The xx - VCR (Live in Porto, 2010)

Spartan but lush at the same time. 

It's about time we had something new from The xx but for the moment old tunes will have to do.

The sound of this live take on 'VCR' is spartan but lush, cold but warm at the same time with the vocals intertwining beautifully.

Download The xx 'VCR (Live in Porto, 2010)' (live, indie, The xx mp3) (Box.net)

LCMDF 'Gandhi (Andrew Weatherall Mix)' (Heavenly, 2010)

Tooth decay sweet, baggy/Madchester pop turned into low-slung groover by Andrew Weatherall. Is it 1991?

The original version of this track sounds like a Hypnotone Remix of a Screamadelica-influenced Flowered Up b-side with the kind of nursery rhyme gibberish that would make Sean Ryder a happy man in his dotage.

It also makes me think of the 'imagined bands' of Saint Etienne's Icerink label. I always assumed most of them were just Stanley and Wiggs letting loose in the studio and then thinking of a concept later - whether it was glorious dub minimalism or saccharine pop metal-lectro.

The baggy retro nature of this track makes it seem fitting to get Andrew Weatherall to go back in time and create one of his long, long low-slung dancefloor detonators. The ice cream van chime of the original melody and a snatch of vocal occasionally being spliced in.

HVN210 LCMDF - Gandhi (Andrew Weatherall remix I) by heavenlyrecordings

The original version:

Green Man 2011: Hannah Peel 'Electricity (OMD Cover)' (Static Caravan, 2010)

Catchy music-box take on OMD's early masterpiece in anticipation of Green Man 2011.

I'm posting a few rarities from people playing the Green Man Festival this weekend - to get me in the mood.

This OMD cover is from Hannah Peel's excellent 'Rebox' EP of New Wave covers that Static Caravan released as a seven-inch last year. The music box treatment works really well for the selection of songs that used relatively primitive synths as their foundation. 'Blue Monday' and 'Tainted Love' work nicely.

The cover of Cocteau Twins' 'Sugar Hiccup' is great too though that, of course, isn't a synthpop track.

The EP is available as a download bundle at Boomkat.

Download Hannah Peel 'Electricity (OMD Cover)' (folk mp3) (Mediafire)

Gallops 'Miami Spider' (Live, 2010)

Expertly twiddled stuff from the Bttls-inspired Wrexham band.

Gallops coax a twitchy, head-nodding math rock brew that fuses laptop-driven beats and keyboard bleats with more conventional band instrumentation. You can't escape the pervading influence of genre-definers Battles but it's a tight and tidy sound, especially live. And the drummer does a fantastic twitch, seemingly on every beat.

Not as frenetic as Three Trapped Tigers, Gallops ratchet up the intensity through melody and groove, hitting a similarly dance-tastic plane as Foals.

Download Gallops 'Miami Spider (Live)' (post rock mp3 download, Mediafire)

Korallreven 'Honey Mine (ft. Victoria Bergman)' (Acephale, 2010)

A delicious, dubby pop confection.

Reminiscent of Dubstar's euphoric/melancholic indie/pop or One Dove's machine-tooled, dubbed-out soul, this pretty 7" from last year is a gem.

'Honey Mine' features the vocals of ex-Concretes singer Victoria Bergman over a pneumatic bed of keyboard bass, clattering beats and washes of synths/strings. Innately glorious and with soaring, layered female harmonies, it's up there with Saint Etienne's best including their production jobs on Golden and Oval.

Utterly delightful.

Download Korallreven 'Honey Mine' (mp3) (Mediafire)

Creep 'Days (featuring Remy Madley Croft of The xx)' (Young Turks, 2010) (Stream)

It would seem that the Young Turks label is on a spectacular roll at the moment. If I were them I would a lottery ticket. First The xx, then Glasser, SBTRKT and now Creep.

'Days' bursts into life with what, to be honest, is a pretty naff, curly synth sound that belongs in Blakes 7 (ask yer dad) before settling into a menancing synth bass groove and Remy Madley Croft's dulcet tones. It's cold wave-y and austere musically but the vocal is, in stark contrast, warm and intimate.

A swoonsome brush of shimmering guitar adds colour and the track shifts in intensity, creating a mood of late night, sodium-lit contemplation.

It's a real grower and a fine, fine track.

Available to buy with, like, money and shit direct from the Young Turks webshop.

YT053 - Creep - Days by Young Turks

Connan Mockasin 'Forever Dolphin Love' (Because, 2010) (mp3)

Very much the mysterious Mr. Mockasin's Krautrock-tinged Jazz Oddyssey.

'Forever Dolphin Love' starts with a gently oscillating pulse-groove - a la Miles Davis circa 'Bitches Brew' - before drifting into a more song-based section that rides on deft bass and guitar interplay, tides of dolphin sonar rising as the track progresses into a locked-groove Can-athon.

His recently reissued album includes a spellbinding live version of the track that extemporises on the theme, busting out to over twelve-minutes of madness.

It opens straight into a Can-at-Der-Schloss-in-1969 late-night groove lock-in before receding in intensity to usher in the song section and those vaguely disturbing (presumably treated) vocals.

By the eight minute mark, it's mutated further into a dubby monster, each rotation increasing the tempo until it's as giddy as a village idiot chasing a cheese down a hillside. Having just huffed a load of lighter fuel.

By the time the track collapses in an exhausted heap, only able to loop through its vinegar strokes in half-time, it's created staggering momentum - the guitars spinning out shards of skronk, the bassist pounding away and the drummer flinging his cymbals round your ears.

Astounding.

Download Connan Mockasin 'Forever Dolphin Love (Live)' (mp3) (Mediafire)

Available on the Forever Dolphin Love (Double CD reissue) of Connan Mockasin's album.

Wild Nothing 'Live In Dreams' (Captured Tracks, 2010) (stream)

The Wild Nothing album is really growing on me and the woozy, dreamy indie pop like 'Live In Dreams' is sounding especially fine as the sun has come out.

It's one for the Field Mice/Sarah Records, The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart and, maybe, Beach House fans to check out.

The Bees 'The Rip (Portishead Cover)' (2010) (mp3)

Nice live session cover of Portishead track 'The Rip' rendered pretty faithfully by The Bees.

Download The Bees 'The Rip' (mp3) (Mediafire)

Oval 'Ah!' (Thrill Jockey, 2010) (mp3)

Intriguing circular glitchy stuff from Oval, mixing a clipped oriental-sounding motif with some nice post-rocky drums and some wonderful breakdowns.

It builds from overlapping loops and add in a variety of chirrups, klangs and krongs. The live drum breaks give a motorik but varied momentum and create what, to me, sounds like the theme music to a Japanese detective show where the hero solves crimes whilst only speaking in Haiku.

Or something like that.

Download Oval 'Ah!' (mp3) (XLR8R)

There's a rather nifty video too.

Beach House 'Zebra' (Bella Union/Sub Pop, 2010)

'Zebra' is the opening track of Beach House's splendid 2010 album 'Teen Dream'. It sets the tone for the rest of the album perfectly, a mellow little riff on the guitar and a soothing, balmy vocal line, drums tish-tish-ing gently in the background.

By the chorus it has developed to encompass gently strident drums, cymbal rushes and gorgeous harmonies, a cavalcade of delightful melody. A lovely piece of AR Kane-ey Dreampop.

Download Beach House 'Zebra (UK Edit)' (mp3) (Subpop.com)

Cherry Ghost 'Finally' (Heavenly, 2010)

A gorgeously downbeat take on Ce Ce Peniston's euphoric 90s pop-house stormer.

Cherry Ghost turn it into a rolling, insistently groovy treat that gives the dayglo dancefloor original a downbeat Mancunian makeover, much in the mood of Doves or Elbow.

Loved the original and love this version which took me by surprise at the end of their set at the Ben & Jerrys faux-festival on Clapham Common last summer. Cherry Ghost are definitely glass-half-full merchants but this a fond, sympathetic reworking that recasts the joy of love-at-long-last into an ambivalent shrug of resignation.

Perhaps it shouldn't work but the propulsive groove with almost apologetic syndrum fill takes you into its slipstream and cocoons you in a warm fuzz of bass, beats and thrum.

Download Cherry Ghost 'Finally (Extended Version)' (cover version, indie music download) (Mediafire)

Primal Scream 'Higher Than The Sun (Live at Olympia)' (2010)

Ah, Screamadelica - the point at which the gobshite rock'n'roll suicides of Primal Scream emerged from an Ecstasy-induced rebirth as genre fusing visionaries. Not sure how that happened - I think Andrew Weatherall has a lot to do with it, though - but 'Higher Than The Sun' was the point at which I did a volte-face and dug the Scream.

Such an irrefutable piece of genius has that kind of effect. Yes, 'Loaded' was a good indie-dance floor-filler, but it didn't fuse deep, deep dub reggae with ambience and Pharoah Sanders, now did it? And it didn't have Jah Wobble on the mind-expanding 'A Dub Symphony In Two Parts' version either.

Recently reissued in a mind-boggling hundred-quid tin or as a more palatable double CD version, Screamadelica is one of the great albums of the last twenty years even though it was cobbled together from tracks conceived in isolation rather than recorded as a whole album.

They've also started to perform the whole of 'Screamadelica' live and this track is taken from the first shows last year at Olympia. A lot of 'Screamadelica' was never performed live at the time. 'Higher Than The Sun' was but the 2010 live version turns it into even more of a head trip with free-er sax and over 13 minutes of blissed-out joy.

Download Primal Scream 'Higher Than The Sun (Live at Olympia)' (mp3, Mediafire)

Primal Scream official website

Hannah Peel 'Sugar Hiccup' (from the 'Rebox' EP, Static Caravan, 2010)

Hannah Peel has a rather fine album of gently-shaded folk-inspired songs and it's something that caught my ear in Rough Trade recently. Produced by and embellished by members of the fabulous Tunng, it's a real treat.

It did, however, lead me via Youtube, to this excellently quirky EP of new wave covers. Released in 2010 and long sold out, the 'Rebox' EP, features songs by New Order (Blue Monday), OMD (Electricity) and Soft Cell (well, Tainted Love, so actually Gloria Jones). Whilst it's a similar approach to that of Nouvelle Vague, Hannah Peel renders the synth-pop through the medium of the punched-card music box.

The real stand-out of the EP for me, though, is not the 80s synthpop, it's her cover of Cocteau Twins' 'Sugar Hiccup'. Originally a track from the Sunburst and Snowblind EP in 1983 (on the peerless 4AD label), 'Sugar Hiccup' was a swirling fog of blissfully, ahem, sky-soaring guitars.

Hannah Peel renders it as a sweet, laconic ballad. Rather wonderful.



Watch Cocteau Twins 'Sugar Hiccup' (Youtube)