Issue 02 · Bad Takes
Music, briefly discussed.
Three records. One unfathomable rating system.
Album artwork: Beck / Capitol
Record 01
Beck: Ride Lonesome
There are, broadly, two Becks. There is the man who sounds as though somebody left a sampler, three funk records and a bottle of cough medicine unattended in a recording studio. And there is Sad Beck. Ride Lonesome is very much Sad Beck.
More specifically, here we find disco-folk-stoner-beats-Scientologist-troubadour Beck Hansen lingering wistfully at the gates of the two beautifully constructed but now sadly dilapidated mansions of his past: Sea Change and Morning Phase. Our favourite Beck, if we’re honest, and not just because as much as we’d like to define the logic of all sexx laws like it’s 2002, doing so makes our knees hurt these days. So, acoustic guitars, enormous empty spaces and Radiohead-assistor Nigel Godrich make everything sound as though it’s been recorded during the final half-hour before sunset. Many of the musicians from those records are back too.
The danger is obvious. Beck has made this record before.
At 56, songs such as Bleed, Run Away and Falling Through My Hands don't sound like a young man luxuriating in sadness so much as somebody examining what he’s made. It’s ruminative, so much so that you wish Bonkers Beck would kick the door down and bring a drum machine. He doesn't. And, mostly, you won’t mind.
Unfathomable rating system rating: 566,189
Album artwork: Beabadoobee / Dirty Hit
Record 02
Beabadoobee: Pylon
Apparently the 1990s are no longer something that happened to us. They are now a genre. This woman’s all over 6 Music, as all the young kids know, and for good reason: Beabadoobee swaggers around enthusiastically nicking bits out of Britpop’s stranger fringes.
The guest list makes the intention fairly explicit: Hayley Williams, Chino Moreno, Brendan Yates of Turnstile and Evan Stephens Hall all appear around a record Beabadoobee herself describes as more intense and direct than its predecessors.
We’ve got issues, mind you. Cobain, we have a problem, if you like. Her voice remains almost absurdly light against all that fuzz and distortion. On Switchblade, Memories and Sun Has Set, prettiness and abrasion kinda get in the way, we reckon. There are good tunes in here dammit. There is also something pleasingly circular about hearing somebody born in — igad — the year two thousand turn stuff she heard was popular in 1994 into contemporary pop. This is what happens. Your old records haven't been reissued; the vibes that created them have been inherited.
Unfathomable rating system rating: 89/10
Album artwork: Actress / Ninja Tune
Record 03
Actress: Radical Frame
And now, something considerably less interested in making your life easy.
Actress, known to the Passport Office as Darren Cunningham, has spent two decades making electronic music that frequently appears to have been assembled from the contents of a computer found at the bottom of a canal. Radical Frame, his tenth solo album, continues to experiment with your tolerance for this sort of thing in general.
There are fragments of techno, ambient music, rap, soul and club music here, but they rarely remain recognisable for long. CASISDEAD appears on Live By You; Rainy Miller joins the 16-minute closing Sheets; elsewhere Cunningham happily takes rhythms apart just as they begin behaving themselves.
And yet tracks such as Withending and Paris periodically allow light through the machinery. That's the trick with Actress: apparent sonic ghastliness suddenly reveals something oddly beautiful underneath.
This is foreground electronic music that occasionally chucks a ‘what the fuck?’ moment out, just to see if you’re listening. We’ve been fans of this clattering avenue of noise-making for some time. You should be too.
Unfathomable rating system rating: 5.9