Don't. Low Hill

It's been quiet for a while on the I Have A Tiger Records front. That ended with this song. The first release by a band called Low Hill.

Low Hill is a band round Laurens Vanhulle and based in Antwerp, who gathered some musicians around himself for a new musical project. The band name is as appropriately modest as it is right for the lowlands Antwerp is situated in. Low Hill may sound modest, the music is far from once the song develops itself towards its climatic ending.

In a way the same bells go off as when I listened to 'Love When You Don't Want It' by The LVE for the first time in 2014. I'm not as short of breath as I was then, but the effect the song has on me is similar. It touches me on a deeper level. Now both bands have the same producer, Joes Brands, so that may explain some of it, but certainly not all.

'Don't' starts with a faint rhythm far off in the mix. It could have been there by mistake or coincidence. It seems so distant, so not part of the intro and atmospheric first verse and chorus. There's so much room for the singer to move around in.

It is in the second verse when a muted, rhythm guitar joins and a female voice lifting mood and song up some more. A lead guitar joins as well, there's drums. Slowly electronics emerge and psychedelic treatments of the voices make my head spin around and around. The lead guitar takes the song over and starts playing a beautiful solo. Reminding me again of the way The LVE's hit song plays itself out. Don't is able to capture me in the exact same way. The difference is in the melancholy undertone where The LVE convinced me more. That takes nothing away from Low Hill's song that is a beautiful song all by itself.

Don't is the first song to be released by Low Hill. A first glimpse of what the band is about to unleash into the world. Vanhulle has worked for two years with his companions, Emiel Rymemans, Anke Verslype, Jordan Hudson and Marlon Leue to create music on the edge of classical songwriting, electronics and neo-soul, as the band describes its music. Add to that a lot of atmospherics and playing with the mood of the listener and the combination is intriguing to want to hear more in the future.

I can't tell the future but I understand that an album is under way. Too bad that it may still be some time off.


Wo.

You can listen to Don't here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fykoyEG-2tg

You can buy Don't here:

https://lowhilltheband.bandcamp.com/releases 

Chuck Berry, I.M. (1926-2017)

Chuck Berry was born as Charles Edward Anderson Berry in October 1926. In a totally different, formally segregated world. Yet he managed to change the world of rock and roll with his songs, influencing hundreds upon hundreds of white teenagers in the western world to play his songs and take it from there right onto this day.

My introduction to his music went indirectly. Being too young to know his music directly or to hear his direct influence on the beat boom coming out of England, the first time I knowingly heard a Chuck Berry rock and roll song was in the winter or early spring of 1974. I deliberately write rock and roll as I do not need to be remembered of that awful song 'My Ding-a-ling'. Somewhere I had heard Johnny Winter's blistering version of 'Johnny B. Goode' and very shortly after that Jimi Hendrix' version that a friend had on the 'In The West' live album. It more or less stayed that way for a while. I learned some more songs but never the original. Starting with 'Carol' and 'Little Queenie' on the Stones' 1970 live album. That changed with a very cheap cd around 1990 with his greatest hits. The quality was so bad and some songs were abominable live recordings. Not an invitation to learn more. That would take some more years.

I only learned how important Chuck Berry really was to the generation behind him when I viewed the picture 'Hail Hail Rock And Roll' on TV somewhere in the 90s. Keith Richards deciding to give Berry a good backing band and Chuck Berry being a total asshole all of the time. Doing his best to derail the whole venture right up to the last minute and start a song, on stage, in a different key than agreed and practised on. The music was great though. The "duckwalk" present and all.

Don't forget that other hail moment in a movie as well. In 'Back To The Future' Michael J. Fox plays a blistering version Van Halen style of Johnny B. Goode with the band of "Chuck Berry's cousin". "Chuck, listen, this may be the sound you were looking for" while his cousin holds up the phone for him to listen. The world that the movie showed us, the world where Marty McFly turns up in, is the world that Chuck Berry described and in a way gave back to the youth of America and to poorer Europe a few years later. A world of promises, full of cars, freedom, girls and Saturday nights dancing and drinking.

One of the stories I had learned in the meantime, was about the payola system of dj Alan Freedman. The other side to the glamour story, the less glamorous. Freedman's name forever is tagged to Berry's first single. The only way to get his song 'Maybelline' on the radio was to give Freedman songwriting credits. On the other hand there's a theory that the best of Chuck Berry's songs were at least co-written by his pianist Johnnie Johnson. Most songs are in chord progressions that are illogical for the guitar, not for the piano. As young men like Brian Wilson put a new lyric over what basically is a Chuck Berry song. 'Surfin' USA' holds the name Berry next to Wilson for some time now.

For people my age a party with a live band is not complete without at least one Chuck Berry song on the setlist. Mostly because of the versions by The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and all those other bands that played and recorded his songs in the early to mid 60s. Fact is that it is a good question whether The Rolling Stones would ever have become this band if Mick Jagger did not have an import Chuck Berry (and Muddy Waters) album under his arm at that fateful meeting on Dartford's railway station. Something bonded there that changed the face of rock and roll. Right up to this day that bond is intact. When I practice with my band, the biggest smiles always come out when we've played 'Johnny B. Goode'. It just makes us feel sooo good.

Chuck Berry has been in contact with the law many times, served jailtime and in general seems not to have been a very nice person. At the same time he was a family man, married for nearly 70 years. Never judge a book by the cover. Yet, all this is inconsequential to his legacy as one of the people who shaped modern music.

On his 90th birthday he announced a new record called 'Chuck'. His first since 1979. Sadly it will be released posthumously. For now let us hail hail rock and roll, as his music will live forever and inspire many people over the years to come. People who start playing guitar and learn rock riffs will always learn a few of or based on his.

Wo.

You can listen to 'Johnny B. Goode' here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFo8-JqzSCM

Waiting To Derail. Paceshifters

Tune in your ears for some noise. On the basis of the name I'd expected to hear some surfrock. The reason I put the album aside in the tremendous load of records coming out these days. And then the band came by in the minute on DWDD. Surf rock? Ha, no! Paceshifters is in the Nirvana alternative rock spectrum of things. Kurt would have turned 50 this year, so it's time for a new generation of grunge rockers. So that my grandchildren can form or listen to their grunge band 25 years from now.

It's kind of shocking to realise that Kurt would have turned 50 this year. Frozen forever in his 20 something guise. What sort of music would he have made today? We'll never know. All grungers who lived to tell have faced or are facing their 50th birthday. It's no surprise when I look at my own age though. Time flies by, fast. Is the world waiting for another grunge record? Probably not. Is this one welcome? Oh yes, it is.

Paceshiftters is around since 2008 and Waiting To Derail is the band's fourth full length album. Brothers Paul and Seb Dokman sing and play bass and guitar, respectively. Jesper Albers bangs away on the drums.

Waiting To Derail is one of those albums that I can be extremely short and straightforward with. Why? Simply because it holds everything that I expect it to hold. Hard rocking songs on the verge of rock, punk and enough elements of powerpop to make each and every song interesting. Full of energy, enough melody and some fiery guitar riffs and solos to appeal to my voice and my body.

Being a trio it means that all have to go full force in order to create a big sound and Paceshifters' members do just that. Even when the distortion and volume know goes down Jesper Albers keeps his power up laying the foundation for the play with dynamics. The brothers both supply the rhythm and lead elements. Then a bass run, then a guitar solo or (power)chord melody.

Despite that Waiting To Derail holds all I expect from a grunge album of the Nirvana variety, it is welcome. The album holds the right kind of excitement and joins that with songs that deserve to be heard. Another band from this country that scores far above average. Something is in the water, that's for sure.

Wo.

You can listen to 'Draw A Blank' here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aVtiQN8dcFU

Little Fictions. Elbow

Elbow is a band that slowly grew on me. There's a parallel there. The band grew slowly on the world as well. Together since 1990, it took the band 11 years to release its first full length album. Step by step an audience was won over that grew by the album, easing the band into fame. My introduction was through a compilation album that accompanied 'Oor Magazine' somewhere in the 00s. With that introduction came a listen to the whole album, which I found highly boring. Nothing seemed to happen in the music, except in that one song: 'Leaders Of The Free World' in which so much came together. An anthem, a uniquely great song. With 'The Seldom Seen Kid' Elbow still did not convince me totally. The next step was 'Build A Rocket Boy', which convinced my girlfriend, so I got to hear the album more often. For me it was 'The Take Off And Landing Of Everything' that won me over. That was a slow progression, as slow as the music of Elbow, in its own particular way is. Come 2017 there's the bands 7th album: Little Fictions, the first without their drummer Richard Jupp, the first band change since the inception of the band in 1990.

Lose a drummer and come up with a very percussive album? It seems Elbow does just that. All electronic and programmed. It seems the band had a field day playing with rhythms. Something I notice when listening to Little Fictions for the first time. Instruments strangely enough perhaps when discussing music is something I do not associate with Elbow. Listening to the band, I hear mostly atmosphere over which Guy Garvey sings his lyrics in his typical way, that rightly so has been compared to Peter Gabriel. I am fully aware that by writing this I'm doing the four, now three, musicians wrong in a grave way. Yet this is how Elbow feels to me. Like mist from which someone comes towards me to disappear into the mist again. Where the individual musicians put themselves aside totally for the atmosphere they create as a band. So the surprise with Little Fictions is that the music is so much more direct. Without killing the typical Elbow atmosphere. It seems to be built up differently.

What hasn't changed is Guy Garvey. His voice is omnipresent on Little Fictions. His solemn presence and delivery is like a bellow right on top of the music. There's nothing modest about his singing, where in the past there always was a hint at hesitation in his voice. A little hint at doubt whether he was doing the right thing. The little crack in the armour of the lead singer. On this album he is 100% the frontman. Sounding so self-assured.

The same goes for the whole band in that sense. With the much more open sound all flower as individual musicians. Heck, even the drum machine does. Whether the keyboards take over the lead or the guitar, with a nice delay in 'Head For Supplies', they sound beautifully and central to the song.

So is that all because of the leaving of the drummer, who allegedly always was slow to work with, in combination with the decision to speed up the writing and recording process? If so, I would recommend it to all bands. Fact is that something really has changed and that it worked a miracle for Elbow. The band has taken a new step in its career and not only made it go up a new path. Once again I have to state that the quality of the songs and the album as a whole is of the level that I expect Elbow to be at. Extremely high.

Elbow is not alone in its part of the musical universe. It has become the sun, with all other acts left behind as mere satellites. One of the top bands of the 10s, artistically and commercially. For a band that developed so slowly that is no mere feat.

Wo.

You can listen to 'Magnificent (She Said)' here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQl5KYiiFDI

Help! Help!. Moon Moon Moon

Help! Help!? Moon Moon Moon? Someone who likes repetition is at work here. A Donald Trump fan? My guess is no, but then I do not know Mark Lohmann, just his music. For certain is that he does not like to stick to saying things just once.

Moon Moon Moon is Mark Lohmann, a 23 year old musician from Heerhugowaard. That Lohmann is Moon Moon Moon has to be taken literally. He played and recorded all you're hearing here in his bedroom studio. So far he recorded two albums and an EP since 2014. This is his first release on Tiny Room Records.

There's a lot to discover on Help! Help!. Mark Lohmann produces dark, brooding songs, with undercurrents spelling danger for each and everyone involved in playing and listening. Mark Linkous is not around for some time anymore, but his music released under the name Sparklehorse is celebrated on this album. The next song can be as fragile as Bright Eyes'/Conor Oberst's most delicate songs. Just an acoustic guitar and a dreamy voice. Another explodes in your face like a bomb of noise. The songs can attract or estrange. Be warm or cold and distant. In other words Moon Moon Moon is interesting. This record does not let itself be pushed into one corner.

Promo photo

Let me focus on 'Disintegration Loop'. Far away thunder. A whistling sound, electronic, but it could be the wind in a rusty windmill, pumping up water for the cattle in the distance. Sounds on the veranda of the farmhouse from things moved by the wind. A very elementary sounding and played bass, around which all sorts of electronics are whistling, rustling, whining. Underneath some drumming and guitars. Barely over it the soft, subdued voice of Lohmann hovers. Like a tightrope dancer about to fall off. Yes, it's that same wind. The song is so delicate, yet so much happens at the same time.

When listening to Help! Help! just do not expect the obvious. Yes, there is beauty in most songs (the instrumental part of 'Goodbye, Seabed'!!!). It takes some stamina to find it at times though. Each and every time I listen to the album I find it. Often in a different places as the session before this one. New things are noticed each time. Even in the songs that seem buried underneath the dust of decades that stored itself into the groove of your grandfather's records. Where the needle can hardly work its way through. Even there there is this delicateness, this tender feeling. A yearning for something far away.

Do I toss the album away? It has happened also when I was not in the mood for the darkness surrounding the music. I needed something more lively. Never did I toss the album far. For that it is too good. For that Help! Help! is too interesting and fascinating. As I wrote: a lot is going on here that is worthwhile exploring. And I have and I will in the future.

This is all you need to know, dear reader. If you're intrigued, this is your moment to start listening. Enjoy!

Wo.

You can listen to 'Disintegration Loop' here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kq8tG64x0as

or buy the album on the bandcamp site of Tiny Room:

https://tinyroomrecords.bandcamp.com/merch