A new week, a new day, a new motherboard. It’s the 31st January which means that the new Lemon Jelly album is out. Hurrah! It’s not bad, but it’s not as good as “Lost Horizon”. There are a couple of good tracks and a couple of so-so tracks and one stinky track. The DVD is something else though and the added visuals give to the so-so tracks.
Anyway, to celebrate the release of this album, here’s “The Shouty Track”:
For more info, head over to http://www.lemonjelly.ky
While I was feeding Alex the Wonderdog, a mystery prize fell out of his box of James Wellbeloved patented doggie chow. It was a special pendant that flashed many different colours – the idea is that your dog doesn’t get run over in the dark or doesn’t get lost. I thought that this was the coolest freebie ever and put the pendant on his collar. The video clip below shows just how bright the pendant is. The blue colorisation in the clip is my night vision on my camcorder.
And so I proudly present Flashing Alex:
So a British explorer has been caught by a tribe of cannibals in deepest, darkest Africa. He pleads for his life: “You can’t eat me, I am an emmissary of Queen Victoria”. The tribal chief is a fair man, so he tells the intrepid explorer that if he can survive a test he will be spared and not put in the cooking pot.
The chief explains that there are three tents, each with a different task inside. The first tent contants a pitcher of the tribe’s strongest alcoholic drink, the second tent holds a tiger with a toothache and the third tent holds the chief’s pretty daughter.
“OK,” says the explorer, “First tent – drink the booze. Second tent – cure the tiger with a tootache. Third tent – pleasure the chief’s daughter.” The chief nods, knowing that the Englishman will probably just get eaten by the tiger.
So the explorer enters the first tent and drinks the booze. It is potent stuff and he staggers out of the tent absolutely rat-faced. He is staggering all over the place and can barely walk in a straight line. The tribe lead him into the second tent and in he goes. They hear the man screaming, the tiger howling and what appears to be a vicious fight between man and beast. This lasts for about 20 minutes until the explorer staggers out of the tent, scratched to ribbons and exhausted.
“OK,” he says, the effects of the alcohol still obvious, “Wheresh the girl with the toothache?”
🙂
I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with AB. Well, hate is too strong a word. Call it ambivalence (blimey, that was a massive downgrade). Some of his back catalogue I love with a passion (The Lone Rhino, Twang Bar King, Op Zop Too Wah) and the rest is OK-ish. Just OK-ish…I really can take it or leave it. And that’s not for want of trying folks. I really do try and love those other records but there’s something about them that leaves me going…”Uh”.
Anyway, that was the past and this is the future and the future is “Side One” – the first part of a three-part work issued on separate CDs (thanks, Ade. Dontcha think I am poor enough already?). So anyway what’s it like?
Well I really loved his last “proper” studio release Op Zop Too Wah. I thought it was clever, fun, intelligent, stupid and brilliant in equal measures. I love the fact that one minute it was out-and-out song writing and the next it was little fragments of instrumental lunacy. So what for Side One?
It opens with the track “Ampersand” which features Les Claypool on bass and Danny Carey on drums (they also play on the following two tracks). I like it in a backward-looking “Elephant Talk” kinda way – it’s got the same kind of scratchy rhythm guitar over it and I love the bass playing on it a lot. It skitters and jumps – and is a very busy start to the album. “I See the Writing on the Wall” again jumps back to AB’s work on “The Lone Rhino” – it’s an basically an instrumental with a lolloping rhythm track and AB saying “I see the writing on the wall” throughtout. It’s OK. It’s a chance for the guitarist to show of his chops, I guess.
“Matchless Man” feels like “Her Love is Mine” from Op Zop, but that’s probably more to do with the use of tabla and the dream-like vocals. It’s OK – but AB does these tracks too easily. Skip to “Madness” which is another instrumental. With dual guitars slipping all over the place. It’s seedy and slimy and nasty. I like it.
“Walk Around the World” is another typical AB pop song – again it sounds like an off-cut from Op Zop. It has fast syncopated lead guitar – a bit like Discipline-era KC actually. It’s OK – it might take a few plays before I really like this one. It’s too familiar at the moment.
“Beat Box Guitar” – this is more like it.
“Under the Radar” opens with a very pleasant guitar chords that I think I can play. 😀 But then he starts singing and ruins it. It’s OK – with lots of blips and bloops occupying the audio spectrum. It’s a lesser piece and I get the feeling he’s doing this on auto-pilot.
“Elephants” execrable nonsense. Been there, done that, got the T-shirt. Rhino II – but at least Lone Rhinocerus was clever and fun. This states the bleedin’ obvious and I can’t stand that. I don’t need the destruction of a species spelt out to me AGAIN.
“Pause” – throwaway puff.
An overview of this album would be to say that it starts off strong and then fizzles out. The instrumentals are good, but the sung-songs are nowhere near as clever as his previous efforts. Dare I say it? If this is indeed a 3-CD set, then I think/hope that most of filler is on this first disc because it is going to be really hard to justify shelling out another $50 for the accompanying two volumes.
To sum-up: one for the die-hard fans.
This is Darth Tater…the Mr Potato Head version of Darth Vader. And yes, he is available to buy.
I found these sound clips on the Cassini-Huygens webpage. For those of you who don’t know, Cassini-Huygens is the name of the space probe currently sitting on the surface of Titan, one of the moon’s of Saturn.
Alien winds as the probe descends
The sound of the radar during descent
That last sound file sounds a lot like the end of a song I recorded in 2000. Have a listen to it here and see if I was channeling sounds from an alien planet?
Just discovered that someone had very kindly written a short, positive review of my “Sows’ Ears & Silk Purses” 4-CD boxet.
GREAT BUY – BETTER OWN
Reviewer: staticmerry
AMAZING package! Well presented. Value for money. 4 disk set means your to find the musical ark of DARREN LOCK, from start to today, smoothly polished.
How cool is that? And I didn’t even have to sleep with anyone for that to happen! 🙂
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