melodic today - various artists
another year, another mid-price melodic sampler.
while the previous issues were predominantly instrumental and at the cutting edge of the genre that shall not be named, this time, the label head honcho has decided to start spreading his eyes a little further a field so beware - there ar songs with singing and suchlike included.
yes there is the excellent (exclusive) pedro track 'lung' with all the usual ingredients that james rutledge is such a master with, but before we get to that track we have a massive set of new sounds to get through. opening with a mad electro cut-n-paste epic the lovingly names 'working for a nuclear free city' kick things off in fine anonymous ways and get the groove going, which is great and sets up the scene well for the krautrock groove of baikonour - all big fat bass lines, electronic noises and general excellence are the order of the day, which is followed by the downright spooky hip hop motions of 'department of eagles' with their 'coltan anyone?' funk. 12 months ago if someone had told me i would be checking hip hop out on a melodic label! as it is .. 'coltan anyone' is a little novelty based type of track that has a live band midsection which gets a little tiresome, however, if they don't slide down the path of the media overloaded welsh collective they could be one to be checking out in coming months. other highlights include the twisted earlies/sfa/beach boys harmony strong epic 'harmonious ascent' by transelement which completely disorientates in the second section of the track dragging you out of your chilled slumber to stunning effect. other honourable mentions - the saucy dncn sample that takes on the recent cassetteboy style cheek and applies it to a lovely laptop production, another fine track from label hopeful wren, and a gorgeous ambient extra that never made it onto the recent l pierre album that totally wins you over and gently drops you into the funked up, but still very laidback, jungle birds/animal noises enhanced, hip hop groove by topo gigio, before we finalise on the reverb'd to the max acoustic mellowness by 'hulk', which is, as expected, incredible.
of course, there are a couple duds spread amongst these 13 tracks, the lower-fi than your average bedsit production presence of john stammers is somewhat dreary for me, but as the rest of the world is rediscovering psyche-folk (andy votel/cherrystones) i suspect i am totally out of sync with this one, and in 12 months time i will pretend i loved from the first time i heard it. hmm. maybe not. and so far, i am struggling with the excessively over-the-top psyche-pop-rock of dungen that everyone else is falling over, its just not doing me good things, yet.
overall, as with the previous compilations, the melodic label has collected together a wide range of sounds which will hopefully get you digging around the release schedules, and open your ears to the fact that underneath the high profile media campaigns, there are wonderful sounds that deserve a few quid here and there, and a lot of love.
today and forever more.
amen.
track listing :
working for a nuclear free city - melodic today
baikonour - coltan anyone?
department of eagles - forty dollar rug
gnac - and again
john stammers - the fridge
transelement - harmonious ascent
dungen - festival
pedro - lung
dncn - eeram
wren - me and my army
l pierre - wier's way
topo gigio - mu arae
hulk - photograph