Song, by Toad

It’s Fresh Air time again, and once again Ruth and I have a splendid live session.  We might even have Ruth’s voice back, just to make matters even more special.

This week The Pineapple Chunks are going to play live in session for us.  And instead of being sensible and doing it acoustically we are going to end up having the full band in the studio and are going to just have to try and find some way of arranging the mics so that we pick it all up.  Basically, I think we are going to just have to have two room mics and ‘mix’ the sound by having people move closer or further away from them, much like the way everything was recorded in the olden days!

So, for too-many-people-in-a-tiny-little-studio mayhem, tune in from seven and see how we get on.  You can always point and laugh if it goes horribly wrong.

On air 7pm-8.30pm gmt – listen live here.

Here is this week’s tracklisting, which will be updated live as we go along.  Feel free to heckle in the comments section.

1. The Strokes – The Modern Age
2. Interpol – PDA
3. The Pineapple Chunks – Gyroscope + Look Back in Horror (Live in Session)
4. Deerhoof – Snoopy Waves
5. Stephen Malkmus – Walk Into the Mirror
6. Erik Gundel – Lake On My Roof
7. The Pineapple Chunks – The Diagonal (Live in Session)
8. Khaya – Duet (Single Version)
9. Sparrow & the Workshop – Into the Wild
10. The Maxwell Cult – Sound is a Place
11. Trips and Falls – How Do You Do
12. The Pineapple Chunks – Man Love (Live in Session)
13. Huey Lewis & the News – Trouble in Paradise (Live)
14. The Pineapple Chunks – Art Storage (Live in Session)

Last week’s session was with the occasionally mental, occasionally hilarious and occasionally joyous Japanese War Effort.  Interview podcast, downloadable session tracks and videos are all after the break. Read the rest of this entry »

Ooh, interesting interesting.  And really rather weird.  Erik Gundel introduced himself to me as ‘that guy from Motel Motel’ and whilst I liked a lot of their songs, I find this vastly more intriguing.

With this sort of strange stuff the sequencing is always crucial, and in this case it is executed really well.  We’re gently lulled in with a spot of unthreatening instrumentalism in the form of Turkulent Indigo.  Then Birdy sort of hints at where the rest of the EP is going, but is still rather a tame version of the music language in which this release communicates.

The centrepiece of the EP is Lake on My Roof, and this is really rather weird, but nevertheless in a friendly and melodic and welcoming sort of way, before Head of Ribbon just smacks you in the chops with the strangeness.  It sounds like some sort of sonically-based puzzle from late 70s sci-fi film where the hero is trying to escape from a dizzying chamber of lights.  Gundel doesn’t even bother with lyrics, just a misbehaving, synthesised cousin of a church organ breathing in and out at irregular intervals.  An oddly, don’t ask me why, it isn’t shit.  Closing things out is the peace offering of Antacids Love Song, slightly quirky of lyric, but otherwise quite a straight-up song.

And that’s the odd contradiction of this EP.  Depending on what he’s sick of reading about in reviews, Gundel could easily be exhasperatedly saying ‘Well if you listen to it, not a lot of it is actually all that weird’.  And he’d be right.  Then again, not an awful lot of this is played straight, either.  Of the five songs only two, perhaps, could be described as plain vanilla pop songs, and even then you’d be stretching a point to do so.

Either way, this is a challenging and a rewarding listen, perfectly put together and unsettlingly compelling, if you know what I mean.  I wouldn’t say that I love all of it, but it’s definitely one of the most engaging things I’ve heard in ages.

Erik Gundel – Lake on My Roof

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Erik Gundel on MySpace – you’re going to have to message him on MySpace to buy the EP, but I promise you, it’s worth it.