Classic or Dud / Search and Destroy: Piano Magic

No, seriously, search "Low Birth Weight", it's an amazing album. The best Autumn album I know, maybe. Very gloomy and fragile if you like that kind of thing, but not compromising on the sonics - they really are carrying the torch for [insert post-rock legends here] on that album.

Destroy - I really was wrong about Artists' Rifles. The music can't survive the concept. It's still not awful though.

Also search the single tracks "Amongst The Books An Angel" and particularly "There's No Need For Us To Be Alone Anymore".

Piano Magic do occupy a fairly unique position, don't they? Australia's Paradise Motel came quite close at times to a similar place, but not enough that I would group the two together.

like 'among...(smethign or other)....and russian lathes)

he.....is....industry

i am currently (meaning now right now) writing a review of it that i'll hopefully fire off to ned tonite and if he is feeling benevolent may see fit to publish on FT.

"I'm listening to Piano Magic's Low Birth Weight for the first time, and loving it. Finally having found this elusive release from '99, I reckon it's probably the best of the three albums I have of theirs (the others being '98's Bliss Out release for Darla Records and last year's Artists' Rifles), although all three are so different and so equally charming as to make such distinctions practically meaningless. Low Birth Weight also conforms most closely to what I originally expected of the group: haunting, baroque dreampop somewhat reminiscent of Bark Psychosis and Disco Inferno, weaved from lushly tinkling or droning guitars, stilted rhythms and gloopy lo-fi electronica.

It's actually the type of music I'd originally vaguely intended to write about on Skykicking - whose name is after all based on a song by the stylistically not too dissimilar Insides - only I never find enough of this sort of stuff which appeals to me (suggestions are of course welcome). What most appeals to me with Low Birth Weight is that despite being restlessly experimental, it remains an approachable and curiously emotional record; that's true of all their work I imagine, but the contradiction seems clearest here. They sound little alike, but I find that I like Radiohead's recent output for similar reasons.

Increasingly the strongest point of reference to Piano Magic's magic is the earlier work of The Paradise Motel, an Australian band who quietly and sadly folded last year. On their debut album Still Life and their first few EPs, that marvelous band captured a similar air of near-gothic isolation, both physical and psychological; Emily Bronte seems an apt comparison for both groups. There's also the shared fondness for poetic, theatrical lyrics, the judicious use of electronics (Piano Magic do this slightly better, but then The Paradise Motel compensated by occasionally rocking out in awesome fashion) and the regular sense that the songs are period-pieces, fragile relics from another time, to be preserved under glass and observed rather than to be engaged with. Odd then, that both bands' work is so much more engaging than most other rock music."

(note: last sentence isn't intended as an attack on rock, but merely meant to suggest that Piano Magic are very very good).

okay, classic: updating "post-rock" (whatever it was) for the y2kwhatever. picking up the mantle of disco inferno, bark psychosis etc. and infusing it with olde englishe wonderment (a strain running from lewis carroll to current 93, with all sorts of offshoots someone with more time than i can map out.) they defy easy description because they hover so often (esp. on "trick of the sea" and "low birth weight") just above doing anything much at all. i do agree with tim that the femme vox tracks ("angel pie," "i am the sub- librarian," etc.) are the apex of a certain strain of brit underground music. i had originally thought i overrated artists rifles too, but now i've come around and realized i underrated it if anything.

dud: sometimes that "hovering on the edge of nothingness" bleeds into actual nothingness. the more "experimental electronica" they get (i.e. many of the singles on the comp.) the further my interest drifts. a feeling that they're moving towards something new that's away from me.

still my favorite band of the moment, although i have a feeling that will change as the spring thaw approaches...

#1 is the singles comp. which will give you a fairly broad range of "what they do." (early) matmos-esque electronics, more straight forward "rock," post-shoegaze swirl. it's spotty, but ultimately worth the money.

#2 is the bliss out/trick of the sea/halloween boat record. two very long tracks, reminding me, oddly, of a twee this heat.

(#3 is artist rifles which is a "straight" indie record, although not as bad as everyone says.)

new album in april/may!

!!

Waking Up
Music for Wasps
I Am The Sub-Librarian
The Fun of the Century
No Closure

Strongo, this was a wonderful name of yours. :-) And yer article way back when was grate.

I like it. It's very pop though! At times the (non-electronic) songs remind me of The Church almost.

that 4ad album is a blight on their discography. i have time for almost everything else they've done.

I think when I first picked it up my enthusiasm was tempered slightly by its seeming conventionality, but the album has the band's best songwriting I suspect - less reliant on their production or the shock of an unexpected voice to render them memorable, and while I like interesting production and unexpected voices it's not the be-all and end-all for this group.

Plus it's a conventionality that suits me perfectly: yeah same old same old post-punk references (Joy Division, Durutti Column, gloomy The Cure, Bark Psychosis, maybe The Triffids?) but its construction is so artful, so stately that it feels like it's picking up on something more archaic, similar to Artists Rifles in that sense but much more understated (no Renaissance folk feeling here).

What it reminds me of most is The Paradise Motel circa Still Life and Please Keep Me Safe - PM likewise created songs which felt (in a sense more thematic than sonic) like they'd been trapped in a glacier and then thawed a century later.

I was interested to note Andy K's comments in his Disaffected review that PM's lyrics are mostly "turgid" (context: he was arguing that Disaffected is an improvement on this score). I guess they are in many ways, again as were The Paradise Motel, but there are phrases which I find quite affecting in their unexpected economy, like in "The Unwritten Law":

"You turn on your side
Like you have to face North
Or else you can't sleep:
the unwritten law"

But can someone explain the Open Cast Heart ep to me? I bought it based on Andy K's review on allmusic, but on first listen it seems quite impenetrable, verging on forbidding.

So, am listening to Part-Monster, and conveniently Tim's said it all already. But it is v. good.

i'm so unconvinced. but that's partly because glen never got back to me when i sent him one of my demos years ago :)

Jealousy!

Ned did you ever hear The Troubled Sleep Of...? That's become the Piano Magic album I listen to most.

Not yet, no -- after everyone and their mother telling me how badly Glen had tanked on 4AD on an artistic level, I really hadn't followed their career much.

so good
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apXqgPKLZkM&noredirect=1

There's a new Piano Magic album. I'm still making up my mind.

Eh. I'm pretty sure Glen's lost it tbh.

"Not yet, no -- after everyone and their mother telling me how badly Glen had tanked on 4AD on an artistic level, I really hadn't followed their career much."

the 4ad album is good. pretty much all of their albums are good. I'm sure the new one is good.

Loving the two Simon Rivers tracks on Low Birth Weight, which I've returned to after the recent compilation.

(Johnson twittered today about a new band with a less stupid name, by the way).

So ... what did the recent 4AD book say about them?

I haven't been up to date with them for years but I just read that last year they announced their final album was estimated for 2016.

I love Low Birth Weight so much, really hope some of their other albums approach that level. Part Monster was really good.

Loved Simon Rivers too. Meant to check out his own band Bitter Springs but never have.

Per my comments above, I think The Troubled Sleep of... is the secret gem of their post-2000 work.

Thanks, I'll keep that in mind.

I liked Klima too, got her two albums. Liked the first one the best. She has a bunch of other bands too.

Just listened to The Troubled Sleep Of... again and I am so fucking right about how good it is.

yes it's great.

Glen has also said every album was their last for the last four records so I'd take the 2016 thing with a grain of salt.