The other day, I realised I’d forgotten Vic Chesnutt’s two albums from ’09 from my best the year list. At the Cut and Skitter on Take Off are both fine works that have moved me greatly. I didn’t go and amend my post because I couldn’t be bothered. That’s totally trivial and unimportant, especially in the light of Chesnutt’s death today, but it’s those little things you (self)-obsess over in the shadow of death. Sorry, Vic, and thanks for all the music.
Fuck Private Healthcare.
Alex and Jell may follow with theirs if you ask nicely. I’ve not included our own releases…
What A Prick for Forgetting
Vic Chesnutt- Skitter on Take-Off (Vapor)
Vic Chesnutt- At the Cut (Constellation)
Love
epic45- In All The Empty Houses (Make Mine Music)
Fuck Buttons- Tarot Sport (ATP)
Bibio- Ambivalence Avenue (Warp)
The Black Dog- Further Vexations (Soma)
Six Organs of Admittance- Luminous Night (Drag City)
Omar Souleyman- Highway to Hassake (Folk and Pop Sounds of Syria) (Sublime Frequencies)
Sunn O)))- Monoliths and Dimensions (Southern Lord)
Skyramps- Days of Thunder (Self-released)
Shackleton- Three EPs (Perlon)
Group Inerane- Guitars From Agadez (Sublime Frequencies)
Really Like
Nitkowski- Chauffeurs (Function)
King Midas Sound- Waiting For You (Hyperdub)
Strategy- Electric Soup (Low Point)
Andrew Plummer’s World Sanguine Report- Third One Rises (Gravid Hands)
Admiral Angry- Prince Buster (Shelsmusic)
Lovvers- OCD Go Go Go Girls (Wichita)
The Duckworth Lewis Method- ST (1969)
The Horrors- Primary Colours (XL)
Mordant Music – SyMpToMs (Mordant)
Tyondai Braxton- Central Market (Warp)
Part Wild Horses Mane On Both Sides- Bataille de Battle (Singing Knives)
Ulaan Khol- II (Soft Abuse)
Om- God Is Good (Drag City)
Emeralds- Emeralds (Undo Mondo)
Wadada Leo Smith- Tabligh (Cuneiform)
PJ Harvey & John Parish- A Woman A Man Walked By (Island)
Also Enjoyed
Part Chimp- Thriller (Rock Action)
Cold Cave- Love Comes Close (Matador)
Leverton Fox- Country Dances (Gravid Hands)
Oneohtrix Point Never – Rifts (No Fun)
Jay-Z- The Blueprint 3 (Some Major Label)
Teeth of the Sea- Orphaned by the Ocean (Rocket)
Animal Collective- Merriweather Post Pavillion (Domino)
Khanate- Clean Hands Go Foul (Southern Lord)
Evangelista- Prince of Truth (Constellation)
Sonic Youth- The Eternal (Matador)
The Juan McClean- The Future Will Come (DFA)
Do Make Say Think- Other Cities (Constellation)
Would Like to Hear
Focus Group & Broadcast- Broadcast And The Focus Group Investigate Witch Cults Of The Radio Age (Warp)
Bear In Heaven- Beast Rest Forth Mouth (Hometapes)
The Xx- The Xx (Young Turks)
Gareth Hardwick- Aversions (Low Point)
Felix- You Are The One I Pick (Kranky)
Vijay Iyer- Tragicomic (Sunnyside)
That Fucking Tank- Tankology (Gringo)
Flower-Corsano Duo – The Four Aims (VHF)
Pan Sonic & Keiji Haino – Shall I Download A Blackhole And Offer It To You? (Blast First)
Plus everything Leyland Kirby’s released and everything on Sublime Frequencies I’ve not heard. There’s not enough time in the day…
Multi Artist Compilations
Plugged In: Pakistani Pops Library LP (Trunk)
Shadow Music of Thailand (Sublime Frequencies)
Algerian Proto-Rai Underground (Sublime Frequencies)
Newness imminent from Records on Ribs!
Yes! After their critically acclaimed ‘Last Rites EP’, All The Empires of the World will (very) shortly be releasing their full length debut Blessings with us. It sees them moving in a slightly more progressive direction, but without toning down any of their trademark stargazing sludge. A second version- featuring contributions from members of Astrohenge, The Exploits of Elaine, …And Stars Collide and others will be out sometime in the new year too. Bonus!
Mr Dominic Fox has just published an excellent book. It is worth quoting the blurb in full:
To live well in the world one must be able to enjoy it: to love, Freud says, and work. Dejection is the state of being in which such enjoyment is no longer possible. There is an aesthetic dimension to dejection, in which the world appears in a new light. In this book, the dark serenity of dejection is examined through a study of the poetry of Hopkins and Coleridge, and the music of ‘depressive’ black metal artists such as Burzum and Xasthur. The author then develops a theory of ‘militant dysphoria’ via an analysis of the writings of the Red Army Fraction’s activist-theoretician, Ulrike Meinhof. The book argues that the ‘cold world’ of dejection is one in which new creative and political possibilities, as well as dangers, can arise. It is not enough to live well in the world: one must also be able to affirm that another world is possible.
And we will be releasing his excellent companion album, Prolegomenon. Eight dysphoric tracks of hopeful alienation: International Socialist Ambient Black Metal for a cold world and for a better world. Cover art from Toby Price.
Fresh from touring Europe with epic45, EL Heath is putting the finishing touches to an album about the long clsoed Snailbeach Lead Mines, which are near his Shropshire home. Tracks evoke the eerieness of desolation whilst purveying a sense of the clatter that once must have filled these mines. Three tracks can be heard on his myspace, including Heath’s first venture into ‘conventional’ songwriting with the heartbreaking ‘Tragedy at George’s Shaft’. We will be actively seeking donations for this release, with all proceeds going to the Shropshire Mines Trust. The new year will also see Heath release his mini-album Shropshire Hill Country via Wayside and Woodland.
We’re just a little bit excited about this one. Ga’an are a Chicago band who blend the aesthetics of prog, kraut, ambient, post-punk and black metal to create something compellingly otherworldly. They’ve self-released two tapes thus far and we’re mind-blowingly excited to be able to re-release them. Vultures of the Horn II: Living Tribunal is one of my absolute favourite pieces of music right now.
Last but by no means least, purveyors of the finest hardcore/punk/metal Earth Defence Force will be gracing Records On Ribs with their debut album once we sort album artwork out. Recorded by production genius Ian Boult at the marvellous Stuck On A Name Recordings, Nottingham. Imminent riffs.
To Leave A Mark, Les Étoiles’ homage to his home town of Brignorth, is released today, and will be launched in style at a party at Jam Cafe in Nottingham tonight. Come down from 8pm to watch Les Étoiles and El Heath perform, and listen to the ROR DJs spin some tunes whilst enjoying a delicious beer or two. If you can’t make it (and why not?), you’ll have to make do with downloading the album – it’s certainly one of my favourite records of the year so far.
We’re delighted to announce that AtEotW are continuing in the classic heavy metal tradition of announcing your retirement only to come back with new material. Thus spake main man Mark Thomas:
Finally! An album! We’ve decided to stop faffing around with EPs – they’re for squares: OFFICI. The provisional title is TITAN OF LIGHT
Yes. Exxxtreme slvdge kvlt epvic mvtvl. Provisional (again, because commitment is an unreliable frame of reference) track listing is as follows:
1. The Sands Of Saturn
2. Of The Father/Ghosts Of The Sargasso
3. [I Perceive Your Resonance]
4. ???? ?????
5. Titan Of Light
6. The Prophet I
7. The Prophet II: SoleilIf you’ve seen us live, you might have heard the first track – the rest are all BRAND FUCKIN NEW HOLMES. All tracks are, of course, 700 billion years long. Expect guest appearances from BARE MANS.
So now you know.
Meanwhile, the now inaccurately titled Last Rites continues to impress, making Sputnik Music’s recommended ‘Under the Radar’ releases of ’09 so far.
Les Étoiles’ forthcoming album To Leave A Mark is more accurately titled though: a quite wonderful essay on its themes here (which we’re going to print as liner notes for physical copies) and a lovely review here. Both pieces really add worthwhile readings to this stunning album.
It is, of course, out on Friday the 18th September (as free download from here and a ltd.edition CD with photographs and lyric sheets from here and Norman Records), and we’re having a very special launch party at Jam Cafe in Nottingham to celebrate, with EL Heath and Les Étoiles playing live sets.
We’ve had a mailing list for a while, but no easy way of getting your e-mail on it.
You can now sign up to it via the form on the right hand side of this and any page. Expect monthlyish updates on what we are up to straight to your inbox. Grand.
You wait a year for a new release by Talk Less, Say More and like the proverbial bus, two come along at once. I Don’t Know Where I Am, I Don’t Know What I’m Doing is out today, the companion piece to last year’s Go Lucky, but a great record in its own right, the finest in pop music.
As some might have already noticed, we have a presence at SoundCloud. You can submit demos and that sort of thing via our DropBox. It is very well designed website indeed. Here is a track from the above for your delight.
Talk Less, Say More – You Were Right About Me by Records On Ribs
‘It’s About Time’ is now out and you are able to download it. Please do. It’s a really clever record, filled with inventive beats and smart rhymes and is certainly more than worth some of your, ahem, time.
Dominic Fox is the author of the frankly brilliant Cold World that is forthcoming from the marvelous Zero Books. Via Hopkins and Coleridge as well as Ulrike Meinhof, it is a work that considers the positive political aspects of sadness, seeing dejection as a force capable of unhooking someone from the world in order to think a better one.
In celebration of the book’s release we are pleased to be putting out a record by Spiral Jacobs, one of Dominic’s music projects, entitled Prolegomenon, which will serve, indeed, as a musical prolegomenon to the work. The following video gives a hint of what to expect when it arrives in late September: spiralling blackened ambience drifting through withered forests, investigating ‘unholy minimalism’, an attempt to use the techniques of minimalist composers like Arvo Pärt but with disharmony and in the spirit of Burzum and Xasthur. Fascinatingly bleak and utterly unlike anything we have put out before.
Don’t forget, ‘It’s About Time’ by Talk Less, Say More comes out tomorrow.
Calling the Kettle Blacksmith
We’re delighted to announce that we’ll be putting out the debut album by Kettle Blacksmith before too long. 97/100 people will think it’s plain stupid, 2/100 will think it’s hilarious when they’re zoned out at 3 in the morning and 1/100 will think it’s the most incredible work of genius they’ve heard this year. A lot of the time we’re in that 97/100, sometimes we’re in the 2/100 and occasionally we’re in that 1/100. Suffice to say it’s a rather surreal/stupid trip. If you imagine Peter Cook was a tramp who recorded a record with Chris Corsano you’ll be along the right lines.
Not Records on Ribs, but almost as good
As well as the rather spiffing new single from We Show Up On RadaR, we highly recommend you part with your cash to purchase epic45’s beautiful new mini-album In All The Empty Houses. The title track will most certainly be accompanying me to Broadcasting House when Radio 4 rectify their overlooking of me for Desert Island Discs thus far, and RoR spotters will be pleased to note that EL Heath of this parish plays on the album. He’ll be buggering off round the UK and Europe as support for their tour in the autumn too (as well as playing in their live band).
If you’re after something a little more raucous then we recommend our good friends Lovvers’ debut album OCD GO GO GO GIRLS which comes out this Monday (the 10th) on Wichita. Catchy guitar punk like what they know how to make on the other side of the Atlantic, but with some definite UK influences too.
And finally, if you’re after something a little cheaper (freer, indeed!)- but just as good- we cannot recommend Scarr & Burd’s free-to-download release ‘Mantile 12’ enough. Johnny Scarr is a legend in the Nottingham underground music scene: a finely moustache’d purveyor of top quality gigs (under the ‘Mantile’ moniker). Quite frankly I’ve no idea who this Burd person is, but together with Johnny (s)he has produced one of my favourite releases of the year so far: two long tracks of ghostly industrial ambience far far better than anything Emeralds/Oneohtrix Point Never has put out (good though those bands are). It can be downloaded for free: a physical release will be available soon and we’ll be sure to keep you in the loop. An accompanying solo release from Mr.Scarr is also available for free, although I’m yet to get round to listening to it.
