Tuesday Ten: 032: Tracks of the Month (February 2008)

After a few weeks off from writing the Tuesday Ten, it's time for it to return. I canned last week's one after I simply couldn't get it to work properly, so this week I'm on more familiar ground with a roundup of ten of my favourite tracks of the month. So here goes…


Playlists:
Spotify

Track of the Month

ESA
Principals of a Parasidic Resolve
How Pure Would Your Utopia Be?

By far the most immediate track from a really rather good album, this is astoundingly good rhythmic industrial from an artist that just seems to be continuing to get better with each release. Somehow, I didn't even notice until listening to it on the album (rather than as part of the non-worksafe video, which appears to have vanished from the internet) that Nikki from Prometheus Burning does guest vocals on the latter part of the track, too. A full review of the album will follow soon.


Detritus
Collide
Fractured

I can thank Tim for getting me into this album, which sounds somewhat different to the live performances of Detritus that I have seen. There is far more going on, it sounds more…urgent, perhaps, and the impressively seamless inclusion of guitar samples makes for a track unlike anything I have heard elsewhere.


Goldfrapp
Caravan Girl
Seventh Tree

I'm really not sure what to make of the new Goldfrapp album. The move from sleazy electro-pop to laid-back folk is one hell of a gamble, and so far it appears to have been a gamble that has only partly paid off. The album only comes alive for the latter half, and among these few tracks the pick is this one – the only track that moves above a languid pace, and is a gorgeous, folky pop song with a chorus to die for. Why wasn't there more like this?


Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
Dig, Lazarus Dig!!!
Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!!

A rather better release overall is this fantastically sneering new Nick Cave album, the pick of which remains the title (and opening) track, a hilarious take on the Lazarus story which moves "Larry" to New York, and he doesn't appear to be very happy about the idea of being resurrected…


Meshuggah
Combustion
obZen

After what was effectively a one-track, forty-seven minute album that really divided opinion (I was not a fan at all, while others raved about it), it appears Meshuggah are returning to their older style. Not that this is a backward step: their breathtakingly technical metal sounds focused, more than anything. This, I understand, is the opening track from the album, and I suspect that this will be an album well worth hearing.


Like so much involving Jarboe, this is just otherwordly. Barely recognisable as a combination of words, her vocals are more another instrument here, on top of the other layers of elegaic, brittle beauty beneath. Justin Broadrick continues to amaze with his work post-Godflesh, and if the rest of the album is as good as this, it's going to be awesome.


KMFDM
Tohuvabohu (MS-20 Remix by Combichrist)
Brimborium

I got this remix album (amazingly KMFDM's first ever remix album) on promo a week or so back, and this is by far the best remix on it. Rather than what have become somewhat depressingly "by numbers" Combichrist remixes of late, this one actually adds something to the original song, and makes it something of a monster of a track. It sounds fantastic really loud, too.


Death In Vegas
Aisha
The Contino Sessions

Every month, as well as all the new stuff that I hear, there is always a few old tracks that appear back on my radar for one reason or another. Here is a perfect example: DiV's finest moment by miles, and a truly mental guest appearance by the mighty Iggy Pop. Quite what he was on about (portraits of a serial killer on the wall, him escaping?), though, I have no idea.


Sepultura
Manifest
Chaos A.D.

There has been a lot of fuss in the metal press recently about The Cavalera Conspiracy – the brothers Igor and Max Cavalera finally settling their differences and recording again together after ten years. Still, it ain't the mighty Sepultura, although the idea of a reformation still seems tantalisingly out of reach. So in the meantime, listening to the originals will do nicely. This was always my favourite track – a blistering track about the Carandiru massacre.


Liberty37
Pig
When We Say EP

(no longer available)

Finally, my recent ramblings about the past (and I will fill in the gaps in the coming weeks, as and when I have more time) have got me listening to this little-remembered band again. A metal band, of sorts, who were kinda outside a number of different movements that were going on in the late-90s and somehow seemed to miss the boat. I'm not sure why – they were bringing an intelligent, melodic and muscular form of metal that should have been lapped up – maybe it was just bad promotion. Either way, this awesome track was hidden away as a B-side and was their live highlight by far too.

Leave a Reply