Chris Knox - 'Not Given Lightly' (Flying Nun)

I went through a Chris Knox period in college and those first couple of solo LPs are great, something I'd recommend to everyone (and strangely, I don't have any of them as physical copies to place under analysis here). This is a 12" single with a slim (but technically existing) spine, which means I never remember it's here as it doesn't catch my eye when browsing (and the Ks are right in the middle of my line-of-sight when standing). It's the only Chris Knox vinyl I own, so I'm grateful for this project to remind me to listen to it. Side A is Knox's biggest hit, rendered here at 45rpm, a tune which actually even charted in some countries, though possibly only southern hemisphere ones (not that there's anything wrong with that). But Knox, being the generous genius that he is, surly figured 'Why have one B-side when you can have 10?'; this side is labeled Guppiplus!! as it's mostly made up of  material from Knox's very rare 1982 solo LP Songs for Cleaning Guppies, which I've never heard in its entirety. The ten songs here lean towards the more experimental side of early-80s Tall Dwarfs work, with a home-studio sound not too far off from the vibe of Seizure and Croaker. The more experimental parts come to the forefront in the way Knox treats his voice; 'Jesus Loves You' uses a processed silly baby voice as a harmony over a clanging percussive loop with backwards effects; it recalls early 80s UK electronic/industrial underground music, which may or may not have actually been an influence then. 'Indigestion' is a heavily rhythmic song approaching rap; 'Sandfly' is totally a-capella and calls out Bobby McFerrin in the liner notes. I can imagine people who bought this for 'Not Given Lightly' and the sweet romanticism of it would find little to enjoy here on the flip. Even the closer-to-pop songs, like 'Over and Out' or 'I Wanna Die With You' have more art-school swagger to them than 'Not Given Lightly', which is a wonderful song for sure but not one with any element of being damaged. My pick of Guppiplus may actually be 'More or Less [Lethargy]', which creeps through a sludgy guitar strum and has a great, classic Kiwi drone-melody. Rendered in Knox's cheerful croon, it sounds absolutely wonderful, but I do love the sound of his voice. The song stops and sputters but stays within the bedroom aesthetic; it's the shining example of what Knox does. 

Bert Jansch - 'Birthday Blues' (Reprise)

Promo issue with white labels and no liner notes. Skipping ahead a little bit from the last few records, we now find Jansch immersed in the Pentangle supergroup, whose extremely rewarding records we'll get to in due time, but for those curious and unfamiliar, there's a new CD box set of essentially everything available. Back here for a solo record (perhaps songs that didn't fit into Pentangle's prolific output?), Terry Cox and Danny Thompson from Pentangle join Jansch, and with Shel Talmy's production, this is an entirely different beast than the folky, traditional-leaning content that came before. It's a bit like Dylan's similar stylistic change circa Bringing It All Back Home, I'd say. Acoustic guitar still dominates, but Jansch is content to pull back from the firestorm of fingerpicking and give more space to the songs, focusing on his delivery and letting the first-rate rhythm section drive things along. As a songwriter, Jansch has a clearly expressed romanticism with a dark edge. 'A Woman Like You' is a driving, melancholy force that is followed by 'I Am Lonely', one of the record's more delicate songs; the juxtaposition of the two is Jansch in a nutshell. His voice is so convincing on both tracks, warbling with vibrato that isn't overdone. Similarly, 'Poison' grinds forward with a mean edge, Jansch striking chords or sparse riffs while the song pulses along, driven by the full band. There's the presence of flute and harmonica on a few tracks, and a big saxophone part on 'Promised Land', but it doesn't feel overproduced. This was Talmy's genius, perhaps. Folk moved into folk-rock, but these Jansch records feel slightly resistant to it, hence the jazzy presence of the Pentangle team. This is expressed most overtly on 'Blues', a 12-bar instrumental with some improvisation, but as an album closer it feels a little bit, well, off. A record with such great songs ('Tree Song' should also get a shout-out for its childlike and earnest vibe, which also utilises the full band instrumentation nicely) should conclude with a bigger statement than 'we also like blues and jazz records'. Still, it's overall finely nestled into that sweet spot where bigger, more pop-orientated production dovetails with quality songwriting and thus it feels like a step forward, not a desperate commercial reach.

Hair & Skin Trading Company - 'Psychedelische Musique' (Freek)

One of the great joys of this gradual and probably quixotic project to work through my vinyl accumulation in alphabetica order is the discovery of records that I didn't remember I owned, or didn't remember what they sounded like. Psychedelische Musique has been hiding here for years, spun only once or twice since I first purchased it, secondhand, back in 2001. 'An American comes to the UK to buy an American record?' said the shopowner with a sarcastic drawl (and you can guess which infamous shopowner it was, if I tell you said shop was located in Leicester) but I didn't let his intimidating aggressive nerdyness deter me - who gives a fuck where I'm from or where a record is from or where it's purchased? And anyway, this isn't an American record - both the band and the label are British, so I don't have any idea what the fuck he was going on about. It's strange I remember that exchange more than I remember the music. This was £8 well-spent, as I knew the moment I dropped the stylus and heard the ringing, pulsing electronic drones that open it (even if I subsequently forgot about them). This is pastiched together like a 90s version of The Faust Tapes, with a variety of, well, 'psychedelic music' techniques applied throughout. Side one has a long, slow spacious passage in the middle with some ominous clanging and echoing roomsound, like Labradford if they had an interest in backwards sounds. Other parts are thicker, and even with a bit of rock-hypnotism at play ('Tor' has lurching guitars, though not too high in the mix, and lazy-ass vocal intoning making it feel like a sketch, an Elephant 6 interstitial track gone rogue) and a generally dark (or at least uneasy) vibe throughout. Side two opens with a pounding heavy goth guitar jam, abruptly ending with a tape splice, as if they were suddenly channeling White Zombie but then changed their mind and left it on the record anyway as a joke. It feels a bit incongruous with the rest of the record, which assembles studio trickery, a post-This Heat soundworld, with the dark surrealism of Thunder Perfect Mind-era Nurse With Wound. There's not a lot of distinction between the organic and the electronic, and the swirling backwards sounds are well-applied. Maybe it's time to see what else they did or what they've done since.