1982@40: AMBIENT 4 - ON LAND - BRIAN ENO

A booming drone. It might be a synthesiser or something found and processed. The high pitched whining rhythm over it sounds like mosquitoes. There is a slow moving melodic figure on a keyboard that seems to deteriorate. Sounds are hard to differentiate. There is no guiding light of central harmony or tone. As a listener you are lost and by the time the squirmy figures emerge to take a look at you before retreating back into the cave and dripping pools you are in a darkness that holds mystery but no real danger. Ghosts, perhaps, but your only harm would come from yourself. Just don't, at any cost, turn it off before the whole record finishes.

The first three Ambient albums, whether collaborative or solo made suggestions for the music of mood and atmosphere and all kept, however strangely, to notions like musical motif and definition of voice (e.g. piano or synthesiser). This final outing all but abandons this, only very occasionally providing a line of tone shifting in time that might otherwise be called a melody. But the point of these is to add further texture and mood. The record is about exploration, slow exploration, the kind of sortie done in the dark on your back with his recommended three speaker system. 

Bubbling mud fields here, the echoes of beaches long swallowed by the sea there, lantern marshes and unfamiliar winds. There is development on recognisable musical grounds but it takes the whole album to hear it. No songs, no vocals (the little girl's voice in Shadow is a processed muted trumpet) but so very much personal vision and genuine composition. If you think of spiky dance tracks when you hear the term electronic music locate a copy of this and live with it without pausing until the end.

I expected to have some fun describing what I see when I listen but it's different every time and wouldn't be what you see. Find it and listen to it while doing the dishes or go all in and lie on the floor with the lights off. You might not agree that this is some of the finest music made since electric recording began but you will have to admit it has something you don't get from other music, something fascinating and compelling.

If you wonder why you think you've heard all of it before you might cast you mind over some of the more strangely scored films you've seen since the '90s from which time this kind of goulash of natural sounds and big twisting subterranean drones made it into almost every horror movie that didn't have an orchestral score. It works beautifully as an ingredient in cinematic creepiness but more generally, weirdness, the confronting experience of nature itself. Seee, I'm doing it again, I'm recalling distant lights and purple grey skies and desert canyons. But no, if you want to go on this journey you need your own mind to guide you.

Some of the finest music made since electric recording began.

1982@40: REPERCUSSION - THE dB'S

Two chords on a guitar so chorused it sounds like a temple bell. Straight into the vocal about the girl whose mother can't let go. The melody of the first few syllables of each verse line is one note held stubbornly against steadily changing chords which adds a cinematic urgency. The song eases out a little: "Run back to your mother..." but then squeezes back in for another verse and then the chorus, a call and response done through delay. "Think (think) for yourself, don't let her live for you." Instead of a fourth verse there's a quietly sung scene of her sneaking back into her room as her mother in silent judgement prepares her for bed. An extended chorus takes us out and under the last chords a whisper, something like, "forget your maaaaa."

Three minutes of epic powerpop, harmonies, complex but tight band parts and songcraft that borrows not only from the great mid-60s phases of The Stones, Beatles and Kinks but current arthouse cinema that shows the sicker side of teen. Three minutes of knock me down sound and the dB's go from an arid debut album to their peak. I still can't listen to Stands for Decibels but I still listen to Repercussion.

Oh, before going on I should point out that I'm going to be talking about the Australian release with the different track order that starts with the above-described Happenstance and ends with I Feel Good (Today). I do not know what made the record company change the song order but with it this album approaches perfection. For the record (nyuck nyuck) I did listen to the original order but wasn't convinced by it. So, the Australian sequence it shall be.

After Happenstance toured the entire cosmos of this record in one song it's time to relax and follow some colours by themselves. We Were Happy There begins with a giant thumping vamp tanged by a plaintive vocal. The chorus rides low until it rises to a big title scream. Living a Lie bashes in with brass and strident beat. Another clear voiced melody line borne of ethereal aaaahs as the serious minor key strut parades on. It's hard to bring a thing like this off without falling into cliche but it's done so straight that it works.

The joke titled From a Window to a Screen gives us a latin feel with exotic percussion, vibes and distant reverbed harmonies that roll in like waves. A White Album style picked bass prevents it from floating away on its own lightness and, by providing a centre, lets us listen to the core rather than have it wash to either side. Ask for Jill breaks the spell with a jazz tinged rhythm and busy vocal line. Light harmonies and bouncy arrangement kept this side of cute and lyrics about dealing with record companies ending with a spoken 1/2 phone conversation that ends in, "yeah, I'll hold." Amplifier ends the old side one and is an sustained joke using a developed Bo Diddley beat in a story of a breakup that ends with a tragicomic suicide after his ex took his prized amplifier. That this amiable but unremarkable number was chosen as the lead single from a record that is bursting with compelling songs. Was it the cool of perversity by a young band? Not a bad song, just why a single?

Side two opens with the rushing bright guitar riff of Neverland. Each line of the verse ends with an intricate drum figure that seems to change time signature but is just syncopation. It adds a kind of show tune complexity to an arrangement that starts by promising to be a four on the floor '60s pop moment. A call and response chorus also changes things up by having the response in falsetto. Storm Warning is a tango done garageband style with a clear vocal warning the second person about giving in to things that make them a loser. A clever middle eight rolls out dismissive ideas of heaven and hell before a harmonised verse and chorus take us to an outro on a synth or Latin flute-like voice and ends on a cha cha cha. The wit of this one is never allowed to exceed the music.

Ups and Downs is three minutes of pop pleasure describing a manipulative relationship sinking under cuteness. Nothing is Wrong is one of those euphoric sounding stoned shimmers that bands that formed because of The Velvet Underground added to their repetoire to include some old-before-their-time world weariness. There's also a breezy Pink Floyd ambience but more than past influences this song is exactly like a strain of future rock bands. American bands of the '90s and beyond have built entire careers on this kind of languid lament. Here, it brings a welcome change of pace and feel, having a broader emotional horizon than all the intrigue and petulance that has gone before it on the album. In fact, it's difference from all the other tracks is the very thing that makes it feel like an album, a song cycle where all the tracks are in the right place (even if the version I'm hearing is a revision). In Spain starts with a whining guitar figure high on the E string and moves into a rapid '60s bad mood song about a girl's manipulation. As the closest thing to any song here sounding like it came from the first album it's also the closest this record gets to having a filler track.

And the best is last. I Feel Good (Today) starts with a few crisp cymbals and an modal acoustic figure with a backwards guitar snaking through. A quiet vocal sings a short melodic phrase that will persist over chord changes. It is soon joined by glorious harmonies. A jaunty middle eight ends in a shining harmony descent. The song resumes after a brief acoustic arpeggio and then just keeps developing and changing around the same short melodic phrase. Stops, starts, adding textures here more backwards guitars there and what sounds like a tribute to the pyschedelic explorations on albums like Revolver, Smiley Smile, The Who Sellout or The Electric Prunes ends back in the lap of this band that continued to bring the best of that lost spirit back on to the turntable. When the album is played with the Australian sequence it has come full circle from the aggressively mid-60s in the '80s Happenstance to the big floating cloud that is its closing number. Ending on a slowly descending guitar figure to mirror the folky introduction and a final whimper not a bang acoustic chord and we're there.

The reason why I find this band's debut unlistenable and this one a glory for the ages is not because the songs are prettier and more conventional, it's because the contrarian brashness has been discarded in favour of the band's strengths. Stands for Decibels is the record of a band that want to sound contemporary but won't actually go to Birthday Party lengths to prove it. Repercussion is by a band that admits its songwriting is strong and can support that with arrangements that prevent the '60s influences from overpowering the statements. This was at a time when younger bands that had spent their teen years investigating the more interesting sounds of the previous generation until punk came along to save them from being retro-nerds. Having both those forces active allowed the punch of one to trim the whimsy of the other. This didn't always work. The worst of these outfits grew their hair and wore paisley on their album art and sounded like the Blues Magoos. The best sounded like themselves, using what they liked from the old stuff their own way. As '60s as they could come off, The dB's always sounded mostly just like themselves. This record is a triumph of that endeavour.