Zelienople - "His/Hers"

Zelienople - Parts are Lost (Type 2007)

Zelienople – His/Hers / Type

It almost feels odd diving into a sound like that of Chicago three-piece Zelienople as the spring relief of winter melts into the soon-to-be-menacing heat of summer. My first reaction to this slow burning, mind-enveloping psych-folk slush is that of an autumnal early-frost sort of feel; the freewheeling, carefree spirit of the summer is now completely gone and the realization that a very cold, dismal winter is imminent. But first reactions are for the birds, and Zelienople’s fifth full-length is definitely something that takes time to digest. His/Hers is primed for midsummer; in fact, it sounds more a reaction to unwavering heat pelting at the brain and dissolving sanity than anything. It’s decomposed folk where the gangrene is made up of noise, psych, metal and free jazz.

While apparently recorded in a suburban Chicago basement, His/Hers sounds much more as if it was concocted in a decrepit cabin in somewhere deep in the woods of nowhere. There is just such a menacing, creaking vibe throughout the five songs that acting as a soundtrack to some folksy horror film is not a far-fetched assumption. Banded together as Zelienople since 1998, Matt Christensen, Mike Weis and Brian Harding are not scared to let their individual sound and erroneous byproducts collate and simmer into the kind of stew a Brothers Grimm character may be offering. And like the original manuscripts by the German folk-tellers, which beneath the sometimes ominous and haunting stories were the seeds of beautiful fairy tales and talented linguistics, the surface of Zelienople’s music may be that of foreboding vibes, but underneath breathes delicate folk and intricate musicianship.

The consecutive pairing of “Moss Man” and “Parts Are Lost” is the apex of Zelienople’s sound. “Moss Man” begins softly with ghostly, reverb-soaked guitar and vocals creeping up from levels that barely register. The music continually builds from here on out: first dithering echoes snake dismally from their sources, then the free jazz drums start with stuttering, scathing rhythms and finally in comes the feedback in all it’s early-Sonic Youth glory. The song builds and cascades and looms in a well controlled climax within the lo-fi recording limits. Just as the noise subsides though, “Parts Are Lost” pleasantly drifts in with trotting sleighbells and a very welcoming melody. Still drowned in reverb, the poignant, patient backwoods folk is in no hurry to establish any semblance of a hook, but just to exist as a counterpoint to the widespread menace. The song meanders pleasantly for nine-and-a-half minutes, none of which seem like over-indulgence.

Zelienople exist in a very odd cross-section of styles, an odd angle that sees Low, Boris and Flying Saucer Attack all overlapping characteristics. His/Hers is psychedelic in the mind-bending definition of the term, but not necessarily with the typically associated bright colors. It is folk in spirit and some instrumentation, but not afraid to wile out when necessary. It is noise where the source material plays just as strong a role as the distraught byproduct. And it is free jazz in the strategic placement of tones and liberated structure, but existing in a folksy realm that the genre rarely explores. Zelienople craft a sound that is not necessarily meant for being the center of your attention; it is more about being a catalyst to exploring the sometimes dismal and sometimes delicate aspects of your mind.

Mansbestfriend - "Poly.sci.187"

Mansbestfriend - Stuck in My Head Since I Was 12 (Anticon. 2007)

Mansbestfriend - Poly.sci.187 / Anticon.

You know it, we know it, the blogosphere knows it: Lately we've been having a lot of rock records pass through the humble headquarters of Audiversity. While that's all very well and good for guitar-attuned ears, those of us more into the floetry side of things have gone hungry. Mansbestfriend is a step in that direction, but hold your horses there, slayer: As with any Anticon. release, it couldn't be just that straightforward. So Poly.sci.187 woozily stumbles in with an Emma Goldman quotation; you know straight away the title was no misnomer. What follows is typical of Tim Holland's clever knack for putting the right beats in the right places.

You'll get spoken-word bits in and out of the album, but it's the production that takes center-stage on this album. The prog-hop sensibilities speak to something larger than just Holland's wizardry behind the boards, though: This is clearly a political album. Whatever political science courses you pretended to take in college are out the window with Mansbestfriend, because this album doesn't occupy any kind of overt spots in the consciousness. Instead, Holland (whom I've somehow neglected to mention is Sole during his day job) caters to the cerebral, filling songs with noise-collage samples, vacant beats, E-bows and organs, ethereal vocals... This never really feels like a hip-hop album, actually. Instead, it feels more like a less menacing Dälek record: There's a lesson to be learned from the music, but it's not explicitly stated.

Well, not always. The Goldman snippet aside, "Spin the Humans" starts off with a little lad named William from Lebanon. It ends with a "Wheel of Fortune" clip, but the best part here is that while we can be pretty certain Holland is, erm, less than conservative, he lets you do the deciding for yourself. That's what might be the most rewarding part of this album: There's no lecturing, there's no instructions on what to think, and there are no answers. There are only questions posed in musical form. It's up to the listener to decide how to answer them. Interestingly, a parallel can be drawn to political post-rockers, say From Monument to Masses or even Godspeed You! Black Emperor. It's not quite as heavy-handed, but the point is the same.

For the hip-hop heads still wondering what happened to all the empty promises of that opening paragraph, "Allieverwanted" will fill your needs quite nicely. The vocals are totally swamped by the noisy electronics and analog wanderings that surround a steadfast beat unafraid to bang big. "Stuck in My Head Since I Was 12" follows it and does just as excellent a job of staying loyal to the beats of the grittiest rhymers. Freestyling over a track will never feel so forward-thinking.

There are a ton of other fly beats on here, and that's really my only complaint: That at 16 tracks it's a bit difficult to really wrap yourself up in any of these songs because they never last long enough. The only reason this is unfortunate is because so many of them deserve a little fleshing out, to see where they go. "High Noon and Sobered" is one example, "Firefish" another, "How Big is Space" yet another... The list goes on. It's just one awesome snapshot after another, and while it's the album's Achilles Heel, it's also it's greatest asset: Holland may not be telling you what to think, but he is suggesting how you should feel. Namely, unsettled.

Anticon. is a reliable label, but with Mansbestfriend they've recaptured some of the essence of what they were about. Before Thee More Shallows, before all those Alias remixes, there was Sole and a left-field hip-hop collective he was associated with that wanted to do more than merely rhyme. Poly.sci.187 speaks to that and to the future of a genre that's been hit-or-miss in recent months. Politically speaking: Consider this a direct hit.

Maserati - "Inventions for the New Season"

Maserati - "12/16" (Temporary Residence Ltd. 2007)

Maserati - Inventions for the New Season / Temporary Residence Ltd.

There is a moment on the three-way split Maserati did with fellow Athens, GA residents Cinemechanica and We Versus the Shark in 2004 where you aren't in love with this band. It is the moment before you hit play on "Towers Were Wires." It is also the last moment I can remember thinking that Maserati sounded like a really good name for a band and not just a car company. Now I know better: It's not just a classic car brand. It's a great name for a post-rock band that's come a long way in their short history.

Maserati have flown under the radar in the past few years, but with Inventions for the New Season they have re-emerged from their post-rock hideaway to deliver a full-length that's as much punk-funk as the expected post-rock. In fact, the group may have welded the two together to produce something not unlike LCD Soundsystem's Sound of Silver or !!!'s Myth Takes, except with more blissy guitar tones.

There's a long-winded explanation to this. Here's the abbreviated version: When Kindercore filed for bankruptcy in 2003, Hello Sir took Maserati under their wing where they released a 7" (which was the first appearance of the brilliant "Towers Were Wires"), one split with The Mercury Program and that three-way split mentioned earlier, and their out-of-print sophomore release The Language of Cities. The band went on hiatus in 2004 and though most of their core members eventually reunited in 2005, drummer Phil Horan is now in a reggae band called Still Flyin'. So material for Inventions for the New Season began to form. The only problem was that there was still no proper drummer.

Enter Marietta, Georgia native Gerhardt "Jerry" Fuchs: This guy's prowess is such that he has been in demand and delivered for the likes of the aforementioned LCD Soundsystem, The Juan Maclean and Turing Machine (which he helped found). More relevantly, Fuchs helped out on !!!'s Myth Takes, and so it comes as no surprise that when !!! swung through the Southeast to play shows in Kentucky, the Carolinas and Georgia, Maserati were in the opening slot. Fuchs professes to not enjoying standing still; by drumming for both bands on those nights (and considering !!! usually does hour-plus sets), he's certainly been kept busy.

His uptempo style of drumming has profoundly influenced the new record. For example, on epic opener "Inventions," guitarist Coley Dennis has explained that it was influenced directly by Ash Ra Temple's 1975 recording "Echo Waves." This sort of stuff, coupled with the Mahavishnu Orchestra and touches of all flavors of krautrock, means that Maserati sounds more like Neu! than Mono. The sort of epic quiet-to-loud build-up followed by the inevitable comedown of bands like Explosions in the Sky or even Mogwai in their more contrived moments is absent here. Instead, Maserati drive as quickly as an MC12 around the streets of Bucharest. There's never been any patience for vocals in their music, but there's virtually no patience for anything else except sheer speed here.

If it sounds like they're devolving and falling into some kind of post-rock-meets-dancefloor mentality, you're way, way off the mark. Meaning: I haven't done this band justice. So let the awesome power of "Show Me the Season" grab a hold of you. Let the sheer might of "12/16" conquer you in its final minute. Let "The World Outside" win you over with an avalanche of cymbal-crashing, adrenaline-fueled beauty. "Awesome" is a weak adjective to describe many things, that much is true... But Maserati isn't one of them.

Plants - "Photosynthesis"

Plants - Tumbleweed (Strange Attractors Audio House 2007)

Plants - Photosynthesis / Strange Attractors Audio House

The anticipation right from the off of Photosynthesis is part of what makes this album so special. This isn't your typical weirdo folk stuff, at least not right away. Part of what makes Plants so interesting is that this air of anticipation turns into an air of uneasiness as the album carries on. In some ways, it's an extension of the vibe popularly known from Radiohead's "How to Disappear Completely." In others, it's just another solid release for an Oregon trio.

The Portland-bred band has been around for four albums now, actually. They are thoroughly established in their particular niche and, if they don't mind me saying so, appear to be as resolute and confident in the music they play as the marriage that holds the core of the band together. Molly Griffith-Blanchard and Joshua Blanchard is the marriage I speak of, and while I'm not sure how long they've been together, I like to imagine that they are quietly smiling to themselves as they scare the hell out of the listener with their own brand of psych-folk. One recent comment on their MySpace can attest to this, some bloke now "looking at the stuff in [his] yard a lot differently." There you have it. Plants: You'll never look at lawn ornaments the same way again.

Jesse Stevens is the third guy officially in Plants (Graeme Enkelis, the fourth current member, did not appear on this recording), though for Photosynthesis they enlisted a few other characters from in and around Portland to help record. Ben Buehler was most prominent among them, helping out with recording, bass, vocal and percussion duties His brother Jason played banjo and piano box, while Howard Gillam slipped in electric tones and Michael Braun-Hamilton worked with a singing saw. Basically, this album was born to be awesome. It's just that much more rewarding to find that the chummy hippie freewheeling of Matt Valentine and Erika Elder has been foregone in favor of some really dark, murky tones best evidenced on the organically unsettling "Roots." But the concept of this album, diving beneath the rocky terra firma of the West Coast acid-folk scene to weed out the Indian sitar roots as much as the backswamp Louisiana bayou folk, is excellently balanced between the instrumentals and the vocal tracks, between the strummed tunes you can remember and the ominous droning you can only remember as the breathers. One particular track, "Birdflowers" is virtually all windchimes and wind whooshing in and out. You never see it coming.

While their "pillow-prog odyssey" Double Infinity last year might have the cooler cover, Photosynthesis more concisely and accurately captures what this group is all about. It is the complete package, from the artwork to the music to the concept. It's haunting but not immediately frightening. It is what I wished more psych-folkers did. It's an album you owe to yourself to hear. Unlike the dynamics of the music, anticipation isn't as good as actually listening to it.

Radio Show Playlist 5/30

6a:
1. Can - Future Days - Future Days (Mute 1973)
2. Amon Tobin - Kitchen Sink - Foley Room (Ninja Tune 2007)
3. Fennesz Sakamoto - Mono - Cendre (Touch 2007)
4. Xela - Wet Bones - The Dead Sea (Type 2006)
5. DJ Krush & Toshinori Kondo - Fu-Yu - Ki-Oku (R&S 1998)
6. Fred Lonberg-Holm Trio - There Never Was a Reason - Terminal Valentine (Atavistic 2007)
7. The Watery Graves of Portland - Sleeping Fox - Caracas (Marriage 2006)
8. Andrew Hill - Passing Ships - Passing Ships (Blue Note 2003, recorded 1969)

7a:
1. Thelonious Monk - Four in One - Big Band and Quartet in Concert (Columbia 1963)
2. MoMo - Segredo Nao se Diz - A Ectstica do Rabisco (Dubas Musica 2007)
3. Juana Molina - Yo No - Son (Domino 2006)
4. Canasta - Slow Down Chicago - Find the Time (Broken Middle C 2003)
5. Dungen - Familj - Tio Bitar (Kemado 2007)
6. All Night Radio - Oh, When? - Spirit Stereo Frequency (Sub Pop 2004)
7. The Feelies - Crazy Rhythms - Crazy Rhythms (Stiff 1980)
8. Boris with Michio Kurihara - You Laughed Like a Watermark - Rainbow (Drag City 2007, Inoxia 2006)

8a:
1. Zelienople - Parts are Lost - His/Her (Type 2007)
2. Dinosaur Jr. - Crumble - Beyond (Fat Possum 2007; Thurs, Fri and Sat at Abbey Pub)
3. Sonic Youth - Incinerate - Rather Ripped (Geffen 2006)
4. Dog Day - Oh Dead Life - Night Group (Tomlab 2007)
5. Ride - Perfect Time - Waves-BBC Sessions (Ignition 2003, recorded 1990)
6. The Sea and Cake - Crossing Line - Everybody (Thrill Jockey 2007; Thurs and Fri at Empty Bottle)
7. The Zincs - Hamstrung and Juvenile - Black Pompadour (Thrill Jockey 2007; Thurs at Empty Bottle, on WLUW-FM at 12:30p 5/30)
8. Karate - Cacophony - Pockets (Southern 2004)
9. Prefuse 73 - Last Light with Sam Prekop - Vocal Studies and Uprock Narratives (WARP 2001; Sat at Bel Eckhart Sound Experiment and Sonotheque)
10. Reminder - On Rooftops - Continuum (Eastern Developments 2006)
11. Ammoncontact - Love Letters - One in an Infinity of Ways (Plug Research 2004)
12. Battles - Race: In - Mirrored (WARP 2007)

The Icarus Line - "Black Lives at the Golden Coast"

The Icarus Line - Frankfurt Smile (Dim Mak 2007)

The Icarus Line - Black Lives at the Golden Coast / Dim Mak

I have a theory about Buddyhead Records. Bear with me: I hadn't realized American Apparel carried free issues of Vice, so I made a point to go over there last week and pick one up (I can't really afford the clothing). As I was flipping through, I couldn't help but be reminded of Buddyhead in their heyday when art-damaged was in and fuck-you pretension was prima.

At the eye of this Los Angeles-bred storm of hipper-than-thou attitude and bird-flipping sass was The Icarus Line, partly because one of its members, Aaron North, was in the band. But Buddyhead as a label was actually pretty good: At the Drive-In, The Dillinger Escape Plan, Yeah Yeah Yeahs, and Wire were among the groups that were featured on some of their releases. It was their website that basically took the piss on everyone and everything they could. Nothing was cool enough for Buddyhead, not even their own bands. Was it a joke or was it serious? That was never clear, but sometime after 2004's Penance Soiree and after North was drafted into Nine Inch Nails, they kind of stopped mattering. Kids had graduated to the next big thing: Vice. The circulation numbers won't lie.

I checked the credits for the latest issue, but I didn't recognize most of the names. My theory is that some of the people involved with Buddyhead's height have at least fraternized with the movers + shakers behind Vice; in any case, one is nearly directly derived from the other. Vice as a label is great, but reading their magazine religiously and loving it either means you have no idea who you are as a person or you're an overanalytical sociology student.

That's all an exhaustive way of reminding you not just of how the Internet used to be, but also how The Icarus Line used to be. We're a long way from Mono and the days when The Icarus Line were arguably rock's most exciting (and frightening) act. Penance Soiree was a huge step away from publishing celebrity's phone numbers and toward actual credibility beyond punk's flavor of the week, but Black Lives at the Golden Coast is an interesting retreat ever further removed from their self-destructive early years. Last year's Black Presents EP was the first signal of this seachange: With Tracks like "Cut Back the Heard" (which didn't make the final cut) and "FSHN FVR" (which did), the 'Line were looking to a different sound that fused their traditional abrasiveness and atonality with a moody, lurking post-punk sound. Diehards may hate it, but if you've somehow gotten by with ignoring The Icarus Line before, now is your chance to dive in. They're more accessible than ever.

Not that it's a bad thing. Black Lives at the Golden Coast is a different take on the hopelessness of Lost Angeles: This album is strongly influenced by mid-80s post-punk as played by Echo & the Bunnymen or The Church and early goth-rock like Bauhaus. The Icarus Line have always had a dark streak in them - after all, they were dressing in all black with red ties long before The Hives thought it was a good idea to dress modly - but it's really coming out in their music now. The guitar tones on "FSHN FVR" and "Slayer" sound straight off a Teardrop Explodes record, something I don't think anyone could've predicted six years ago. Or maybe they could, because if a punk band doesn't implode or become a parody of itself, it usually finds a way to change its sound through post-punk. Hey, the 80s happened the way they did for a reason. You can't go on wanting anarchy forever. Just ask John Lydon.

Their old vitriol is still there, but only just. It feels like you're walking in on the group already playing as "Black Presents" starts with feedback and the ever-muscular drumming of Jeff Watson. Rock n' roll swagger pops up here and there throughout the duration, including penultimate track "Golden Rush." The ultimate testament to The Icarus Line's evolution in sound is the concluding track, "Kingdom:" At eight minutes, it runs the gamut of psychedelic walls-of-noise and minimalist post-punk and garage-rock and everything else that this band could possibly incorporate into its sound (including both strings and, of course, horns... But we already covered that with Silver Daggers so I'll spare you). Frankly, Joe Cardamone's wailing has never sounded so fragile and unassured. Is this the sound of a band that's just now realizing the possibilities that lie beyond three-minute blasts of noise? Or is this the sound of a band that's about to self-destruct, as all great punk bands eventually do, just as they're reaching an important juncture in their sound? Will the fans follow?

Maybe it doesn't matter. Caught in their own world of a Lost Angeles scene that continues to be wrapped up in the self-importance of upholding the Left Coast, The Icarus Line have challenged themselves and come up blood-colored roses on Black Lives at the Golden Coast with arguably their finest hour. Now they're staring you straight in the eye and daring you to do the same; the only thing dividing you is a Vice review... Or maybe it's Buddyhead incognito. I can't tell the difference.

Fisk Industries - "EPs and Rarities"

Fisk Industries - Liquid Silver Moments (Mush 2007, originally Highpoint Lowlife 2006)

Fisk Industries – EPs and Rarities / Mush

There is just something enchanting about IDM done right. Through purely a mechanical process, a good electronica artist can breed emotion through a seemingly simple process of programming rhythm and melody. It’s not necessarily rocket science and typically easy to decipher from a listening standpoint, but utilizing just the right balance of equipment, samples and production is definitely a talent. If it weren’t, we would certainly not hold artists like Boards of Canada or Plaid in such high esteem. And in some aspects, while agonizingly obsessed over programming may never be held in the same respects as say a jazz improviser, acclaimed vocalist or a guitar virtuoso, there is something to be said for an artist that can wrangle emotion out of stone-cold sine waves, erroneous clicks and static.

London-based multimedia artist Mat Ranson had no intention of diving into the world of IDM, ambient techno, downtempo or whatever electronica subsidiary that may categorize his music. Bedroom sound doodling while at Art College in Birmingham, England escalated to collaborating in 2003 with Highpoint Lowlife Records, a club-spurred multi-genre release imprint based in London via San Francisco. Now dubbed Fisk Industries, Ranson was able to release is intricately designed melodic-yet-crunchy IDM aside similar-minded artists like Recon, DoF, Marshall Watson and n.Ln. Like the entire Highpoint Lowlife roster, Ranson is not necessarily out to revolutionize the genre with his Fisk Industries moniker; it’s more about exploring the possibilities and relationships of the tools involved. Attempting to elaborate on the seeds planted by Aphex Twin, Autechre, Boards of Canada, Oval, Mouse on Mars and Plaid without straight mimicking their sound. Seeking to breathe life into electronic machinery and seeing what emotion really does exist in those confusing pathways of wires and circuits and breakers and whatever else makes electronics electrocute.

Already making noise in London and it’s surrounding areas with four years of ten-inch EPs, digitally released work and other singularities, Ranson has now teamed up with the always entertaining Mush Records to both cull and release his collected material stateside. The two-disc set aptly titled EPs and Rarities features both properly released The Isle of Wight and 77 and Rising ten-inch EPs as well as four other exclusively digital EPs and five previously unreleased songs. Though the release dates involved span back to 2003, all of the material fits seamlessly together while letting Ranson dip his toes in the aforementioned electronica genres (IDM, ambient techno, downtempo) as well as dub, minimal techno, left-field house, glitch and illbient as well. I know that sounds like a bunch of similar style regurgitation, but they are all tags that Fisk Industries could be filed under, so just be aware.

The first disc featuring the two previously released ten-inches is definitely the go-to point for newcomers. Ranson has as good a grasp on manipulating analog synths into sparse, emotion-drenched melodies as either of the Boards, but definitely surrounds the core with more minimal isan- or Isolée-like minimal blip-rhythms than Boards’ drum breaks. And while The 2003’s Isle of Wight EP may owe just a little too much influence to the ambient electronica pioneers, 2006’s 77 and Rising adds a heavy dub influence to further the cause. “Liquid Silver Moments” for example submerges the bass-line leaving only the lowest of frequencies to pulse along the delicate, skittering rhythm, deep analog keyboard breaths and the sparse vocoderized vocals. Later on, “Close” sounds like it was almost produced through an actual bass, but processed heavily and colored in with synthetic string flourishes and twinkling electronic pings.

The second disc is a more random assortment of styles being a collection of mostly singles and unreleased tracks. Ranson teases his sound in both more upbeat and cluttered directions (“Columbia”) as well as the opposing sparse and ambient attempts (“On Thursday”). He manages to find such a welcoming balance on the first disc, I doubt I’ll revisit the second one nearly as often. And it should be noted that while very enjoyable, Fisk Industries is not releasing any music that has not been purveyed time and again since the mid-90s, when we all got sick of guitars for the moment and yearned for something different. It is, though, a nice, unpretentious culmination of the many sub-styles that have immerged in the last decade, and that certainly counts for something. I for one would take it over something like the progressive-trance overly climatic music of The Field any day. It’s something much more endearing with it’s simple and tasteful demeanor.

Montag - "Going Places"

Montag - Safe in Sound (feat. Amy Millan) (Carpark 2007)

Montag - Going Places / Carpark

Ah, Mondays. There's nothing like a little Memorial Day to slow down the pace of things, a much-needed time to relax and recharge for the long summer that inevitably lies ahead. For me personally, Monday is all about a re-evaluation of what I did on Sunday... Which was watch the biggest day in motor racing. I started off with Formula 1's Monaco Grand Prix in the morning, watched the excruciatingly drawn-out Indianapolis 500 in the afternoon, and for some reason also kept up with NASCAR's Coca Cola 600 in the evening. It was the motoring equivalent of de-evolution. Put better, I went to bed last night feeling a lot less cultured and classy than when I woke up.

So when this morning rolled around, I needed something savvy enough for me to feel like I'd recovered from a Casey Mears hangover but approachable enough for me to get into it immediately. I needed something that captured the joie de vivre of a culture far, far removed from anything paved and ovular. Montag and his real name Antoine Bédard is that guy.

Why do we care about Bédard? If you're interested in independent music at all, you've probably already heard his name: The Quebec-born, Vancouver-raised electronic wizard is incredibly prolific, having released 2005's Alone, Not Alone while playing live with Xiu Xiu, Ghislain Poirier, The Russian Futurists and Ulrich Schnauss to name a few. He's remixed Stars, he's scored poetry by Kim Doré, he's been to SXSW. The only thing it seems he hadn't done was release a second album, but that's taken care of now.

In keeping with what must be a highly gregarious nature, Montag didn't work alone by any stretch of the imagination. Poirier, M83, Final Fantasy and Au Revoir Simone are some of the more notable names to drop in during the course of Going Places, but each seems to take their respective songs in a slightly different direction. While "I Have Sound" starts off with the Anthony Gonzalez collaboration, none of M83's hallmark analog whitewash is to be found; instead, the synths-as-airy vocal harmonies work their magic for what sounds more like Montag than even Montag could've hoped for. It's starry-eyed, it's breathing in deeply and smiling stupidly, it's the essence of what's to come.

"Best Boy Electric" sounds like it came off a synth-pop assembly line in its Dntel-like drive, but the beat never gets the best of the humming refrain and ultimately livens up the first half. You'd think the Ghislain Poirier match-up on "Alice" would be a little too in-your-face for Montag, but don't laugh, it's not post-modern: Instead, it's short, subtle and pretty. Very muted, even.

Which is the main story to this album, actually. Take any particular song with any particular collaborative effort and it seems like Montag got the better of them all. The Amy Millan collaboration "Safe in Sound" is less Small Brown Bike and more Stars of course, but both Millan and Bédard have virtually anonymous vocals on this track and no one else fairs much better. There's no doubt about it: Bédard knows exactly what he wants out of his own album, and on Going Places he's hit it squarely on the mark.

I could use all kinds of circularity to tie up the loose ends and talk about how while I went nowhere yesterday watching tons of guys drive hundreds of miles for me I've driven many more miles even than them to get back to Columbia and then on to Vancouver mentally to join Montag in his scene-setting, but I think you see where it's going. Just know that while Going Places isn't revolutionary, its irrefutable pleasantness is what sets it apart from so many other releases. Relax, it's going to be alright. See? "Hands Off, Creature!" You'll be okay.

Ah, Tuesdays.

Omar Rodriguez-Lopez - "Se Dice Bisonte, No Bùfalo"

Omar Rodriguez-Lopez - Boiling Death Request a Body to Rest Its Head On (GSL 2007)

Omar Rodriguez-Lopez – Se Dice Bisonte, No Bùfalo / GSL

Over at Reckless Records, I am always surprised at how consistently we keep Omar Rodriguez-Lopez’s first solo project, 2004’s A Manual Dexterity: Soundtrack, Vol. 1, in stock. It is a decent album (supposedly the soundtrack to an uncompleted/never-released film of the same name) of ambient psychedelic guitar noodles released at the peak of The Mars Volta’s popularity. I’m not necessarily saying it was a cash-in on the revitalized interest in Rodriguez-Lopez’s post-At the Drive-In guitar-wizard reputation, but despite a few well-worth-your-time songs, it is pretty much negligible in the grand scheme of things. Yet I have probably sold more of that particular album, especially the LP version, than all the Mars Volta albums combined during my tenure at the Chicago record store. I have a theory (that was somewhat solidified through a conversation with a patron as I was once again selling our newly-restocked copy to just the other day) that the brightly twinkling, light refracting cover-art has a lot to do with its appeal when matched with Rodriguez-Lopez’s acclaimed name. It nearly hypnotizes you with curiosity upon setting your eyes on the flashy cover; especially in it’s grandiose LP form. The customer asked me what I thought about it, and I told him my true opinion—decent with a few standouts, but nothing overtly special—and it didn’t dissuade him in the slightest, and then he actually remarked about the curious artwork. Now if Rodriguez-Lopez had just matched that ridiculously hypnotizing album cover with the music of his latest solo outing, Se Dice Bisonte, No Bùfalo, we would have the complete package.

I think like most people, my interest in the Rodriguez-Lopez helmed Mars Volta peaked early and waned with each passing release; it is now to the point where 2006’s Amputechture got little more than a sole passing listen by my ears. But truth be told, I have always had and presumably always will have a soft spot for the Puerto Rican composer, guitarist and producer. He is just too talented to ignore even if neo-psychedelia prog is not your cup of tea. There is a reason that At the Drive-In was such an ambitious, mind-blowing punk band, and as Sparta has further proved, it was not stemming from the rhythm section. Seemingly the love child of Carlos Santana and John McLaughlin (see 1972’s Love Devotion Surrender for the seeds of Rodriguez-Lopez’s sound), Omar’s freewheeling and passionate compositions stem from the hey day of ambitious psychedelic jazz-rock in the early 70s, but as with his work with the Volta, occasionally over-reach their ambitions into pretension and come off more cheesy mid-70s prog than anything. It’s a shame too, because the man has ridiculous talent and vision, he’s just trapped in the wrong era.

Thankfully though, Rodriguez-Lopez occasionally leaves the major label budget behind for some home recordings like the ones on his latest solo offering, Se Dice Bisonte, No Bùfalo, one of four albums recorded while visiting Amsterdam in 2005. Fortunately handed-over with no over-arching themes or alienating concepts or questionable Mars Volta artwork (other than the once again possibility of being a soundtrack), his third album under solely his name is an intriguing affair of mid-fi Latin-jazz-grounded psyche-rock that vastly improves on the foundation laid with A Manual Dexterity. The regular cast of characters remains involved: Cedric Bixler-Zavala’s high-pitched croon is utilized on three of the tracks (exceptionally on “Rapid Fire Tollbooth,” haphazardly on “La Tirania de la Tradiciòn”), Volta contributors Juan Alderete de la Peña, Marcel Rodriguez-Lopez and Jon Theodore all chip in, and of course the now expected two-cents from John Frusciante and Money Mark. All the musicians involved sound very much attuned to each other and provide ample palettes for Omar to riff and wail and rip over with his so ably proficient electric guitar.

After two doodling ambient pieces (the kind that made up the majority of A Manual Dexterity), the first proper tune is “Rapid Fire Tollbooth,” a patient psyche-funk number narrated by Bixler-Zavala that should have been what the Mars Volta was doing all this time. With Bixler-Zavala’s unearthly, echoing yelps undercut by drowned soprano sax flourishes, Rodriguez-Lopez first riffs with consciously sloppy wah-wah funk before releasing the kind of finger-bleeding solo that has instigated so many Santana parallels. A slightly more developed ambient piece bridges into the title track, a slowly blossoming song of Latin-jazz piano, mindedly eased electric guitar and un-enunciated vocals from Bixler-Zavala. It mostly sounds like a Tremulant cast-off, which is absolutely a compliment. Another continuously developed ambient number (a pattern is appearing) before we get to the original studio version of “Please Heat This Eventually,” a limited-edition 12-inch collaboration with Can’s Damo Suzuki from earlier this year. Though Suzuki’s growling vocals aren’t included on this version, Money Mark’s Joe Zawinul impression accentuating the urgent, exuberant piece certainly takes it to a new, welcomed dimension. In between the culmination of this every-other-track-pattern of slow-burning, ambient pieces, “Lurking About in a Cold Sweat (Held Together by Venom),” and the questionable psychedelic-punk of “La Tirania de la Tradiciòn,” is my favorite number, “Boiling Death Request a Body to Rest Its Head On.” Like a b-side to Love Devotion Surrender, Rodriguez-Lopez submerges his guitar in watery effects-pedals and lets Adrian Terrazas Gonzales wail on an equally recordingly-restrained soprano saxophone in a Pharoah Sanders-spiritual-jazz manner. With the light percussion and just right marriage of pedals and distortion, it’s the Latin-psyche-jazz excursion I have always hoped for from Rodriguez-Lopez.

So is Se Dice Bisonte, No Bùfalo the best Omar Rodriguez-Lopez solo offering to date? Yes. Is it more rewarding than most of the Mars Volta output? To me at least—yes—but mostly because it just seems devoid of the pretension they have established with that outfit (which seemed like a good idea at first, but hasn’t really panned out). Will it prove as remarkably sustainable selling-wise as A Manual Dexterity? It should from a music standpoint, but the prairie-toned artwork certainly doesn’t have the same mesmerizing appeal as the light refracting hoopla of Dexterity. And finally, the must-be-answered hypothetical question: “I am more of a fan of the idea of the Mars Volta than the actual music, will this suffice my tastes?” Yes, and I’m right there with you buddy.

Singleversity #12

Audiversity’s weekly column on random music in a predetermined number of words between 1 & 150. This week's randomly generated number: 37. Except, ah, yeah: There are definitely only two of us.

(Ed. - Originally this was called Threeversity, but in the spirit of simplicity we've decided to retroactively relabel all of these posts. The content remains unchanged.)

MA:
(#37 of a random playlist generated from my ever-changing database of 12,500+ songs)



Brood – ing [broo-ding] –adjective
1. To hover envelopingly; loom.
2. a) To be deep in thought; meditate.
b) To focus the attention on a subject persistently and moodily; worry.

example: see Thee More Shallow’s "Monkey vs Shark".

JR:















[Here in spirit, RIP and so on (Jordan is not dead, just on an indefinite Audiversity hiatus. -Ed.)]

PM:















If France felt refreshing last night, Huddie Ledbetter will have you feeling the oppressive heat of the American Southeast after “Pick a Bale of Cotton.” His father a sharecropper, his music pre-blues, his influence immeasurable. Enough said.

Kahil El'Zabar's Infinity Orchestra - "Transmigration"

Kahil El'Zabar's Infinity Orchestra - Soul to Groove (Delmark 2007)

Kahil El’Zabar’s Infinity Orchestra – Transmigration / Delmark

I was all set to write-up a party-friendly, spazz-happy record, but to tell you the truth, it just didn’t hold my attention and was really wrong for my current mindset. I need something more random and less hip, something maybe not necessarily mind-blowing, but interesting and exotic and ridiculous. I need to distance myself from the DJs and laptop-artists and solo-outfits and half-cocked ideas and immerse myself in something bigger, some sort of cultural melting pot of styles and backgrounds and musicians. I need something more than a quartet or a quintet or a sextet of players, I need a fucking small village of musical minds playing as one. I need something both new and old, a bridging of eras and mindsets, something that stretches out in all directions with exuberance, excitement and joy, and something celebratory to bring in this holiday weekend. So, what the hell, I’m heading to a port city in the southwest of France to experience the live, multi-layered, ethnic barrage of free jazz, big band, soul-jazz, funk and hip-hop by a 39-piece orchestra. While I may actually be spending this pleasantly cool and quiet Chicago Friday night huddled over my laptop with a Honker’s Ale and an attention hungry cat, as far as my mind and ears are concerned, I’m sitting front-and-center at the National Theater of Bordeaux, Aquitaine, France, drunk on their world-famous wine and smiling broadly at the orchestrating antics of Kahil El’Zabar as he leads his Infinity Orchestra through the rambunctious hour-long set of Transmigration.

El’Zabar is a true Chicago jazz musician; he is multi-talented, highly committed and part of more eccentrically wonderful projects than there is time to list. A product of the AACM, he is a percussionist, arranger, composer, conductor, clothes/costume designer, educator and community leader. As a musician, he began at a young age honing his skills with early incarnations of the Art Ensemble of Chicago, and along with playing alongside everyone from Dizzy Gillespie, Nina Simone, Stevie Wonder and Cannonball Adderley, he has lead and played in groups like the Ethnic Heritage Ensemble, the JUBA Collective and the Ritual Trio. There are many other interesting tidbits to El’Zabar’s career as well, for example, clothes designing for Nina Simone, artist in residence/Master of Carnival in Bordeaux, or arranging the stage performances of The Lion King, but we really should concentrate on the album at hand.

The origination of the Infinity Orchestra reaches back to 1978 when El’Zabar pieced together an all-Chicago ensemble that let him experiment with his increasingly ambitious big-band compositions. In fact, one piece from those experimental days appears on this release, the album closer “Return of the Last Tribe.” Inspired then by the works of the Art Ensemble of Chicago and Archie Shepp’s big-band excursions and now influenced by myriad of geographically concentrated styles including free jazz in France (especially BYG Actuel releases, though not nearly as challenging), indigenous African percussion (most notably the balafon and djembe) and American rap and turntablism, El’Zabar has arranged and orchestrated a skillfully performed and joyous album with his French 39-piece cross-generational ensemble in Transmigration, which may not be perfect, but is certainly a treat to experience.

The album opens with the very curious “Soul to Groove,” certainly not what I was expecting at least. Kicking off with a turntable solo, a solo free jazz tenor sax enters two minutes later wailing away like there’s no tomorrow. It’s not cheesy in the least, which in itself is a success. Bombastic orchestra cheers and funky guitar riffing egg on the duet before dissolving back to just solo turntable once again; it is certainly not the first pair of the two genres, but it is handily pulled off. Now “Nu Art Claiming Earth” on the other hand is not nearly as successful and actually bends toward unlistenable. This times rhymes are added to the mix care of French rapper Bindi Mahamat, and with no offense to his flow, it just doesn’t work. The song drags on for fifteen-minutes through a barrage of different movements, but if anything, just disenchants the promising album opener.

The centerpiece of Transmigration is the 24-minute “Speaking in Tongues,” though while simple from an arrangement standpoint contains fantastic musicianship and is a very rewarding track. Kicking off with the melodic percussive sound of the balafon, a West African xylophone of sorts, it meanders through three phases each spotlighting a different soloist, trumpeter Piero Pepin, clarinetist Jean Dousteyssier, and alto saxophonist Benoit Berthe. Like every solo on the disc, they are inspired and fantastic, and in fact, the solos are the main attraction of the album. On “Return of the Lost Tribe,” the only two non-French musicians, Chicagoans Ernest Dawkins (New Horizons Ensemble) and Joseph Bowie (Defunkt) each provide emotional outbursts to the grooving orchestral swing led by El’Zabar. Again, it would be a far cry to call any of it classic, but it is very enjoyable and a much-welcomed aural escape from most of what gets released these days.

So after a ridiculously jading week, it feels great to lose myself in the heart-felt eccentricities of Kahil El’Zabar and his orchestra. No it won’t win you many cool points in the hipster realm of things and no it won’t blow your mind from a musical you-have-never-experienced-something-like-this-before standpoint, but it will put a grin on your face, make your head sway and probably send you to the liner notes a couple times to see who just ripped that ridiculous clarinet solo. What else could you want? A bottle of Bordeaux’s world-famous wine? Well yeah, me too.

Silver Daggers - "New High and Ord"

Silver Daggers - Real Neat Flag (Load 2007)

Silver Daggers - New High and Ord / Load

Though it took the entire summer of 2004, I eventually came to love Black Eyes' Cough. Maybe it was just the single greatness of "Drums" or maybe I was just feeling malleable, but by that August I had grown to appreciate what they were doing even if I wasn't going around telling everyone about it. When I found out they broke up right before they released Cough, I was slightly heartbroken: Here was a band that was using horns to push the free-jazz side of punk forward in a way that hadn't been done properly in years. It was all very no wave and Black Eyes were arguably Dischord's most promising band (alongside Q and Not U).

It's taken three years, but we're virtually in the same place on the calendar and I've finally heard something worthy to the immediate legacy that Black Eyes left: Welcome to the Smell-affiliated world of LA's Silver Daggers. Like our previous post on No Age, Silver Daggers have been heavily involved in the growth and development of the venue and community out there. With New High and Ord, the quintet has held up well from the promise of their early 7s to come through with a downright dirty set of 16 songs your friends still obsessing over Contortions and 99 will love.

There's so much happening here right from the word go on "Enter the King." Every member of the group plays some critical part: While William Kai Strangeland Manchaca throws in atonal keys and shares both vocal duties and sax skronk (There it is for this review) with Jenna Thornhill, Jackson Baugh violates his guitar to the listener's delight, Steven Kim finds irresistible grooves in the noise, and Marcus Savino just goes at it constantly on the skins. It sounds like it's a total disaster when I write it out, but as they've recently stated themselves, New High and Ord and Silver Daggers in general are just the synthesis of five people with totally different musical ideas and schools of thought contending. It's this tension that makes the album so wonderful. The drums of the title-track dominate while a cobra-taming sax line runs in the background and WKSM shares in the shouting with Thornhill. Like so many other songs on the record (that mostly clock in at around a minute-and-a-half, but this is an exception at nearly five), it's boisterous, it's lively, it's driven. That is Silver Daggers as a whole. "Real Neat Flag" is just one excellent example.

I know I'm behind when I sing their praises as this came out a month ago today. But I don't think it's ever really too late to get into something good (Also, Silver Daggers have not, to my knowledge, broken up; always a plus). It hasn't taken me nearly as long to jump head-first into this. New High and Ord may be a chaotic and messy collage of primitive synths and ultra-sharp guitar tones, but its emphasis on the punk in post-punk is one of the main reasons this sounds entirely different from so much else out there at the moment. They've learned the lessons of Lydia Lunch and still managed to take in the poptones of Public Image Ltd.

What remains is an unconquered public that's been trained to think that Gang of Four and Liquid Liquid are the epitome of one of the most significant musical movements of the last century. Er, not necessarily. Sitting on the other end of my toast is New High and Ord: Here's to another attempt at re-evaluating what post-punk and experimentation were all about.

Boris with Michio Kurihara - "Rainbow"

Boris with Michio Kurihara - You Laughed Like a Water Mark (Drag City 2007)

Boris with Michio Kurihara - Rainbow / Drag City

It's sometimes a struggle to write a record review when so many other people have already beaten me to the punch. So why do it, you know? What's left in the nooks and crannies of one of 2007's better releases that hasn't yet come to the light of day after months of analysis as The Hype Machine will attest?

I'm not sure, but let me just say this: I'm glad this album has finally come to the US. It was January when one of the better unheralded blogs out there, Funtime OK, first warned of an impending release with new artwork and extended songs. Though they're now finished, their heads-up was enough to get people refocused on something a little more psychish after last year's collaboration with doom kings Sunn0))) resulted in the massive but mostly underwhelming Altar. Something was necessary to rectify that amplifier worshipping situation.

So if you haven't gotten the message, Rainbow is definitely that. In several reviews Boris is noted for their critically successful Pink and Kurihara is universally regarded for his time in Ghost, who themselves released an album earlier this year to some minor acclaim. Here's a secret not so many people have pointed out: Drag City definitely have the better album with Rainbow. In fact, I'd venture to say that In Stormy Nights was at times downright boring. Three months on from its Stateside release, I struggle to remember the highlights. Masaki Batoh would have my head, but perhaps Kurihara would slide a smile behind his back. I'm not propagating a rivalry here, just calling them like I see them.

Boredom is never a word I'd associate with Rainbow. Even during its quietest passages (The intro to "Shine" takes its sweet time revving up to proper amplitude), Rainbow flourishes under the tension of Boris' past and the ghosts of Les Rallizes Denudes to name but one. For two: Ghost shows up here too, but it's their earlier work that seems more relevant. More Second Time Around than Hypnotic Underworld. Or maybe that's just the spirits talking. Either way, this album is alive with late-60s golden-era Jap-psych and the best krautrock even shows face on "Rainbow" the song and my personal highlight, "You Laughed Like a Water Mark." This particular song's lo-fi solo is one of my favorites this year for its piercing sound and for its ascending and descending delicacy, honed over tons of Ghost albums, White Heaven, Damon & Naomi, The Stars, You Ishihara... You get the idea. Dude gets around.

The sounds alive on this record are all over the place, so much so that the distant vocals and Kurihara's six-string shredding are the only things uniting them. Boris is a transformed band here with a renewed sense of purpose and vigor. Frankly, I thought that Pinks was merely good (Dronevil stands to me as their ultimate magnum opus) and Altar was more than overrated and over-saturated at least. It seems like anytime Boris puts something out, people jump on it just because they're happy to have another Boris release. I don't blame them, they're one of rock's finest bands at the moment... But for the last year or so they've been cruising n' collecting. No more. Rainbow is the reaffirmation for those of us who might've grown a little bored with recent releases that this band still knows how to put together brilliant songs. Michio Kurihara comes off looking as good as ever. Who loses? Only you if you haven't already purchased Rainbow for yourself.

Grouper - "Cover the Windows and the Walls"

Grouper - Heart Current (Root Strata 2007)

Grouper - Cover the Windows and the Walls / Root Strata

For me, the birthday happenings ended pretty early last night. The aftermath started in this morning as the evil cough that has been trading barbs with my immune system for the last three days returned. There's no question about it, Justice just was not the kind of music I needed to hear to settle myself down, get a throat lozenge and attempt to sneak in some more sleep. I needed something dreamier. I needed something appropriate for a post-anything aftermath. In the wake of a hacked-up lung, one woman emerged through the haze of the morning sun to save me: Liz Harris. I'd have had it no other way.

Portland resident Harris is the woman behind Grouper, but you may know her better from a Xiu Xiu collaboration called Creepshow. She's also released two albums prior to this one, and on her sophomore effort Way Their Crept she demonstrated a mastery of musical and vocal delay. There's a slight change on Cover the Windows and the Walls, because now she's playing around with pianos and slowly strumming guitars, which form the base of songs like "It Feels Alright." This evolution only works wonders for Grouper, because this album is sheer morning glory for your ears. Like a kid rubbing their eyes to see the sun through the blinds, Cover the Windows and the Walls floats as airless as dust in the light of dawn, enigmatic but never frustratingly opaque.

The songs evoke the pastoral feelings of a roaming countryside the kinds of which Emerson was keen on writing about. Indeed, it's less pastoralism and more transcendentalism that's advertised in this music, borderline ambient but still concrete enough for a listener to detect, um, "hooks." Term used loosely. It's the stuff of dreams, the sounds of REM sleep coming to a close. It's a spiritual state that hovers in on the A-side with the title-track and continues on through to the B-side, which starts off with "Heart Current." This is a special piece of vinyl, understated and at times very distinct ("You Never Came" has the most noticeable guitar pieces). But it is, more than anything else, an individual album.

Maybe Liz Harris is keen on literature and maybe she couldn't care less about it. But the spirit of Emerson's "Nature" is written all over her music, and I mean that in the best possible way. The concluding words of that 1836 manifesto are my best advice to you as you give Grouper a listen. Uncover your windows and walls: "Build, therefore, your own world. As fast as you conform your life to the pure idea in your mind, that will unfold its great proportions. A correspondent revolution in things will attend the influx of the spirit."

MoMo - "A Estética do Rabisco"

MoMo - Segredo Não se Diz (Dubas Musica 2007)

MoMo - A Estética do Rabisco / Dubas Musica

I pride myself as being a good recommendee. While collaborating on Audiversity certainly testifies that I enjoy doing the recommending as well, I personally am much more interested in being recommended new music to enlighten my tastes. Luckily, I have done a pretty good job in putting myself in strategic positions to have new music as recommended by knowledgeable peers and colleagues continuously dumped into my ears. Being the Music Director of an independent radio station like WLUW-FM Chicago is most beneficial in this aspect. My job may be to use my personal knowledge to cultivate a quality eclectic library, but there is no way in hell that could be accomplished without 200 volunteers continuously giving me their opinions on the music they love the most. One of the most beneficial (for me at least) relationships I have established in the last year has been with music critic Peter Margasak, whose vast worldly knowledge fills me with envy and awe on almost a daily basis. Thankfully, he enjoys dishing out said knowledge and regularly sends music my way that I request after hearing on his internationally focused radio show, Mosaic, or on his blog, Post No Bills, for our library. His post on blossoming Brazilian singer/songwriter Marcelo Frota from a couple of weeks back immediately caught my attention, and to my pleasure, the slightly delayed request was merrily replied with “I was waiting for you to ask.”

The music of Frota’s debut album under his MoMo moniker, the aptly titled A Estética do Rabisco (The Art of Scribbling), was absolutely not what I was expecting—it is better. I try not to think that my knowledge of Brazilian music is completely concentrated on the Bossa Nova and Tropicailia scenes, but for the most part, it sadly is. Like I’m sure most of you reading do, I regularly snatch up the obscure psychedalia comps rampantly being culled from Brazil and love me some of the easily acquirable light-hearted Bossa Nova groove, but outside the occasional Afro-Brazilian, samba or MPB record, I rarely get schooled on the many, many, many niches of Brazilian music I am sure exist. And on the MPB subject, that tag is as vague as calling a record “pop,” so it is hard to differentiate one sub-style from another. Well A Estética do Rabisco falls under none of those categories and contains none of the wily rhythms I was expecting that are usually associated with Brazilian music; it’s psyche-folk heavily influenced by early 70s Brazilian recordings and late 60s American psychedelia as well as our contemporary freak-folk scene. Just check his MySpace page: Antony and the Johnsons, Devendra Banhart, Cat Power, CocoRosie, Feist, Isobel Campbell and even Nick Drake all reside in the coveted “Top Friend Space.” Surprised me too; and yes, I feel bad about my ridiculous naivety.

In fact, Frota’s MySpace page details just how influenced he is by his American contemporaries like Banhart and Antony, he lists them as inspiring forces to write A Estética do Rabisco. And Frota’s non-descript psyche-folk not only lives up to such parallels, but surpasses them with his unassuming, laid-back vibe and mid-fi recordings that are much more effective to my ears than some of the grandiose arrangements being utilized in the American underground these days. Both Margasak and the Dusty Groove abstract of the album name Alceu Valenca and Geraldo Azevedo as Brazilian reference to his sound, but I have had trouble stirring up decent descriptions of those two artists other than that damn MPB vagueness (though allmusic has lengthy bios on each). Using very generic reference points we can all associate with to describe Frota’s sound: strip away White Album-era Beatles or Syd Barrett’s Pink Floyd to the barest melodic essentials, slow them down to a Nick Drake shuffle and intertwine some of that exotic Caetano Veloso charm, and you are starting to get an idea of what we’re getting at.

The instrumentation on the album is nothing special but very effectively utilized; sparsely recorded kit drum, acoustic guitar picking and analog keyboards make up the majority of the music with Frota’s wonderfully unpretentious croon leading the way. Pinwheels of feedbacking electric guitars, avant-garde sax yelps and light breezes of flute all occasionally color the sound with the psyche tag, and it’s classic late 60s/early 70s psyche too, not the post-produced slop we get a lot of today. I can’t too much speak for the lyricism, though his intimate tone and delicate phrasing certainly point in an endearing romantic direction if any. The music sweeps with sparse psychedelia, patters with gentle folk-pop and grooves melodiously rather than rhythmically. It’s an album that you melt into, letting the musical swirls enchant your mind and lull you to relaxation.

Marcelo Frota and his MoMo moniker are definitely names to keep on your to-get-a-hold-of list. If you reside in the States, my guess that it will be tough to come by at the moment, but he is apparently seeking a U.S. license to grace us with his psyche-folk seduction. Did you hear that Gnomonsong? For now though, you are going to have to take my route and rely on knowledgeable friends. There is no shame in being the recommendee, and if you play the role long enough, you’ll be switching sides before you realize it.

Justice - "†"

Justice - Valentine (Ed Banger 2007)

Justice - † / Ed Banger

What better way to celebrate my birthday than with the ultimate party people of the past year? Gaspard Augé (the bearded one) and Xavier de Rosnay (the one with all-conquering sideburns) have dominated dancefloors since their Simian remix in 2004; when Vice picked up the tab for Ed Banger releases Stateside last year, the rat-race to award them as the greatest dance phenomenon since the DFA's post-9/11 successes was well and truly on. Kids started wearing giant crucifixes again; high-tops were more in-style than they were 20 years ago; D.A.R.E. shirts were everywhere. Paris was the new Brooklyn.

Almost a year on from their debut EP Waters of Nazareth, then, where do we stand? Don't be fooled by So Me's subtle artwork that no longer screams for attention as it did on the EP. Instead of the towering mass that declares yes, here is Justice, only the outline of the mighty cross that illuminates their sets hovers menacingly, understated and outlined, in the middle of their cover. Have they taken a turn for the darker, or is their big-bang 500cc style still the same?

"Genesis" doesn't take long to answer the question. The menacing orchestra, sounding miles off, gives a glimpse of the sound the cover suggests... But it's 38 seconds in and the pumping bass arrives. The subtleties of "Genesis" are in how they don't go all out with fuzz or massive percussion; even the beat doesn't feel overdone, subtle enough to be hidden away late in a mix... or at the forefront of one of 2007's most anticipated albums. "Let There Be Light" follows, its compressed analog melodies clashing nicely with the tisking hi-hats and thundering 4/4 drums. "D.A.N.C.E." is the first single slated for release on May 28th, its choral recitation an obvious highlight of the album that you'll probably hear everywhere this summer.

After this point (and maybe even before it), you get the idea. That's both the blessing and the curse for these guys: Their City of Lights splendor only works as long as you're up for the dance. But at some point the party has to end and you have to go home (except in Berlin). Strangely, that song for this record is placed right after the "Phantoms." "Valentine" is a humble and cheesy song that couldn't have been more appropriately titled. It's the shortest tune on the album, but it's also one of the most different: Despite the ubiquitous beat, the playful synths take on a doe-eyed form and you're suckered in not by Justice's usual big-beat machismo but by their softer side instead. It rarely comes out and nowhere else on the record does it stick around for a whole song, but it is a curious addition and a welcome one.

"The Party" will be another favorite for club-hoppers the world over, but Uffie's delivery never engaged me and this is no exception. Always sexual from a distance, perhaps due to some kind of coke cloud surrounding the entire Ed Banger camp, Uffie is begging for objectification here. Or maybe that's not the point. No, I guess when your appearance is on a song with a title like "The Party," reading too much into things might be a mistake.

So we won't. We'll dance until our shoes no longer have soles and we'll drink ourselves silly and we'll snort what we can and smoke every last Gauoloises Blondes and spin until there's no song left on earth to play and the people have no choice but to stop. Maybe there will be a day when IDM really exists and people think on the floor and this bollocks about "the party" will fall by the wayside and Paris will recede from the musical spotlight... But Gaspard Augé and Xavier de Rosnay are doing everything they can to ensure that day won't come anytime soon. Sounds like something worth celebrating to me.

Radio Show Playlist 5/23

6a:
1. Television - Marquee Moon - Marquee Moon (Elektra 1977)
2. Watchers - I Don't Want It - Vampire Driver (Gern Blandsten 2007)
3. Earth - Coda Masestoso in F (flat) Minor - Hibernaculum (Southern Lord 2007)
4. Dead Meadow - Greensky Greenlake - Dead Meadow (Tolotta 2001)
5. Black Moth Super Rainbow - Forever Heavy - Dandelion Gum (Graveface 2007)
6. Battles - Tonto - Mirrored (WARP 2007)
7. Mahjongg - rRABBITT - Raydoncorg (Cold Crush 2005)
8. Dan Deacon - Snake Mistake - Spiderman of the Rings (Carpark 2007)
9. Karl Blau - Put Me Back - Dance POSITIVE (Marriage 2007)

7a:
1. The National Trust - Secrets - Kings & Queens (Thrill Jockey 2006)
2. Aja West & Friends - The Getaway - Total Recall 2012 (Mackrosoft 2007)
3. Jamie Lidell - Multiply (in a Minor Key) - Multiply Additions (WARP 2006)
4. Experience 7 - Songe - Experience 7 (Isque Debs 1979)
5. Jay Mitchell - Mustang Sally - Cult Cargo: Grand Bahama Goombay (Numero Group 2007, recorded 1972)
6. Fela Kuti & Roy Ayers - Africa-Center of the World - Music of Many Colors (Phonodisk 1980)

8a:
1. Hausmeister - Ursula - Water-Wasser (Plop 2007)
2. Jim O'Rourke - Fuzzy Sun - Halfway to a Threeway EP (Drag City 1999)
3. Mice Parade - Sneaky Red - Mice Parade (FatCat 2007)
(Tickey Giveaway) 4. Black Rebel Motorcycle Club - Spread Your Love - B.R.M.C. (Virgin 2001)
(Request) 5. Wire - Men 2nd - Chairs Missing (Harvest 1978)
6. Sarolta Zalatnay - Itt a Nyar - Sarolta Zalatnay (B-Music 2007, recorded 197?)
7. Matthew Dear - Vine to Vine - Asa Breed (Ghostly International 2007)
8. My Sister Klaus - Kicks of Sand - Chateau Rogue (Tigersushi 2007)
9. John Cale - Paris 1919 - Paris 1919 (Reprise 1973)
10. Califone - Fisherman's Wife - Roomsound (Perishable 2001)
11. Spacemen 3 - Feel So Good - The Perfect Prescription (Genius 1987)

Vibracathedral Orchestra - "Wisdom Thunderbolt"

We're going to start doing things a little differently now. Jordan's been pretty busy moving and making and DJing and doing so much it would be impossible for him to write properly, which is what we're keen on here, natch. So while he takes an indefinite hiatus (I don't think he'll be breaking up), Michael and I will soldier on for now with a new format: Single post, single artist. The ultimate in minimalism. Sweet. Let's get on with it, then.












Vibracathedral Orchestra - "Sway-Sage" (VHF 2007)

Vibracathedral Orchestra - Wisdom Thunderbolt / VHF

I was in an apartment in downtown Charleston, South Carolina recently. If you've never been there, Charleston's a wonderful town that thrives on culture and history of the distinctly Southern variety. There's houses that have been there since the 1700s and beaches that go on for miles. It's got its underside as any city does, but they're working on it with all the gentrification they politely call it. The poverty continues to work its way further and further from the center of town in the traditions of the European model of urbanization.

Despite exorcising the physical decrepit and decaying, it's a lot harder to exorcise the spiritual and metaphorical: As a quick search will attest, plenty of people are willing to tell you about it. If you're in a house and you're starting to feel the strange chill of something calling from beyond the grave, you need to start bringing in the heavy artillery. Call in the spells.

England's Vibracathedral Orchestra may just be the thing for you. Their own brand of fried-folk drones and psych-outs are the stuff of sheer aural embalming, drawing you in with the might of a few electric guitars and fucking with your mind through chiming bells and theremin swoops and other otherworldly devices. The seven-minute title cut is exactly the kind of thing that Julian Cope was referring to when he said in 2002, "this is music that does not need much describing, indeed it could be off-putting to do so. Instead, listeners just need to be alerted to the fact that it exists." In fact, his review of Dabbling With Gravity & Who You Are could accurately describe most of the VCO's massive back catalog.

The sounds that the members of the Leeds-based band make are truly outerspaced, droning with a vibrancy that could quell any spirit. Though no personal credits are listed on the album, the last official check had the group in the form of original members Mick Flower, Bridget Hayden, Neil Campbell and Adam Davenport joined by Matthew Bower, Chris Corsano, John Godbert and Pete Nolan (Hayden and Campbell have since left, while Flower and Corsano are currently on tour as a duo). Whoever happens to be playing on this release at any given time, Wisdom Thunderbolt is a mighty statement and their best since Tuning to the Rooster.

"A Natural Fact" isn't an obvious highlight, but as the second track it builds anticipation following the tribal drum outro of the opener. The tension in the guitars made it feel almost like Isis after a trip through the Indian slums of Mumbai, sorry, New Delhi. There's a definite Eastern feel here, a Silk Road post-rock of sorts that wouldn't feel out of place alongside those Psychic Paramount b-sides that came out last year. Instead of sounding half-baked as those experiments were, this album is absolutely formed to its fullest. The proof is in the epic centerpiece, 12-minute "Rainbow Whirlwind," which sounds like it was recorded live and runs the gamut of noise-rock tricks that Black Dice have executed in a similar fashion in recent years.

At just around four-and-a-half minutes, "Sway-Sage" is the shortest song on the album, taking a wayward carnival melody and running it through a windtunnel with the water-sprinkler percussion ratcheting along in the background. Fat chance for segues, because it's straight off to the medieval world of "What!!!" to finish off the album. The songs are all over the place, but the end result is not: Vibracathedral Orchestra have exorcised the ghosts of line-up change's past to record a solid album. Feeling safe with the spirits never sounded so good.

Fennesz Sakamoto, Fred Lonberg-Holm Trio

Fennesz Sakamoto - Mono (Touch 2007)

Fennesz Sakamoto – Cendre / Touch

About five years ago, I became somewhat immersed in Ray Kurzweil’s book, The Age of Spiritual Machines (I am a sucker for science and technology). Published in 1999 (and updated in 2005 as The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology), the book details at length the exponentially increasing evolution of technology, specifically artificial intelligence and the possibility of a manufactured consciousness, and how this technological-evolutionary jump very well may happen in our lifetime. Basically, according to his law of accelerated returns (exponentially advancing technological, social and cultural evolution), the functionality of the human brain will be not only quantifiable in the near future but also re-creatable in terms of technology, and in theory this could produce synthetic consciousness. The “real” world and the technological world would mesh into one and there will be a singular, infinite existence (infinite because of the paralleling advancement in nano- and medical technology). I know it’s a large pill to swallow, but just think back twenty years ago before the assimilation of the Internet. And since you are reading this right now, you currently exist in our minute Audiversity home surrounded by a mind-boggling vast interconnected virtual world. It is not like we are going to revert in a technological standpoint; it’s only going to integrate further and deeper with what we now refer to as reality. Yes, it’s some crazy fascinating shit.

Ok though, this is an audioblog, not some futurist message board, so I need to get back to the present and discuss the music at hand. If there were ever a soundtrack that could exist in this seemingly inevitable world of indiscernible virtual and organic reality, it would be Fennesz Sakamoto’s Cendre. In fact, there may be no better album to contemplate along with while lounging beneath static clouds on fields of 0s and 1s with your synthetic companion--so specifically and finely designed to fit seamlessly with your personality that she/he/it is essentially a continuation of yourself--than Cendre. It’s a marriage of composed electronics and acoustics that melt into one emotionally resonating hum from two of the most acclaimed purveyors of their field, Christian Fennesz and Ryuichi Sakamoto. And it’s gorgeous, whether you are discerning the vibrations through the complicated receivers of the ear or the electronic equivalent.

Not only are we crossing mediums with Cendre, but styles, geographic locales, and generations as well. A genre-bending icon, especially in his native Japan, Ryuichi Sakamoto provides the acoustical half of the album as well as some laptop tweaking. His most notable reference point is that of his band, the techno-pop trio Yellow Magic Orchestra, which rose to fame in the early 80s and is highly regarded as the Eastern version of Kraftwerk. A classically trained pianist, Sakamoto has spent his 30+-year career exploring musical fusions and formats, from classical pieces to pop collaborations to Academy Award-winning scores. His piano playing on Cendre though is patient and highly restrained, opting for deeply thoughtful and resonant strokes of the keys to counteract Fennesz’s static flourishes. Every tone seems to have meaning, and on the flip side, every crackle seems to feel its sincerity.

The electronic side of Cendre, created via highly treated pathways of a six-string guitar, is Vienna-based sound designer Christian Fennesz, who has been turning heads with his freeform ambience since the mid-90s. A staple of the acclaimed Mego label, Fennesz like Sakamoto works in a number of different fields, especially for multimedia art exhibitions, but is most noted for his electric-acoustic experiments. As of late, his re-released Endless Summer from 2000 has once again sent critics abuzz (including myself) about his bridging of human and electronic tones.

Together they create something undeniably beautiful with both its pristine clarity of melancholic feeling in acoustic resonance and in the harnessing of the inimitable random crackle of white noise. Crafted by electronically swapped ideas, there is no compositional leader in the duo; one song may be initiated by a Sakamoto chord while another by a Fennesz atmosphere. That is probably the main reason why each of these twelve songs sound so thematically attuned, but still discernibly different than the next despite the minimal tools involved.

Fennesz Sakamoto creates a music that both my laptop and myself can enjoy. While I obviously can’t speak for my thin plastic friend, I can only imagine such warm, textural music must feel as good translating from bits to soundwaves as it does from soundwaves to neuron transmissions. We still may be separate entities at this point, but certainly no human being shares the same connection, by way of captured thoughts and secrets, that my laptop and me do, and I think that counts for something. Like Christian Fennesz and Ryuichi Sakomoto’s blurring of electronics and acoustics on Cendre, so is our surrounding world in terms of technology and environment. We have got an infinitely interesting future ahead of us, and I for one look forward to experiencing it.





Fred Lonberg-Holm Trio - There Never Was a Reason (Atavistic 2007)

Fred Lonberg-Holm Trio – Terminal Valentine / Atavistic

In the context of jazz, performers known solely for their mastering of the cello in particular are few and far between. Off the top of your head, name me just one… and no, Yo-Yo Ma does not count and will lose my respect if that is your answer. It’s tough. For one reason or another, it is just an instrument that doesn’t seem to find it’s way into a notable jazz line-up. Maybe it has something to do with it’s rich, bold sound that dominates any frequencies surrounding it, the fact that it’s lush vibrations immediately resound with melodrama, or perhaps because the bass has just evolved as the low-end of choice and it was just a matter of chance. Luminaries on the instrument, again in the context of jazz, can seemingly be counted on one hand: Fred Katz, Abdul Wadud, Hank Roberts, ummm… see what I mean. The fact of the matter is that most innovators of the cello are highly respected bass players first who look to the dwarfed violone to further their musical explorations. Harry Babsin, Ron Carter, Sam Jones and Oscar Pettiford are all great examples of this. The cello is just an underused resource in the realm of jazz and for the most part, popular music as a whole, hence Chicagoan Fred Lonberg-Holm’s ridiculously busy schedule as the go-to cellist in the city's bustling underground avant-garde scene.

In the last decade-and-a-half, Lonberg-Holm has quickly risen through the sparse ranks of in-demand cellists in jazz and experimental rock. The musically ambidextrous Delaware native studied composition with avant-garde genius Anthony Braxton and minimalist composer Morton Feldman before striking out on his own, first in New York City and then relocating to Chicago in the late 90s. His résumé stretches a mile long, from experimental big bands like Anthony Braxton’s Creative Orchestra and Crisis Ensemble to radio and television spots to composing music for Mr. Bungle’s William Winant and free jazz connoisseur Kevin Norton to leading improv acts like the Light Box Orchestra and Pillow to performing with Ken Vandermark, Peter Brötzmann and Jim O’Rourke to leading his own groups like Terminal 4 and the Fred Lonberg-Holm Trio; and that’s the extremely short-list. When you are the top player in your field, respect is given in work and Lonberg-Holm is a very busy man.

For his third album with his trio, including bassist Jason Roebke (a student of Roscoe Mitchell and frequent collaborator with Vandermark, Toshimaru Nakamura and Rob Mazurek among many others) and drummer Frank Rosaly (Crisis Ensemble), and recording for Chicago’s Atavistic Records, Lonberg-Holm continues to perfect his balance between accessible and challenging avant-garde jazz. More demanding than his work with Terminal 4 and his previous two Atavistic releases, A Valentine for Fred Katz and Other Valentines, Terminal Valentine finds the cellist perhaps testing his love of intimacy and warmth by adding a little bit of grit to the relationship. He is still very much grounded in his attraction to lulling lyrical melodies, but frequently counteracts them with explorations in the outer edges of such warmth. It is almost like he is teasing his girl, showing her undoubting affection then testing her reaction to the cold shoulder; he wants to know exactly what makes her tick and to do that you have got to submit her to a range of situations.

The warmth and intimacy of this recording sucks you in completely. Lonberg-Holm’s cello weaves and kneads and occasionally scathes with confidence and sincerity while Rosaly’s drumming is spry but effective and Roebke plucks with subdued proficiency. They sound very much tuned-in with each other, painting with the same autumnal hues without ever muddling the individual colors. Songs like “Three Note Song.” “There Never Was a Reason,” and “There’s No Way” utilize melody with great efficiency, drawing the listener in with longing affection and then demanding they work for such intimacy by jumping in and out of the framework of the song. This is late night music for those of us who refuse to give into the spoon-fed melodrama of 95% of the music out there.

No kidding, I have listened to this album on repeat for three days straight now. Maybe it’s my current lady-clouded mindset or the amazingly soothing Chicago spring nights with the window’s wide open, but Terminal Valentine is exactly the music of my moment. And as I rambled about in the first paragraph, it makes me wonder even more how the cello is not utilized more in jazz. Yes the vibrations it makes are more attuned to lush classical extravaganzas, but as Lonberg-Holm has repeatedly showed us, it can be a multi-dimensional boundary-pushing beast.

Singleversity #11

Audiversity’s weekly column on random music in a predetermined number of words between 1 & 150. This week's randomly generated number: 48.

(Ed. - Originally this was called Threeversity, but in the spirit of simplicity we've decided to retroactively relabel all of these posts. The content remains unchanged.)

MA:



Produced by Lee “Scratch” Perry, "Ashes and Dust" is an eerie remix of Augustus Pablo’s seminal “Vibrate On” from 1977. Perry sounds lost among Pablo’s sensuous melodica and the phase-shifting proto-disco riddim. Is he praising Jah or asking for guidance out of his unstable mental state? Simply haunting.

JR:



Silver Apples: Most slept-on band yet to be excavated by the blogosphere. Put this NYC duo in the same deep breath as Can, Kraftwerk, or Suicide. Circa 1968, Simeon & Taylor were justly ruling like futuristic shaman poets piping psychedelic electronic music into the depths of your subconscious.

PM:













Broken glass started my relationship with Pretty Girls Make Graves. I'd heard "Liquid Courage," but "Holy Names" offered a more poignant, less anthemic side that's rarely celebrated. Though they're breaking up and I've moved on, I will always have a place for "rooftops with secret views." Aging romance.

New Music: Fields, Matthew Dear

Between you and me, I was really, really hung over when I wrote the second paragraph in that Juho Kahilainen review. Like, more hung over than I've ever been in my entire life. I'd finished everything up to that point before I went out on an all-night drinking binge that ended when I passed out sometime around dawn on Wednesday morning (or that's what they tell me). Anyway, I gave the review a look on Wednesday afternoon and decided I couldn't write because I was still feeling ill. When I finally came back with a cleared mind and settled stomach, I finished but it wasn't pretty. Juho, if you're reading: I'm sorry, I didn't mean it. Next time I'll try harder.













Fields - Parasite (Atlantic 2007)

Fields - Everything Last Winter / Atlantic

The point is that sometimes when you go away from something you were really excited about and you come back only to find that words have failed you, your instinctive reaction is to examine how you've changed. In Kahilainen's review, that added up to several glasses of cheap champagne and limoncello wreaking havoc on my liver. In the case of Warwickshire quintet Fields, there's definitely something different from the last time we made acquaintance... But it's not from my end. This is a different-sounding band and I'm not entirely sure it's for the better.

The reason NME, NPR, et al jumped on the Fields bandwagon last fall was because of a series of singles and EPs that were neatly collected on 7 From the Village, the tunes that would eventually pave the way for the band you hear now. The unusual coupling of freak-folk weirdness and Brit-rock traditions was especially prevalent on songs like "Sisters" and "Heretic," and my enthusiasm was apparent when I heard the boys (and one Icelandic girl) had finally made their way out from the wilderness in April. Only one of those seven made it to the big city: Opener "Song for the Fields" has been redone (again) and though it always promised big-folk bombast as much as any folk song could promise bombast, its full realization here has been markedly polished from early incarnations. Appropriately, it sets the tone for the rest of Everything Last Winter.

Even the small songs sound big here. If you need a reference point, Marc Hogan gave you about 800 in his review on Pitchfork earlier today. I try not to link to other reviews as I sometimes feel it's a crutch, but in this case Hogan's got it right on several accounts: There's a lot of Brit-stad(ium) in this album that is indebted to bands like Snow Patrol and the whitewash of The Cooper Temple Clause or Lush as well as conventional strummers like Pete Yorn. "If You Fail We All Fail" was a UK-only single that survived the change of years too, but it's a good example of that merging of sounds on a grander scale, a larger stage. If you're looking for pure guitar rush, "The Death" is your only option. Situated smack-dab in the middle of the album, "The Death" acts as the fulcrum and the balance between the rock and the folk that so dominate their sound.

I want to condemn this album, take the easy out and blame it on the label and on the polished sound producer Michael Beinhorn achieved and the band for not taking more chances in song structure and melodic delivery. But everyone seems to be condemning Fields right now as a Travis knockoff or yet another British group somehow indebted to the rotting corpse of a Radiohead that died over a decade ago (RIP, for heaven's sake). That is a mistake. This band is far from finished. Okay, maybe the Atlantic bidding war got to their egos or maybe they just thought they'd settle for a ton of mid-tempo pop-rock ballads that will fit nicely on [University student]'s iPod playlist and pay the bills for at least another release... But you can still hear shades of a Fields people thought they knew last winter. "Feathers" plays with just a hint of electronics before the inevitable squall takes over around four minutes. "Parasite" wraps up the song with a cello and the acoustic approach that everyone apparently was expecting. It's a beautiful closer and, I think, an open door to the future. They understand that the songs don't all have to sound the same.

You can't deny that these songs have been touched up; indeed, most of this album has been available in one form or another for several months. In a cruelly ironic way, crystallizing the sound might just be the thing separating this band from critical greatness. Isn't that pathetic? That the same set of songs with dirtier production can be more acclaimed than if the production is better? It's like rock fans are trying to reverse decades of audio technology to give some kind of authenticity they couldn't produce themselves because they weren't alive in the late 60s and early 70s... But then, I'm the guy writing about it. I never said I wasn't pathetic too.













Matthew Dear - Vine to Vine (Ghostly International 2007)

Matthew Dear - Asa Breed / Ghostly International

One segment of the music-listening populace that would beg to differ on the point of production are the electronica listeners... And anyone who recognizes Radiohead from 2000 onward. These people are all about headphones and big speakers and what was that sound? and I think I just heard Matmos's sperm on that one. Matthew Dear knows what they need and with his latest album Asa Breed, he's delivered the goods. Except not in a Matmos way, you know. Clean. For the kids.

I was even more excited for Matthew Dear than I was for Fields. It's not like I've been following the Detroit tech-house wizard for ages or anything. I mean, hell, I barely even heard Leave Luck to Heaven or Backstroke or that Fabric comp he did last year under the Audion moniker (Fabric sets never did anything for me unless I was there, though, so that may have something to do with it). But I was given the hot tip on Asa Breed in early March and rightfully so as this has proven to be one of my favorite electro albums this year. We knew this was going to be good when "Deserter" hit the bins on May 8th, sounding every bit the Bowie impersonation he'd explored on earlier material or maybe something more akin to My Life in the Bush of Ghosts + Give Up. There's nothing wrong with that, but "Deserter" isn't the highlight of this album. Dear's deadpan vocals may turn away people obsessed with hooks, but the music is just too strong to deny this time.

Dear writes quickly and so the theme of "abstractions of human relationships" didn't emerge until after the 13-track album was already completed. And yet there it sits sticking out like a sore thumb in the midst of the microsounds of tracks like "Elementary Lover" or "Will Gravity Win Tonight." While Dear expounds on love in the sometimes indecipherable vocals, the music emanates with both love from inside the womb and the stale machinations of what lie beyond. This is a record you can listen to both in the middle of a Swedish forest and in the glow of the fireplace at a ski resort with a cup of hot chocolate to keep the hands occupied. Seems mysteriously out of place being released in June, but when that heat beats down on you come July and you've given Asa Breed a fair few spins, remember what it's like to feel cool. I mean, not just James Dean cool. Fucking cold. So refreshing to have a record that isn't confined to one particular mood or mindset. Example: The two best tracks bookend the record. On one end, "Fleece on Brain" opens up sounding an awful lot like "Get Innocuous!" but still banging so brilliantly it can only be considered in the top tier of '07's dance tracks. The Airy "Vine to Vine" wraps things up at the other end with a monotone meditation on the record as a whole. I went with that one because you'll more than likely already know the dance songs by the time this whole thing passes over. Just don't forget that great albums show versatility even within the walls of a one-trick pony.

Like all great electronic music, Dear is able to make music that serves a ton of purposes. Maybe those are sleighbells on "Death to Feelers" and maybe they're just salt-shakers at the hot dog stand in the wake of another win for Kobayashi (Gotta put something on the fries, after all). Maybe these vignettes on figuring out love are windows into the man behind the music, or maybe they're just abstractions dreaming of a different way to do Berlin. Whatever the case, Matthew Dear is back at the top of his game. Or put another way: Never again will he have to worry about the legacy of "Dog Days." I'll drink to that.

New Music: Watchers, Parts & Labor

Watchers - Crumbs ft. James Chance (Gern Blandsten 2007)

Watchers – Vampire Driver / Gern Blandsten

For only their second full-length release (bridged together with two excellent EPs, 2005’s Dunes Phase and 2006’s Rabble), Chicago’s Watchers attempt to find their way out of James Chance’s angular shadow by tweaking their sound in a number of different directions. With their unstable line-up finally anchoring down to the trio of Michael Guarrine (Assembly Line People Program, Hex), Ethan d’Ercole (Mannequin Men) and Damien Thompson plus a couple of additional accessory players, the unit continues to bang out urgent 3-minute jerks of avant-funk, no wave and Dischordian punk, but in an increasingly skeletal manner. Wily, mischievous and knotty, Vampire Driver transports you back to New York City’s Lower East Side circa 1981 when the Contortions and DNA reeked havoc on ears and dance floors, but thankfully, in a much less pretentious state-of-mind.

Now before we completely leave Chance, a man you have to cite repeatedly while discussing Watchers’ brand of music, he once again contributes to the cause for the second consecutive release. Along with his Contortions, Chance was one of the most important figures in the development of No Wave in NYC during the late 70s as well as inventing such hyphenated genres like avant-funk and noise-funk. The man squawked and squealed with such infectious power, he was key in revealing noise as an instrument in underground music. So when such a respectable and ground-breaking force appears not only on multiple albums, but tags the unit as his backing band while on tour, you have got to show your respect. Funky no wave may not be all the rage these days, but if anyone is continuing to further the cause, it’s the Watchers.

Also along for the ride are fellow Chicagoans Damon Locks and Wayne Montana, who themselves cause such genre confusion in their band The Eternals. While they continue to conglomerate and layer their sound with Lee Perry-like humor, Watchers are stripping away theirs in almost a Fugazi-like direction. Vampire Driver is raucous, distraught, angular and eccentric, but still very musical; it is not all in-your-face noise, only the thoughtfully stripped-away essentials. The other noteworthy echoing force of their music stems from The Specials, who took British ska to completely new levels of innovativeness. With the manic punk attitude, ska undertones and exuberant vocals, the Watchers are only a horn section and a few covers (which I’m guessing they know anyways) away from being a Specials tribute band. It’s not a slant by any means though: a combination of Contortions, Fugazi and The Specials? Fuck yes, I’m in.

Vampire Driver excels the most when the Watchers are mixing it up or collaborating with accentuating players. “Crumbs” featuring James Chance is definitely the highlight: urgent, manic and surprisingly melodic, it could be practically a Buy b-side. Damon Locks adds his odd vocal tenor to “Young One” and “(We’ve Got) A Witness,” both very much owing a drink to Terry Hall and company. Tracks like “Science Theme” and “S.I.S.I.A.I.” mix up the instrumentation, the former adding sci-fi synths care of Wayne Montana and the latter with pots-and-pans percussion, adding a much welcomed dynamic to the rampant avant-punk of the album. And finally, when the unit finds a deep groove beneath the scathing guitars and sassy vocals, especially heard on “Union,” heavy head nodding and jerky dance moves are inevitable.

Watchers may very well be one of Chicago’s most overlooked musical gems. They completely ignore every bandwagon quickly passing them by and continue to purvey a genre that they obviously whole-heartily believe in, which should be the absolute foundation to any good band. Though Vampire Driver is a solid album from start to finish, I do think some of the urgency and fun is lost in the recording process (the live Rabble EP is a great example of this), and they very well may be just an excellent producer away from something truly mind-blowing. In the mean time though, we have a great stopgap solution in Vampire Driver and if you’re lucky, a tour date or two.







Parts & Labor - Fractured Skies (Jagjaguwar/Brah 2007)

Parts & Labor – Mapmaker / Jagjaguwar/Brah

I first came across Parts & Labor in their infancy. 2003 was a year where my musical palette expanded significantly; independent radio took the step from up a curiosity into an obsession, I subscribed to zine after music-oriented zine to hone my tastes (from Skyscraper to Wax Poetics to Fader) and I spent a lot of money I didn’t have on albums by artists I had only read about just to feed this new fix. Rise, Rise, Rise, a split between Brooklyn trio Parts & Labor and avant-garde guitar player Tyondai Braxton (son of acclaimed jazz experimenter Anthony Braxton and currently dominating the world’s ears in Battles), was one of such albums. I wouldn’t necessarily call it an incredibly important album in my taste development, but it’s curious combination of accessible noisy avant-garde rock certainly made an impact. Since that glorious October afternoon when I pulled the spilt from it’s mail-ordered cardboard box (mail-order! pschhhh, that’s so 2003… er… 1995), I have kept a close eye on all three parties involved, Narnack Records, Braxton and Parts & Labor. The former two have held their own in delivering the eccentrically wonderful goods over the years, and I am now happy to report that with Mapmaker, Parts & Labor are finally up to speed.

The core of the Brooklyn noise-rock trio is keyboardist Dan Friel and bassist B.J. Warshaw, two sound experimenters who came together as co-workers at NYC’s Knitting Factory. They are now working with the third drummer in their five-year existence, Christopher R. Weingarten, and from the opening moments of their sophomore full-length on Jagjaguwar/Brah, he contributes a significant impact. “Fractured Skies” rips open the doors of Mapmaker. Weingarten pummels in like Zach Hill in a lock-groove, while Friel’s scathing keyboards somehow form a coherent structure through all the noise. But such noise-rock has been done these days time and again, so how does Parts & Labor differentiate themselves from the pack? Anthems my friend, anthems. Mapmaker is full of them, and “Fractured Skies” is one of the most triumphant album openers I have come across in recent memory. Teaming vocals sore and a horn section blares into a fist-pumping climax of gleefully squealing noise while Weingarten’s drums incessantly batter at a speed-metal pace. My arms are tired just listening.

The pieces of Parts & Labor’s sound are curious to say the least: noise-rock, pop-punk and avant-funk with touches of Scottish marching troupes… I kid you not. In all actuality, the Scottish influence (which stems from who-knows-where) was one of the most intriguing aspects of the Rise, Rise, Rise split, though it is toned down to the occasional bag-pipe like keyboard buzz here or an anthemic kilt-sporting march there. The other curious characteristic is the pop-punk influence. Not really the most popular genre among the American underground these days, it is heartily apparent in a number of places throughout Mapmaker, especially within Weingarten’s speed-punk drumming. As far as complete songs go though, “Brighter Days” and “Vision of Repair” are simply pop-punk anthems dressed up in noise. The vocal hooks soar exuberantly over the simple, spastic punk beat and a thumping bass line. If it weren’t for Friel’s ridiculously manic keyboard spits, this would be classified completely in the pop-punk section. Don’t let that turn you off though; if anything, Mapmaker reminds you why such a genre can be so popular when played with the right amount of individualism.

Parts & Labor are certainly not the first band to amp up the anthems with a healthy dose of noise, but it just feels like a while since anyone has done it with such gleeful abandon. I rarely do any moshing (hell, I rarely get out to a show as it is), but if I did, this is how I want it soundtracked. The circling pit wouldn’t just be an excuse to relieve some aggression by pounding against some other violent mosher; it would be an inevitable display of energy channeled through the band into your merrily thrashing arms. It would be a pit where when someone falls, everyone dashes to pick him off the floor so we can all enjoy the blissfully noisy moment and flail together in relief of our painfully separate daily lives.

New Music: Bark Bark Bark, Juho Kahilainen

Bark Bark Bark - Haunts (Retard Disco 2007)

Bark Bark Bark - Haunts / Retard Disco

Graduation last week, a quick jaunt down to the beaches of Charleston this week... Where will the humble international man of mystery writing this particular post find himself next week? Chances are it won't be in Arizona, but apparently that's my loss... And here I was thinking the entire state worshipped at the altars of either Authority Zero (Andiamo, very clever) or The Format (Sore thumbs remind me of my old college days). Maybe that's still true, but one Jacob Cooper is doing his part to ensure that the tastes of the three men behind 20jazzfunkgreats aren't lost in the deserts surrounding Tucson A-Z.

In fact, it quite surprises me those guys weren't more on top of Retard Disco's latest release because it seems like it was hand-crafted for them. This requires a little more Internet savvy than the usual lamedrop, but to cut the metablogging short: Cooper is sort of like Liars or maybe Chromatics with the emphasis on homespun electronics taking darker turns with monotone vocals and hummable songs that let the pop souls fester almost in spite of the brittle avant-garde synthesizers that try to get all the attention. It's a battle every song, and on tracks like "New Kids on the Block" no side really wins: The 8-bit synth line wages a quiet war with Cooper's double-tracked cooing and the casual drumming before calling a white flag: The only thing winning by its conclusion is the listener.

But Haunts is a weird album and nothing is as it seems from a mere paragraph's worth of work. Witness the epic "Tattoos" for example: Five tracks in, we suddenly go from early Liars to Muse-in-three minutes. The contrasting vocal lines that allow the build-up to fade unnoticed is as attractive as anything I've heard from Matt Bellamy recently. Like, since 2001.

"I'm Needy" is more about the synths and the drums. A lot of these songs would feel at home in a DIY nu-rave party but since we pretend that wasn't real we'll just say Cooper and Hadouken! would probably get along if they ever met one another. Except for the part about the drinking: Cooper's still not yet of legal age over here. Pretty remarkable in and of itself. They're getting younger every year, I swear.

There's no doubt that some tracks on Haunts are throwaways or too simple and cute for their own good given the company they're in. While the title track is a great single waiting to happen and "Some Time" has some haunting imagery conjured up in its final 40 seconds, it's not a perfect album. "I Love You But I Don't" sounds good when you're not paying attention to it, its childlike piano lines playful but sadly out of place. "Heart" is a quaint little ballad but doesn't need the cheap pre-programmed drums to be beautiful. The last third of this album does quieten down just a hair, and "You Could Swim" is the best way to end this album: You get your souped-up synths and frantic drumbeats early in the song before an ambient chant Gregory the Great would've been proud of ends the album on a decidedly downtempo note. It's not what you're expecting at the outset of "Brand New Shoes," but Haunts will stick with you if you're into endearing synthpop brocken by witches out for blood and succeeding half the time.













Juho Kahilainen - Sleeping With the Lizards (Bpitch Control 2007)

Juho Kahilainen - Sleeping With the Lizards 12" / Bpitch Control

And while Tucson thrives on the energy of a surprisingly large artistic scene that has also helped birth Calexico, 515,000 people give or take does not leave a huge pool to take from. Berlin wouldn't know anything about that: Given that their 3.4 million people in the city limits alone makes it the EU's second most populous city behind only London, the opportunity for more and more diverse music is an obvious plus. One man who was quick to recognize the attraction was Finn Juho Kahilainen. In a country known for rallying and all things -nen, Kahilainen has at least kept faithful to the former. As for the whole music thing, his latest 12" presented here (and remixed on the b-side by My My) is a brilliant minimalist tech-house track that has shades of the playful nature Kahilainen exhibits in his mixes and his music.

"Stupid jokes and making a fool of myself is basically what I am," he says in his biography on the website. That sort of plays into the nature of his music, also demonstrated on a couple of earlier 12s and collaborations and remixes that (officially) reach back only to the turn of the century. The airtight beats of "Sleeping With the Lizards" featured here contrast nicely with the boom bipping of the sparse synthetics that rise and fall over the course of six minutes. No, it's not a full-length... But this single is pure dynamite and I'm not just saying that because it's on Bpitch and I'm a sucker for the Ellen Allien-run label. This pair of songs will get the kids moving from Berlin to Bangor and back again. It didn't take much to describe this single because you just have to hear it to love it... And hearing is half the battle. The loving comes easy.

Radio Show Playlist: 5/16

6a:
1. Johnny Cash - Folsom Prison Blues - Live at Folsom Prison (Columbia 1968)
2. Paul Duncan - High in the Morning - Above the Trees (Hometapes 2007)
3. Smog - Finer Days - Red Apple Falls (Drag City 1997)
4. Grails - Dead Vine Blues - Burning Off Impurities (Temporary Residence Ltd 2007)
5. Pullman - To Hold Down a Shadow - Turnstyles and Junkpiles (Thrill Jockey 1997)
6. Brightblack Morning Light - Friend of Time - Brightblack Morning Light (Matador 2006)
7. Alex Delivery - Milan - Star Destroyer (Jagjaguwar 2007)
8. Carlos Santana & Mahavishnu John McLaughlin - A Love Supreme - Love Devotion Surrender (Columbia 1972)
9. Chicago Underground Trio - Transcendence - Chronicle (Delmark 2007)

7a:
1. East New York Ensemble de Music - Mevlana - At the Helm (Folkways 1974)
2. Animal Collective - Grass - Feels (FatCat 2005)
3. The North Sea - Feather-Cloaked Silver Priestess - Exquisite Idols (Type 2007)
4. Dinosaur Jr. - Crumble - Beyond (Fat Possum 2007)
5. Wire - Single K.O. - 154 (Harvest 1979)
6. Young James Long - Her Jammies - You Ain't Know the Man EP (Southern 2007)
7. Red Eyed Legends - Cold in the Sun - Mutual Insignificane EP (File-13 2004)
8. Watchers - Crumbs ft. James Chance - Vampire Driver (Gern Blandsten 2007)
9. Black Eyes - Speaking in Tongues - Black Eyes (Dischord 2003)
10. Black Lips - Fairy Stories - Los Valientes del Mundo Nuevo (Vice 2007)
11. Make Believe - Temping as a Shaman - Make Believe EP (Flameshovel 2004)
12. Parts & Labor - Fracutured Skies - Mapmaker (Jagjaguwar/Brah 2007)
13. The Fucking Champs - The Loge - VI (Drag City 2007)

8a:
1. Roxy Music - Editions of You - For Your Pleasure (Virgin 1973)
2. The Race - Ice Station - Ice Station (Flameshovel 2007)
3. Electrelane - Tram 21 - No Shouts, No Calls (Too Pure 2007)
4. Lichens - Vevor of Agassou - Omns (Kranky 2007)
5. Fennesz Sakamoto - Haru - Cendre (Touch 2007)
6. Jan Jelinek - Them, Their - Loop-Finding-Jazz-Records (~scape 2001)
7. Black Moth Super Rainbow - Untitled Roadside Demo - Dandelion Gum (Graveface 2007)
8. Piano Overlord - Spring's Arrival (Express Rising Remix) - Tease EP (Money Studies 2004)
9. Flying Lotus - Orbit Brazil - 1983 (Plug Research 2006)
10. Yesterday's New Quintet - Uno Esta - Uno Esta EP (Stones Throw 2001)
11. Isaac Hayes - Walk on By - Hot Buttered Soul (Stax 1969)

New Music: Numero Group, Aja West & Friends

Jay Mitchell - Goombay Bump (Numero Group 2007, originally Penn 1974)

Various Artists – Cult Cargo: Grand Bahama Goombay / Numero Group

While the Eccentric Soul series has dominated the Numero Group’s much praised reissue catalog in their three-year existence, the first and only (up till now) Cult Cargo entry was my personal favorite. In the fall of 2005, I stumbled across an expansively packaged CD while digging around in the world section of a Charlotte, NC record store. Being as that I was then spending my days in bed and my nights in a dimly lit factory, whatever colorful sounds this disc may have hiding inside was essential to my well being and I promptly headed to the check-out line. The album was N-006, Cult Cargo: Belize City Boil Up, and it was my first introduction to the wonderful Chicago crate-destroying collective. But it has now been almost two years since we were blessed with an installment of the Cult Cargo series, and I was starting to worry that it would be a one-off deal. So just imagine my excitement when Rob Sevier dropped some knowledge on my eager ears while spinning at WLUW’s Record Fair & Other Delights a month back. I think my heart skipped a beat when he mentioned Cult Cargo: Grand Bahama Boombay… yes, my over-exuberant reaction is a sad but true fact, but so is the life of a music obsessor. And don’t front, you certainly wouldn’t be reading this if you weren’t in the very same mindset.

For the sophomore release of the Cult Cargo series, Sevier, Ken Shipley and Judson Picco headed south to Florida, jumped on a ferry on the state’s east side and settled in for their seven-hour trip to the shores of Freeport on the Grand Bahama Island. While Nassau is the destination of choice for most groove seeking in the Bahamas, Freeport is surprisingly a relatively untouched destination of crate-digging, which is somewhat confusing since it is the first stop on the closest major island to the United States and a city which exploded with tourism in the 60s. But while Freeport was developed specifically with tourism in mind in the late 50s and was subject to a hearty fusion of cultures in the following decades, not to mention that today it contains one of the most modern though small airports in the Bahamas, the port city has also has succumbed to numerous hurricanes including three incredibly destructive ones in the last decade alone. With music in mind, this means that not only were the funky local hits of the early 70s lost in closets and malfunctioning jukeboxes after promising young islander careers floundered with poor distribution and underexposure, but a lot of the actual product was lost to the ridiculously vast sea floor as well. Thankfully though, the Numero trio did not have to strap on scuba gear and wrestle hermit crabs out of their home inside those comfy boxes of water-soaked 45s, they were able to scrounge up at least sixteen cuts of local island tunes still playable and still funky as hell.

With the story of cultural exportation in mind that you have now heard time and again with how the soulful music of Detroit and Memphis circa the 1960s reached and influenced the music of so many geographical nooks and crannies around the world, Freeport is no different. With each Otis Redding or James Brown 45 that washed ashore the small port city, a Jay Mitchell or a Leroy “Smokey 007” McKenzie lost interest in his daily labors and dreamed of the American stage. They’d gather up their musically inclined friends already schooled in the island sounds and attempt to cover the songs they had fallen so immersed in, from “Mustang Sally” to the “Theme from Shaft.” Of course you cannot take the imbedded island instincts completely out of the session players, so “goombay” was born, a synthesis of local stylings and American soul and funk: breezy but bombastic, sun-drenched but soulful, and oh so fanatically funky.

Getting into the colorful back story of the sole Freeport studio (GBI) and it’s local hero producer Frank Penn, the imported Jamaican musicians further confusing the island sound, the deftly religious Bahamian public influence, the poolside bands and the nightly talent shows or the decline of the scene due not to disinterest but destructive weather would only ruin the charming liner notes accompanied with the disc, so I won’t divulge too much more information. As with every Numero Group release, Cult Cargo: Grand Bahama Goombay is a mental trip to a different time and place that gives your ears a momentary but heartfelt glimpse into a world you would have otherwise never had the pleasure of experiencing. Personally, I am ecstatic not only for the wonderful music involved but to know that the Cult Cargo series was not just a one-off deal. And as with every Numero number to date, N-014 is another undeniably solid and must-hear to believe effort by the great Chicago crate-saving trio.







Aja West & Friends - The Getaway (Mackrosoft 2007)

Aja West & Friends – Total Recall 2012 / Mackrosoft

Last time we met with Aja West (2.24.07), he was paying homage to the B-Funk scene: the survivors of the early 70s funk-soul explosion of bass lines, drum breaks and afro skylines that are now condemned to playing nostalgia on cruise ships. With his fellow Macrosofters on this release, West is reminding us that in all that post-‘74 populist funk mud, there were the seeds of Prince. The clouds of disco, drugs and materialism may have severely dimmed the late 70s and 80s after the sun-drenched creative outburst of the ’65-’75 era of wonderful music, but nothing brings out the best in artists like a little smoggy oppression.

Honestly, I wanted to like West’s last album, The Olympian, more than I actually did. His work with his brother Cheeba on 2006’s Exile in the Woods (under The Cheebacabra moniker) was fantastic; that neon future-funk masterpiece juked and jived itself all the way on to the Audiversity Top 60 of 06. But Aja alone wasn’t rocking the same kind of Blade Runner crip-walk as heard on Exile, he was on some Ohio Players trip… Spirit of the Boogie pre-“Celebration” Kool & the Gang silky smooth funk. As on both The Olympian and this quick-following successor, Aja West’s music is very much heading towards the land of cheese, but stops just short at the very thin line of infectiousness. The brass is real, the breaks are live and the funk is undeniable, but goddamn does he love to layer up the synths and goddamn do they paint every song a brightly glowing neon orange. It is a sound I mostly stay far away from, but when the groove is undeniable, why fight it? Besides, the afro is still standing tall within West’s brand of funk; we got a good three years to boogie down before it sogs down with the smog into a greasy Jheri curl.

Thankfully, Total Recall 2012 comes much closer to Exile than The Olympian. Like all Mackrosoft releases, the most impressive aspect of the album is the marriage of live instrumentation with so many neon keyboards and effects. I would guess that this album was composed with midi, loops and laptops, but when it came time for the recording session, West got on the phone and called up everyone from Maktub/Soulive’s Reggie Watts (who co-wrote the album) to Money Mark to old school J.B.’s musical director Fred Wesley to head down to the studio and provide live instrumentation. The result is impeccably tight, twinkling funk; it definitely doesn’t share that badass grit of the early 70s material though, but neither does it completely succumb to the overbearing synthesization of the 80s that led to urban R&B.; It is very close to a great balance of groovy styles, but sadly still isn’t quite completely there just yet.

Now don’t get me wrong, I love a good chunk of this album: the wonderful wavering Grant Green-meets-L.T.D. bounce of “Suite 2012,” the sexy baby-Prince of “The Getaway,” the J.B.’s gone Mothership of “What’s Really Going Off!” and the patient Talking Book synth cascades of “Clouds Imitate Life.” But West just loses me every so often with the wrong balance of funk and cheese. “Wanna Get Up” has a fun “bum-bum-badump bum” vocal hook, but his singing voice is just too Terence Trent D’arby for me. “Out of Control” and “My Modo” sadly continue the trend; some great ideas and music to boot, but it just repeatedly slips into late 80s pseudo-soul.

As I have now stated in like fifty different ways: there is a very thin line between infectiousness and cheesiness especially with this style of music. On Total Recall 2012, West hopscotches back and forth repeatedly. One second he has you head-nodding and lip-biting in the groove, the next cringing and looking around to see if anyone noticed you digging the questionable music so hard. Unlike The Olympian though, the former outnumbers the latter for his second 2007 release, and I still think the best is yet to come. Hopefully, we can think of this as his Prince sitting between the questionable For You and the mind-blowing Dirty Mind; considerably more accomplished and maybe, just maybe, previewing the dirty, adventurous music to come with his next release date.

Not Enough Hours in the Day

So due to outstanding circumstances involving all three of your beloved Audiversitarians, Used-Bin Bargains is taking the week off. I suggest giving your ears the day off to enjoy the sounds of spring-time. tweet twinkle buzz bloom snooze

Singleversity #10

Audiversity’s weekly column on random music in a predetermined number of words between 1 & 150. This week's randomly generated number: 90.

(Ed. - Originally this was called Threeversity, but in the spirit of simplicity we've decided to retroactively relabel all of these posts. The content remains unchanged.)

MA:
(#90 of a random playlist generated from my ever-changing database of 12,500+ songs)



Tony Allen is finally getting his props. After years of sitting patiently behind the legendary personality that was Fela Kuti and providing the most important aspect afrobeat, that mind-blowing rhythms, Allen is finally getting the respect he deserves. And of all things, it’s his subdued playing on a fucking Brit-pop record that is spreading his name through the mainstream. Well whatever. 2002’s HomeCooking kicked off Allen’s revitalized recording career, and though it’s intent was to bridge afrobeat with London hip-hop, tracks like "Crazy Afrobeat" are what the people want.

PM:

After many attempts at trying to figure out just why I should like This Heat, “Makeshift Swahili” was the one that finally won me over. Sandwiched between “Radio Prague” and the infamous “Independence” on their 1981 masterpiece Deceit, “Makeshift Swahili” has both Charles Hayward and Bullen shouting the words to a storyline based around Native American relocation as the atmosphere shifts with the late change of a pedal. Though they were sorely overlooked in their own time, the British trio finally got re-examination treatment with 2006’s Out of Cold Storage.

JR:

Apparently Jordan's Jazz-Warriors NBA playoff party took its toll on him last night, so in his place Patrick will be doing another track. What's one song you'd probably never catch Jordan listening to? Here's one guess: “The Poet Acts” is in the opening to “The Hours,” a movie based on the Michael Cunningham book about Virginia Woolf. Woolf would’ve been impressed with the drama here as Michael Riesman plays piano for a score dreamt up by Philip Glass. Riesman was a cohort with Glass for years before the 2004 release.

New Music: Valet, Alias

Valet - Mystic Flood (Kranky 2007)

Valet - Blood is Clean / Kranky

If you read this at any point on Friday the 11th, I wasn't actually here. I was out graduating from college. Save the congratulations; I'm sure at some point I'll be told that I was "missing a few credits" and the whole thing was a sham. On that day, I will probably drop out, get disowned by my parents, and move to a foreign nation (North Africa always appealed to me) to live as a recluse. Alone, despotic, utterly shambolic.

Sounds pretty extreme, right? I guess that'd be the kneejerk response to hearing that you're a little further behind than you thought (...again). The logical thing to do would be to sit back, collect your thoughts, take a breath, rub your forehead like Adam Schiff on "Law & Order" and keep on keepin' on. What one needs as a background in those moments of extreme stress and frustration is not music that will tip you over the breaking point, music that will not aggravate and instigate and incite and inflame. What you need in those times of small crisis are the soundtracks that stay out of the way: Music that will set a mood and a tone but won't overtake the moment. Valet's Honey Owens knows what I'm talking about: With a list of instruments culled from Salvation Army bin-hunting, Owens takes the ambient root to produce a brooding set of songs for her solo debut, Blood is Clean.

Forget about accessibility: Straight away Owens sets the tone of the album with "April 6," an eight-minute epic that wavers with sparse acoustic guitar plucking an uncomfortable chord repeatedly in the final couple of minutes before heading into the hazy "Burmajuana" and then the, erm, "single" and title-track. Though it sounds like the album is a masterpiece of studio engineering and countless hours devoted to isolating and recording just that perfect pitch for each instrument, the truth comes out on "Blood is Clean" the song when the sounds of a train can be heard charging forth in the background. It's a unique moment in that suddenly the album shifts from being this sealed, distant thing into a murky bedroom folk record turned well inward, deep into the depths of the head. It's almost like a folk Kid A or something. There's your big statement for this particular review, anyway.

A few listens through, I think the songs with Owens' vocals stand out immediately. "Tame All the Lions" and "My Volcano" both showcase this, but her voice is so wonderfully low and almost twistedly seductive that it sometimes feels like another layer in among the swooning guitars and drones that dominate the album. "North" is the concluding track and possibly the finest example of this; at 13 minutes, it whooshes like a far-off UFO for half the track before evolving into a celestial ambiance that concludes the album. I picked "Mystic Flood" because it's one of the more manageable tracks but also because it shows off this post-folk kind of vibe that Grizzly Bear really excelled with last year on Yellow House and which has occasionally been successful in the past three or four years. Instead of feeling less homey, Blood is Clean feels discomfiting. Or if you're three credits behind, appropriate. It's all relative.













Alias - "'Sixtoo - Remix for 'Karmic Retribution / Funny Sticks'" (Anticon 2007)

Alias - Collected Remixes / Anticon

And relatively speaking, Brendon Whitney can't be faulted for inconsistency: As the master beatsmith behind last year's collaboration with Tarsier, Brookland / Oaklyn, Alias threw in his trademark sounds as Tarsier dominated the mic. So that begs the question of what exactly the trademark sounds of Alias are. By the time you're finished with these eleven songs, you think you have a good idea: ...Endtroducing found-sounds and basic hip-hop beats pegged with the odd IDM touch. So yeah, technically none of these songs are new.

The One AM Radio remix of "What You Gave Away" is the first to demonstrate this sound, nursing Hrishikesh Hirway's dreamy vocal delivery along on the opener from 2004's A Name Writ in Water. It maintains the aura of the original, so this is somewhat of a red herring: As Brian Howe accurately mentioned, Whitney sees remixing more as a song coming to him and the construction of "his" sound or vision rather than the other way around. It just so happens that the sounds of Hirway's folktronica happen to coincide nicely.

The John Vanderslice remix of "Exodus Damage" is more where the visions diverge; granted, Vanderslice is a smart enough guy not to know about electronics, but the fact that he returns for a remix of his own song makes you stop and wonder. And then there is the other main offense: That the gunshot drum marches of the Boy in Static remix for "Stay Awake" and inserted vinyl hissing in the Lucky Pierre remix for "Crush" are both utterly, utterly uniform. Further evidence: Fully seven of the eleven songs on Collected Remixes all hover in the four-minute bracket.

But here's the thing: While his beats may not be definitive and recognizing an Alias remix is like recognizing a remix, this is still an Alias release. Interestingly, his lack of constant reimagination is an asset in the sense that you feel that this is really an Alias album rather than a remix album. Maybe the typical hi-hat lines of a generic top 40 radio hit inhabit Giardini di Miro's "Given Ground," but if you don't like his crashing drums then you probably don't like Alias period. It's who he is and his remixes, though limited in scope, are an extension of that. Nobody's perfect, but this Sixtoo remix is pretty close: More than any other track here, Alias uses a looped sitar line and overmodulated everythings to make an imposing track at the tail-end of the collection. It's an aggressive and unique take on Sixtoo, satisfying and enveloping all at once.

If you think you're too far beyond Alias remixes at this point, maybe you're simply beyond beats. That's where Valet comes in; likewise, if you feel like you've graduated from epic drones to something with a little more form, Brendon Whitney is the man to guide you. Starting points on opposite ends of the stage. All you gotta do now kid is walk it. Don't forget to turn the tassle when you get to the other side.

New Music: Black Moth Super Rainbow, Efterklang

Black Moth Super Rainbow - Forever Heavy (Graveface 2007)

Black Moth Super Rainbow – Dandelion Gum / Graveface

I love writing about albums of colorful psychedelic whatever. The wackier the music the more I get to play with words to try and describe the ridiculously infectious sounds blasting from my speakers. A beautiful example of this was my review of The House of Apples and Eyeballs back in early December of 06 (way back when Audiversity was still just a hobby instead of the full-fledged obsession it is these days). A sticky-sweet collaboration between Austin’s The Octopus Project and the Pittsburgh mystery quintet Black Moth Super Rainbow, The House caused me to drop such ill-advised phrases as “like power drills somehow making sweet love to colorful balloons” and “rebuilding it with new vibrant sounds in structures so ridiculous that they would make a Doozer blush a reddish-green.” Yes, Fraggle Rock Doozers. This is why I love to write about music, very few boundaries and most of those are easily worked around. Anyhow, I have been a fan of The Octopus Project for a number of years now so it was not that surprising, but early last week I was finally blessed with a proper full-length from Black Moth Super Rainbow and a chance to hear a good chunk of the source material from the collaboration album.

Let me put it this way: if I had heard this album before The House of Apples and Eyeballs and knew that The Octopus Project was going to get a chance to tweak this grab-bag of psychedelic pop candy, the ridiculous sugar-high of my anticipation would nearly have put me in a coma. The Black Moth Super Rainbow allegedly hail from some disconnected forest in the vicinity of Pittsburgh, and if so, I think Willy Wonka may be sharing some floor space in their cabin (I hear he is an underrated bass player).

Now I am not say that the anti-social quintet are purveying a tweeting brand of simple indie-pop by using a lot of candy-like descriptions, quite the contrary in fact. They actually have more in common with Battles than Belle & Sebastian. There is definitely a mathy undertone to Dandelion Gum, it’s just baked heartily in a pie of analog synth jam, sugary melodies, gummy vocoder, dabs of flute, a crust of nearly mechanical drums and sprinkled with a wide array effect pedals. Tracks like “Lollipopsichord” and “Lost, Picking Flowers in the Woods” utilizing grating, mechanical synth sounds and stringent drumming, but the layers upon layers of popsicle melodies win over your ears every time. And again, these aren’t melodramatic Shins or some other indie-pop band's melodies we are talking about; they are much more akin to the psychedelic pop of the late 60s--“Strawberry Fields” melodies. Bass lines typically bob and weave around the many Moogs and Rhodes and monosynths and whatever other keyboards they have lying around, acoustic guitar strums in some humanity to all the gadgetry and some guy named Tobacco makes use of the vocoder as well as Alan Parsons ever did. Yes, yes, yes saying that he uses his voice as an instrument is a cliché description that is used (mostly by me) way too much, but goddammit, just listen to “Sun Lips” or “The Afternoon Turns Pink” and tell me it’s not practically an additional keyboard itself. There are lyrics under all that distortion somewhere, but the enunciations are unnecessary to understand his position, his tone typically says it all.

I think a lot of the appeal of Dandelion Gum is nostalgic as well. The combination of the wonderfully analog synth sound, Beatles-like flute swirls and some of those fantastic cringing melodic climaxes (“Forever Heavy” and “Untitled Roadside Demo” being the absolute best) definitely sends you back to those rampant psyche-pop bands of the late 60s/early 70s playing melodic music but in the wake of serious political and social issues. Which brings me back full-circle to my colorful descriptions of Black Moth Super Rainbow. It is hard to see too far past the synthetic fun and infectious melodies of Dandelion Fun, but there is some excellent musicianship on here as well. Hell, the album was three years in the making. Even if they clock in only about three minutes, do you really think pop songs this layered and cleverly structured are perfected over night? So while I may use a lot of cute terms to describe it, know that this music runs much deeper than most shallow pop music. And if it’s going to take another three years for Black Moth Super Rainbow to concoct another album up to this degree of enjoyability and impressiveness, then I’ll happily wait.







Efterklang - Himmelbjerget (Leaf 2007)

Efterklang – Under Giant Trees / Leaf

I bitch and moan and do everything I can not to accept it, but melodrama makes the world go round. Nothing sucks in people better than a scene of sheer, jaw-dropping drama, whether it be a horrific car accident, a heart-wrenching story of fighting adversary or, with our subject at hand, epic, soul-tugging post-rock. Evolved out of film scores where the music was composed to further accentuate the drama on screen, when it became acceptable to craft albums of slow-developing landscapes where the idea was not to hook the audience with a forefront riff but rather a finely presented heartfelt melody, melodramatic post-rock was born. From the first album released with these ideals we were done for. How can you not get sucked into such epic tales of grandiose musical imagery? Overcoming the powerful nemesis, losing the love to inescapable consequences, being left completely and utterly alone, we eat it up in platefuls even if they seem like unsavory subjects. From the multimedia narratives of Godspeed You Black Emperor to the effects-heavy hypnosis of Labradford to the pounding brood of Slint to the icy terrains of Sigur Rós (and many, many more at this point), we crave this melodic, grandeur tension. I for one fight it daily. I do everything I can to live a stress-free life from keeping acquaintances at a minimum to staying in most nights to never falling fully for a lady-friend; it absolutely lacks the excitement of someone living balls to the wall, but since I don’t experience the adrenaline highs, neither do I succumb to the spine-crushing lows. Don’t get me wrong though, I love me some post-rock, but I try to keep the soap opera side of the genre to a minimum. Well Efterklang snagged me with my guard down and now I’m heavily sighing, moodily swaying and feeling the wrath of the mountainous emotions the Danish collective have recorded for this limited-edition, five-track mini-album. And dammit, I love every second of it.

I think Efterklang has been able to rope me in more than some of the other groups because their music is a dense forest of interlocking sounds. It is not just walls of guitars or tectonic shifts of electronic noise or long-decaying piano reverb, it’s a myriad of acoustics, electronics, voices, and post-production all working together for lush compositions of heartfelt, melodic longing. Like the gorgeously crafted artwork, Efterklang are creating music to droopy, silhouetted forests, but continually splotch the night sky with rich blobs of color; never overtly prismatic, but enough to transform the dim backdrop into comforting kaleidoscope of soothing color. Their music works in the same way: the compositions are melodramatic, poingnant and yearning, but they score it to a wide array of instrumentation including but not limited to strings, brass, pianos, choirs, percussion and electronics. Including the five core members of Efterklang and two violinists from similar Icelandic act Amiina, five additional instrumentalists are used, not including the Dubbelgänger Mens Choir. The instruments swell brightly and brilliantly, but the music is downtrodden and somber; it makes for a very intriguing and hypnotic tension.

For an example of what to expect from Under Giant Trees, take album closer “Jojo.” The song opens with two harps trading bright tones over crunchy, stuttering electronics. Male/female vocals coo overhead and a delicate xylophone tacks it together. After about a minute-and-a-half, it breaks down into yearning vibes, piano and a violin before erupting with the original ensemble accompanied by swells of brass, a small string section and mountainous percussion. It ebbs again and then returns bigger than ever before finally succumbing to small sea of static. A few more vibe tingles, a couple organs and finally some brass counterpoint to round out the song. Yes, it’s a damn lot for your ears to take in, but Efterklang does a good job of balancing the tones and never letting the music meander without purpose.

Efterklang is certainly not the first to release this type of orchestrated post-rock, but I have to say it is some of the finest I have come across as a whole. Under Giant Trees is able to grab your well-protected heartstrings and pluck them with force, but they rarely do it with too much pretension or just for the sake of being melodramatic. While the orchestration is ridiculously abundant, it does not really come off too far over-the-top, only enough to really milk the tension. I am really enjoying each successive listen, but I really don’t think my speakers are suited for so much dynamic tension, nor is my apartment big enough for such mountainous moods. If there ever was modern non-classical music suited for a symphony hall, Efterklang is composing it.

New Music: Battles, Boom Bip

Between "Atlas" hyping up the kids and a few guiding lights suggesting Mirrored is already on their year-end best-of lists, absorbing the influx of info for Battles can be difficult. While Brian Hollon flies quietly below the radar with a brand new EP, the four men of the former soldier on, date by date, hoping to win over the masses with their unique brand of futurist-pop. Is the hype justified? Would you be better off buying Boom Bip? Let's do this.













Battles - Tonto (Warp 2007)

Battles - Mirrored / Warp

Let me first start off by exorcising some demons of memory: Battles abruptly entered my life in December of 2004 with nothing more than a quick call from, of all people, Jordan Redmond:

"Dude, Battles is playing down here in an hour," he said to me.
"Well I'm eating up here. I'll think about it." I like being wishy-washy.
"You won't regret it," were his parting words.

By the grace of God, I didn't have much else happening that night beyond trying to entertain an ex-girlfriend. So we go down to New Brookland Tavern and sure enough, eight people were in attendance for what remains to this day one of my favorite live shows. It was a visceral experience, Tyondai Braxton's electronic trickery on a glowing iBook coupled with John Stanier's really-hi-hat percussion piercing my ears with a rendition of "SZ2" that I still recall even now.

That said, I did not listen to Battles passionately. I did not play them often on my radio show. History That Has No Effect did not suddenly get thrown in my CD player constantly. At that point, being completely satisfied by a live show and playing "SZ2" or "TRAS3" every now and again was enough. For two years, I lived this way: vaguely fascinated but not overly enthused.

Then came "Atlas." When Pitchfork broke that video, the race was on and every Battles fan that had been in the woodwork suddenly came out with an opinion: Was it a huge Focus piss-take, the math-rock album of the year or simply the album of the year? I liked "Atlas" alright but was not totally blown away and only mildly enamored with the pitch-shifted vocals. It wasn't much to make a fuss over, was it? Shortly before going to see them live again in March, I decided to find out for myself. While "It's fucking Battles" works on some of my more trusting friends, I recognize you may not take me at face-value. So first, the verdict. It's taken five paragraphs, but here's what you've come to see: Mirrored is one of the best albums of the year.

What about the structure of these eleven songs makes it so good? "Race: In" starts off about how you'd expect a typical Battles song to go (whatever that means)... Except, as already mentioned, the breakthrough is in the vocals: Avant-garde journeyman Braxton is putting vocoders and warped effects (No pun intended) to good use as the group coagulates under the repetition that signals the hallmark of lesser math-rock bands. A lot has been made of the vocals, but I think it's important to note that the tasteful application of words often totally incomprehensible renders anything human in this pastiche of carefully constructed notes and rhythms moot; sort of like a My Bloody Valentine Effect with a less ambiguous delivery, the vocals become just another instrument and yet another layer in the precision of the songs. The album version of "Atlas" is, though longer, more rewarding than the single precisely because it once again showcases the newly rediscovered magic of Braxton's vocal manipulations while still leaving in the make-ups and breakdowns that make every climax in a Battles song so awesome.

From most places that I've read, "Atlas" remains the clear standout for many people. "Leyendecker" is one candidate that begs to differ, sparse and hollow in its lack of guitar aggression but lush in a descending keyboard line and reverse orchestration. It's not very long and doesn't provide the drama of "Atlas" but it does highlight an example of why Battles are so good: With almost nothing to work with beyond the simple keys and (relatively) straightforward drumwork of Stanier, the band makes a song that is utterly fascinating if for no other reason than Braxton once again adding an unorthodox vocal melody that you'll find yourself struggling to hum.

But if "Leyendecker" is the minimalist masterpiece of the record and a highlight in a first-half full of highlights, "Tonto" is the futurist masterpiece XLR8R alluded to and Ferruccio Busoni never made. "Tonto" might actually be the band's best ever song; so sublime is its construction and execution that it essentially sums up the band in just under eight minutes. Futurists were concerned with music deconstructing its past influences to reveal something new and raw. Battles don't necessarily abhor the staid traditions of math-rock forefathers like Don Caballero or Lynx, but they aren't sticking to the plan. Stanier's astounding drum bits will have listeners naturally gyrating to the beats, but Ian Williams plays on his laptop as much as Braxton these days and his guitar loops and electronic tinges add the element that suggest technological advances and forward-thinking futurists were so obsessed with. The horns cloaked under the mighty guitar riffs that dominate the middle of "Tonto" are a perfect example of this, unnoticeably subtle in application and yet necessary to add that extra bit of fuzz in the headphones that make Dave Konopka's guitars sound just that much more menacing. And then, just as aggressively as it comes, the riff dies and the song begins its long, unraveling outro.

In only one listen I had decided which song was my favorite, but while all my yapping has been about the first half, the Brooklyn quartet know how to finish an album. More "difficult" pieces are tucked away on the dark side ("Prismism" is the prime example), but despite its less immediate songs, Mirrored does not feel unbalanced on repeated listens. In fact, it feels as balanced and propellant as a first official Battles full-length could. More intriguingly, Mirrored could the the musical paradigm of the futurist movement a century on from its birth. I know that sounds academic, but don't let the stuffy analysis dissuade you: Mirrored has the sensibility to appeal to the basest Helmet fan as much as the high-minded English academic. Everyone has a chance to let this record win them over.

Also, it's fucking Battles.













Boom Bip - The Pinks (Lex 2007)

Boom Bip - Sacchrilege EP / Lex

In stark contrast, Boom Bip has been down a considerably different path. From the crumbling metropolis of Cincinnati, young Brian Hollon made a name for himself on the decks at parties along McMililan Street and elsewhere around the University of Cincinnati's campus. Art history wasn't going to get him much beyond a teaching or curating gig, but Hollon was never concerned with that to begin with; even in the early days it was music that was clearly taking hold of him. Though he'd had a few releases prior to the turn of the millennium, it was 2000's DoseOne collaboration Circles that brought him to the forefront. Packed full of ideas, Hollon scored a John Peel session out of it and basically built himself a reputation enough for his first proper full-length, 2002's Seed to Sun. Something like eight releases since (including 2005's debated Blue Eyed in the Red Room) has proven he hasn't lost his pursuit of the perfect beats despite a relocation to LA.

What does the Sacchrilege EP say about where he stands now? The easy answer is that all that noise coming from the other side of the world in the City of Lights has had its effect on at least one resident in the City of Angels. Indeed, Sacchrilege is pure 80s kitsch with the beauty of big-Banger beats Ed would be proud of. "Snook Adis" is the first indication that this newest direction will fly along not with the momentum of a futurist locomotive but with the blood-red Maranello fury of a Testarossa on autodrive. Like the pulsing dynamism of a bad 80s teen flick's montage sequence, "Snook Adis" winks its way through four minutes of retro electro.

"Rat Tail" is similar but more succinct, the same big thumps that have gotten indie kids all over the world to dance working a similar magic here. It's also probably the weakest point of this quintet of songs, for "Coogi Sweater" featuring Ali Lee (whom I can find very little about, except that her monotone is perfect for the Moroder-induced synth lines this song rides its rails on) is pure Italodisco as straight as the faces of the people who propagated this kind of stuff in 1978.

But if "Coogi Sweater" is the Italodisco decadence of Baia Degli Angeli, "The Pinks" arrives with a punk-funk cowbell the DFA would be proud of to promptly declare that it's on, that there's no more playing around with mere Chinese Revenge leftovers. This one's a bright, sparkling piece of music that will electrify any listener willing to leave behind the blow for five minutes and just enjoy Boom Bip's wizardry. I don't know if the French have been importing the goods to Hollon to see what happens, but if Boom Bip is just experimenting with some deep Italodisco and frog-tech then maybe it's Boom Bip who's the experiment here and not just this EP.

"One of Eleven" tidily wraps up this EP with a nod in Berlin's direction as the airy synths and micro-sounds pop steadily throughout the song's duration before a dominant descending synth line takes the song out of its final two minutes and my whitened nose finally ends its Oreck impression. This song is still heavily indebted to the French and Italians, but the Germans manage to nudge their way in at the last moment for a curious bookend to Boom Bip's latest. His output is extraordinary, but that also sometimes means that his quality suffers; no such worries for Brian Hollon or his fans here. Like Mirrored, Sacchrilege is the distillation process of decades of fine-tuning from a variety of sources in music's past. Though one's clearly deconstructing more than the other, both offer something fresh in the face of high expectations and extensive histories. Conclusion: Get them. You won't regret it.

Radio Show Playlist 5/09

***Starting next week, Audiversity: The Radio Show will be extended by one hour (6-9a) to be immediately followed by Democracy Now!***

6a:
1. Jesus & the Mary Chain - Darklands - Darklands (Blanco y Negro/Warner 1987)
2. Dinosaur Jr. - Back to Your Heart - Beyond (Fat Possum 2007)
3. 90 Day Men - Dialed In - (it (is) it) Critical Band (Southern 2000)
4. The Sea & Cake - Exact to Me - Everybody (Thrill Jockey 2007)
5. Mice Parade - Sneaky Red - Mice Parade (FatCat 2007)
6. Q and Not U - Soft Pyramids - Different Damage (Dischord 2002)
7. Opsvik & Jennings - Port Authority - Commuter Anthems (Rune Grammofon 2007)
8. Black Moth Super Rainbow - The Afternoon Turns Pink - Dandelion Gum (Graveface 2007)
9. Karl Blau - Put Me Back - Dance POSITIVE (Marriage 2007)
10. Stevie Wonder - Maybe Your Baby - Talking Book (Motown 1972)
11. Aja West & Friends - Clouds Imitate Life - Total Recall 2012 (Mackrosoft 2007)

7a:
1. Wayne Carter - Wahoo Wahoo Wahoo - Wahoo Wahoo Wahoo/Mad Mouth Woman 7" (Aestuarium ????)
2. Mavis Staples - 99 & 1/2 - We'll Never Turn Back (Anti- 2007)
3. Eddy Senay - Message of Love - Hot Thang (Sussex 1972)
4. Lifesavas - Night Out ft. George Clinton and Mega*Nut - Gutterfly: The Original Soundtrack (Quannum 2007)
5. Melvin Van Peebles with Brer Soul & Earth, Wind and Fire - Sweetback's Theme - Sweet Sweetback's Badasssss Song: An Opera OST (Stax 1972)
6. Efterklang - Falling Horses - Under Giant Trees EP (Leaf 2007)
7. Slaraffenland - Polaroids - Private Cinema (Hometapes 2007)
8. Elvis Costello and the Attractions - Radio, Radio - This Year's Model (Columbia 1978 -- Tonight at the House of Blues)
9. Pop Levi - Sugar Assault Me Now - The Return of the Black Magick Party (Counter 2007 -- Tonight at Double Door)

New Music: Colleen, Softwar

Colleen - Sun Against My Eyes (Leaf 2007)

Colleen - Les Ondes Silencieuses / Leaf

Ahhhh, Colleen, always coming round when I need her most. Everyone Alive Wants Answers came along on one of those starving post-graduation days where Taco Bell was a luxury; I was browsing Boomkat and applying online for a job at Mellow Mushroom (or something equally as dubious). The Golden Morning Breaks created a surreal French country village in my mind that was turning over space and time with too much ease. Les Ondes Silencieuses rides in quietly on spring winds carrying unseen misfortune. Colleen somehow always imposes her music at memorable times. Call it a mystery of the universe or simply coincidence but Les Ondes Silencieuses is here and I couldn't be more involved.

Why so interested? Yeah, I do hear alot of music on a daily basis, but what makes a particular record stick? In this case, Les Ondes Silencieuses is a distinct shift in sound from the previous two full-lengths; Colleen is all grown up, eschewing with the music boxes for serious instrumental archaeology. This album features only five promiment instruments, all decidedly retro: viola da gamba, spinet, guitar, clarinet, crystal glasses. A stripped down approach for an artist already dedicated to minimalism and space inbetween sounds. The result is a rich pallette of old-world sounds, the viola da gamba, the seven-string ancestor of the cello, deserving particular praise. It particularly works with Colleen's new affinity for chiarroscurro as opposed to Impressionism, less looping and now more akin to chamber music echoing out of a magical bottle, sound perfectly preserved from some medieval hillside convent also inhabited by the likes of Fursaxa, Kuupuu, and Josephine Foster.

"This Place In Times" sets the table with gentle, punctuated swells introducing the lush, regal sounds of the viola da gamba. "Le Labrinthe" is a chiming, meditative duet mostly between guitar and the spinet, a kind of small harpischord, which combine to paint the warm glow of a chalette on a cold, rainy evening. "Sun Against My Eyes" would fit right in on one of my very favorite records, Do Make Say Think's Winter Hymn, Country Hymn, Secret Hymn. Its all snowflake delicacy, soothing sounds like a homecooked meal setting your tastebuds alight, unlocking so many good memories. Also, there's a definite nautical point to be made, songs like "Echoes & Coral" and "Sea Of Tranquillity" unfurl rickety old maritime culture, cured meats and sleeping in the hull and Captain's Logs. "Le Bateau", which means small ship in French, closes out the album viola da gamba proving itself as one of the most incredible instruments I've ever heard, like if the cello always gave soggy eyed monologues.

So have I mentioned the viola da gamba? If it were a person I'd pledge myself forever. Les Ondes Silencieuses is the most mature effort yet from Colleen. Not that the tiny orchestras of the previous two records weren't fully cooked, but this long gaze towards chamber music is certainly growth, Colleen stepping out fearlessly onto previously untouched lands, wielding the power to shape a world in her image.



Softwar - The Softwar (Digitalis 2007)

Softwar - S/T / Digitalis

I've gotta admit, I really like the new Kings Of Leon. Its spacious and clean and at times like what New Weird America would sound like gone arena-sized. Because Of The Times is just that, a product of its time, at a point where everything is so referential and only one degree apart. Thank you, Google. Thank you, Myspace. We are seriously getting too good at information grabbing and the ability to create instant culture just a blog site away. This Kings Of Leon could be Comets On Fire playing it straight or Wooden Wand if only knew his capability to take over the world. Just accept it, this is the world we live in, so lets all give thanks to the psych folk deities from the Jewelled Antler Collective for one of the records of the year.

Thats right. Softwar comes bearing the emblazoned mark of Jewelled Antler, the same folks associated with Skygreen Leopards, Thuja, Blithe Sons, etc.; in this particular case the line-up consists of major guru, Loren Chasse (Thuja, Blithe Sons, Kyrgyz), Christine Boeppel (Whysp, Skygreen Leopards), with Kerry McLaughlin and Geoff Koops of Franciscan Hobbies. Lots of star qualities here, and its ridiculous I even know who these people are but never underestimate the power of a good search. So travelling a billion miles an hour, this transcontinental root has burrowed miles and miles below the surface just to come tap my soul. Softwar's debut record is the brightest flower in a full-bloomed psych folk field already populated with copious beauty.

The album splits its ten tracks between coronating corporeal folliage and floating soft prayers into the night sky. "Psychic Shake" and "Hagoo (The Victory Over Moods)" are dense pieces with all the clangor and crash you'd expect from Thuja but this time with a more discernable form. Both of these tracks, as does most of the album, features the spellbinding vocal talents of Kerry McLaughlin. Its really amazing how the mood is so similiar to Finnish stuff like Islaja or Kuupuu, despite time and place somehow these artists connect to these California forest-dwellers. "The Softwar" is a faerie dance spell, McLaughlin's vocals hovering overhead, asking you the tough questions about life and then giving you the answers! There's healing power in this music, a waffing haze of mana leading you down the most golden of all roads. "Earthen Volley" and "Soft Love" show a dedication to tiny, delicate melody perfectly exemplified by artists on Japan's Noble label. "Immul: The Children's Crusade" and "Prui" are the longest tracks here with the latter clocking in at a modest nine minutes. As a result of the length these songs are given proper room to breathe, stretching out in a million directions like the thickest of canopies.

Its this seemless combination of all the good in the world that makes Softwar's debut such a fascinating album, stitching together so many things that make sense into an always rewarding listen. There's so much good sub-underground tape stuff out there right now and I'm barely keeping up. This Softwar record is a great example of the wealth of musical greatness being churned out on a daily basis. Thats right. I'm a critic and I've got a smile on my face, but that makes me more of a fan doesn't it? Its 2007, y'all, we've only got five years left until Quetzecoatl's return so lets get past the headnod and fully appreciate God-sent genius when it confronts us.

New Music: Chicago Underground Trio, Frog Eyes

Chicago Underground Trio - Transcendence (Delmark 2007)

Chicago Underground Trio – Chronicle / Delmark

I have always been fascinated by the recordings of the Chicago Underground, no matter the actual line-up they may be sporting for each particular album. In the last decade, cornetist, composer and sound explorer Rob Mazurek and percussionist and composer Chad Taylor have enlisted a number of acclaimed musicians to explore the sonic possibilities of Chicago-inspired free jazz. Like the Midwest metropolis, it is never gaudy, showy or hip, but brilliantly structured in timeless textures with heartfelt outbursts of sheer expression and unpredictable landscapes. Mazurek and Taylor first teamed up as the Chicago Underground Orchestra in 1998 which was actually a quintet featuring Jeff Parker, Chris Lopes and Sarah P. Smith. They then stripped down to a duo for the acclaimed Twelve Degrees of Freedom followed by Possible Cube and Synesthesia. 2000’s excellent Flamethrower was released under the Trio status though along with newly hired bassist Noel Kupersmith, Parker returned to the fold with his proficient electric guitar. 2002’s Axis and Alignment and 2006’s In Praise of Shadows, both released on Thrill Jockey, found Mazurek and Taylor in their stripped down duo form once again and exploring the seemingly improbable border between frantic free jazz and subtle ambiance. I know all of the different line-ups can be confusing, but just know that if you come across the Chicago Underground tag, be prepared for an array of unpredictable sonic textures and some of the most welcoming free jazz you will ever experience.

Mazurek and Taylor’s ethos for the Chicago Underground projects have seemingly always been about exploring new territory, and their latest release Chronicle is chock full of first times. This is their first release for Delmark, their first time playing with bassist Jason Ajemian (Dragons 1976, Triage, Cushicle, Josephine Foster, Azita), their first completely improvised outing, and the first live album of sorts. Why “of sorts”? Well if you are asking that question, than this is probably your first time experiencing the constantly changing musical world of Rob Mazurek. Whether playing with his projects Mandarin Movie, Exploding Star Orchestra and Sao Paulo Underground or contributing his instantly recognizable Don Cherry-inspired cornet to Tortoise, Isotope 217, Stereolab, Gastr del Sol, Sam Prekop and probably a dozen other outfits, Mazurek loves to tweak and manipulate and explore new territory at every possible juncture. With Chronicle he sets out to destroy the border between live and studio recordings. Yes, Chronicle was recorded live and completely improvised save a few loose foundations, but Mazurek teamed up with studio engineer and TV Pow member Todd Carter to tint the recordings with subtle studio manipulations. There is not necessarily any overdubs or gimmickry added to these live takes, but carefully considered creative mixing to achieve just the right dynamic and spatial attributes in the translation from live sound to binary code.

Chronicle was performed in July of 2006 in a wide-open space at Chicago’s German Cultural Center. The music was accompanied with an equally dynamic video projection performance, which was captured on DVD and is included with this CD. Surrounded by a wide array of instruments and dressed in all white to blend in with the massive white projection fabrics surrounding the stage, Mazurek, Taylor and Ajemian are lost in the visual landscapes, but their music proves dominant, leading and teasing with textural bliss. Like most Chicago Underground albums, the free jazz is subdued and tastefully laced with subtle electronics and warm melodic percussion. Songs rarely find a tangible groove, but rather shift fluidly from one free-flowing sonic idea to the next. Sometimes beautiful, sometimes grating, sometimes confusing, and sometimes inspirational, the trio creates an intangible music fabric of otherworldly patterns that somehow retain a human quality.

From the opening bass solo of “Initiation” to the vast (28m26s) electronic sea of “Power” to the South American ghost town of closer “Transcendance,” Mazurek, Taylor and Ajemian rarely retread any territory in this 80 minutes of music, but also never seem to leave their established thematic plateau. I am most impressed by Ajemian’s ability to step into the long established cerebral connection between Mazurek and Taylor and hold his own in this match of musical wits. Chronicle absolutely keeps with the cross-fertilization of styles that is automatically assumed when picking up a Chicago Underground album: musique concrete meets underwater funk, free jazz meets minimalist electronica, fringe-rock meets psychedelic ambience, and on and on. And to think this recording was improvised is impossible for my mind to completely wrap around. Once again, Mazurek and Taylor reinvent the Chicago Underground moniker and once again, they have graced us with a cerebral, spine-tingling array of sonic possibilities.






Frog Eyes - Bushels (Absolutely Kosher 2007)

Frog Eyes – Tears of the Valedictorian / Absolutely Kosher

The Northwest Canadian avant-rock movement is an interesting scene to consider as a popular, influencing entity. A small collection of bands (Frog Eyes, Destroyer, Sunset Rubdown, Wolf Parade, Swan Lake) with three main songwriters (Carey Mercer, Daniel Bejar, Spencer Krug) all are carving out their very own niche of indie rock far more exciting and experimental than half of what is being produced out of the underground today. Now saying that, if you like one album by a particular band, you are basically down for the discography and in turn, the collective of musicians since they all collaborate and share talents so often. It is not that each band sounds completely like each other, but they definitely share a particular songwriting influence and commitment to the eclectic and urgency within their post-punk roots. And you cannot really discuss their sound without referring back to the originators of the carnival-like eclecticism, most notably Tom Waits and Nick Cave. Of course though, each act has their nuances: the more personal ramblings of Destroyer, the more frantic nature of Frog Eyes, the more poppy Wolf Parade and the color-melting soul of Swan Lake. No matter the band though, enter the world of this particular collective and you can expect ambitious songwriting, peculiar, over-the-top lyricisms, jerky, angular guitars, manic keyboards, and basically all the elements of quirky pop and post-punk music thrown in the blender and served with carnival cotton-candy. They are certainly not the first to purvey such music (the bridging of experimental rock and early punk back in the mid-70s and more recently pre-popularity Modest Mouse), but it is hard not to be sucked into their manic hand-painted worlds, so let’s not try and dissect it too much and just enjoy the fun music they are creating.

For the fourth full-length of the Carey Mercer-helmed Frog Eyes, the frantic quartet continue to mature their musical songwriting into a sound that is not completely distinguishable from past albums, but a definite progression in consistency and melodicism. It sounds as if maybe working so closely with Bejar on the Swan Lake project has rubbed off on Mercer as his songwriting is more ambitious at the very least amount-wise, but also in some of the non-lyrical vocals (not that Bejar is the better songwriter; I’m sure some of Mercer’s frantic energy influenced Bejar). Lyrically, Mercer seems to continue down his already established path of colorfully obtuse pulpit pounding about who knows what, but definitely appears influenced by late 1800s literature. I have never been much of a lyric-obsessed listener anyways, but attempting to decipher Mercer’s lyrics would not only be futile, but slightly pretentious. It’s obvious that these words have personal meaning to Mercer if only for the conviction he sings them with, but for the rest of us, it should really just be observed as an intriguing instrument (which is to a degree how it should always be in my opinion).

Like Mercer’s vocals, the music is increasingly ambitious. Gone are the minute-and-a-half outbursts and in their place songs that range not only in their degree of musical nuttery, but also in length (from just over 2m to 9+m). Sharp stabs and simple riffs of keyboard sound much more abundant than in the past and a good deal of guitar manipulations are used, from wall-of-fuzz to acoustically picked. I am also increasingly impressed with the bass playing, if only because it keeps up and adds some interesting low end to the hysteria. Also, I am not sure whether it is an actual mandolin or just the aping of that quick strum typically associated with the instrument, but it is used often and in good taste throughout Tears of the Valedictiorian.

Two songs in particular seem to make up the foundation of the album, "Caravan Breakers, They Prey on the Weak and the Old” and “Bushels,” both are lengthy and located on opposite sides of the disc. “Caravan” sounds like classic Frog Eyes, but in an extended format. Instead of pounding through it in less than two minutes, they let the song bloom and climax and eventually settle. It is definitely a good direction for the band to take in my opinion. “Bushels” even ups the epic-level with nine-plus minutes of soul-ripping yearn. Mercer truly sounds at a loss as he yelps and pleads over a strong piano-lead and fuzzy bass grind. It sounds almost like The Birthday Party fronted by Bejar, and very effective. That quick mandolin-like strum is translated both to the piano and electric guitar during “Bushels” and it definitely adds a sense of urgency to the already in-your-face mess.

So, all in all, Tears of the Valedictorian appears to be a healthy progression for the group. They are pushing their frantic but predictably so sound into greater more mature directions. If you are a fan of past Frog Eyes, picking up this album is an absolute given, and that is pretty much the same if you have any interest in it’s adjoining collective as well. With this being the first release from Frog Eyes in particular after the success of Swan Lake last year, I foresee an increased amount of attention and appreciation for the sound Mercer and company are purveying, and rightfully so. Hopefully the band will continue to explore new directions and if this album has anything to say about it, the best is yet to come.

Used-Bin Bargains: Pucho & His Latin Soul Brothers - Yaina

Pucho & His Latin Soul Brothers - You Can't Always Get What You Want (Right On 1971, rereleased Cubop 1997)

Pucho & His Latin Soul Brothers - San Juan 2000 (Right On 1971, rereleased Cubop 1997)

Pucho & His Latin Soul Brothers – Yaina / Right On/Cubop

In the spirit of Cinco de Mayo weekend, I figured why not spotlight a little Latin music since most of North America is in the right frame of mind for it (even if most Americans use Mexico’s day of heritage celebration solely as an excuse to wear sombreros and drink margaritas). So continuing with that sort of pseudo-theme, I have decided to concentrate on a man who is actually not of Latin descent, but has embraced their style of music so whole-heartily that his ethnic heritage is often mistaken for his genre of choice. Henry “Pucho” Brown is an African-American Harlem native who immersed himself completely in Latin culture after being raised in the Nuyorkian Latin explosion of the 50s. With his walls covered by posters of Tito Puente, Machito, Tito Rodriguez and Pucho & the Alfarona X (a Puerto Rican band that led to his own nickname by childhood friends), Pucho mastered the timbales, rose through the ranks of Latin clubs in New York as a bandleader, and was instrumental in the blending of Latin, jazz, soul and funk throughout his 50-year career, but would never reach the level of recognition adorned to his contemporaries like Mongo Santamaria, Willie Bobo and Cal Tjader. After somewhat retiring from the record industry, Brown would spend two decades obscured in a hotel house band before returning to the scene in the late 90s as an unknowing godfather of acid jazz, which lead to a resurgence in his recording career.

Growing up in New York and frequenting the Apollo Theatre with his mother, Pucho’s band-leading ear was no doubt influenced by being exposed to big bands led by Duke Ellington, Count Basie and Buddy Johnson. The music bug bit early, and Brown dropped out of high school to concentrate on his musical craft, learning the nuances of the timbales and putting together and experimenting with a number of youthful acts. By 17, he was good enough to join the Joe Panama Sextet and later rival Joe Cuba’s Cha-Cha Boys. After a series of hirings and firings, and definitely a good amount of quality networking, Pucho pieced together his first substantial group: Pucho & the Cha-Cha Boys. While most acts traveling the Latin circuit at that time stuck solely to what particular style of the genre the chose, Brown’s outside influences persistently seeped into his mambo foundation. Elements of doo-wop, R&B, swing, jazz and blues mixed with the Latin-based music to lay the seeds of Latin-jazz and both the audience and other musicians took notice.

By 1962 (at age 24), Pucho & the Cha-Cha boys were headlining the Purple Banner in Harlem with his audiences growing every night. But Brown was still a young man and both his finances and experience was limited, so other bandleaders like Mongo Santamaria and Willie Bobo would cherry-pick Pucho’s hard found talent and bribe them into their own bands. Musicians like Chick Corea, Hubert Laws and Sonny Henry among others developed their chops with Brown before being snagged by the lures of more money and more exposure leaving Pucho’s band in a constant state of musician turnaround but nonetheless amazingly consistent over the years. Latin soul exploded into the mainstream a year later with Santamaria’s saucy take on Herbie Hancock’s “Watermelon Man” and concurrently the major labels were out for imitating that kind of success. Pucho had an innate knack for balancing just the right amount of Latin, soul, jazz and funk, and Epic took first notice releasing the group’s first ever single, “Darin’s Mambo,” though with little success (and a quick termination of their contract).

Pucho’s next, much more successful venture into the recording industry came when he renamed his group Pucho & His Latin Soul Brothers and signed with Prestige in 1966. Musically, he upped the funk element considerably as James Brown was concurrently spreading his influence and definitely kept a keen ear on what Motown was producing. Mambo became his Latin influence of choice and the Soul Brothers talented line-up of heavily rhythmic and genre-jumping players meant a nearly unparalleled groove quotient that could switch from mambo to soul to funk at the snap of Pucho’s burly fingers. Their debut Prestige release, Tough!, is now actually regarded as the starting point of acid jazz with it’s percussion-heavy blend of soul-jazz and Afro-Cuban rhythms. Pucho & His Latin Soul Brothers released eight albums in just over three years for Prestige, but none really made a significant impact on the mainstream; his genre-jumping ideals are respectful no doubt, but make for an inconsistent discography with as many trials and errors as overlooked successes.

In 1970, Brown left Prestige for the smaller, more independent minded Right On where he would have more creative say, which further separated him from any mainstream success but did result in this fantastic psychedelic Latin-funk record from 1971, Yaina. Somewhat obscure until it was re-released by Cubop in 1997, Pucho and his crew of Latin soul-jazz misfits unleash nine wonderfully eclectic and fun songs. With a few originals sprinkled in, just look at Pucho’s source material for the erraticism of his music: The Rolling Stones’ “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” John Coltrane’s “Naima,” Kenny Burrell’s “Chitterlings con Carne,” and Grant Green by-way-of Neal Creque’s “Cease the Bombing.” The instrumental line-up blends beautifully with a Latin-oriented rhythm section, electric piano, vibes, wa-wa guitar, electric bass, flutes and occasional sax and brass. Like all of Pucho’s music, it is heavily influenced by the popular music of the time, in this case, mainly psychedelic rock and soul-jazz. “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” kicks off the re-release (not included on the original) with a cheesy introduction, but quickly opens up with funk-heavy drumming, 70s soul sax wailing, which is later replaced by growling flute, and electric piano flourishes. It is surprisingly effective and fun and would makes for a great inclusion on your party playlist. “Cease the Bombing” follows with a much more mellow vibe and very Santana-like sound, and surprisingly moving with its vibraphone melody and wordless vocals. My personal favorites are “San Juan 2000,” “Naima” and “Chitterlings con Carne,” but for very different reasons. “San Juan 2000” has been a mixtape staple of mine for years now; it has this sort of timeless quality to it in that you could as easily assume it’s from the early 60s as it could be the mid-70s. Layered rhythms poignantly chatter beneath vibes and electric piano before vocal chants and increasingly loud rhythms take over; it is very easy to lose yourself in its many exotic flavors. Pucho has a very interesting take on Coltrane’s “Naima” transforming the sultry slow-burner with almost a Weather Report kind of psychedelic fusion. On the other side of things, “Chitterlings con Carne” is infectious because of it’s growling flute and ear-friendly melody. It just further proves Pucho’s talents for masterfully balancing genres, this time the raucous fun of Latin mambo and the deep groove of psychedelic rock. The rest of the album follows suit: never many surprises once you discover the formula, but it is a formula that is finely balanced and infectious as all hell.

With the Latin-soul-jazz falling out of mainstream favor by the mid-70s, Pucho in turn left the limelight setting up shop as a drummer in the Catskill Mountian resorts of New York State. He somehow remained there for 20 years until being fired for personal disputes. It turned out to be a blessing though with acid jazz taking increasing interest in the U.K. in the early 90s as well as the crate-digging, re-issuing bug here in the states. Cubop re-released a number of his albums from his independent label days (including Yaina), and he went back into the studio to continuing purveying his multi-genre fusions. In all honesty, Pucho’s sound on his more recent albums barely sounds aged at all. It is still the same great balance of mambo, soul, funk and jazz, even if the audience for such styles isn’t quite as large as they were in the past. So if this year’s Cinco de Mayo festivities inspired you to take an increased interest in Latin music, why not go check out some of Pucho’s wonderfully fun music. Prestige released a great collection of his best material during his tenure there in 2000 called Cold Shoulder, which is a great starting point for curious ears. As far as recent material is concerned, I’m a pretty big fan of How’m I Doin’? from the same year on Cannonball even if it is a bit nostalgic and suffers from dated funk on occasions. And of course, head over to Cubop for the great re-issues of his early 70s material like Yaina that really buttered on the psychedelia influence with his already flourishing stylistic fusions. You will not be disappointed, and besides, Latin music of all kinds is a treat no matter the date.

Continued Research:
All Music Guide Entry
Ubiquity Profile
All About Jazz Interview
Wax Poetics #9, "A Man and His Music, from Harlem, New York" by Matt Rogers
waxpoetics.com

Singleversity #9

Audiversity’s weekly column on random music in a predetermined number of words between 1 & 150. This week's randomly generated number: 40.

(Ed. - Originally this was called Threeversity, but in the spirit of simplicity we've decided to retroactively relabel all of these posts. The content remains unchanged.)

MA:
(#40 of a random playlist generated from my ever-changing database of 12,500+ songs)



Spaceways Incorporated - Alice in My Fantasies/Cosmic Slop (Atavistic 2000)

Ken Vandermark + Hamid Drake + Nate McBrite + Funkadelic + Sun Ra = Thirteen Cosmic Standards by Sun Ra & Funkadelic. The most full-sounding trio you will ever hear jumps aboard the Mothership for one funky-ass trip to Saturn.

JR:



Its crazy the persistance of Swamp Thing throughout my childhood, comics and cartoons and those father/son trips to boggy Carolina swamps. Alligator Crystal Moth's Kerosene Hat rises spectral from dead water, rife with dense atmosphere and wailing guitar seance.

PM:













"Chopin & Me"

1827: Chopin still at the Warsaw Conservatory
Yesterday: "The People Vs. Larry Flynt" on TV
Background music: "Mazurka Op. 68, No. 2 in A Minor"
Me: No Arthur Rubinstein
You: Either, probably
Arthur Rubinstein: Happy to oblige

New Music: Aa, Babils

Aa - Horse Streak (Deleted Art 2007)

Aa - gAame / Deleted Art

This spring has seen a mighty battle of sorts between those hellbent on brilliant percussion - groups like Konono No. 1 who are about to embark on a tour in support of Björk (or maybe it's the other way around? Or both?) or LCD Soundsystem or Adult. or OOIOO - and the groups who would rather let their good old-fashioned instruments do the talking - groups like Cyann & Ben, A Sunny Day in Glasgow or The Twilight Sad. There has been astonishing quality from both ends of the musical spectrum, but if you go far enough out there on one end of said spectrum, you're bound to find yourself winding up on the other end. So far out there you inhabit the infinity symbol off the charts. That's where Brooklyn quintet Aa find themselves... But please, call them "Big A little a" (or, as I prefer, simply "Big Little"; there don't appear to be any artists out there with this name at the moment).

The glorious thing about Aa is that, like what lies beyond the visible reaches of a spectrum, there's no definition to this band. Everybody's a percussionist. Everybody's flailing around drums or maracas or electronically manipulating chants and choruses and singalongs and I wouldn't be surprised if they threw in a kitchen sink à la Hurra Torpedo because a group like Aa wouldn't be afraid of it. These guys just don't give a damn.

And that's kind of why they inhabit the nether-reaches in the way they do: You go so far off the percussion end of the spectrum that eventually you come around to the analog sounds, the very basic key sequences of a track like the epic "Horse Streak" drawing you in with a mystical trance. Swerving backward through songs like "Best of Seven" is the vocals, never clear and almost totally unrecognizable as such in some cases. This haze makes you feel like you're totally disoriented, which is definitely something gAame can be.

Remember in the 80s when Burundi beats and Safari polyrhythms acted as the counterweight to synthpop and slick-rock drivel? Aa have learned from that and, like latter-day Boredoms or a less pop-thoughtful Animal Collective, astonishingly melted the scale that was balancing those weights in the first place. It still sounds like a jungle, of course: High-pitched yelps from the dense brush of the first song proper ("Best of Seven") and later in the album ("New Machine") still reveal that African influence in more than just the drums. But this paranoid backdrop is placated by tunes like "Walk Again" that stroll through the jungle mist with placid irreverence only to find that what lies at the other end is "Time In," a kind of built-in remix with 8-bit bullets firing as percussion and those eerie swells of what sound like something organic living beneath yet another fuzzed-out voice.

I feel like I've brought up Conrad's "Heart of Darkness" in passing quite often on here, but Aa have achieved another, different kind of soundtrack to the same book: Instead of being from the perspective of the Europeans as per the norm, gAame shows life in the Congo from the side of the natives. And what a wildly inventive, erratically vibrant life it is.












Babils - Preventorium (Stilll 2007)

Babils - The Joint Between / Stilll

Another quintet knows what being wildly inventive and erratically vibrant is all about, but with a totally different sensibility to them. Tongue-twisting Brussels band Babils build their monolithic debut The Joint Between out of leftover scraps from the Can discography and all those Japanese psych bands your mother told you about. Another Alex Delivery? Well, not quite: There's a difference here from Star Destroyer because it takes elements of free-jazz that prog performers often dabble in and runs it through the patented Les Rallizes Denudes windtunnel-of-fun for a truly mind-altering psychgazing extravaganza.

That's a mouthful, but if you've ever heard The Psychic Paramount's Gamelan Into the Mink Supernatural, you have a vague idea of what I'm talking about. It's just such a massive record, but the glory is that it can be as heavy or as quiet as you like. Though a lot of these songs run well over five minutes, the centerpiece is without a doubt the 11-minute "Dent de Sagesse," which flitters through an almost Arab-like flute-charming session as Etienne Vernaeve and Lukas Vangheluwe tamper with the cymbals in and out, like desert waves or the dancing of a cobra streetside. Eventually low-frequency guitars circle the flute and mighty waves of feedback and droning UFOs hover back, sweeping up the song to leave only the rustle of the grass behind. While Alex Delivery lays on the sauerkraut repetition thick, Babils revel more in the flighty whims of late-60s freak-outs and enveloping guitar squall. I say this not to demean the former but rather to distance these two groups because, having realized we just recently posted on them, I wouldn't want you confused.

I don't think that's going to be an issue after hearing "2=3," a take accurately described by Fluxblog as something akin to both Radiohead's "The National Anthem" and Primal Scream's "Blood Money." But the squonking horns aren't unique to this song; brass frequents the album in the form of Vangheluwe's trumpets and maybe even a sax here or there. One of Babils' assets is point-man Gabriel Severin who is noted in the Brussels scene for a variety of projects, and to be fair I'm not really sure how much percussion Vangheluwe contributed to this album, but I'd like to believe that his efforts were just as valuable as Michel Duyck's simmering six-string action.

But why split hairs? At the end of the day it's the collective effort that merits the notoriety and, regardless of what happens behind the scenes in the Babils compound, the output on their debut is worth not poring over the details for. There's a mass of psych-rock out there right now, but sometimes it's difficult to tell the good from the bad and what's worth listening to and what just isn't. Babils may not have much more than an LP to their credit, but the elephants on the cover and the roar of "Hommes Elephants" are too loud to ignore. Have you ever ignored an elephant when it was trying to get your attention? Here's some terse advice if you've never been caught in the predicament: Don't. That is all.

New Music: Lichens, Hausmeister

Lichens - Vevor of Agassou (Kranky 2007)

Lichens – Omns / Kranky

When listening to the opening tracks of Lichens’ (aka Rob Lowe’s) new album, Omns, I can’t help but reference Sigur Rós, mainly the ( ) album. I do realize that these days such a parallel is not the most complimentary comparison, but the shared interest in un-enunciated vocals and warm melodies is hard to ignore. The differences between the experimental Chicago artist and the melodramatic Icelandic post-rockers though are enough to separate the groups as much musically as they are geographically, so certainly do not think that I’m placing both groups on a similar musical plateau. Lowe and vocalist Jon Thor Birgisson just both have a love for exploring vocal possibilities, especially dispelling the need for any kind of lyrical accompaniment to express emotion. They also both share a similar vocal prowess, one of vowel-heavy eeriness that somehow surpasses any creepy tag and heads straight to an intriguing alien-like quality. But while Birgisson wraps himself in pretentious made-up languages, still not completely being able to shrug of the necessity of lyrical direction when vocals are involved, Lowe whole-heartily utilizes his voice simply as an instrument, mostly in a more subdued and atmospheric Tyondai Braxton sort of way. Still though, the similar vocal tones and even sonic directions between Omns and ( ) are worth pointing out, if anything to at least give you an idea of what kind of aural world you are entering into by picking up this album, but there is one absolutely defining difference between Lichens and Sigur Rós that I have to point out: Where Sigur Rós set out to soundtrack a post-apocalyptic world of heavy regret and mournful solitude, Lichens composes the music to a heavy sigh of relief when the chaos of the world finally apexes and we are left with the serene calmness of nature and nothing else.

Lowe’s first album under the Lichens moniker and away from The 90 Day Men, The Psychic Nature of Being, set the stage for such vocal improvisations as well as his love for sparse hints of melodies achieved usually through delicate guitar picking. Omns definitely continues in this direction, but with an expanding palette of sonic possibilities. The first two tracks, “Vevor of Agassou” and “Faeries” are definitely in this mold. “Vevor” combines multi-layered metallic-leaning vocal inflections with warm-toned electric guitar picking. Like all Lichens recordings to date, it meanders, but in the most respectful definition of the term. Lowe explores the melodic possibilities of his tools at hand, establishing a loose sort of melodic theme, but never submitting to any sort of hook. Even though “Vevor” clocks in at nearly five minutes, it seems to fall silent all too quickly and regrefully just as you feel immersed in the track. “Faeries” continues on with the eerie, almost insect-like vocal foundation, but replaces the guitar with careful splashes of resonating piano keys. As I mentioned earlier, it approaches that Sigur Rós-like territory of melodious atmosphere, but never in the melodramatic sense (and I'm sure much more akin to hundreds of other artists, like a large portion of the Kranky roster for example, but since I've established the comparison, let's just stick with it). Think more minimalist drone where the static wall is all but crumbled and the underlying melodies are left to flower now that they can finally feel the sunshine.

Ignoring “Sighns,” a gorgeous two-minute coda of sorts that rounds out the album, the other two tracks of Omns feature Lichens exploring other musical directions. “Bune” especially is a very intriguing song bridging the two halves of the album. A solo electric guitar piece with just the right amount of crackle and feedback to color the tone with character, Lowe actually approaches Hendrix territory… well Hendrix on benzodiazepines. Like his guitar playing on “Vevor of Agassou,” it neither completely meanders nor reveals any sort of consistent theme, but acts as if moving in a particular though obviously unpredictable direction. Clocking in at nearly nine minutes, it surprisingly never seems to lose my attention, which for a song made up solely of structure-less electric guitar is pretty much an accomplishment in itself. And finally we get to the album’s centerpiece, the 18m41s of “M St r ng W tchcr ft L v ng n Sp r t” (care to try and pronounce that?). Broken down into movements, Lowe reveals many of his influences throughout the lengthy composition, from Turkish, Indian and Mongolian reference points to genre specific titles like drone, ambience, pop, psychedelia and classical. At the basic level, we can break it down into three parts, first a minimally droning movement of guitar overdubs, which blends seamlessly into the second segment of slow-burning organ and keyboard chords. Finally, after the somewhat suffocating sounds of church organs, the clouds retract into a crystal clear day, the birds literally come out chirping and Lowe moves back in with subdued vocal improvisations. It is 18+ minutes of serene, unenveloping and caringly placed aural beauty that thankfully sidesteps any melodrama what so ever.

Maybe the most appealing nature of Omns is how it sounds so impossible to recreate. And to further this feeling, the album comes accompanied with a DVD of a 2006 performance at Chicago’s Empty Bottle. Like Lowe’s music, his performances are whole-heartily in the moment; while framework maybe set, I sincerely doubt the final product is ever predicted. If you are in need of warm, exotic, minimal and sincerely caring music or miss the heyday of atmospheric Kranky beauty, do yourself a favor and pick up Omns.






Hausmeister - Ursula (Plop 2007)

Hausmeister – Water-Wasser / Plop

I do my very best to sprinkle my reviews with as many intriguing factoids as possible. Not necessarily just regurgitating the press release, but utilizing it as a starting point for my research and dropping some curious biographical nuggets as well as fun descriptions of the music. The point is obviously to turn you on to interesting new music while stretching my creative muscles in the process, win-win. Well I have to be honest; I’m having a bit of trouble with Hausmeister’s latest album, Water-Wasser. Musician and painter Christian Przygodda is not new to the scene, this is apparently his sixth full-length, but I’m still having trouble digging up any substantial information about him. On top of that, the press release goes on how this poptronica instrumental album refers heavily to French comic artist Moebius or writer Lars Gustaffson. My knowledge of comic books is close to rock bottom, but being a world-renowned artist, Moebius aka Jean Giraud was easy to come by. But again, how this melodic, handcrafted music has anything to do with Giraud, and more specifically his famous comic book series, The Airtight Garage, is beyond me. And Gustaffson? Google-ing the book title accompanied in the blurb, The Third Rochade of Bernhard Foy, only brings up the exact same description of this album in various languages. So, to be absolutely honest, I have no idea how Water-Wasser relates to any of its apparent influences, but I can tell you it is an enjoyable, inventive album of electronic innovations and warm acoustic melodies.

As I mentioned, Przygodda has released a number of albums under the Hausmeister alias, which is German for “caretaker,” or if you ask freetranslation.com: “janitor” (hahaha). Most of these albums are available via German imprint Karaoke Kalk, also home to Takagi Masakatsu, Hauschka and other similar-minded artists. Masakatsu is a good musical reference point for Water-Wasser, especially if you additionally sprinkle in names like Collections of Colonies of Bees, Tortoise and Mouse on Mars. It rides the very well explored line between acoustic and electronic instrumentation, but Przygodda definitely has a trained ear and I’m guessing some formal education mixed in there somewhere because the classical influence is hard to ignore, most notably on album closer “Fynn Und Anton.” There are also healthy doses of pop, folk, jazz and maybe even a touch of prog.

Album opener “Ursula” pretty much sets the stage of what is to come: acoustic guitar and piano melody, light, breezy rhythms, electronic wisps and tinges, and occasional harmonic vocals in the vein of “baba-ba-baaaaaaa.” Just as you think it exists solely as a simple pop ditty though, it completely breaks down into calm acoustic guitar picking in a classical mode before picking up into a short reprise of the initial head-bopping groove. Every other track from here on out is noteworthy. “Raphael,” for example, hopscotches in a cool west coast groove of folksy guitar lines with acoustic and electronic percussion. For good measure, Przygodda accentuates the already very melodious track with pan flute and harpsichord. Between more meandering pieces, “Amsterdam” skitters on a much more accessible Mouse on Mars tip and “Transport” matches classical-leaning piano with bongos and sighing sine waves.

To call Water-Wasser pleasant sounds slightly undermining, but it is an adjective that is hard to ignore with such plaintive, melodic music. You just have to remember that there is some excellent musicianship throughout the album (absolutely no loops used) that mostly excels because of its deceptively simple demeanor. After listening through it completely a number of times, I still have no idea how it relates to epic comic strips or rare novels, but I really don’t think these themes are necessary to enjoying the music anyways. Water-Wasser is music for spring days in the park… with a pretty lady in a bonnet… a fly bonnet… because she’s bringing them back in vogue.

New Music: 65daysofstatic, Mikhail

65daysofstatic - These Things You Can't Unlearn (Monotreme 2007)

65daysofstatic - The Destruction of Small Ideas / Monotreme

It only feels like last year that 65daysofstatic burst onto the scene and lit up the post-rock landscape with their debut album One Time for All Time, doesn't it? Too bad that album actually came out two years ago and The Fall of Math was their actual debut... But hey, as long as Monotreme isn't telling, who in the US really needs to know?

As it turns out, The Destruction of Small Ideas is a good reason for illustrating a deeper background of this Sheffield-based band. They've been around for six years now, but like their music they are a constantly shifting group of people: It started out as a three-piece in 2001, but four line-up changes in the three albums since has continually contorted the focus and the direction of the group, albeit not so dramatically that they are totally unrecognizable from release to release. In fact, 65daysofstatic has now become one of the most reliable instrumental rock groups anywhere on the planet and that's no small feat considering the competition. So what's up about The Destruction of Small Ideas that makes it feel just that little bit circumspect?

After all, the artwork is all there and they certainly didn't slack on creating it: 16 pages of the kind of obtuse sketches and pamphleteering one would expect from a band fresh out of the blocks. But maybe it's this figure buried in the middle, "Fig. A: Fundamental Truths Versus the Path We Have Taken," that shows the kind of trajectory the group has taken. There's a progression on the x-axis of the graph that goes from "1 moment" to "the next" to "crossroads/again" to "fly/fall." In the visualization, a canyon shape, the labels follow this axis from "planteau of indecision" to "familiar peak of impending trouble" and so on. Maybe this can be read as the thought process of a single song, but I see it more as the progression of the group as a whole: For the third album (="crossroads/again"), the pairing is "sine ocean."

Maybe it's not so obtuse after all, then. Despite the fact that "When We Were Younger & Better" would fit in comfortably beside the tracks from One Time for All Time, and despite the fact that this album once again averages somewhere in the high four-minute bracket, the extra time they've spent in making this album has affected its presentation. Whereas once the glitchy backbeats and head-pummeling percussion were stuffed into a song almost for the sheer purpose of having them there, the emphasis is rather less on that now. In the same way that All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone's bonus disc had electronic elements bring out the percussive elements of their songs (except for that ruthlessly slow Jesu remix), 65daysofstatic will never need a remixer because it's already inherent in their music. The songs here are tinny in production, but the power is still there: When the guitars and drums are in full-on rock mode, they rock hard. "These Things You Can't Unlearn" is a depiction of the latest incarnation of the band at its very best, over six minutes of instrumental math thrown in a blender with Mono's melodrama and Autechre and filtered through backing strings for what ultimately turns out to be the apex of the album.

It's not that they descend in the next seven songs, but it does feel like they're going back through their notes of the first two albums and figuring out what to do with such a unique sound. This group is vital in the sense that they have opened up one more possibility for what a post-rock act is capable of. It sounds familiar and distinct all at once, and that's part of the continual balancing act they've had to face. The Destruction of Small Ideas might be the signal of intent that they've already competently conquered their own sound. Now comes the crossroads: What will it take to fly and not to fall? I like this album well enough, but I think it holds more questions than answers. For now, the holding pattern.












Mikhail - Dance (Quartermass 2007)

Mikhail - Orphica / Quartermass

Of course, being in a holding pattern is all relative isn't it? You have people writing blogs now who don't even remember when "art-damaged" was so ubiquitous, so utterly played-out it was only legitimate for about three weeks in early 2003... And then you get the critics who are still delving into the back catalogs for missing pieces in the life of Mendelssohn. Both of these critics are well represented come Sunday morning in The New York Times "Arts & Leisure" section, but elsewhere classical continues to remain sorely unrepresented. The perception is that it's just too stuffy, too highbrow to be dealt with. It's antique audio, no longer relevant and functional only from an academic standpoint.

Mikhail would bid to disagree with that. Like a lot of other amateurs, I'm not well versed in Grieg or Webern, but I can hear elements of the modern, the romantic and the classical all over Mikhail Karikis' solo debut. While Karikis throws in moments I know I've heard before from Tchaikovsky ("Untitled in CoF Minor") or even some generic piece from Copland ("Dance"), his background as a kid in Thessaoloniki, Greece means he's likely thinking more of the Balkan folk songs that dotted his youth than any "Pork: The Other White Meat" commercials. Indeed, some of the recordings here ("Asteris," "Archon" and "Incubus") take field recordings from Mount Olympus and the Ionian and twist them into beats Matmos would be proud of. The natural melodies of these songs over said beats have survived the centuries and Karikis shows why all over this album. It is beautiful and fascinating and I completely understand why Björk wanted him to remix "Army of Me" now: They're a perfect fit.

In that sense then, I suppose now is a good time to bring up that Mikhail has just as much in common with The One AM Radio as Handel or Liszt. Arguably the biggest selling point of this album is that he has remixed "Army of Me" and, with Volta right around the corner, Brussels-based Quartermass might have the perfect way in to really sell this one to kids who otherwise wouldn't have a clue about Mikhail. Frankly, I'd use any excuse I could to get this album out to the people; for me, that means a lowly college radio show and this mighty blog. There is just so much here to love, from the found sounds of scissors interspliced with harpsichords or tympani to Karikis doing that very Björkian vocal trick of almost sneering into the mic as a Wagnerian chorus backs him up on "Argonautica." And as a brief aside, "Argonautica." Pretty fucking cool if you ask anyone who hasn't played with Legos in the past decade. Argonauts? Anyone? No? Okay.

Though the inspiration for the soul of this music is the great Orpheus, Mikhail has managed to blend hundreds of years of music from all over Europe with the sounds of modern electronic and the avant-garde to create a fascinating LP that comes highly recommended. I'm not banking on Volta being a disappointment, but early indications are that it is significantly different from Vespertine or Medulla. If you still pine for the more cerebral elements of the Icelandic songstress or are looking for something more interesting from the "world" section of your local record store than yet another Putumayo compilation, pick up Mikhail's Orphica. I could put this in more elaborate terms, but that would be muddying the point: You'll be glad you did.

Radio Show Playlist 5/02

6a:
1. Tom Waits - Fumblin' with the Blues - The Heart of Saturday Night (Asylum 1974)
2. Low Skies - You Can't Help Those People - All the Love I Could Find (Flameshovel 2006)
3. Grails - Dead Vine Blues - Burning Off Impurities (Temporary Residence 2007)
4. Califone - Pink & Sour - Roots & Crowns (Thrill Jockey 2006)
5. Alex Delivery - Milan - Star Destroyer (Jagjaguwar 2007)
6. Amon Tobin - Stoney Street - Bricolage (Ninja Tune 1997 -- Playing Abstract Science 10th Anniversary Party!!!)
7. The Cinematic Orchestra - Child Song - To Bulid a Home 7" (Ninja Tune 2007)
8. Thilges - Hig - La Double Abscence (Staubgold 2007)
9. Tortoise - Gamera - Gamera/Cliff Dweller Society 12" (Duophonic 1995)

7a:
1. Lymbyc System - Astrology Days - Love Your Abuser (Mush 2007)
2. Fred Anderson & Hamid Drake - From the River to the Ocean - From the River to the Ocean (Thrill Jockey 2007)
3. John Coltrane - A Love Supreme, Pt. 1: Acknowledgement - A Love Supreme (Impulse! 1964)
4. Tito Puente & his Orchestra - Mambo Beat - Mucho Puente (RCA International 1964, recorded 1955-57)
5. Ismael Quiniors - Control - New York Latin Hustle! (Soul Jazz 2007)
6. Monguito Santamaria - Monguito's Theme - Hey Sister (Fania 1968)
7. The Sea and Cake - Exact to Me - Everybody (Thrill Jockey 2007)
8. Junior Boys - In the Morning - So This is Goodbye (Domino 2006)

New Music: No Age, Raccoo-oo-oon

I've never been one to stoop to "the dog ate my homework" lows but in this case I'm prepared to take the incomplete, if you would be so generous. My Raccoo-oo-oon review disappeared earlier this evening in a freak power outage, such things happen in the ghetto. But with the best of intentions I share with you this exquisite diamond of a song, Black Branches, from Raccoo-oo-oon's upcoming full length, Behold Secret Kingdom. Its full of racket like the angry forest at night. Look for a proper LP release of this soon on Night People, and in the meantime buy buy buy everything you can from this wonderful DIY label run by Raccoo-oo-oon's Shawn Reed.




No Age - Everybody's Down (Fat Cat 2007)

No Age - Weirdo Rippers / Fat Cat

Being a child of the internet has its perks! Sure I waste alot of time on tentative relationships but all the constant scouring yields results. Lately, like once a week, I've found some bundle of joy delivered straight to my hard drive. Easily thrills? Yeah, maybe, but the timing has been spot on. Panda Bear and Times New Viking brought it at the first turn of spring, spraying sunshine all over the place; in the car, on the porch, situation by situation these timely interventions have been just right, just what I need. This week's speedy delivery is from LA dudes, No Age. No Age plays a big part in the whole Smell scene, by now a fairly well-known quantity in the underground for all the right reasons. Bands like No Age, Mika Miko, Silver Daggers, Abe Vigoda, and many others from the same locale are working hard to restore your faith in rock music. Weirdo Rippers is full-length collection of No Age's most golden tracks, wrapped tight like dynamite and ready to explode upon play.

If only you could see me smiling rainbows right now! No Age is definitely lo-fi, all the cracks and distortion sounding bad in all the right ways. This duo, featuring one dude from the sadly short-lived Wives, are a rarity these days, not even trying to make it seem like they're having fun; this is all full-blooded honesty and, I'll be damned, a genuinely fun rock record in an age where people are turning more and more to electro for their thrills. Much like Times New Viking's wonderfully naive Presents The Paisley Reich, the recording quality should perk the ears of old timers still lamenting the glory days of Husker Du and Guided By Voices. But mostly I think No Age would form a Rock-N-Roll Express fan favorite tagteam with Parts & Labor, as both groups are equally adept at mixing sugar-rush punk pop with bright electronics.

"Loosen This Job" is the best summation of No Age, maybe thats a little too concise but the song brims with distortion, feedback, noise, or whatever (!) providing a warm palette for campfire drums and wonderful lyrics about how "Night time is the right time" and "Its colder in your house than you think / Its colder in your bones" echoing exactly how I feel every day after an eight-hour work day. This song speaks directly to me, whether intentional or not, but I hear it loud and clear and the most important thing is that it lets me cast away all the unwelcomed shit that I deal with during the work day. "Everybody's Down" is on a similiar frown-destroying tip; it's a punk gem like the best Punk-O-Rama song ever, like this makes me hop around like I did when I was fourteen years old and first heard NOFX or Pulley or some shit. Its a simple, guiltless pop song, all anthemic with huge singalongs like "Every soul in every town's got me goin ooooo-ahhhh-ooooo". "My Life's Alright With You" may be one of the best mixtape songs ever written simply for the title alone. Things start off pensively among swathes of keyboard and faraway guitars, total fuzzed out beach-cruising pop hooks and a swinging guitar solo to get all the kids gyrating.

This is the top of the mountain. I hope my excitement about this band is translating because I am doing double dutch with my shadow totally beside myself. Expect to hear alot more from these guys closer to the release date of June 11th when Weirdo Rippers is released on the always respectable Fat Cat. Keep in mind No Age hadn't released a single recording until March of this year, simultaneously unleasing five very limited vinyl releases. We're all new to this then so get on it and enjoy all the vitality radiating from this amazing band.