These New Puritans

I love "Hidden" to death! I love "Beat Pyramid" too.

My ears get picky when chamber music instruments are recorded in a natural way. A swirl of delay and pitch-shift here and there, subby kick-drum, but otherwise this record sounds like a recording of a concert, not an album. Which is awesome! But it makes me listen with a different set of ears, the same ears that listen to Erased Tapes and Bedroom Community and Corey Dargel and Olafur Arnalds and Simon Bookish and, like, recordings of chamber music. The same set of ears that never got into The Rachels'.

I have nothing bad to say about the record because the intention is honourable and the execution is excellent. But on the first couple listens, it's not what I'm looking for as a listener. Why not, I can't put my finger on immediately? Maybe it broadcasts its godparents too loudly, i.e. Gastr del Sol + David Sylvian + "Taphead" + Michael Nyman + Hindemith? Or maybe I don't like the way the drums and vocals are recorded so cleanly? Still, great band and I am a big fan. The last track is brilliant.

Love your take, thanks for this -- and to an extent I'd agree in that while the band has massively bootstrapped I do agree with you that it feels like they're still 'in process.' The Japan/Talk Talk comparisons in terms of arc are thrown around and all but at the same time, Japan's third was Gentlemen Take Polaroids and Talk Talk's The Colour of Spring -- ie, there was STILL more to come. Not that that would be guaranteed in TNP's case necessarily but I like the idea of this being yet another signpost in their progression.

Something that always excited me about Spiritualized and Blur's forays into chamber music-- on a theoretical level, bc I don't love either Let It Come Down or Monkey-- was that in interviews both J Spaceman and Damon Albarn had a rotten-child attitude toward the Concert Hall and instrumentation. Spacemen in the MOJO magazine saying "I told the arranger I wanted 12 French horns and no other brass" and Albarn saying "I hate violas tell all the violas to go home". Even if I didn't love the resultant music, I appreciated the sentiment, it was brash and fun and stoopid and I liked it.

Then, with "Hidden", it was as if that sentiment had come full-blossom, arrangement-wise. The amount of bassoon and taiko was perverse. The sonics of that album were thrilling and its building blocks were so unexpected and unprecedented. It had the effect of "this could be a piece of chamber music" and was performed as such at Barbican? and elsewhere? I missed it but heard it was ~amazing~.

I don't like x=y discussion-- especially comparing this band to Talk Talk which, with my low opinion of Talk Talk, is a disservice to TNP's much more crystallized intention-- but the end of "V" sounds like "Taphead" (or whatever that Talk Talk song is with the two minutes of drum vamp). "Spiral" sounds like "Let The Happiness In". [Another track] sounds like [that track from Camofleur]. There's a trumpet solo that could be a sample from "In A Silent Way". Compared to "Hidden", it is all so familiar? Instead of unexpected.

I read a little blurb that said that guy wrote everything out, all parts, before entering studio. It's possible that he didn't realize how striking these reference points are, while the record existed as notes on a page. It's something I'm familiar with, a client will say "make it sound like x" and just how much it sounds like x is kind of arbitrary, dependent upon studio and players as much as the limits of the arranger's own ingenuity.

And maybe I'm supremely off-base and just listen to too much David Sylvian and Gastr del Sol etc. and I'll fall in love with the record on third listen

especially comparing this band to Talk Talk which, with my low opinion of Talk Talk, is a disservice to TNP's much more crystallized intention

Yeah, agreed. I only find that valid in terms of evolutionary shorthand -- at most -- rather than explicit reference point or role model.

P/dull from the excerpts, for Puritans I detect much pleasure here, not enough work.

Bands have yet to crack Ferneyhough Transit.

Well, I disagree strongly with that idea. If anything, Ferneyhough is trying to take "intuitive serial sound creation" and box it into notation and classical music performance. The reverse is true. Ferneyhough has yet to crack a run-of-the-mill noise rock show or a synth jam. But that's what I like about Ferneyhough? I thought it was the point? That what he was doing was really dumb and time-intensive?

Sorry my rambling upthread was a bit tangential and pointlessly personal, but I guess this thing lends itself more to imaginative interpretation more than having any sort of functional use. Can't dance to it, can't really use it at dinner parties, would sound shit in a car, can't even really relax to it. Think what I was getting at is that instead of being some Talk Talkish meditation on the spirit of Eden, it feels more like they're dealing with a particular manifestation of the messy cultural entropy at the end of history.

― dschinghis kraan (NickB), Thursday, 30 May 2013 19:39 (2 days ago)

how much of the music you listen to has a functional use?

Maybe "functional use" isn't quite the right term for it but Nick's problem sounds a bit like the one I had with the Swans album from last year, in a "I really like this but I can't imagine many moments in daily life when I'd actually be able to listen to it".

At the time, Artrocker described These New Puritans as sounding like "Sheffield and Berlin synths, '90s alt rock Sonic Youth and Yo La Tengo drones, Underworld beats; and all in the most contemporary of contexts".[citation needed]

In a 2010 interview with Barnett, Paul Morley described These New Puritans' new material as "very 1970, but also quite 1610, 1950, 1979, 1989, 2005 and 2070".[5]

Ferneyhough's Bone Alphabet almost sounds like a synth jam.

The idea, if anything, is that bands have got to stop fkn about with bores like Reich and Ligeti (I mean, come on, half a dozen works worth a listen and a few rambles against serialism aside - this is bullshit right?), and rock writers shouldn't be impressed.

What Ferneyhough does could be really dumb. I mean, I doubt he could get a bunch of players and tour the music around clubs like Philip Glass did it because there would be several suicides involved given the time-intensive "demands" involved. But that's likeable, although the results are what I care about.

there are certainly some albums that could fit that category via being extremely long, dissonant, dysphoric or what have you, but there is a huge amount of music that has no sort of functional use while not sharing any of those characteristics (in which you might include 'field of reeds')

i don't think 'classical music' is that relevant here, it uses classical instruments but nothing in that interview suggests yr boy barnett is heavily invested in notated music

reich and minimalism maybe in some small measure, but that has always existed on the interzone between concert music and the periphery of popular music

1610 though, Vespers? :-)

trash ligeti if you wish but please don't place the composer of lontano, the piano studies, the second string quartet and the san francisco polyphony alongside reich

Yeah that was low, apols.

I really don't like those piano works though.

"Heavily invested", probably not, although he has talked a bit about composers like Britten and Messiaen in interview. Equally though how much rock music, especially modern rock music, shows an interest in the kind of melodic and harmonic progression of something like 'V (Island Song)' or 'Dream'? I mean when most bands use classical instrumentation they tend to stick to fairly tried and trusted rock chord progressions, as by and large did bands like Bark Psychosis and Talk Talk while texturally being closer to this album.

I mean I don't think the band believe they're making classical music in any way shape or form and I don't think they're explicitly channelling any individual composers but they're definitely approaching the writing process in a completely different way from most other bands, even/especially those who happily flirt with orchestral grandiosity on occasion.

sure, the use of these instruments/arrangements is more than just perfunctory or decorative......i think there is a reasonable tradition now of this sort of chamber pop or whatever (leftfield 'rock'ish people using small ensembles of violins & woodwinds &c....i don't want to get lost in taxonomy)

it's not an area that interests me greatly but this lp is interesting enough, i need to play it a few more times and also the previous lp

they seemed more into classical during their last lp judging by this

http://www.factmag.com/2010/07/16/fact-mix-167-these-new-puritans/

I really hope that Capleton into William Byrd transition is properly mixed.

I have nothing bad to say about the record because the intention is honourable and the execution is excellent. But on the first couple listens, it's not what I'm looking for as a listener. Why not, I can't put my finger on immediately? Maybe it broadcasts its godparents too loudly, i.e. Gastr del Sol + David Sylvian + "Taphead" + Michael Nyman + Hindemith? Or maybe I don't like the way the drums and vocals are recorded so cleanly? Still, great band and I am a big fan. The last track is brilliant.

sylvian was the really really obvious touchstone I was flailing for above btw.

This conversation has gone on too many tangents and I don't even know where to start.

I don't know why we're talking about Ligeti and Reich and Ferneyhough but xyzzzz__ u r rong, Ligeti rules and if you are feeling saturated by too many pop bands and chamber music composers who're taking cues from him you have probably sourced out a gold-mine of Ligeti-inspired music that I'm unaware of and would like to know about

You know why we're talking about it. Admitedly I've only had a skim of the discussion and heard a couple of snippets...your point seems to be that because there is not enough chamber-like pop we should perhaps lower the threshold for what could seen as good when it does arrive. Which we shouldn't do.

So I was completely ignorant of these guys until now and even thinking of them as one time indieBrit-wannabes seems absurd. I wonder if Sutton had a couple of old Penguin Cafe/Lounge Lizards albums floating around the studio. I get the Talk Talk references, but this is way more direct and making a statement while TT were seeming simple fractal-zooms.

I may have been exposed to the wrong pieces but I've never heard any Reich or Ligeti that sounds like this. Obviously there are loads of bands who take Reich and Glass as influences and considerably fewer who talk about Britten (who TNP bring up more than anyone else) and even that influence is considerably more audible on the last album than this one.

your point seems to be that because there is not enough chamber-like pop we should perhaps lower the threshold for what could seen as good when it does arrive

By what yardstick? No one would dispute that they are more rudimentary "composers" than anyone else being discussed here. I'm not really up on "chamber pop" and I tend to assume most of it is faux-baroque prissiness but until you actually mention some of the bands you're talking about (or, y'know, listen to the record) I'm going to assume your position is bullshit, sorry.

The one thing I didn't address was flamboyant's suggestion that I was sitting on a stash of magnificent chamber pop. Which I'm not.

But some of this stuff is talked about upthread: bands usually explore the ambient and minimalist ends. People like Radiohead have talked about Ligeti and tried to channel it.

Guess where I'm coming from is that I know of a few classical composers that played in punk-ish groups and liked Webern too and then went to make hard-edged "classical" music. Not all are like that; Ferneyhough played in brass bands and went on to remake post-Boulez in his own manner.

The slight frustration is how bands talk about something which they think is modern yet its actually quite old. I attached onto that and what they call themselves.

I suppose what I'm talking about doesn't quite yet exist, and may never come to exist.

You know why we're talking about it. Admitedly I've only had a skim of the discussion and heard a couple of snippets...your point seems to be that because there is not enough chamber-like pop we should perhaps lower the threshold for what could seen as good when it does arrive. Which we shouldn't do.

I didn't say that, but if that was the impression I gave, I feel the opposite. i.e. too much chamber-pop and let's all raise the bar.

I realize that there were some conflicting statements in my initial post ("I love this band" / "I'm cool on this record"). My enthusiasm for the band is generated mostly by the clarity of their intention and their commitment, and by their past successes, afaic this band has yet to turn out a bad track. If anything my gaze has turned critical on this band because I've come to hold these guys to super-high standards.

xyzzzz__ I respect this:

I suppose what I'm talking about doesn't quite yet exist, and may never come to exist.

I used to attend chamber music concerts with the attitude that for the concert to be worth my time, my pre-conceptions needed to be shattered, my life-view altered. If I heard a moment that is reminiscent of a Romantic composer, I'd assume the composer had childish Romantic ideologies. If I heard a shitty break-beat, I'd assume the composer is less intimate with the history of break-beat than I was. I'd stand out in the lobby with Simon Bookish or similar and snark about how composer X obviously hadn't heard composer Y because if they did they'd "immediately stop with all those post-African repetitions" or whatever. I just don't feel the same anymore.

What I'm trying to say is that if the pizza arrives and you realize that you want falafel, you should go and get falafel instead of complaining that the pizza chef has obviously never heard of the miracle of falafel. I really really like the last two Skeletons records, "Money" and "PEOPLE".

Album now up on Spotify:
http://open.spotify.com/album/3LNUwgmPk0dxd0pAyeKE6v

Listening to Navigate, Navigate again for the first time in a long, long time and I can retroactively hear the seeds of what they're doing now floating around in these songs; like, it's pretty self-evident (to me) that it's the same songwriter working with a different sound palette on each of these albums.

If I heard a shitty break-beat, I'd assume the composer is less intimate with the history of break-beat than I was.

chamber music has breakbeats??

Hearing the Wyatt comparison a lot more on second listen.

Only hearing the thinnest hair of Robert Wyatt here, def. more Talk Talk, or whatever it is, exactly, from Talk Talk acts like King Creosote or, I dunno, Shearwater sometimes borrow. Hanging piano chords? Background drones? Plaintive vocals?

chamber music has breakbeats??

Yep. The staff fits right between "contrabassoon" and "superfluous er'hu"

I've clocked a couple more listens and it just reinforces how crucial "Organ Eternal" is to the album's sequencing and overall quality. By "Spiral" the album becomes an oppressive muggy cloud and "Organ Eternal" is the thing I need to get through the rest. Really, it's what I thought they would do more of on this disc. Such a nice piece of music. The rest, well... 18 Musicians in Search of a Music. (I make that double reference because I feel that, as a sombre as the records are, they are always pretty self-aware, or fourth-wall aware.)

Another thing: the continuation of the move toward classical/avant garde means that I think the jazz influence on this record has largely gone unremarked. The trumpet on "Nothing Else," for example, reminds me of something from Ascenseur pour l'échafaud drastically slowed down. Some kind of film noir cool jazz thing... The keyboards on "The Light In Your Name" have a bit of a In a Silent Way thing going on...

"Field of Reeds" is another big payoff. Both it and "Organ Eternal" have major-sounding chord changes (for the most part). It really relieves some of the grinding nausea.

― fields of salmon

^^^abandoned early draft, pieced together from pitchshifted recordings of a tsunami

I dunno what that means but it sounds cool

Interview in Fact:

http://www.factmag.com/2013/06/14/you-have-to-be-quite-obsessive-these-new-puritans-on-their-dizzying-new-opus-fields-of-reeds/

Also present is one of the lowest singing voices in Britain, nurtured in the lungs of bass singer Adrian Peacock. Barnett had already written the music before realising that making it a reality would be slightly more complicated.

“I knew [the part] was very, very low. At first we tried to contact Russian Orthdox singers – they have all this music for the basso profondo range, which is even lower than bass singers, it’s really, really low. We tried to contact them but we couldn’t really get through to them, we just got answerphone messages with chanting on.

“So I don’t know how we came across him, but he’s this great character, Adrian Peacock. He’s one of the three basses [in the country], this is what I’ve heard, who can hit this note. If you listen to the song ‘Nothing Else’, it starts off with him, and that’s basically his lowest note.”

Just listened again and bloody hell, that is a low note.

Okay the bit about the answerphone messages.

Good grief @ that being a regular human voice and not, like, I dunno, some weird woodwind instrument or something. Which is what I thought it was.

They were fantastic in London last night, they managed to make this huge expansive sound with maybe six musicians onstage, and everything sounded as full as it does on the record, possibly fuller.

The best songs were probably from Hidden though - We Want War was predictably astonishing and their drummer is terrific.

Jealous.

I was looking out for you last night Nick. They were smashing. Too loud for my poor ears though. I wish I'd taken ear protection.

Sadly I am skint and many miles away. Missing Melt Yourself Down in Bristol tomorrow too. Sadface.

I'm interviewing Simon Reynolds in a record shop in Bristol next Thursday if you're around and you fancy it. And I presume that will be free.

is petridis supporting

He's out of my league (in more than one sense). I'll be lucky if I can persuade a CD player to spin Acid Trax for me in the warm up slot.

Yeah, I saw that was happening; tempting.