Review of Seldom Sampler One by thisisnottv

22nd Apr 2003

It's a matter of cause and effect really. If you try and tolerate anything unpleasant for long enough the result is bound to be reactionary. In the case of Seldom Records, and with many other similarly infuriated propositions popping up all over the country, the something unpleasant is, of course, a music industry intent on forcing tepid, pre-packaged, guaranteed financially returning aural slop onto the general public. A slop that is inevitably draining the far reaches of music industry coffers and therefore denying the rise to prominence of acts who, though possibly offering a financial risk, might actually be worth loving. Its understandable, its business, its industry, companies must make profits fair enough but that doesn't make it any easier to tolerate. So the reaction is to get off your moaning arse and do something about it. To start your own label and do your very best to nurture those whose efforts you feel deserve your help. So here we have the first tentative results of the recently spawned Seldom, a five track sampler of the artists founders Charlie Light and Richard Cheng have found in their search for the criminally unnoticed.

First up are Idiot Bear whose "Future Song", put succinctly, sounds like Michael Stipe covering an acoustic Nirvana. Theirs is a world of subtleties and understatement, caressed by melancholy cello and organ. The track's gradual build, stopping just short of crescendo, is something of a masterpiece of restraint, all things pointing toward then snatched away from a cathartic explosion. Babylon By Bus's "Away" is by turns promising and pedestrian, the sky kissing potential of their shimmering 80's glossed indie failing to lift things to any kind of prolonged reaction. The undulating beats of The Endorphines "Moon Man" however are far more interesting, this is especially strange speaking as one who feels dance music to be the very nadir of human creation. Distorted, rippling piano gives way to a sea of drones and a crisp rolling break beat (is that what the kids call it?) before collapsing on itself and returning to reform like a remix of one of dEUS's more obtuse "My Sister Is My Clock" moments. Redneck Renegade brings alive the notion of baggy being anything worth listening to with the ramshackle "In The Middle Of Nowhere". His euphoric grasp of shuffling, danceable cacophony is the kind of stuff half of Manchester's dreams are still made of and is a delicious reminder that Aberdeen (the Redneck's homeland) isn't the grim, ugly waste of space it is often purported to be. To finish off this diverse but mostly satisfying package come dreamy instrumentalists UpCDownC whose "Z More" drifts and plods without direction taking a long time to do nothing until it decides to climb into a transcendent mass of inclement noise. It builds and builds and builds with more and more fury and you will it on to higher more demented things until… until… it stops. Like the musical equivalent of someone who is unable to come it goes on and on without any resultant explosion. Unusually enough it still manages to impress, the knocking of preconceptions and musical rules presumably being the band's, achieved, goal.

On the whole a damn fine example to set the world and a bloody good reason for you to take up your swords and follow suit.

<adam farrer>