Showing posts with label Epic Soundtracks. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Epic Soundtracks. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 3, 2012
Sunday, January 1, 2012
Thursday, December 29, 2011
Nikki Sudden- Waiting for Egypt (1982) / The Bible Belt (1982) MP3 & FLAC
Secretly Canadian ~ 2001/1982
Waiting for Egypt (Remastered & Expanded) in FLAC: Grab, Try, Then Buy!
Secretly Canadian ~ 2001/1982
The Bible Belt (Remastered & Expanded) in FLAC: Grab, Try, Then Buy!
Friday, June 17, 2011
Epic Soundtracks- Change My Life (1996) MP3 & FLAC
"Right on time the words that rhyme came crashing through the door."
The story of Epic Soundtracks is one of those bizarre, twisted tales you can only find in the annals of rock music. He and brother Nikki Sudden had grown up idolizing Can and T-Rex and eventually found their own musical ambitions realized in the form of the short-lived but legendary Post-Punk band Swell Maps. Soundtracks had adopted his ironic stage name well-before his success in this band but for some reason went to the trouble of establishing a copyright on it. As a result, he was (quite hilariously) able to force Epic Records to rename its soundtrack division by threat of a lawsuit. Post-Swell Maps, Soundtracks issued a few singles before taking over the drumming duties in Nikki Sudden's brilliant band of Jangle-Pop wastrels, the Jacobites and later played drums in Rowland S. Howard's Crime and the City Solution and These Immortal Souls. While this is certainly an interesting bio by any standards, he saved the strangest chapter for last: the 1990s resurrection of his fledgling solo career, this time as a piano-based pop balladeer (well, sort of). Epic Soundtracks released three solo-albums before his untimely death in November of 1997, the last of which was Change My Life on which he had started to vary some of the song arrangements by branching out into Jangle-Pop, Motown, and Big Star-inspired Power-Pop. For example, "Steal Away" has a decidedly Specter-era Motown feel, and features one of Soundtrack's trademark sweet and shaggy vocal turns that really shouldn't work, but it does. Another standout is "Wishing Well," which sounds like a ragged John Lennon piano ballad and offers a beautiful example of Epic Soundtracks' gift for pure pop convention. As with his brother, many critics tend to focus on Soundtrack's limited vocal abilities, but also like his brother, his voice carries a raw, immediate expressiveness that more than makes up for what it lacks in range and polish.
Sunday, June 12, 2011
Jacobites- S/T (1984) / Shame for the Angels EP (1984) MP3 & FLAC
"I moved out from the Bible Belt and down to Silver Street, Victorian oasis in the afternoon, the place we always used to meet."
Following the demise of the Swell Maps, Nikki Sudden took (what at the time) seemed like an unforeseen turn toward the kind of rock classicism that his previous band had been concerned with deconstructing. On the heels of two solo albums, Waiting on Egypt and The Bible Belt, Sudden's initially brief collaborative venture with ex-Subterranean Hawks guitarist Dave Kusworth took form during the various and sundry sessions that had originally been intended for a third Sudden solo record but that soon became the basis for the Jacobites' eponymous debut. Exhibiting an unmistakable penchant for late-sixties Brit-Rock and its tarted-up younger cousin Glam, the obvious touchstone for Sudden & Kusworth's flamboyantly wasted garage aesthetic is Sticky Fingers-era Rolling Stones mixed with a touch of T-Rex. However, what makes Jacobites such an intriguing listening experience 25 years after the fact is the undeniable quality of the music, which, at the time, ran entirely against the grain of every conceivable music trend in Post-Punk Britain. With a heavy emphasis on acoustic instruments and sonic immediacy, the Jacobites' debut is a beautiful, shambolic mix of raw emotion and authentic Rock 'n' Roll swagger. Opening with the much admired original version of "Big Store" (a highly truncated acoustic version turned up on the Jacobites' second LP, Robespierre's Velvet Basement), the Jacobites turn on the amps and offer up a mesmerizing slow-burner with some great melodic bass-work from Mark Lemon and Nikki Sudden's wasted, heartbroken Dylan-esque drawl. Another gorgeous song among many is "Silver Street," an off-kilter, slightly out-of-tune, ragged ballad that features some memorable acoustic guitar and vocal interplay between Sudden and Kusworth. Some critics point to Sudden's limited ability as a vocalist as an explanation for why his body of work was (and still is) often overlooked; however, Sudden's voice fits this music perfectly, as it manages, in subtle ways, to convey the excess at the core of heartache, something a more polished singer could never accomplish.
Thursday, April 7, 2011
Jacobites- Robespierre's Velvet Basement (1985) Remastered Edition (Bonus Disc) MP3 & FLAC
"I'm looking for something I'll never find. I feel so alone, but I don't mind."
One glance at the beautifully wrecked pair on the cover of Robespierre's Velvet Basement and you know right away The Glimmer Twins are an inspiration. It seems that after disbanding the inimitable Swell Maps, brothers Nikki Sudden and Epic Soundtracks were looking to trade in the Kraut-Rock-Punk hybrid of A Trip to Marineville and Jane from Occupied Europe for a sound best described as a mixture of acoustic folk & blues and glam, which, come to think of it, is also a pretty adequate description of Exile on Mainstreet. This time, Sudden teamed up with Rough Trade journeyman Dave Kusworth (formerly of The Subterranean Hawks) and hit on a sound that presages everything from Brian Jonestown Massacre to Dan Bejar's Destroyer. Most of the songs on Robespierre's Velvet Basement make generous use of shambolic acoustic strums backed with ramshackle percussion, all of which only add to the garage-like greatness of some of the songs. For example, on "Ambulance Station" and "She Never Believes," Sudden's joyfully downtrodden cigarette-soaked vocals exude the same kind of elegant, "who gives a fuck" decadence that made the UK glam scene of the early seventies so engaging. Robespierre's Velvet Basement is an uncompromising classic that couldn't have been more out of time & place when it was released back in 1985, which is why it hasn't aged a day. Listen to this.
Thursday, March 31, 2011
Swell Maps- Jane from Occupied Europe (1980) MP3 & FLAC
"And the door's been bricked up, and the room is a mess, and we'd exchanged salvos even before we met."
In many ways, the early Post-Punk movement was a reaction to the overly simplified aesthetic (as well as ideology) of a UK Punk scene that had quickly become a caricature of itself by the end of the seventies. While the term "Post-Punk" has, over the years, become synonymous with the moody, scratchy, cerebral approach of bands such as Gang of Four, the movement was/is actually quite diverse. This is best exemplified by Swell Maps, who integrated the original Punk D.Y.I. aggression with more "arty" influences such as Can, and did so while casting a thick layer of cheeky irony over everything. While their debut, A Trip to Marineville, wasn't always able to integrate these different sonic palettes together seamlessly, their follow-up and swansong, Jane from Occupied Europe, stands as one of the most singular-sounding albums of "The New Wave." From the first few seconds of "Robot Factory," the lead track, it is clear that we have entered uncharted territory. With eerie psych organ, strange clicking effects, and distant mumbled voices, the song sets the tone for what's to come. Standout track "Cake Shop Girl," with its combination of guitar crunch and Kraftwerk-style synth-lines practically writes the book on integrating Punk and pop, a book bands like The Meat Puppets would be memorizing soon enough. Jane from Occupied Europe is, without a doubt, an essential document of Post-Punk's first wave.
Swell Maps- A Trip to Marineville (1979) MP3 & FLAC
"This is just another song; I guess it's rather long. This is just another song, and now it's gonna stop."
Even though brothers Nikki Sudden and Epic Soundtracks (not their real names in case you were wondering) had been tinkering in a band together for several years under the name Sacred Mushroom, it was not until the rise of the British D.Y.I. Punk scene of 1976-1977 that they began gigging and eventually found their way into a studio. When they finally got around to recording a full-length, the result was A Trip to Marineville, a mad scatter-shot of an album that manages to offer some of the best Punk of the era, but be warned: for the most part, this is not Punk of the simple three-chord-thrash variety. Mixing in surf guitars, Kraut-Rock flourishes and some glammy touches, there is simply nothing else from the original (Post) Punk era that sounds quite like Swell Maps. A Trip to Marineville is, among other things, the fruit of two distinct sonic approaches, the first being comprised of glam guitar crunch, Punk-Rock vocals, and quirky twists that always push the proceedings beyond the limits of Punk conventions. The second approach, as evidenced by songs such as "Gunboats" and "Adventuring in Basketry," indulges the band's obsession with Kraut-Rock legends Can, creating a unique mash-up of sonic textures that Swell Maps would explore to even greater affect on their next album, Jane from Occupied Europe.
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