Similarly fine and in a similarly downbeat and chilled vein is Portal’s Waves And Echoes collection on Make Mine Music. Treading a line that meanders somewhere between Oval, Broadcast, Cocteau Twins and labelmates July Skies, Portal have made a beautiful record that is evocative of lost afternoons sunk in the lushness of sun-speckled forests; of tracking the coastal path past abandoned bunkers and squinting at the platinum shards of light reflecting off the horizon; of sitting on concrete rooftops amid cities’ electric hum and mechanised rumble, reflecting on vapour trails and the memories of eyelashes closing in slow motion across your cheek. Portal is the sound of summer vibrating and fragmenting, coalescing and collapsing in on itself under the weight of skies of painful blue. We can only hope that the great British summertime does it justice.
Another treasure of sunblissed unwound sound that treated my afternoons in Spain and which is currently sitting in the sidelines ready to sidle out and sip the sunbeams of England’s Flaming June, should it decide to arrive in earnest, is the Memory Column set on Darla by arch modernists Mahogany. Now I had heard their name dropped in ‘space-rock’ circles before but never investigated, though listening to this collection of ‘early works and rarities 1996-2004’ makes me wish I had paid more attention. Then again, if I had, this set would have not given me the sense of delight is has done, and anyway, it’s a moot point. What really matters is that the bulk of this twenty song two CD set is a delight of gossamer Pop with a modernist slant. Not that we’re talking about sounds that draw lines to the likes of The Creation or The Action. In fact the sounds couldn’t be further from those Beat Noise Soul roots, and rather this is clearly a group in love with the whole architectural / art ideal of Modernism as posited by the likes of Mies Van Der Rohe, thw De Stijl group or the Russian Constructovists (check out song titles like ‘The Age of Rectangles’, ‘The Singing Arc Lamp’ ‘Sophie Taueber-Arp’ and ‘Nelly Van Doesburg’), and in fact sonically Mahogany are closer to the likes of Seefeel, Stereolab or early Broadcast. And whilst all the tracks are certainly worth checking out, of the two Cds it’s the second that appeals most to me, as the sound hardens and patterns and grooves become more coherent and defined. It all reaches a magnificent peak on the truly sublime ‘L'éphémere Est Éternal’ which revolves around a glorious refrain that twists around itself, lifting the whole song to heaven, or at the very least to the outer reaches of the visible solar system. This is a song that should feature on all summer mixes from now until the end of time. And just for good measure, it segues nicely into a cover of OMD’s wonderful ‘Bunker Soldiers’, which gives a nice glimpse of where some of the roots of the sound and aesthetic of Mahagony lie. Personally I think it would have been cooler to have covered something from Dazzle Ships, but that’s just me being very picky.
If however you prefer your electronica shorter, sharper, harder and with a more industrial edge, you could do worse that check out the ‘Happyland’ EP by Soiled, whose ‘Mindnumb’ EP I brought to your attention some time ago. With four tracks of warped no-fi tomfoolery, ‘Happyland’ is a fine slice of UK underground techno punk. My personal favourite is ‘Uttoxeter Holiday Incident’, mainly for the brilliance of that title, but also because it sounds suitably dingy, grubby and with an altogether unsavoury sense of mesmerising ugliness. It sounds like walking along Teignmouth seafront on a rainy bank holiday afternoon, the sounds of amusement arcades drifting in through bedraggled waterlogged candyfloss. The other side of summer, indeed.
© 2005 Alistair Fitchett