Jeff Boyle is the guitar player for Jakob and sometimes gets to work with Rhian Sheehan and very occasionally Mean. Here are five albums he’s loving right now…
1 – Radiohead, The King Of Limbs: Radiohead is my favourite band, hands down. So when I gave King Of Limbs the first listen and I got that same feeling I got when I first heard Kid A, I was hoping it was going to be a grower. A gem, like Kid A turned out to be, that I just simply didn’t get at first. Now I listen to it most days. On this album they manage to make amazingly dynamic and memorable music without resorting to any formulaic fall backs which they could so easily do. Why I love this band so much is because they can keep evolving musically and still keep producing relevant and truly great music with every album. The textural focus on this album is what gets me the most; they use subtle shifts to create the dynamics while Thom’s melodies make sense out of a chaotic blend of angular guitar loops, fantastic bass lines and perfectly electronic blended beats.
2 – Stars Of The Lid, The Tired Sounds Of: A few years ago Jules Desmond recommended this album to me. It has been one of the most played albums on my iPod since. I still can’t figure out how they have created half the tones and textures on this album, it is almost completely other worldly. It is stunningly beautiful.
3 – Swans, Soundtracks For The Blind: This album has been one of those albums that I had to keep going back to. I didn’t completely get it until I discovered The Angels Of Light’s How I Loved You. Micheal Gira is just one of those musicians that you might struggle with for a while, then you come across one song that you get and you then realise the guy is a genius. His music has real weight to it, a no-bullshit emotive weight. Soundtracks For The Blind is an album that took him fifteen years to complete so you get an amazingly eclectic array of samples and textures, jangly guitar grooves, stark heavy slabs of sound and aching moments of Gira’s vocal ramblings.
4 – Efterklang, Tripper: I first discovered these guys when we played after them at a festival in Denmark back in 2004; it was really hard work following them. I was still dumbfounded by their set. This was the album they had just finished when they played the festival and it is one of my favourites still. It is another incredible genre-transcending album. A twelve-piece blend of glitchy electronica, piano-driven ambient post rock and choral/strings laden soundscapes. It has Edda and Hildur from Amiina (and Sigur Ros) playing some of the strings on this album which was one of the highlights of seeing it live.
5 – Fugazi, Red Medicine: This one I’ve just recently rediscovered. It was one of the albums that had a huge influence on my music back in the mid-90s. It was brilliantly recorded, amazingly live and full of their raw energy. I really loved In On The Kill Taker but when this came out it was much more experimental and pointed towards a more art rock/post rock direction which I think paved the way for a lot of bands. It has a bit of a Slint Spiderland feel in there and the dynamics across this album are incredible. It has the relaxed ‘let’s just try this and see how it goes’ feel to it of a band producing their own record. The way Ian & Guy’s guitars work together (and against each other) is completely seamless, two people who have been playing together for a long time together and right on top of their game. Joe’s bass playing is as good, in my opinion, as it ever was across their career on this album. It also confirmed Brendan Canty as one of my favourite drummers; possibly the highlight of a truly great album.