These New Puritans

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.

Any word on a US release date?

wow this album is pretty striking

it doesn't SOUND like Talk Talk Spirit of Eden, but it kinda makes me feel the same way that I did when I heard that album

ooops now i've read the thread and see that talk talk came up many times

but yeah i don't have a real good handle on how to discuss this album cuz my modern classical/chamber knowledge is mud puddle deep but yeah wow this is a fucking amazing record

it is isn't it

although v (island song) and nothing else are for me the two very clear standouts

ok i'm hearing that guy's bass voice discussed upthread (last song right?)...that is a low note!

nah, 3rd-to-last song I think, very beginning

his voice just sounds like some vague electronic rumbling tbh, but it's the very first sound on that song

the C#/D-flat at the beginning? Yeah, that's pretty low, although I can fake that note depending on how I'm feeling (I can hit it right now, actually)

I can replicate it with a throaty growl but it basically sounds like I'm drawing up phlegm. Not very impressive at all.

His voice was collosal - he could holler with the best of them. Did he influence James Brown or vice - versa?

Oops meant for Bobby Bland. I'll try that again.

Lol

this is cool as shit

i liked the last one ok but i like this a lot more

still sounds to me like what field music was making in miniature on measure ("precious plans")

it's not quite that, I think. field music way more interested in catchy hooks, deconstructing pop

not that measure isn't every bit as good as this, because it is - may even be better, but it's different

that field music album is more prismatic going for a more variegated effect song by song while these new puritans with this one are more focused i think on elaborating one distinct (mark hollis) aesthetic. maybe my point is i hear echoes of spirit of eden in recent music and i'm glad field of reeds runs with those sounds but it's not like omg they're reviving tones no one's heard in ten years

Er just bumping cos I wanna read this on zing

I like this record a lot more than I did a month ago

I only heard it for the first time about 2 days ago and I must have played it about 5 times through already. Great stuff. I'm interested in this current 'trend'/'contintuum' that seems to include this, the Knife album, The Seer, Bish Bosch, certainly Heartland and a few other recent(ish) albums (someone mentioned Ulver upthread) that work as a piece and are 'post-rock' and epic and indulgent and arty and grand but not in a Mogwai sense. It's my favourite kind of album at the moment and I can't get enough.

Maybe Matt Elliott's The Broken Man? You know, the one that features the memorable title, "If Anyone Tells Me 'It's Better To Have Loved And Lost Than To Never Have Loved At All' I Will Stab Them In The Face".