| #576 |
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2001 |
Perilous 576 Its been a busy year for UK outfit Fridge. Keiran Hebden’s second Fourtet solo album emerged a few months ago, and now the fourth Fridge album, Happiness, appears. Rather than continue with Go Beat, Happiness is released on Fridge’s own label Text Records and like the Fourtet album will most likely appear here on Domino. Comprising 9 tracks with simple self-explanatory titles (Melodica & Trombone, Tone Guitar & Drum Noise, etc), Happiness opens much like the first Fourtet LP Dialogue – all clatters and haze. The second track, Drum Machines & Glockespiel, builds from a low crackle and tinkle into a lush rolling quadruple time dub track with chiming guitar, and drums that build into a cacophony by the end of the thirteen minutes. With the exception of the relatively straight instrumental rock of Five Four Child Voices Hebden’s obsession with delicate microsounds, loops, and the use of real instruments alongside samples makes Happiness sound the most adventurous Fridge or Fourtet album so far. The tight flickering edits towards the end of Drums Bass Sonics And Edit sounds like Tortoise running head to head with Oval; and the subtle plucked instruments of Harmonics and the electronic pulsing underpinning the never ending rolls of guitar loop brings an odd warmth to the closing track Long Singing – the only track to be titled something which its not. Over to Twisted Nerve, a label that is veers from the retro-sampling adventures of the highly underrated Andy Votel to the folksy acoustic guitar moods of Dakota Oak, the electronic experiments of Sirconical, and the relatively straight indie sounds of Badly Drawn Boy, comes a welcome cheaply priced sampler titled Everything You Wanted To Know About Twisted Nerve. 19 tracks in all with a little bit of everything from the weird to the straight forward, loud guitars to soft spoken electronics. Well worth checking. Less interesting and more for amusement value is the ultra-cheesy Old Skool compilation from Ministry Of Sound. It really only was a matter of time, and indeed I had expected this to surface closer to 1998 than now. After all, it would have been a perfect companion to all the ‘ten years after the Summer Of Love’ hype. Anyway, packed into two CDs are all the 7” versions or radio edits of all the pop-dance and proto-rave tracks of the fruitful 1987-1992 period. Alongside the credible MARRS sampladelic Pump Up The Volume and Coldcut’s remix of Eric B & Rakim’s Paid In Full, you get abominations like Don’t Go, NJoi’s Anthem, Felix – well, you get the picture. Amongst the rest there is cheesy ‘ardcore like On A Ragga Tip, Kicks Like A Mule’s The Bouncer, Italo anthems like Ride On Time and more. I’m not sure if this sort of compilation has real appeal because its sandwiched between a generation who are way too young to remember these, and a generation who would probably rather forget the bulk of them or would be too embarrassed to front up to a store to buy a compilation with a big smiley acid house face on the cover. Perversely, this is probably what WildFM would have sounded like if it existed back then. At Frigid we’ve got Mik La Vage and Rod Alvarado accompanied by Prince Valium Benzo Experience on the 28th then a special appaearnce by the fabulous Leaf Records boss, Tony Morley (ex-Moody Boyz) on the 4th of November. Morley will be dropping an eclectic set of music you’ll be looking for in the coming months. If his radio shows and regular charts are anything to go by it will be stellar . . . .and did I mention that Cryogenesis 2002 has just been announced ? . . . at long last. www.snarl.org for details Yellow Peril  Goto
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