on this project and who knows... by then I'll probably have forgotten the whole bloody disc or only like Country or something. There is no such thing as a fair comparison in this space.
Midweek. Busy week. My only night here at home, after a day of isolation working from my front room. And I just watched the first episode of Ben Whishaw vehicle London Spy on iPlayer. The only option for a listen and this - as well as being next cab off the rank - is a good fit. Sick uses strings and a guitar loop in place of the club-like sounds in places, a lighter touch to the music but not to themes. This is not happy positive stuff at all, but urgent and evocative. A sense of antipathy and misanthropy drips off every word, a feeling reinforced by the musical structures.
That restrained hate gives Bloodsport a vitality, an angst and a purpose that I really like in my music. It isn't screaming rage, its contained, let out with control to create something. Its a positive expression, harnessing negative emotion for effect. Whether deliberate, or just something I am inferring from the strain in his voice and the dominant tones in the construction I couldn't say, but I remember having this exact same reaction back when I first heard these songs, and having the same positive opinion of the disc. The guitar wobble in the hook of Black Sheep adds a sense of loneliness to the track, even as layering of the vocal builds a sense of a wider world. It strikes me as a very effective combination for the song, isolating and ostracizing. I really couldn't have stumbled onto a more appropriate album to listen to this evening all told. The song itself is one I remember liking but despite liking the effect outlined above, I find it a little flat as a piece of music tonight.
There are electronic beeps ending one track and making a seamless transition into Loretta Young Silks, which actually has a rather off-putting vocal staccato effect I don't remember. Once the song proper starts that fades away, thankfully, and its a head-noddy nothingness. Until, that is, the chorus hits. Like Kiro TV before it, the chorus just injects a sense of hurt, of being wronged, of disdain, into both the music and the vocal that the song takes off. The three choruses are certainly enough to drag the track up to a point where I would consider it the high point so far.
There is a significant shift in tone then. M'Aidez is a strained vocal, but the musical theme is much, much lighter, floating. There is still a darkness lurking there, but it has the impression of being to this album what How Do is to Becoming X. I suppose it works to cleanse the aural palette but I am not sure it is needed and as it goes on I am getting more and more thrown out of the appreciative mood that I was in at the end of the prior track. Thankfully it is a minor misstep; The Fuel is pure energy. The tension comes back in the second it starts, but it takes until the rhythm really establishes for it to generate the pure driving momentum I remember the track for. I see visuals of someone forcibly walking through crowds on dark, rain-swept back streets, fighting past exposed metalwork, dudes twice their size and dangerous ladies with far too many piercings. Always moving, always bobbing. I don't see it as vehicular movement, but constant personal flow. It's really hard to sit still and type with that bass. I really like this track in case you hadn't worked that out, despite never having been into the club scene, and particularly not the kind of club scene I imagine when I hear these kind of tunes.
The title track bleeds off the excess movement. Whilst still tense it is much more introspective and almost soft by comparison despite the heartache of the lyrics. "Love is just a blood sport" is a pretty epic level of cynicism that I used to share. Now I just feel too far removed from the sentiment in anything other than a familial sense to comment - I am far less bitter about this than I was when I was in my 20s. The track is catchy enough but at five and a half minutes it feels like it drags on a bit too far, so I am happy when we tick over to Think Harder. This track has the pace and energy of The Fuel, harnessed differently. It's less tense, less pent up, more act of release, the solution not the question, and - ironically - act, don't think. The image it generates is more of a chase, making snap decisions to escape. The cognitive dissonance between the image I get from the music and the content of the chorus lyric is a minor barrier, and does not impede my enjoyment of the tune.
It comes to a rather abrupt stop though and the last couple of tracks are less energetic. The sense of misanthropy returns with Blue Movie, which makes me picture a broken society living in run down neighbourhoods rather than anything even remotely sexy despite the obvious pornography references in title and lyrics. The whole piece falls flat for me, and there I must refrain from making poor taste jokes given the lyrical content. Why Amazon, from whence I pulled the track list, had the last track as "Crazes" not "Grazes" I don't know, but such things are easily corrected. This track I like despite it not having the urgency, the energy or the power of the higher tempo tracks. There is still a spirit of injustice and an air of hurt in the vocal, but the music is lighter. It remains grounded where M'Aidez floated a bit too much, a solid central structure and return to less open lines forgiving the somewhat overwrought soaring in the vocal come the chorus. I had forgotten the sonic discomfort that followed the first chorus, but it serves to offset the looseness in the long syllables and held notes. Its the simple but catchy percussion that sells the track though - strong enough to come through and create the structure, but light enough not to dominate the parts laid over it.
Overall? It's not quite the string of stellar tunes that I perhaps considered it a decade ago, but I still really like parts of it. They feel appropriate, they engender strong responses. The weak points are less forgivable than they were, and I still reckon it isn't a patch on Splinter, but it will be years before I get to cover that on this project and who knows... by then I'll probably have forgotten the whole bloody disc or only like Country or something. There is no such thing as a fair comparison in this space.
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