86 JuLY 2010
Kate Mossman:
invulnerable.
SIA
We Are Born rca
Ten years ago Adelaide’s Sia Furler was getting
called “The New Lauryn Hill” on account
of her big R&B voice and tomboyish charm.
Since then she’s sung for Zero 7 and Beck,
written songs for Christina Aguilera, and had
her music used on everything from The OC
to Six Feet Under. Sia was never meant to
lead the life of a back-room girl though – she
has a lovely, raffish, unique stage presence.
She is also one-woman hit factory for sturdy
soul-pop songs, 12 of which are featured here,
produced by Greg Kurstin.
THE PUNCH BROTHERS
Antifogmatic noneSucH
Chris Thile’s voice is not a particularly
remarkable instrument, unlike his mandolin,
so it’s a shame he’s employed it so much on
The Punch Brothers’ second album. Once his
boyish singing was a poignant reminder of
his youth against the wizardry of his playing;
now he sounds over-wordy and fraught. His
composition suffers a similar problem: he
can’t seem to resist landing on a discord, or
rapidly changing a key, and as a result the
music is starting to sound increasingly rarefied;
too much bitter and not enough sweet.
BOMBAY BICYCLE CLUB
Flaws uniVerSaL
You’ll remember the strikingly young indie
band featuring Ewan MacColl’s grandson
Jamie who met in a Crouch End sixth form
and released their debut album during their
gap year. Now they return with an all-acoustic
record. The big challenge with acoustic
stuff is a) you’ve got to play really well because
you can hear what every fingernail is
doing and b) if you
tend write the same
song, over and over,
it’s really going to
show when the backing
is stripped away.
BBC have triumphed:
this album is engrossing,
like sitting in on a
songwriting workshop,
and far more accomplished
than their pre-
DIVIDEANDRULE!
RICHARD HASWELL
Safety in Movement rHubard muSic
A cheap cover with
some trees on it,
“man and laptop”
– to me this spelt
morose, possibly
rather tinny folk
music. But Safety
In Movement is a remarkable thing – a
strange lo-fi tardis of an album whose
nine subtle songs unroll from the speakers
like the soundtrack to some bedsit
kingdom. Arise is acoustic Pink Floyd;
Loop A Lil is a druid-like meditation on
three strings that makes you stop working
and stare out the window. The thrill
here is great songwriting with an
appearance of effortlessness. Edinburgh-based
Haswell has been working
on it for two years and has apparently
recorded 20 albums to date – under the
names Rhubarb and G For Gnome.
vious brand of bouncy indie rock. Fairytale
Lullaby is particularly warm and delicate.
SCISSOR SISTERS
Night Work uniVerSaL
The Scissor Sisters worked for 18 months on
their third album and then scrapped the
whole lot, went back into the studio and made
this one instead. Jake Shears says – as though
this might be a departure – that it’s “supersexual
and sleazy”. There are fire sirens, pulsing
late-’70s roller-disco basses and lyrics
about getting ready to go out, “packing a rubber”.
In fact, so many of the Scissor Sisters’
songs centre on what you’re
about to do – what you’re
going to get tonight – that
it’s little wonder the excitement
of this music never
wears off. Ian McKellen
guests on Invisible Light.
SOPHIE HUNGER
1983 Two genTLemen
Being a really good musician
isn’t just about the
quantifiable things like
good tunes and virtuosity; you’ve got to have
something more mysterious as well, some
kind of artistic “self-possession”. Émilie
Jeanne-Sophie Welti Hunger, from Zurich,
might be found singing Jaques Brel at the
Montreux Jazz Festival, strumming a languorous
Swedish folk song or shuffling, deadpan,
over English trip-hop beats but she
retains an air of self-containment that seems
to explain her facility with all those different
styles. On this, her third solo album, she knits
herself very closely to the music, breathing
into a burbling backdrop of guitar or stacking
piano chords neatly around her words in
Breaking The Waves.
MAX RICHTER
Infra FaT caT recordS
Among the more interesting projects by German
composer Max Richter is his 2008
album of “miniatures” for mobile phones. He
also collaborated with Roni Size on Reprazent
and set up the endlessly entertaining
Piano Circus. I’d never heard of him till someone
sent me a YouTube clip of a ballet called
Infra for which Richter had written the
music. The clip featured a couple in pants,
dancing to a mesmerising piece of violin
music, and I watched it 100 times. Here is
that soundtrack in full. At his saddest, Richter
sounds like Gorecki (see Infra 7); at his
most penetrating, like Michael Nyman on a
backdrop of concrete and rain.
VARIOUS: MIXED BY ANDY VOTEL
Vintage Voltage FaT ciTY recordS
Some music is “press day music” – Jon Sellers’
Music From German Sex Education Movies
Of The 1960s and ’70s, for example, or something
by the Radiophonic Workshop – anything
as long as it’s otherworldly and slightly
frantic. So it is with Vintage Voltage, t h e
latest offering from DJ, producer, electronic
music curator and Finders Keepers founder
Andy Votel. It’s a 4,089-seconds-long fusion
of “post-war mechanical music” sourced in
Pakistan, Hungary and 1970s Iran, shot
through with spoken word, radio excerpts
and singing children. I love the fact that so
much work has gone into editing this, to keep
it running as one continuous, smooth, funky
piece – and all for something so daft.
www.wordmagazine.co.uk
To view a Ceros magazine you need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser and have the flash player 8 or higher installed. To install the latest flash player, click the icon above, install the flash plugin and then click here to refresh this page.