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Starring


Djo, Jan Jelinek, Kirk Barley, Mark Barrott. Real Estate


The Front Runners


Daniel : Real Estate


Real Estate offer the kind of wide eyed, confident indie pop that you’d need a heart of stone to dislike.


There’s a case to be made for Real Estate to be crowned as the kings of jangle pop. I’ve always liked the idea of Real Estate, but sometimes found their earlier albums to be an anti climax. With ‘Daniel’ they’ve delivered an album where the reality delivers on the promise

They make the kind of music that’s unconcerned with big arenas. They want the intimate pleasure of convincing you that you are their sole concern. They want to see you transfixed by their melodies and harmonies, discreetly tapping your feet and silently mouthing along to their perfect choruses. They’re a more grown up Fountains of Wayne in their ability to deliver a radio friendly song. They are as intricate as the softer songs of Nada Surf. And they’re at one with the Barenaked Ladies in their ability to sprinkle fairy dust over ordinary experiences and make them glow Melody and harmonies are key in the carefree way of The Byrds.


Their songs are as calm and uplifting as a warm summer morning when all around is still. They create a feeling of mild intoxication in songs such as ‘Somebody New’ that can only bring a contented smile to your face. They incorporate the steel guitar of country in songs such as ‘Victoria’, but it’s not the sound of ‘Deliverance’ but the feeling of being heard across the fields while lying under big blue skies with a few fluffy clouds littered around.


Above all, these are songs that wrap you in their warmth. They’re pop songs to lose yourself in, pop as you always hoped it could be.


Taster Track : Somebody New



The Chasing Pack


The Crux - Djo


Joe Keery, who plays the character Steve Harrington in Stranger Things is also the musician Djo. On this album he plays the part of a cool, cocky pop star. He’s not bad but, in this role, he’s no Oscar contender.


And that’s the weakness of this album. It feels as if he’s playing another part, that he’s acting these songs rather than inhabiting them. His half spoken lines on songs like ‘Egg’ sound like a script not a natural aside or part of a believable conversation. In the end it feels like appealing buddy boy pop not a leading man to change your life..


Perhaps he’s trying too hard, cramming a lot of different approaches into songs like ‘Lonesome Is A State Of Mind’ In wanting to demonstrate star quality and artistic credibility he over compensates and doesn’t relax.This becomes a triumph of style over substance and something that makes true meaning subsidiary to easy words and sounds. Lines stay in your head, but not songs.


None of this is particularly off putting but neither does any of it truly stand out. There’s a fair amount of glossy fun to be had in a song like ‘Potion’. ‘Gap Tooth Smile’s power pop feels a more natural fit for his performance and less contrived. ‘The rock and roll strut of ‘Back On You’ is a fun performance, like a cheesy 80s Hollywood coming of age film. ‘Charlie’s Garden’ is typical of the songs here. There are echoes of 10cc, Tot Taylor and Bleachers throughout but without any of the classic moments those acts have provided.


As a whole this is as tasty as a main meal based around a Chinese takeaway or what you can extract from a hotel vending machine. Both have their moments but neither are truly satisfying.


Taster Track : Back On You



Kosmischer Pitch : Jan Jelinek


Electronic Sound magazine carries a monthly feature on buried treasures. A contributor chooses an electronic album that they feel was influential on release but has since vanished from sight. ‘Kosmicher Pitch’ was a recent selection from 2005. I can understand both why the contributor feels it should be heard again and why it vanished.


It’s an album firmly in the tradition of 70s German electronica, equally touched by the prog electronica of that time and the sampling approach of the 21st Century. It’s an album that still tries to push at the boundaries of what electronica music can sound like. It’s quite hardcore in that sphere, not chasing chart placings but the approval of fellow practitioners.


Opening track ‘Universal Band Silhouette’ starts as a highly noodly piece before building into a tune that is worth waiting for. It’s repetitive, hypnotic and as memorable as a pirate radio call sign. It’s a tune that introduces the purposeful momentum that characterises the whole album.


Jelinek occupies a world that gets busier as he adds more and more elements to it. It’s as if he keeps a store of half formed fragments and ideas simply because they may prove useful one day. It’s certainly true of ‘Vibraphonspulen’, which reappears in a different extended form to close the album. As I said, nothing is disposed of if it might be useful. ‘In Diskpdickicht’ is a more sprightly number, the kind of tune that might be played for the workers in Willie Wonka’s chocolate factory to keep them up to the mark. ‘Lithiummelodie’ has an interesting call and response piece going on in the melody. And “NilSon’ is a very pleasant electro-acoustic to the album proper, refreshing the palate.


If there’s a flaw it’s probably too long. Attention sags two thirds of the way through. It turns to bump and grind, and I don’t mean that in a ‘let’s get jiggy’ kind of way. It’s closer to the bump and grind of metal meeting concrete.


That aside, this is an album that holds up well. Perhaps it’s better to sample it though than listen to it in one sitting from beginning to end.


Taster Track : Universal Band Silouette



Lux : Kirk Barley


This is an ideal introduction to ambient music for the non-believer, and a highly enjoyable musical display for those already converted.


Let’s address the elephant in the room that the uninitiated raise with ambient music. It’s not music. It’s difficult. There are no good tunes. How hard can it be to make? Even a child can string a few sounds together. If we were talking about the art world I'd be in the John Constable camp, not the Jackson Pollock one so it will never work for me.


Fair comment - unless you’re prepared to lay down your prejudices, assume positive intent on the part of the musician and invest a little more time to relax into it. Then you’ll find rewards you can’t find anywhere else in music.


And it is music. It’s the music of the world around you, the music of the happy accidents that mean you can be hit by a riff inspired by cutlery shifting in a drawer. On a first, inattentive listen it could sound a mess. Give it time though, and it is clearly not. It’s a composition of the unexpected, a study in how sound, texture and pulse can go together. Sometimes you may hear elements that are not quite notes as they appear on a piano or the pentatonic scale, but you can find beauty in their variations of pitch and tone and in the space found between those notes. There are moments in Kirk Barley’s work that may sound slightly off, a little discordant. They clash just like the sound of modern life but are carefully and judiciously controlled. If you could look at music, this would be like looking at it through a broken mirror, rendering the familiar different but allowing you to focus on individual elements that usually make up the whole.

But there’s more. Kirk Barley’s music taps into your memory, prompting nostalgic feelings. Sometimes, as on ‘Verre’ it conjures up the music that’s around you all the time. Elsewhere, as on ‘Balanced’  it transports you to faraway places such as humid forests. The thunder and artificially constructed rain patterns on ‘Balanced’ display all that is good and powerful about ambient music. And as you engage fully with the trance inducing quality of ‘Descendant’, it affords you the space to think - the same space that allows tricky, insoluble problems to be clarified and resolved  in your head while you sleep.


There’s a possibility that this ambient music that creates a space around you is as much for the creator as it is for the listener. So what? Like any skill it can be enjoyed and beneficial to others.


The acid test of any album is whether or not it works as a piece of music that you want to listen to. For me, Kirk Barley’s ‘Lux’ was over far too quickly.


Taster Track : Descendant



Everything Changes, Nothing Ends : Mark Barrott


‘Everything Changes, Nothing Ends’ is the epic sound of ambient chill as it reaches out of the come down rooms to strive for grandeur and meaning.


It’s an ambitious development. ‘Pandora’ takes the ambient house and orchestral strings that are a marriage made in Ibizan Heaven and adds an Enya celticism that is stunningly effective in creating something mystical and, eventually, almost spiritual. It has the grandeur , on ‘January 25th’, of stumbling across the nearly completed pyramids during the final throes of their construction. 


This is an album that feels like a new day dawning in high definition technicolour. It feels beguilingly unexpected and different, but there’s a nagging worry that it could also feel like the emperor’s new clothes, given a quick upgrade to sparkle anew. (And that, of course, can never be successful or even a thing.)


Leaving your worries aside for a moment, there is much to take at face value and enjoy. It’s a great rearrangement of the elements that can make Balearic come down chill beautiful and celebratory. The skipping beats of ‘Butterfly In A Jar (II - IV)’ keep one step in the club sounds  that gave birth to it. The borrowing of some jazz trumpet cleverly interweaves a lonely sound into the mix, emphasisng the peace and calm of the rest. It’s a top moment.


The combination of club and grandeur raises a question though, and the answer will  make clear if you’re going to enjoy the music or not. Is this an album that is trying to free itself from pop’s shackles? Is it aiming too high, to become something grander and more mystical? Does it want to be listened to in reverence and awe, rather than enjoyed and experienced simply as music for the end of a great night out? 


For me the jury’s out. I enjoyed it to a point but it lost me a little before the end.


Taster Track : Butterfly In A Jar (II - IV)




As ever this week's Taster Track playlists can be accessed at https://open.spotify.com/playlist/42qDXrw3nLMlCSg45kCnRy?si=4499207642034207 or via the Spotify link on the Home Page.



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