Family Fodder - 'Savoir Faire: The Best Of' (Dark Beloved Cloud)

When Dark Beloved Cloud released Savoir Faire in '98 it came a time when this collective seemed defunct and long-forgotten; nothing had been heard since 1983's somewhat messy All Styles and this hybrid post-punk/experimental/art-pop band was music to my ears. The title track, opening things off, set the pace - a fast bit of aggressive art-pop with a French-sung bridge and two members of This Heat playing along. I was hooked and fell in love with this disc, which to this day is still the go-to Family Fodder record for me. Probably the greatest hits nature here is beneficial for this band, a ragtag collective that mostly gravitated around Alig Fodder and Dominique Levillain; being a completist gets you a few extra gems for sure (some of which we talked about on the vinyl blog) but the average Joe can survive for a long time with just this. There was a time almost 20 years ago where I could not believe such crazy sounds were hidden in rock's recent past; this was before the reissue fatigue set in and this sort of very British experimentation wasn't as commonplace. There's still an audacity and ridiculousness to 'Playing Golf (With My Flesh Crawling)', merging Residents/Snakefinger riffs and Eno-esque vocal delivery into something so fundamentally absurd it's become a classic. That it hews to a clever pop structure as well, with hooks, tension and release all delivered at the appropriate moments, is also key; Family Fodder are experimentalists in affect, lyrics, and production a lot of the songwriting is just bubblegum. Take 'Cold Wars', which in an alternate universe would have been a chart topping smash, or 'Film Music' (spoiler: it's empty); if only this songwriting talent had been used for less Gestalt purposes! But this is how I love it, a demented kitchen-sink mentality that did a lot to inspire my own music at the end and in the years following. Most of the Family Fodder singles are on here, which is nice as they are harder to find; this includes the double-punch of the Blondie 'Sunday Girls' cover (done actually pretty straight) and then the spastic rave-up 'DEBBIE HARRY', which at the time this came out was more well-known via Unrest's two sorta-covers, 'Winona Ryder'. A lot of British music in the early 80s was embracing dub and reggae forms and you hear a bit of this in Family Fodder, most notably in the dub take on an Erik Satie Gymnopede (or is it a Gnossiene?), though the curation of this disc otherwise stays away from that tip. Even still, it's a long way from an Adrian Sherwood production, being too self-consciously goofy. The last few tracks are where things trail off, containing their absurd 'Dinosaur Sex', a song I don't actually enjoy yet I can't imagine releasing a representative disc of Family Fodder without it, and a few later pieces from the 80s, previously unreleased, none particularly memorable. The last few years have got the band back together, though they haven't seemed to make much of a splash and I personally haven't heard any of it.

Biota - 'Half a True Day' (Recommended)

It's been about a month away, which we can blame on travel + the yuletide season -- but also on the sheer difficulty of reviewing yet another Biota album. This one is only 69 minutes long, but it's also pretty much instrumental, eliminating those beautiful pop songs that occasionally slice through the layers. I'll reiterate that I do like Biota, enough to own three really long CDs despite a "I hate CDs" philosophy; but maybe I have to question my sanity sometimes. This is the most recent, coming out in 2008 I think. The standard tropes are there -- intense studio processing, zany effects, and a melting pot of melodic structures. But this time, the overly affected percussion is gone - we (mostly) hear a drum kit as a drum kit should sound. And drummer Larry Wilson actually has a pretty great style. It's scrappy, and start-stop, and it vibes well with the backwards-processed sounds. Half a True Day is a great title cause it feels like it takes half of a day to listen to it. There are a few moments of true alien beauty - 'Another Name' being one of them. These parts often conform to fairly traditional harmonic pleasure, in terms of instrumentation and atmosphere, but with something slightly off. The adventurous side is pretty impressive, and probably what drew me to Biota in the first place -- 'Silent Grove' gets into a real mudslide of animal skulls, abandoned duffle bags, and curving tunnels. After I got about halfway through this, I think I realised it was my favorite Biota release. I miss the songs, but the voices are still here and it feels more cohesive -- instead of intelligible lyrics, the vocals are part of the group sound, another instrument. Sure, without the obvious songs to break things up, Biota can be a bit more troublesome to take. This is a monolithic album, and I can't let myself sink into it enough to sense any development over the past decade. But it feels focused, which is something I wouldn't say about the other two. I think the CD format dares you to take one track and isolate it and listen to it alone a few times, but we all lack the patience to do this. There are parts where I get sick of the accordion or the xylophone, but there's also parts where it's both astoundingly chaotic and astoundingly controlled, and those instruments help to create the gel. And the artwork is a notch above the last two discs, though still very steeped in digital rendering and pastel pantones. Age and scenario probably means that these guys 'n gals have long-missed their chance for 15 minutes in the spotlight, but that's what make hidden pleasures so pleasureable.