The Jimmy Cake - Tough Love

The Jimmy Cake – Tough Love

With Tough Love, The Jimmy Cake “slowly build a universe before breaking it all apart again”

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Beginning from a low rumble that feels like the echo of creation, The Jimmy Cake slowly build a universe before breaking it all apart again. This immense track (over 40 minutes long) that sees them go full kosmische as they continue to push the boundaries of their music further out. Much further out. This is tremendous stuff and it is potentially the most psychedelic thing they have committed to record yet.

Tough Love is a logical progression from their difficult fifth album Master – indeed the foundations for it go back to some of the live performances the group did in the wake of that album (such as a particularly hypnotic set in The Joinery where they settled on one chord and played it for about an hour). They had hinted at this sort of thing a long time ago (see the piece “Perfect Smoke” from the terrific 2002 compilation Orang-Utan) but here they step it up a gear, setting the controls for the heart of every sun they can find.

The Jimmy CakeThe Jimmy Cake have always excelled at repetition, in finding that sweet spot where you feel like there is only the moment in which this sound exists and it will last forever. This is certainly the case with Tough Love but through incremental and subtle increases in intensity, you realise that you have sleepwalked into something even more profound. When the drums and pulsing bass rhythm finally kick in around 9 minutes into the first half of the album, you can tell something special is going on. Phantom instruments appear in the mix and it starts becoming hard to separate out who is playing what. It is a heady and mesmerising conflagration of sound that is something akin to an auditory kaleidoscope.

The second half of the album moves into a heavier sphere altogether as a slow and lumbering guitar becomes the anchor to the music. Suddenly the sound is less 70s Germany and more like a stripped down version of Sleep’s Dopesmoker. Where the first side of the LP was explosive and felt like it was constantly in motion, this is like plodding through a lysergic custard. Just when I think I have got a handle on this shift in pace, suddenly they throw some heavily processed vocals deep into the mix to confound things even further. I have no idea what is being sung but the overall effect is monstrous.

It is hard to believe this is the same group that gave the world Brains and Dublin Gone. Everyone Dead. Then again, given the flux of band members in and out of The Jimmy Cake it is not really the same band. On that point, Tough Love is Paul G. Smyth’s last recorded work with the group, leaving The Jimmy Cake as a lean five-piece from now on. I suppose now it is time to lay bets on where they go from here, it is really anyone’s guess.

The Jimmy Cake will play The Grand Social on Saturday, July 8th.

http://www.thejimmycake.com

The Jimmy Cake - Tough Love

  1. Cornu Ammonis said:

    <a href="https://thumped.com/bbs/goto/post?id=1684192#post-1684192">&uarr;</a>

    <blockquote>They had hinted at this sort of thing a long time ago (see the piece “Perfect Smoke” from the terrific 2002 compilation <i>Orang-Utan</i>)Click to expand...</blockquote>

  2. [​IMG]

  3. Cornu Ammonis said:

    Oh wow, that's really cool! I've never seen that before.Click to expand…

    i've been biding my time…

  4. Cornu Ammonis said:

    Oh wow, that's really cool! I've never seen that before.Click to expand…

    if i remember correctly, section a was a nod to arnold dreyblatt's nodal excitation

  5. Just waiting for someone to mention an obscure early 00s compilation track.

  6. Unknown Convict said:

    Click to expand…

    Holy fuck, I haven't seen that in a loooooong time. It didn't quite end up that way, did it? I remember there was a conga line.

  7. Hector Grey said:

    Holy fuck, I haven't seen that in a loooooong time. It didn't quite end up that way, did it?Click to expand…

    i don't really remember. is there a recording of the full set (as opposed to just the 'perfect smoke' section)?

    Hector Grey said:

    I remember there was a conga line.Click to expand…

    that was the 'black lace' section – best forgotten.

  8. Cornu Ammonis said:

    Just waiting for someone to mention an obscure early 00s compilation track.Click to expand…

    timing is everything.

    funny to see the names/instruments of the departed. i'm not even certain who's in the band these days but i'm pretty sure that incarnation still featured @Osimono @Keeror @Diumraid

  9. Unknown Convict said:

    timing is everything.

    funny to see the names/instruments of the departed. i'm not even certain who's in the band these days but i'm pretty sure that incarnation still featured @Osimono @Keeror @DiumraidClick to expand…

    I look forward to the future court cases over ownership of the name for those lucrative reunion tours. @Vinnie's Jimmy Cake vs @Diumraid's The Jimmy Cake vs The Jimmy Cake featuring Paul G.Smyth

  10. pete said:

    I look forward to the future court cases over ownership of the name for those lucrative reunion tours. @vinnies Jimmy Cake vs @Diumraid's The Jimmy Cake vs The Jimmy Cake featuring Paul G.SmythClick to expand…

    the jammy cake vs. the jimmie cake vs. the jimmy sponge vs. seamus cáca milis. good times ahead.

  11. the jammy cake vs. the jimmie cake vs. the jimmy sponge vs. seamus cáca milis. good times ahead.

  12. Unknown Convict said:

    timing is everything.

    funny to see the names/instruments of the departed. i'm not even certain who's in the band these days but i'm pretty sure that incarnation still featured @Osimono @Keeror @DiumraidClick to expand…

    I've forgotten more JC members than I can remember.

  13. Unknown Convict said:

    timing is everything.

    funny to see the names/instruments of the departed. i'm not even certain who's in the band these days but i'm pretty sure that incarnation still featured @Osimono @Keeror @DiumraidClick to expand…

    They're not dead, or anything.

  14. Unknown Convict said:

    the jammy cake vs. the jimmie cake vs. the jimmy sponge vs. seamus cáca milis. good times ahead.Click to expand…

    Buffalo Springform.

  15. the jimmy eat cake – punk-pop versions of jc classics
    the jimmy buffet – all-you-can-eat jc
    the jimmy chamberlin – lounge versions of jc tunes

  16. the jimmy eat cake – punk-pop versions of jc classics
    the jimmy buffet – all-you-can-eat jc
    the jimmy chamberlin – lounge versions of jc tunes

  17. Unknown Convict said:

    the jimmy eat cake – punk-pop versions of jc classics
    the jimmy buffet – all-you-can-eat jc
    the jimmy chamberlin – lounge versions of jc tunesClick to expand…

    The Jimi Cake Experience
    The Australian Jimmy Cake
    Le Jimmy Gateaux
    James H. Cake

  18. Really enjoyed the gig last night. Although the Grand Social was so warm it finally pushed me over the edge from "feeling a bit peaky" as I'd been since Tuesday to properly sick.

    Thought Paddy Kelleher was great to.

  19. the last Jimmy Cake album completely passed me by but I had a listen to this the other night on Soundcloud and it sounds deadly.

  20. Really? It was freezing in the audience.

  21. Unknown Convict said:

    if i remember correctly, section a was a nod to arnold dreyblatt's nodal excitationClick to expand…

    There was a regular set-piece that got dropped because people were so unhappy about the flagrant Dreyblatt-ism of it.

    Unknown Convict said:

    i don't really remember. is there a recording of the full set (as opposed to just the 'perfect smoke' section)?

    that was the 'black lace' section – best forgotten.Click to expand…

    Full recording is still MIA … sad state of affairs for a compulsive archivist.

    The conga-line section was supposed to be a nod to Afrika 70 and to the Sun-Ra Arkestra … that part really needed more rehearsal 😀

    pete said:

    I look forward to the future court cases over ownership of the name for those lucrative reunion tours. @Vinnie's Jimmy Cake vs @Diumraid's The Jimmy Cake vs The Jimmy Cake featuring Paul G.SmythClick to expand…

    I can totally see this happening once the big bucks start rolling in. What about that future incarnation with NO original members … remember that? LOL

  22. the ship of theseus version? a.k.a. the jimmy broom?

  23. Diumraid said:

    I can totally see this happening once the big bucks start rolling in. What about that future incarnation with NO original members … remember that? LOLClick to expand…

    Doug Yule's Jimmy Cake

  24. Very first Jimmy Cake gig was Simon, Vince, John, Dee, Lisa, Rory, Me. The last one was Vince, John, Dee, Lisa, Me and Parx, and Parx has been tootling for a decade or more. So we're still pretty Original. We're a ways away from Buffalo Springfield territory.

  25. Very first Jimmy Cake gig was Simon, Vince, John, Dee, Lisa, Rory, Me. The last one was Vince, John, Dee, Lisa, Me and Parx, and Parx has been tootling for a decade or more. So we're still pretty Original. We're a ways away from Buffalo Springfield territory.

  26. Cornu Ammonis said:

    Doug Yule's Jimmy CakeClick to expand…

    The Yule Log

    Unknown Convict said:

    the ship of theseus version? a.k.a. the jimmy broom?Click to expand…

    I only know this paradox as 'Lincoln's Axe' .. nice to have a more classical reference.

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