Author Archives: The Music in My Ears (by Jamie Kyei)

Unknown's avatar

About The Music in My Ears (by Jamie Kyei)

Just one man who's making his way through life one day at a time writing about the songs he has on his phone. And other things at some points.

#1232: The BPA ft. Olly Hite – So It Goes

Leave a reply

It’s been a while since Norman Cook, mostly known to you and me as Fatboy Slim, released an album. The producer’s fourth LP Palookaville was released back in 2004, and that’s still his most recent one to this day. Under the Fatboy Slim name that is. What I don’t think a lot of people know is that in 2008, he and good friend Simon Thorton got together, recruited a number of artists and musicians and made an album with ’em entitled I Think We’re Gonna Need a Bigger Boat, under the moniker of ‘The Brighton Port Authority’. The BPA for short. But to make the whole affair a little more interesting, the story was invented that the album was actually a compilation of recordings made in the ’70s that had been long-lost until they were found in a box next to a warehouse that was in development. Quite funny when you realise most of the guests on there probably weren’t born until a decade after.

…Bigger Boat is bookended by two covers. As it begins with Iggy Pop singing The Monochrome Set’s ‘He’s Frank’, it goes on to end with ‘So It Goes’, a take on the Nick Lowe original, sung by Olly Hite. While that Lowe original contains more of a rollicking, swinging ’70s power pop feel, the ‘So It Goes’ by the BPA and Olly Hite goes for the warm and intimate approach, similar to that you’d find in an NPR Tiny Desk concert or something. Hite sings alongside a tastefully played Rhodes piano that mirrors the chord progression of Lowe’s guitar in the original. The idea that it’s being performed live is reinforced by the cheering, handclaps and adlibbing by various people in the background, who then go on to applaud Hite as he sings the final words and steps away from the microphone. Other Norman Cook/Simon Thornton production tricks occur throughout, but not so much that they get in the way of the bittersweet end-of-the-night, time-to-go-home mood the track gives out.

According to Lowe, the song isn’t about anything much and is just a bunch of interesting words strung together, though was influenced by Thin Lizzy’s ‘The Boys Are Back in Town’. Though if you want to try and get something out of it, the three verses respectively describe scenes at a music show, a political meeting in the Twin Towers, and I think the embrace between a couple of some kind. With the chorus stating “And so it goes, but where it’s going no one knows”, maybe the whole track’s a comment on how these things happen in life, life goes on until you die, and what happens after death is anyone’s guess. Whereas the original fades out on the lyric, here Hite turns the words from “no one knows” to “I don’t know”, switching the perspective around to leave the album on a sweet, personal note. It looks more and more unlikely that Norman Cook will make another album again. But if this were to “his” last song… for the time being, I wouldn’t be too mad at it.

#1231: Nine Black Alps – So in Love

1 Reply

Although I wished it wasn’t the case, I remember being slightly disappointed by Nine Black Alps’ Love/Hate album. Their debut Everything Is was and is so great. The power and energy from the songs on there was off the scale. The 12-year-old me in late 2007 was expecting the same when the band’s sophomore album came around. That wasn’t to be the case though. There was less power and more of a focus on the musicality and the melodies with a rougher recording style too. The songs didn’t leave much of an effect on me, except ‘Forget My Name’ which I’ve written about before. I ripped it to my iTunes library, though. Could always have another listen one day.

And years later I did. I can’t remember what year exactly. I’m sure it would have been after the band released their third album. Maybe even their fourth. But it was on that re-listen that ‘So in Love’, the ninth song on Love/Hate suddenly sprang out to me. That particular track is the shortest one on the album, a sharp shock lasting for just over two minutes. It’s led by an ugly-sounding riff that’s more Nirvana than anything they did on the first album, as Sam Forrest alternates between softly singing and harshly yelling about the chokehold being in love can have on a person. Or at least that’s what I get from listening and looking at the lyrics.

‘Burn Faster’ was the first single to be released in the lead-up to Love/Hate. If you listen to that song, you can probably tell why. But I like to imagine a world where ‘So in love’ was that first piece of new music Nine Black Alps provided after those couple years of waiting. It’s really nothing like anything on Love/Hate and is a bit of a ‘What the fuck’ moment as a result, but it still has those melodic hooks than can win you over. The “Try to get out, try to get out” choruses sound so ’90s and are fun to sing along too, there’s a use of two-part harmonies during the verses that they never did on their first album. The whole track gives a huge rush that is sorely missing throughout the whole record. A lot of the B-sides from this era of the band probably could have been on here instead. There’s one in particular that will come around on here soon.

#1230: Bloc Party – So Here We Are

Leave a reply

I was around when Bloc Party’s Silent Alarm was the brand-new debut album released by the band….. 20 years ago. It creeps up on you, doesn’t it. It wasn’t like I was following the group’s every move, ’cause I was nine at the time and was probably thinking about cartoons and football more than anything else. But I knew of the band as I’d seen the video for ‘Helicopter’ on MTV2, months before the album was out. But as 2005 went on, it was difficult to go onto MTV again, or any other alternative music television channel for that matter, and not see Bloc Party in some sort of capacity.

Every site and streaming platform will tell you that the album was released on the 2nd February 2005, but at least in the UK it came out on Valentine’s Day. ‘So Here We Are’, released alongside ‘Positive Tension’ as a double A-side single, was the first track to be unveiled in the proper run up to Silent Alarm, two weeks before. And it’s a song that I completely missed initially. I remember seeing ‘Banquet’ and ‘The Pioneers’ on a much more frequent basis at that time. I’ve a feeling ‘Two More Years’ was even out as a single before I knew about ‘So Here We Are”s existence. But its video came on TV one day, I was thinking if it was a new song. It definitely wasn’t. But I ended up liking it all the same.

Even if this song were to be an instrumental piece, its effect would be just as strong. The twinkling arpeggiated guitar intro, which extends into the verses and beyond, between Kele Okereke and Russell Lissack is enough to put anyone into a kind of meditative trance. But what I’ve always found to be the highlight of it, along with many other Silent Alarm numbers, is drummer Matt Tong’s performance. Among the serene guitars comes this bustling source of rhythm that adds a huge rush of energy to the track. The drums sound like a loop of a sample or something, they’re done that well. The song has no chorus – made up more of one long verse and the coda – all of which concern how people feel after taking ectasy. And it’s during the coda that Okereke sings about having that MDMA-induced epiphany over a glorious solo. It’s beautiful stuff.

#1229: Röyksopp – So Easy

Leave a reply

When I was a young boy back in the 2000s, the British mobile network operator T-Mobile – now known to you and me as EE – used to run an advert on TV that was backed by a really cool piece of music. I didn’t know what the people were singing. To me, it sounded like “Ooh, ung, ooh/Haanay, hun, haanay/Ooh, ung, ooh/Da-da, day-da, doo”. I would sing it like that, anyway. I can’t remember exactly what age I would have been at the time. I’m sure it was under ten, though. And I just thought it was one of those songs where the people were singing gibberish on purpose. People do that in songs all the time, so it didn’t seem that strange to me. That melody would stick around in my head for a long while.

Fast forward to my second year in university, late 2014. I’d known about Röyksopp for a good five years by that time. ‘Happy Up Here’ was my song for a good few months in 2009. I was sat in front of my laptop, looking for some electronic music to listen to get me away from the guitar-oriented stuff for a change. The duo’s debut Melody A.M. appeared to have been well-received by critics around its release, according to the sources on Wikipedia. Maybe it would have made more sense to listen to the album ‘Happy Up Here’ was on. But Melody it was. So, I got to searching on Spotify. The first song on there was ‘So Easy’, and holy moly, this was the track that was in that advert all those years ago. Röyksopp made that tune. Well, this album was getting off to a fantastic start.

Searching up ‘So Easy’ on Google upon inadvertently finding answered the question I guess I had about the song for all of those years. Turned out, whatever vocals were on there weren’t gibberish at all and were in fact a sample of a song from the ’60s – one that very much had actual lyrics. “Blue on blue/Heartache on heartache/Blue on blue/Now that we are through” were the actual words. Swedish vocal group Gals & Pals sang them. And it’s these vocal samples taken from this performance that ‘So Easy’ is built around. Well, Röyksopp also lift the source material’s pizzicato string introduction, over which a funky little bassline is laid out. The song ends early, closing out with this little interlude that leads into the next song on the album, ‘Eple’. That’s one I would have written about, but things didn’t line up. But it’s not the last of Röyksopp on here.

#1228: Malachai – Snowflake

Leave a reply

December 2010, my uncle came round to the house from Australia to visit for the holidays. Was the first time I’d seen the dude since he moved in about 2005 or something. He was always into gadgets and technology, so when he visited he did the nice thing of getting my mum a new TV – a 3D one at that – a soundsystem that wasn’t really needed and a Playstation 3 for me with a few games. It was a bit much. I honestly would have been fine sticking with the PS2, even at that time. But a PS3 was now what I had, and FIFA 11 was one of those games that he stuck in there for good measure.

Now, you frequent readers know I’ve got a history with the FIFA series and a huge appreciation for its soundtracks. If you’re not playing a football match in-game, the other times you’ll be navigating the menus or, now on this “new” generation of console, in the practice area shooting the ball at the keeper or trying to figure out skill moves. The soundtrack was the backing to all of this. 11 had its fair share of bangers, including LCD Soundsystem, Gorillaz, Massive Attack… I could go on. A fine selection was made by the people of EA Sports yet again. But what ended up being my favourite of them all was a song by an artist/band I’d never heard of, which is usually how it went with those types of games, and was the one I would probably get the most excited about hearing if ever it popped up in the background.

Malachai are a two-piece band from Bristol, round here in the UK, of vocalist Gee Ealey and producer Scott Hendy. Ealey has quite the soulful but gritty tone his vocal, and it’s on show on the featured song for today, ‘Snowflake’. The more I listened to the song, the more clear it became that it was about being very horny. Lonely, but horny too. At least to me The track was censored on FIFA, which led me on to wondering what the muted part was. The lyric was “When all of a sudden I’ve needs from below”. The “from below” part was muted. And reading the rest of the words, making references to chewing over sweetness and being down “on bended knees and elbows”. Well, the deduction came ’round pretty quickly. But I really like it though. The production fixes everything into the centre channel, essentially making it a mono recording, but I feel it really works in the music’s favour. Everything sounds that little bit grimier as a result.