THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY #5

Music

Like a good squad of nordic fisherman, R$N trawl through the bulging promo MP3 inbox and bring today’s catches straight to your plate. This week, to try and prompt the London sun god out of hiding, we’re getting all positive, with not a cynical review in sight.

The Good

Papa Hedi EP- Piano Interrupted. Photogram Records

Tom Hodge and Franz Kirmann make up Piano Interrupted, and their music is made up of a deftly balanced mix of piano, cello, percussion and electronics. Papa Hedi is a beautiful EP,that started off life as the score for a film on the great, late Tunisian composer Hedi Jouini; and was later developed into these four fully fledged tracks. Unusual rhythms; traces of Juini’s own mystical Arabic scales; arrangements that subtly build from whispers into screams. This is richly musical, haunting stuff. Good!

The Bad: (In a good way)

Bo Saris – She’s on Fire (Maya Jane Coles remix)

Bo Saris is a Dutch, London Based blue eyed soul singer, with a voice that hovers around the falsetto mark. The original version of She’s on Fire is a mildly boring Mark Ronson esque 70s soul pastiche. Maya Jane Coles, however, takes a snatch of the vocal and applies it to a slightly slowed house workout that shouts BIG SUMMER TUNE at the top of it’s breath. She manages to wring way more soul out of it than the original, and the simplicity of the composition drives it along nicely. Nice bass too. Bad like Jacko.

The Ugly (In the Theo Parrish sense):

Tom Trago ft Tyree Cooper – What You Do (Kink Inst remix) Rush Hour

Rush Hour is a great label. Tom Trago is a great producer. Kink is a bloody hero. Put them all together and you get a messy beast of abstract expressionism that sounds like the black beast of bodmin moor riding around on a Kawasaki motorbike, hunting for fresh prey to devour. It’s frightening, it’s weird and it’s ugly, and I mean that as a compliment. The track is off the Tom Trago Iris remix EP, also featuring a Mr Fingers dub of What You Do, a further vocal mix by Kink and a lovely Linkwood remix workout of Trago’s ‘Being With You’. Yes, it came out last week, but I was too busy comparing booty house to crocodiles at the time to be able to fit it in.