The introduction to Asa Tone‘s Temporary Music is a bait-and-switch. A voice is here to narrate, possibly to guide each listener on how to approach the group’s debut album, but what arrives instead is lovingly abstract. Disjointed phrases sputter out from a voice that exists somewhere between haunting and mystifying due to the constant glitching. Feelings of the uncanny valley pop up, and by the end, all you’re left with as a listener are a few words and enticing motifs (and a song title) to hang onto – “waving”, “empty time”, and “everyone repeating”. This intro is ultimately necessary as it lays the groundwork for the listener to find a compelling vision in this project beyond it being an endearing exploration and meshing of sounds halfway across the world.

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Asa Tone is the collaboration of Melati Malay, Tristan Arp, and Kaazi. Malay – one half of the group Young Magic – set up a recording studio in Indonesia with the other two for her annual return home back in 2018. Temporary Music is the result of that ten-day recording session centered around a mix of traditional Indonesian instrumentation and electronic equipment. The interplay of these two styles – including all their connotations – is the immediate draw on every track. The heavy use of Rindik instrumentation – essentially bamboo xylophones – evokes a calming naturalistic setting. Meanwhile, the Infinite Jets pedal and a few other instruments disrupt that peace with an unavoidable 21st-century technological interference. The meshing of sounds here is as natural as the meshing of cultures. There’s no question of whether they should or not; it’s about reveling in the fact that global harmony is possible.

The first two tracks following the introduction – “Perpetual Motion Via Jungle Transport” and “Visit from Tokay” – were released as lead singles, and the urgency in each compared to the rest of the album makes it easy to explain why. “Perpetual Motion…” is lush with subtle deviations in that repeating initial Rindik rhythm. Notes get jolted out of the original rhythm with echo-like effects, and it makes for a great repeat listen as there could be little surprises down in the mix you might have missed before. “Visit From Tokay” is probably the best stand-alone track here with an emphasis on a steady percussion and some melodic flourishes, especially in the song’s breakdown in the middle.

Elsewhere, the project’s limitations become apparent. Many of the songs move laterally without taking enough detours or risks. On “Inexplicable Notion (Location Specific)”, we get a glimpse of how the songs should maybe develop further at around the three-minute mark with the Suling flute finding a bit of a rhythm to latch onto, but it’s mixed down to where it’s almost drowned out. The steadiness of each track, while creating a lovely ambient feel, also plays into the low-stakes, relaxed vibe of the whole project. That the songs average three minutes in length doesn’t help either.

…The album comes full circle with the voice’s return on “Each Pool a Lifetime” and ends on the idea of “completing the shape”. Again, it’s abstract to the point of some necessary extrapolation, and what I’ve settled on, in regards to this project, is the need to venture out and fulfill our creative urgencies through others. The collaboration of like-minded people with the same background doesn’t amount to much when considering what’s possible. There’s a complete version of us, of music, out there to find when we get past limitations, whatever they may be. Now, while these particular tracks may be too limited in scope to properly convey that, they certainly have me thinking about it. That’s certainly enough for this lovely passion project.

…expanded album with 12 new original remixes.
For some time, Jacques Greene’s curious career was defined by the French-Canadian producer’s knack for fusing different modes of dance music with contemporary pop and R&B influences. Philippe Aubin-Dionne’s curatorial ears (and eyes; he previously worked as an art director) helped him navigate electronic music’s shifting trends. But where his debut LP, Feel Infinite, took an insular approach, Aubin-Dionne’s sophomore album, Dawn Chorus, treats the Jacques Greene project more like a band. Inspired by groups like Massive Attack and Slowdive, he brought on producer and Oneohtrix Point Never collaborator Joel Ford as well as contributions from Brian Reitzell, Oliver Coates, and Julianna Barwick. The result feels…

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…at once intimate yet immense — a collection of ruminative dance tracks with a shoegaze heart.

The muscular loops of last year’s Fever Focus EP, crafted for peak-hour DJ sets, made for an incremental step forward, but Dawn Chorus largely abandons the pretense of the club altogether. From the instant that the smeared rave sirens of “Serenity” go soaring across snippets of indistinct radio chatter, it’s clear that Aubin-Dionne is just as concerned with kindling introspection as he is with moving bodies. It’s a trick he pulls off differently on almost every track: Rainy field recordings envelop mid-album highlight “Sel,” and spirals of hazy, resampled textures on “Let Go” set the stage for a moody guest turn from Toronto-based singer Rochelle Jordan.

Until now, Jacques Greene’s signature move has been to lift melodies from beloved singers like Mario and Brandy, slicing them into wistful refrains. He was hardly the first to repurpose R&B vocals—what up, Burial—but Aubin-Dionne understands that the provenance of his samples is less important than the vocalists’ charismatic timbres, rendered mystical by washes of synth. Instead of falling back on familiar sources, he opts to alchemize his guests’ voices into hooks, occasionally ceding the spotlight altogether, as on “Let Go” and the acid-tinged “Night Service,” with Cadence Weapon. Unfortunately, Cadence falls a bit flat as he rhapsodizes about a night out during the bloghouse days of yore, when DJs used to play the Rapture. It’s charming but awkward.

Dawn Chorus is most compelling when the production does the bulk of the talking. Nearly a decade into his career, Jacques Greene continues to hone his sound design and arrangements. Much of Dawn Chorus was recorded at Hudson Mohawke’s Los Angeles studio, where Aubin-Dionne set out to wrangle new sounds from specific pieces of hardware used by his musical heroes. You get the sense that exploring unfamiliar equipment in new spaces has helped him find new possibilities in his own work—that by plunging himself into guitar pedals and classic French-house compression modules, he’s ushered in a new era for Jacques Greene without losing sight of his unique sentimentality. “For Love,” possibly the only track geared for the floor, turns a hit by Canadian disco outfit THP Orchestra into a pumping funky house number with a dream-pop middle eight. The expansive “Drop Location,” co-produced by Aubin-Dionne’s old friend Clams Casino, shows that the cloud rap pioneer’s chilly tendencies pair well with Jacques Greene’s newfound love of distorted drones.

The shoegaze influence is most apparent near the end of the album. Hesitant arpeggios waft through a barren Shlohmo-esque atmosphere on “Understand,” while the seven-minute closer “Stars” is a slow-burning meditation on nature and childhood, undergirded by the steady pulse of warehouse drums. Aubin-Dionne’s gleaming synthesizers ebb and flow; the woozy swells and quietly crackling drones flank the spectral spoken-word passages of another Toronto artist, Sandrine Somé. Eventually, Somé trails off, and so do the resonant pads, leaving a lone breakbeat to loop into the ether. The brooding, ambient nature of Dawn Chorus suggests that one day, Jacques Greene just might abandon dance music altogether—but for now, it’s a form that he continues to reshape in his own way with each new release.

There’s a story behind Isobel Campbell‘s first solo material in 14 years: her record company closed and it took Campbell a year to take back the rights to her album, before another couple of years passed as she signed to Cooking Vinyl and waited for the legalities to be completed.
“It felt like I’d retired or was in prison,” she has said. “But if you’re lucky to live long enough, there are always going to be peaks and troughs.” There Is No Other is a career peak. A record full of shimmering indie folk and shaky synths, its wobbles lull you into a false sense of security that all is right in the world it was made. But, lean in closer, and you can hear the hard miles travelled in the making of this lilting and lullaby-dominated music. Standout song The Heart of It All…

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…is the country soul classic fans of her collaborations with Americana hero Mark Lanegan knew she had in her, with its perpetual motion and heavenly harmonies. Those hard miles can also be heard in the clipped electric guitars and stacked Staples-esque vocals of Hey World, while The National Bird of India fades in on swooping string sounds, Campbell whispering her secrets in your ear. It’s not all warm and tender love, however, as the taut and tough Below Zero reveals when Campbell sings ‘Tired of all the bullshit / Playing nice / Shadow boxing / Skating on thin ice’ over a twisted acoustic guitar figure and strings that bring to mind Beck’s magnificent Morning Phase. There Is No Other is a similar, gentle masterpiece, but there’s leather located behind the silk and the record packs an emotional punch.

An Ireland native who now resides in the US, Siobhán O’Brien is in great company here as John Bush and Matt Hubbard, both players in Edie Brickell & New Bohemians, handle percussion and keyboards respectively.
The title track starts the listen with an acoustic guitar, and a rootsy delivery as O’Brien’s pretty vocals suite the elegance perfectly, and “The King’s Fool” follows with a soulful quality amid the breezy melodies. Elsewhere, “The Burger Song” gets rhythmic and playful in its more forceful display, while “Hold Me In Your Arms” gets romantic with a ballad atmosphere and strong vocal acrobatics. “I Stayed Too Long”, one of the album’s best, then finds more rugged yet tuneful territory with a firm rock influence.

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Near the end, “Sanctuary” recruits modern pop ideas into the gorgeous landscape, and “Mother” ends the listen with some spacey sounds that turn into acoustic strumming in the emotive and intimate exit.
An artist born into a musical family, O’Brien carries influences like Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan and Neil Young with her, and this 3rd album documents the highs and lows of recent years of her life with absoring, raw beauty.

Nantes-based Australian drummer and percussionist Will Guthrie returns to Black Truffle with Nist-Nah. Like his previous solo record on the label, the abrasive hip-hop concrète of People Pleaser (BT027), Nist-Nah finds Guthrie branching out in a new direction, this time in a suite of six percussion pieces primarily using the metallaphones, hand drums and gongs of the Gamelan ensembles of Indonesia.
The music presented here is grounded in Guthrie’s travels in Indonesia and study of various forms of Gamelan music, from the stately suspended temporality of the courtly Javanese Gamelan Sekatan, to the delirious, thuggish repetition that accompanies the Javanese trance ritual Jathilan, to the shimmering acoustic glitch…

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…of contemporary Balinese composer Dewa Alit and his Gamelan Salukat. However, far from an exercise in exoticism, Nist-Nah develops out of Guthrie’s extensive work with metal percussion in recent years (as heard, for example, on his 2015 LP for iDEAL, Sacrée Obsession), where gongs, singing bowls and cymbals are used to build up walls of hovering tones and sizzling details. Though Guthrie is broadening his palette to explore Gamelan instrumentation and pay tribute to his love of this sophisticated yet elemental percussion music, the pieces presented here are equally informed by Guthrie’s interests in free jazz, electro-acoustic music and diverse experimental music practices, exploring long tones, extended techniques, and non-metered pulse.

Nist-Nah presents a variety of approaches across its six pieces, from the crisp, precise rhythmic complexity of the opening title track to the droning textures of ‘Catlike’ and ‘Elders’. On the epic closing ‘Kebogiro Glendeng’, Guthrie offers an extended, layered rendition of a Javanese piece belonging to a repertoire primarily used for warmups, beginner’s groups and children first learning Gamelan, elegantly gesturing to his own amateur status while using the piece’s insistently repeated melody as an extended exploration of the hypnotic effects of repetition, falling in and out of time with himself to create woozy, narcotic effects until the piece eventually dissolves into a wavering fog.

Born of a communal houseful of artists and musicians in Vancouver, British Columbia, the collectively run group N0v3l make tense, jumpy songs modeled closely on the groove-embracing dissonance of ’70s and ’80s post-punk. Their not-quite self-titled debut Novel feels somewhere between a short album and a lengthy EP, with eight tightly wound tunes heavy on funky basslines that duel with jagged guitar leads and hyperactive rhythms. This particular intersection of danceable funk and angsty punk was well explored by originators like Gang of Four, Essential Logic, A Certain Ratio, the Pop Group, and an entire scene of post-punk bands decades before N0v3l came around. The disco beat, auxiliary percussion, and swells of echo on the shouty vocals…

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…of “Sign on the Line” replicate the raw crackle of post-punk almost by the numbers. It’s hard to hear the sharp vocal delivery and general rough-hewn push of “Natural” and not think of Gang of Four. The off-kiltered rhythms and brittle guitar leads of “Are They” sound more borrowed from early-2000s acts like Moving Units or the Rapture, who were themselves studying post-punk when developing their sound. While the generous application of post-punk signifiers sometimes feels like listening to a copy of a copy, there’s also something to N0v3l’s sound that places them in their own time. Amidst the bold-faced reference points to England’s frustrated working-class punk circa 1977, the chiming unison guitar lines that weave in and out of “To Whom It May Concern” sound very Canadian circa 2019, sharing a chorus-drenched tone and lackadaisical melodic approach not dissimilar to Canadian indie acts like Mac Demarco or Tops. It’s a slight element, but it shows up again and again, giving otherwise completely stark songs like “Take You For” or “Will to Power” a distinctive lightness that keeps N0v3l’s songs from being mere remakes.

Likewise, complex production and arrangement add unexpected instrumentation to the mix, dropping in synth or saxophone and abruptly shifting the feel of the track. At points it’s hard to overlook the likeness to well-known innovators of the past, but the members have enough of their own fingerprints on the material to keep it interesting.

The infectious draw of Beatrice Dillon’s Workaround comes from a prolonged time of tinkering and reformulating sound as it exists. It’s a debut that not only sticks to an unconventional agenda but shows a devotion to moving the genre of techno into another realm.
Beatrice Dillon has long experimented with widening her electronic scope, but Workaround is an LP that takes into consideration its roots. Seen tipping her hat to iconic names like Throbbing Gristle, Shinichi Atobe, and even bits of Aphex Twin, Dillon offers an intriguingly straightforward approach to influence that retains her very own personal stamp right in its center.
Dillon’s no stranger to the idea of risk in her music. With a slew of releases under her belt,…

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…it comes as no surprise that she’s bound to venture off into different avenues. Therefore, as she’s well-equipped to test new waters without obscuring her essence, and Workaround shows her as grounded as ever. Embracing chic elements of avant-garde and body-moving techno, her debut remains clear-cut, her songs fashioned around sharp, enunciated thuds.

It’s an LP that would almost feel sterile with its precise and uniform edges, were it not for Dillon’s inviduality. Album opener “Workaround One” proves Dillon’s talent for remaking techno in her own image. Its tribal percussion variations vaguely call to mind early Liars, particularly moments on Drums Not Dead, while there’s a slight Afrobeat influence on some moments here.

All that being said, it’s the simplest tracks that make Workaround such an intriguing listen. “Clouds Strum” scurries as a super-charged club hit while “Workaround Four” recalls the work of Axel Willner as The Field. But even while Dillon charges through Workaround with exceptional moments, filler tracks like “Workaround Five” at just over a minute and a half wouldn’t be missed if she decided to scrap them. This goes for “Workaround Six”, too: it sounds a little like Dillon nonsensically fiddling around as though she’s sound checking. But aside from those smaller gripes, Workaround’s basis quickly bounces back into sharper focus. LP highlight, “Workaround Seven” bustles with an infectious groove accompanied with coppery string plucks, showing Dillon unafraid to incorporate the unorthodox.

Cuts like “Workaround Eight” stand as rhythmic fuel for Dillon. Channeling the shuttering frequencies of techno polymath, Aleksi Perälä, it’s an LP highpoint, if not its strongest track. It’s a tune that strobes uncontrollably and it’ll easily stand as a night’s peak in the club. But Dillon’s music tends to function best with greater versatility. There’s no struggle here; Dillon’s creative fluidity manages to harness a lot of what her peers fail to achieve by building on what she has, rather than overreaching entirely. On Workaround, Beatrice Dillon leaves us to ponder how she’ll continue to transform the idea of techno and club culture.

In the story of Homer’s Odyssey, a tale embedded in Greek mythology, Odysseus returns from war to find his wife held hostage by men fighting to be her husband. Odysseus’ quest to get back to his island and eject his wife’s suitors is built upon the undying love for his home and family. Using this story as a guideline, Gengahr’s songwriter Felix Bushe carves his own love story from similar experience, minus the executions.
Straying from their usual dreamy alt-pop stance, with the help of Bombay Bicycle Club’s Jack Steadman on production duties, Gengahr release an album that is bold, daring and dazzling with sheer pop excellence. It packs in a full bag of human emotion eloquently and sophisticatedly. Whilst “Heavenly Maybe” dances over Felix’s…

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…problems with a disco-infected funk, “Fantasy” soars hauntingly through the core of the album like a space film theme song. Louder than previous entries, there are injections of noise dotted throughout that would seem alien on any other Gengahr album – “You’re No Fun” having an almost youthful exuberance personified by a crash of guitars.

Whilst 2015’s A Dream Outside and 2018’s Where Wildness Grows float within a contained bubble, much of Sanctuary has been left to self-implode. The product of friends seizing control, it is an album that turns Felix’s pain into a pleasurable listening experience. It is deeply heartfelt with an underlying positivity, and looks ahead to a bright future. — thelineofbestfit.com

There are almost as many strings to guitarist Paolo Angeli‘s bow as there are on his customized instrument. Ethnomusicologist, researcher and international arts festival director, Angeli plays in duos with Hamid Drake, Iva Bittova and Fred Frith. It’s as a solo performer, however, that the Sardinian guitarist is probably best known. On this hour-long solo suite, Angeli reinterprets the music of English alt-rockers Radiohead, deftly weaving traditional Sardinian folk songs and his own compositions into the mix. It’s hard to believe that there are no overdubs, so multi-layered are Angeli’s arrangements, but then again, his prepared Sardinian guitar is no ordinary instrument.
Eighteen sympathetic strings arranged in two banks, the upper one running to the head of…

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…a cello; foot operated hammers linked to the primary strings; internal motors that activate little propellers that trill the strings; multiple outputs; and an effects box. Suffice it to say, Angeli’s guitar is a hybrid beast—a cross between a guitar, a baritone guitar, a cello and a drum kit. The suite, played mostly acoustically, with just occasional, bowed electric interjections, is best appreciated in an uninterrupted sitting.

Angeli purveys an impressive range of textures, styles and emotions. The ragged strings on “Vinagra” evoke a beat-up old guitar from a junk shop. On “Scatterbrain,” his delicate picking is neo-classical in tone, while on “Ora Illegale” there’s an Andean folkloric vibe . His arco playing is no less varied; cello-like on the intro to “Airbag,” Angeli conjures an Eastern violin on “Teflon,” and frequently employs the bow to create powerful electric riffs or drone soundscapes.

Rhythmically and percussively, Angeli is just as creative. The brushes effect on “Knives Out” could well be a plastic bag over a foot—a typical live-aid for the guitarist. Flamenco rhythms on the guitar body color the mid-section of “Knives Out.” More often than not, guitar melody, bass rhythm and percussive patterns work simultaneously—all without overdubs. Only on “Kumquat” does Angeli resort to loops. The suite is a technically impressive feat, but more importantly, Angeli conveys the emotional shading of Radiohead’s strangely mournful, yet frequently uplifting songs.

Southern Mediterranean and Sardinian folkloric strains are never far from the surface. Angeli sings in Sardinian dialect on “Andira” and Notti d’ea,” traditional songs from Northern Sardinia dating to the eighteenth century. His distinctive vocals break up the predominantly instrumental suite, and his yearning, melancholy delivery blends perfectly with the emotional language embedded in Radiohead’s compositions. The guitarist’s own compositions, threaded throughout the suite, are more experimental in design, creating diverse atmospheres that chime well with Radiohead’s own eclectic sonic world.

Two years in the making, 22.22 Free Radiohead is a striking labor of love. In his highly personal homage to Radiohead, Angeli captures the spirit of one of popular music’s most creative bands, while leaving his own inimitable mark, every step of the way. — AllAboutJazz

Personnel: Paolo Angeli: prepared Sardinian guitar, vocals, noises.

On election night 2016 a newly reconstituted Okkervil River found themselves at a small club nested within the botanical gardens of Brussels, Belgium, nearing the end of European tour dates for the deeply personal eighth Okkervil River album Away.
At the start of this set Will addresses the crowd, telling them how grateful the band is to play a show and take their minds of their fear and anxiety about the outcome back in the states. There follows a dreamy 90-minutes plus of music played by a band with their minds half in the room and half somewhere else, reenacting crucial cuts from Away as well as breathing adventurous new life into sometimes almost unrecognizable old Okkervil River classics. The set ends with a cover taped…

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…a few days later, paying tribute to Leonard Cohen who died the day before the election. Sonically a bridge between Away and the following Okkervil album* In the Rainbow Rain* (which would start production shortly after the ill-fated presidential election) Election Night Special is a powerful, urgent performance and the first audio document of the band in its present lineup. Liner notes for Election Night Special contain a long essay by Will on the making of Away and his recollections of that emotionally charged European tour.

Okkervil River R.I.P.
Call Yourself Renee
The Industry
Unless It’s Kicks
Plus Ones
Mary on a Wave
A Girl in Port
Judey on a Street
Our Life is Not a Movie or Maybe
For Real
The War Criminal Rises and Speaks
Days Spent Floating (in the Halfbetween)
So Come Back, I Am Waiting
Anthem (Leonard Cohen cover)

The fourth album from Shopping – comprising members of Trash Kit, Sacred Paws, Current Affairs and Wet Dog – is another impressive collection of spiralling, high-energy dance-punk. Though here, the rougher edges of 2018’s The Official Body have been smoothed over with a cleaner-cut production courtesy of US-based producer Davey Warsop, and enhanced with a newfound appreciation for classic ‘80s synth-pop: the heavy, dystopian keyboards driving the darkened discos of ‘Follow Me’, ‘For Your Pleasure’ and ‘Lies’ sound like nothing else produced in Shopping’s seven-year existence. And yet, these departures aside, all in all, it’s steady business as usual.
All or Nothing is a grand refinement of their previous work, rather than a reinvention.

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Still retained is that amazing sense of propulsion and momentum the group have made their own; ‘Initiative’ and ‘Body Clock’ are impossibly fast, constantly threatening to overbalance themselves, yet always remaining resolute and gloriously intact.

Sam Chown records kaleidoscopic meta-pop as Shmu when he isn’t making neo-prog as part of the duo Zorch or touring as the drummer for artists such as Vinyl Williams or Botany. He’s been making music for almost his entire life, actually, and has recorded hundreds of albums’ worth of material. Pure Bliss is his first full-length for French label Requiem Pour un Twister (also home to Vinyl Williams), and it’s the album he’s spent the longest time working on — songs from this album date back to 2004, when Chown was still a teenager, and the bulk of it was written and recorded a decade later. Chown presented the demos to Lionel Williams (Vinyl Williams’ namesake), and the two re-recorded the drums and completed the album. The songs themselves all come out…

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…of Chown’s constant struggles with anxiety, panic attacks, and sleep disorders, and the various ways he’s tried to cope with them over the years. Compared to his other albums, Pure Bliss, while still sprawling and multi-faceted, is certainly less scattered than his mind-blowing glitchgaze epic Shh!!!! (which is destined to be turned into a cult classic by a future generation, not unlike its closest cousin, Sweet Trip’s masterpiece Velocity : Design : Comfort), and it doesn’t quite delve into R&B and yacht rock influences the way his vaporwave-tinged follow-ups Lead Me to the Glow and Vish did.

The music is generally a sort of drifting psychedelic art-pop, filled with lush self-harmonies and spiked with the shoegaze guitars more prevalent in Shmu’s earlier work. Tracks like “Cursed Lips” and “Marble Falls” manage to blend jangle pop and prog-rock, while “Intertwining Sands” has a touch of post-punk bleakness to it. “Wolves of L.A.” is at once downcast, sparkling, and trippy, resulting in the album’s most memorable and impressive track.

While not as unabashedly weird as Shmu’s other albums, Pure Bliss is undoubtedly more personal, and feels like an essential distillation of Chown’s emotional and musical evolution.

Last week, Nicolas Jaar signalled that Against All Logic had performed a hard left turn, releasing an onslaught of a mix and an EP that made the older, warmer version of the project seem outmoded. Even so, the power and violence of 2017 – 2019, this new LP, is shocking. “Because if you can’t beat ’em, kill ’em / If you can’t kill ’em, fuck ’em,” growls Lydia Lunch on “If You Can’t Do It Good, Do It Hard.” A booming electro rhythm re-enters and she catches the beat, chanting the track’s title as if playing drill sergeant. Jaar has frequently asked that we move our bodies to his music, but never in this way. This is straight-up fight music. 2017 – 2019 isn’t quite this lairy elsewhere, but most of it is jagged, hard-hitting and seriously over-driven. The change has Jaar sounding artistically replenished.

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Some time away has maybe heightened the album’s impact. Jaar’s last major release was in February 2018, the Against All Logic album 2012 – 2017, where feel-good, sample-driven house, soul and disco were the prevailing moods. At the time, Andrew Ryce used words like “pastiche” and “generic” in a review, confirming the feeling that we’d come to expect, or even demand, a level of innovation from Jaar. He’s an artist who, since getting his break as a teenager, had become a headline act off the back of strange, singular and often downbeat music. This seemed to stem from an uncommon curiosity. Away from the main tides of the international music scene these past couple years, Jaar has pursued a dizzying array of projects, including an artist residency at Het HEM in Amsterdam, a soundtrack for the famed Chilean filmmaker Pablo Larraín, and principal production work on the incredible FKA twigs album MAGDALENE. What appeared to plenty of people as a time of inactivity was, it seems, an intense period of creative development.

That Beyoncé is the first voice we hear on 2017 – 2019 is instructive of the bold new direction. Hers and Sean Paul’s vocals are lifted from “Baby Boy” and layered over a crackling broken beat, an uncanny string-like instrument and inviting synth chords. A sample of Luther Ingram’s 1972 soul song “(If Loving You Is Wrong) I Don’t Want to Be Right” appears on track two, a degraded house cut, thus establishing a template of sorts: 2017 – 2019 is an album of stylistic leaps, radiant melodies, difficult-to-place sounds and red herrings. Back-to-back opening tracks with instantly recognisable sample flips, for example, sets up an expectation of many more to follow. Instead, there are none. That is unless you can spot the source of the hip-hop loop on “With An Addict.” Jaar casually filters it into the arrangement to create a half-time contrast with the main drums, a rolling footwork/jungle-style pattern that features percussion reminiscent of the “Apache” break. The poignant, daybreak melody caps a track that bundles the album’s strongest qualities.

The stylistic leaps I mentioned are actually a bit of an audio illusion later in the album. Perhaps you could describe “Alarm,” “Deeeeeeefers” “Faith” and “Penny,” which appear consecutively, as all being house and/or techno. Each features a four-on-the-floor kick pattern and is made for the dance floor. But there’s a significant scope of differences and ideas between them. The two-minute-long breakdown/build in “Deeeeeeefers” might be dismissed by some EDM artists as being OTT, with Jaar ballooning his damaged synth lines until the whole thing plops back into place as though nothing has happened. “Faith,” on which he flexes the choral range of his voice, could have been signed to Innversions were it not so weird. The fantastic “Penny,” meanwhile, is a 142-BPM techno track that less dogmatic DJs should be into—its chargrilled timbre, matched with groovy percussion and emotive melodies, is unlike most modern techno productions. Along with the buckled drum cut “Alarm,” these tracks seem to gain inspiration from the subversion of templates that in the past Jaar himself has worked with.

All of which returns us to the idea of replenishment. The military man on the record’s artwork, the copious levels of distortion, the brazen use of samples, the warping of genre tropes—on the surface it all feels like a “fuck you,” perhaps at the state of things, perhaps at Jaar’s own artistic history. If there is anger here, though, it’s complicated, and it’s almost always offset by hope or damaged beauty. Perhaps, instead, the noise is an alternate means of expressing something that before found a different form in Jaar’s music. The hazy peculiarity of the past is now manifested in different materials and through some force. Maybe it’s an idea to consider during the record’s only moment of relative calm: “You (Forever),” the closer. The tender vibe here is reminiscent of Space Is Only Noise, the 2011 album that established his name, but the sounds are of a far-off time and culture. A decent sign of an artist evolving, in other words.

It’s now eight years since Icelander Ásgeir Trausti Einarsson’s album Dýrð í dauðaþögn became the fastest ever selling debut album in his homeland, yes even pipping Björk and Sigur Rós to the post. The album was then translated into English with able assistance from John Grant and titled Into the Silence for added international heft. Second album Afterglow was a brave, yet fascinating departure from the acoustic folk with added electronica and beats.
Ásgeir’s third album Bury the Moon, or Sátt for its Icelandic title, is more of a return to the folky and atmospheric sonic blueprint of his debut. Born out of a need to escape to the Icelandic countryside following the disintegration of a relationship, Ásgeir holed himself up in a summer house…

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…in the winter with his guitar, a small keyboard and minimal recording equipment. The results are deep, authentic and emotionally introspective.

The album opens with Pictures, its strumming evoking – of all things – Sheryl Crow‘s Redemption Day, and the melancholy builds gradually into brighter chorus sections with warmer brass creeping in towards the end. Youth, written with his father, the poet Einar Georg Einarsson, explores clinging onto childhood innocence in this dark and troubling world against a backdrop of plucking guitars, as horns gear us towards the finale. The touchingly haunting Eventide will bring a tear to perhaps even the most cynical of eyes with its stark reality of grief and loss, and the beautiful atmospheric electronica of Breathe is layered over a soft and ethereal drum beat while romantically exploring holding on tight no matter how rough the seas get.

Being immersed in nature weaves into the album on the soulful Living Water, an ode to Iceland’s natural resources and an urgency to preserve them. Similarly, the more antagonistic Lazy Giants treads the narrative of Tori Amos‘ Up The Creek with an accompanying music video seeing Ásgeir strum a guitar while blind capitalist greed is leading to artefacts and nature crumbling behind him.

The album’s standout is the orchestral and cinematic Rattled Snow. Electronic pulses are urged on by a thumping drum beat underpinned by celestial strings. Ásgeir’s trademark haunting, yet uplifting vocal is here in spades. He may not be able to see the outline of the hills for the snow, but is still optimistic silently waiting for Spring and hopeful and happier times.

At the album’s heart beats a narrative of emotional torment, yet not only on a personal level. Bury The Moon showcases the healing and enveloping power of nature, yet also hones in on the simple and absolute necessity of its existence. This dystopia we are in will wreak more havoc with its conceited leaders and rapacious lawmakers all too hasty in their dangerous disregard of climate change. It’s a harsh reality, but one we must face.

The album closes with the bittersweet and jagged title track recalling Naughty Boy featuring Beyoncé‘s Runnin’ (Lose It All) depicting someone who has literally moved Heaven and Earth for their lover, the dawn then breaking on the realisation that even this will never be enough.

Ásgeir has returned with an ambiently powerful and a brilliantly immersive album. Unlike his One Little Indian labelmate Björk, we should not be puzzled by these emotional landscapes, but rather beguiled and entranced.

Sunflowers return with their third LP, Endless Voyage. A conceptual sci-fi record about the end of the world, the rise of the machine, doubt about one’s individuality and the acceptance of chaos.
This is a story about the Studiomaster… an entity seeking out the decadent minds of mankind and warping their reality from within as it pulls you into its world. As you feel the calmness settle in, you begin to question your surroundings. The journey continues until you can no longer draw the line between your perception of reality and what the machine wants you to believe is real. A simulation where the user is always kept away from the world around them and kept distracted to the machine’s plan. Don’t get distracted, he might be listening in on your thoughts…

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You will be taken on a voyage with many ups and downs and you will beg to do it over and over. Listening to it, the classic psych punk, noisy pop sound that the band has been preaching has been polished and tamed (to some degree) with a fresh air of exploration into their sound. A ping pong game between pulsing drums, bouncy bass, reverberated echoes of vocals and loud schizophrenic guitars meet a mellower, smoothed electronic compositions that go deep into the band’s musical knowledge.
Truly a rollercoaster of a record, ‘Endless Voyage’ runs smoothly through its 40 minutes, pulling you in and out of a trance you forget your’e in. Then morning comes and you realise you’ve been fully gripped by it, leaving a howling hiss in your ears and your soul.
The band recorded Endless Voyage during the summer of 2018 and spring of 2019. Recorded between Arda Recording Co., Casa do Soto in Arouca and their house in Porto.

Hamerkop is a pair of Baltimore-based sound nerds, one of whom hails from Christchurch. Annabel Alpers (formerly of Bachelorette) is a composer, singer and instrumentalist, and Adam Cooke is a Baltimorean drummer and audio engineer.
Their new work, Remote, is a live, multiple-speaker, surround sound experience. The project began as an exploration of the beauty of sound, inspired by Alpers’ collection of field recordings from her homeland and beyond. The resulting work still contains the pop sentiment of Alpers’ previous work in Bachelorette, anchored by Cooke’s minimalist drumming as she expands her use of experimental textures and vocal layers. In Annabel’s words, “My intention is to create…

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…a live sonic experience that encompasses the audience, and is as cathartic for you to listen to as it is for me to make. I’m inspired by the beauty of my remote homeland, New Zealand, which I miss so much when I’m away. I’m also inspired to find beauty in parts of everyday life – patterns and forms, mundanity, longing, excitement, nature (tamed and untamed), connections, fragility… (the list is endless) – and attempt to communicate this awe to you, through music.”

Remote is the debut of Hamerkop – a song-cycle that contrasts everyday life with an idealized, longed-for fantasy world, seeking catharsis through the wedding of personal texts and sonic scrapbooks to lush melodic songscapes. The chill of their synth-pop is highlighted by the sighing of the human soul concealed within it. In the spaces between these things, Hamerkop finds the spot where we all feel great joy in our shared existence.

Rich with avant-garde flair and provocateur spirit, the London-based quintet more than justify their fêted status on a much-anticipated debut.
Despite an aesthetic rooted in the storied androgynous tradition of glam rock and new romanticism, HMLTD appear less defined by the rigid tropes of the past, instead transcending genre boundaries at a whim; hybridising art rock, trap, electro and post-punk elements with quickfire elasticity. Formerly known as Happy Meal Ltd, the five-piece have previously issued glimpses of their penchant for quasi-new wave decadence, albeit in a chequered fashion – a scattering of singles and 2018 EP release Hate Music Last Time Delete to their name. Testament to the outfit’s commitment to creative independence, West of Eden…

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…indulges in a vision freed from the corporate machinations that have proved a professional thorn in the band’s side in recent years, namely their breakdown in relations with Sony.

London-via-Torquay frontman Henry Spychalski alternates between the persona of crooning troubadour and angst-ridden anarchist with the kind of vacillative opulence that commands immediate attention, proving a master at tempo-shifting traction. “The West Is Dead” ushers in the album’s treatise on western civilisation as an eroding edifice, its apparent impending downfall serenaded with Spychalski’s paradoxical unruly sophistication: “The Dalai Lama wore Dolce and Gabbana in vermillion red / And the West is dead / CEOs hang themselves by their neckties / And the West is dead”. Spaghetti western strings strike through “The Ballad of Calamity James”, hinging alongside “To The Door” in a glitch-torn diptych – Ennio Morricone spliced with the likes of The Garden and Outer Limits Recordings. The spiralling Bowie-esque architecture of “Satan, Luella & I” yields to a similar sense of occasion; shades of Roxy Music, Wall of Voodoo and Sparks recognisable at times, notably on “Mikey’s Song” and the Depeche Mode-nodding “Nobody Stays In Love”.

With a title subverting John Steinbeck’s East of Eden, and embedded allusions to the Biblical story of Cain and Able, HMLTD nod towards in a philosophical discourse that seems relevant in our turbulent times; Spychalski describing the West as a “superpower masked by the façade of luxury and equality… a dying corpse stained by its own sins against humanity”. This ouroboros-like image underpins West of Eden, which could perhaps only be forged in a crucible of turmoil and chaos; the trials of the past few years strengthen the backbone of a concept album that flirts with cultural posterity, morality and existential weight in a concerted sense of design.

Committed to a style and substance that simultaneously looks to the past and future, the five-piece soundtrack their role as esoteric prophets of doom with a sonic credo that proves genuinely idiosyncratic in the current climate – sharp, wit-filled and uninhibited stuff.

Produced entirely using iPhone and iPad apps, the latest LP from future-soul mainstay Steve Spacek is a quirky and inventive exploration of his musical roots, which run deep within the storied dance music scenes of Chicago, Detroit, and London.
The album opens with “Rawl Aredo,” a sleek, grooving deep house jam guided by Spacek’s whispery vocals and electric piano chords that are twisted and warped by an envelope filter. “Waiting 4 You” pairs soft, jazzy organ chords with a lo-fi synth bass, placing it firmly within the same sonic sphere as Larry Heard circa Sceneries Not Songs. “Where We Go,” a high-energy vocal anthem, is a gorgeous reboot of the early ’00s broken beat sound, melding a bouncing kick-clap-rimshot pattern with synths and a devastating bassline.

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“Tell Me” is slightly darker; Spacek’s longing vocals are set dead-center, and the synths and effects that swirl around them create a haunting atmosphere. “African Dream” lays a joyful, minimal vocal over a backing track where bass and percussion are constantly warped with panning and filtering effects. The end result is less a “song” and more of an ever-changing sonic environment.

Bonus track “Child Insperation” distills all of the influences Spacek draws upon throughout Houses. With its driving, 4/4 kick drum, electronic handclaps, deep bassline, and Spacek’s own heavily reverberating voice, the song feels like a winking callback to house music’s past—and a reminder of the liberating, revelatory feeling it can generate on the dancefloor. — daily.bandcamp.com

It’s perhaps not too surprising that a genre enamored with making its listeners drowsy would turn to the topic of dreams as often as ambient does. The music’s soft drone pads aid the act of dozing off — they’re crafted to cushion the harsh silences of our environment. Dream Interpretation, the newest full-length from Tokyo-based artist Kazuya Nagaya, translates the lingering dreams of decades past into spectral sound in an attempt to give shape to subconscious thoughts. The album makes regular use of chime-like bells and gongs, which Nagaya chose for their connection to Zen Buddhism.
Nagaya keeps his arrangements spacey; instrumental lines blend together, mirroring the uncertainty in recalling specific details…

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…from a particularly messy or confusing dream. Occasionally, the mood becomes unsettling: “Wolfman’s Dream” hits a discomfiting fever pitch, with piercing metallic sweeps ringing out over sparse background instrumentation, as a male voice describes—in German—the fear of a wolf pack hurting his family. The synths on “Heathen” feel stylized, its bleeping analog rhythm encircled by dissonant chimes. It’s a wonderfully off-kilter moment—an attempt to find normalcy in an alien environment.

In late 1994, soon after signing to Parlophone, Supergrass attended an EMI event in Brighton. At the corporate soirée, fellow Oxford boys Radiohead introduced the group to Cliff Richard, telling the former Mr Webb that the young group had a single out and that the singer was only 18; Cliff explained that he’d released his first single when he was aged just 17. In Melody Maker a year later, Gaz Coombes recalled his response to the soon-to-be-Sir: “Yeah, but I bet it wasn’t about snorting coke.”
Apocryphal or not, the story tells us a lot about Supergrass: that they had youth on their side, copious charm and cutting wit, and everything in place to enable them to be a genuine sensation. They were that too, for a time, when debut album I Should Coco hit No 1 in summer 1995…

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…their “Alright”/“Time” single reached No 2 and Steven Spielberg wanted to turn them into the next Monkees. Yet with fame, as it goes, what you get is no tomorrow, and so Supergrass have been saddled with their youth, their wit, their cheeky Britpop charms ever since – at least in the eyes of the wider public. This new voluminous boxset, charting their career from 1994 to their last new music in 2008, provides an excellent way for the band to set the story straight, if it’s needed; to shine a light on their impressive evolution, and the sheer variety of musical moods and styles they mastered over their 14 years as a functioning band. Inside the box are all six of their studio albums on picture-disc vinyl and CD, four CDs of unheard live material and a further three CDs of B-sides, rarities, unearthed demos and ‘oddities’ (also included: a book, posters, badges and a seven-inch of new remixes of “Caught By The Fuzz” and “Richard III”).

Of course, even on their debut album, Supergrass were doing things differently to many of their peers in the mid-’90s. I Should Coco remains a brave and diverse album, beginning with a clutch of raging post-punk hurricanes, such as “I’d Like To Know” and “Mansize Rooster”, and gradually transitioning into a more contemplative second half, including the Kevin Ayers-like drift of the six-minute “Sofa (Of My Lethargy)”. Even louder numbers such as “Lose It” 
have hidden depths, its guitar solo ending in a bar of clattering drums and feedback before its fantastic chorus seems to meld a sour jazz harmony into its spiky rush; “Caught By The Fuzz”, too, for all its velocity, is built around a fairly sophisticated chord sequence involving a prominent major-seventh.

1997’s In It For The Money is traditionally, and deservedly, a fan and band favourite, with the group’s outlook darkening on “Richard III”, the bizarrely structured title track and hallucinatory ballad “It’s Not Me”. The band were experimenting more too, with “Cheapskate” influenced by funk, “Hollow Little Reign” a jazzy piano ballad and the closing “Sometimes I Make You Sad” ending the record on a trippy note, its mouth percussion, see-sawing fairground organ and sped-up guitar solo evoking Pepper-era Beatles.

Their 1999 self-titled LP widened the gap between the two poles, with “Pumping On Your Stereo” and “Mary” sniggering pop and the likes of “Faraway”, “Mama & Papa” and “Moving” more measured and mature; the latter, experimental in form and rhythm, has even become one of their best-loved songs, and demonstrated a growing influence in their music: David Bowie. The Dame’s impact was even more potent on 2002’s underrated Life On Other Planets, which embraced glam on the bovver-booted Bolan boogie of “Za”, “Grace” and “See The Light”. Meanwhile, “Never Done Nothing Like That Before” and “Rush Hour Soul” were more ferocious than anything since I Should Coco, and the closing brace of “Prophet 15” and “Run” were swathed in drifts of electronics, Mellotron and lush Beach Boys harmonies.

Supergrass switched gear on the hushed, folky Road To Rouen (2005) and then again for 2008’s Diamond Hoo Ha, a raucous set faintly smelling of Bowie’s Berlin Trilogy. There are some great songs on these LPs, especially the orchestral frenzy of “Roxy” on Road… and the enigmatic, disco-inflected “Butterfly” on its follow-up, but slipping chart positions and intra-band personal issues soon did for the band until their current 
live-only reunion in 2019.

Of course, the real incentives for splashing out on The Strange Ones lie in the extra tracks; there are stunning B-sides that rank among the group’s most magical songs, such as “Wait For The Sun”, “Odd?” and “We Still Need More (Than Anyone Can Give)”, and illuminating rarities: wild full-band demos, a John Peel piss-take, assorted studio outtakes, aborted singles, a cover of The Police’s “Next To You” and experiments deemed unsuitable for their albums. You can even hear Gaz Coombes and bassist/vocalist Mick Quinn deconstructing “Sun Hits The Sky” during a Belgian radio session. Perhaps the most important track is a monitor mix of “Out Of The Blue”, which was planned as a single but ultimately never released; it’s possible to imagine its swinging bounce proving as popular as “Alright”.

The clear highlights of the box, however, are on the four CDs of unreleased live material, where Supergrass are revealed to be some hyper mix of The Who, The Jam and Blue Cheer – at times, such as their 1996 gig at Dublin’s RDS Arena, they’re perhaps better than any of those. That Blur support slot is a manic set, with the quartet powering through 14 songs in 50 minutes. Drummer Danny Goffey lifts the tempos like a more driving Keith Moon, spraying out ridiculous fills every few bars, Mick Quinn fiddles like Paul McCartney and Jean-Jacques Burnel rolled into one, while keyboardist Rob Coombes keeps the whole glorious onslaught tethered to Earth; Gaz Coombes’ guitar breaks on “Lenny” or “I’d Like To Know” are truly Hendrix-esque, permanently on that thrilling edge of feedback. They bring out a horn section to augment “Alright” and a closing “Going Out”, but they barely register beneath the sea of noise the quartet produce. Their sets at 1997’s Glastonbury, 1998’s Reading and 2000’s T In The Park are nearly as unhinged and almost as exciting.

The live discs showcase the ’Grass’s other side too, with a bunch of stripped-down acoustic performances from the Road To Rouen era. 
“Roxy” at Ronnie Scott’s, just Mellotron flutes, Rhodes piano and vintage rhythm box, is about as far from “Mansize Rooster” as one could get, and “Tales Of Endurance (Parts 4, 5 & 6)”, from the same show, suggests a world where Pink Floyd recruited Ennio Morricone for “Atom Heart Mother” instead of Ron Geesin.

Whether the group can recapture their two live extremes at their 2020 shows remains to be seen, but their chops, charm and sense of experimentation are still intact, and still much underrated, so it’s a good bet. While casual listeners might continue to associate Supergrass with Chopper bikes, adolescent abandon and teeth “nice and clean”, this fantastic boxset instead reveals the full story of one of the best British bands of the last 30 years. Strange in their worlds, for sure, but much more than just alright.

CD01 – Roots & Vines (Demos, Out-Takes and Oddities)

01. Sitting Up Straight (4 Track Demo) (2:23)
02. Caught By The Fuzz (4 Track Demo) (2:15)
03. Lose It (4 Track Demo) (2:54)
04. Richard III (4 Track Demo) (2:49)
05. Out Of The Blue (Studio Recording Monitor Mix) (2:28)
06. Moving (8 Track Demo) (3:08)
07. Sun Hits The Sky (Acoustic Radio Session, Studio Brussel, 2002) (1:13)
08. Stinkfinger (Studio Recording Monitor Mix) (2:30)
09. Dark Star (Studio Recording) (2:21)
10. Brecon Beacons (Rehearsal Room Demo) (3:04)
11. Can’t Get Up (Mini-Dosc) (2:04)
12. Funniest Thing (4 Track Demo) (3:01)
13. Orbiting Around The World (Mini-Disc) (2:17)
14. Sad Girl (Radio Kerrang! 105.2, Birmingham, 2005) (3:56)
15. Road To Rouen (Studio Outtake) (2:28)
16. Fin (Live At UEA, Norwich, 2005) (3:38)
17. Car Crash (Rehearsal Room Demo) (4:29)
18. Next To You (Studio Recording Monitor Mix) (2:44)
19. Bury My Heart (Demo) (3:36)
20. 345 (Demo) (3:24)
21. Tronic (Demo) (3:47)

CD02 – Rarities, Remixes & B-Sides Disc 1

01. Caught By The Fuzz (Backbeat Version) (2:17)
02. Strange Ones (Backbeat Version) (4:00)
03. Caught By The Fuzz (Acoustic) (3:01)
04. Odd? (4:09)
05. Wait For The Sun (4:08)
06. Sex! (2:35)
07. Condition (2:44)
08. Je Suis Votre Papa Sucre (1:47)
09. Melanie Davis (2:44)
10. Sometimes We’re Very Sad (2:21)
11. Nothing More’s Gonna Get In My Way (4:02)
12. 20ft Halo (3:18)
13. Sun Hits The Sky (Bentley Rhythm Ace Remix) (5:38)
14. Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others (3:03)
15. Don’t Be Cruel (5:12)
16. The Animal (4:49)
17. We Still Need More (Than Anyone Can Give) (3:34)

CD03 – Rarities, Remixes & B-Sides Disc 2

01. We Still Need More (Than Anyone Can Give) [Dust Brothers Recording] (3:45)
02. Sick (3:40)
03. What A Shame (2:44)
04. Lucky (No Fear) (3:13)
05. You’ll Never Walk Again (2:15)
06. You Too Can Play Alright (4:56)
07. Believer (3:48)
08. Faraway [Acoustic Version] (4:56)
09. Oracle (3:48)
10. Velvetine (3:39)
11. Electric Cowboy (5:07)
12. Tishing In Windows (Kicking Down Doors) (2:11)
13. That Old Song (3:58)
14. The Loner (3:26)
15. I Told The Truth (2:21)
16. Everytime (3:14)
17. Kiss Of Life [Tom Tom Club Mix] (6:18)
18. We Dream Of This (3:14)
19. Fin [Dave Eringa Alternative Mix] (3:15)
20. Car Crash (2:57)
21. I Believe In Love (4:46)

CD04 – Live Disc 1

01. Mark Radcliffe Introduction (Mark Radcliffe BBC Radio Session, 24th October 1994) (0:20)
02. Strange Ones (Mark Radcliffe BBC Radio Session, 24th October 1994) (3:48)
03. Time (Mark Radcliffe BBC Radio Session, 24th October 1994) (2:49)
04. Interview (Mark Radcliffe BBC Radio Session, 24th October 1994) (2:20)
05. Sitting Up Straight (Mark Radcliffe BBC Radio Session, 24th October 1994) (2:07)
06. Lenny (Mark Radcliffe BBC Radio Session, 24th October 1994) (2:34)
07. Shane O’Donoghue Introduction (RDS Arena Dublin, 22nd June 1996) (1:39)
08. Lenny (RDS Arena Dublin, 22nd June 1996) (2:53)
09. Caught By The Fuzz (RDS Arena Dublin, 22nd June 1996) (2:45)
10. Sitting Up Straight (RDS Arena Dublin, 22nd June 1996) (2:30)
11. I’d Like To Know (RDS Arena Dublin, 22nd June 1996) (4:21)
12. Odd? (RDS Arena Dublin, 22nd June 1996) (4:08)
13. Lose It (RDS Arena Dublin, 22nd June 1996) (3:13)
14. Richard III (RDS Arena Dublin, 22nd June 1996) (3:36)
15. Strange Ones (RDS Arena Dublin, 22nd June 1996) (4:18)
16. Time (RDS Arena Dublin, 22nd June 1996) (3:24)
17. Alright (RDS Arena Dublin, 22nd June 1996) (2:58)
18. We’re Not Supposed To (RDS Arena Dublin, 22nd June 1996) (3:31)
19. She’s So Loose (RDS Arena Dublin, 22nd June 1996) (3:29)
20. Melanie Davis (RDS Arena Dublin, 22nd June 1996) (3:18)
21. Going Out (RDS Arena Dublin, 22nd June 1996) (5:33)

CD05 – Live Disc 2

01. I’d Like To Know [Glastonbury Festival, 1997.06.26] (4:43)
02. Richard III [Glastonbury Festival, 1997.06.26] (3:33)
03. Sitting Up Straight [Glastonbury Festival, 1997.06.26] (2:21)
04. Cheapskate [Glastonbury Festival, 1997.06.26] (3:06)
05. Time [Glastonbury Festival, 1997.06.26] (3:06)
06. Alright [Glastonbury Festival, 1997.06.26] (3:06)
07. Odd? [Glastonbury Festival, 1997.06.26] (3:53)
08. In It For The Money [Glastonbury Festival, 1997.06.26] (3:15)
09. Tonight [Glastonbury Festival, 1997.06.26] (3:18)
10. You Can See Me [Glastonbury Festival, 1997.06.26] (4:00)
11. Caught By The Fuzz [Glastonbury Festival, 1997.06.26] (2:21)
12. Going Out [Glastonbury Festival, 1997.06.26] (4:55)
13. It’s Not Me [Glastonbury Festival, 1997.06.26] (3:29)
14. Sun Hits The Sky [Glastonbury Festival, 1997.06.26] (5:05)
15. Strange Ones [Glastonbury Festival, 1997.06.26] (3:50)
16. Lenny (3:39)
17. Out Of The Blue [Reading Festival, 1998.08.29] (2:48)
18. Alright [Reading Festival, 1998.08.29] (2:43)
19. In It For The Money [Reading Festival, 1998.08.29] (3:42)
20. Richard III [Reading Festival, 1998.08.29] (3:44)
21. Sun Hits The Sky [Reading Festival, 1998.08.29] (4:17)
22. Going Out [Reading Festival, 1998.08.29] (4:49)

CD06 – Live Disc 3

01. Mary [T In The Park, 2000.07.09] (4:25)
02. Alright [T In The Park, 2000.07.09] (3:09)
03. Time [T In The Park, 2000.07.09] (3:36)
04. Jesus Came From Outta Space [T In The Park, 2000.07.09] (4:42)
05. Sick [T In The Park, 2000.07.09] (3:37)
06. Faraway [T In The Park, 2000.07.09] (5:41)
07. Sun Hits The Sky [T In The Park, 2000.07.09] (4:25)
08. Going Out [T In The Park, 2000.07.09] (4:36)
09. Caught By The Fuzz [T In The Park, 2000.07.09] (3:23)
10. Steve Lamacq Introduction [Reading Festival, 2001.08.25] (0:30)
11. Pumping On Your Stereo [Reading Festival, 2001.08.25] (3:35)
12. Caught By The Fuzz [Reading Festival, 2001.08.25] (2:24)
13. Moving [Reading Festival, 2001.08.25] (4:24)
14. Can’t Get Up [Reading Festival, 2001.08.25] (3:30)
15. Beautiful People [Reading Festival, 2001.08.25] (3:28)
16. Late In The Day [Reading Festival, 2001.08.25] (3:56)
17. Lose It [Reading Festival, 2001.08.25] (2:40)
18. Funniest Thing [Reading Festival, 2001.08.25] (2:29)
19. Richard III [Reading Festival, 2001.08.25] (3:32)
20. Going Out [Reading Festival, 2001.08.25] (3:57)
21. Sun Hits The Sky [Reading Festival, 2001.08.25] (4:23)
22. Lenny [Reading Festival, 2001.08.25] (3:34)

CD07 – Live Disc 4

01. St. Petersburg [Radio Kerrang! Session, 2005.08.10] (2:29)
02. Late In The Day [Radio Kerrang! Session, 2005.08.10] (3:58)
03. Seen The Light [Radio Kerrang! Session, 2005.08.10] (2:34)
04. Sitting Up Straight [Radio Kerrang! Session, 2005.08.10] (2:41)
05. Kiss Of Life [Ronnie Scott’s, London, 2005.08.18] (3:37)
06. Tales Of Endurance (Parts 4, 5, &6) [Ronnie Scott’s, London, 2005.08.18] (5:59)
07. Roxy [Ronnie Scott’s, London, 2005.08.18] (4:19)
08. Moving [Ronnie Scott’s, London, 2005.08.18] (3:37)
09. Low C [Ronnie Scott’s, London, 2005.08.18] (4:53)
10. Road To Rouen [Ronnie Scott’s, London, 2005.08.18] (3:28)
11. Bullet [Ronnie Scott’s, London, 2005.08.18] (3:14)
12. Sun Hits The Sky [Ronnie Scott’s, London, 2005.08.18] (5:53)
13. Fin [Ronnie Scott’s, London, 2005.08.18] (3:23)
14. Mary [Ronnie Scott’s, London, 2005.08.18] (2:50)
15. Diamond Hoo Ha Man [Later With Jools Holland, 20008.02.29] (3:26)
16. Bad Blood [Later With Jools Holland, 20008.02.29] (2:58)
17. Rebel In You [Later With Jools Holland, 20008.02.29] (4:21)
18. The Return Of… [Shepherd’s Bush Empire, London, 2008.12.10] (3:25)
19. Ghost Of A Friend [Shepherd’s Bush Empire, London, 2008.12.10] (4:06)
20. Outside [Shepherd’s Bush Empire, London, 2008.12.10] (4:06)

CD08 – I Should Coco

01. I’d Like to Know (4:02)
02. Caught by the Fuzz (2:17)
03. Mansize Rooster (2:35)
04. Alright (3:01)
05. Lose it (2:38)
06. Lenny (2:43)
07. Strange Ones (4:20)
08. Sitting up Straight (2:20)
09. She’s so Loose (3:00)
10. We’re Not Supposed To (2:04)
11. Time (3:10)
12. Sofa (of my lethargy) (6:18)
13. Time to go (1:57)

CD09 – In It For The Money

01. In It For The Money (3:05)
02. Richard III (3:13)
03. Tonight (3:10)
04. Late In The Day (4:43)
05. G-Song (3:28)
06. Sun Hits The Sky (4:56)
07. Going Out (4:17)
08. It’s Not Me (2:56)
09. Cheapskate (2:43)
10. You Can See Me (3:41)
11. Hollow Little Reign (4:09)
12. Sometimes I Make You Sad (2:48)

CD10 – Supergrass

01. Moving (4:26)
02. Your Love (3:27)
03. What Went Wrong (In Your Head) (4:06)
04. Beautiful People (3:22)
05. Shotover Hill (3:43)
06. Eon (3:45)
07. Mary (4:00)
08. Jesus Came From Outta Space (4:10)
09. Pumping On Your Stereo (3:20)
10. Born Again (3:39)
11. Faraway (5:05)
12. Mama & Papa (2:33)

CD11 – Life On Other Planets

01. Za (3:05)
02. Rush Hour Soul (2:55)
03. Seen The Light (2:26)
04. Brecon Beacons (2:56)
05. Can’t Get Up (4:02)
06. Evening Of The Day (5:19)
07. Never Done Nothing Like That Before (1:44)
08. Funniest Thing (2:29)
09. Grace (2:30)
10. LA Song (3:44)
11. Prophet 15 (4:06)
12. Run (5:28)

CD12 – Road To Rouen

01. Tales of Endurance (Parts 4, 5 & 6) (5:31)
02. St. Petersburg (3:10)
03. Sad Girl (3:37)
04. Roxy (6:18)
05. Coffee in the Pot (1:50)
06. Road to Rouen (3:51)
07. Kick in the Teeth (3:37)
08. Low C (4:18)
09. Fin (3:11)

CD13 – Diamond Hoo Ha

01. Diamond Hoo Ha Man (3:25)
02. Bad Blood (3:03)
03. Rebel in You (4:41)
04. When I Needed You (2:31)
05. 345 (3:39)
06. The Return of… (3:36)
07. Rough Knuckles (3:25)
08. Ghost of a Friend (3:54)
09. Whiskey & Green Tea (4:16)
10. Outside (3:32)
11. Butterfly (5:11)