Monday, February 18, 2013

Umberto - Confrontations

New album from Missouri's Umberto, still mining the 70s horror soundtrack seam. The new seven track release blends John Carpenter synth sequences with Goblin prog flourishes, packaged as the soundtrack to a movie that was never filmed. There's a lot of this about at the moment but Umberto does it better than most, aided by an all-in strategy that extends to the album artwork. CD and vinyl available on Bandcamp - the LP's a very reasonable $15 including shipping and your choice of immediate digital download in various flavors including mp3, AAC, FLAC and ALAC.


Sunday, February 17, 2013

Of Ferdinands & Editors & An Honest Day's Work


Played the first Editors album tonight for the first time in a few years. Hit their website to see what their latest release was just out of curiosity (I stopped caring after the second), only to find they haven't released anything since their third in 2009. Debut was 2005. That's three in eight years. On a whim, wandered by Franz Ferdinand's site to confirm my suspicions there. Three. Since 2004. Nine years. 

Bloc Party - four in eight years. Kaisers - four in eight. Futureheads - four in a decade. 

Let's compare:
  • Marc Almond's first eight years: 3 Soft Cell + 1 mini album, 2 Mambas, 4 solo albums and a seven track mini album. That's 10. Including two double albums. And not counting multiple four track 12-inches and popping up on most of Coil and Psychic TV's contemporary output.
  • Depeche Mode: Six plus a double live one and a fair amount of b-sides and suchlike.
  • The Beatles, for what it's worth: All of them. All of the fucking albums. 12. With a year in hand.
  • Rod Stewart (in pre shit mode to boot): 4 Faces, 1 Jeff Beck Group and 4 genuinely superb solo albums. All in the first four years. Not eight. Four.
  • Joy Division: Two in two years plus a posthumous one in the second year which equals a work rate roughly equivalent to that of Franz Ferdinand despite spotting Franz Ferdinand six extra years by virtue of being stone dead.
I understand some of this lot were dropped unceremoniously by labels or suffered struggles partly relating to their second albums being a pile of shit, but the class of the mid 2000s make The Stone Roses look like Jackie Collins. Where's the fucking work ethic?

Friday, January 4, 2013

The Deadly Spawn


First purchase of 2013: Mondo's limited vinyl reissue of Michael Perilstein's electronic soundtrack to 1983 sci-fi-horror splatterfest The Deadly Spawn, housed in a fetching gatefold sleeve. Mondo's occasional ventures into vinyl have so far escaped the instant-sellout-to-unscrupulous-eBay-flippers trend of their poster series; hopefully that's a trend that continues.

Spawn follows Maniac and The Beyond from Mondo, and the trend of horror soundtrack reissues on nicely packaged vinyl increased last year with a series of fantastic, wallet-assaulting releases from the UK's Death Waltz Recordings. Spawn title music after the jump; review to follow. Watch the entire film here.

Thursday, January 3, 2013