Aural Fixation plays "New Generation" on WMBR

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community radio at MIT
cambridge ma usa

November 17, 2007

2. The 17th Pygmy New Generation Ballade of Tristam's Last Harping 2007 Trakwerx

http://auralfixradio.org/index.html

LIVE SHOW with The 17th Pygmy & The Spirit Girls at Dangerous Curve

Sunday December 15th 7:00 p.m.

For more details go to http://dangerouscurve.org/

An Unruly Conductor reviews "Paper Wraps Rock"

CULT WITH NO NAME...album review here.
Current mood: exanimate
Category: Music

Cult with no Name

PAPER WRAPS ROCK .(post-punk/downtempo)

LABEL ; TRAKWERX.....released 10/31/2007

CULT WITH NO NAME hail out of London,....the self professed 'post-punk half drunk electronic philharmonic atmospheric balladeers'...do exactly what they say on the tin!

The first cd sent to me for scrutiny...I sat back and took in the album with no prior expectations (I had heard them on their page, but only casually).

At the start of 'PAPER WRAPS ROCK' a trickle of piano leads us gently into a smokey room full of half drunk pints and a silent game of dominos. Aparent are the classical influences in this opener, as it winds up unfazed and presents you the unravelling flower of this album. 'Blame it on the Oil' is the second track on this 15 track cd, and the first to introduce the vocals of Erik Stein. Chopped with a more emotional piano line, this track gives you more of a picture about what the London duo are about...intellegent but vunerable, masters of their art although insecure. There are a few influences spinning in my head...the vocals sound hauntingly familiar, or is that the tone and subject merely arriving home. The rest of the album takes you on a hopeful taunt, tight-roping over the impending melancholy with spikes of high piano directing your attention upwards into the glow of empathy.

To say this album is a lounge album, is true, but I like the bravery of it's layout....instead of hitting you in the face with the big 'singles' from the album...it takes it's time...delivering a mature theme to the proceedings, building up with electric piano and drums n' effects in time...then to glug back under the drink from wenst it came. The stand out tracks from 'Paper wraps Rock'...are 'Operation failed' with it's striptease of mood and cafe ease.....and my favourite track on this title 'Girl'...like a steam engine sat at the station, releasing the pressure and readying for the remains of this journey!

I wish Erik Stein (lead vocals/rhythm piano) & Jon Boux (lead piano/rhythm vocals) the best of luck on their passage through this musical adventure...and no doubt I will be reviewing further releases and dates for this rising band! So if you like your indie to down their guitars and ease on the pedals of a piano or two, this band are for you...destined for some greater expose.

CULT WITH NO NAME - PAPER WRAPS ROCK - DEBUT ALBUM

(POST-PUNK/PIANO) a TRAKWERX release....available now!!!!

for more info & a listen to their album goto

www.myspace.com/cwnn

or for bookings/promo/cd

www.trakwerx.com

Thanks for the cd guys....I will treasure it!!

FOR MORE REVIEWS ON LITTLE KNOWN ACTS & SOME HIGH PROFILERS.....SUBSCRIBE TO THIS BLOG.

ELECTRO/INDIE/TECHNO/HAUS/BREAKBEAT/ELECTRONIQUE/DUB

UNRULY TIMES.....CALLING FOR SOME UNRULY MEASURES!!!!!!!

regards

A . U . C

JACKSON DEL REY'S BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN ON YouTube

"MEN AND THE MAGGOTS" scene from Battleship Potemkin

MICK MERCER REVIEWS "PAPER WRAPS ROCK"

CULT WITH NO NAME
PAPER WRAPS ROCK
Trakwerx

More strangeness? Oh, okay then, as long as you don’t mind something strange seemingly all but entirely normal; chaste and rarefied in a subtly disconcerting manner. They admit to being post-punk electronics, but also with a thing about ballads, which may scare you, because who wants an alternative Coldplay? Erik Stein and Jon Boux (‘rhythm vocals?!!) don’t entirely go that route, as there’s no pompous masquerading as heartening quests or explosive emotion. What they do verges on light orchestral musing, with peculiar lyrical disenchantment.

Having been struck by their track on the 17 Pygmies album a while back I think this album will go down well with true 80’s indie aficionados, and people today who want a little more meat on their ambient bones, as that’s what it comes closest to in my eyes, the feel of modern ambient music, but with that trapped inside the melodic muscle of more conventional songwriting, creating interesting and cement-hard, credible compositions. The album also comes in a cunning card cover, with a cute illustration of the band I shall have to include here, with sleeve like a depressed digipack, the CD placed in a slot in the inside back cover, the lyrics simply printed all over the card, like a latterday version of the early Savage Republic card covers.

In ‘The Morning After The Night Before Last’ I’m tempted to say his troubles seem so far away but it’s a delightful piano at work, like something crossed between the accompaniment to a romantic silent film, and a flow which makes you become lost in thought, oddly reassuring. Liquid vocals accompany piano through the tricky, winsome ‘Blame It On Oil’ and you’re with a duo who can play immaculately and sing likewise. They’re like the Anti-Coldplay; musicians woken at a time of musical tedium, come amongst us to perplex.

‘More Of The Same’ is as compelling as any of the rubbish major label nonentities spew out, and should be something major indies look for, even though they might not know what to do with it. Plinky percussion behind the keyboards and vocal guile, it’s a deftly desirable piece.
‘Business Is Good’ even has a souped-up Eltonesque cadence but overall it’s more of the same, almost casually catchy, and the press release mentions bands which probably give you a better illustrative set of comparisons than I manage – Associates, Tuxedomoon, Erik Satie, Keith Jarrett and Shriekback. Throw in Furniture, at their most fragrant, and Stephen Poliakoff too please, because I like the effect, and then play these two back to back again, they’re so beautiful.

‘Waiting For The Punch Line’ is, seemingly, a love affair with technology, and could herald a sectioning order and the demure ‘Operation Failed’ is a form of club noir, with a very soft underbelly, a bit like Bill Pritchard on manoeuvres, everything fluid but somehow just ambling, and this is richly enveloping music of simple tones, which could be minimalist but for the huge, rich reach of the pieces. It’s also a bit weird, as the lyrics are fairy oblique, you just hope you know what’s going on. ‘In Every Way But One’ could be Baby Bird all grown up and flying, but it’s so short. Some people would develop something this enticing through various verses to spiral upwards, but often CWNN don’t hang around long enough for such ideas. They tie up another pretty parcel and shift onwards on to the next track.



It really is very close to tradition at times. ‘Start It Again’ is phlegmatic and ironic pop, as if by waspish daydreaming cousins of The Beautiful South, but ending with an airport departure lounge ambience. ‘Girl’ has an elaborately traipsing sound but couldn’t be simpler with observations of implied regret in the girl and her life, only this is mawkishly close to Ally McBeal soundtrack material.

Then the boundaries blur again, and back again. ‘Maslow’s Dog’ is filled out, almost crooning its odd lyrics over idling piano, ticking rhythm and florid, introspective sound. ‘Wormwood’ is very unusual and with some serious disquiet trapped in the words there around the graceful piano; still a fresh bloom to something intrinsically rotting. ‘Product Of’ seems too close to orthodox indie so the weary words may be clever with their accusatory terms, but it’s an elegant plod. ‘That’s The Power Of Television’ is strange in its pleasant manner because the singer doesn’t exactly sound let down by the loss of his love, whereupon he kicks the woe around a bit more through ‘Jenny’s Tongue’ and if not morose at least it feels rueful, its solemn air quietly seductive. ‘Yes People’ is a thoughtful suicide after more resigned defeatism, and then it’s gone.

An unusually captivating record, it is an indie treasure, one of those albums where after a few listens you believe you’ve had it years.

http://www.cultwithnoname.com
http://www.myspace.com/cwnn
http://www.trakwerx.com

Organ Magazine mentions Cult With No Name Release

ALSO CHECK OUT
CULT WITH NO NAME - mellow, warm two piece balladeers with warm, subtle electric piano/keyboards and a Scott Walker flavour or two to add to their Pet Shop feel. They’re from London, they have a certain restrained dramatic style that’s worth a moment or two - www.cultwithnoname.com

Cult With No Name Receives Favorable London Press

Nosferatu DVD Coming Soon

Jackson Del Rey does it again...He writes a new film score for the 1922 silent horror film Nosferatu, eine Symphonie des Grauens ("Nosferatu, a Symphony of Horror"). As in Battleship Potemkin, Del Rey & The Sun Kings perform the dark haunting music for the original adaptation to Bram Stoker's Dracula. Directed by F.W. Murnau.

Due to be released in November 2007, check the record label website for more details: http://trakwerx.com/label.htm

HARP REVIEWS BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN CD

Jackson Del Rey was a founding member of L.A. experimental rock combos such as Savage Republic and 17 Pygmies. If you’re familiar with these bands, you’ll understand this gives him a very good pedigree for undertaking his new project – creating a soundtrack for Sergei Eisenstein’s 1925 silent film about a shipboard food protest that results in carnage, and brings the seeds of revolution to the port city of Odessa. Instrumental, incorporating a variety of Del Rey’s expected pan-national musical influences, and relentlessly dark, this is wonderfully crafted chamber prog of the highest order. The disc is beautifully packaged, and a great addition to Del Rey’s canon. He was off the music scene for a decade and a half, and it’s nice to have him back.

By Byron Coley
First printed in November 2007