Issue 36

TooKoo’s demented Take Me Home is the best Franz Ferdinand rip-off I’ve ever heard, even pipping original inspiration Take Me Out for the screeching, slightly out of synch chorus.

And Praise Be! Listening to this album isn’t about passing an extra-curricular history exam; it’s about getting down, Stooges style. Laying down thy raincoat and grooving; as you surely will to A Trip Out, a song which boasts the most primal, most dumb-ass drumming outside of Ceremony.

Seavault’s take on Ultra Vivid Scene’s the Mercy Seat is near genius and Seabear’s version of Teenage Kicks is so ridiculously - but endearingly - inoffensive as to be almost beautiful.

And another thing… what is it with the lyrics on these Nordic records? They’re always so heartbreakingly jumbled and emotional…

Pluramon’s latest effort sounds pretty similar to the woozy anthems on Dreams Top Rock; scuzzy guitars wrestle and writhe and quiet breathless vocals attempt to cast spells on all who will listen.

Soon after the press conference breaks up for good. I find myself being politely (but quite surreally) handed a piece of cake by Holger Czukay.

I spot the widow of Michael Karoli pointing out his guitars to her children. “That’s dad’s guitar”… I wonder how she feels at all this.

Another beautiful folk release is Parallel Suns, brimful of soft, beguiling music, even though opener Have you Seen the Colours is a spit for the Quo’s Pictures of Matchstick Men at times.

The band just about stays the right side of pretentious by seeming to be utterly enthusiastic about anything and everything.

Luckily the music matches the anticipation; this is as good a set of alternative, stumbling blues-rock as you’re likely to hear this twelvemonth and there’s the added bonus of J Mascis drumming here and there.

My God, Sunburned Hand of the Man and Circle collaborating on a record; could you get more out there? I doubt it.

It also sounds like somebody has chucked a bag of robots into a river. I couldn’t ask for more.

Here are some pictures taken on the opening of the Can's Inner Space studio exhibition at the RocknPop Museum in Gronau, (just over the Dutch border from Enschede). The installation runs until March 2008. A visit is highly recommended. 

The sounds contained on (=AOK) span the decades. There's fifties twang, and sixties garage, seventies rock, eighties thrash and so on – but the sound is never derivative.

Somehow this unholy cross between late Can and Mike Oldfield works.

Mr Dawson, our Chief Reviewer, brings you a round up of what has been playing on his gramophone this past month. Hopefully you will gain as much pleasure from listening to these LPs as he did!

This man has, off and on, been responsible for some of the most inventive, playful and downright cussed avant garde music created in the UK for, well, a good 20 years now.

Don’t let the beginning (or indeed the title) of Victor, Fly Me To Stafford put you off, it’s a wonderfully affirmative love song

In the spectrum of stupid ideas of how to finance a film, right there at the top is financing your film by driving a cab.  Oh lord! 

We said to JR Mascis you can’t bring four amps, can you just bring two? There was a bit of a thing, but he came with two and then at the show he snuck a third one on. (Laughs..) It was really funny, like a little kid… “Oh sorry, I can’t play with less than three”.