Magnetic Man go mainstream together, Skream goes off on his own...

Magnetic Man are the supergroup of the already successful and well reknown dubstep producers Artwork, Benga, and Skream. Born out of Croydon, they are among the young pioneers of a scene which is gaining ever increasing international acclaim, from critics and from a wide cross section of music fans.

This is their first album and, being such an attractive proposition, it's heavily supported by the record label. They're on tour at the moment, starting off in smaller clubs and progressing to larger venues in 2011. When I saw them at Heaven, in central London in October the club was mostly though not totally full, the audience mostly young, hip and white.

The album is something of a showreel for dubstep - targeted squarely at the mainstream audience it's a patchwork of the current styles and trends in the genre. There's everything from moody, urban, ambient instrumentals, through classy, modern pop and on to the more usual, club-focused and frenetic, dubstep breaks. The standout tracks are the two big singles "I Need Air" with Angela Hunte, and "Perfect Stranger" with current it-girl Katy B.  This is arguably the sound of 2010 - medium paced, with romantically epic synths running regulation four chord progressions on a continuous loop, big autotune-saturated vocals, and slickly modern beats. "I Need Air" is followed by "Anthemic" - which is a kind of cookery show '..and here's how we did that' - an almost identical blueprint this time without the vocals - throwing together the basic dubstep recipe of breaks, big synth chorus and subterranean bass 'whfomp whfomp'. Most disappointing is the second Katy B track "Crossover", which is frankly just dull, a simple chorus repeated far more than necessary. Final track "Getting Nowhere" surprisingly features a rootsy, soul vocal from the respected John Legend - but here the dubstep struggles to match the soul, the beats sound lumpen and it misses the mark on feel.

In general, while there are some nice arrangements and some clever moments, MM's ideas are stretched a little too long and hard, the tempo drags a little too much. The album seems half done and lacks a clear vision of what it wants to be, opening the door for the faint suspicion that - like most supergroups - this is actually a canny, record company vehicle rather the serendipitous product of musical collaboration. Most damning is the way it is enlivened significantly by the personalities of each guest vocalist. It's perhaps an unfair comparison, but if compared to the decade-defining, social landmark that was Massive Attack's Blue Lines, then Magnetic Man falls some way short of its potential.

In clear contrast, Skream's latest solo album Outside The Box is a coherent, surprisingly lush, pleasure of an album. Slower in tempo and with a reflective mood it's clearly a labour of love from a thoughtful, boundary pushing artist. It calls to mind an autumnal dusk in South London, those lurid orange streaks across the sky, a smoky damp in the air and brown leaves permanently rotting across every street and pavement.

Opening with the sad "Perferated" it eases smoothly into the sparse, scatty, "8-bit baby" with rapper Murs in fine toasting form. The bones of Outside... are similar to the Magnetic Man, but here, rather than pushing ideas beyond their means, Skream has confidence to allow his ideas the space and time to breathe and as a result it has a more natural heartbeat.

Throughout, the production is superb and the sounds and sonic layers have been crafted with purpose and care. There are echoes of a number of last generation electronic musical sources; as an ambient, electronic, urban journey it calls to mind the Goldie's midnight epic Timeless. The softly emotive, melodic synths are reminiscent perhaps of something from Boards of Canada (surely an influence). Elsewhere there's pop-ology from Sam Frank and La Roux, the latter appearing on the exquisite "Finally". Personal highlights are the cavernously deep, dark dub of "Metamorphosis", and the elegant nostalgia of "A Song For Lenny" which goes beyond the dubstep brand and out into true electronica.

This is still a baby of genre, and it's being nursed by artists with a broader music taste and ambition than is typical of most dance/electronic scenes. Magnetic Man is commercial music made by a collective of talented producers; it's a strong idea, it's pop ready, and it'll work well in clubs, but it's perhaps not built to last. Still - better things may come. If you like Radio 1, or you subscribe to the annual Now.. collection, then you'll enjoy the singles. If you're keeping up with trends, then Magnetic Man may be as perfect a momento of this point in time as a digital photo on your mobile phone. Skream however delivers a more personal, introspective listening experience, made for, say, an interminable ride on a London night bus, or as the soundtrack to your post-club, weekend wind down.

Links:
Skream on RinseFM (dubstep pirate station): http://www.beatsfortheplanet.com/2010/04/21/skream-live-on-rinse-fm-14th-april-2010/
Magnetic Man - "Perfect Man" (live with Katy B): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93AU5IkvDPY
Skream - "Where You Should Be (feat. Sam Frank): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TVNpsg7rYS0

The Frames... lads having fun, Live at Shepherds Bush Empire, 8 Dec 2010

After raving incessantly to all my friends about the brilliance of the Swell Season, I was curious to see Glen Hansard in a slightly different context - back with his original band the Frames on their 20th anniversary tour. The result was more than positive. On the one hand, I can see why the Swell Season is so necessary to him at this moment in his artistic life; as suspected - the instinctive musical intelligence and mutual intuition involved in his partnership with Irglova allows him to explore his ideas with greater freedom. Specifically; her clever vocal harmony and piano and somehow her general female-ness complements his melody, his guitar, and his general male-ness. So the Swell Season's work has more grace, it's a little slower, a little more cultured, and there's a clear, strong, woman's viewpoint in there.

The Frames, by contrast, are a Irish rock band, a band of musical brothers - bonded by shared experience, by manhood, by nationality and hard won understanding. They're much more fun because they're less controlled, they're a lot more spontaneous. Whilst Glen is quite definitely still the leader - the rest of band contribute their own ideas confidently and are openly supported in doing so, so the sound has different voices. A trademark of Glen and the Frames' is the gleefully peverse way they like to break into other songs from within the midst of one of their own. So last night they suddenly break into a Clash-esque punk rendition of their usually gentle, wistful ballad "Lay Me Down", or at the end of the first set bassist Joe Doyle takes them out with a sweet version of "The Most Beautiful Widow" by Sparklehorse. The effect is to constantly surprise and delight the audience, never more so than when some peverse spirit seizes Glen and he breaks into a faithful cover of "Like a Rhinestone Cowboy" - hilariously incongruous in this context.

Personal highlight was an intense, gigantic, emotionally overwhelming "Finally", it's like a Bach overture with it's fantastic momentum, building with all the force of a runaway train. The passion with which Glen throws his entire body and soul into a song is unforgettable.

If you've not seen them before - check out this legendary end of tour show from 2007 recorded by NPR. Download it if you can and save it for when you've got a couple of hours trapped in a car or somewhere and you can listen to it end to end.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9796328
Set list: http://www.setlist.fm/setlist/the-frames/2010/shepherds-bush-empire-london-england-7bd29a60.html

Autotune obesity

The ever more ubiquitous autotune is a new millenium phenomenon. First used, according to Wikipedia on Cher's "Believe" it has become ever more widespread since. It's a music production tool that will take a vocal recording and use a digital processor to adjust and filter any off tune frequencies to be perfectly on pitch. The effect, as we know, is to output a sound that is pitch perfect though robotic in sound. Presumably the robotic effect comes because the software filters out some of the wider frequencies to leave only the simple tones. 

A technical note on timbre; sounds are made by the combination of lots of tones overlapping and interfering with each other. In a musical instrument, each note is made of a basic, dominant tone, combined with the frequencies of multiple octaves above and below, along with a small amount of off tune frequencies. The variation in the volume and the combination of octave and other frequencies is what gives each instrument it's unique sound quality - timbre. A trumpet generates lots of additional high frequencies which bounce easily around the trumpet's brass body to produce a bright, hard sound. A guitar's long strings and wooden body allow for plenty of bass tones to echo and amplify. With a synthesiser, you can build your own sounds from the ground up by selecting frequencies and ways of combining them to create your own waveforms.

So; the autotune. It is beloved of producers because it's easy to process in studio; no matter how "unique" the vocal "artist" you're forced to work with, you can magically autotune the hell out of their vocal and produce something that's commercially acceptable. It's beloved of radio station programmers because the production is bright and loud and simple and well-defined, not quirky and awkward to program in a 9min commerical slot. Music like this is continually grabbing your attention, there's no time and space for your brain to wander off in other directions. This makes it very ad-friendly, very urgent and dynamic sounding.
And finally it's beloved of the demographic that listens to pop on any device - on a mobile phone, or a laptop, or a car radio. Sound fidelity is not a criteria. A simple, recognisable melody and the associated visual-social cache is the only point. So the autotune sounds just as great on a mobile phone speaker as it does when you watch the youtube on your home pc.

Why do we like it, why doesn't it drive us all crazy? My theory is that it's ear candy - something about the perfect pitch is instantly appealing. Ally it to a catchy melody and you've got yourself Pop Gold.

So what's the problem? Well, I'd argue that we're overdoing it, that we're now continuously gorging on this junk music and the effect it has, in a word - is monotony.  It's the sound it filters out that's the problem. The frequencies it leaves behind are the ones that provide character, uniqueness, personality. The vocalists on the majority of today's top 20 are literally interchangeable. Most of the time you can still tell whether it's a male or female singing, but beyond that it's any body at all.

Is this a fad that will pass when we get bored of it? Hopefully. But the fear is that the brain deadening banality of it will turn a whole generation off music altogether - what's the point when it all sounds the same.