The
Fall play London Astoria on 16 December. Tickets GBP 10.50 available from
box office 0171 434 9403/4, Stargreen 0171 734 8932 ( + unspecified large
markup), Ticketmaster 0171 344 4444 (+ 4 quid markup), Rough Trade, Rhythm
(Camden)
============
Peel Session #21
Bound Soul One
Antidotes
This Perfect Day
Shake Off
K. Leatham - bass and keyboards
Tom Murphy - drums
M.E. Smith - vocals and keyboards
Nev Wilding - guitar
Speth Hughes - special effects
============
Graham C:
a 'Speth Hughes' is listed as engineer for Inner Sense: "Driving, gutsy, searing samba from Manchester posse, INNER SENSE, boasting a full-ahead 9-piece batteria of drummers plus giant rapper Desnya. Busting with momentous rag ga, Rio samba, samba, reggae and other demon Brazilian rhythms, INNER SENSE produces the most spirited set you're likely to see all year."
'as good as dance music gets' writes Simon Attwood of the Banbury Guardian
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Graeme:
Bound soul1
Did anyone else think they were about to get the VUs "I can't stand it" near
the start? A cover I'd like to hear. I think it'll take many listens to get
my ears round this one, the keyboard clatter in the middle gets really dense
and confusing.
Antiddote
Liked the percussive guitar(?)/drum machine, weird vocal effect midway through.
Love to hear this live.
This perfect day
They've found a guitarist.
Shake Off
Love the guitar on this. Back to the garage for the Fall?
====
Tom:
Bound Soul One- g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g-g, and Smith's redoubtable keyboard technique, a la Scareball- another person binding their heart. Peel reckoned this hearkened back to 1979- p'raps the drums from A Figure Walks, and keyboards of No Xmas for John Quays (Totale's Turns style). Perhaps
Antidote- Appears to me on first hearing (and God help me when someone actually listens to it) like some Vincent Price vehicle- scientist in shed searching for cure, testing on dogs with scales attacking sports ministers? Is this Impression of J.Temperance II? Comment on the column inches devoted to searching for cures? Ach! so many questions.
Perfect Day- I don't need no-one telling me what I don't already know- a plea from the heart surely.
Shake Off- Had me dribbling- eyeball injection-ing.
I thought it was amazing, Smith's vocal technique seems to have taken another leap into the alien, trying to compete for the attainment of non-notes with the group. More out of synch noises and drums, which I like AND very vocal presence from the young upstart Tom Murphy, 1-2-3-4ing like the rockabilly veteran that he is.
Shake off appears to be about an extremely dysfunctional family- sort of Mother-Sister for the new millenium.
Smith's vocals remind me of a Kershaw documentary about bi-tonal singers in Mongolia
====
Simon C:
http://www.epoch2000.freeserve.co.uk/session.htm
http://www.postnearlyman.freeserve.co.uk/fall3.mp3
http://www.postnearlyman.freeserve.co.uk/fall4.mp3
====
Peter:
Those long "notes" he holds during Antidote, and the keyboard that comes in for the last section of Bound Soul One make for some very strange tunes. At the same time, it's like early Fall in that half the fun came from the drum fills.
Wasn't much struck by the words, though they were pretty inaudible right through. Except for that rambling, bitter "you will end up eyeball injecting with Domestos or household products containing alcohol".
The guitarist seemed spot on. The echo on Smith's vocals during Bound Soul One, and those bursts of noise on Shake Off (a concise track), work really well. A sparse sound with colour.
The songs just about hold together, in the way that Kimble did. Maybe a bit more structure will help them, but this was the most inventive session for some years.
====
michael,
My initial feeling was that MES had confused ditching musicians for ditching music altogether. So much of the stuff is dominated by the drumming and this gnarling gargling vocal noise. But there are some good guitar sounds there, re-stating the long term policy of guitars as percussion instruments. The keyboards sound like they're being hit fairly repeatedly too. The vocal effects kind of remind me of Birmingham School of Business School. Presumably there are bass parts for all these songs which may change the feel of them entirely.
Was pleasantly surprised to find three new songs in there. When the third track turned out to be This Perfect Day I was absolutely expecting F~lding Money to turn up next, which personally I would have found disheartening as the test of the new line up should be their ability to create new stuff.
I'll have to listen to it again (and I'm sure I will!), but at least it's a damn sight more encouraging than the last session.
====
johnh:
I just want to cast my vote for Session 22/21 as a GRADE A Peel session. Listening to those songs reminded me of how I felt when I heard Inch crackling over the Real Audio lo these many months ago. Thrilled. Smith sounds like he is pushing off into the great unknown yet again. The songs each have great Atmosphere. They don't sound like they were written so much as they appeared. And Smith is just surfing the sound, not coasting, and he seems engaged. Some fine keyboard work. It seems like he is working towards a more open and vulnerable music and the muscular rock that Crooks/Hanley/Burns played was too claustrophobic. The model of Peter Hammill looms, as Hammill's music has also become more spare and thoughtful as of late. The difference between the two is that Hammill is always rattling his own cage, whereas Smith is rattling someone else's. john
====
mel:
I quite liked it, just the fact that it was on really, plus I was falling asleep and every time a fall song came on I jerked awake in horror and faffed around trying to turn the tape to record, thus I'm missing the start of the last track!
Thoughts: agree with Mr Peel on the back to '79 view. I like the held-on oooohm MES did in antidotes and/or Bound Soul One. The riff in Shake off was great. The first one seemed to be about Julia on first listen, about her keyboard chip being lost or left or stuck to her(!) maybe why she wasn't there...
====
Pete:
Can I be the last person on the list to say that I loved Wednesday's session? Having had a unavoidable meeting with a pub of my acquaintance, enormous kudos to Simon and Nick for encoding / uploading & assorted spoddery. Ta.
Bound Soul One: bloody hell, this is top. How many genres can you fit into the one song? There seem to be echoes of dub in there and I love those keyboards. Primal and exciting.
This Perfect Day: third time I've heard the Fall do this - previous two have sounded like cover versions, this one has much more Fallidentity to it.
Shake Off: dark and nasty, cross-rhythmic dance beats. Yeah.
Antidote: well, it might grow on me. I thought the drums were too low in the mix, they sound one of the more interesting things. I'd rather be listening to _Hip Priest_.
Overall, damn fine session. Very heartening, very promising. The new, not very bassly sound seems to work well (I hope this wasn't intentionally dissing Shanley) and new material is in the Inch / Vulture vein which suits me fine. This Nev bloke seems pretty decent and all. I don't know about you lot, but I'm dead excited!
====
Stuart
The session was much as I expected - MES plastered all over an absolute cacophony. Shake Off gets my vote as being well on the way to being classic Fall. Antidote could be really good. Perfect Day sounds like some 15 year old kids going "let's be a punk group"; tailor made for the Inertia thing, that would have been. Bound Soul One is not unlike Scareball and Ivanhoe - that smooth guitar sound with nonsense going on all around it.
Not bad at all - and at least Mark now sounds consistently angry rather than just bored.
====
smurf:
Just listening to the peel session, and was curious about bound souls. With Marks psycic fixation, I visted M. Wells site and found the explanation of a bound soul -
To fear death is a primordial instinct for the Western man. It is the supreme punishment we give our criminals and the worst we think could happen to someone is to die before their time.
In the case of an accident or a violent death, the cords would all snap together and immediately transfer the seed atoms into the astral shell. The personality might not even know they had died. Usually they realize it when they see their physical body lying prone. Sometimes they can not accept their demise and refuse to continue the Bardo process. This would be a bound soul (or ghost).
====
Graham C:
"Kealan's new movie project, "The Glow Boys" will star Mark E. Smith of The Fall and is scheduled for a September release. Insiders have divulged that the story centers on nuclear power plant workers who believe that they are superheroes. Kealan will make a brief cameo appearance as a lager lout, throwing darts in a pub scene. "It's not easy pretending to be English," states Kealan." (It's called acting.)
Kealan, it says, is the drummer in the Useless Eaters, from
Oakville, Ontario - 'a punk rock supergroup with members of the original
hardcore punk bands C.R.A, Scarred and Zeroption.'
====
Ther's a small pic of MES on p17 of this monht's Select.
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