Jul I'm Sorry

XIV Dark Centuries are one of those bands that I have known of since 2003 or so, however, for whatever reason, I always delayed in checking out their material until this little EP came out and, needless to say, after hearing it, I was kicking myself for not checking out the debut album (… Den Ahnen Zum Grusse …) sooner; Jul is definitely a pristine and perfect starting point for a newcomer to XIV Dark Centuries since, for one, it's rather easy to sit down and listen to it anytime since it's about 17 minutes long (which, umm, could not be said of Equilibrium's 80-minute Sagas beast, for example) and, besides that, it captures everything the band is about.

Love , lust and angst were the biggest topics of teen love songs back in the 50s, a time where the idols of the day , no longer your Mom and Dad s crooners, dominated the charts. The 1950s marked the birth of rock’n’roll. From big band tracks to jazz standards, until midway through the 20th century, music was a resolutely parent-friendly zone. But then everything changed. Elvis had flustered teenagers all shook up, while the likes of Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis and the like were destroying the old safety nets with a virile, passionate new sound.

Jerry Williams’—aka Swamp Dogg—first love was country music, listening to it as a Navy family kid growing up in Portsmouth, Virginia. “My granddaddy, he just bought country records out the asshole,” Swamp remembers. “Every Friday when he came home from the Navy yard he’d stop off and get his records, like ‘Mule Train’ by Frankie Laine, or ‘Riders in the Sky’ by Vaughn Monroe.” His first time performing on stage, in fact, was a country song at a talent show when he was six years old: “I did Red Foley’s version of ‘Peace in the Valley.’”

Despite the fact that Wagon Christ-related releases started to pile up for various labels, Luke Vibert wasn't in danger of repeating himself - his productions on Sorry I Make You Lush differ stylistically and thematically from any material he's issued under any other alias, while still being less a genre holiday than his previous YosepH for Warp. Still pushing his beats and basslines farther into funk and soul territory even while he pulls his effects from the realm of experimental electronics, Vibert may play the dance technician while producing his tracks, but he's become much more a natural trackmaster than in the past. "I'm Singing" may be his first vocal feature of all time, but regardless, it is a vocal track, and one that shows him integrating sung vocals into his hipster funk very well (a later track finds him sampling a female folksinger à la Jacqui McShee to good effect)…