Xela "Tangled Wool"

Artist: Xela
Album: Tangled Wool
Label: City Centre Offices
Release date: 15 March 2004
Genre: Electronic
Style: Folktronica/Ambient

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Tracklisting:
01. Softness Of Senses
02. Smiles And Bridges
03. You Are In The Stars
04. Drawing Pictures Of Girls
05. Through Crimson Clouds
06. Quiet Night
07. So No Goodbyes
08. Her Eyes Sparkled And She Walked Away
Total running time: 40' 50"

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"Even though he’s a mere twenty-three years old, John Twells (aka Xela) is no ingénue, having released last year’s acclaimed For Frosty Mornings… on Neo Ouija as well as Where We’re From The Birds Sing A Pretty Song, an equally impressive collaborative outing with Gabriel Morley issued under the name Yasume. Following upon that City Centre Offices release, Twells returns with Tangled Wool, seemingly intent upon wresting the folktronica crown from Greg Davis and Kieran Hebden. Don’t be turned away by the twee song titles, as this is as perfect an example of melodic folktronica as one might hope to find, plus it’s a perfect length too, admirably succinct at eight tracks and forty minutes. One thing it’s not, however, is Rounds II as it largely eschews the propulsive beats one finds on Four Tet’s 2003 release. Instead, Twells creates sublime pastoral oases that are rooted in the shimmer of his acoustic guitar.

“Softness Of Senses” is a stunning opener, at once reverberant, anthemic and blissful, awash in shimmering, bucolic splendor. “Smiles and Bridges” follows, and it’s as satisfying, building euphorically with layers of acoustic guitars and chiming synths. In contrast to their uplifting auras, “You Are In The Stars” is a moodier, mournful piece with crunchy beats, while “Through Crimson Clouds” with its laconic beats is the most uptempo piece here. Obviously, the prevailing mood is one of delicacy, its sound teeming with multi-layered guitars, hazy atmospheres, and sparkling melodies that chime and soar. Twells even adds a vocal to the heavenly “Drawing Pictures Of Girls” but, in keeping with the overall style, it’s a wordless sigh that, along with the oboe sounds, becomes an irresistible hook.

With Tangled Wool, City Centre Offices reaffirms its stature as one of the pre-eminent electronica labels. Home to artists like Ulrich Schnauss, Dictaphone, Boy Robot, Static, Caney and Joory, Dub Tractor and I’m Not A Gun, the label consistently produces impeccable music, Tangled Wool merely the latest proof of that dictum. In fact, it’s almost too beautiful and innocent a recording for an era like ours, one so poisoned by aesthetic corruption and philistinism. It’s a reverie-inducing album that’s unfashionably free of irony, but perhaps that’s all the more reason to embrace it and savor its delicate, paradisiacal qualities." [source]

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Tunng "Good Arrows"

Artist: Tunng
Album: Good Arrows
Label: Full Time Hobby/Thrill Jockey
Release date: 27 August 2007
Genre: Rock
Style: Folktronica/Indie Rock

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Tracklisting:
01. Take
02. Bricks
03. Hands
04. Bullets
05. Soup
06. Spoons
07. King
08. Arms
09. Secrets
10. String
11. Cans
Total running time: 42' 54"

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[Tunng - Bullets - Video Clip]

"When they emerged on Static Caravan in 2005, Tunng was unfairly snagged by a genre generally attributed to the rabid British press: folktronica. The timing was bad. They were lumped in with the Psapps, Múms, and Four Tets of the world, a white-washing that accounted only for a shared taste in acoustic sounds and chipped beats. But following their debut, Mother’s Daughter and Other Songs, the band issued a sophomore record that blurred the genre’s lines enough to show Tunng was stuck in their own headspace. Comments of the Inner Chorus was hazy and impressionistic, cozying Sam Genders’ cloudy, image-based storytelling in Mike Lindsay’s rusty-nailed folk pastiche. It held tracks that sounded on the surface like pillowy love songs (“Woodcut,” “Jenny Again”) but that when taken in a few times, revealed rough Victorian tales of death and abandon.

Now, on their third record and first for Thrill Jockey, Tunng is six members deep, having added former Chapterhouse drummer Ashley Bates (as a guitarist). But, really, it’s still the Mike Lindsay and Sam Genders show. Lindsay’s folksy bedfitting and deft, pastoral use of electronics are as room-full as they’ve ever been, bumping out clapboard beats and barrel-roll basslines without sacrificing the duo’s wooded hush. The duo round out their heady creations with film samples, clattering woodblocks, piano, dulcimer, plenty of windy static, and even a beat (on “Arms”) supposedly stitched from tape of a bonfire. They still have that Chaucer round-the-fire sense to their songs, a thousand shadowed tales to play out your travels. But on their first two albums, Tunng often reveled in the smear of their sounds—and the atmosphere they created—which tended to distract from the albums’ front-to-back movement. With Good Arrows, not only is Lindsay’s comfort with the soundboard more evident, but the songs seem to interact in concert for the first time. In fact, a quick look at the song titles nods to this new cohesion. Each is a blunt, everyday token—from “Soup” and “Spoons” to “String” and “Cans.”

But beneath the band’s intoxicating take on English folk lies something far more bleak and lacking shape. As I alluded to earlier, Tunng has always played at dichotomies—perhaps the band’s most gorgeous musical creation to date, “Jenny Again,” was a dreary, well-hidden murder tale. They have a way of lulling you into loving a song whose lyrical bedding contrasts directly with its ‘pretty’, disarming sound. And yet never before has this duality been so troubling, so full of conflict and density. Themes of mortality and death, the body incarnate, stretch out atop children’s choirs and ascendant string sections. Innards, spines, bones, guts, and teeth mark the soil; it’s strange, bewildering turf for an album that on first-listen, you imagine playing at green summer picnics.

Nowhere are these lines drawn more clearly than on the album’s core initial-third. “Bricks” is about as anthemic as Tunng has ever sounded, with tinkling bells and a billowy beat like an early Beta Band recording. Genders’ tale, however, is murky—a series of disconnected images about lizard skins, pretty girls staking their thoughts on nature, and a series of bold colors and surrealistic wordplay. There’s nothing as consciously shady about the song as many here, but you get the feeling Genders is dancing around some foul truth. He seems to employ false smiles to keep his company happy, and this makes it kind of hair-raising. Or maybe it’s the line about the cold eggs. Such a visceral image that, a plate of cold eggs.

Over a gently picked acoustic guitar and muffled tom-beat, “Hands” is more direct—an outsider’s tale full of trite daytime stuff (“he stands with his head in his hands/in the corridor in A & E”) as well as its nighttime extra-stuff (“we sing as we all fall down/we sing as the sky collapses/and make what we can of this”). The song tickles away in sounds of reverie, but even Genders patient voice can’t shake its hint at the elusive. “Bullets” is easily the most strident song Tunng has ever created. Well, musically. After a haunting vocal sample ushers in a rocksome tea-time beat, Genders sings “our blood and guts are out/we spread our bones across the table at night” against Tin Pan Alley piano. As with so much of Good Arrows, you come to sense only to lose it again, as Genders spoils almost every narrative line with peculiar phrasings and clouded imagery.

Somehow, in this confusion, Good Arrows is still a series of beautiful songs for that part of us all that just wants to stay in bed all day. In fact, with these smudged narratives, Genders is offering you an out: simply let me flow through you and pretty is all it has to be. It can still be picnic music. Just don’t listen too closely." [source]

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Mum "Go Go Smear The Poison Ivy"

Artist: Múm
Album: Go Go Smear the Poison Ivy
Label: FatCat
Release date: 24 September 2007
Genre: Electronic
Style: Folktronica/Freak Folk/Experimental

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Tracklisting:
01. Blessed Brambles
02. A Little Bit, Sometimes
03. They Made Frogs Smoke ‘Til They Exploded
04. These Eyes Are Berries
05. Moon Pulls
06. Marmalade Fires
07. Rhuubarbidoo
08. Dancing Behind My Eyelids
09. School Song Misfortune
10. I Was Her Horse
11. Guilty Rocks
12. Winter (What We Never Were After All)
Total running time: 44' 05"

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[Múm - They Made Frogs Smoke 'Til They Exploded - Video Clip]

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[Múm - Blessed Brambles - Live @ Museum Of Garden History, London]

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[Múm - Winter - Live @ Museum Of Garden History, London]

"This is the sound the children from “Village of the Damned” would have made had they not been so fixated with killing their parents and ruling the world, a sound that is both alien and child-like, whilst simultaneously clever and knowing. This is Múm.

A perfect representation of Iceland they certainly are, cold, distant, yet full of colour and vibrancy. Up until recently there has been several female vocalists in the band, each offering up highly pitched melodies which entwine with each other, the many and varied instruments in the mix and the electronic, glitch-style backing.

For many this mix of musical ingredients was best summed up in 2004’s “Summer Make Good” album, which left any future release with mountainously high expectations from many. That “Poison Ivy” deviates from this template is likely to lead to criticism from many quarters.

If you let yourself be put off by that though you will miss out on a quietly and slowly growing triumph of musical expression. What is present this time around is a more vocally dominated album than ever before. Also now a big feature is the addition of male vocals which adds an interesting but cleverly hidden dynamic to the final mix.

Múm succeed in pulling in the listener with an open, cool atmosphere, whilst at the same time hitting us with radiant and free strands of sound which in tracks such as opener “Blessed Brambles” and single “They Made Frogs Smoke Till They Exploded” (a tale of juvenile animal cruelty) sparkle beautifully. This nostalgic look back on life is continued through to track seven “Rhuubarbidoo” and track nine “School Song Misfortune” where it seems feasible that the album may well of been recorded in a remote field or even a lost village. The album may well disappoint for around two-thirds of its length with the appearance that it lacks a clear point or purpose, but the wider picture is soon revealed as the free traveller suddenly realises that he is actually lost!

An aspect that is hinted at with the song “I Was Her Horse” is fully announced in the next track (”Guilty Rocks”) which showcases a dark and haunting nature in its execution and beauty. Suddenly you’re suspended in an asylum looking for a way to escape. Out of hopelessness come the creeping angelic like voices toying with you that there is a way out, but all hope is finally lost on last track “Winter (What We Never Were After All)” which, along with the previous track, bring all the disparate strand together and deliver the highlight of the entire album.

In the end Múm have shown their willingness to change, but akin to the musical progression of their art they like to do it slowly and with subtlety. As for those scary children from Village of the Damned, perhaps they would have made equally impressive music if that damn idiot Gordon hadn’t of been so intent on saving the entire human race. Who knows, who knows indeed? [cue raised eyebrows, and cut]" [source]

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