Review: BECKY N - Two Wheels EP
BECKY N: Two Wheels EP
Before I tell you why I love this little record and why you will love this little record, let’s get the lo-fi issue out of the way. Many years from now with a daisy-chain of shining records behind her, Becky N’s swelling army of admirers are going to follow it back to where it all began and dig up “Two Wheels”. An accidental collection of four songs recorded on either side of the planet by a poet with a portable microphone tied to her hair, this record electronically crackles and hisses with 21st century basement bootleg distortion - digitally remastered to iron out as much of the creases as possible, and dressed in effects, if audio-purity is high on your agenda then you’re barking up the wrong musical tree.
However - and this is a mighty big HOWEVER - if, like me, you can hear past hiss and whirr to the heart of music and the song itself, and if you dig the living, breathing atmosphere of lo-fi (a door slams in the background, a chair creaks, hair swishes, a cricket cranes his head to listen) then you’ll quickly hear why so many folk love Becky’s music. The unfortunate thing about it, is that the why it’s so loveable is as intangible as a daydream. Trying to define it, or put it into a box of convenient genre-titling is near impossible - it’s a bit folky I guess, a bit pop, lyrically simple on the surface but blatantly hiding layers and layers, verging on existentialist in the being of lines like “You wrote me a letter from across the swimming pool”, or “Salt tipped tongue tastes/Air full with yellow/Crinkled sand and/A gust under earlobe”. But ultimately it all comes back to the fact that despite it being all these things, it is always that something else, that “other” that makes it really special.
The songs might all be painted with the same Becky N brush, but each one exists in its own right as something worthwhile. The quirky ode of “Pink Flowers”, the colourful landscape of “The Patches”, the sublime and quite brilliant songwriting of “Don’t Ask Me Again What I Dreamt”, and finally the oh so simple melodic yet catchily stratospheric closing “Autopilot”. In fact as the most recent song, “Autopilot” is an ear-watering glimpse at where this could potentially go given some decent recording equipment and really much more of the same behind it. It is a song that sticks in your head like vapours of gum, the cool switch into the magical “I have dreams of wasting away…”, like something from the late 60s, harmonic and other-wordly, and singing like it is purely from a love of singing songs, unpretentious and pretty damn beautiful.
Do I really need to say anymore?
Listen to “Autopilot” from BECKY N’s “Two Wheels” EP:
For more info about Becky N visit: http://www.myspace.com/beckynnnnDownload “Two Wheels” for FREE
from the STORE link at the top of this site.
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BECKY N - Two Wheels EP
Out Today!
As promised here’s something pretty fucking cool & then some for your weekend. Quixodelic Records is proud to present the latest in its short-line of collective musical adventurers, BECKY N and her debut TWO WHEELS EP.
Fans of the Daydream Generation compilations might be familiar with the songs, but thanks to our resident gangsta engineer Bubbasmooth, they’ve been given a bit of an audio shoe-shine. While I continue to try and fathom why so many people (including myself) love Becky’s songs so much, you can download it for FREE from the STORE link at the top of the site & hear for yourself.
2 commentsOne Man’s Strawberry Fields Is Another Man’s Piggies
Just a quick mid-monthly note to let all you daydreamers and watchers of daydreamers and bots and whatnot know what the fuck is going on at The Daydream Generation right now.
Of course I don’t have to tell you again that we’ve taken the giant leap from distribution channel mining to a full-blown quixodelic collective with our very own quixodelic download label like a seed in the virtual ground. If you water it, it may grow. But then I said the same about the forum and look what happened to that. Ask me again in 3 years and I’ll tell you if it panned out or not. The most beautiful thing about it is that - like you - I don’t have a clue where it’s going, and I guess that means we can go anywhere we want it to go. For now I’m working hard at researching the many musical collectives of the world past and present, less to steal blueprints of success, more to see if I can figure out what they’re NOT doing. Until I realise I’m overthinking it, happenings will happen, records will be released, iPods will fill up with weird and wonderful and really beautiful lo-fi sounds, I’ll smoke a shitload and within seconds it’ll be history. Make sure and check out the COMMUNE section at the top of this page for information on the various members of The Daydream Collective - more will be added as and when I have something to add.
I’d just like to say a big THANKYOU as well on behalf of both the DG and Helter Skelter for everyone who has downloaded our most recent release, ROLLERCOASTER’s mighty “From Darkness To Light” record (available to download for free from the STORE link at the top of the page as well) this week. For every pat on the back we get for running the DG, it means a lot more to see the records and compilations getting downloaded, and ultimately that’s what is going to keep me behind the wheel. So keep downloading and keep coming back because you never know when the next record is going to appear (there are at least 7 due out in the next month & a bit, including 2 done and waiting to go).
OK & finally (I think) there’s the small matter of DAYDREAM GENERATION 6 to discuss. Yep, you heard me right. After the marathon slog of the 3 disc 5th compilation it’ll back to 160 minute basics again & this time I’ll be keeping one eye firmly on the clock. The simple fact is that there’s a steady stream of great new songs and contributions that land in the daydreamgen@gmail.com email box every week that eventually you have to give in to and get on with. So there you go - consider that an open invitation to anyone who wants to be featured on the 6th compilation and bear in mind that this time around there’s going to be limited spaces. DG6 will undoubtedly be the last of the year and from what I’ve heard so far it’s going to be as great as DG5. If you can’t wait for DG6 then you know what you can do in the meantime - go and download DG5 at the COMPILATIONS link at the top of the site.
Ah.
That was pretty hurried, but it had to be done. Tune in later if you want to hear the latest offering from the Collective… you might just get a great new record tonight if I can get my act together.
Be kind to each other.
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Review: ROLLERCOASTER “From Darkness To Light”
And so finally a Rollercoaster record for us all to play. I’ve been holding out for this one ever since “Slide It On” first exploded between my starving ears sometime in early 2007 and thankfully, the wait has been well worth it. Before I get into writing this up let me just promise you that I’m not going to resort to the obviously lazy rollercoaster analogy - even though the 7 tracks that make up “From Darkness To Light” sound like some oscillating musical adventure-ride, swooping from sonic space footstompers to symphonic druggy superballads in the blink of a song, looping the loop of raw punk-motown and climbing to fall on decidely Spiritualized-esque electronic waves of arrangement. Oh shit, I just did it didn’t I?
“Slide It On” was my first hit of the enigma that is Helter Skelter’s own brand of head-melting indie pyro-psychedelia, and at the time I remember thinking “well, I can’t imagine it gets much better than this”. Surprisingly, it doesn’t just get better, it grows like a technicolour splash of acid on blotting paper, pirhouetting out in opposite directions, exploring potentials of sound without ever compromising the song at the heart of it all, and thoroughly putting each style to bed before stretching out towards the next possibility. “From Darkness To Light” catches fire with the sparky pop rhythm & blues of “Space Rockin”. I’m thinking Elvis on mushrooms in a strobe-lit basement, highlighting Rollercoaster’s ear for king-killer melodies. The track leaps back and forth between tripping out of a star-spangled jumpsuit into the shoegaze fuzz ecstacy of its “space rockin got me down on my knees” chorus.
As if by specific design to refelect the title of the collection, from “Space Rockin” the record dives headfirst into the spectacularly poignant and experimentally ambitious orchestration of “I Guess U Sold Your Soul To Rock N Roll” - a track that would be a blisteringly fitting end to any great record. It is a beautiful example of how the Rollercoaster sound is built like a fragile tower of organs blown apart by bullets of effect boxes, and 3-chord guitar lines - the jagged other-worldly theremin-fuelled final couple of minutes of the song are simply and breathtakingly cool as fuck.
From here the only way is back up again into the majestic multi-delay white light assault on your senses of the aforementioned “Slide It On”. Here’s a true story for you about how I felt when I first heard it: see, I used to work a really terrible job. Walking up to the front door in the mornings I had something resembling the funeral march playing in my head, shuffling inside and taking up my position in the great grey unstoppable machine. That is until the morning that I walked in listening to that song. From the first wave of guitars I felt an indescribable urge to kick the doors in, snort a line of coke under the nose of the snotty receptionist, burst down the corridor carried on the white sonic light of the song, leer like a devil in the face of my idiot boss, before picking up my pc and hurling it through the window beside my desk for kicks. That song had somehow created an overpowering illusion of invincibility that up until that point I’d only felt listening to the Stones “Street Fighting Man”. Of course I didn’t because I am a nice, sensible lad. But I guess when it comes to music like this, it’s the thought and the feelings that count.
The influences are of course worn openly on its sleeves. The newest thing about it is the combination and arrangement of sounds in search of great songs, but lovers of the Jesus & Mary Chain, Spaceman 3, and even to a lesser degree Primal Scream might not necessarily be able to see where the ride is going, but they will know exactly where the it is coming from. (Shit, done it again). Fourth song “I’m Gonna Cry All My Tears Away” is the perfect example - a little bit of all 3 of the bands above coming together to produce a country-tinged track from the beatific gutter, some melodic hymn of keeping on. Then here comes “Shake It Up”, a firm favourite in my house this summer perhaps only out-played by The Kinks “You Really Got Me”. From the same shade of the spectrum as “Slide It On”, fuzzbox riffs, waves of wah, and a chorus to kill for. At gunpoint I’d maybe say that this is my favourite of the seven songs, and definitely the one that has grown on me most over time, but it would be quite conceivable to imagine that anyone out there who downloads this record could have any one of the tracks as their favourite, so consistently great it is from start to finish.
“From Darkness To Light” closes with the mantra-like blissed-out rising “Can U Feel It?” - a 21st century laser guided melody that shone on a previous Psyilocybin Sounds CD, and closes with Helter’s personal favourite song, the poppy, roughed-up dreamers anthem entitled “Dreambabydream”. It’s surfadelic, like 60s motown just gate-crashed the Elvis basement and tore it all up with a smile.
And so the wait was worth it. If this is a long-overdue debut record, then it is a staggering start to something you feel just can’t get much better but could easily keep on going, rocketing on riff-waves, curving into space jams, surfing on solid songs and taking your brain to the exact place it wants to go. “From Darkness To Light” doesn’t need the Daydream seal of approval - it’s your loss if you don’t download it. But I’ll guarantee if you don’t and listen hard enough you’ll hear the sound of those of us who were lucky enough to get onboard as the ride burst out from the shadows, grinning and screaming, grinning and screaming, grinning and screaming…
Listen to ROLLERCOASTER “Shake It Up”:
see http://www.myspace.com/rollercoasteruk for more info
