ROCK POP
THE ALIENS Astronomy for Dogs (Pet Rock Records) .00.
After two songs of the Aliens' debut long player (an outdated description. but at 72 minutesjba .. . justified one). you might be praying for invasion by some little green ones to take yOu away from it all. The hackneyed and tuneless 608 funk psycl'iedelia of 'Setting Sun' and 'Bobot Man' is thankfully abducted by some adorable. seiilful. epic and guirksome numbers including the honeyed 'Tomorrow'. the closure to ‘Only Waiting' of rampaging. post- apocalyptic horses accompanied by a quasi- Brass Eye theme and the mournfu! ‘She Don't Love Me' are worth the admission price alone. Created by two
quarters of the Beta Band and one Lone Pigeon. Astronomy for Dogs will have you howling at the moon and chomping at the bit for much. much more. Truly cosmic.
(Brian Donaldson)
SCARY NASTINESS TAKE A WORM FOR A WALK WEEK
Take a Worm For a Walk Week (Midmarch Records) .0.
Far from sitting on the fence TAWFAWW choose to iii)cereinoniously hack down the fence. stamp it into little pieces. collect it up and feed it to a pack of hungry dogs. Well. that's what it sounds like. To be honest this sounds like chaos. but like most extreme music — and this is brutal and heavy like it should be — this is an incredibly disciplined barrage of noise. which. despite the anarchy. fits into the noise rock category pretty succinctly. obeying all the rules of start stop bewndering time
changes howled vocals archetype. That said. there are some flurries of innovation and you imagine this record is merely an advert for one of the most disturbingly good live shows you'll see all year.
(Mark Robertson)
AMBIENT ELECTRONICA RU ENS Carnivalesque
(Herb) 0..
RUBENS
It really is a terrible shame to always be likening fresh Scottish electronica to the all— conquering Sonia stable. but Rubens
possess that same jittery. emotive quality in spades. Christ knows how the title relates to the contents but the duo's debut Carni‘va/esgue opens strongly with the Sublime. busy ambience of 'Vertical Hold' and does its best to maintain through 60 minutes of stirring synthetic melodies and twitchy rhythms. Again. in the tradition of Boards of Canada. Autechre and the aforemeiitioned. the cumulative effect of these desk-noodling endeavours is that
interest inevitably wanes.
But at its best this is a work of calculated beauty.
(Mark Edmundson)
ELECTRO POP POMEGRANATE The Thrill of Fresh Paint
(Integral Records) .0.
With a background in futuristic theatre productions and distant cinematic electronica. Pomegranate (duo Stef McGlinchey and Vanessa Rigg) certainly know how
to put a layered. nocturnal soundscape or two together (not for nowt is the final track named 'ldreamasound'). Whether this is enough to justify the linkage of 'fresh paint' and ‘thrill' in the disc's title is a moot point.
Crouched somewhere between dreamy and soporific. the dozen tracks here offer a few unearthed diamonds (the Massive Attacky Underground Saint' and the nursery rhyme simplicity of Nests) but the majority should leave you feeling rather irritated. Like early Cocteaus but with a spring in its step. most of Pomegranates third album stumbles haphazardly towards a vague notion of gorgeous imperfection. (Brian Donaldson)
I»; .g x ' J ‘ ' ‘6‘; \‘ r a- " . pf“ -.\
.‘. 4'\A",‘.\."'”' .'
. ' -..- o 4" l ’ ‘
“‘\‘v"l‘:tt“"- I - q ' ‘ ‘ \ \"‘."“'
\\\ \ v, §\"o-
.3 5‘15".
92.927
FARRYL PURKISS
PDSITIVELY 4TH STREET
'_ Ht 5 f‘. " ‘1': .a.“.‘v-.S "9’
- .'.'-
,«l» _ -
v .‘,"\---e- -. nah...
ALSO RELEASED
Brett Anderson Brett Anderson (Drowned in Sound) Debut solo venture from the former Suede daddy has glints of his former glories but is. well. like Suede without the fun, glam bits. so fairly hard work for the most part. RJDZ The Third Hand (XL; For some reason we had him pinned as a dOur hip hop head but he is actually somewhere between Jimi Tenor and Beck: tongue—in-cheek po’boy soul.
Mr Hudson and the Library Tale of Two Cities (Mercury) Another oddball this one: claims to be Cole Porter meets Dizee Rascal but is more like The Divine Comedy going hip hop with a bit of a Surreal. skanking edge. It's a bit odd at first but it works. The same thing was said ab0ut The Streets five years ago and look where he ended up . . .
\\
TTREMASTEREDBDM
(HID
15> 7:99 Mar 1’00? THE LIST 63