Shikari enters; ‘Take to the skies’; Ambush Reality
Look, this is why you shouldn’t let your kids go to elementary school. They can meet other music-loving lunatics, bond and form a band, like Rou Reynolds (vocals/electronics), Rob Rolfe (drums) and Chris Batten (bass) did. Well three quarters of a band: Rory Clewlow (guitar) joined them four years ago to complete Enter Shikari, a wonderful rarity from St. Albans, North London. Over hundreds of shows, making precocious teens even more precocious, they’ve honed their uncanny amalgamation of punk, goth, speed metal, trance and electronica into a distinctive sound. From rave to rave, Take to the Skies is their first full-length album, self-produced over three weeks in the fall of 2006.
Take any aspect of your sound, and it might not be all that interesting. But the punk scream chant combined with the choir boys’ soothing melody, layered grit-metal guitar and mesmerizing synth loops, alternating lyricism and attack mode in vocals and songwriting, all that shoots our ears into an interesting realm.
The lads could take it a bit easier with the hooligan chants and goth yells (although I’m sure it sounds better live). We get it, folks, you are potentially scary guys.
But these 17 tracks point us to the fact that you, too, are musical types veering into some fun, energetic art rock, and no matter how often you snarl the f-word and yell, “Walk the plank!” They won’t convince me otherwise. And I heard that tuneful ballad, “Adieu,” tucked deep within their setlist, sly, elegiac devils. But don’t worry, I won’t tell anyone.
‘The Darjeeling Limited: Original Soundtrack’; ABKCO Music and records
Speaking of weird amalgamations, later this month Fox Searchlight presents Wes Anderson’s latest film, and it’s accompanied by this quirky refreshing swirl of ’60s rock, understated vintage psychedelia, music from the films of Satyajit Ray and Merchant-Ivory. , and classic fare. The setting is an odyssey in which three American brothers (Owen Wilson, Adrien Brody and Jason Schwartzman) alternately meet and lose each other on a trip to India.
It will be necessary to find out how the music fits with Anderson’s dizzying instinctive visions. But working again with his previous collaborator, music supervisor Randall Poster, Anderson has reflected the brothers’ commonalities and divisions with some lesser-known tracks from Lola vs. the Powerman & the Money-Go-Round, by other famous tricky brothers, Ray and Dave Davies of The Kinks. All but one of Anderson’s films, The Life Aquatic, have featured Rolling Stones songs in the score. This time it’s “Play with Fire.” Peter Sarstedt’s trippily cosmopolitan “Where Do You Go To (My Lovely)” and French singer Joe Dassin’s “Les Champs Elysees” also make cameo appearances, as do Beethoven (Ray apparently loved the Seventh Symphony) and Debussy.
But the main ingredient in Anderson’s musical masala are brief outtakes from Ray’s films, some written by Ray himself. On the album, they merge into a seductive otherness, familiar enough to be accessible, strange enough to play into Anderson’s disorientation session.
In the meantime, here’s a test for you. See if you can listen to Merchant-Ivory’s Bombay Talkie “Typewriter Tip, Tip, Tip” without dancing around her room. Really. I bet you can’t.