12-2003 / www.monorailmusic.com / Colleen, Movietone...

Colleen / Everyone Alive Wants Answers
Everyone Alive Needs Answers just seemed to land out of nowhere, a series of psychedelic psotcards from a 26 year old Parisienne dreamer, Cecille Schott. As compellingly strange as Rivette's Celine et Julie Vont Bateau, for which it would be a perfect soundtrack, it was all pretty details and clunk. Susumu Yokota would surely have been proud of such a work. Our record of the year. (SP)

Maher Shalal Hash Baz / Blues Du Jour
It was their first studio set since their legendary Return Visit To Rock Mass 83-song opus, and group leader Tori Kudo had planned it all out. A series of winning, brilliant avant pop songs would lead into a second-half of miniatures, some gorgeous, some very odd. Everyone seemed to go wild for this beautiful melancholic sound; the reviews were ecstatic, and everywhere they played people fell in love with them. The actual magic band. (SP)

Directorsound / Redemptive Strikes
All hail the pocket genius from Dorset. Redemptive Strikes is an absolutely compelling series of pieces which flow into each other gracefully, but not too smoothly. Assembled with care and love in Nick Palmer's bedroom, it isn't really like anything else but reviews talked of 'circus music without the clowns', Fellini music, Tom Waits' instrumentations, and Nino Rota and Pascal Comelade. Lo on fi, high on ambition, it's a gentle anarchy; a wild kindness. (SP)

Movietone / The Sand And The Stars
Movietone are forever the greatest semi-secret English group: a winning mix of early Rough Trade (YMG/ Marine Girls) and Robert Wyatt's soft-focus psychedelia. With "The Sand And The Stars" they took as the starting point a review of their previous record which described their sound as like "a jazz record being played from across the bay," and, after lugging their gear down to a remote beach near Land's End, created a completely original and beautiful fourth album. (SP)

Alasdair Roberts / Farewell Sorrow
An absolutely majestic set of tender, brilliant songs from the erstwhile Appendix Out leader, Alasdair Roberts, who made us see that homespun avant-garde folkiness could be much, much more than the latest fashion pose. The 'young man slowly growing old' is serious and reflective and when he sings out you've got to listen. A contemporary classic that's really quite traditional. The whole house is singing. (SP)