When John-Mark Lapham realised DM Stith’s voice was exactly what was needed to finish a piece of music he’d been working on, neither knew the collaboration would work so well that they’d go on to strike up a partnership, name it The Revival Hour after a groundbreaking American evangelist radio show of the 1930s, and dedicate most of the next two years to investing their music with all the rousing emotion that such a name warranted.
The duo’s debut EP Clusterchord introduced an extraordinary fusion of panoramic and timeless sound with a thoroughly modernist and intimate feel: 60’s R&B, soul, doo-wop and pop, fused together by a panoply of electronics and Stith’s heavenly singing and vivid lyrical narratives: “pulp horror, comic drama, a dark cosmic pageant of chase sequences, monsters, spirits and explosions of blood,” according to Stith.
Scorpio Little Devil, the new album is a realization of all the potential seen on the EP. Exploring all the elements that made the EP stand out and pushing the electronic, experimental and pop sides even further, it is sure to make a mark in early 2013. In “Hold Back” they have a bona-fide classic single that leaves you breathless with love and admiration – a song you feel you already know on first listen.
The Revival Hour’s brilliance isn’t so surprising when you know the duo’s previous form. Texas-born Lapham was the sounds-and-samples component of Manchester-based The Earlies, purveyors of a kaleidoscopic brand of folk-tronica explored over two celebrated albums, and recorded a mini-album for 4AD with Micah P Hinson under the name The Late Cord. The Buffalo-born Stith, meanwhile, released an equally revered debut album, Heavy Ghost, in 2009 on Sufjan Steven’s Asthmatic Kitty label, a record admired by the likes of Bat For Lashes and Grizzly Bear.
What continued to unite the pair was their upbringings in strongly religious communities which shaped Stith’s lyrics. "They're intentionally over-the-top dramatic, in a pseudo-spiritual religious context. I was angryabout my religious upbringing and the alienation from friends and family that accompanied my coming out. But in dealing with it, I had to poke fun at it."
The Revival Hour is the sound of adventurism; of deep, historical musical connections; of falling in and out of love; of bravery. Courageous in scope and spectacle they share an affinity with PJ Harvey, Dusty Springfield, The Knife, Antony Hegarty, Robert Wyatt and Portishead - artists they share a compulsion with to create a timeless sound, epic in ambition and sonics.
Nearly three years on from his breakthrough album Here’s To Taking It Easy, Phosphorescent returns to the fray with his most stunning record yet: Muchacho. During the last album’s ‘cycle’, one could almost hear jaws hitting the floor witnessing a live band of such infinite verve. Not only did the album draw high praise in the form of Mojo’s ‘Album of the Month’ (#8 End of Year), Sunday Times & The Independent ‘Albums of the Week’, hit Rough Trade’s Top 5 Best of the Year, but the band also supported The National over the course of three sold out nights at Brixton Academy, a show that The Independent gave 5/5 and called "a sublime, joyous gig".
Matthew Houck, for he is Phosphorescent, likes to work. The Alabama native, now resident in Brooklyn has delivered five albums as Phosphorescent since his 2003 debut. Houck has a highly distinctive artistic voice, but also a refreshing, rolled-sleeves approach to his expression, and if he had his way, he’d have as many albums again under his belt by now. The singer-songwriter, multi-instrumentalist and producer is envious of the time when prolificacy was expected. “In the ’60s and ’70s, they were making artists crank out records every six months. With guys like Waylon Jennings, John Prine and even Dylan, I don’t think those records would have gotten made in today’s climate, because now you’re allowed – or even required – to make a grand statement. I have this ideal – and I know it’s not possible, because of the way the industry works – of making a record every year.”
Houck may not have managed that, but still has an impressive output – one born of commitment and his soul’s need to have its say. It was 2007’s Pride – a delicate and spare, haunted and haunting work of ragged country, bittersweet southern gospel and forlorn folk-ish drone – that first caused ears to swivel appreciatively in Phosphorescent’s direction. He followed it with To Willie, a tribute to bandana-sporting country legend Willie Nelson, then 2010’s Here’s To Taking It Easy, an unapologetically enthusiastic plunge into country rock and rolling Americana. Now, his sixth album flashes yet another colour in the subtly shifting Phosphorescent spectrum.
Muchacho reprises the understated melancholia and sensuous minimalism of Pride, while kicking up a little of Here’s To Taking It Easy’s dust, but it also strikes out into more adventurous waters via rhythm and electronic textures. It took shape if not quite by accident, then partly as a result of events beyond Houck’s control. After spending the best part of 18 months touring his last record, Houck was, in his words “pretty fried.” In late 2011, he returned to the Brooklyn Navy Yard studio where he’d recorded his previous two albums, planning “on taking this whole thing down a few notches. I wanted to make music,” he explains, “but I was weary, so the spectre of putting anything out and getting back on the road was a bit of a block.” In December, he bought a load of old analogue gear and “just starting playing around with it, making these noises. They weren’t songs, they were just strange sound pieces. I’ve always had that element in my work, and one or two weird, ambient pieces seem to squeeze themselves onto every record, but suddenly I was doing a lot of those.” Houck also turned into a bit of DIY electrician, since a lot of the vintage gear needed fixing. “I ended up spending a lot of time learning about stuff like impedance matching and ohms,” he laughs. “I really got quite nerdy about how it all worked.”
Houck also got very enthusiastic about the sonics that would eventually feed into the strikingly raw, Can-like, ‘Ride On/Right On’, where his simple, whooping vocal and 808 drum beats are the focus, the production is echo-heavy and the guitar little more than abstract background choogling. “I’ve always been happy with the records I’ve made,” the singer says, “but sonically, I think there’s been something lacking. This time, I was getting really excited about the experimental sounds I was making. I was thinking I might make an ambient record that had vocals, but no lyrics. I was actually considering releasing it under another name, or even my own name.” So, a much-needed break, plus some enjoyable messing around with noise, without much thought as to how to use it. But, exactly as 2012 turned, Houck’s life began to unravel. A domestic crisis meant he had to find another apartment/studio at short notice, in the dead of winter. In accommodation-squeezed New York. His life was falling apart, but almost perversely, “songs just started happening, and there were five or six of them.” Houck admits he was “in the middle of a bit of a freak-out,” so in the small hours one Sunday, he booked a ticket to Mexico, on a plane that was leaving three hours later. “It sounds really cheesy, but I went down there with a guitar and got a little hut on the beach in Tulum, on the Yucatan Peninsula.” He spent a week there, working to finish the songs that would become Muchacho, then went back to NYC, found a new place, fitted it out with his studio and began tracking the record in May 2012.
‘Muchacho’s Tune’ – with its opening braid of twanging guitars, piano and electric keys, its warm, rich reverb and poignant mariachi brass – is the song on which the album turns. “I’ve been fucked-up and I’ve been a fool,” confesses Houck, who may or may not be the feckless man-boy of the title. This was the first song to come to him fully formed, and it establishes the album’s lyrical theme – “that the possibility of redemption through love and romance is not just hopeful, it’s also viable. It definitely exists. But what ends up happening is more redemption through some vague means that I don’t really understand.”
The album is perfectly framed by ‘Sun, Arise! (An Invocation, An Introduction)’ and ‘Sun’s Arising (A Koan, An Exit)’, the opening and closing tracks respectively. Sweet, healing and hugely potent in their hymnal simplicity, they not only recognise the diurnal rhythm that governs our existence, but also remind us that however dark things might get, the light will always reappear.
‘Muchacho’s Tune’, the sombre and majestically slow ‘A New Anhedonia’ and the seductively loose ‘The Quotidian Beasts’ are the album’s fullest songs in terms of instrumentation and arrangements. Houck called on around 20 musicians at different times to add various parts, including members of the superior five-piece live band that has recently made such an eloquent and physically powerful contribution to Phosphorescent’s soulful expression. But the album’s composition and production are again all his own. “It’s really always me by myself, so much so that with Pride, no one else played anything. I have a group of really great dudes, and I’ll happily trumpet how fantastic these guys are, but a band going into the studio, as one? That never happens.”
‘A New Anhedonia’ – a gorgeous, charcoal grey song on which understated piano, soft brush work and ripples of pedal-steel guitar are matched with heavy reverb and gently sighing backing vocals – was the second song to come fully formed to Houck. And the crisis it describes was resolved by the very writing. Anhedonia is a loss of the ability to take pleasure in something the sufferer usually finds enjoyable, and Houck experienced it in those winter months following that gruelling tour. It’s quite a shock to hear him murmur, “all the music is boring to me” and then describe music as “foreign”, but that’s how he felt for a short, dark while. “In addition to what was going on in my personal life, music had always been the most reliable thing for me, but I had a few really lost months of not caring about it, of not deriving any pleasure from music. I felt detached and adrift from everything. Oddly enough, I don’t think I knew the word ‘anhedonia’; it just kind of popped up right around the time of writing that song. That dread was still quite prevalent, even after the batch of songs came together.”
If losing one’s way results in something as lustrous as the first album taster ‘Song for Zula’, more artists should find life’s maze and walk around for an indefinite period. It is such a glorious gem that unfolds with Houck’s cracked vocal stalking the perimeters unabashed. And this amidst an album positively riddled with highlights like ‘Terror in the Canyons’ and superlative ‘A Charm/A Blade’; all barrelling piano and stabby horns galore.
It’s indicative of Houck’s distinctive talent, dedication to his work and trust in his muse, then, that a temporary hurdle didn’t become a serious block. “I got clear of it by just getting to work on the recording,” he says, simply. Sleeves rolled. Resolve fixed. Muchacho delivered
Recorded with no effects, a few loops and maximum gain on a Tascam 246 (R.I.P.).
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This is a live recording of an instantly composed freeform concert, that Jochen Arbeit (Einstürzende Neubauten, Automat), Dirk Dresselhaus (Schneider TM, Angel) & drummer Claas Großzeit (Saal-C) played at HBC, Berlin in January 2012 as part of the Krautrock concert series Future Days.
CD edition limited to 100 hand-numbered and stamped copies (curated & released by Last Foundation
John Foxx And The Maths' third album of analogue electronic music brings together collaborations with The Soft Moon (the post-punk psychedelia of the title-track); Gazelle Twin (including the strikingly beautiful 'Changelings'); New York duo Xeno & Oaklander; Moog maverick Tara Busch and Ghostly International's Matthew Dear, plus a Pink Floyd cover and some new Foxx/Benge material. This includes the opulent, moody glow of 'Walk' and apocalyptic ballad 'Only Lovers Left Alive'. Meanwhile, regular Maths live band member Hannah Peel plays violin on 'Neon Vertigo' and 'My Town'.
Evidence is John Foxx And The Maths' most atmospheric and percussive album so far - built around stark, late night drum machine rhythms and their lead instrument, a 60s Moog Modular synth. The ambient spaces in the music allow for experiments with textures and mood, creating dreamlike echoes of Massive Attack, dub (in spirit not pastiche), 'Ghosts'-era Japan and the exotic swirl of Dead Can Dance. Meanwhile Foxx's vocals are darker on the new songs - powerful, often treated with effects and mining a rich lower range.
The edgy beats of the opening track 'Personal Magnetism' are followed by 'Evidence', featuring The Soft Moon's Luis Vasquez. Layers of sound whirl around Foxx's brooding, insomniac vocals, as he searches for answers in the early hours. The slow, minimalist 'That Sudden Switch' takes the European art-movie approach of Xeno & Oaklander and re-invents it as post-dub electronic pop. 'Talk (Beneath Your Dreams)' features US electronic artist Matthew Dear taking the role of the 'sleeper' as a conversation is held in a dream. It's a chilly, nightmarish track but like much of this album it has motion - Dear adding new techno rhythms as well as a Bowie-esque vocal in the final verses.
'Neon Vertigo' furthers the noir tension with massive bass sounds and 'space violin' from Hannah Peel, while 'Changelings' is in many ways the centrepiece of the album. Originally written and recorded by Gazelle Twin, 'Changelings' only retains her voice as The Maths rebuild it completely from scratch. It's arguably one of Benge's finest moments in the studio so far, while Foxx's reverb-drenched backing vocals complete this stunning, end-of-the-world song.
What follows is weirder still. 'My Town' features Peel on violin again as Foxx's metallic, distorted voice
The cover of Pink Floyd's 'Have A Cigar' starts with a cackle of laughter before Foxx launches into another heavily treated vocal, not unlike that of 'My Town'. Meanwhile, 'A Falling Star' is the reverse of 'Changelings' - this time it's a Foxx/Benge track reworked by Gazelle Twin. In this context, the song becomes an icy but epic ballad, full of siren vocals and a sense of release as it stretches into the long, elegant fadeout. In fact, 'A Falling Star' does signal a change on the album as the mood evolves into something more reflective. The two instrumentals 'Cloud Choreography' and 'Shadow Memory' offer new space and textures, while 'Walk' appears to emerge half-way through a dream as Foxx sings 'and I walked through all the streets of this city' after a slow build. This final section climaxes with the electronic harp music of 'Myriads' and the last song, 'Only Lovers Left Alive' - a pretty melody found on an old discarded reel-to-reel; nostalgic, the sound of memory and tape creating one of the album's most moving tracks.
1. Personal Magnetism
2. Evidence (featuring The Soft Moon)
3. That Sudden Switch (featuring Xeno & Oaklander)
4. Talk (Beneath Your Dreams) (featuring Matthew Dear)
5. Neon Vertigo
6. Changelings (featuring Gazelle Twin)
7. My Town
8. Have A Cigar
9. A Falling Star (featuring Gazelle Twin)
10. Cloud Choreography
11. Shadow Memory
12. Walk
13. Myriads
14. Only Lovers Left Alive
Bonus track:
15. Talk (I Speak Machine Mix by Tara Busch)
GARY NUMAN: "John was my hero when I first started making electronic music. He's a true pioneer and seems as passionate about music today as he was then. I have a huge amount of respect for him."
CLINT MANSELL (Soundtrack composer - credits include Black Swan and Moon): "John's music is man and machine in perfect harmony. Consistent quality output too. The Maths material is vibrant."
PAUL DALEY - EX-LEFTFIELD: "John Foxx is the quiet man from another dimension bending sounds from the 23rd Century underneath cinematic sci-fi future vocals. Afrika Bambaataa is a big fan too."
