Taking The Temperature All The Way Up To Zero

Starring

BMX Bandits, Earthen Sea, Ishmael Ensemble, Lightheaded, Mirror System, Peter Bruntnell. Say She She

The Front Runners

Rituals : Ishmael Ensemble

This is described as a jazz album. It’s not. It’s the first album I’ve heard for a while that strikes me as being truly significant.

The Ishmael Ensemble are one of the newer names to come out of Bristol. They’re carrying the flame for the city’s legacy for pushing boundaries. They’re a Massive Attack for the 2020s.

Musically this is an alternative and perhaps experimental approach to music. (That should win over the doubters!) This is music that asks questions of you and pushes you to make choices. It’s music that turns towards once in a lifetime defining moments with no turning back. There’s a deeper sense too of gears changing and moving towards a new phase in music.

Ishmael Ensemble recognise the power of music and its potential to be a driving force. The vocals on a track such as ‘Grounded’ are lower in the mix. There are moments of soul and gospel in there too, leading to moments of revelation. This is certainly true of ‘In Time’ and ‘Ezekiel’, showcasing Holysseus Fly, is a soulful warning of a song.

Two things stand out in the music. The first is that, with no context to help you, you’d regard this as a synth driven album. It’s musical but, more importantly, the synths set the atmosphere. On ‘Fever Dream’, what you notice is not the notes or any melody but the sounds.

The second stand out feature is the pulse underpinning the whole album. There may be a jazz influence in the beats and clicks, but there’s an urgency in the pulse like a heartbeat beginning to work overtime. ‘C’Mon’ and ‘Blinded’ are the very definition of slow build songs. Once you are ensnared in their grip, there’s no breaking away. Listening to their music is to allow it to overwhelm you like the storm of dust and sand from a helicopter’s powerful downdraught.

This is music to prepare you for your one shot at greatness. Ishmael Ensemble are looking to change your world.

Taster Track : Ezekiel

The Chasing Pack

Dreamers On The Run : BMX Bandits

This was not what I was expecting. It’s pop filtered through dreams, not the dreams that sit alongside ambitions, but the dreams that are half formed and render feelings and thoughts larger than life.

I think my response needs a little context. I’m a BMX newbie. I heard my first BMX Bandits’ album - ‘Bee Sting’- just a few weeks ago and absolutely loved everything about it. ‘Dreamers On The Run’ is not the same kind of album.

This feels more like a Duglas T Stewart solo album. There are no shared vocals. He’s the only face on the cover. There’s self referencing in the song titles. Above all this seems to be the very personal dream of one man, and there’s an unapologetic ‘this is who I am’ note to the album.

Coming to this is like dipping into the Rolling Stones and pulling out ‘Their Satanic Majesties Request’ or heading to 10cc hoping for ‘People In Love’ but landing some of Godley and Creme’s more outre songs. You have to take them on their own merits.

Stewart helps you with this. He sets out his stall clearly with the six minute ‘Dreamers On The Run’. It’s a longer and more intricate song with a memorable melody but also more stylised. It places you in the dream where the normal rules of musical engagement don’t apply. We step back to ‘Bee Sting’ territory with the catchy ‘Setting Sun’. It’s fair to say it’s the song most likely to be heard on daytime radio. Songs such as ‘Cockerel’s Waiting’ are very much from the dream state and that accounts for their undeniable oddness.

What saves this album from self indulgence is the sad sweetness underpinning a song such as ‘What He Set Out To Be’. On ‘My Name Is Duglas - Don’t Listen To What They Say’ the sadness is infinite, but it’s tempered with defiant acceptance too.

This is an ambitious and brave work of art with pop influences. What’s lost is some of the more straightforward, irresistible pop. It could alienate some, but it might encourage more to self reflection.

Taster Track : What He Set Out To Be

Recollection : Earthen Sea

This set of ambient pieces with dubby bass lines soothes in a melancholy way.

Back in 2020, just before the world was abruptly taken away, I was working in a large office very near to Victoria Station. Our entrance was part of a normal parade of shops, souvenir tat, an excellent coffee outlet and a hairdresser amongst them. I retired during the pandemic without returning to the office except to clear my desk. That entire parade of ordinary shops had vanished, closed up, gone.

Earthen Sea’s album is the soundtrack to that moment of uncomprehending loss, the coming to terms with irrevocable change.

It’s an ambient record, experimental in places and it’s music to stop you in your tracks, giving you time to dip again into the thoughts, feelings and echoes from a time that the world changed. It’s undeniably melancholy, but not overwhelmingly so and it pulls off the surprising trick of leaving you stronger and even happier for listening to it. It’s music for the aftermath of collapsed hopes and for settling for something different from your dreams. It’s a form of melancholy though that is tempered by the knowledge that you have a new path to follow, and a life to explore and rebuild.

This is eyes closed music. It’s full of a dub heavy, soothing ambience. The songs are full of sound and texture and they’re given structure by connecting bass lines that you’ll continue to hear, even when they’re no longer there. They creep up on you too. The percussion on ‘Another Space’ keeps you grounded in the physical world.

There are echoes of other artists. The strongest is of David Boulter’s meditations of his childhood. ‘A Single Pub’ could have been lifted from his past catalogue. There are fainter echoes of Talk Talk in ‘Another Space’.

Listen to this if you want the time and space to make sense of your personal past.

Taster Track : Another Space

Combustible Gems : Lightheaded

These are songs to remind you of the essential joy that pop has at its heart.

It was Henry Ford who said you could have any colour of Model T Ford you wanted as long as it was black. Of course I’d be lying if I said I always wanted something as simple and unpolished as a Model T Ford. I like polish and comfort as much as the next driver. I’m glad though that Lightheaded can be described as the Model T Ford of pop, but painted in rainbow colours.

Lightheaded have the spirit of starting out anew. It’s easy to lose that in an era of increasingly accessible, affordable and sophisticated recording techniques. It’s refreshing how they cut away the fripperies of pop and give you its untamed heart.Think of an even more pared back version of The Las or a less falling over themselves early Orange Juice.

‘Always Sideways’ is a slightly misleading place to start, being an appealing song that grows from a simple three minute pop song into something slightly more substantial. For the most part, the songs here stay true to their roots. ‘Dawn Hush Lullaby’ is drawn from the well of the poppiest songs by the Velvet Underground. The songs may be basic and even raw, but they’re melodic and sweetened by harmonies too. It makes for something catchy and likeable on ‘Moments Notice’. You’ll find a little reverb here, a nice touch in harmonies there on ‘Still Sitting Sunday’. They finish with ‘Because Of You’, their version of a big final number. It’s threaded with thin, wonky strings that are an absolute delight.

Treasure this record as a memento of something that is increasingly at risk of becoming part of a lost world.

Taster Track : Because Of You

Route 77 : Mirror System

Mirror System’s electronic chill has its moments but at 63 minutes it sometimes feels like an overlong journey that never quite arrives.

We all know that Route 66 is the rock ‘n’ roll highway, but where does Route 77 take us? If I’m honest I’m not sure. It drifts along its chosen path, taking its time and passing through some attractive territory on the way, just enough to keep you looking out the car window.

It’s a little impersonal as if you’re travelling on an otherwise empty Greyhound bus, or in a taxi where the driver has no interest in conversation. There are moments when you feel you’ve had enough, and have to suppress a tetchily hopeful “Are we there yet?”.

Those moments pass though. Mirror System has the knack of catching you off guard with its hooks and ear worms. ‘Paris Texas’ and ‘John Vain’ have an unexpectedly bluesy treatment conducive to pretending you're travelling through dustbowl America as you crawl around the M25. ‘Avenue of Lights’ swirls by with a lovely, intermittent four note refrain that takes you back to the days of Royksopp. ‘Bocca di Lupo’ doesn’t quite know how to get going but, slowly, something memorable emerges. ‘Camel Hot’ is one of those deep cut tracks you find on chilled club compilations for aficionados, its Arabian influences audible just below the surface It's quite dreamlike - amiably soothing and easy to like.

This is an album that requires your patience. Just as you write off a song as just so much ambient electronica it snags your attention. Turn your ears away or zone out and you might miss something. I’d like to think that with the simply weird closing track ‘Sonora Desert Edge (The Abyss)’ is Mirror System’s way of checking you’re still paying attention!

Like Route 66, Route 77 is a journey through featureless terrain with just enough moments of interest to keep you going.

Taster Track : Avenue of Lights

Houdini and the Sucker Punch : Peter Bruntnell

Peter Bruntnell’s stock in trade is a pleasant blend of country, folk and rock. It is what it is, and it doesn’t need to be anything more.

In his Spotify bio, Bruntnell quotes The Guardian as saying that he should be selling out arenas and winning handfuls of Grammys. I’m not sure that’s meant entirely seriously, but if it were I don’t think it would be doing him any favours. Just think how Lady Jane Grey reached the heights of her situation before it ended very badly for her. Bruntnell’s music is more at home in the back of an unexpectedly good bistro pub, the highlight of an evening out with friends.

He can play. He can sing and he can write. ‘Houdini and the Sucker Punch’, ‘Sharks’, ‘Let There Be A Scar’ and others are good, thoughtful and appealing songs. They’re not earth shattering but they are good comfort listening, the bubble and squeak of pop. He writes,plays and sings about the downbeat moments of life so that you don’t have to.

There aren’t enough arenas in the land to accommodate all the musicians who deserve to be in them. What Peter Bruntnell lacks on the evidence of this album is a song to make his name, like ‘Babylon’ did for David Gray or ‘Mary’s Prayer’ did for Danny Wilson. The act that came to mind as the closest equivalent to Bruntnell is the excellent Small Town Jones. I’ll wager that most of you haven’t heard of him either!

Peter Bruntnell is destined to bring a lot of pleasure to small versions of the masses. He’s their personal private secret. There are many worse things to be.

Taster Track : Let There Be A Scar

Silver : Say She She

Disco never went away. It simply went underground until it was rediscovered in every detail by Say She She.

One thing about this album is undeniable. It’s an uncanny resurrection of the classic late period disco sound. You can hear the pitch now. Minnie Riperton joins forces with The Pointer Sisters in perfect harmony with Chic. That's not a forced marriage. It works perfectly.

These songs have Chic style driving bass lines. The falsetto moments on ‘Astral Planeare a joy to behold, and that falsetto becomes the sound of howling banshees on ‘Reeling’. The breathy vocals on ‘Echo In The Chamber’ are very attractive. The blend between each of the singers is unimprovable. They are a match made in Heaven. As an homage to a lost genre, this scores ten out of ten.

And yet…..

It also shows that you can have too much of a good thing. At sixty-six minutes, it’s too long. Perhaps it’s different if you’re a dancer. I’m not, and before the end my attention wandered. This is authentic, deep cut disco. It’s much loved by BBC Radio 6, possibly because, individually, any of these songs would add a quality hallmark to any programme or playlist. There’s a late night vibe to songs like ‘Don’t You Dare Stop’, and sometimes I felt I might just be ready to go home.

This is disco at its most serious, aligned with its DNA and avoiding the fripperies that might make it more fun. Its appeal back in the early 80s would have been for students of clubculture, not readers of Smash Hits. It lacks the heady joy of disco’s finest moments. You could say it has too many trills and not enough thrills.

As an acclamation of a significant musical development, this scores 10/10. As a listening experience it’s good, but it’s 7.5/10.

Taster Track : Astral Plane