Unknown, vaguely Cardiacsy prog-pop that only MaresNest and I actually like

Oh, I liked that track and the one after! I then nominated the album for the EOY poll but didn't vote for it. I need to listen to it all in its entirety, may do by the weekend, cheers (am not at home rn)

Hopefully 2015 is a good year for all things Cardiacsy!

I'm still trying to form an opinion on the new Knifeworld album. The songs are pretty good (especially "Don't Land On Me") and I appreciate Kavus trying to stay away from prog cliches but I think keeping the songs more straightforward in parts kind of exposes what I think is some pretty bad mixing, especially in the drums. On the other hand, I've liked it more each listen.

There were some really weird mixing choices on the last Knifeworld album, considering Bob Drake is no amateur at that sort of thing. Definitely improves with each listen, though.

Family duties seem to've put NSRO on hold for the time being, sadly. At least we had another excellent Arch Garrison release last year, if anyone missed that.

New William D Drake long player out in March, apparently.

"The first incarnation was founded in Bristol, March 2004. We blurted out avant-rock and psychedelic folk detritus ... The device began as a rock quartet; exploring bendy time signatures, maximalism, free improvisation and spontaneous theatrical outbursts. Herein a fascination with discord and harmony, (surprise and comfort) evolved throughout a feverish period of writing, improvising and performing on the Bristol music scene."

I was hopeful from this timeline/hometown + something about the sound of the track bandcamp randomly selected for me that they were something to do with Safetyword but they're not, are they? I'm afraid I stopped listening and listened to Safetyword instead but intend to revisit Perhaps Contraption again... eventually

OH - so the 'good stuff' is OLD! Yeah, they followed a dark, dark path. Will listen to the older stuff soon, even though I know what was to come.

Sorry for confusing midnight post: I think they are a completely different band, who just happened to start at the same year in the same town as a band I quite liked (but not enough to post about here until now), and sound a bit similar during the 40 seconds I listened to before impatiently clicking away

however, if they are in any way related, someone please do let me know

(haven't got round to revisiting PC's music yet, but I am not really one for theatrical burlesque stage shows, that much I know)

Not cardiacs related at-all, just wondering what frogbs and LJ think of this craziness.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?t=128&v=cT8mSZBJzJA

Botched that link somehow, sorry, it starts a ways in.

Not Cardiacsy in the slightest but that's OK cos Hasuinonasa (I think I got that right) fuckin' rule.

that was really cool!

to contribute something, here's a cut from the 1st Birds and Buildings album, which I discovered thanks to this board, anyone who posts in this thread who hasn't heard it should check it out

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QVZHZ54w36s

that Hasuinonasa is fucking incredible :D thanks! oh dear, too good

Birds & Buildings are a known quantity - that first album is sweet, yeah

Haisuinonasa, even - might spend some quality time on their Bandcamp today...

Their new single is fucking unbelievable

https://zankyorecord.bandcamp.com/album/transformation

Yea I am greatly digging this.

I love how the singer's voice has a pure, flat tone, she sounds like a Japanese version of Lisa Bielawa who sung the solfège in Glass' 'Music In Twelve Parts' so beautifully.

Additionally, I think I like it best when they just lean away a little from the hyper-kinetic, four-Don Cab-albums-playing-at-once bits, then it really morphs into a quite unique racket, to me at least.

Also their name is spelt in Katakana which suggests it's loaned from another language, weird.

Very nice.

Did you know that Youtube animation star Cyriak has only 1 direct ILX mention ever? The dude is bringing Cardiacs to the people.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tnWP2Emps1M

I'm going to post the some of the ones with the best music, because he has the Cardiacs spirit deep within him

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3JCESdFNyw

the rest is yours to surf. glad I could give him a spiritual home on ILX though

Those are amazing.

The Flying Lotus video he did a few years ago was pretty great too.

Yeah! His own music is so great though

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLGUQA3Wjz0

haha this is so great! jon poole and bob leith weren't really in cardiacs at this point were they? tim smith recruiting the actually-really-good tribute band, well i never

obviously jon poole 'gets' cardiacs like few others, hence his contributions to 'sing to god'

The whole "4 Little Boys" tape is as good as that. Jon was talking about a decade ago of doing a remastered/re-recorded version of these songs, but got too bogged down in other stuff and the idea was shelved. Shame!

Of all the various Cardiacs splinter groups, the most obscure one I have is probably The Grown Ups five track demo(and one extremely murky live bootleg), which was a short-lived Mark Cawthra/Bill Drake collaboration that only lasted a couple of years, with bits of the songs eventually incorporated into Cardiacs proper (London -> I'm Eating In Bed, Time And Space -> Everso Closely Guarded Line, etc)

The one I really want to hear is "Honour Our Trumpet", the band Bill tried to recruit Tim into before the idea of Bill joining Cardiacs was even a thing. Apparently recordings exist...somewhere.

Know nothing about this band other than 'bloody hell'

https://soundcloud.com/voice-coils

https://voicecoils.bandcamp.com/album/in-sixths-field-and-border

https://soundcloud.com/voice-coils/an-atrium#t=0:00

Searing into the Extra Life void! Bet they even share some musicians

yep, they do, it's a pretty seamless changeover except with a different songwriter and all. v promising tho

Good spot, I thought I heard some Extra life in there, especially An Atrium

I always wanted to like Extra Life but I found the vocals horrible. But this is cool as fuck.

These songs remind me a lot of The Knells though

https://theknells.bandcamp.com/releases

^^^A wonderful record that absolutely no-one has heard of^^^

Voice Coils sound amazing, Extra Life also sounds great. The Knells too.

early split enz may have already been mentioned, but i hear a lot of things cardiacs fans may enjoy in the swingers (one of former split enz member phil judd's later band).

a lot more more pop and less prog, but they give me the same feeling of this joy in what music can do that the cardiacs do. real similar voice too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lP-KW_Igw7Y

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUMJgUHWRcU&list=PLGFqSwN7wWcZ20aywwCJVvZYssekZzJqE&index=10

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ypm6E7cq-s&list=PLGFqSwN7wWcZ20aywwCJVvZYssekZzJqE&index=1

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

they only did a few singles and one album - it's all excellent though

oops, one of those linked to a playlist instead.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ypm6E7cq-s

Heard this band called transElement recently, like most of the music in this thread they're not that close to the greatness of Cardiacs but who is, really?

But they scratch my itch for quirky experimental indie-prog or whatever you want to call it, it's a shame they haven't existed for over a decade and never really got their dues. They had their moments of brilliance, and I always love hearing a regional accent in music.

These are their best releases I reckon:

http://transelement.bandcamp.com/album/is-missing
http://transelement.bandcamp.com/album/pendletones

Cool, will listen. That Swingers lot were ok but yeah, upon the Cardiacs scale they don't create much of a shockwave. I would argue that there is some Cardiacsy stuff that measures up, even if you have to look closer to Cardiacs themselves to find it (NSRO, for instance)

i love that album, but yeah it's definitely just early 80s pop music with an edge. similar voice though and with the weird trajectory from a prog band to a punk one to a new wave one - still these vestigial traces of each phase apparent.

that latest stars in battledress album... so amazing and manages to not go down that well well-worn extra-musical route of making this kind of music "funny" or "quirky" (a whole other thread)

yeah it's really lovely :) a superb record. the bands that make this kind of music 'funny' and 'quirky' are fucking loathsome in almost every case. don't ever google 'perhaps contraption' lol

swingers reminded me a bit of a band soref turned me onto recently...punishment of luxury, that's it. definitely a wealth of postpunk, now virtually forgotten, that mixed it up some

to be honest, it took me a while to get past the surface-level "zaniness" of the cardiacs.

which is what i was getting it - even when stuff isn't outright zany. there's often this strange affect. like a beta-male (for lack of a better term) submissive clowning - making fun of yourself before someone else does? there's a pretty close description in that pomplamoose thread " like he has neither a sincere nor a sinister bone in his body, like a pod person who only learned to imitate zaniness". little bit unfair as they're a cover band, but that's what i feel while watching recardiacs on youtube. even some of those william d drake videos.

i guess what i'm getting at is that i'd love this stuff to be presented without being wacky or playing up the teenage "we're weird and you're not going to understand this weird music" thing. just some band that are really confident in what they do and not hamming it up as if they're like a bad actor playing up the fact that they can't act very well.

it is just surface-level aesthetic that doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the music. but it's kind of a framing device that prevents people (like me!) from getting into this stuff. i guess it could be historically it's probably a kind of backlash to the prog affect of being ultra-serious and humourless. or just aspects of zappa coming into atavistic being.

your criticism seems to be based almost entirely on the 'tarred and feathered' video, which is much more sly and layered than it may at first seem. 'beta-male' is obviously preposterous - their act has always been, imo, a grand play upon exaggerated universals - the themes are down to earth and serious, concerning mortality, childhood, existential despair, the pastoral, aesthetics, war, religion, friendship, possessiveness, love etc, but the canvas is an intense & highly poetic extroversion that is easy to mistake (at a distance) for quirkiness, preciousness or insincerity. quite obviously cardiacs, behind (or even through) the hi-jinks (if you look close enough), are one of the most sincere bands that have ever been. Even in character, 'beta-male submissive clowning' doesn't work - they operated as a thoroughly savvy art-troupe, with Jim as put-upon victim, Tim as domineering bully and the others as clowns only in the purest sense. it really, really doesn't come across as gratuitous weirdness unless you're only paying half-attention. the 'hamming it up' is integral to the totalising synthesis of their commentary upon life (surface-level aesthetic almost always has loads to do with the music). have you read their lyrics? it's some of the most affecting and profound material in the english-language songwriting canon. they're trying to convey the grand, rich weirdness and pathos of life itself - of course they're going to open themselves up to the brickbats of the world somewhat.

you fucking compared cardiacs to pomplamoose! omfg. tim smith is ALL sincerity, ALL sinistral menace, ALL joy of the world, ALL love, ALL frenzy. this kind of criticism is fearful of just how ALL cardiacs are - when forced to countenance it, retreating into awful lazy melody maker stereotypes and tossed-off cliches about youthful exuberance and wackiness. cardiacs are only wacky or zany insofar as they use wackiness and zaniness as part of their press relations satire, in order to keep a barrier between themselves and the mundane ignorance of the music press

it has nothing whatsoever to do with prog being ultra-serious and humourless (it wasn't) and everything to do with tim smith being an incredibly generous man

^^^ wot he said

oh no, you've got me completely wrong! i LOVE cardiacs now. i just remember being initially put off by the videos and especially the alphabet business concern stuff. seemed a bit sixth-form and done better by the residents or early devo but it doesn't really bother me now. like you say, some of it totalizes the experience and what they're trying to get across.

my criticism was on the other stuff vaguely in this vein that is getting it WRONG - like the perhaps contraction stuff or how i see re-cardiacs. i just wonder how to or why that kind of thing i describe is inherent in the dna of this stuff somehow. i guess it's a bit chicken in the egg as perhaps it's a certain type of person who is attracted to this stuff.

and then there's the difficultly of how do you present this stuff otherwise? it's like hearing minor chords as "sad" or 12 tone music as "scary" - they're just popular constructs. or is there's something inherently clownish and hammy about doing this kind of thing?

"tim smith is ALL sincerity, ALL sinistral menace, ALL joy of the world, ALL love, ALL frenzy" - love this

tbh i've no experience whatsoever of the 'cardiacs' but imago's post warms my heart :)

which is what i was getting it - even when stuff isn't outright zany. there's often this strange affect. like a beta-male (for lack of a better term) submissive clowning - making fun of yourself before someone else does? there's a pretty close description in that pomplamoose thread " like he has neither a sincere nor a sinister bone in his body, like a pod person who only learned to imitate zaniness". little bit unfair as they're a cover band, but that's what i feel while watching recardiacs on youtube. even some of those william d drake videos.

― linee, Saturday, 27 June 2015 02:36 (6 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Totally agree re: Recardiacs. That woman's attempt to imitate Tim's "disturbed child" persona were painful to watch. I appreciated what they were trying to do in terms of bringing this music to an audience who would never normally encounter it, but if I was seeing them cold with no knowledge of the source, I think I'd just be bemused more than anything.

It's like the difference between the critical perception of Cardiacs as a bunch of pretentious art students dressing up as weirdos on stage, and what they were really like(i.e. actual weirdos), but in this case it's very much more of the former.

oh fuck

sorry linee, i had somehow managed to escape knowing about recardiacs until this day. i think i will abstain from listening

Brilliant post up there imago.

I'm quite suspicious of mugging and zaniness myself but for me sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. It's all about how genuine or contrived they come across. I admit maybe if I'd seen Cardiacs' early antics first it may have put me off but luckily I heard Eat it up Worms Hero first without knowing anything about them and it completely melted my brain. As far as musical experiences go that's rarely been matched.

The new William D Drake is out, btw, and it's really lovely, if not quite on the level of Rising Of The Lights (on first listen) - it's a bit simpler, for a start, and a bit more 'wacky', I suppose ;)

Songwriting is still largely delightful

really coming through on the second listen, stuff like 'the blind boy' is key

and then 'castaway'/'revere reach' are the 'me fish bring'/'homesweet homestead hideaway', sort of (they're more like 2x 'me fish bring' tbh, but with cool synth textures n shit)