60 Watt Kid

This track came upon my person from I'm not sure where. My iTunes keeps playing it without me noticing - apt, I'd say, due to its swirling phosphorescent nature. They are the musical offspring of West Coast art-pop - Animal Collective are an influence 60 Watt Kid wear on their sleeves in 'Ocsicnarf Nas' - but often more mellow. Vocals are warped in sunshine warmth, distorting like heat off the road.

'Ocsicnarf Nas' is impressionistic - colours blurring and smudging into a palette of dancing guitars with spinning skirts; vocals like a tuned-out radio at twilight; a sonic backdrop of dense, ambiguous programming.

'Every Day' is more manic - scrappy garage rock smacked up by bleepy synths and splashes of feedback grind. It is scruffy and frayed, a Fuck Buttons remix of an indie-pop song - squiffy casio exhortations failing to completely obscure the hooks and melody.

Their debut was released earlier this month on Absolutely Kosher (also home to Sunset Rubdown, Frog Eyes, The Wrens, Xiu Xiu) and have a hand-painted limited edition cassette on the way. It's also on iTunes, and the tracks can be heard on their myspace and website.

60 Watt Kid - Ocsicnarf Nas

60 Watt Kid - Every Day

Sam Amidon + HEALTH

Sam Amidon is a New York folk man with a voice the now-sadly-defunct Stylus likened to "a more assertive Kermit The Frog", which isn't far wrong. Some of his stuff, like his ill-advised cover of "Head Over Heels" by Tears For Fears, crosses into wet-tissue feyness and I have to listen to some strident disco to get the wobblyness out of my head. However, "Saro" is easily one of the years best songs.

It's a rendition of an old folk song, so Amidon can't really take the credit for the awesome vocal melody. It's absolutely effortless and timeless; and like all great melodies sounds as if it's been hewn from the natural world rather than forced out of a mind. Particularly affecting is the way the line "for to be alive" falls, a beautiful little moment. To give Amidon his due, its a very moving performance, managing to convey both a resignation to lost love, and the awful time it took to get there.

Sam Amidon - Saro

Sam's album featuring this track, All Is Well, is out in February, and was produced by Valgeir Sigurðsson, who has worked with Bjork, Bonnie Prince Billy, Mum, Sigur Ros, CocoRosie and, er, Kate Nash.

At the other end of the melodious prettiness spectrum we have HEALTH. They recorded their record (and are regulars) at the not-really-underground-anymore underground L.A. club The Smell, which has also nurtured such experimental-hipster-punk luminaries as No Age and Mika Miko. The Smell has a habit of putting on bands with silly names, try these on for size: Heavy Face, Vomit Bomb, Disposable Thumbs, Child Pornography, Bipolar Bear, Pocahaunted, This Moment In Black History, Good For Cows, Toxic Loincloth, Stay Fucked, Mattress, Moth Drakula. Lovely.

Anyway, HEALTH (why the block capitals? Smell-brand silliness again) may look nu-rave and even sound it on the Crystal Castles remix of their "Crimewave", but they actually play a brand of punk that fans of Liars and Black Dice will dig, garage rock meets noise bursts meets electronic noodles with tribal drumming and eerie vocals. I love "Perfect Skin", in which titanic chords call on the po-faced monolithic riffage of metal to slowly lay waste to the landscape. The way they fall fractionally off the on-beat is just great. Turn this one way up.

HEALTH - Perfect Skin

Hello blues, whatcha doin in here so soon?

The cold has set in good and proper up north. I get wrapped up to go outside - hats and coats and scarves. The last two days, Sheffield has been draped in a thick grey misty rain that settled as fog this morning. It was cold, and everywhere sounded empty, voices echoing hollow in the morning chill. This is the weather for blues, for the down and out blues infront of wide log fires - since I don't have a log fire, I'll settle for the blues.

Bessie Jones was the principal in a special form of gospel singing called the 'ring shout' which was practised on the St Simon's Island where she lived with her husband. This song was one she'd learnt as a girl, along with lots others from her grandfather - an African ex-slave. This one she made up "when she was young and still 'out in the world'(not a church goer)"

Alan Lomax discovered her in 1959, and she later convinced him to record her music and her biography. 'Beggin' The Blues' is featured on the 2CD Alan Lomax Songbook, it was recorded in 1961 and as a result, the recording is pretty much spotless. Lomax captures her voice in sharp focus and almost unbearably close-up. She sings completely a capella here - her voice is rich and powerful but tied down and softened for this personal lament, tarnished by a beautiful lilt that carries off the last syllable into a dark blue wilderness.

Bessie Jones - Beggin' The Blues

Life Force

Recently I have been enjoying the pleasures of rediscovery, spending half an hour here and there rooting around in a shoebox full of electronica and avant-rock promos from the last three years. I keep chancing upon albums buried in my memories, blurred undeservedly into a generic subset of mediocre strings and electronic mutterings.

The Life Force Trio are one of the things is listened to the most. This one track (in tribute to Alice Coltrane) stood out the most and I am glad to find it again. Unfortunately the album has terrible artwork and an even more hideous title: The Living Room. Well done guys, you really convinced us all that your good album was actually some flaccid lounge bullshit. (No points for imagination either - it was recorded in a living room)

They were conceived by Carlos Nino, who was also part of AmmonContact and Hu Vibrational among others. As far as I can tell, they've only ever released this one full length on Plug Research, with a guest appearance forDwight Trible and a 7" here, 12" there.

'Alice!' is six minutes of strings gliding; soaring like starlings over the high notes; caressing and adorning the helpless looped melody as it falters, is retrieved and heaps around and upon itself - a beautiful tangle of wind, string and the carefully disguised hum of programmed monotones.

Alice! - The Life Force Trio