Musical Mondays - Black Labyrinth (2018) by Jonathan Davis

It’s always difficult to know where to start with these reviews, often because I want to give a little personal preamble to why I chose what I chose for that day, but tonight, there is no reason other than sheer love of the music itself. I have already reviewed music by this man – this legend, this icon – but that was while working in his band; flying solo, there is a marked change in his style which is so experimental, yet so perfect for him, that I fall in love with it a little more each time I listen. You may be able to guess who I am referring to (the photo is probably a give away, no?), yet I think I’ve played the adoring fan so often now there’s a fair few to choose from, but in my eyes there can only ever be one who deserves this much praise and that is Jonathan Davis.

At the start of 2018, Korn fans were teased with the release of Davis’ first single, ‘What It Is’ and, while I can’t remember my specific reaction upon hearing it, I knew I had to get my hands on the physical music when it was released in May and so I pre-ordered it. And when it arrived I feel I must have listened to those 13 tracks over and over for days – much as I hope you might after reading this review (you can check out the album on YouTube using the link at the bottom).

The opening track ‘Underneath My Skin’ bears the hallmarks of some of the material Korn had produced at the time, particularly from their 2013 album The Paradigm Shift. There is a recognisably sinister undertone, a heavy bassline, and an affinity for electronic sounds which defined Korn during the mid-2010s, but there is also an unexpected vibrance, a warmth even, that underlies this song and shows how Davis has diverged from his band. When you get to the second track ‘Final Days’, however, you realise just how much of a divergence this solo work is.

There are Indian tabla and deep tribal drumbeats, the haunting reedy notes of Armenian duduk, and many other eerie world music undertones which show this album to be a whole new breed of monster. Davis’ biting vocals are there just to remind you who is at the helm, and yet the new sound still suits him, but it is a garment quickly shed when the sudden intro of ‘Everyone’ kicks in. This is a track in freefall; it’s fast, it’s scornful, it strikes like thunder, there is barely room to breathe as verse surrenders to chorus and back again, and the pace doesn’t let up much for ‘Happiness’ either.

This one could easily be mistaken for a stripped back Korn song with its signature swagger, raw growling breakdown and eerie layered vocals, a fact which has been to Davis’ detriment as reviews often slate his attachment to the ‘heavy comfort blanket’ of Korn’s style, as NME put it, most tracks ‘sounding like echoes of older, better songs he wrote for his main band’ (Spectrum Culture, 2018). But here I beg to differ because, if we continue on to ‘Your God’ – another track which owes its flavour to its predecessor – there is something to be said for how Davis’ ‘old’ caustic vocals and Korn’s signature harsh guitars freely give way to something brighter and richer for the chorus. This is especially evident in ‘Walk on By’ which opens with a recognisably chunky guitar riff and drumbeats that fall away in favour of unique glassy synths and almost airy vocals. The breakdown here is one of my favourites on the album, full of distortion, synths, and soaring guitars.

And then just like that, the attachment to Korn seems to fade as the second half of the album is undoubtedly unique. ‘The Secret’ is a sinister slow burn of a track – something you don’t get from the band as much – which launches into one of many epic choruses composed of smooth yet gritty, soaring vocals and guitars. ‘Basic Needs’ is perhaps my second favourite track: soft, slow and subtly eerie, Davis’ voice an almost uncharacteristic gravelly purr which launches into an epic yet comforting chorus as he cries ‘don’t you know that you’re all my basic needs’. The breakdown is by far the most beautiful, laced with the same haunting instrumentation from ‘Final Days’ which slowly merges with more traditional guitars and drums and even the bittersweet chords of a violin. And yet this rich tapestry isn’t enough to top my chart as that honour goes to ‘Medicate’, a gently percussive, atmospherically electronic track, pierced with an eerie note that gives me such chills, and only makes me that much more heartbroken to hear how Davis is ‘medicating every day to make it go away’.

Fortunately, the tone steps back up after this gentle interlude for ‘Please Tell Me’. At first as quietly percussive and atmospheric as the previous two songs, with stronger vocals, this is another slow burn like ‘The Secret’, building to an impressive breakdown for the final minute, full of bright synths, rich guitars and brassy drumbeats. ‘What You Believe’ is a track full of sinister swagger, creepy crunchy electronics, and hollow percussive bursts all played by Davis himself which feels as close to a return to Korn as the latter half of the album can get, before giving over to the haunting drawn out tones of ‘Gender’. This lament to Davis’ struggles with gender identity as a teen wearing make-up is highlighted by the presence of a sitar but otherwise isn’t overcomplicated with instrumentation, much like the final grand track that is ‘What It Is’.

It’s the only track to feature a piano and acoustic guitar (so far as I am aware) but they set the tone beautifully against Davis’ switch between clean and grittier vocals. The chorus, however, is as dramatic yet simple as it needs to be and delivers its message clearly that life ‘it is what it is’, very relevant in our current climate when we need to acknowledge that reality can’t be changed. And then there’s the subtle power of the breakdown: layered, gentle, simmering to a screaming, reverberating boil before launching seamlessly back into the chorus.

I recognise that there are times when this could easily be the ‘lost Korn tapes’, the offshoots of Davis’ imagination from the 10 years prior to Black Labyrinth’s release, left to moulder on a shelf and grow some exotic fungus that faintly obscures its origins. But when you consider Korn’s career spanned 14 years at this point, and their controversial jaunt into dubstep with The Path of Totality was only 7 years prior to this, the experimental nuances Davis has injected into this album are commendable at the very least, downright gorgeous at their very best, and I would argue that any attachments to Korn’s aesthetic are merely a force of habit. They are no comfort blanket, but a recognition of success, and a link to a band – and a style – that Davis should rightly be passionate about.

FULL ALBUM: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLH22-xSMERQprC4zgKJLVNfgnzGT5jywW

Photography Thursdays - it's only temporary

 

it's only temporary (St Leonard's Beach Promenade, St Leonards) - 28th March 2021

I think I will have to accept that whatever I put out here will be sporadic at best (as I knew it would be) but I do still enjoy what little I can bring myself to scrape together. And so it seems appropriate to be sharing this photo of some artistically confusing graffiti from a beach promenade in St Leonards, South East England. The composition makes as much sense as the stuff scribbled on it - there's a door, and a picture of a door, a poster reminding you that 'It's not about YOU!' and whatever 'self chuckling(?)' is - but it understandably drew my eye when I walked past it. I'm not posting this one as much for the way it looks as the ideas it inspires - whatever they may be! Make of it what you will.

Musical Mondays - Fever Ray (2009) by Fever Ray

I do wish I had more time tonight to talk about this fortnight’s album but I have my exercise commitments (and a healthy amount of sleep) to try to stick to, so I shall do my best to make this a study in brevity. Now, maybe not a lot of people have heard of Fever Ray, but it was an alias name created by Swedish singer-songwriter Karin Dreijer in late 2008 during the hiatus of The Knife, a band they formed with their brother Olof. Their self-titled debut album enjoyed a fair amount of success thanks to lead single ‘If I Had a Heart’ being used in several prominent TV shows including Breaking Bad (which I will now have to rewatch to listen out for it!) And this is the album I will quickly cover tonight.

Put simply, Fever Ray’s debut is an airy, yet eerie trip, deeply percussive, electronic, and tribal, with the ability to somehow transport you to both past and future. The first track, the aforementioned single ‘If I Had a Heart’, was where it started for me, yet it wasn’t through a movie soundtrack but the music video itself, as part of a ‘strangest music videos’ compilation, that I first heard this bizarre song. For the most part it is a sinister track, composed of repetitive, almost mechanical notes against a bass drone, and Dreijer’s deep, layered, distorted vocals (and the music video is equally dark and confusing), but there are brief flashes of light in Dreijer’s softer vocals and the accompanying atmospheric change in musical tone. And this tone is repeated in three other songs: ‘Dry and Dusty’, ‘Concrete Walls’, and ‘Stranger Than Kindness’, all of which I love just as much.

‘Dry and Dusty’ is an eerily celestial sounding track with soft percussion, drawn out synth notes, and those same distorted vocals which do occasionally give way to Dreijer’s real lighter voice. ‘Concrete Walls’, by contrast, retains a persistent, almost unsettling tone, comprising a low bass drone, rattling, metallic percussion (tambourine and a hollow striking sound), drawn out synths and much lower vocal distortion. It’s a little tribal, a lot trippier, and honestly quite desolate, but you feel a little comforted by the softer synths towards the end. ‘Stranger Than Kindness’ also retains some of this softness, being an instrumentally faster and lighter track with much tighter metallic sounds, and even a small dose of electric guitar reverb, finished with the dull lustre of some piano/string-type synth notes (cannot place what it was).

By almost stark contrast, you have the free-spirited, slightly celestial nostalgia of songs like ‘When I Grow Up’ (slightly hollow instrumentation with Dreijer’s natural vocals), ‘Seven’ (a track which starts out strongly percussive yet muted, and evolves into something complex and atmospheric, evoking memories of childhood), and ‘I’m Not Done’ (I can’t even fully encompass the celestial, instrumental wonder of this track, pierced with yet more layered and semi-distorted vocals).

You get a few more songs like ‘I’m Not Done’ which stand out for their instrumental clarity – these being ‘Triangle Walks’, ‘Now’s The Only Time I Know’, and ‘Coconut’ – though these are quite different from one another. Where ‘Triangle Walks’ is lightweight, tightly metallic (I love the dominating notes of what sound like glass bottles of water or metal tubes being struck) with almost natural vocals, ‘Now’s The Only…’ is light yet gets more complex as it progresses, especially focused on metallic percussion and electronic warping, while ‘Coconut’ is more grounded, with earthy electronic notes, fast percussive strikes, even what sound like bird noises and a hint of a kalimba alongside the deeper yet still natural vocals.

And that leaves my favourite to last: ‘Keep The Streets Empty for Me’, a softly tribal, gently electronic, occasionally percussive piece of forlorn wonder. It too grows in complexity but never gets overwhelming, instead simmering away with a beautiful set of natural vocals, tribal drumbeats which sound like raindrops, and some deep, evocative panpipes. It all comes together to produce a feeling of obscure calm which is slightly trance-like, almost trippy (though I have no real idea what one feels like), and just a tiny bit disturbing – just how I like it!

(I do realise I missed the ending track ‘Been Here Before’ but it wasn’t too much of a stand-out, being simplistic yet bizarre in its own way. I am also aware of the turn that Fever Ray has taken subjectively in their follow-up albums, which couldn’t be more different, but unfortunately it is not to my taste. Maybe one day, when I have more time, I might try it out again.)

FULL ALBUM (plus music videos): https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLiN-7mukU_RHnbca_YQh3OAgG-mpPsWOW

Photography Thursdays - Circolo Popolare

Circolo Popolare (Rathbone Square, London) - 30th June, 2021

It has been almost an entire two months since I last posted a photo so I hope this beautiful shot can somehow make up for the absence. 

There seems to be so much I have yet to see of the area where I work and this is literally just round the corner! An expensive little Italian trattoria in a courtyard linking two minor roads together and to be honest, I love this shot because of how it's laid out: the greenery framing the orange of the window with the white strip of stone between it, and the little pops of light too just set it all off. I didn't even give too much thought to how I wanted to lay this out before I took it - unlike a few other shots I took of the area. Simply sublime!

Musical Mondays - The Killing Machine (2016) by Cousin Buzz

Well hello again. Told you I’d be Rein-bach! And I’m coming at you with more musical favourites, mostly major artists thus far, but today, owing to the fact that I need to be up at half 5 for my morning jog, I am trying something more obscure and thus shorter. It comes with an interesting memory of my first ‘festival’, this being the Port Eliot Festival in Cornwall, England, around this time 4 years ago. I was there to help put together a magazine for the festivalgoers during a rather wet and, in typical festival fashion, muddy 3 days. Only by the fourth day did the rain stop, the sun come out, and my duties to the magazine cease for one glorious day of self-indulgence. And it was on this final day, after wandering the venue grounds, drinking gin and tonic from a reusable plastic cup, and checking out all I could fit in, that I heard the metallic resonances of an electric guitar emanating from a far corner of the field. What I found was the Cornish three-piece alt-rock band Cousin Buzz, jamming to an almost empty tent. I observed for several minutes, simply enjoying their gritty tunes before going over to say hi, give praise and, as everybody should, pick up a copy of their music – which I shall briefly review for you now.

This album, created in November 2016, is a 6-track EP entitled The Killing Machine, and makes up 1 of only 2 albums this band ever produced (their follow-up 2 years later being Greasy Fingers and a Bad Attitude which I may give a listen to some time soon). What I think drew me to this band in the first place is that they don’t sound quite like any other band that I’ve ever heard of. Their songs are often bass-heavy yet highly melodic, full of varied applications of guitar and percussion, and strung together with sweet and sour vocals (by which I mean, there is a softness and a harshness to singer Arthur Harrison-Ward’s vocals which seem to complement each other).

Opening track ‘Oh My (So High)’ displays this vocal harmony rather well alongside some tight metallic strings and a subtle drumbeat. The backing vocals do tend to clash with the lead in the verses but harmonise much better for the chorus. There are also some stellar, though slightly discordant, guitar solos mixed in too, a feature which persists into ‘Crank It’ (though the second breakdown proves much more successful). This track gives off a lazy Sunday vibe with its classic guitar intro, while Arthur’s vocals are dealt in more of a laid-back drawl, but the bass comes across strong and smooth, before everything amps up for the chorus, Arthur’s vocals now straining to new heights.

Track 3, ‘Go to Sleep’ is among my favourites: the guitar intro is softer with some fantastic metallic melodies and breakdowns, the bass is clearer, the drums slower and laced with shimmering cymbals, and those vocals, while still rough and nasal, are delivered carefully, gently even – at least until the end. The final line is dealt with something reminiscent of Gerard Way’s strangled notes from ‘I Never Told You What I Do for a Living’. In fact, almost as if sensing that, there is a slip into something more melancholic for ‘Always the End’, consisting of a simple guitar and drum tune, a strong bass backing, and hauntingly perfect vocal duets, but with the added embellishment of a smashing guitar solo, a cutesy little xylophone tune, and a vaguely psychotic closing refrain. But I think, of the whole album, this song has the most depth and indeed stylistic scope, especially when contrasted with the next song, ‘Quicksand’.

Uniquely, this song opens with a bass intro which kicks into gear pretty fast, delivering a rapid, bass-heavy, but more upbeat tune, populated by percussive drumbeats and smooth guitar breakdowns which help to carry the beat. And that leaves us with the titular track ‘Killing Machine’ which again breaks the mould, being pumped full of more attitude and swagger than any other song. The drumbeats are strong and defined, the guitars harsher, but the bass nowhere near as heavy as usual. Arthur’s vocals are back to their standard drawling melody which melds well with the backing vocals until the end, where they seem to crash into each other in a haphazard and messy overlaying. A bit of a let-down for the final track but by no means a reflection of the album as a whole, but there you have it; my not-so-brief review of a Cornish flash in the pan. It is always a pity to hear that these obscure little bands never really take off, but at least they had a fan in me!

Check out their Twitter page, and their Bandcamp below.

FULL ALBUM: https://cousinbuzz.bandcamp.com/album/the-killing-machine-ep

Storybook Saturdays - Sprout (2009) by Dale Peck

It seemed like I didn’t stop running till I found him the next day in school

It’s Sunday, yes, but it’s also Pride Month which is why this weekend’s book of choice is Sprout by Dale Peck, an insanely witty and descriptive little essay (as it seems to be) on the highs and lows of one Daniel Bradford: 16 years old, green-haired, gay, and new to Kansas.

The events of his life, on a surface level, are fairly relatable teenage things: adjusting to life without a mother, in a new city, while trying to come to terms with his own sexuality, but Sprout, as he is nicknamed, isn’t just an ordinary teenager – which in some ways still makes him relatable to me. He finds enjoyment in words – touting a dictionary the way anyone else would their mobile phone or purse – and this pairs expertly with his personality to make for a mature yet colloquial and intimate read. Much like my last entry on Laini Taylor’s Daughter of Smoke and Bone series (which you can read here), there are often dense sections of description for each character. This, in addition to Sprout’s sporadic asides and digressions – which, at times can give you whiplash and make the story seem more like conversation than composition – almost make you believe you’re standing right beside him like an imaginary friend. Due to his love of synonyms, everyone is uniquely depicted from his writing coach, Mrs Miller’s ‘[w]ispy bangs […] tortured with repeated applications of curling iron and hairspray in clear violation of the Geneva Convention’ to his friend Ruthie whose body is ‘tall and thin as a periscope poking from the waves’. Understandably, his father doesn’t get so much a physical description as a character exposé, from his perpetual drunkenness to his collection of tree stumps and vines. And sometimes just a few lines of dialogue are sufficient to display a character such as the gym teacher Mr Balzer, singling Sprout out for not wearing the proper gym gear while obnoxiously shouting ‘Yo, Abernathy, wassup my man!’ to another student. But the real description begins when he meets Ty, the boy he falls in love with; suddenly everything they see and do together seems like pure poetry.

When they first meet, it is during a game of touch football, and by the end, having been pelted with every ball in the sports hall, Ty is left looking like a ‘human-shaped flame’ surrounded by balls ‘like a field of psychedelic mushrooms’. During their first out of school meeting, Sprout is so tense with uncertainty that ‘[t]he silence was so loud the leaves bumping against each other sounded like a thirty-car pileup on the highway’. And the way he describes their first kiss – ‘the naked breath of the forest air felt ice cold on my lips, and all I wanted to do was pull him back on me. So I did’ – it made my heart melt. In fact, Ty’s very character is the most colourful of them all – and that’s not forgetting that Sprout has green hair! – he’s creative, innovative, childish, scarred, and strong. He stands up for Sprout, endures his father’s beatings just to see him, and even then you’re still not 100% sure if he’s gay too. But it’s ok because Sprout seems to love him all the same. One scene in particular seems to solidify this when, after having sex, he must lick all the green hair dye smudges from Ty’s skin – lest Ty’s father find out – and yet he proclaims ‘I’d’ve painted his whole body green if I could have, just to let the world know he was mine.’ You get so caught up in their romance, along with Sprout’s convoluted streams of consciousness, that you seem to be caught short by any moments of tension and seriousness which belie the potential for a less-than-happy ending (which, by the way, is very open-ended, though I won’t say why).

I don’t remember the specifics of how this book came into my possession, but I have re-read it so many times now because it is just so unique, funny and, dare I say, even a little adorable. It’s kind of like a kaleidoscope really – if I wanted to employ some Sprout-like literary devices: from the outside it seems fairly unassuming (aside from the green hair poking in from the edge of the cover); you read the blurb and think you know what to expect (I mean, hey, it’s just a kaleidoscope, right?) but when you look inside, it’s a whole other world that keeps shifting, defying expectations, and sometimes taking you by surprise – especially with the direct asides which seem to know what you’re thinking. (‘Get you mind out of the gutter!’) I would readily take the advice which is given and read this book over and over again, if it weren’t for the fact that I have other reviews to do, because it’s so different from the usual fantasy/sci-fi stories I invest myself in, and it’s so goddamn honest, bizarre, and wholesome. If you need a good coming-out story, please don’t miss this one.

Feathered Fridays - Striated Caracara

Phalcoboenus australis

It may have been over a month since my last Feathered Friday entry but this one is a beauty which should make up for the absence. It is the Striated Caracara, otherwise known as the ‘Johnny Rook’ or the Falkland Island Caracara. Not a native UK bird by any stretch – they can only be seen in captivity in local wildlife parks across the country – their natural home is on the extreme southern tip of Latin America, specifically south Chile, Tierra del Fuego, and the remote islands in this area including the Falklands (where they are most common). They typically frequent rocky coastal habitats and open grasslands, particularly farmland where they have been persecuted for predation of young lambs and their numbers subsequently threatened. On the coast, however, they appear to be doing better, their diet consisting of seabirds and young penguins which they mostly scavenge rather than kill (however they have been observed taking eggs and chicks and will even predate smaller seabirds at night). They can also subsist on tidal invertebrates and will move stones to search for food (they aren’t considered one of the smartest birds of prey for nothing).

These birds are striking in their appearance – and I should know; I was privileged to see one up close at a wildlife park in Devon (that's where I took the above picture) – their plumage is composed of black to brownish-black feathers with a mantle of silvery/buff-brown streaks or striations around the upper part of their bodies. There is a broad white stripe across the tip of their tails and white panels on the underwings, visible in flight, and their faces and legs are strikingly yellow with a classic grey hooked bill. The juveniles can be distinguished by their lack of distinct striations, a darker bill, and pinkish legs. Unique among caracaras, they also have ‘rufous’ or red-brown feathering on their thighs and, measuring on average nearly 60cm/2ft long with a 1.2m/4ft wingspan, they are the largest of their genus Phalcoboenus.

When it comes to the breeding season (late Autumn to early Winter), the striations which give them their name are put on show, couples throwing their heads back and baring their patterned chests to each other, uttering loud and raucous squawking calls. With their chosen partner, a female will lay 1-4 eggs in a nest of grass and twigs, high on a rocky ledge (if coastal) or hidden in deep grass cover (if rural), within the loose bounds of a colonial nest-site. The eggs’ hatching is timed to coincide with that of the nesting seabirds (in the same way blue tits’ hatching coincides with that of local caterpillars) meaning the young have plenty to eat. As such, over the course of 2-3 months, the young – initially small brown balls of fluff – will grow rapidly and be ready to fledge by the end of February. And, by ‘be ready’ I mean, they are unceremoniously evicted by their parents, often flocking and learning to survive together.

This majestic bird is, sadly, one of the rarest raptors in the world, currently considered to be Near Threatened with roughly between 1.5 and 4 thousand individuals within their restricted habitat. However, conservation efforts and legal protection is helping to increase the breeding population – which is a real relief because, having come face-to-beak with one of these birds, it would be a real shame to see them go.

Facts taken from: Falklands Conservation, Lake District Wildlife Park, ebird.org, Oiseaux-Birds

https://falklandsconservation.com/caracara/

https://www.lakedistrictwildlifepark.co.uk/animals/striated-caracara/

https://ebird.org/species/strcar1

http://www.oiseaux-birds.com/card-striated-caracara.html