Fluke – The Second Bite

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Many of my favourite electronic groups seem to come from England, and Fluke is no exception. The group was formed in Buckinghamshire (could that possibly sound any more English?) by trio John Fugler, Mike Tournier, and Mike Bryant in the late 1980s. Over their four main album releases, which came out between 1991 and 1997, the band became a founding member of a slew of different subgenres under the electronic music umbrella as well as a key part of the mainstream British Electronica boom in the 1990s.

Fluke is a band I have been meaning to feature quite a while now. I have enjoyed their music since I first heard Atom Bomb and Absurd in the mid-1990s. Then I purchased Risotto – the album the two tracks are on – and it quickly became one of my desert island discs. The best track on the album – out of an album full of great songs – is Kitten Moon. The track has a long, slowly building yet subversive tempo change in the middle that is almost imperceptible except for how your body starts bouncing quicker along with your head bobbing more aggressively, to keep up with the pace. This has been one of my favourite tracks on any album for nearly three decades now.

I would have talked about Risotto a long time back, except it sadly is not available in its entirety on Spotify or YouTube or any of the other streaming services from what I can see – at least within Canada. I have tried to piece it together on Spotify myself, with a playlist, from singles and tracks on compilations and other sources, but one song named AMP is just not on the service at all.

Devin Townsend – Empath

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Wall of sound. Operatic vocals. The heaviest and hardest Metal. Beautifully deranged arrangements. There are many, many ways to describe the music of Devin Townsend. When you look at his entire career, or even many of his albums, he cannot be pigeonholed in to one definitive genre or style. Heavy Devy is simply Heavy Devy. Musically, Townsend is a master of production, guitar, and vocals in a way that sets him apart from just about any comparison you could attempt. The man is a musical genius on par with Trent Reznor, which is high praise in my books. However, Devin Townsend has an insane vocal range and self-effacing sense of humour that puts him in another realm.

If Pitchfork slags your album, that is usually a sign that it might be pretty good. The magazine has a penchant for being so over this thing before the thing is even released. On release, the music mag(rag?) gave:

Tool’s Lataralus a rating of 1.9

Nine Inch Nails’ The Fragile faired a touch better with a 2.0

Moby’s Play managed to receive a whopping 5 out of ten

The Go! Team – Thunder, Lightning, Strike

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I feel like I have done enough recent album picks for a while. So, let’s go back into my wheelhouse of listening to things that came out at least two decades ago.

Thunder, Lightning, Strike by the Go! Team was first released back in 2004. It still sounds like an anachronism: it could have been released by an indie band yesterday, or the back in the 1960s or 1970s. It doesn’t fit to a specific period or era, so it is always fresh and ready to be discovered.

The Go! Team is an odd project started by one guy – Ian Parton – creating the recordings and adding samples from different songs and live sources as well, compiling what would eventually become this album. The live band was actually recruited and put together after Thunder, Lightning, Strike was released.

So, what does this sound like? Imagine the Jackson 5 and the Ramones got together and made the soundtrack for a bunch of Peanuts cartoons from the 1960s. That should give you some idea of the crazy energy and genuine warmth this album exudes.

Thanks to tickets gifted by my aunt and uncle, my wife Kate and I joined them to see The Guess Who play at the Saddledome on Monday, June 8th. The four of us weren’t the only people there, as it was so packed it must have been a sold-out show, or close to it.

It was a somewhat strange experience going to this show. It has been a while since I felt like a young person at an event. That feeling was a frequent occurrence when I was in my twenties and going to whisky festivals in Calgary, but it is a rare thing now, at the ripe old age of forty-five.

The most difficult thing about the show was the lineup to get in. That luckily went smoothly despite the metal detectors constantly setting off from all the canes and walkers, replaced hips, and shrapnel from the Korean War the many individuals ahead of us had. I could smell just as much from weed smoke wafting around the stands as the last concert I saw at the ‘Dome, so that must be a universal thing now, regardless of age and demographic.

The opener for the night was Don Felder from the Eagles. He is still a solid performer and sounded great, though I am a big fan and barely know any of his music. He was, of course, obligated to end his set with Hotel California. There would have been riots otherwise, with the crowd of Boomers eyeing to tear down the Saddledome before the new arena is finished going up to replace it.

But I was there for The Guess Who.

This band has gone through quite a few iterations over the 60+ years it has been together, on, and off. The live band that is currently touring contains its two most famous members: Burton Cummings and Randy Bachman.

No, that sixty years is not at typo. Cummings – still singing melodiously at nearly 78 years old – noted during the show that he and Bachman first played in Calgary together in 1966.

Cummings, Bachman, and their backing band played through 19 songs in total for the performance. They performed 17 straight before leaving the stage only to come back for a two song encore before the lights turned up, and it was time to go home.

Jambinai is a band from South Korea – but they are about as far from K-POP as one can possibly get. There are no teen idols here – Jambinai is more of a post-rock band with some jazz and folk influences thrown in for good measure. The music Jambinai creates ranges from deep, melodic and introspective to noise-driven dissonance made with a fusion of instruments wailing notes that merge the sound of a bleating air horn with nails scraping down a chalkboard. In a good way.

When it comes to Canadian Bands from that were big in the 1990s, everybody thinks of The Tragically Hip. Others that might come to mind are Our Lady Peace, Moist, The Odds, Barenaked Ladies, Big Sugar, The Tea Party, and so on. It was a pretty good time for Canadian Rock and Alternative music, wasn’t it?

The Canadian band that been living rent-free in my brain since they first I first heard them back then is the Headstones. This band, along with Nine Inch Nails, created the music that helped me survive the (mostly self-inflicted) trials and tribulations of teenagedom.

I remember first hearing the Headstones music when my parents got a 24 pack of Labatts beer, and it had a compact disc inside. The song on the CD was the Headstones’ first single: When Something Stands For Nothing. I was hooked on that song from the first play.

And this one’s for nothing
And this one’s for fun
And this one’s about rock n’ roll
And comic books and bubble gum

Coming at us from Montreal, Quebec is Chill ’em all by DJ Champion. This album will turn 20 years old in November of this year. Crazy, right?

Even though it was originally released in the fall, there is something about the music that makes it a soundtrack for – and celebration of – summer vibes.

Part two in my Dystopian Future Album series.

Don’t worry – I don’t have plans for a third part. At least not yet.

Year Zero by Nine Inch Nails was released in 2007, during the Bush II era of US Presidency. I was 26 going on 27 at the time, bemoaning how stupid we were in the western world to be following such an absolute idiot as the Leader of The Free World for a second term. Oh, how dumb and naive I was. The more things change…

Here we are, not even two decades later, and those times seem oh-so rosy now. A bygone era, where politicians mostly did things above board (okay, maybe not), the corruption was less blatant and in your face, and the 24 hour news cycle seemed to pause and let us all collectively take a breather occasionally. You know, instead of pummelling us non-stop with the next imminent crises or global meltdown.

George W. Bush now seems like a scholarly elder statesman looking back, with his Fool-Me-Once-isms and inventive pronunciation of Nu-Cu-Lor that I still not cannot stop saying myself, and that awe-shucks goofy smile. But he didn’t have it easy, no sir. He was just a salt of the earth guy from Texas that inherited everything from his daddy, including his post-secondary schooling, political party and presidential seat. Oh, and his favourite nation to have a war with. If only all of us were so lucky to fail upwards in such a stratospheric manner.

Year Zero was very obviously Trent Reznor’s look at the Bush II era we were living through, and taking it all to an even more outrageous level. The entire album is an ode to a world gone even madder. There are songs that show the blurring of lines between religious zeal and nationalistic jingoism. Lyrics envision a dystopian hellscape where misplaced rage and deeply flawed masculinity find each other and fall in love. The rabid worship of power for power’s sake is given musical form.

Well, thank goodness, none of that nonsensical doomsaying will ever happen.

Front Line Assembly’s most popular album came out back in 1994 – the same year Nine Inch Nails The Downward Spiral was released. More than 30 years ago. Both still sound and feel ahead of their time.

Front Line Assembly is an industrial band that resides in Vancouver. Originally founded in 1986 after Bill Leeb left fellow Canadian industrial band Skinny Puppy, the band has rotated and included different members over the years. The two main constants are Bill Leeb and Rhys Fulber. It is a soundtrack for this world we live in. One of Front Line Assembly’s members is Rhys Fulber.

Their music is on Millennium and elsewhere is synth-driven, dark, and dystopian. There are notes of Nine Inch Nail’s industrial style on the album. There are also notes of Rage Against The Machine’s eponymous album, which came out in 1991. But Rage Against The Machine was burning with justified anger at the inequality and racism all around us, and The Downward Spiral points out the unbalance and self loathing that festers within. Millennium is more a warning or portent to unregulated warmongering and fear and aggression.