New Music: The Sea and Cake, The North Sea

The Sea and Cake - Exact to Me (Thrill Jockey 2007)

The Sea and Cake – Everybody / Thrill Jockey

“Hey! Is that the new Sea and Cake??? What does it sound like?”

“Well… umm…. You know, sounds like the Sea and Cake.”

I was speaker one in this conversation about a week and a half ago after spotting a promo copy of the upcoming release from Chicago’s grooviest indie-pop band, The Sea and Cake. While kind of mundane, it is an exchange that will no doubt take place numerous times with Everybody, the quartet’s first album in four years. But while it would definitely be considered a negative slant with most bands, I do not think such a remark would discourage any fan of the band. The Sea and Cake very much play a singular brand of endearingly groovy indie-pop, but it is a sound surrounded by intricate peculiarities, refined craftsmanship and melodies that pluck your heartstrings with care and exuberance. Everybody once again tackles pop music strung through jazz, blue-eyed soul, gentle funk, Brazilian and krautrock ideals, but this time the Chicago quartet aim for a more lively, not-quite-as-precise sound with tributaries of West African guitar grooves and rocksteady bounce.

The Sea and Cake came together in 1993 with all four musicians already spending time in acclaimed post-rock groups. At first intended as a one-off project to mix Chicago’s burgeoning textural and cerebral rock style with Afro-Caribbean rhythms for their self-title debut, guitarists Sam Prekop (Shrimp Boat) and Archer Prewitt (Coctails), bassist Eric Claridge (Shrimp Boat) and drummer John McEntire (Tortoise, Bastro) received such warm feedback that the initial side-project became a highly regarded concentration for most of the members. Actually named after McEntire’s misinterpretation of the song “The C in Cake” by Gastr del Sol, whom he was drumming for at the time, the key to the Cake’s sound is the distinctive contributions by each member: Prekop’s breezy, elegant croon and careful phrasing, Prewitt’s pinging, lyrical guitar lines, Claridge’s buoyant, nearly funky bass, and McEntire’s crisp, precise backbeat. Incredibly tight and refined, The Sea and Cake effervesce an almost debonair charm with their poppy indie-rock, and while their frame of sound may be easily predicted, the intricacies are always thoughtful and inventive.

Everybody almost acts as an antithesis to 2003’s One Bedroom. The latter saw the group utilizing drum machines for a more rigid sound, mechanical pop, but this latest entry heads in the complete opposite direction. Recorded in the secluded Key Club Studios in Benton Harber, MI with Brian Paulson (Slint, Wilco, and also the first producer used outside of McEntire in their 14 year existence), Everybody was laid to tape with very little overdubs. As well as a loosening of groove, their sound is not nearly as crisp as past recordings, giving Everybody a more gritty sound… but obviously only gritty in terms of the Sea and Cake back catalogue. The instrumental tone also benefits from this production style; a much more blended, natural, and warm sound to their already soothing vibe.

The biggest standout of Everybody is “Exact to Me,” which utilizes with much success the Western African guitar style (which is bleeding into many genres it seems these days). Prewitt genuinely captures that guitar mode of benga music, no doubt influenced by fellow Thrill Jockey-ers Extra Golden. As well, McEntire takes a much more cymbal heavy and skittering snare beat than his usual snare-centric rhythm. “Middlenight” creeps into your ears with delicate wisps of pedal steel and wavering keyboard coos, while “Crossing Line” actually finds the group significantly rocking out. With Prewitt adding some feedback to the accompanying handclap beat, you’ve got a new potential live favorite. The only track that really reminisces of One Bedroom is “Lightning” with it’s gated snare, but Claridge’s lightly galloping bass, twinkling vibes and glistening keyboards send it swirling into even deeper realms of dream pop.

So yes, Everybody sounds basically what you would expect from The Sea and Cake, but unless you only give it a glancing listen, these are brand new territories for Chicago’s finest indie-poppers. It is really a loosening of the debonair tie that has delegated their existence up to now. Of course you can still bring them home to your mother and she will merrily approve, but it’s much more of a subtly badass, experienced look. The pants hang a little lower, the tie not so taught and shirt a little ruffled. The Sea and Cake now get the go-ahead nod from both your parents and your friends.






The North Sea - Feather-Cloaked Silver Priestless (Type 2007)

The North Sea – Exquisite Idols / Type

During a small college graduation party in the Boondocks of South Carolina, me and a few of my close friends were hanging out in a rural backyard, reminiscing, drinking and just being together as a group for what turned out to be the last time before scattering ourselves around the country. The night was plugging along nicely with nothing too outlandish when one of my friend’s backcountry neighbors stumbled up with a jar of clear liquid with a shriveled peach inside. If you’ve never experienced real, homemade, unsafe for anyone, practically rubbing-alcohol moonshine, I would recommend keeping it that way. To say that shit has a bite is vastly underrating it. If a shot of straight vodka is mosquito bite, real moonshine is an alligator chomp. One of my good friends in attendance that night is a hell of a drinker, not in the sense that he does it all the time, but he could damn well chug any beer or liquor in existence without so much as a hiccup. Well by the time the neighboring redneck stumbled up with his jar of liquid death, this friend was pretty damn drunk and taking dares. One thing led to another, and after a verbal slant to his manhood, he damn near chugged the entire fucking jar. Needless to say, he missed the chair on the way down. Later during the 2a.m. drive home, he threw up in my car three times, and I had to actually hoist his head up while weaving through the back roads of northern South Carolina because he had fell completely limp. With the windows rolled down, nature chirping all around us, my radio humming along to Ravi Shankar’s droning sitar, and the moonshine swirling merrily around his brain, I have a good feeling a music not completely unlike The North Sea’s Exquisite Idols soundtracked his trip home.

Brad Rose is far from a household name even in a blogosphere sense, but he is definitely heading in that direction. His biggest claim to fame to date is his acclaimed 2006 collaboration with the U.K.’s elegant drone trio Rameses III, Night of the Ankou on Type, but he also runs the Digitalis and Foxglove labels, the Foxy Digitalis webzine and records under a number of other monikers, though The North Sea seems to be his latest concentration. For his solo debut under the alias, Rose unleashes a creeping, ethereal and gently chaotic brand of free folk that incorporates drone, blues, folk, psychedelia, ambient and avant-garde with Indian, Greek and rural American influences.

The closest comparison I can come up with is Panda Bear’s recent Person Pitch, but there is one key difference: where Lennox was heavily influenced by Beach Boys melodies, I would say Rose draws much more heavily from The Velvet Underground’s experimental and acerbic rock, if we are looking back to the same era of influence. It is not that Rose’s material is that much more menacing, but where Lennox would opt for infectious, light-hearted coos, Rose will sing almost off-key with an indecipherable slur. Both acts’ music can be described as melancholic, whirling, meandering and trippy, but Rose definitely sounds like he composed his set secluded in his Tulsa, Oklahoma home while Lennox was very much in a Brooklyn state-of-mind (which is actually kind of backwards with the influences’ locale in mind, but you get my drift).

Nearly every one of the eight songs on Exquisite Idols has a different vibe. Most of the songs barely surpass the three-minute mark, except for the 11+ minute “We Conquered the Golden Age,” a freewheeling hookah puff of acoustic folk meandering, cascading drone and unstructured hand percussion. The first two tracks, “Eternal Birds” and “Guiwenneth Of The Green Grass,” set the stage with ambient bird chirps, haunting ghost-town piano rolls and droning keyboards, though the latter is exponentially brighter heading in an almost Takoma-like direction of rural acoustic folk. The album’s most accessible track, “Take It From Me Brother Moses” is all too short at only 2m13s; the delicate backwoods gospel stomp is simple and endearing, a breath of fresh country air in this hazy set of songs. Probably the most Panda Bear-like is “Children of the Ashes,” which crams in a barrage of hand percussions with chiming acoustic guitar overdubs and organ flourishes, though a better vocal melody would have definitely lifted the song to the next level. After the raga-influenced and impressively pulled-off “And Then The Solstice Disappeared,” Exquisite Idols comes to a close with “Feather-Cloaked Silver Priestless,” a raspy folk stomp with a healthy dose of Native American flutes and even a saxophone/banjo duet.

Exquisite Idols is far from perfect, but perfection is overrated. It is nowhere near as accessible as the similar-minded Person Pitch, but no less hypnotic and endearing. Rose definitely sounds as if he is testing the waters with his solo debut, and if that is true, the best is yet to come. And with a wonderful label like Type backing his rural psyche concoctions, I would definitely keep a watchful eye in his direction.

P.S. Like most of the recent Type releases, Matthew Woodson did the cover art, and it is stunning once again.

Used-Bin Bargains: Yaz

Yaz - Situation (Mute 1982)

Yaz - Upstairs at Eric's / Mute

Though I try hard not to be an egomaniac, sometimes I wonder about how readers think this blog works. Is it just that Jordan and Michael and I are thirds of the same whole, equal tastes with duties split up on the same great albums? Hardly. The truth is we disagree and our areas of emphasis are very different. If you've been reading us for any length of time, you can pick up pretty quickly on where our strengths are. I'm learning, but I'll be honest: Funk and soul from the 70s all sound pretty good to me. Michael's quality filter is much more attuned to that sort of thing... But on the flip side, it's tough for him to discern which 80s synthpop doesn't suck.

Michael: there are very few things i liked about the 80s
Michael: hitchhiker's guide to the galaxy, ghostbusters... that's all i got
Me: Magazine? Sonic Youth's best stuff? No and New Wave?
Me: Turbo everything.
Michael: i like latter day sonic youth, and i can take or leave both waves
Michael: i think i may be 10 years behind the typical popular curve, so ask me again in 2015
Me: NES. Contra. The greatest videogame code ever.
Me: And Yuri Andropov died! I don't see what's not to love.
Michael: ok, you got me on those two
Me: I'm just saying, there's more to the 80s than VH1 gives credit for.
Me: The Cars?
Michael: meh
Me: Billy Bragg?
Michael: meh
Me: Public Enemy?
Michael: i'm bigger on very early 90s rap

You get the idea. So Jordan and I take on the 80s and we try to do Justice to them, but judging by my campus and a truckload of music that's been coming out lately, I don't need to tell you the 80s weren't a total waste of time.

All that's a long-winded introduction to Yazoo aka Yaz (there was an American label that already had the name), and it's easy to forget all of the new wave groups that emerged right after the groundbreakers... So easy, in fact, that James Murphy himself has forgotten them in recent live renditions of "Losing My Edge." I would credit my personal discovery of Yaz to him (because I'm a tool), but I actually first heard Yaz on the Rules of Attraction soundtrack (because I'm a tool). That's what Audiversity's all about: Bringing such disparate people as James Van Der Beek and Bret Easton Ellis together with Yaz. And making me look like a tool. Because I'm an egomaniac. Connecting the dots.

Those dots for Upstairs at Eric's start with Alison Moyet in 1977, the best time to be 16, pissed off at the British school system, and primed to leave for a record shop with no future in South East Essex. But fate would have its way with her long beyond the years the punk-rock scene did: The Vandals, Screamin' Ab Dabs, The Vicars and The Little Roosters were just some of the creatively named groups that Moyet was a part of. Like virtually everyone else in Britain who saw the light of post-punk though, by 1981 Moyet had graduated to the new decade, the brave new world of hairspray synthesizers.

The other half of this story involves another Basildon child who helped nurture synthpop, Moyet and Erasure in quick succession: Vince Clarke was an Essex lad with violin and piano skills behind him when he met Andrew Fletcher and they formed No Romance in China around the same time Moyet was starting her record store gig. The band, like so many of Moyet's forays into punk, was short-lived: They lasted just two years and Clarke was a guitarist for French Look with third member Martin Gore when they changed their name to Composition of Sound. Clarke was a singer for the band, but he didn't like it: Hiring Dave Gahan in 1980 was right about the smartest thing they ever did. Depeche Mode has enjoyed a fruitful relationship since.

When the band's primary songwriter decided he was no longer comfortable with the line-up, he quit following 1981's remarkable debut Speak and Spell and a tour. It didn't take long for Depeche Mode to pick up the pieces in Clarke's wake, but the lack of starry-eyed reminiscing was mutual: Clarke and Moyet had formed Yaz by the spring of 1982. Evidence was their first single: "Only You" and "Situation" are, respectively, the a- and b-side of the first single the duo released. The British took to it kindly: It went straight to #2 in the charts and set an immediate precedent. Interestingly, these songs were originally proffered to Depeche Mode as a parting gift but they apparently declined.

Thank goodness they did, because these songs (along with "Don't Go," the third single which hit #3 in the UK and #1 on the Billboard dance charts) eventually formed the basis for their late-August debut LP: Upstairs at Eric's is a quintessential electropop record and fits in nicely alongside obvious synth-based duos like Soft Cell or Naked Eyes and the rest of the British contingent that had cleaned up its image and packed away their guitars in The Human League or Bronski Beat or, in a metaphorical sense, New Order.

Though "Situations" is a dancefloor stunner and has been re-released several times to much success, Yaz never seems to come up in conversation when discussing the great synthpop groups of the genre's heyday in the US partly because it never went anywhere near the Top 40. 1983's follow-up to Upstairs at Eric's, You and Me Both, is just as good if not better than the debut... And still the group continues to be bogged down by time, Napoleon Dynamite and "Can't Hardly Wait." But as "Situations" (and virtually every other song on Upstairs at Eric's, so named for producer Eric Radcliffe's apartment) proves, the natural pop chemistry of Moyet and Clarke was abundant. It is unfortuante that they decided to part following their sophomore release as Moyet went on to a solo career and Clarke went on to help start Erasure, but what was is just as good as what might have been in Yaz's case. I've seen Yaz in a bargain bin quite often and it baffles me that you wouldn't want to have these albums in your collection... Unless, of course, you hate the 80s or are a decade behind the typical popular curve.

Singleversity #8

Audiversity’s weekly column on random music in a predetermined number of words between 1 & 150. This week's randomly generated number: 104.

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



Last summer, nearing the final moments of July, I think the unbearable heat melted my usual down-to-earth demeanor into a pool of sappy emotions and sun-baked sighs. For one reason or another, Milosh was my music of choice. His sweaty IDM beats and sexy coos seemed to manifest my undirected longing into blippy waves of late-night grooves. Because a track like "Time Steals the Day" is so genuinely primed for sensuous sessions of making-out and bodily explorations, it doubled as a soundtrack to my nightly woe-is-me window gazing. Yes, cheese. Sappy, mushy cheese. But we all succumb to such nonsense time and again.

JR:



It's spring in South Carolina and every possible moment is spent living the porch life. Nights out there are vibrant times, so refreshing being able to sit and sip on your beverage of choice, whether that be sweet tea or spirits, only going to fuel lively night-long conversations. So, of course, the whole rustic log cabin thing sounds good these days. Thanks to the advice of MV & EE I may just have to strike out into the wooded mountain sides of Virgina. "Cold Rain" is plucked from 2006's Mother Of Thousands, a real pastoral epic and my favorite MV & EE release.

PM:













While Cadence Weapon has dominated headlines in the past year following Breaking Kayfabe, Canadian hip-hop isn't merely confined to one critics' darling: Sixtoo has been representing both Halifax, Nova Scotia and Montreal since his cassette debut in 1994. A man of constant reinvention and a thick discography, Sixtoo hangs out on London-based Ninja Tune these days. Though 1998's The Psyche Intangible is regarded as a terse version of the man who would eventually pen 2000's Anticon. classic Songs I Hate (and Other People's Moments), "Shooting Angels" is notable not just for its brevity but also for its production and theoretical lyrics worth a read.

New Music: Phat Kat, Telegram!

Phat Kat - Vessels (feat. Truth Hurts) (Look 2007)

Phat Kat - Carte Blanche / Look

J Dilla's death in February of 2006 was, strangely enough, the genesis of a kind of resurgence in Detroit hip-hop. Donuts came at a time when most people only knew Detroit for D12 or "8 Mile" or whatever; I know that I hadn't taken much interest in the community up there until well after Donuts, but the reason I did was because of Dilla. In the months since, he's been memorialized almost to the point of sickness; whereas once he had been the beatman behind Common, now his name and likeness are frequently plastered all over liner notes and websites declaring what an influence he was on these people. It makes me ill at times, like his remaining unrealized potential is some sort of excuse to exploit an artist's own inherent weaknesses. "But he gives a shout-out to Jay Dee, he can't be that bad."

Well, maybe it's time to let sleeping dogs lie. Poor James probably just wants to RIP and I can't say I blame him... But if anyone has an excuse to throw up the name for another drop, it's Ronnie Watts aka Phat Kat. Kat has all the listings on his resume for his latest release, Carte Blanche. Origins: Both he and Dilla were in the group 1st Down in 1995 and, with a sole 12" to their name (A Day Wit' the Homiez just six songs long), disbanded after label trouble. Though it was ultimately unsuccessful, 1st Down was the beginning of a fruitful relationship between Dilla and Kat. They hooked up again during Kat's time in Slum Village and again on Jay Dee's Motor City-centric Welcome 2 Detroit.

In the months leading up to his death, Jay managed to bang out a number of songs for Phat Kat during a tour in the summer of '05. Though the album isn't flooded with Dilla's production, five of the 14 songs on Carte Blanche (and three of the first four) showcase his talent on the boards. The rest of the album flows just as well even though three other producers (Young RJ, Black Milk and Nick Speed) keep Kat honest on the mic with their resilient beats. One of the reasons it works so well together is because virtually everything involved in Carte Blanche is Detroit-based. All the producers and all the guest MCs excepting one: Truth Hurts is out of St. Louis. The only other exception, ironically, is Kat's label Look out of San Francisco... But they all seem to get it. Everyone involved in Carte Blanche, thankfully, seems to get it.

Kat's lyrics are as husky as the frame of the man that spits them, which actually works for him on this album. He's pure East Side on "True Story, Pt. 2" but he never plays the fool or slacks on his words. Equally intriguing are the guest appearances, and "Vessels" is the most fascinating of these with its stuttering synth line courtesy Nick Speed and Truth Hurts belting out a soulful backing track as Kat flies through each verse as fresh as he's ever sounded. If it's a little too tense for you, "Lovely" featuring Melanie Rutherford slows things down with an airy vibraphone line that has so much space to wrap up in. Couldn't have titled it better, really.

Dilla's production is pretty good too, though I didn't want to throw that in your face. "Nasty Ain't It?" gets the album off to a streetwise start with its dropped bass thuds, scratching and typical brevity at just over two-and-a-half minutes. "Cold Steel" is another highlight, dark and woody and both frighteningly urban and utterly rural all at once thanks to Elzhi's monochromatic reminder of what you're listening to. "Game Time" is the sound of a Japanese summer, sparse koto accopanying crickets and inevitable handclaps. But it's a brilliant beat and it's once again proof of what Dilla could do given the chance to expand.

But ultimately Carte Blanche isn't just about what Phat Kat and J Dilla could do given the chance; it's a giant orange-painted billboard indicating what Detroit as a whole can do given the chance. For what it's worth, this is one of my favorite hip-hop albums of the year so far, if for no other reason than its production is just another reminder of what the possibilities for Motown are: Between Young RJ, Black Milk and Nick Speed, the city is alive. I just hope they don't always fall back on Dilla, because that will feel like we're being cheated; for now, Carte Blanche remains a respectful homage.












Telegram! - Disjointed, Unnerving, and Continuous (I'm Not Going Outside Today) (Self-released, 2007)

Telegram! - "Message for You, Sir" EP / Self-released

It was a toss-up between Apparat and Telegram!. Call me a favoritist, but I went with the guy I knew personally over the German engineering maestro that you'll likely be reading about here next week anyway (as we use tons of excuses to talk up Apparat and all things remotely Bpitch Control-related). So I'll tell you a little story: I just got this EP from a friend of mine, one John Murray, and he's the man behind Telegram!. Murray's a man of beats as he'll readily tell you, and as I know him personally, I think explaining a little bit about his personality will help you better understand not just this particular song but the EP as a whole.

The man gets his bills paid and his business done partly because he always needs stuff to keep him occupied. Music has proven to be a successful way for him to do that, and it shows on Message for You, Sir because, even though there are seven songs on his debut, none of them run over four minutes and you can find everything from the flittering, fluttering helicopter beat that happens to be a personal favorite of mine here on the ungainly titled "Disjointed, Unnerving, and Continuous (I'm Not Going Outside Today)" to a pseudo-Genghis Tron cop on "Joanna Whitmire" to a track akin to subtractiveLAD on "Milestones and a History of Ups and Downs." The focus is that there is none: Anything can happen next, and though it's all vaguely in honor of Fruit Loops and the possibilities thereof, you never know how that's going to be translated.

One thing Murray likes using is samples. I must confess to also being a sucker for a well-placed snippet from an old film or political diatribe, just to spice things up (and perhaps this explains my love for From Monument to Masses, but that's neither here nor there). Though not all songs are based on a sample, frequently it feels like a song is constructed either around or through one. I don't often promote locals but, let's face it, Chicago is like four times the size of Columbia so I don't get as much of a chance to. Even still, there's always bound to be something humming beneath the streets in a college town, and in the case of the University of South Carolina's infamous catacombs, it's electro that lurks beneath the smiling faces and bland jock-rock and easy breezy acoustic strumming of a Saturday night Starbucks solo artist. Message for you, sirs and madams alike: Murray is a fly-by-night kinda guy, so if you're into fetching this for yourself, hit up his MySpace and let him know. Sharing is caring and that's what we're here for: You. Cheers.

New Music: Fred Anderson & Hamid Drake, Opsvik & Jennings

Fred Anderson & Hamid Drake - For Brother Thompson (Thrill Jockey 2007)

Fred Anderson & Hamid Drake – From the River to the Ocean / Thrill Jockey

If you have absolutely any interest in jazz and have spent any significant time in Chicago in the last decade, chances are pretty damn good that you have experienced the fascinating one-two spiritual jazz punch of saxophonist Fred Anderson and percussionist Hamid Drake. Anderson, hunched over his tenor, utilizing every ounce of breath in his nearly 80-year-old lungs creates a thick, transcendent tone; and behind him, nearly hidden behind his array of percussive knicks and ringing knacks, Drake, usually with eyes closed and head passionately swaying, somehow finds an even, conclusive rhythm despite never relying on one drum or percussive toy for more than a minute or two. In the city that acted as the catalyst for the original evolution of jazz, Anderson and Drake keep the tradition alive and breathing for what seems like on a nightly basis, all the while incorporating practically every developmental step along the way: blues, swing, bop, modal, free, avant-garde and modern creative, all meshing into one spiritual sound.

Despite Anderson’s age and commitment to running The Velvet Lounge (of which he has now been keeping the open sign brightly lit for 25 years and running) and Drake’s dedication to a ridiculous amount of ensembles worldwide, they have found time to release at least one album a year working together since 1995. And even more remarkable, there has not been one lackluster or forgettable disc among them. Well 2007’s installment, From the River to the Ocean, is certainly not going to dispel this long-running tradition, and in fact is going to place itself near the top of the must-have list of Anderson-Drake partnerships. Recorded in John McEntire’s Soma Studios and featuring the instrumental prowess of fellow Chicagoans Harrison Bankhead (8 Bold Souls, Frequency), Jeff Parker (Tortoise, Isotope 217, Chicago Underground) and Josh Abrams (Town and Country, Sticks and Stones, Prefuse 73), From the River to the Ocean honestly approaches A Love Supreme territory. While it may be a clichéd parallel, it is nearly impossible not to have the thought at least briefly cross your mind with this mix of accessible free jazz, African instrumentation and spiritual resonance.

The centerpiece of this album, their second on Chicago’s Thrill Jockey, is undeniably “Strut Time.” The 20+ minute track shows off the talents of each performer involved by letting instrumental duals push the song along. After a brief defining solo from Anderson, the theme is stated and the first push-pull duet is between Anderson’s patient yet driving tenor and Bankhead on cello. They interweave tones with grace while Drake, Parker and Abrams lay down a subtle, grooving rhythm. After the halfway mark, everyone gets a moment in the spotlight, first Parker’s highly melodic electric guitar, then a scathing outburst from Bankhead, followed by a head-nodding bass line run from Abrams and finally Drake unleashes his rhythm-destroying arms for an all-too-short drum solo. The final few minutes returns to the song’s musical theme in a classic exhibition of jazz talent.

Opening the album is “Planet E,” a double-bass display of propulsive modern creative. Bankhead and Abrams sit on opposite sides of your speakers, each teasing and tantalizing your ears with somehow cohesive rhythmic interaction, while Drake continually builds up from light percussive momentum to a full drum onslaught before coming full-circle by song’s end. The melodic drive is first taken by Parker with the kind of guitar work that made Tortoise so hypnotizing, which is then quickly overshadowed by Anderson’s mature, exploring sax. He seems to be testing the waters to see if this group of young guns can keep up with his storied playing (p.s. they can).

The Love Supreme echo is most strongly heard on the album’s final three tracks, “For Brother Thompson,” “Sakti/Shiva” and the title track. The first of the trio, an ode to colleague and AACM trumpeter Malachi Thompson, opens with shimmering wind chimes, Bankhead providing deeply resonant, interjecting acoustic piano and Drake chanting in Arabic. The modal, heavily meditative track opens up further with Anderson’s aching tenor and the testing, seemingly improvised percussion that has defined Drake’s entire career. To say the very least, it is deeply soulful. Abrams moves to a guimbri for the final two tracks, a Moroccan instrument that while looking somewhat and played much like a guitar, provides a deep, percussive sound much like a pizzicato cello creating an ancient African vibe. To further instill this emotion, during the title track Drake also picks up a frame drum (pictured on the album’s cover), one of the oldest membranophones known today. After a brief, very primal sounding introduction, Parker reminds us that this is present day with his tantalizing electric guitar, which eventually gives way to Bankhead’s bowed bass and sax interjections all being played over rich tones of polyrhythm. The final track is left for Anderson, his exacting, full-throated sax heartily resonating over a subtle giumbri rhythm.

I am going to go ahead and chalk this up as an entry into my Top 10 of 2007 and dare to say it will probably go down as the best jazz album of the year. The bridging of generations both between the players and between jazz of the 60s/early 70s and today is wonderfully executed. Anderson, though quickly approaching his 80th birthday, sounds as youthful as ever through his soulful tenor and Drake continually amazes us with his highly detailed rhythms. From the River to the Ocean is a deeply spiritual jazz album that proves such music is still very much alive and effective. Though it may be a long shot, forty years down the line we very well may be talking about how this album has aged with grace and increasing emotional power in the same manner we speak of A Love Supreme today.






Opsvik & Jennings - Port Authority (Rune Grammofon 2007)

Opsvik & Jennings – Commuter Anthems / Rune Grammofon

The morning commute, your daily transition from homelife to worklife. It is a transition that we all experience but remains completely idiosyncratic and can be very different depending on your geographic locale. Growing up in South Carolina, commuting to work meant weaving highway traffic and Podunk country roads. Now living in Chicago’s bustling metropolis, it is quite different with considerably widened options ranging from the death-defying bicycle rides to packing in uncomfortably close to strangers on the El train to strolling the storefronts and alleyways. Any way you may experience it, the commute is a necessary transition that separates your two most significant life bubbles, work and home, and along with the physical separation, acts as an important mental detachment from each of your personal worlds. Here in the city, those omniscient white ear buds seem to be the entertainment of choice for the many commuters, which I have mixed feelings about. While soundtracking the trip with music can bring interesting new viewpoints to both your local surroundings and your tunes of choice, ipodders do lose the pleasure of the random ambient noise of life, which is the most interesting music we are subjected to, hands down. International duo Opsvik & Jennings look to bridge these two aural worlds with Commuter Anthems, creating an environmental soundtrack using acoustic and electronic instrumentation. It plucks and blips and bobbles seemingly paying homage to the random ambiance around us every weekday morning while also creating something melodious we can enjoy in that transitional process.

This is the second full-length release for Eivind Opsvik and Aaron Jennings, and they are pushing their sound in a more acoustical direction from their earlier work but still utilizing that skittering, stuttering laptop-pop aesthetic in the process. Both multi-instrumentalists are coming from a jazz background, so there is a definite underlying free jazz and modern creative ideal, but Commuter Anthems is much more accessible than either of those genre descriptions typically denote. Jennings (guitars, lap steel, banjo, concertina, vocals, software) is an experimental pop musician by way of a free jazz and electronica background. The Tulsa, Oklahoma native and software enthusiast relocated to New York City after his college career and began purveying a number of musical projects before hooking up with Opsvik. Hailing from Oslo, Norway (hence Commuter Anthems being released on Rune Grammafon, a genre-less label dedicated to creative Norwegian artists ranging from the arctic electronica of Biosphere to the Zappa-influenced avant-metal of Shining to the cinematic trumpet player Arve Henrisken), Opsvik (bass, drums, percussion, piano, organ, Theremin, vocals, software) also now calls New York home and has been a part of a number of experimental NYC groups in the last decade including Eivind Opsvik Overseas, Kris Davis Quartet and David Binney’s Out of Airplanes (with Bill Frisell) amongst others.

Together, Opsvik & Jennings come up with a sound that draws from their free jazz backgrounds while infusing hearty doses of rural genres like folk and country along with laptop-pop, ambient and Norwegian electronica. They take the commuter theme to heart and act as if they are soundtracking your daily window gazing by substituting all of the passing landscapes with warm acoustics. Sometimes it is more sparse, rural environments like on “Lorinda Sea” with meandering brass squiggles bridging streets of electronic piano teeters, lapsteel wisps, banjo plucking, cello sighs and light, free jazz percussion. And sometimes, as with “I’ll Scrounge Along,” it has a much more urban vibe with the loose cool jazz bass line and kit beat which continually layers up with hand claps, percussion and electronic tinges. Songs like “Silverlake” and “The Last Country Village” sound much more influenced by the Norwegian landscapes with the rolling hills and floral decoration of acoustic guitar, lap steel, glockenspiel and Theremin melodies. Think The Books elaborating on a Boats song as played by The Cinematic Orchestra: sparse, patient, melodious, buoyant and freewheeling.

I do not listen to music during my morning commute (I mean c’mon, I’m surrounded by it constantly and need at least a few moments to enjoy the natural sounds of the world), but if I did have a pair of those white earbuds, Commuter Anthems would be a charming and relaxing introduction to the day ahead.

Radio Show Playlist 4/25

6a:
1. Sleater-Kinney - All Hands on the Bad One - All Hands on the Bad One (Kill Rock Stars 2000)
2. Welcome - First - Sirs (FatCat 2007)
3. Vietnam - Hotel Riverview - Welcome to My Room EP (Kemado 2006)
4. Bill Callahan - Sycamores - Woke Up on a Whaleheart (Drag City 2007)
5. Freakwater - Gravity - Old Paint (Thrill Jockey 1995)
6. Paul Duncan - The Fire - Above the Trees (Hometapes 2007)
7. Occidental Brothers Dance Band International - Nyarai - Occidental Brothers Dance Band International (self-released 2006)
8. Vieux Farka Toure - Ana - Vieux Farka Toure (World Village 2007)
9. Jimmy Cliff - You Can Get It If Your Really Want - The Harder They Come (Mango 1971)
10. Marcia Griffiths - Gypsy Man - Jonny Greenwood is the Controller (Trojan 2007, recorded 1974)
11. Big Youth - Chi Chi Run - Chi Chi Run (Melodisc 1972)
12. The Eternals - High Anxiety - Out of Proportion EP (Antifaz 2005)

7a:
1. Skeletons & the Kings of All Cities - Hay W'Happens - Lucas (Ghostly International 2007)
2. Andrew Hill - Plantation Bag - Passing Ships (Blue Note 2003, recorded 1969)
3. Wayne Shorter - Water Babies - Super Nova (Blue Note 1969)
4. (((Powerhouse Sound))) - Old Dictionary (for Bernie Worrell) - Oslo/Chicago: (((Breaks))) (Atavistic 2007)
5. Fred Anderson & Hamid Drake - For Brother Thompson - From the River to the Ocean (Thrill Jockey 2007)
6. The Books - Tokyo - Lemon of Pink (Tomlab 2003)
7. Prefuse 73 - Oh Linda, You Lit Up My Life with Your Voice and Made Me Fall in Love with You - Dublab Presents: In the Loop 2 (Plug Research 2005)
8. Cornelius - Fit Song - Sensuous (Everloving 2007)
9. Slicker - Knock Me Down Girl - We All Have a Plan (Hefty 2004)

New Music: True Primes, Mammatus

True Primes - We Have Won (Locust 2007)

True Primes - We Have Won / Locust

"Shambolic" is an under-used term in the American language. Of course the British use it properly, it is their language after all. For example: "Liverpool's defense was utterly shambolic on the night". Its all a shambles, a total mess, not really functioning like it should. We get so used to things functioning like way they should. Often times concision becomes too expected in music as well, even supposed surprises fall within the spectrum of expectation. Everything comes so totally stylized nowadays, even the truest of black metal bands adhere to a narrow form and yeah, that Prurient record is really brutal but thats what I expected. We Have Won, the first proper release from this Brooklyn duo, almost sounds like a total accident, songs slowly soldiering on, the drums at times kinda off, dark turns coming out of nowhere, not just challenging typical forms but conceptions of what "released" music should sound like.

Alot of music is amorphous, totally capable of flipping the script, and I'm not arguing against Kid606-like curveballs but even sometimes even the deftest maneuvers come off contrived. True Primes don't have any tricks. If anything the band sounds like a bird learning how to fly. Certain parts sound out of place or incomplete to my overlearned ear. Its all endearingly raw, coming off more spontaneous than jazz dudes diving into impenetrable theory. These songs are strung together by feeling, sounding more like the perfect practice sesh caught on tape than anything at all premeditated.

The title track has a listening-in feel, like hearing your neighbor's band practice next door. Tentative interplay between guitar and drums with slight humming sounds like maybe we started listening too soon or they started the tape too soon or something. Its all kinda uneasy hearing these two musicians find an understanding. The floating, intimate vocals of Rolyn Hu and chaotic musical underbelly provided in part by Che Chin reminding me alot of Jandek's classic, "Nancy Sings". "In The Surf" starts off like a sloppy beach party beat, everyone dancing in stop-motion, the drums persisting ever more erratic as it fights against waves of ominous synth. Here once again is the wonderful interplay between Hu and Chin, this time Hu's vocals taking on some Yoko Ono-type theatrics, and near the seven minute mark morphing into what the Magik Markers might sound like on a particularly good Valentine's Day. "13 Houses" is another loosely strung gem and showcases True Primes' penchant for pop experimentation. Hu's processed vocals sound otherworldly along a bed of warm electronics and that slow, unsteady beat that by this point is totally welcomed, like a good friend or a strong liquor shot on a cold day. "We Have Won (Reprise)" closes the record nicely, a delicate number that brings to mind Galaxie 500 at their best.

So its nice to think this is all accidental, amateurish stuff, and hopefully it is, but the True Prime's We Have Won asks a good many questions about listener assumptions. These songs wander with purpose, finding incredible heights in the awkward, fresh outta the box feeling of being in a new band, and its fun watching them find their feet, always stepping in the direction of something great. Also, its worth it to note Che Chen is the founder of the O'Sirhan Sirhan zine and Rolyn Hu curates Brooklyn's Glassland Gallery, a definite hotspot for artland vortex activities.





Mammatus - The Changing Wind (Holy Mountain 2007)

Mammatus - The Coast Explodes / Holy Mountain

"Behold the power of my wizard staff!"? God, how did I get here? Maybe it was the exposure to mind-expanding visions of alternate worlds, from Legend to He-Man, at a time when such odd things wedge themselves in deep, dark corners of the brain, only to come flooding back in adolescence and adulthood. I still get hit with an odd wave of attraction to comic book stores and the World of Warcraft because these things strike deep chords. Its all idealized, yeah, Brody from Mallrats embodies a worthy rolemodel in my mind, and I know its just a way of prolonging childhood, but geeking out is a true link to childish enthusiasm, a vital trait typically ground into submission by the weight of the world.

Mammatus is a band keeping it real. Live footage of the band could easily be settled in a northern California commune circa 1970, the band clad in trippy robes, donned only when the moon is right to conjure the right spirits. But this is the here and now, Mammatus claim Corralitos, CA as home, a metropolis of 2,500 people located in progressive Santa Cruz County, a place where marijuana is virtually decriminalized. Despite sounding like a mystical beast, the band's name actually refers to mammatus clouds, breathtaking monster cloud formation often appearing after tornadoes, looking like a celestial battleground protruding into the earthly realm.

The Coast Explodes is a panegyric to the sea. Recorded in the last throes of summer 2006 after a lengthy US tour, this record is Mammatus recharging their collective battery, jump-starting their souls in the spiritual homeland, delivering a sonic homage to God's mighty ocean. "Dragon of the Deep Pt. 3" opens the record with a twelve minute jam, burning at both ends with the rugged groove of the first six minutes or so, dual guitar leads riding a thick, precise Can-like bass groove. This track brings to mind a good many reference points; Sabbath, Hawkwind, Sleep, Molly Hatchet, all the sleeveless rock-n-roll glory is present here. Vocals kick in almost ten minutes deep, some whirlpool wizard rising from the depths to speak directly with a ghostly full moon. "Pierce the Darkness" exhibits the band's tightness, sounding like Soft Machine sitting around the desert with Matt Pike, the song eventually giving way once more to skyward looking twin guitar solos, this time evoking the warm washes of Growing with the slight twist of Slash's windswept solo in "November Rain". "The Changing Wind" is there suddenly, taking you to a peephole deep within a coastal cave. Druidly vocals echo off cavernous walls, somewhere a fire is burning, druids dancing ceremoniously around the flame, complete with their own master flutist, the meeting ending abruptly by an invasion of sea lions. The title track wraps up the record, another twelve minute behemoth, dirging heavier than anything else on the album, veering into Sleep-like inertia, slowly unfolding with the certainty of colliding glaciers.

Be sure to catch this band of marauding rock-n-roll explorers on tour this spring with Acid Mothers Temple. I caught the show in Asheville with both bands in majestic form. Watch out for the wizard staff!! And also be wary of Acid Mothers' ability to totally alter your outlook on life. Go see, hear, and feel this stuff live! You can be the rocky California shore to Mammatus' crashing waves of sound.

New Music: Alex Delivery, Lifesavas

Alex Delivery - Milan (Jagjaguwar 2007)

Alex Delivery – Star Destroyer / Jagjaguwar

It is going to be very hard for anyone to talk about Alex Delivery’s debut album on Jagjaguwar without dropping the krautrock tag. Mostly because the New York-based quintet purvey the genre so well and have created an album that sounds as if it could have actually been made in the early 70s if it weren’t so crisply produced and layered so densely. While being immersed in the rhythmic river of psychedelic sounds that band together to form Star Destroyer, it is very hard to not continually think back to names like Can and Faust and Neu!. But do not necessarily think of Alex Delivery as a cover band, they wrap up the metallic maelstrom in warm melodies and hypnotic vibrations making this debut album a very promising start to their budding career.

There are three main tracks to Star Destroyer: “Komad,” “Milan” and “Sheath-Wet,” which each clock in around the 10-minute mark and mesh and mold in what can only be described as a molten metal myriad of music. “Komad” opens the disc with a slightly dubbed-out rhythm of what sounds like two sheets of scrap metal being scraped together, but what is probably an analog synthesizer with the high frequencies tweaked to hell. This is really the only consistent sound throughout the song as it drives through three stages of rhythmic cacophony. Stage one consists of a thunderous one-two snare-cymbal beat, a deeply sparse bass bounce and warbling vocal coos. It builds up consistently before ebbing away into stage two, which brings in a new barrage of analog synth grooves and spacey sound effects. At one point any semblance of rock melts away into a robo-dance floor track that Arthur Russell would merrily drop the needle on. But the metallic abrasions scrap on and stage three is a bellowing of factory disco with one keyboard after another taking the lead before coming full circle and dissolving into a pleasant piano melody.

“Milan” kicks off with washes of scrapped synth sounds breaking on a delicate shore of almost orchestral hums. It quickly opens into a krautrock groove of distant cowbell clatter, bass pulses and deeply reverberating keyboard melodies. Mid-point through the song, you enter into the most soothing span of the record with the abrasions taking a quick coffee break for the warm synths to effervesce together. All the while, the rattle of a vintage roller coaster seems to clatter around in the background; the screams of adventurous joy at that first demanding hill really take the melodramatic melodies to a whole new level. Everything is layered to perfection and it opens up a much softer side to Alex Delivery, one we can appreciate both that they have the talents for and that they keep continually just off-stage so we do not get lost in soap opera post-rock.

The third of our concentrated trifecta is “Sheath-Wet,” which returns to “Komad” and Faust territory. With a heavy emphasis on the drum kit, the rest of the music swells in bubbles of psychedelic turmoil. One second it is carnival keyboards that take center-stage and then sing-along choruses and then industrial ambience. The continual turnover of musical concentration really keeps the song interesting, a characteristic that a lot of krautrock purveying acts fail to take a grasp of. While “Sheat-Wet” most certainly rides a mechanical rhythm that seemingly could only arise from German factories, everything around it is extraterrestrial and nearly impossible to decipher. I am not sure where these kids scrounged up their barrage of analog synthesizers (perhaps they mugged Nettelbeck himself), but they make for a wonderfully classic sounding album in Star Destroyer.

It seems like Jagjaguwar has once again scored a great addition to their already impressive line-up of odd-but-hypnotic sounding bands. You can go ahead and chalk up Alex Delivery next to Oneida, Parts & Labor and Wilderness as the go-to set of modern experimental rock that owes a lot to the heyday of the genre, but certainly carves out a path all their own. So if you are down for a hearty helping of krautrock, musique conrète, space rock, electro-organic mutations and a little bit of industrial disco, go ahead and pick up Star Destroyer because you will not be disappointed. As for me, I’m hitting up the tour schedule, because I very much want to experience this carnival synth maelstrom in person.






Lifesavas - Night Out ft. George Clinton & Mega*Nut (Quannum 2007)

Lifesavas – Gutterfly / Quannum

The current rap scene is at an interesting crossroads. In the late 90s it stemmed a very potent and discernable underground with a number of labels taking advantage of an audience growing bored with the increasingly mundane mainstream. Stones Throw, Mush, Anticon, Solesides/Quannum, Rhymesayers and Def Jux all made a living off pushing the genre into new directions, challenging their audiences and not really giving a fuck what the masses were eating up. A decade later and that very same audience all of a sudden is starting to take notice. No longer do you have to sit up all night listening to college radio or paging through specialized zines, all the information you need on up-and-coming rappers is easily accessible via the internet and the entire music game has been rapidly changing (duh). Madlib and Aesop Rock are household names, Anticon has turned to new genres to keep themselves on their toes, the mainstream is for some reason obsessed with nerd-hop, goddamn Kanye West is a superstar (sigh), and the underground is far from being actually underground. The original rebellious tributary is reconnecting with the rushing river, and elements that were only heard on one side of the spectrum are intermingling as one. Lifesavas, a Portland-based rap duo is pretty good proof of this; they are dropping their sophomore album some four years after their very underground-centric debut and without some biographical knowledge, you wouldn’t be able to tell whose team they are playing for.

For better or worse, Lifesavas is very much a Quannum rap group. They are descendents of the cerebral back-and-forth banter of Latyrx and directly building off the Blackalicious sound; hell, they were discovered and mentored by Chief Xcel himself. And though their musical foundation of buoyant West Coast funk is stronger than ever (which is pretty hard to hate on), Jumbo the Garbageman and Vursatyl are mixing up their flow and adding a little bite to their bark (Jurassic 5 regretfully headed in the opposite direction). As a creative catalyst, the NoW (thanks Patrick) duo along with DJ/producer Shines have created the soundtrack to the long-lost blaxploitation film Gutterfly that truth be told is completely made up itself. Is this theme necessary? No, but I can imagine it was a lot of fun to make and it’s hard to hate on some creativity, so we’ll play along. In the film, Portland is known as Razorblade City, Jumbo is Sleepy Floyd, Vursatyl is Bumby Johnson and Shines is Jimmy Slimwater, though for the most part I’m going to ignore those names because monikers of monikers is just too damn confusing.

Though the theme is fun and “scenes” narrated by Ike Willis do string a loose narrative together, the actual songs would pretty much stand strongly on their own thanks to muscular rhythmic flow and inventive, well produced music. Like their debut, the decent but forgettable Spirit in Stone, Lifesavas purvey a socially conscious brand of rap, but Gutterfly thankfully adds a degree of grit to keep the cheese level bearable. Not to mention the boys have rounded up a good amount of big name friends to help further develop their sound. On the production side of things, Jumbo handles the majority, but Oh No, Jake One, Vitamin D and DJ Rev Shines all contribute significantly, along with instrumental help from Living Colour’s Vernon Reid, Fishbone’s Angelo Moore and even The Decemberists’ Chris Funk (no doubt a relationship formed from both calling Razorblade Ci… er, Portland home). Helping Vursatyl with mic duties are notable but aged acts like Camp Lo, Dead Prez and Smif-‘n’-Wessun. Since Lifesavas are definitely riding a classic rap tip on Gutterfly, they all sound in their element and their contributions are warranted.

So, as you can see, the back-story has eaten up the majority of this review, and like the album itself, it takes a little away from some of the great tracks hidden beneath the concepts, themes and notable guests. After an excellent contribution from Stone Thrower Oh No on “Double Up,” the album doesn’t really find its stride until “Dead Ones” about halfway through. Angelo Moore’s horn arrangements help lift a mediocre song into excellent territory, taking it on a rap-meets-The Specials trip. “Superburn” excels in that it sounds so radio-friendly without losing that underground edge, which leads to the album highlight, “Night Out.” George Clinton, yessir George Mother-fucking-Ship Connection, contributes growling vocals to grind beneath a subdued electro-funk track while some cat regrettably named Mega*Nut spits a quirky narrative in between a Parliament derived chorus. It sounds mostly like something Outkast would produce, and that is absolutely a compliment. The rest of the album wanes a bit, but hidden at the very end is the excellent “Tailormade Razorbladez,” which bumps along oddly Wu-like giving a brief nod to the always fun martial arts film.

Gutterfly excels in the current state of middle-ground rap. It owes as much to Blackalicious as it does Outkast, and will please fans of both. The well-versed theme is a fun addition, but somewhat unnecessary, and on occasion quality tracks get lost in the muddled hour of music you have here. But this is definitely one of the strongest albums I have heard out of the NoW scene, one which I have not been pleased enough with to embrace. So if you are a hip-hop fan, especially one looking to find a throwbackish album, I would give Gutterfly a good listen, because Lifesavas may be what you are looking for no matter if you are coming from the mainstream or underground.

Used-Bin Bargains: Andrew Hill - Passing Ships

R.I.P. Andrew Hill 1931-2007



Andrew Hill - Plantation Bag (Blue Note 2003, recorded 1969)

Andrew Hill – Passing Ships / Blue Note

"If musicians are just trying to be different, but don’t have a synergy with the audience, they have nothing."

Perfectly stated Mr. Hill. I respect and very much enjoy the avant-garde, but for me to be completely immersed in it rather than just gaping from afar, I need an accessible point of entry. This is why the late-60s are my go to point for jazz. The musicians were once again growing tired of the confines of what was becoming the norm (this time post-bop) and teasing it into new, typically atonal and experimental directions. By the time we get into the first few years of the 70s, the exploration had progressed so far that most free jazz was completely void of any relatable structure at all. And while I completely respect and understand the need for such music, I’d much rather experience it live than in a recorded setting. Andrew Hill greatly understood this aspect of musical balance. A composer first, the groundbreaking pianist built his compositions up from a post-bop foundation and took them on experimental trips that were heavily laced in spontaneity and sophistication. His music was certainly free, but with respect for the listener. Hill passed away Friday morning of lung cancer in his Jersey City home; he was 75. Passing Ships was on my to-get-to list for this column anyways, so it seems most appropriate to take a look at this excellent 1969 album now.

A Chicago native, Andrew Hill began playing the piano in his very early teens and was spurred on by “the first modern jazz pianist,” Earl Hines. The promising youngster was schooled both by local jazz composer Bill Russo and German classical composer Paul Hindemith, whose own style of combining neo-classicisms with jazz elements no doubt had a significant impact on Hill. As the 50s rolled on, he gigged regularly throughout the Midwest, gaining experience by sharing the stage with such bop luminaries as Charlie Parker and a young Miles Davis among many others, not to mention Chicago folks like Art Ensemble bassist Malachi Favors and hard-bop saxophonist Von Freeman. Before even out of his teens, Hill was composing original songs, but his era of most renowned creativity did not begin until 1963 after traveling to both coasts working with singer Dinah Washington and a no doubt influential stint in Rahsaan Roland Kirk’s band. Hill caught the ear of Alfred Lion during Blue Note’s waning years as a jazz powerhouse, and was signed in 1963 as part of their avant-garde movement (which when looked at in contrast to the early 70s avant-garde scene is really just slightly more exploratory post-bop). Lion referred to him as his “last great protégé.” From 1963-1970, Hill officially released a number of revered albums through Blue Note working with the cream of the forward-thinking post-bop crop, including Eric Dolphy, Bobby Hutcherson, Joe Henderson, Freddie Hubbard, Elvin Jones, Tony Williams, Richard Davis and John Gilmore. Frequent go-to points in his discography include 1964’s Judgement! and Point of Departure and 1965’s Compulsion.

Interestingly enough though, some of his accomplished works crafted in this era didn’t see the light of day until many years after their original completion. Passing Ships, recorded in November of 1969, was not rightfully released until just a few years ago after the master tapes were found in 2001. You may wonder how the hell this got left on the cutting room floor listening to it now, but looking at Blue Note’s state of debauchery in 1969, it makes much more sense. Lion had retired in 1967, Hill’s tenure was all but over, and the label, purchased by Liberty Records, was questioning the commercial viability of jazz (sigh) and heading toward populist funk. So Passing Ships, despite Hill’s advanced conceptual compositions and a nonet of acclaimed musicians including bassist Ron Carter, trumpeters Woody Shaw and Dizzy Reece, trombonist Julian Priester, French horn player Bob Northern, a very young Lenny White on drums and multi-instrumentalists Howard Johnson and Joe Farrell, did just as the title foreshadowed, drifted past into 34 years of obscurity.

One of the great aspects of Passing Ships is the way it is architecturally pieced together. There is a definite concern for spatial relationships, not just tonal or rhythmic. Hill will push the drums, miked from afar for one complete sound rather than each individual piece of the kit, to one side, then pull his patient, Monk-without-the-fire-of-relative-insanity piano to the other. Farrell, on which ever of his instruments (bass clarinet, alto flute, English horn, soprano and tenor sax) he decides to pick up at that moment will flurry from the left-center while Shaw and Reece’s trumpets cock and weave from the right-center. And of course, Carter, though maybe not at his most potent, plucks away from the center and fully rounds out the sound. If listened to in the right mindset, you can practically walk directly into the session, pull up a chair in the core of the semi-circle and enjoy the music coming to life around you. The barrage of finely toned instrumentation and Hill’s masterful arranging makes Passing Ships a pleasure to experience whether you are looking for an exploratory post-bop album or a very accessible free jazz one.

With the number of players and diverse instrumentation, the typical classification for such an album is progressive big band, but I feel this is slightly misleading. It sits at a comfortable mid-point between being a BIG band and a small ensemble; you get the structural possibilities of a larger number of players with varying talents, like the… er… cascading harmonies of “Cascade,” but the intimacy of a song like “Passing Ships,” which concentrates more on each player’s soloing over the piano/bass/drum groove without losing Hill’s masterful piano work in the mix. There is also a great deal of exoticism to the album, again thanks to the large color palette especially provided by Farrell’s ability to pick up a slew of different instrumentation and the low end augmentations on the tuba and bass clarinet by Johnson. The longer pieces, “Passing Ships,” “Plantation Bag,” and “Noon Tide” prove the most rewarding as Hill guides them through many passages from jazz-funk to free to post-bop to modern creative. Passing Ships may not be looked at as Hill’s quintessential creation, but it is an inventive, distinctive and highly enjoyable piece of music sorely overlooked for three decades that is absolutely worth your listening time.

Hill had two separate resuscitations of his career, both with short stints once again releasing material on Blue Note: the first in 1989 and the second just recently with 2006’s Time Lines being highly revered by critics everywhere. In between these times of recorded resurgence, he spent his time in academia, teaching at Portland State University and Colgate University as well as public schools and even prisons throughout California. Hill was also a rarity in the jazz world because of his widely regarded gentle and kind spirit and notable sanity. He may have shared artistic genius with many jazz greats, but not the usual personal demons that so often accompany it, which for better or worse also probably kept his legacy from sparking potentially widespread interest (the crazier the more interesting the story). Either way, jazz and musical in general lost a great artistic force in Andrew Hill on Friday morning, and if you haven’t explored his discography before now, it is as good of a time as any to enter his majestic aural world.

Singleversity #7

Audiversity’s weekly column on random music in a predetermined number of words between 1 & 150. This week's randomly generated number: 134.

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



I was admittedly a latecomer to the quirky world of Mark Linkous, but the dreamy bubbling pop of 2006’s Dreamt for Light Years in the Belly of a Mountain was just too hard to ignore. Tracks like "Shade and Honey" are the exact reason adjectives like--well bubbling--jump to mind when talking about Sparklehorse’s music. I mean just listen to that keyboard; the fucker is practically effervescing. And that bassline teeters and totters with subdued playfulness as Linkous’s voice rides that very thin line between creepy and cute. Oh, and those wavering synth nodes and the delicate xylophone tapping and the soothing cello coo… this is the exact definition of dream pop. Yes, the song is relatively straightforward and not really that challenging, but I have enough to compete with while I’m awake.

JR:



Italo disco to the max! I live for this shit. Its fun to see results of America's cultural hegemony, in this case our lock on global music initiative, disco being hurled by a giant red-white-n-blue laser catapult over to Italia, a land ready to receive the total decadence of cocaine-fueled dance marathons. Italo disco is such a sparkling example of filtered American culture, its familiar signifiers just a little off; instead of Donna Summer, we have Valerie Dore. Forget the Bee-Gees, Paul Sharada struts around in a suit so "none more white" that he is visible from space as a luminescent dot broadcasting live from Miami's swankest discos. Florida (Move Your Feet) is about the passion of dance, Sharada expounding in wonderfully-broken English all the ties that bind.

PM:









Not too much education this week unless you’re one of those kids always flipping off people behind their backs after they tell you to “respect your elders:” Public Image Ltd. was post-punk genesis and a detailed depiction, better than any I could write, is provided in the book “Rip it Up and Start Again.” Aside from one of last year’s much-heralded Canadian super-groups (not to mention a legendary Tchaikovsky ballet), “Swan Lake” is the third track from 1979’s impenetrable Metal Box. When speaking of post-punk, it’s easy to yap about Gang of Four, Joy Division or even Wire, the British Big Three… But overshadowing them all is the true giant among giants, PiL. “Swan Lake” is a personal favorite: Screeching guitar, hyperdub basslines, a warbling John Lydon. The final great revolution in music? Well...

New Music: Sage Francis, The Saturday Knights

Sage Francis - Keep Moving (Epitaph 2007)

Sage Francis - Human the Death Dance / Epitaph

Brother Ali may be the great white ghost of underground hip-hop, Slug may be the masterful Lucy-chasing mohawker, and Saul Williams may be its slam poet du jour, but only Sage Francis is the jack of all trades when it comes to the "underground." Francis is the biggest name in the underground partly because he has been the most influential crossover poet, a maestro raised on Dean College communications and Rhode Island U. journalism, a killer wordsmith bred on freestyle battles and a Scribble Jam title for cred. The Anticon collective may have the final say in experimentation, but Sage is the only one born for the people with a conscience that doesn't revolve around bling n' bullets.

If you've missed this guy and you're remotely interested in hip-hop that extends beyond the realm of Mims or T.I., you're not remotely interested in hip-hop. Whether or not you like the guy, there's little doubt he's made an impact even if it's only ripples in the great pond of popular music: Thanks in large part to 2001's too-soon(?) "Makeshift Patriot," Francis gained a legion of supporters and won respect from an audience that had largely been built through Internet file-trading, word-of-mouth hype and self-released solo albums. When it hit the shelves on Punk-O-Rama 8, 15-year-old antiestablishmentarianists everywhere had their eyes opened. Francis became the new Pennywise.

Enough has happened in the interim to merit a further discourse, but the moral of the story is that, through the last appearance of the nine-member Wu-Tang Clan and A Healthy Distrust and the first hip-hop artist signed to Epitaph, Francis is a hit. He's got a universal appeal with lyrical prowess that is rarely equalled as consistently. Human the Death Dance is no different: Two albums in to his three-album deal with the Epitaph crew, there remains some debate as to whether Francis is still on the ascent. The verdict from this guy? Best yet.

Frankly, I'm not much a fan of the album title right off the bat. That's just me though, and there at least is an explanation for it: Sage has his own label, Strange Famous, and Buddy Wakefield is a spoken-word poet on it. Excerpts from a work entitled "Human the Death Dance" are included here at the end of "Keep Moving" and "Hell of a Year" with Wakefield doing the legwork. Those aren't necessarily the strongest points of this album, but they certainly are fine examples of how Sage has stepped up his game for this one. The production is sublime and, together with another strong set of words strung together as only Sage can, it's one of hip-hop's better albums this year.

Production is good partly because the people behind it are good. No coincidence that standouts like "Underground for Dummies" or "Midgets and Giants" or "Going Back to Rehab" are produced by knob-twiddling fiends like Odd Nosdam, Alias and Tom Inhaler. Yeah, there's even a Buck 65 track in "Got Up This Morning" that has Jolie Holland fiddling around on it. Lucky that backing vocals are about as far as anyone ever goes on Sage's albums, because the man can do all the work himself. He needs no support. He's a one-man army. He should probably stick to keeping the collaborations on other people's albums. People who are weaker than him, in other words.

After all that praise, it must then come as some irony that my only complaint with Human the Death Dance is that at 54 minutes it still feels a little long. Maybe it's because Francis packs in so much so quickly, or maybe it's because by "Call Me Francois" I'm rolling my eyes at Godspeed! You Black Emperor namedrops instead of smirking at them; whatever the case, it's a minor drawback. I mean, hell, this is the best one he's yet had. Who the fuck am I to complain? Take it in small doses. Take it in large doses. Just take it. You'll be glad you did.













The Saturday Knights - The Gospel (Light in the Attic 2007)

The Saturday Knights - The Saturday Knights EP / Light in the Attic

To say that Seattle is a "burgeoning" hip-hop hotspot would be stupid. It's not, because it's always been good, right back to... Uh, Sir Mix-a-Lot... Yeah. Anyway, Common Market was my first brush with the NoW Coast (I just made that up, there's probably a better name for it) last year and I've been trying to learn more about it. I know I stumbled across The Saturday Knights at some point earlier this year but formally getting an EP with the classy front cover that these guys got from the Bee Gees could only spell a good time.

As usual, I'm right. I mean, how could I not be? I'm a blogger. Seriously, The Saturday Knights are a bunch of goofballs. The suggested RIYLs include Busdriver, El-P(?) and The Beastie Boys. Yeah, go ahead and throw Man Man on that board. Though "45" is the high-energy power-hop rump-shaker that made them their name on the famed KEXP and mainstream moguls 103.7 The End, all four songs on this re-recorded debut EP (with a full-length to follow this August) have the goofy power-pop energy meshed with the gritty urban grit of an El-P. It's a whole different world from a Shins backing band on "Motorin'" and the Brother Ali-esque aggression of "45." But they've still got a sense of humor: Beneath the beats lies a party band that just wants to have fun, nevermind that single. "The Gospel" is a great example of this, hardly a rap song at all right at its core.

No, this definitely shares more with garage-rock or Man Man insan-sanity than anything currently sweeping the decks. It's a refreshing change and the Beastie Boys comparisons are not totally unthinkable. Light in the Attic may have signed The Black Angels and scored big last year, but The Saturday Knights might be a smarter choice given that they have more potential to be crossover hits. Party rap is sorely lacking (and maybe there's a reason for that), but The Saturday Knights look like they're on the right track toward amending that. If you can't wait until August and don't already have the original EP, give this a whirl.

New Music: Paul Duncan/Slaraffenland, Thilges

Paul Duncan – Above the Trees / Hometapes

Paul Duncan - Red Eagle (Hometapes 2007)

Slaraffenland – Private Cinema / Hometapes

Slaraffenland - Polaroids (Hometapes 2007)

I am a label guy. There are artist guys who only love music by their preferred artist or genre guys who only love music in that particular genre or year/era guya who only love music from that specific year/era. I prefer labels. It’s basically like saying I do not really care if I get a red Skittle or a green Skittle or one of the special once-in-a-lifetime blue Skittles, I just dig what Skittles is doing so toss me whatever happens to be the next color out of the bag and I’m most likely going to be down. So as you have surely noticed, my choice reviews, while not specifically dependent on this factor, typically do sway to whatever my preferred labels are releasing. A personal connection with a label can be a wonderful thing; it makes it easy to continually push your tastes into new eclectic directions while having a guide to lead the way. One imprint that has been quickly pawing its way up my personal-taste-totem-pole is Boulder, Colorado’s (by way of Arkansas) Hometapes. They very much seem to be rounding up artists not with one particular sound but with a discernable vibe, one that fumes a caring patience, a love of craft and a goal of soothing your nerves. And as their mission statement details, their ideals are very scrapbook-esque; random mementos that make sense when catalogued together, labors of love ached and obsessed over by their creators that may not appeal to everyone, but to the caring few will mean millions. You have to respect that. They are also setting up spaces for artists to create at will devoid of any sort of guideline or deadlins at Placetapes as well as HAUS, an online store for supporting your local starving artist.

Two of their latest releases fell into my eager hands in the last couple of weeks, Paul Duncan’s Above the Trees and Slaraffenland’s Private Cinema. Both continue on the Hometapes ethos with very different approaches, so I thought it appropriate to group them together to further my point.

Like I believe a good number of people were as well, I was introduced and concurrently became invigorated with Paul Duncan by way of his 2005 album Be Careful What You Call Home. A cerebral and subdued collection of lush electronically-tinged bedroom pop songs, Be Careful became a go-to album for those evenings alone where I wasn’t specifically down-and-out, but a little overtaxed and in need of a soothing voice to share the insistent bearing of the world. So pulling Above the Trees from it’s yellow envelope was a deep soul sigh; I could already feel the pressure being lifted. But I was slightly taken aback on my first spin of Duncan’s third full-length, all the homemade electronic twinges were gone and in their places lush arrangements of twangy folk. My disappointment didn’t last too long though; Duncan’s aching tenor, now forefront in the mix rather than weaving through the immense instrumental textures, is as relatable as ever and the music, while more straightforward, is still garnished with an immense amount of subtle peculiarities. This in essence is the Will Oldham album I have been waiting for. The album ebbs and flows with deep breaths of slide guitar and string flourishes, Texas twang at heart but created with Chicago’s obsession of texture. Which makes sense since it was recorded at Chicago’s Soma EMS with immensely talented friends including members of Tortoise, Grizzly Bear, Bear in Heaven, The Vandermark 5 and Cursive among others. Yes Duncan has been pulled from his bedroom and in turn some of the intimate idiosyncrasies have been lost along the way, but Above the Trees is no less personal and exponentially more confident. It drifts caringly with complex pastoral tones and Duncan’s songwriting is as strong as ever as he gets to express himself with a much larger musical palette. This was the natural progression for Duncan as an artist, and it is very exciting to hear a musician not only coming into his own but pushing himself to completely new peaks of creativity.

And now we move from an artist who is reaching his potential to musicians bubbling to the brim with it. Scandinavian quintet Slaraffenland (Sluh-raf-in-luhnd) actually sound more Canadian than their frosty neighbors with a sound akin to the everyone-shout-along music of Broken Social Scene but with a penchant for jazzy experiments within their indie-rock foundation. Their band name by no coincidence translates to “the land of milk and honey,” and while the music streaming from these 20-something students based in Copenhagen may be certainly sweet on the ears, they also like to incorporate a hearty amount of staticy recording techniques and the occasionally atonal outburst. Their first release stateside, Private Cinema is actually their third album as a group and the first to utilize vocals, which were tastefully recorded from afar garnishing an Animal Collective like parallel. The music never seems to sit still, for example “Polaroids” where they get into a washy, acoustic guitar/bass/drum groove but allow it to grow increasingly more chaotic as woodwinds begin to intertwine themselves below the mix and everything climaxes triumphantly followed by a quickly decaying tape hiss conclusion. It is very much music that is as influenced by a Brötzmann as it is a Sufjan, which you have to admit piques your interest quite a bit. Already being championed in their home base country of Denmark, Slaraffenland’s U.S. audience is quickly growing as well with acclaimed sets at CMJ (06) and SXSW, which I can only imagine is a raucous fun-loving stage show. Private Cinema is a wonderfully intriguing debut on Hometapes, and I am looking forward to see which direction they push their sound in next, because as this album reveals, the pathways are numerous.

So if this is your first introduction to Hometapes I would also suggest you checking out some other of their recent releases like Feathers’ Synchromy, an eclectic post-rock album, and Canonic, where acclaimed producer Scott Solter remixes Pattern is Movement in the old-school Abbey Road/King Tubby method, with analogue tape and razors. Both are excellent and very much worth your time. And once you are caught up, feel free to grab a seat beside mine so we can eagerly await their next release together.






Thilges - Hig (Staubgold 2007)

Thilges – La Double Absence / Staubgold

Vienna, Austria has long been a hotbed for musical innovations. I mean damn, if you look back to the 18th and 19th century the number of classical composers based in or regularly making appearances in the city is a checklist of now legendary icons in the field including Mozart, Beethoven, Strauss, Haydn, Schubert, Wagner and on and on. These days, the classical culture is still rampant with the Burgtheater being its widely renowned home base, but the most exciting music being made in the city is actually by its potent avant-garde underground. In the last twenty years, the experimental electronica scene in particular has birthed many acclaimed innovators, though the more widely recognized Berlin underground typically overshadows it. For an example of an innovative Austrian group, look no farther than Thilges, also known as Thilges 3, who focus on adding an organic nature to the heavily synthetic electronic scene. Together since the mid-90s, the core of electronic manipulator Nik Hummer and multi-instrumentalist Gammon (as well as regular collaborator Armin Steiner) have set out to infuse the same unpredictable essence of acoustic instrumentation to the stringent world of programming. To achieve this they rely solely on analog modular synthesizers, heavily improvised compositions, a mixture of acoustic instrumentation and electronics and performing in settings where the music unpredictably interacts with its surroundings, which result in recordings that are practically impossible to recreate. For example, they typically perform accompanied by performance art, in acoustical innovative settings or with a PA system specifically designed to achieve a different sound depending on your relation to it (usually a quadraphonic PA system). For their second release on the experimental German label Staubgold, Thilges were commissioned to combine Western experimental music with Oriental art and create a geographic-less sound that pulls influence from many cultures but is grounded in none.

Combining Austrian, American, Persian, Arabic and Afghan cultures with the grace and refinement of Oriental art, Thilges create a patient, meditative sound through exotic acoustic instrumentation and an electronic foundation for La Double Absence. Along for the cause is Persian vocalist Zohre Jooya, renowned oud player Asim Al-Chalabi, American violist Eyvind Kang and Austrian musicians Franz Hautzinger on trumpet and Peter Rosmanith on percussion. The first layer of this nearly indefinable album is the minimal electronic-based rhythm section. On a Ghostly-like tip of finely chopped clicks and blips, the loose foundation sometimes augmented with hand percussion makes for a surprisingly comfortable connection with the acoustic instrumentation swirling above. Like all Thilges productions, these synthetic sounds are made solely with analog modular synthesizers like the monophonic trautonium, an electronic instrument invented in the 1920s most notably utilized in the soundtrack for Hitchcock’s The Birds. The only other instrument heard on every song of La Double Absence is Gammon’s acoustic guitar, which is played in traditional Arabic scales known as magams. This definitely spins the music in a Middle Eastern direction which is only emphasized by the resonate, droning tone of the oud. In songs like the opener “Izdiucz,” Arabic for “a fusion of two different materials,” Hummer seems to try and match the low tone of the oud with his synths making for an hypnotizing blend of acoustic and electronic music with boundaries very much blurred. When Hautzinger adds his subdued trumpet to the mix, a brand new welcoming sound adds a familiarity to the exotic music; a definite European or jazz swash to the Middle Eastern foundation. And Jooya’s sultry Persian and Afghan based vocals heard on about half the songs continue to bend and blend the cultural boundaries, though I’m slightly partial to the instrumental numbers.

The most appealing aspect of La Double Absence is its melancholic vibe. Yes you are mixing a hell of a lot of different sounds, but Thilges keep it accessible by tastefully layering in a minimal manner. The melodies though based in foreign scales are recognizably emotional no matter your geographic home making it truly international music. It also has a very timeless appeal since the acoustic instrumentation harks back to past cultures while the electronic rhythms remind you that this could only be made today. It is a very meditative record in the same sense of some of the earthy jazz in the early 70s, based in complex melodies that wrap themselves around your soul and transport the listener into a world only alive in your mind. La Double Absence is experimental but sophisticated, exotic but recognizable and chilling but infinitely warm.

New Music: Von Südenfed, The Narrator

Von Südenfed - Flooded (Domino 2007)

Von Südenfed - Tromatic Reflexxions / Domino

So here's the honest truth: We could've covered The Fall's Reformation Post TLC, and this is proof that in hindsight things aren't always better. I'm glad we didn't, and anyway, critically reviewing a Fall album at this point is the equivalent of critiquing pints of Guinness at the Gravity Bar: You think the first one's good, but by the 26th you don't even know what the fuck is going on. You just know you'll have another.

But waiting it out proved to be rewarding for another, entirely unforeseen reason this time: That's where the bizarre world of Von Südenfed enters, and you can save the German cough syrup jokes, they're already played out. This is a marriage made only in old Fall fan heaven, because while lately The Fall have gotten away from their electronic forays, the one and only Mark E. Smith has been spending time with the dudes in Mouse on Mars. Here then is that collaboration, and it is something else. Imagine Varcharz with, well, a slurring English guy on the mic. Yeah, it's about what you're expecting.

Unless you weren't expecting it, of course. Those able to reach deeper into the memory bank and pull out Smith's guest appearance on Ghostigital's album In Cod We Trust last year will not be surprised by what they're going to find on the debut, two songs already up on their MySpace. A dozen tracks will litter this record all in all, and in the same way that Charlotte Gainsbourg's new 5:55 is really just her singing over Air, Von Südenfed is really just Mark E. Smith singing over Mouse on Mars. Not a bad thing, mind, but nothing totally unexpected. There, I'm already contradicting myself.

"The Rhinohead" has to be an amusing highlight in that it is positively one of the most upbeat and strange things I've ever heard from Smith (and I haven't been listening for 30 years, so I probably missed something along the way). A jumpy synth line essentially structures a Smith rant over a pop song in a grand eschewing of conventions. Or maybe it isn't. As ever, the decision is yours.

This tune right here, "Flooded," this one's more standard fare for the course. The swamped bass swivels like a subsonic siren as Smith talks up his night out fucking up the DJ or some such rubbish. Maybe Smith was the DJ? Sven Vath who? Try telling me what he just said from 2m50s-2m54s. Any guesses? After however many drinks he had, once again, it just doesn't matter. Listen to that bass enough times and your head starts to hurt. Smith is one of those guys who people will let off the hook because somehow he has not only managed to slur more words together on record than any other man in the history of music, he has also managed to score friends in much more precise places. This means Andi Tomi and Jan St. Werner, although for what it's worth... They loved him so much, there's already a second album and a US tour in the works. And The Fall are touring this summer too. Double bill? Shouldn't be too hard. Somehow, we go on loving. Madness. Maybe it's that snazzy straight-outta-'81 press kit they give us.













The Narrator - Start Parking (Flameshovel 2007)

The Narrator - All That to the Wall / Flameshovel

Now The Narrator and I, we get along okay. Always have, right back to that Youth City Fire EP in 2004. In those days my knowledge of the Chicago "scene," its legacy and its future was pretty limited. Gradually I came to learn about Shellac and everything Steve Albini ever got his grubby hands on and how that shaped the sound of the city and the country at large. Chicago's a big deal these days, but for an altogether different reason.

But let this be the first and last time you see "The Narrator the band" and "juke-house" in the same sentence together, because All That to the Wall is about as far from The Fader's favorite flavor as The North Atlantic, and if you didn't hear Wires in the Walls last year then you're missing out. I digress: What happened to that Narrator that sounded so hungry on 2005's Such Triumph? That was a band that had all the energy of a young Drive Like Jehu with a slightly twisty post-punk lean. "The Electric Slide" from that first EP had a bassline not unlike Interpol's "Obstacle 1," so clearly they were absorbing at least a little bit of influence from what was hot... But by and large, they were running their own race and with a solid label in Flameshovel were able to get some exposure.

So what happened here? The difference on All That to the Wall is both in the tangible and the intangible. Their old drummer Dave Turncrantz left during the recording of this one, so slimmed down they decided to fetch help from a few local friends. Russian Circles, The Oxford Collapse, Bound Stems... The shortlist is about that long, but the long of it is that there were eight outsiders helping the core trio of Sam Axelrod, James Barron and Jesse Woghin. Maybe all that hanging out did something to them, because no longer does this band sound like the hungry post-hardcore prodigies they once did. All That to the Wall sounds a lot like, well, an indie-rock album. It's not generic in the sense that you know who this is most of the time. Things are cleaned up quite a bit for this record, but the basic chord-plucking melodies are still there. The guitar crunch that would've been so eager to jump out of a song like "Breaking the Turtle" restrain themselves. Like Earth in some ways, this album is a lesson in conservation and in restraint. It's still got some yelping, it's still got some dischord, but really it's a good solid rock album and little more.

I don't blame the guys for not changing the world; isn't everyone else out to do that these days? But The Narrator sound like they're moving around in the space they inhabit comfortably. The epic "A Decade in Kentucky" is the album's longest song, but it's worth it with the feedback and the crashing cymbals finally leading into an uptempo punk rock song we've kind of come to expect. Don't count out The Narrator if you even knew about them in the first place. These guys aren't in a funk, they're not fizzling out, they're not breaking apart. They're just growing up like the rest of us. You can only do loud for so long, can't you? And finding those quiet moments amid the noise is part of the new-found joy of The Narrator's sophomore effort.

Radio Show Playlist 4/18

6a:
1. Pixies - Subbacultcha - Trompe Le Monde (4AD 1991)
2. Welcome - All Set - Sirs (Fat Cat 2007)
3. Watchers - Superbad (live) - Rabble EP (Gern Blandsten 2006)
4. Pop Levi - Dollar Bill Rock - The Return to Form Black Magick Party (Counter 2007)
5. T. Rex - Born to Boogie - Tanx (Rhino 1972)
6. The M's - My Gun - Future Women (Polyvinyl 2006)
7. The Twilight Sad - Talking with Fireworks/Here, It Never Snowed - Fourteen Autumns and Fifteen Winters (Fat Cat 2007)
8. Arbouretum - Pale Rider Blues - Rites of Uncovering (Thrill Jockey 2007)
9. Mavis Staples - 99 & 1/2 - We'll Never Turn Back (Anti- 2007)
10. The Emotions - Peace Be Still - Music from the Wattstax Festival (Ace/Stax 2003, recorded 1972)

7a:
1. Lymbyc System - Astrology Days - Love Your Abuser (Mush 2007)
2. Broadcast - Echo's Answer - The Noise Made by People (WARP 2000)
3. Four Tet - Hands - Rounds (Domino 2003)
(If you listened from here on out, I apologize for it's terribleness... it was one disaster after another, and I couldn't get back on track for the life of me.)
4. Gabor Szabo - Dear Prudence - 1969 (Skye 1969)
5. Glenn Jones - Heartbreak Hill - Against Which the Sea Continually Beats (Strange Attractors 2007)
6. Kenny Burrell - Everyday (I Have the Blues) - Blues: The Common Ground (Verve 1967)
7. Cadence Weapon - Oliver Square - Breaking Kayfabe (Upper Class 2006, Epitaph 2007)
8. Prefuse 73 - Plastic ft. Diverse - One Word Extinguisher (WARP 2003)
9. Jorge Dalto - I've Got You On My Mind - Chevere (United Artists 1971)
10. Vieux Farka Toure - Ana - Vieux Farka Toure (World Village 2007)
11. Domenico+2 - Aeroporto 77 - Sincerly Hot (Luaka Bop 2004)
12. Harmonettes - Can't Go Halfway - Cult Cargo: Belize City Boil Up (Numero Group 2005)

New Music: Lymbyc System, TTC

Lymbyc System - Astrology Days (Mush 2007)

Lymbyc System – Love Your Abuser / Mush

Partially because of time constraints and partially because I like to hear albums pumped through their large speaker system, I have quickly gotten in the habit of spinning my newly received albums during my allotted playtime at Reckless Records. On Friday morning I slid in Lymbyc System’s debut full-length for Mush Records, Love Your Abuser, and was enjoying their captivating melodious music when a customer asked me what was playing. I excitedly told him, and he remarked how much he was digging it and asked what this particular kind of music is called. When I told him it would pretty easily be categorized as post-rock, he just kind of stared at me with a confused look on his face. I then noticed he had pulled an Incubus album from the shelf and decided it was best to start from the beginning, because hey, we all got to start somewhere so why not share a little knowledge and maybe I will spark a more exploratory music fan. (Actually, I can still remember the day my fellow Audiversitarian Jordan explained to me the very same concept). So I detailed how in the late 80s/early 90s alternative rock took stranglehold of the mainstream, and in reaction a new movement began attempting to counteract the easily definable brand of rock by infusing a large amount of influences like krautrock, jazz, ambient, prog, classical, math rock, avant-garde, dub and IDM into an epic statement of instrumental prowess. I talked about Spiderland and Tortoise and Labradford and how the antithesis of the compact rock of the time was too patiently string it out into complex structures with lyrical melodies, and how it eventually became the norm itself and was also dismissed by a new movement in the early 00s. But sadly after all the explaining and detailing, he wasn’t even able to buy Love Your Abuser, because all we had was the promo copy I was currently spinning and it was not for sale. It is really a shame too, because Lymbyc System is a very promising young voice in the rebounding genre and I would have loved to cast him off on his burgeoning musical voyage with them to lead the way (but don’t worry, we special ordered it for him and his trip is merely delayed, not canceled completely).

The core of Lymbyc System is a pair of brothers from Tempe, Arizona, Jared and Michael Bell. Molding their sound since 2001, they have whole-heartily embraced the aforementioned post-rock sound and further infused it with a healthy dose of one of its side products, folktronica. Like most albums in this field, Love Your Abuser is the result of many a rehash with each recording laid down by the Bell brothers, reconfigured and re-recorded and overdubbed, and then re-reconfigured and re-recorded and overdubbed once again, and then re-re-reconfigured… you get the idea. Some of the source material is nearly impossible to decipher listening to the final product, which skips and sweeps and sashays and stutters and swirls in an invigorating blend of soul-sighing melodies and unconventional structures. The groundwork was mostly created with vintage keyboards and wonderfully time-unperfected equipment adding a lovely layer of crunch and crackle to the sugary sweet center. The Bell brothers, talented musicians in their own right, also got a little help from their friends with the similar-minded Dylan Cristy of The Dylan Group and Mice Parade laying down some vibes and Jimmy Lavelle of The Album Leaf, Tristeza and The Black Heart Procession providing his noted forte, which also saves me some time from listing reference points to Lymbyc System’s sound. Really though, the album Love Your Abuser reminds me of the most is the sorely overlooked Easy Pieces from the short-lived Lateduser (featuring Andrew Broder and Martin Dosh) released in 2004 on Merck. Both albums build strikingly moving melodies out of profuse textures and unconventional instrumentation that create nearly tangible atmospheres without meandering on for too long. And that is one of the defining characteristics of Love Your Abuser: quickly making its point and constantly moving to the next thought. It’s a post-rock album that does not muck around too much in slowly drifting ideas, which is a rarity. These songs are rich tapestries of finely interwoven textures that let you discover a new layer with each spin, just like my newly guided friend is going to do when he peels off each layer of post-rock’s history. If he can’t start from the beginning, he may as well start from this excellent summation of ideas that proudly has its roots in such an interesting genre.






TTC - Quand Je Claque des Doigts (Big Dada 2007)

TTC – 3615 / Big Dada

Outside the U.S. market, the sponge-eared kids of France make up the second largest audience for hip-hop and it’s many stemming byproducts. In fact the evolution of hip-hop culture in France is almost an exact parallel to its rise to popularity here in the states, really just a short lag in trends separates the two markets. Hip-hop first appeared in Paris in 1979 with a large number of devoted radio stations emerging not too far behind in the early 80s. Not unlike the jazz scene in the 60s, the French welcomed American rap stars with open arms throughout the 80s long before their home audience did, and they eagerly awaited each concurrent trend within the genre confines. Rap hit the mainstream in both the U.S. and France in the early 90s, both succumbed to controversy as it grew more aggressive and anarchic (ahem, gangsta) as the decade plugged along and finally a very productive underground emerged on each side of the Atlantic in the late 90s/early 00s. In fact, a lot of heads feel the French language is better suited for the lyrical style since it naturally flows much smoother opening up a new world of possibilities for rhyming. And as the last few years has seen an increasing dependency on electro-trashy beats and avant-club music in the American underground, so has it in France (or probably the other way around) and a group by the name of TTC is leading the pack with their contagious analog synth bounce and multiple personality dynamic.

Signed to Ninja Tune imprint Big Dada in 1999 after dropping off a single at their home office, the emcee trio of Tido Berman, Teki Latex and Cuiziner along with their usual helmet-clad DJ, Orgasmic, are releasing their third full-length in four years. Like Ceci N’Est Pas un Disque and Bâstards Sensibles before it, 3615 has completely different appeals depending on your geographic location. If you are sadly stuck in solely the English language like myself, a TTC album is more of an aesthetic attraction. The emcees each have their own personal flow: a raw, crunk-influenced, guttural flow, a more straightforward NYC/east-coast scheme and, my personal favorite, the over-emphatic, kooky, comedic relief voice that really rounds out their appeal. They trade free-flowing Beastie Boys-like rhymes, at least in vibe not necessary lyrically, over electro-euro-trash beats built from analog synths and basic drum machines giving the overall sound a very throwback vibe that rings more an updated 80s party-hop than anything. Joining DJ Orgasmic behind the decks are renowned electronica artists Para One, Tacteel, Modeselektor and Tido all providing their own two-cents, but keeping with the overarching musical theme. Though I have absolutely no idea what in particular they are spitting about, some of the translated track names include “Rub Your Ass on the Ground” and “Strip for Me,” so you have to think it’s got a club-ish swagger to it; maybe not in a Lil Jon way, but definitely the underground equivalent, perhaps a Peaches or the likes. When TTC does it right and matches the quirk level on both lyrical flow and backing track, like the click-and-spring bounce of “Quand Je Claque des Doigts” or the stuttering synth sass of “Une Bande de Mecs Sympa,” it’s undeniably infectious; you are going to dance, laugh, and join in on all the fun-loving exuberance no matter what they may actually be rapping about. But every few tracks you get a “Turbo” or “Ambition” where the synth cascades are over-emotional and even though it’s in French, you can tell it’s cheesy. Thankfully though the prior outnumbers the latter and you get a great pop-club album that is primed for your next rent paying keg-party. Loud, silly, boisterous and even a little thuggish, 3615 makes for an over-enjoyable gulp of party-hop much like that third Jäger-bomb that most likely wasn’t a good idea, but fuck it, you don’t have to work in the morning. And if you are one of the many laptop on-the-cutting-underground-edge loft-party DJs, stick this in your rotation because your hipster crowd will eat it up no questions asked.

Used-Bin Bargains: Jan Dukes de Gray

Jan Dukes de Gray - High Priced Room (Decca 1969; re-released on Wounded Nurse 2002)

Jan Dukes de Gray - Butterfly (Decca 1969; re-released on Wounded Nurse 2002)

Jan Dukes de Gray - Sorcerers / Decca, Wounded Nurse

For me, used-bins aren't just about perusing the local record store or mining your own massive vaults or reading Wax Poetics or even hitting up your favorite torrent hot spots. Sometimes you have to go to places even more mundane than that to find some of the best stuff. Lately, the LiveJournal psych_folk community has been really spot on with some great finds and the latest I've had the pleasure of hearing is Jan Dukes de Gray, a short-lived English band on the famous Decca label. Two of those songs are presented here from their debut and showcase a duo that was about to grow into something otherworldly but had not yet reached full fruition.

Michael Bairstow and Derek Noy were the brains behind the Dukes, two multi-instrumentalists with their origins as rivals of T Rex before they went glam. Not much has been documented on the rivalry and it's supposed that Marc Bolan's origins in London in the 60s probably sprung from the same sort of collective that Bairstow and Noy come from. But as Bolan and his cohorts went glam as time went on, Bairstow and Noy went ever further into the acid-psych realm. Sorcerers was just the start: At 18 songs and with none longer than the concluding track "Turkish Time" at a mere 4m51s, Sorcerers was a gentle, plucking approach to rapid-fire ideas, bubbling out of the times that produced more psych-anything per capita than at any other point in, well, the history of the world.

I've taken to Sorcerers in recent days partly because it is just the opposite of its successor, the sprawling and now-legendary Mice and Rats in the Loft in 1971. Sorcerers is the work of two talented musicians with a bevy of ideas floating around but no idea yet of how they want to showcase it; as such, a variety of sounds permeates the album and it all starts with the trippy cover-art, which doesn't stand out in any particular way when put in context but which fits the album's lack of coherence and thematic elements well. It's the disheveled whimsy of the bongos of a track like the meditative "Trust Me Now" or the dual-lead vocals in "High Priced Room" that are presented here that give this album its charm. "High Priced Room" is the fourth track on the album but it's the first to use these layered vocals for an almost Middle Eastern effect. It's the pan flutes and the nonsensical (or "enigmatic") lyrics that follow up with the title-track, but these sorts of shifts are expected from an album that had 11 songs on its a-side alone. "Butterfly" is tucked far away on the b-side, fading in following "City After 3AM" and, like other tracks on the album, setting a mood of drug-tinged optimism.

But vocals aren't key; in fact, instrumentals often allow breathing space for the listener to take in each instrument almost individually, as it's happening. With barely a celeste, sometimes no percussion and only a few acoustic guitars to guide them, Bairstow and Noy created a rich album to listen and inhabit. Unfortunately, Decca didn't agree: Though they were moving away from the sounds that they were promoting with Jan Dukes de Gray by that point anyway, getting ditched by the label before their second album must have allowed them some kind of creative freedom.

Maybe this is fodder for another edition of Used-Bin Bargains, but in case we never get there, here's the short story: Bairstow and Noy went off the deep-end for 1971's Mice and Rats in the Loft, but they didn't do it alone. With renewed help from another label, Transatlantic, and a fresh drummer in Denis Conlan, Mice and Rats in the Loft was an explosive sonic tour de force that featured only three epic songs in the entire a-side "Sun Symphonica," "Call of the Wild" and the title-track closer. Generally hailed as the band's finest work and one of acoustic psych-folk's hallmark albums (whatever that's supposed to mean), Mice and Rats in the Loft marked the final album for the band. They disbanded shortly thereafter following an obvious lack of commercial appeal that even Transatlantic didn't want to deal with.

Sorcerers remains barely available, only in bootleg form really... But if you can find it in a used-bin, consider yourself a lucky one: Psych-folk elitists (and ex-Decca executives) may not prefer Jan Dukes de Gray's first album to the second one, but having even one is enough to raise a few eyebrows. Though it is unfortunate they lasted just two albums in two years, the band remains massively influential and can be heard in the sounds of modern acid-folkies all over the country. It would've been tough to guess what was to come when Sorcerers first hit the shelves almost unnoticed in 1969.

Singleversity #6

Audiversity’s weekly column on random music in a predetermined number of words between 1 & 150. This week's randomly generated number: 86.

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



Goddamn. It’s 8:30p Friday night. I’m listening and writing and happily propping my feet up after two straight 10 hour workdays and less than 5 hours of sleep between. The clock is already ticking on tonight’s potential sleep since I will be loading in WLUW’s Record Fair at 7a tomorrow, and then helping keep it afloat for the next 48 hours. It Just Don't Stop. Thanks Roots, I need this, even if your Illadelph problems circa ’96 were a bit more substantial than my current bitching.

JR:











Acid Mothers Temple & The Melting Paraiso UFO - Hello Good Child / Does the Cosmic Shepherd Dream of Electric Tapirs?

I just discovered a treehouse in my backyard. Toru Okada had his well and I have my treehouse overlooking an abyss of urban development. It really is like sitting on the edge of the world. Nights like these deserve proper mood music. "Hello Good Child" is a cosmic duet between Tsuyama and Cotton Casino's vibrant souls, floating along all spectral, holding hands in the fifth dimension. It's an anthem to the stars, perfect for skygazing and giving yourself over to the awesome majesty of outer space.

PM:

Hague native Danny Wolfers aka Legowelt looks innocent enough, doesn't he? If only he knew what night terrors he's probably caused people... I found "Valley of Darkness” by blindly stumbling through his massive back catalog (that started around 1998). Tucked away deep on the b-side to his thematic Beyond the Congo 12", “Valley of Darkness” doesn’t need words to give a feel for where it’s heading: Doom-deep bass, paranoid synth pitches, laser-powered beats, and even cats of the jungle. Kurtz gets his 21^st century makeover.

WLUW Record Fair

In Chicago this weekend? Like vinyl (and I know you do)? Come dig, discover and be merry!


(click flyer for more info)

Performance Schedule:
Live Performances and DJ Sets by
Sat. April 14th:
10am Unicycle Loves You
11am Tyler from Pitchfork and Steve from Resident Advisor
12pm Leaves
1pm Pit Er Pat / Evan from Thrill Jockey DJ set
2pm Pit Er Pat / Evan from Thrill Jockey DJ set
3pm Mucca Pazza
4pm Dave Fischoff DJ set
5pm The Brown Party

Sun. April 15th:
10am Reddelicious
11am Ryan from Flameshovel DJ set
12pm Rob from Numero Group DJ set
1pm Rob from Numero Group DJ set
2pm Rue Royal
3pm The Janes Go-Go Dance Troupe / Wayne Montana of The Eternals DJ set
4pm Antelope

Directions

(I'll be spinning randomly in both auditoriums. My official set is Sunday 10a)

New Music: Staraya Derevnya, Kenna

Staraya Derevnya - Traces (Self-released, 2007)

Staraya Derevnya - Onelegged EP (Self-released, 2007)

I've always had a bit of a fascination with Russia. This goes back to around 1993 when I was watching "Wings of the Red Star" in the days when the Discovery Channel was about actually discovering things rather than home-decorating makeovers or high definition blue whales or whatever it is they're doing now. You'd think that the curious history of the MiG-25 or the privilege of walking aboard a Volga-Dnieper Antonov An-124 as a kid would've been enough to spark my interest in the language as well. No such luck: As soon as I hit that Cyrillic alphabet, it was like a brick wall.

And so Russia remains a fascinatingly distant place and paradox, European and Asian and backward and modern and wayward all the same. As the saga with Putin unfolds in the pages of the New York Times Magazine once every two years, its musicians carry on in the Moscow underworld and in the exiled streets abroad. But what do we really know of contemporary Russian music? Most people hear that and think Shostakovitch or Prokofiev if they think anything at all. At worst, they think Gogol Bordello. Yikes.

Maybe Staraya Derevnya isn't at the root of what's happening. Maybe they're totally irrelevant, but I'd like to believe they're not. I'd like to believe that slightly demented piano lines and click-clack bongo percussion and earnest, lo-fi vocals and recordings still have their roots in trad-Russian folk ballads of the peasants that still inhabit the Urals despite the strife and the rush for modernity and the oligarchs and the oil. Their name is Russian, they sing in Russian, it feels like they're singing to Russians... But alas, it is London and Haifa that they call home.

I'd love to be able to point these guys out to you in public. I'd love to tell you their names. But their website and MySpace account (much like their ethos and delivery) are both impenetrable, utterly Russian. What I can discern: They have been around since at least 1999's Expeditions, have a few songs that haven't made it to a record yet, and finished recording this EP in February. They call it acoustic post-punk, and in the first track "Maldives" you can hear that in the scratchy vocals and heavy strumming of the guitars. But "Traces" has to best both the opening cut and the second song, "Offering," with its homemade hissing and four-track charm. It's a beautiful song really, and though Russian is often criticized (like all the Slavic languages) for not sounding "pretty" enough in itself, the two gentlemen I believe to be running this show prove otherwise. The photos of the band on their MySpace page are the same, a visual dichotomy of the music this band offers as a taste of old-world singalongs on the Black Sea clashing with the freak-folk guardians of the new age. It may not be the sound of Russia, but it's a lot closer than gypsy-punk. Spread the word.













Kenna - Black Goodbye Ride (Star Trak/Interscope 2007)

Kenna - The Black Goodbye EP / Star Trak/Interscope

Last Night I Dreamt That Kenna Talked to Me

Patrick: New sacred cow! Is it really...?

Hypothetical Kenna Zemedkun: Funny.

P: Couldn't resist. I thought you were dead! Or rather, I guess I had less freetime to follow your progress post-New Sacred Cow. Whatever happened to you, anyway?

HKZ: The basic background is the eldest son of an Ethiopian immigrant hears U2's The Joshua Tree and flips out, tries to figure out a way to make the same kind of grandiose, sweeping statements with his own music. Lucky for me I met a guy in high school who had the production skills to help out: Chad Hugo. I went on "Subterranean" a few years ago after the "Freetime" video hit and was getting ready to be a big deal. Chad helped me produce the EP, naturally. In 2005 I said Make Sure They See My Face was 95% finished. And then... Then there were label troubles with Star Trak where they delayed it and then in '06 we were still working through them, telling people the record was still coming but it just didn't work out. The "Out of Control" single was released last December on iTunes and that's on this EP too. So we're aiming for a June 5th release date with the full-length, that's what we put on the back of the jewel case for this latest EP anyway. Also, you can lay off the references. I get it, you're witty, you're a blogger, you're important. We all get it.

P: Since you brought it up, I feel obligated as a blogosphericist to point out that you have a lot of disparate influences that you have always hit hard but seem particularly indebted to on this one. People bring up Radiohead a lot, which on something like "Better Wise Up" sounds pretty accurate. So, "Better Wise Up"? Thom Yorke's "Black Swan"? Get that a lot too?

HKZ: Only on my own forums.

P: "Out of Control" starts off like a synth-blasting M83 song before morphing rather quickly into another song hipsters know well, "Losing My Edge." But it sounds more like you copped that directly from Killing Joke's "Change" than from its better-known ripoff. And the explosions to define that, yes, here is the end of the song? A little unnecessary, no?

HKZ: Probably to all of the above. But it's all in what you hear, isn't it? It's easy to say that the subtle things, the musical references that make inadequate people feel better about themselves, that's where all the magic in the music is happening. But sometimes it's the bigger picture. To me, it's about people recognizing that I want people to share in my well-being. I say this on the MySpace, in the mission statement, all of it. I see music as a positive force and I try to play to those strengths. Hopefully everyone takes a little away from it, for their own betterment.

P: "Black Goodbye Ride" is the longest one on this EP, but it's a corker in such a quiet way. Restrained for the most part, not necessarily bombastic or overwrought with dynamics, a coy way to wrap up this very brief EP. Tell me a little bit about what we're supposed to expect for Make Sure They See My Face. Is it more like the slower, the more atmospheric? Or is it in-your-face Paris '07-cum-U2?

HKZ: If I did that, I'd have to let you hear the album. Forget it, I know you're on Oink and Indietorrents.

P: But my ratio sucks on both of them. They'll probably kick me off. Have you seen the rules? Totally stringent! It's like they're...

HKZ: Don't you dare.

P: ...Hell bent on it? Kenna get a witness!

HKZ: We're so finished. You're about to fall asleep anyw

New Music: Vieux Farka Touré, Welcome

Vieux Farka Touré - Ana (World Village 2007)

Vieux Farka Touré – Vieux Farka Touré / World Village

Thanks to Mali’s landlocked geographic position in Western Africa, it is subject to hundreds of different ethnic groups all infusing their own cultural influences to create one nearly indefinable Malian culture soundtracked by a barrage of musical styles. On top of just the indigenous instrumentation, post-World War II Mali was subject to an intermixing of African, American and British soldiers, introducing most importantly the guitar to the Saharan country. Like most pre-60s African countries, and really most countries around the world at that time, dance music was the craze and along with the passed-down Malian traditions, European dances like the rumba, waltz and tango drifted south through Africa. When Modibo Keita became the first president of the newly independent country, he further pushed cultural expression and as well as instigating a roots revival, Cuban music became popular. The 70s saw further diversification with a style eerily parallel to the American blues surfaced as the electric guitar rose in popularity and the continued importation of outside genres. By the time of America’s eye-opening epiphany in the 80s with regard to world music (“Wait! You mean other countries are making interesting music too???”), Malian music was as diverse as ever with fusion, pop, rock and even techno-influenced Mande music being popular at the time. But one man seemed to capture the majority of America’s attention with his distinctly mellifluous and meticulous Malian folk guitar that resembled the American blues with its immensely soulful expression. Ali Farka Touré became an international musical icon and was instrumental in bringing much warranted attention to his home country. Sadly though, he passed away in March of 2006, but thankfully his son Vieux Farka Touré is continuing on his legacy as well as progressing the musical foundation his father established with his eponymous debut album.

After a career of hardships, the last thing the elder Touré wanted was his son to enter the music business, even going to the extent of demanding he become a soldier. Well the creative genes refused to sit idly, and against his father’s wishes, Vieux started first to play percussion before taking up his father’s guitar and attending the National Arts Institute in Bamako. As you would suspect, the music came easily and by the time of his graduation, Vieux was a local celebrity and joined Toumani Diabeté, a renowned kora player (a 21-string harp-lute indigenous to the area), a close friend to Ali and one of Vieux greatest supporters, and his band. After touring internationally with Diabeté and in the waning moments of his father’s battle with bone cancer, Vieux began work on his solo debut with the help of producer Eric Herman and the eventual permission of his father.

As expected, there are quite a few similarities between Ali and Vieux’s guitar playing. The sweet-toned, intensely meticulous and pastoral vibe of Ali’s Saharan blues is passed down to Vieux, who seems bent on not only perfecting his father’s earthy style but also pushing it in directions never before explored. Some of Ali’s last recorded material is present here in duet form with his son. “Tambara” lets the elder take the lead providing tight elliptical flourishes of almost angelic tone while Vieux respectably plays the role of rhythm adding an earnest palette for Ali to embellish on. Later, “Diallo” provides a more upbeat and extended interaction; Ali’s guitar is much more lively with a swirling, tinny approach while Vieux sings in a smooth yet guttural manner, sounding much more aged than you’d expect from the young man.

While the father-son collaborations may be the starting point for most intrigued listeners, the infusion of outside genres, mainly reggae, rock, funk and R&B, are what keep you coming back. The best and most exciting of these hyphenated explorations is “Ana,” a delicious four-minutes of intertwining Malian and Jamaican influences. Beginning somewhat docile with Vieux’s fracture Saharan blues backed by tight reggae upstrokes, it continually builds into a climax of organ flourishes, wah-wah funk and horn embellishments. Everything is tastefully recorded and Vieux grooves along patiently over the juicy bass line unveiling a connection between the two cultures never before explored (at least to my knowledge).

Like Ali, Toumani Diabeté also gets two songs to jam along with Vieux. The renowned kora player effortlessly glides across his 21-string harp, patiently finding his groove and then rapidly improvising with perfected flourishes only achieved when you have been playing an instrument for decades upon decades. He takes center stage on “Toure De Niafunke,” while Vieux provides a warm, subtle rhythm much like on “Tambara.” The young Touré certainly understands his place and rightfully lets the elder statesmen shine. Diabeté also plays on the final track, conveniently named “Diabeté.” Again, the angelic kora is the concentration, but Vieux definitely slips in a little bit of subdued virtuoso himself, momentarily grabbing the spotlight with his crafty rhythm line while Diabeté strategically plans his next move.

With ten songs just under fifty minutes, Vieux Farka Touré’s eponymous debut is a patient album that not only pays rightful respect to his elders, but also acts as a passing of the torch to the young guitarist and even lets him explore a little on his own. The production and recording is pristine, never opting for augmenting studio techniques but masterfully capturing the idiosyncratic tones of each of the individual players. With Ali Farka Touré’s passing less than a year before this album’s release (in February 07), there is also a sense of bittersweet reflection. It is great that the father and son were able to create such wonderful music together, but also makes you think about the possibilities lost because of the elder Touré’s initial stubbornness. Nonetheless, we get to welcome in an exceptionally promising new artist and hopefully Vieux will continue on and progress the tradition Ali Farka Touré started.






Welcome - All Set (Fat Cat 2007)

Welcome – Sirs / Fat Cat

The 20-year stylistic loop phenomenon in independent music is sometimes too eerily spot-on for it’s own good. Sitting comfortable now in 2007, we look back to the late 80s and concurrently the late 60s. Our first cycle back sees the burgeoning alt-pop scene taking hold with the Pixies acting as scene-pavers and the Seattle outcasts banding together for their imminent takeover of the American underground. The glossy, materialistic outer shell of the 80s is giving way to melodic pop hooks strung through raucous, out-of-tune guitars and abrasive yet infectious outbursts of the two-minute pop song. The cycle prior to that, the late 60s, really is the starting point for that exact sound with the influential growth of the underground New York scene spiraling outwards from The Velvet Underground. As well, The Stooges were redefining the possibilities of pop-rock music by dragging it through the dirt, and mainstream pop was growing increasingly more abrasive and mutating in the direction of punk. Now we fast-forward back to present time as the lush and epic indie-pop of the mid-00s is once again heading in an increasingly noisy and concise direction. And though it takes some tunneled vision to really bang home such a loose theory, a record like Sirs from Seattle quartet Welcome only further proves the theorists right.

Welcome’s line-up is straight out of the Pixies handbook: straightforward set-up of guitar/guitar/bass/drums, check; wily frontman with a penchant for odd word-play, check; a female bass player with a hypnotic voice, check; large collection of distortion pedals, check. The basement recording of the album all but wraps it up with the not-quite-lo-fi but certainly not glossy sound and the homespun atmosphere so important to the alt-pop albums of the late-80s/early-90s. But it’s not all gritty two-minute outbursts; there is definitely a healthy serving of recognizable psyche-pop melodies meandering just below the distortion pedals and loose riff exchanges. And as the press release so conveniently states, you can’t spin this album without succumbing to at least a brief nostalgic sigh for the late-60s psyche-pop luminaries like The Creation, Syd Barrett’s Pink Floyd and Revolver-era Beatles (the latter is further embellished with frontman Pete Brand’s Lennon-esque vocals). The greatest lure and dismissal of Sirs is exactly the same: nostalgia for both of the influencing eras.

For me it’s all lure. The first three tracks which clock in at about six-and-a-half minutes combined are instantly attention grabbing. “All Set” opens with choral “ah-yeas,” a crunchy bass line, ping-ponging distorted guitar shards and the snare/tambourine-heavy percussion of the late-60s. Slight psychedelic delay and tape manipulations only further the cause. “Marry Me Men” features Brand’s smoothly gruff vocals drive the song with a splattering bass that plugs along for a minute-and-half before giving away to a little Sgt. Pepper background noise and quickly calling it quits. Bassist Jo Claxton takes over the mic for “Bunky” with her hazed, easy-on-the ears croon; the two-minute song, like the majority of the album, rings along for just enough time to establish itself before cuing down. The two longest tracks (just over four minutes), “First” and “Sirs,” let you know why; the second half of each song is just diminishing instrumental meandering, not necessarily bad, but not really needed either. And though I’m partial to the first half of the album, you could almost call “You With Me” a Revolver b-side, though it’s certainly sloppier than anything The Beatles ever produced.

So that’s basically it. Do you dig late-60s psyche-pop and late-80s underground alt-pop? Well do yourself a favor and pick-up Sirs because it’s absolutely up your alley. Wonderfully sloppy, poppy and choppy, Welcome definitely knows what they are doing musically, but loves to drag it through their dingy basement and string it through their homemade sfx pedals crafting a nostalgic mood but never outright mimicking their so obvious influences. You better start digging out your flannel now because according to the 20-year stylistic cycle, the next wave of grunge is just around the corner.

New Music: Panthers, Earth

Panthers - Listen to Me (Vice 2007)

Panthers - The Trick / Vice

Panthers. Hmm. Well, it's about time, I'll say that much. Maybe I'm in the minority; after all, I never had the pleasure of seeing Orchid tear me up live or even gave a damn about their dogma. They were one of those scene bands I could only respect from a distance because, while they were the best at what they did (Screamo), they almost singlehandedly launched a million awful bands and certainly affected the way hardcore and the independent punk scene saw (and did not see) itself. I don't have that New England scene background, just a boring suburban kid with an unhealthy knowledge of The Smashing Pumpkins and tastes that came around to Orchid just a hair's breath too late. The kids have respect and I finally found mine too. So what better way for the respective members to continue honoring the legacy of this band than by whipping out some cock-rock and throwing a little Baudrillard in for show?

Er, don't ask Ampere. You probably won't catch them dead hanging out in Greenpoint looking pretty for Vice. But Panthers... Panthers pull it off. The Trick is their third argument for their sex n' philosophy pseudo-intellectual R N' R, but if you didn't like 2004's Things Are Strange, chances are you're not going to be tricked into swiping up a copy of this either. And that's fine; at this point, Panthers are established enough (or at least, they believe themselves to be established enough... Although recent tour difficulties and label complications might suggest otherwise) to be able to hone in on a sound they've been trying to master since they first formed in 2002. But who of the Orchid crowd is still listening? And will anyone ever bring up Turing Machine or Pitchblende?

I don't know, maybe that question isn't even relevant anymore. We're half a decade removed from that YouTube video anyone who's tried to relive the glory days will surely have found by now. Can't we all just get over it? Same goes for the others. I've painted Panthers in an awfully negative light thus far, but like a lot of stupid kids I feel obliged to weigh The Trick against Orchid rather than against their growing catalog of songs. That's my mistake, but don't let it be yours: This album is lean, mean and as ferocious as the animal from which they take their name.

I've sat with this album for awhile now and tried to love it more than Things Are Strange, but whereas the scorching album closer "Weird Birds" almost singlehandedly made that album a must for 2004, there are no epic freak-outs here. Panthers might have found their stride, but they've cut all the excess in favor of straight-ahead rock songs that leave little to the imagination. I just don't know what to think.

...And therein lies the ultimate problem with this band: So often they have put all the pieces in one place and Jayson Greene has been spot-on and the riffs have been dynamite. But unlike some people, I don't think they are at their strongest when they simply bring it. I also don't think they've done their best work yet. In one of the most blatant id vs. superego contests in rock, the real joy of Panthers was in seeing them balance out French deconstructionists with the politics of fucking. At this point, they've let the id win: There's nary a word to be found on postmodernism and the intellectual BS I love wallowing in because Panthers have instead opted for vague allusions in favor of outright saying anything about Jacques Attali. I for one hope the victory is temporary and though I'll cautiously endorse The Trick mostly because I at least still believe in this band... The truth is, I think the band has been listening to the media a little too much. What they need is to return to their strengths: A power chord and some tasteful high-brow namedropping are all that separate the best White Panther house-band ripoff I've ever heard and a truly great piece of music. For at least one more album, we'll wait with our heads banging almost in spite of ourselves. Maybe being heavy is the only key.



Earth - Coda Maestoso in F (Flat) Minor (Southern Lord 2007)

Earth - Hibernaculum / Southern Lord

Unlike Panthers, Earth take a different approach to heavy. Panthers stride the line between MC5 swagger and full-on Orchid-esque brutality. No such luck here: Like a lumbering behemoth, the quintessential drone pirates from Seattle led by Dylan Carlson are prepared to drag their feet so slowly you can barely stand it. This is the stuff of which Sunn 0))) (or Mars) and the best of Boris was bred: At only four tracks and standing at what would ordinarily constitute a modest LP in 36 minutes, Hibernaculum is another strong statement from the return of the weighty beasts. Sort of.

I say "another strong statement" because Carlson has never really "broken up" Earth. In essence, he is Earth. Using the same moniker since 1990, he has included a rotating cast of characters during his 17-year run. A few groundbreaking drone works in the early 90s here, a few failed experiments there, a remix LP somewhere in the midst, and now a rehashing of a few older releases; none of this material is new, actually. The first three songs here, "Ouroboros is Broken," "Coda Maestoso in F (Flat) Minor," and "Miami Morning Coming Down," are all much older works from as far back as 1991 - the fourth, "A Plague of Angels," has been tidied up from a tour-only split 12 with Sunn 0))).

It really doesn't matter, because the awesome power of Earth is that they are as timeless as the concept of repetition in art. Droning ever onward, that's the magic to the sword of this stone. Where Mogwai or Slint or Isis are content to move away from the repetition to build to something satisfying, Carlson takes the opposite approach: By never letting go of the reigns, every song always feels prepared to break out into something. It never does. Keep waiting, go home, go away. The joy isn't in the build-up, because there is none. The build-up is the payoff and vice versa, back and forth and over and over and over again like the planets swerving around the sun(n) in eternal orbit. Earth is in eternal orbit because no one is there to tell Carlson to just lay off for a little while, give them something to talk about, give them something to chew the fat about later. But giving in would be giving up on the Earth aura, and that's not something the beautiful piano in "Miami Morning Coming Down" is ready to concede.

Even as "A Plague of Angels" fades in, you know it's a false dawn. There will be plenty of patient guitar notes plucked in excruciating sloth, walking carefully around in endless circles as the kids stand in the crowd watching it all melt together on the accompanying DVD. Carlson explains his love of slow music and if for no other reason, pick up this album for the post-Hex tour footage and interview. The master stroke of this album, no pun intended, might also be the accompanying artwork done by one Mr. Stephen O'Malley and the equally reputable Seldon Hunt. Together, they paint the picture Earth may try to obfuscate in the fog of a cover like Living in the Gleam of an Unsheathed Sword. Yes, this is the brilliance and the detail and the clarity that these reworked songs deserve. In a strange but appropriate juxtaposition, Earth's Hibernaculum could not offer so much without so much minimalism. A hallmark of greatness.

Radio Show Playlist 4/11

6a:
1. The Velvet Undergound - Ocean - Live 1969 with Lou Reed Vol. 2 (Polygram 1988)
2. The Zincs - Hamstrung and Juvenile - Black Pompadour (Thrill Jockey 2007)
3. (((Powerhouse Sound))) - Coxsonne - Oslo/Chicago: (((Breaks))) (Atavistic 2007)
4. Brokeback - The Field Code - Field Recordings from Cook County Water Table (Thrill Jockey 1999)
5. Leaves - Ash Wednesday - Live at The Ice Factory (FP 2006)
6. Chicago Underground Quartet - Tunnel Chrome - Chicago Underground Quartet (Thrill Jockey 2001)
7. Karate - Airport - Some Boots (Southern 2002)

7a:
1. Low Skies - You Can't Help Those People - All the Love I Could Find (Flameshovel 2006)
2. Tinariwen - Imidiwan Winakalin - Aman Iman (World Village 2007)
3. Vieux Farka Toure - Ana - Vieux Farka Toure (World Village 2007)
4. Occidental Brothers Dance Band International - Bombako Awuti Na New York - Occidental Brothers Dance Band International (self-released 2006)
5. Kieran Hebden & Steve Reid - Our Time - Tongues (Domino 2007)
6. The Cinematic Orchestra - All That You Give - All That You Give EP (Ninja Tune 2002)
7. Boom Bip - Roads Must Roll - Seed to Sun (Lex 2002)
8. Bill Callahan - Sycamores - Woke on a Whaleheart (Drag City 2007)
9. The Mountain Goats - No Children - Tallahasee (4AD 2002)
10. Karen Dalton - Little Bit of Rain - It's So Hard to Tell Who's Going to Love You the Best (Koch 1997, originally 1968)
11. Deerhunter - Fluorescent Grey - Fluorecent Grey EP (Kranky 2007)

New Music: Adult., Dan Deacon

Adult. - I Feel Worse When I'm With You (Thrill Jockey 2007)

Adult. - Why Bother? / Thrill Jockey

So its Easter Sunday and I'm sitting here at the computer stuck in an internet-induced malaise, my stomach devoid of the wonderful down-home cooking my folks are dishing out just down the road. I won't be starving for long, just until I can finish this review for Adult's newest. This temporary hunger strike is supposed to get me into a certain mindframe conducive to fully experiencing Adult., I really wanna get up against their brand of blackened electro-punk and exchange knowing glances. I wanna dance because I have to, because the music demands it, overriding any reservations I have about throwing a fit in a public place.

I've been with Adult. with a minute now, first running across Anxiety Always as a wide-eyed freshman thumbing thru the WUSC music library, that album along with the Vanishing's Still Life's Are Falling soundtracking an especially awesome Halloween where I dressed up like a straightedger and made people really uneasy. Having released their first 12" in 1998, Adult. has been at it for a while, always existing smartly at the moment when punk splintered. Post-punk? Check. Industrial? Yeah. Goth? Kind of. These are a few of my favorite things when done right and Adult. manages to be all at once. But don't knitpick, over-intellectualizing sub-genres is sooo 2004. Adult. is a tight package navigating a black sea of now quite divisive musical cliques, they're capable of being loved equally by fans across the spectrum, from Nine Inch Nails to Prurient, Adult. will elbow, kick, and stomp a hole thru your playlists.

Adult. has always specialized in making black hearts beat. Alot of criticism splits hairs about the group's shifting sound but Adam Lee Miller and Nicola Kuperus have been stomping down the same twisted metal highway the entire time. Sam Consiglio or not, things aren't much different. Adult. has a fierce dedication to its craft; whether the record is debated as more electronic or less electronic, the duo has always aimed to make you move with panic attack fervor; the end result is similar whether its four-on-the-floor drum machine beatsss or an emphasis on scuzzy bass guitar thudding.

Why Bother? is yet another nod towards the shadows. Check their myspace for visual queues and clues about the outlook of the album. Its all playful doom and gloom. Sure its dark and moody and all but its really self-aware too. Not to say thats a fault, if they were this purely vitriolic it'd be too good to be true. Motivations aside, Adult. can still kick you square in the crotch. "I Feel Worse (When I'm With You)" is like throwing knives at your S.O. because he left the toilet seat down again and totally missed the target. Thats it, the final straw. Check the cheeky vid for this song on the Youtube front. I'm on this audio/visual tangent because how the song is presented visually can't help but shape criticism, these songs with vids as kind of focal point for us long-winded but short on inspiration blogosphere critics. "The Importance of Being Folk" is a suite of three ambient soundscaping type tracks, short and horizontal, broken up throughout the album, but presented visually to tell a creepy backwoods story with cryptic supernatural happenings. Overall, Why Bother? boasts the band's most acrid electro work to date, whether in grating synth stabs or noisy driving machine beats. Miller's basswork is also stellar, sounding like how a concrete block feels, heavy and something you don't want connecting with your head. And of course, Nicola Kuperus is in fine howling form, crying bloody murder over spilt milk and certainly being the opposite of a cliche. Punks, goths, rivetheads, noise nerds, electro enthusiasts, they all bow down to worship at Kuperus' shitkicking boots.

By now you should know Adult. Take away with you this nugget of wisdom: Adult. is gonna be that band in like ten years (if we're all still here) that people will look back on as being essential. All the microtrends invented by people on message boards will be eaten alive by even more bullshit ephemeral scenes of people pretending that wearing their underwear on their head is the cool thing to do. And it may seem like the thing to do but only for a minute. You'll wake up with your briefs on your head and be a total outcast. Adult. is a band built on strong foundations, embodying many good things like all the bastard children of punk, evolved and fully realized by the duo of Adam Lee Miller and Nicola Kuperus. This is one for the time capsule.





Dan Deacon - The Crystal Cat (Carpark 2007)

Dan Deacon - Spiderman of the Rings / Carpark

I can't get enough Dan Deacon. Dan Deacon. Dan Deacon. Dan Deacon. See? Say that over and over again. Its fun! Thats life thru Dan Deacon's duct-taped glasses, little pixie sticks of fun grow everywhere. Pick them and eat them and get at it. You're only as young as you feel and thanx to Mr. Dan Deacon I'm feeling like eight years old right now. Its Friday night, I got new comix and Dad brought home pizza, things in my simple little world are a-okay. This burst of childhood exhuberance comes courtesy of Dan Deacon's new record, Spiderman of the Rings, out on Carpark May 8th. Its all suicide snowcones and monster trucks, a record of electronic whimsy, sugar-rush giddiness straight to the dome. I just snagged this yesterday and I can't stop bouncing off the walls. If only I had one of those toy basketball hoops in my bedroom. I'd be tearing that shit up right now.

Its impossible not to associate Deacon's music with a feel good childhood vibe. Dude has put out a record called Porky Pig. There you go. Deacon also counts Spiderman as a main influence, not only for the cartoony garishness but especially for Spidey's famous maxim: "With great power comes great responsibility". Kinda gets you all sniffly huh? I think Deacon's music is a large laser machette fighting against a mostly dour culture that tells people to grow up too fast. And somehow its caught up in this potential movement or maybe just coincidence of bands being tagged as "future shock", in reference to Alvin Toffler's 1970 cult sociology hit that warned of the ever-increasing grip technology has on our lives and how the constant accelerating speed of life will lead to total information overload, causing "shattering stress and disorientation" in much of society. I'm not sure its a cure, but Deacon's music is a well-intentioned treatment of pure lasertag love, surely meant to make us jump up and down like kids at play, kool-aid moustaches and all.

See also: Ecstatic Sunshine, Ponytail, DAT Politics, o.lamm, and Grabba Grabba Tape for more pure feeling generators, functioning in the same manner as Mr. Deacon with hopped-up geeked-out rainbow brite jams.

Deacon went to grad school at Purchase College where he was all about electro-acoustic and computer music studies, and Spiderman of the Rings is an exercise in academic electro tomfoolery. Academic as in your wacky English TA that wore goofy glasses and awful sweaters, eyes glazed, living in the wonderful postponed adolescence of academia. In other words, this is all about ideals and being, yes, idealistic about the kind of music that can change someone's general outlook, especially in the live-setting where Deacon's performances are legendarily sweaty and spontaneously combustible. Every show wants to become a huge "Funzone", which from what I've heard about Wham City, the live-in residence throwing shows, art bashes, etc. in Baltimore, the Funzone ideal was actually realized, putting theory to practice (as much as anyone can).

The twelve-minute track, "Wham City", is a sonic mission statement with huge gang vocals like a chorus of teddy bears chanting about this magical glowing castle with a fountain of gold and the sickest cartoon family band of all-time, the Gummi Bears, the Smurfs, motherfucking Shirttails, all jamming out. "Woody Woodpecker" also contributes to the Saturday Morning feel, with, you guessed it, a song based on that laugh, underlined by casio beats and blissful sinewaves. "The Crystal Cat" is my favorite track, hop along to the sound of Surf Cats, a powerhouse song featuring Deacon's talent for vocal processing, sounding like the most rock-n-roll chipmunk ever. "Okie Dokie" and "Trippy Green Skull" sound like futuristic hokey pokey throwdowns, you and your friends wylin' out in somebody's impossibly sweet treehouse. "Snake Mistakes" features a bouncey bassline and "I know, I know, I know" vocal stickiness, catching in your ear like moments of Beck's finer work, definitely leaning towards that easy-going Mellowgold vibe.

Do you still have an imagination? For real, Dan Deacon is like a Peter Pan for our generation. Let it all loose, guilt-free from looking like a spazz because here cool is measured in how much you boogie oogie. Its not overstatement to say Spiderman of the Rings is like going to Showbiz once a year, it carries an electric excitement and the need to just let it all go and hop around like a goofy toddler. Its smart, its fun, its a faceplant into your birthday cake. Dan Deacon, totally bringing the birthday party to full effect.

New Music: (((Powerhouse Sound))), Bill Callahan

(((Powerhouse Sound))) - Old Dictionary (for Bernie Worrell) (Atavistic 2007)

(((Powerhouse Sound))) – Oslo/Chicago: (((Breaks))) / Atavistic

By this point, I’ve written about jazz a good number of times, but every now and again while doing my initial research on an album, I come across a review written by a true jazz critic that makes me hesitate to write anything at all. This is the problem I came across while preparing my critical improv for Ken Vandermark’s latest group (((Powerhouse Sound))), which is actually two collectives of musicians separated by the Atlantic Ocean approaching the same set of compositions. Well Allmusic’s review of the double-disc is amazing; it’s clearly the work of a person who is either a knowledgeable jazz player in his/her own right, or has spent a good chunk of time concentrating on the ins and outs of jazz music. I, on the other hand, rarely write two reviews in a row that are even in the same sonic worlds of each other, so it’s been an inch at a time progression for my critiques on each particular style of music. So while I’m not going to be able to drop such awe-inspiring lines of critique like: “Vandermark finds a natural tension between the constancy of circular rhythm broken by a meta-textual musico-linguistic syntax of individual statements made from the conception of groove that moves out toward something else and finds itself home again in the primary communication at its center,” I’ll do my best to share some knowledge with you.

Ken Vandermark is among the top contemporary jazz musicians who still explore the same spiritual sonic space as the great players of the late 60s/early 70s underground jazz scene. Through his infinitely expressive work with the tenor sax and bass clarinet, he’s one of the few remaining direct links to the groundbreaking work of Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Joe McPhee, Ornette Coleman and Fred Anderson. But being exposed to the modern music scene, Vandermark has had the privilege to see the evolution of post-bop, modern creative, avant-garde and free jazz and link the past and present together into one fiery, cerebral brand of his own music. Leading and contributing to such bands as The Vandermark 5, The Flying Luttenbachers, Spaceways Incorporated, Exploding Star Orchestra, Crisis Ensemble and the NRG Ensemble, to name just a few, more than warrants his controversial reception at just 35 of the MacArthur Fellowship aka the “genius grant” in 1999, an award typically only given to “near-legendary” figures of any age in any field who "show exceptional merit and promise for continued and enhanced creative work" like past music-based winners Cecil Taylor and Anthony Braxton. During the last 18 years, Vandermark has helped to sustain the incredibly heady underground Chicago jazz scene and he looks to continue the tradition with his latest concoction (((Powerhouse Sound))), which bridges the Windy City to Oslo, Norway.

The original line-up of (((Powerhouse Sound))) was actually based in Oslo, not Chicago. In the summer of 2005, Vandermark teamed up with electronic manipulator Lasse Marhaug, drummer Paal Nilssen-Love (of Atomic and a regular contributor to Vandermark’s School Days) and bassist Ingebrigt Håker (of Atomic, School Days and Element), while also bringing along Vandermark 5 bassist Nate McBride (Spaceways Incorporated, Joe Morris Trio/Quartet). There is a definite Orentte Coleman influence within this group, not only in the incorporation of two basses as heard on Coleman’s recent Sound Grammar, but also as we’ll see in a few minutes, a relative homage to In All Languages which is a double album featuring two different groups (an acoustic and electronic) attacking the same compositions. The Norwegian ensemble set out to approach songwriting in the opposite manner of the conventional “from the top down.” Instead, they put a heavy emphasis on the rhythm section, building their ideas for the low end up, which certainly explains the double electric bass line-up. As with most Vandermark 5 albums, he showcases his influences right in the song title and this album is no different. Looking to the dubbed out rhythms of Jamaica, especially the wily compositions of King Tubby, Lee Perry, Coxsonne Dodd and Burning Spear, as well as the collaging techniques of Hank Shocklee of Public Enemy and the ferocious rhythm section of The Stooges, (((Powerhouse Sound))) is a free jazz band built on a thunderous foundation of genres dependent on rhythmic inventiveness like funk, reggae, dub and the original spit-in-your-face ideal of rock ‘n’ roll. This is further symbolized in the album title (((Breaks))), and believe you me, there are some vicious, unruly breakdowns to contend with on this album, especially when looking at the first disc, Oslo.

This first disc with the Norwegian line-up consist of basically three different modes for the band, the heavily rhythmic double-bass breakdowns, the noise disintegration when Marhaug gets the go-ahead to explore his sonic palette, and the culmination of both ideals with Vandermark weaving effortlessly in between with his growling tenor sax. “Shocklee (for Hank Shocklee)” displays this perfectly: the 12-minute song opens slowly with dirty electronic snarls before the rhythm section comes grooving in. One bass lays down your traditional beat while the other circles around menacingly, daring any intruder to attack at will. That intruder just happens to be Vandermark, who comes stabbing in just before the halfway mark, never overshadowing the rhythm section but adding augmenting swabs of melody and harmony. The song comes full circle, first breaking down into the kind of daring, aggressive low-end that made Public Enemy so volatile and progressing to crumble right back into Marhaug’s collaging electronics. “King to Crown (for King Tubby)” flips this structure by book ending the song with the entire group jamming off the booming low end and leaving the electronic improvisations for the creamy center. “Coxsonne (for Coxsonne Dodd),” “Acid Scratch (for Lee Perry)” and “Exit-Salida (for Burning Spear)” all groove on similar patterns, opening with a light bass, drum and sax rhythm that echoes the early days of reggae through a jazz state of mind. Each song also succumbs to noisy outbreaks about three-fourths way though with the latter two highlighting Vandermark’s squealing sax solos. “2-1-75 (for Miles Davis)” (perhaps paying homage to Davis’s two consecutive concerts in Osaka, Japan in February of 1975 released as Agharta and Pangea on Columbia) and “New Dirt (for The Stooges)” both feature scathing tape manipulation strung throughout and the latter adds an inverting effect to one of the basses causing it to bellow and bloat from underneath the rhythm.

The second disc finds Vandermark and McBride returning to their home Chicago scene and teaming up with drummer John Herndon (Tortoise, Isotope 217, Exploding Star Orchestra) and guitarist Jeff Parker (Tortoise, Isotope 217, Chicago Underground). This ensemble takes on the same songs as the Oslo crew, but with a different sonic approach and sometimes in different arrangements of the same compositions; for example “Acid Scratch pt. 2 / Shocklee / Exit-Salida” which obviously combines three of the songs from the previous disc. The only completely new tune on this disc, “Old Dictionary (for Bernie Worrell),” an ode to the one time keyboardist for Funkadelic and Parliament, opens the second half and showcases the similarities between the two groups. Herndon and McBride lock together seamlessly while Parker at many times takes the place of the scratching electronics and Vandermark jumps back and forth from his harmonic stance to acting in the same manner as Håker did as the second bassist. I am a bit partial to this second ensemble partly because it’s considerably more accessible and partly because the groove quotient is upped considerably, and I’m a sucker for a good groove. It should be noted that we are not dealing with Tortoise 2.0 though, songs like “King to Crown pt. 1 / Acid Scratch pt. 2” are comfortably in the free jazz spectrum with the rhythm section providing the thematic chunky chorus while Vandermark and Parker take turns soloing with minute dexterity and sheer technical prowess. “Coxsonne” truly pays homage to the Studio One producer with it’s calm, echoing opening groove and laid-back riddim, even though the eventual blasting breakout sounds more on the Stooges side of things. And that very same exuberance is what makes the real Stooges influence on “New Dirt / King to Crown pt. 2” so invigorating, Parker’s wily electric guitar punch and Vandermark’s raucous yet inherently smooth outbreaks teamed with Tubby-like grooves.

Oslo/Chicago: (((Breaks))) is one hell of an album. Two opposing discs bent on outdoing the other but with the same exact frame of mind. Two opposing cultures sharing the same love of artistic influence and means of expressing it but with radically different results. Two ensembles both highly experienced and instrumentally proficient looking to pay homage to their shared heroes and create something truly individual, hypnotizing and invigorating in its own right. It is an album built from the ground up, low end to high, rhythm to melody, and influence to individual. It is an album that bridges continents, cultures, styles and feelings, and succeeds wildly.







Bill Callahan - Sycamore (Drag City 2007)

Bill Callahan – Woke on a Whaleheart / Drag City

New Weird America allows a myriad of outside genre influences to seep into the psychedelic folk foundation. Swashes of free jazz, metal, noise, tropicália, electronica and other seemingly alien styles have regularly been incorporated within the very loose boundaries of the genre, and its a musical movement that has come to dominate the independent scene in the last five years. Bill Callahan predated this latest trend by a good fifteen years, building a solid following under his Smog and (smog) aliases by a slew of cassette only releases in the late 80s and early 90s before signing to Drag City around 1992 and continually experimenting with his odd, lo-fi singer/songwriter status. From his early days as a Jandek-influenced free-folk purveyor to his more recent albums that explored more melodic and lush arrangements to his continually evocative narratives, Callahan, like John Darnielle of The Mountain Goats, seems to live outside of the New Weird quirk collective simply because they have been plugging along and living in their own insular worlds for so long. It would be a mistake to group them with any trend even if they share similar characteristics... well, except perhaps with each other. But as we have seen before, their influence certainly does not go unnoticed, and with his first official full-length released under his proper name, I hope all the New Weirdos are paying attention to Bill Callahan because his gospel-folk maybe the latest hybrid genre to arise within their stylistic confines.

The first four songs of Woke on a Whaleheart are phenomenal. Easing his way into this new musical approach, “From the Rivers to the Ocean” slowly laps and layers forward; first the melancholy piano, then the reverberant snare and finally Callahan’s croaking baritone opens the song into an almost Cash-like ballad. Leaves of electric guitar and lap steel gently float by and about halfway through the song climaxes with these ghostly gospel echoes care of Olivet Baptist Church’s Deani Pugh-Flemming and a sashaying country-folk violin provided by Elizabeth Warren. It’s six-and-a-half minutes of riverside balladry and it just soothes the soul. “Footprints” is a bit more aggressive with its foot-stomping beat and playful spirit. Both Pugh-Flemming and a raw electric guitar have increased roles, the former providing colorful embellishments to Callahan’s more charismatic lines and the latter adding a crunchy layer to the otherwise pie-like material. The first single from the album which was previewed on the previously released EP of the same name, “Diamond Dancer” features a great vocal hook from Callahan which acts as a reassuring spirit to the otherwise tension-filled track. Then we get to my favorite, “Sycamore,” five-and-a-half minutes of spine tingling, ping-ponging guitars and Callahan’s soothing, sap-filled baritone. He even gets a bit sassy with the much-needed help of Pugh-Flemming for a great bridge of lyrical sincerity. Everything sounds so unforced and natural, and the free spirit is downright infectious.

Not that the second half is a stark contrast from the first four songs, but I do believe it’s a step down from the first half of the album. The highlight is definitely “Day,” which motors around on an M. Ward like piano roll while Callahan’s patiently paced lyrics awkwardly counteract the rollicking music. And that opposition of what you expect from Callahan and the actual music presented here really is the majority of the appeal in this album. Though it has definitely been a slow progression, comparing Callahan’s early recordings to Woke on a Whaleheart is near impossible. His earliest 4-track recordings creaked of alienation and insecurity, while on this album he sounds confident, assured and pretty damn playful. And as I said before, the spirit is fucking infectious. I mean hell, I spent the majority of last week repeatedly singing “Like Sycamoreeeeeeeeees.” It seeps into your brain and the hook just sits on repeat, which would be annoying if it wasn’t so damn sincere. These wonderful vocal hooks are scattered throughout Woke on a Whalehorse, and different one seems to take the spotlight with each concurrent listen. For a man who built his foundation on lyrical prowess and not really catchy but mesmerizing with a voyeuristic-like quality, that’s worth mentioning. It’s a wonderful thing to listen to Callahan’s progression from Jandek comparisons to Nilsson parallels, and it’s been a maturing process captured on tape. It is a nearly 20-year tale of self-discovery with a wonderful accompanying discography.

Used-Bin Bargains: Dr. Alimantado - Best Dressed Chicken in Town

Dr. Alimantado - Best Dressed Chicken in Town (Greensleeves 1977, recorded 1974)

Dr. Alimantado - I Am the Greatest Says Muhammed Ali (Greensleeves 1977, recorded 1973)

Dr. Alimantado – Best Dressed Chicken in Town / Greensleeves

So I’m slightly cheating with this week’s entry; I did not cop this from the used bin this particular week as the mission statement for this column suggests. I actually came across it a number of years back, not too long after it’s 2001 re-release date, and way before I was able to put it in any sort of context within the my musical knowledge. Over the years I’ve picked up bits and pieces of information on Dr. Alimantado, one of the most interesting figures in popular reggae music from the 60s and 70s, sometimes even rivaling the insane biography of the unparalleled Lee “Scratch” Perry, a close compatriot and collaborator. A recent interview in Wax Poetics along with a growing internet interest in the Jamaican toaster and a soapbox to now stand and shout upon has led me to finally tackling one of the most prized used bin finds of my early college years, Dr. Alimantado’s Best Dressed Chicken in Town. Not extensively rare by any means but very much under the radar, the quirky, jerky toasting of James Winston Thompson over eclectic backing tracks provided by some of the most renown Jamaican producers including Lee Perry, King Tubby and Scientist adds up to one of the most idiosyncratic and unique voices in reggae history, and it is certainly worth our time to do a little exploring within the legend.

James Winston Thompson aka Dr. Alimantado aka Youth Winston aka Winston Cool aka Ital Surgeon aka Prince Winston aka Ras Tado aka probably a dozen other monikers I’ve missed was born in Kingston, Jamaica in 1952 and grew up in one of the most notorious ghettos of the city’s west side. A wily youth raised by his mother in the typical Jamaican fashion, Thompson bounced around the Caribbean island exploring his roots and working countless odd jobs, not to mention a healthy dose of rambunctiousness and youthful tyranny. A distant relative of the great Marcus Garvey (cousin of his mother’s grandmother), a symbol of self-determination who started Universal Negro Improvement Association, Thompson was the son of a well-off Jamaican woman of African and Trinidadian descent and a half-Ghanaian, half-Jamaican Rastaman. His paternal grandfather was a doctor in Ghana before moving to Jamaica at the request of his wife, a man Thompson would idolize with his most renowned moniker, Dr. Alimantado.

Like most Jamaican legends, the actual story is a bit… well hazy. Different biographies reveal sometimes-conflicting stories, and Thompson’s entry into the world of music is no different. One interview reveals that he was lured to the dancehall scene as early as three or four, though I find that a little hard to believe, but either way, Thompson was interested in the world of music at a young age. After a chance meeting with his father, he gradually gravitated toward the Rastafarian religion and spent much of his childhood rebelling from his Christian-oriented grandmother by growing dreads (and then repeatedly getting them chopped off in punishment) and running away from home. By the early 60s, Thompson was basically a street urchin, finding work when he could, stealing when he couldn’t and attending dances in the meantime. A chance encounter with legendary toaster King Stitt who deejayed for Sir Coxsone’s Downbeat led to Thompson’s first stage performance when he chatted Psalms 1 and 2 over ska sides. Inspired by the crowd reaction, he became a freelance deejay being schooled by legends like U-Roy and eventually becoming a star himself heralded by Jack Ruby, the producer not the assassin, among others and working with some of Jamaica’s top-ranking sound systems.

Though recording sporadically in the 60s, Thompson would not establish himself as an artist in his own right until hooking up with the legendary Lee “Scratch” Perry in the late 60s. Their first sessions together proved promising as they recut Junior Byles’ “Place Called Africa” into “Chapter 3 of Africa,” one of Thompson’s first island-wide hits. Other significant releases from this era include his contribution to Byles’ other smash hit “Beat Down Babylon,” collaborating with Perry and Hortense Ellis (then known as Mahalia Saunders) on “Piece of My Heart,” and one of the first deejay records released in praise of the Rastafari faith, “Maccabee The Third,” recorded over Max Romeo’s “Maccabee Version” rhythm. By the early 70s, Thompson had fully converted to both the Rastafarian religion and the Dr. Alimantado moniker and sought out full control of his own work. He formed two labels, Ital and Vital Foods, and began to barter for choice cuts of rhythms from other producers, including spending an increasing amount of time at Perry’s Black Ark studios where the two infinitely creative minds started to produce songs together.

This brings us to the era that the relative greatest hits compilation, Best Dressed Chicken in Town, stems from to showcase Thompson’s most fruitful years. Officially released in 1977 as Greensleeves 001, the album pulls tracks from 1973 to 1977 stopping just before his international hit, “Born for a Purpose,” which we’ll get to a little later. The centerpiece of this cult classic is obviously the opening title track from 1974, in which Thompson utilized a continuous, triple-tracked stream of multi-toasting over Perry’s heavily dubbed-out rhythm track of Horace Andy’s “Ain’t No Sunshine.” Inspired by a well-known radio poultry advertisement, Thompson and Perry crafted one of the most individual and quirky pieces of reggae mania that would stand as a testament to both men’s shared mad scientist-like creativity. Only three other of the included tracks on this compilation were born in the Black Ark studio, 1973’s “I Am the Greatest Say Muhammad Ali” and “Ride On” and 1974’s “Can’t Conquer Natty Dreadlocks.” Both of the 1973 tracks stem from the same piece of amazing dubbed out funk provided by Perry himself. “Ride On” features Alimantado’s smooth singjaying (sing-toasting) with Jah Woosh and Jimmy Radwell providing backup vocals. It’s a laid-back track expressing a love of unity, but given free reign of the track, Perry reimagined it into something truly amazing. “I Am the Greatest Says Muhammad Ali” is one of those Perry dubs you have to hear to believe, a bone crunching guiro forefronts the psychedelic funk ebbing in the background; wah-wah guitars, muted brass and bites of organ all take momentary turns in the spotlight further cementing Lee Perry’s unparalleled studio magic. 1974’s “Can’t Conquer Natty Dreadlocks” was more a product of Thompson’s creativity than Perry’s though as he spins Delroy Wilson’s “Trying to Conquer Me” into a soulful pronouncement of his Rastafarianism.

The earliest of the tracks culled on Best Dressed Chicken in Town were actually recorded at King Tubby’s, mostly from 1972 and 73, right before his relationship with Perry bloomed. The earliest available here is the vibrant self-produced “Ital Galore” that was no doubt a dancehall favorite, in which Thompson’s off-tune croon swirls around echoing horn riffs and up-beat keyboard chops. Tubby engineers some more magic on 1973’s “Plead I Cause,” which once again utilizes Andy’s “Ain’t No Sunshine” rhythm into a strikingly religious testament that asks Jah to actually intercede all that oppose him. 1975 proved to be another productive year for Thompson in Tubby’s studio where he self-produced three of his most notable concoctions, “Poison Flour,” “I Killed the Barber” and “Johnny Was a Baker.” Riding the riddim of the 1968 hit “The Man Next Door” by The Paragons, Alimantado dubbed Horace Andy for the hook and worked with Tubby protégé “Prince” Phillip Smart to piece together a hypnotizing, bubbling call-out to his fellow Rastafarians to not fear the attacks on their people because Jah would protect them. Engineered by Buddy Lee at Tubby’s, “I Killed the Barber” continues Thompson’s heavily Rastafarian outlook. Utilizing Jackie Edwards’ “Ali Baba” for the hook and riddim, he explains that though he sees nothing wrong with the death of the local barber (a position disapproved of by the Rastafarians who look upon their hair as faithful symbolism), it was actually the baldhead Tom who killed him. A confusing story yes, but catchy as hell, and it notably uses clanging sheet metal to ape the sound of gunshots, which is a technique that would be used often for years to come.

There are few later tracks also included that were neither recoded at Perry’s or Tubby’s, like 1976’s “Gimme Mi Gun,” built from Gregory Isaacs’ “Thief a Man” at Channel One, and “Unitone Skank,” which found Isaacs and Thompson working together on an original tune. The compilation closes with 1977’s “Tribute to the Duke,” an A-side dub featuring the Channel One studio band, The Revolutionaries, helmed by Alimantado. But beyond this comp, 1977 was a tumultuous year for Thompson as he was nearly paralyzed but used the experience to produce his only international hit, “Born for a Purpose.” On the day he was slated to rehearse for his first show at Jamaica’s main theater, the Carib, he not only was resuscitated after nearly drowning in the early morning, but was struck down and dragged behind a bus while walking home; according to his Wax Poetics interview, he believes it was because he was flying his dreads while walking in the streets, a statement not too popular at the time. The song came to him while he was recovering and legend has it that he had to drag himself across his house, due to the ineffectiveness of his crippled legs, to find a pad and pencil to write it down. Recorded at Channel One during a free session (basically out of charity and respect), the song, which proudly explains “if you feel that you have no reason for living, don’t determine my life,” captured the ideals of the burgeoning UK punk scene and took off in the British Isles. Sex Pistol Johnny Rotten further spread the word when he named it among his all-time favorites during a radio interview, and The Clash even mentioned him in the song “Rudie Can’t Fail” with the line: “Like the doctor who was born for a purpose.”

Thompson’s recorded output significantly slows starting in the late 70s. He relocated to Lodon in 1978 and started his ISDA label, which is also about the time he hooked up with Greensleeves (who he signed with because they gave him the most freedom though he was at the same time being courted by major labels like Virgin, Island and EMI) and released Best Dressed Chicken in Town as their first official discography entry. During the 80s, he spent most of his time in Britain, released the In the Mix dub series and worked with lesser known DJs and toasters like Clint Eastwood, Jah Stone and Trinity. As the years passed, the musical output slowed and Thompson traveled in increasing spurts exploring most of Europe and North Africa. Though we have yet to see any actual new music, he is apparently setting up a new studio to cultivate new talent and record more of his wholly individual sound. One can only hope that an immensely creative mind like that of Dr. Alimantado will once again grace us with his quirky, rambunctious and infectious musical stylings.

For more information please visit:
www.doctoralimantado.com
www.greensleeves.net
Wax Poetics #19, “Medicine Man” by David Katz
www.waxpoetics.com

Threeversity #5

Audiversity’s weekly column on random music in a predetermined number of words between 1 & 150. This week's randomly generated number: 96.

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



Jorge Dalto - I've Got You on My Mind - Chevere (United Artists 1976)

While I had no intentions of spinning this into an ad for WLUW’s Record Fair next weekend, this song just sets it up so perfectly. I copped this LP at a record fair put on by my previous station’s (WUSC) purge of their library, and it was definitely the diamond in the rough sack of records I left with. A tasty bite of Latin jazz-fusion, Argentine-born keyboardist Jorge Dalto joins Bernard Purdie and Ronnie Foster for some swirling synthesizer soundscapes. Funky like a Sonic theme song, it’s a testament to what wonderful surprises crate-digging can unearth.

PM:

Jon Brion, a guy probably best known these days for his work with Fiona Apple Kanye West, once helped make a movie score I consider one of the finest in the last decade: 1999’s “Magnolia” was a beautiful, bizarre and oft-maligned film that never gets old. Part of the reason is Brion’s score, always bubbling beneath the surface of sounds to add that extra bit of tension without distracting the viewer. “So Now Then” is featured toward the finale, but its job is the opposite: Explain, comfort, resolve. Few instrumental pieces have touched me as immediately.

JR:

So like all us Audiversitarians, Jordan is a workaholic. We all work multiple jobs to pay the bills and write in the meantime, so on occasion the music slips our mind like it did today for Jordan’s entry. It’s 33 degrees here in Chicago and my ass is obviously planted on the couch, so I’ll just toss another random mp3 at you in his place. This time around we get The Chosen Few’s way too edited-down cover of the Shaft theme song found on the cramped Blunted in the Bomb Shelter compilation culled by Madlib. Enjoy.

New Music: Dntel, The Skull Effect

Dntel - Natural Resources (Sub Pop 2007)

Dntel - Dumb Luck / Sub Pop

Life is Full of Possibilities. "(This is) The Dream of Evan & Chan." The Postal Service. Give Up. Wouldn't it be great if every review said this in the first line for Jimmy Tamborello's latest Dntel release and then didn't mention it again? Is there anyone who isn't tired of hearing how the monumental success of Give Up (second only to Bleach in Sub Pop's discography!) has made Tamborello one of indie's biggest names? Dntel just seems like a machine pitch for reviewers because, what the hell, everything has to measure up to Give Up now. If it's not as instantly brilliant as "Brand New Colony" or whatever then it must mean he's "trying something different." So there it was: Every review you'll ever read for Dntel in about five sentences.

Unfortunately, Dntel and The Postal Service (and Figurine, and James Figurine) are all inextricably linked by Tamborello's boardwalking. The guy has always been a meticulous producer dating back to his earliest work under the moniker as a kid fresh out of high school in the mid-90s. Dntel (or "don't tell," or nothing since Tamborello initially meant it to mean as much) is his oldest alias, and though it's no longer his most famous, there's no doubt he has to take a certain amount of pride in the limited body of musical magic he's managed to get out for it: 1999's Early Works for Me if it Works for You, Life is Full of Possibilities, two EPs, two singles. But those were all done in the days when glitch was still a relatively new idea that hadn't quite infiltrated the pop spectrum. Electronica was still mutating, still coming along. Pro Tools software cost $795. Different days, my man. Different days.

Six years on from his groundbreaking sophomore album comes Dumb Luck. You can do your own speculating on what the title means, but know this: The songs he's put together here (albeit with the help of a host of friends) are beautiful and elegant and there's no dumb luck in that. Tamborello was as careful with the details as he's ever been for this album, and it sounds as good as anything else he's put out. You may have already heard the title-track; that's just the first in a series of atmospheric songs that occasionally change pace but most often have at their core a steady beat that lets the melody swirl around it instead. Pure hypnosis.

"Rock My Boat" is an interesting example featuring Mia Doi Todd. The slowest song on the album (but also one of its shortest), "Rock My Boat" sounds exactly like its title, easing gently in and out of the troughs of white noise waves as the breeze blows back your hair and the clouds float by. Part of Tamborello's appeal for me is how he doesn't have to trick out a song with microtechnics to make it engrossing. Sometimes all it takes is a little vinyl hiss to make what would otherwise be a curious, horn-driven ballad like "Natural Resources" feel warm and approachable. For a guy who's built a reputation on the subtle (Mistake Mistake Mistake Mistake is such a Berlin-based album that you sometimes hardly notice it's on), it's these basic touches that keep the listener focused through the slower first half before the expected beats and beeps kick in for the finale.

As I mentioned, it's not all Tamborello. Of course, it never is: From Mia Doi Todd to Grizzly Bear's Ed Droste to Mystic Chords of Memory to Conor Oberst to, yes, Jenny Lewis, this album is awash in guest appearances and friends in high places to drop a vocal or two. But as it's always been with Dntel, nobody's overpowering the music; this was especially a shock with Oberst, who I thought for sure would flip out with another one of his "heart-wrenching" moments, but even Conor knows what restraint means, and the metronome-like "Breakfast in Bed" is all the better as a result. This whole album is better as a result. Maybe he'll finally get the critical shaft for that second Postal Service LP due later this year, but that would be dumb luck of a different kind. Tamborello's a solid producer and his faultless attention to detail sustains itself for at least one more album. There's no reason to think that, nearly 20 years on from his first informal musical forays, he will suddenly catch himself out with The Postal Service. If Life is Full of Possibilities is anything like Dumb Luck, 2007 is going to be a big year for Tamborello. Go get 'em, Jim.












The Skull Defekts - Sex Fracture (Release the Bats 2007)

The Skull Defekts - Skkull / Release the Bats

The Skull Defekts are a different story. Göteborg, Sweden isn't anything like LA, and Skkull probably captures this difference as dramatically as anything else. Hell, it's still winter out there... And though this weekend promises a white mix of its own Stateside, the effect won't be quite the same. Unless you live in Minnesota.

Now The Skull Defekts aren't entire unknowns. The core quartet (Coretet? Somebody take that for a hardcore cover band in love with Kieran Hebden) of Henrik Rylander, Joachim Nordwall, Jean-Louis Huhta, and Daniel Fagerstroem (who technically wasn't on Skkull but who is counted as a member) have been in a multitude of acts in and around the Göteborg scene for quite some time. Kid Commando, Union Carbide, Cortex, Trapdoor Fucking Exit, on and on it goes. They've been out and about too, assisting Damo Suzuki live and aiding Norway's "jazz and beyond" guy Lasse Marhaug on occasion. With a few releases behind them and enough live experience to warrant a change in formula, it was time to step in a new direction. Skull finds it.

Whereas Dntel uses glitch and warm electronic windshield wipers to glaze over the dirt of every day creating an idyllic world of either crisp mountain air or blissful summer sunsets, The Skull Effect's glitch is a grinding, tortuous walk through the Amazon. The beads of sweat pour down and the claustrophobia of the jungle takes its hold right from the outset of "Sex Fracture." You just don't get any breathing room and, in the best traditions of Wolf Eyes or a more bitter Black Dice, you never feel comfortable in the realm of the Skkull. No coincidence that they share common ground with Ann Arbor's finest, either: They actually did a split LP together last year. The Fang Bomb release might've done something to them: This is a much more minimalist approach than in past releases and the drone of each of these four songs, switched up only once for the broken toybox experimentation of "Breathing Your Face," is relentless. But relentless in a good way, because this stuff is still as heavy as ever and at the end of the day that's what you should want from a Skull Defekts album.

Though it came out in February, Skkull still has a hold on me even now. The buzzing cicadas of "Six Six for Eyes" and the low-end wavelengths that dominate this album are just what you need to frighten the fuck out of your neighbors and get the parents off your case about "what you're going to do now that you're graduating." Or maybe that's just me. Either way, The Skull Defekts are a proven method for warding off the weak and making the Cheshire cat grin that accompanies a Dntel album disappear almost instantly. Yin and yang, that's all it is. A question of balance, an answer of skulls. You can't fracture what's already broken.

New Music: Cornelius, Silmaril

Cornelius - Music (Everloving 2007)

Cornelius – Sensuous / Everloving

Oh the cut-and-paste pop song; it very well may be the most pleasant product of the last twenty years of music making. As technology advanced, artists were not only able to refine their compositions after converting it to 0s and 1s, they were able to completely deconstruct every element of the song. Today's musician is far from finished after recording; days, weeks, months and sometimes years are spent rearranging, reimagining, restructuring and recontextualizing those snippets of wavelengths, and very often the final product is a far cry from the initial idea. And with any new approach to recording music, new schools of post-production techniques have surfaced, from the minute, magnifying glass editing of your Matmoses to the heavily layered abrasions of your Kid606es and everywhere in between. Post-pop is a force to be reckoned with and it opens entire new worlds of architectural possibilities for the technological savvy musician. Japanese cut-and-paste pop aficionado Cornelius has been purveying such aural possibilities since 1993 and his kaleidoscoping compositions have been schooling fans and aspiring producers ever since.

Raised just outside of Tokyo, Keigo Oyamada is very much a product of the Shibuya-Kei Japanese pop phenomenon. Like his contemporaries the Pizzicato Five and Cibo Matto, Oyamada was heavily influenced by the colorful, collaging influences of lounge-pop and urban electronica, mashing together the sweet melodies into refracting, complex arrangements that could only be drawn back to the Japanese imagination. He broke stateside with 1997's Beck-ish Fantasma via Matador and solidified his place among pops most impressive post-producers with 2002's excellent Point, which found the quirky musician significantly mellowing out and exploring especially Brazilian melodies and ambient noise. Sensuous continues down this trail, finding Cornelius's arrangements as pristine as ever and proceeding down the path of patience only accessible with age and experience. I don't want to say he's reached the peak of his potential, but this is the twiddling, exotic, playful and organic album we've been patiently waiting from Oyamada all these years.

The CD comes embedded with a music video of the first single, "Fit Song," a skeletal funk-pop piece with swashes of 80s synthesizer. The visual interpretation consists mostly of stop animation using household items ranging from sugar cubes to toothbrushes to reanimated rhino beetles that had no doubt already succumbed to the insect collectors' killing jar. But the sheer fluidity of the video is unbelievable; if it was actually made using the stop animation technique and not a digital editor (though I seriously doubt it), someone spent many an hour agonizing over each frame, which conveniently makes a good parallel to Cornelius's use of samples. When sampling his own instrumental prowess, Oyamada appears to clip every loop just short of its natural decay. The phrase is pristinely rounded off and the originating source is easily decipherable, but his partial selection technique keeps the music innately obtuse and unconventional. So when he approaches a song like "Music," which is a pretty straight-forward tune of mellow Brazilian pop strung through Japanese ideals, all of the lush acoustic guitar strums, synthetic pads and vocal harmonies are clipped strategically and pieced backed together in a collage-like manner to create a delicately jerking pop song. He frequents the laid-back pop-funk apparent in "Fit Song" on a number of occasions, especially effective on onomatopoeic "Beep It." The aptly titled "Breezin'" drifts along with choicely manipulated cheesy-80s-synth-pop source material while Oyamada coos along sounding mostly like Caetano Veloso singing in Japanese, and "Wataridori" could double as animatronic porn music. Album capper "Sleep Warm" is also noteworthy as Oyamada reimagines the 1958 Rat Pack classic of the same name. Utilizing a faux-orchestral arrangement and a healthy amount of Vocoder, Oyamada creates a lullaby for robotic Japanese toys everywhere.

Cornelius cleverly toes the line of cheesy synth-pop and intriguing post-pop with Senuous, and I'd venture to say it's his most realized production to date. He very much taps the curiously engaging synthetic bossa nova coming out of Brazil in the late 80s, but updates it for the new millennium and douses it with a paint bucket full of Shibuya-Kei. It's both organic and electronic, jerky and buoyant, and million other seemingly opposite characteristic pairs made possible through modern recording techniques. It is whole-heartily the work of a sound designer rather than just a musician.






Silmaril - Plymouth Bay (Locust 2007, originally 1973)

Silmaril – The Voyage of Icarus / Locust

So while I'm a pretty big geek about a lot of things, my level of Tolkien geekery is not nearly high enough to give you a proper summation of the exact story of the Silmarils and their relationship to the ridiculously popular Lord of the Rings series. I read The Hobbit years ago and I've seen all three of the movie renditions of the lengthy sequel, but a comfortable understanding of Tolkien's epic legendarium is still a very far cry from my knowledge. But thanks to my mad Wikipedia skills, I have been able to dig up at least a vague description of where we are coming from with an obscure Milwaukee psychedelic folk band and the relationship to their chosen band name.

According to the Wikipedia skills for Silmaril, "[they] are three fictional sacred objects in the form of brilliant star-like jewels which contained the unmarred light of the Two Trees." Two Trees? Yeah, I have no idea either, but continued research reveals they reside in a common mythological element signifying a connection between heaven and earth, bringing order and the divine to terrestrial earth and must be protected at all cost. Okay, so that makes these Silmarils pretty important, but wait! Two of the three were destroyed, so now we are in a bit of a potential apocalyptic pickle. And if I understand this correctly, which I must admit I'm not too confident about, the third and now very important Silmaril was forged into a certain ring you may be familiar with if you've seen the movies/read the books.

Alright, so this collective of musically inclined Milwaukeeans are some serious fantasy geeks, that's not that exciting since Tolkien geekery may be at an all time high these days. Yes, but this Midwest band is also made up of devout Catholics and a lead singer who is torn between his innate homosexuality and his overtly conservative ideas. So now the plot thickens, this legend becomes significantly more interesting and the music that strings it all together begins to come into play. Inspired by the Incredible String Band and the Grateful Dead, Silmaril crafts coffeehouse psychedelic folk with Christian, medieval and operatic influences, not to mention a love for exotic instrumentation and a desire to experiment with musical elements and themes. Culled from the band's sole self-released album, Given Time or the Several Roads in 1973, and the unreleased follow-up No Mirrored Temple, Locust's The Voyage of Icarus will be the first real exposure for the short-lived spiritually confused band, but as they say, better late than never.

Far from the epicenter of acoustic-tinged psychedelic rock in the early 70s, NYC's Lower East Side and San Francisco's Haight Street, frontman Matthew Peregrine (born Jim Boulet), Tom Tews and Michael SanFilippo met in their youthful days spent at Catholic youth retreats. While honing their skills by aping Incredibly String Band songs, multi-instrumentalist William Pint and Mary Ann Filo joined the group under the moniker, Dark Star (yes, after the Grateful Dead song). Filo was quickly ousted by Tews’ girlfriend Sharon Larke (this is shaping up to be some serious Behind the Music drama), the classically trained Mike Krukowski also jumped on board and they thankfully adopted the Silmaril alias. Jamming together with such varying degrees of musicianship and instrumentation, which included a myriad of strings like moon guitars, banjos, fiddles and sitars along with light wind instruments like recorders and kazoos and even on occasions a light-flashing synthesizer or a pump organ, their haunting, trickling, spiritual psychedelic folk came to be.

Bitten by the fantasy bug, the band mixed mystical fairy tales with Christian undertones creating an odd, deeply religious but thoroughly confused ideal within their music. As they began to record Given Time or the Several Roads, frontman Peregrine became involved with Catholic Pentecostalism, a growing charismatic and outlandish branch of Christianity whose stage show heavily influenced Peregrine’s thinking. He also married a close friend because “God instructed him to” further suppressing his homosexuality. Inward tension within the group and the confused inner demons of each of its individual members made for strikingly emotional recordings, and further emphasized by using hauntingly sparse instrumentation. Tracks like “Living Stone,” no doubt referencing both their namesake and Jesus, consisting of no more than delicately plucked acoustic guitar, renaissance-y organ and a vocal duet between Peregrine’s low-key tenor and Larke’s operatic voice. The concentrated banjo twang of “Harrow Hill” is almost Fahey-like before a recorder comes swooping in transforming the tune into some late-night Shire music. Then there are the more exotic songs, like the title track’s mix of droning sitar and Peter, Paul and Mary folk or “Plymouth Bay,” which mixes European string influences with psychedelia.

The latter half of the album features an increasingly growing Christian rock and medieval influence usurping the fantasy stronghold. After recording their unreleased sophomore effort, Peregrine’s marriage broke up, and the group appropriately joined a traveling Renaissance Faire. By the end of the 70s, Silmaril disbanded and Peregrine ended up in Houston finally fully embracing his homosexuality and joining the leather community of the city. He continued his artistic endeavors and eventually ended up in DC where he succumbed to an AIDS-related illness in the mid-90s. The rest of the group continues to make music in varying genres and situations.

With the current climate of New Weird America who share similarly mix thematic influences like Christianity, the Renaissance and fantasy worlds of all kinds, I can easily see the warrant in a re-release like this. Silmaril also share musical elements with this recent movement: psychedelic folk, hymnal emotion, and exotic ventures into European and Indian styles. If you are a fan of acts like Joanna Newsom, Fursaxa, Devendra Banhart and the long list of other freak folkers who I am not familiar with, this is definitely worth your time as a starting point for the genre they’ve since swirled into something truly epic. Silmaril’s back story is as enticing and hypnotic as their dark, delicate music and unless you are up for some serious digging to try and surface an original wax copy of their sole self-released LP, I’d pick up this disc.

New Music: Hot Cross, The Bummer Road

Hot Cross - Silence is Failure (Hope Division 2007)

Hot Cross - Risk Revival / Hope Division

I think one of the reasons I love writing for this blog so much is because I get the opportunity to write about whatever I want however I want to write about it. We don't have ads, we're not here to be a part of the blog culture just 'cause we're bandwagoneers, we're not looking to give you the very first heads-up on the latest n' greatest (or hatest, as it were). We write because we love this music and, that failing, we are so baffled by its success that we feel obliged to comment on the reactions. For me (and maybe me alone), Hot Cross falls unabashedly in the former.

In some respects, I suppose, it is more noble or "in better taste" to have the latest Ed Banger release or an extended digression on a recent Vice signing. Don't get me wrong: I love both of those labels to death. But I don't want you to expect the expected. Hot Cross for me is a band that deserves mention partly because they are so far removed from this whole blogosphere thing. This is a band that has guys who have been around in assorted East Coast scenes for years (most notably as members of Saetia, Off Minor and, er, Interpol). Occasionally dismissed by elitists as an inferior Drive Like Jehu or a third-wave Fugazi, Hot Cross continue to earn the respect of people who still think punk has a soul.

I don't want to make assumptions about your taste as a reader because I think that's part of why "blogs" are looked upon with such disdain. But sometimes as a reader you just have to stand back from a review and ask yourself, "Is this guy full of it?" Though the answer is often blurred here at Audiversity as it is in life, let me be clear: Featuring Hot Cross is not a move of desperation. This is an album I am genuinely enamored with partly because it represents a refreshing change of pace (Ergo, not 4/4) and, man, is it nice to hear some guitars again.

Risk Revival is their second album, a mere four years after Cryonics. Translation: It's been too long. So what's changed? Well, in either a brilliant move or a horrible one, only the production has been touched up a tad. I'm ignoring the split 7s and the Fair Trades & Farewells EP which always felt like stop-gaps. This is still a tight-as-hell release and one listen to the militant "Rejoinder" will confirm that. But after so many years with only a few interim releases on Level Plane and now the always-curious Equal Vision (Hope Division is just an offshoot), you'd think they would've traveled the way of These Arms Are Snakes or even a Pretty Girls Make Graves, fed up with the usual scene fare to the point that they retreat to textures and, heaven forbid, lite ballads.

Not a chance. There's still all the fury of their early releases in tracks like the "fuck off"-driven "Fatefully," but despite the stumbling of the early songs which feel nothing less than completely hackneyed, there's enough going on with this record to feel like it's not a total stumbling block. There's something about "Silence is Failure" here that cannot be ignored in its Jehu-like guitar onslaught. City of Caterpillar would be proud, anyway. Those first swells carry on for the entire song, and even though Billy Werner's vocals are more distinct than they ever were in Saetia (which can be either pleasure or pain depending on how much you can stomach), he does the smart thing here by stepping aside and letting Casey Boland's guitars do the carrying. At just 2m43s, this isn't a song that should feel epic - but it does.

That's credit to the band, who might be smarter now if not more ambitious. Werner may want to be a pop idol here, but Risk Revival is too strong not to sell the kids with their arms still folded. Earth to hairXcore: Grow up and get down. Hot Cross is here to help.












The Bummer Road - We Bark Cos We're Carrying Weight (Child of Microtones / Time-Lag 2006)

The Bummer RoadDeep Space Circuit / Child of Microtones/Time-Lag

Growing up and getting down, yes. That's what expanding the mind and letting the creative juices flow is all about, isn't it. Nobody knows this as well as The Bummer Road: Better known as Matt Valentine and Erika Elder's backing band from earlier this year on Green Blues off Ecstatic Peace, The Bummer Road made a name for themselves on the road last summer when they were touring with the aforementioned couple. It truly was the summer of the Bummer. Don't forget to tip your waitresses.

Green Blues was my first experience with this group, all backwoods New England acid-folk and none of the artificially enhanced digitized landscaping so common to psychedelia these days. I mean, there's a time and a place for Spiritualized... But The Bummer Road just seem to settle in the ears so much better, don't they? Give "We Bark Cos We're Carrying Weight" a listen, for example. This was recorded live and yet you can still hear the ethereality of Elder's voice... Or wait, is that a slide guitar? That's definitely a harmonica. Okay, reverby guitars. Tambourine? The call of some far-off animal or the cavalier roaming of an electric guitar? In the murky world of a Bummer Road live show, the difference is either nonexistent or so marginal it's irrelevant. The point is, you're there with them in the depths. And the only way out is through two CDs of beautiful folk backdrops. The scenery never looked so good.

Deep Space Circuit is actually two discs split evenly between nine songs that reach every corner of the music-as-experience globe. "We Bark Cos We're Carrying Weight" (which is alternately titled "We Bark Cos We're Carryin' Weight" on Kennedy Wings, the Buffalo, NY CD-R just two releases after this one) is modest at just under eight minutes; for a real representation of what The Bummer Road can do given a little lee-way with their live shows, "Who Do You Love Too Much" clocks in at a modest 35 minutes. But it never gets old! I could listen to this stuff all day if I wasn't cursed by fate to love other music as well. Does it sound aimless? Did that noise pedal that just kicked in bother you? Forget it. Just sit back and relax. Enjoy life a little bit. Pet a dog, plant some flowers, take a jog in the park. Just forget it! There's so much to envision and think about and contemplate and ease into when you're listening to Deep Space Circuit, and for once I don't have to use obscure cosmonauts to describe the situation.

There's an otherworldliness about this album and this band, sure, but that's not why I fell into the trap. Sometimes I just want to know what the hell they've got cooking deep in the forests of Maine, beyond the college folk of Orono, beyond the hackneyed images of sea-ravaged lighthouses and lobsters along the coast, beyond the very idea of what it means to be New England acid-folk (Why does the location have to mean anything?). If you can get your hands on anything these people have put out, get it. The releases are almost always rare (Green Blues is the exception) and the quality is almost always better than you'll need. I'm not even taking drugs when I listen to this, that's a true story and maybe the best one I have to tell. I just love the feeling of the open 'Road. Hopefully you will too.

Radio Show Playlist 4/04

6a:
1. My Bloody Valentine - Soon - Loveless (Sire 1991)
2. The Twilight Sad - Cold Days from the Birdhouse - Fourteen Autumns and Fifteen Winters (Fat Cat 2007)
3. Deerhunter - Flourescent Grey - Flourescent Grey EP (Kranky 2007)
4. Thee More Shallows - Oh Yes, Another Mother - Book of Bad Breaks (Anticon 2007)
5. Mahjongg - The Stubborn Horse - Raydoncong (Cold Crush 2005)
6. The Chrome Cranks - Safe from the Blade - Diabolical Boogie (Atavistic 2007)
7. Make Believe - Each Day is Different - The Pink 7" (Flameshovel 2006)
8. Dumbwaiters - Repeats/Version - Musick (Fiani 2004)
9. CocoRosie - Japan - The Adventures of Ghosthorse and Stillborn (Touch and Go 2007)
10. The Dirty Projectors - I Will Truck - The Getty Address (Western Vinyl 2004)

7a:
1. Junior Boys - Double Shadow (Kode9 Remix ft. The Spaceape) - The Dead Horse EP (Domino 2007)
2. Slicker - Knock Me Down Girl - Hefty 10 Digest (Hefty 2006, originally 2004)
3. Fennesz - Caecilia - Endless Summer (Mego 2001, rereleased Fat Cat 2006)
4. El-P - Run the Numbers ft. Aesop Rock - I'll Sleep When You're Dead (Def Jux 2007)
5. Aesop Rock - Number Nine - Fast Cars, Danger, Fire and Knives EP (Def Jux 2004)
6. J Dilla - Make'em NV - Ruff Draft (Mummy 2003, rereleased Stones Throw 2007)
7. Cadence Weapon - Black Hand - Breaking Kayfabe (Upper Class 2005, rereleased Epitaph 2007)
8. Roots Manuva - Movements - Brand New Second Hand (Big Dada 1999)
9. Darc Mind - Seize the Phenomenon - Symptomatic of a Greater Ill (Anticon 2006, originally 1997)
10. Nas - It Ain't Hard to Tell - Illmatic (Columbia 1994)
11. Desmond Dekker and the Aces - Keep a Cool Head - Rockin Steady: The Best of Desmond Dekker (Rhino 1992, recorded late 60s)
12. Love Trio - Rock the Rhythm ft. U-Roy - Love Trio in Dub (Nublu 2007)
13. Delroy Wilson - This Life Makes Me Wonder - Jonny Greenwood is the Controller (Trojan 2007, recorded early 70s)

New Music: Ellen Allien, Ghislain Poirier

Ellen Allien - The Other Side: Berlin / Deaf, Dumb, & Blind (2007)

Ricardo Villalobos - Ichso / Cadenza (2005)

Gotta thank Timeout for educating my dumb hick ass about faraway places. Working with Deaf, Dumb + Blind Recordings, the international "go here, and do this" city guide has been bundling info packs of local culture and secret hotspots. Each CD/DVD combo includes an in-depth local tourism guide and a mix put together by an artist representing their city. Past installments have featured Fischerspooner, Black Strobe, and Damian Lazarus repping NYC, Paris, and London, respectively. Now we turn our sights to Berlin, a place I may never see in my life but now I've got this little nugget of culture to pique my interest and soon I will commence searching for impossibly cheap plane tix.

This edition of The Other Side is mixed by Berlin's own stadtkind, Ellen Allien. I've always been interested in how her sound walks a delicate line between packing clubs and invading bedrooms. Sometimes she's more dance-minded and at others interested in creating intimate, reflective electro pop. The only downfall of that is people expecting either end of the spectrum are often disappointed. Whether its the dark, churning style of Thrills or the twinkling, horizontal masterpieces on Orchestra Of Bubbles, you've got to be ready to just go with it. In her music and particularly her mixes, Ellen Allien occupies a unique place in the electronic music spectrum, reimagining club space as something more than simply a place to go dance.

Appropriately enough, EA chooses to begin her mix with David Bowie's "Heroes" sung in passionate German. Its a nice way to put a uniquely German spin on things and set the tone for everything that follows. Its a classy touch to include many artists currently operating out of Berlin, that means more recent ascendents like Booka Shade and Ricardo Villalobos in addition to some old-school gods such as Plastikman and Monolake. All these guys together in a set seems a bit too obvious for most in the know but a real-life pairing all these big names together could happen on any given night in Berlin, such is the wealth of options open to electronica fans in the city. I've gotta really applaud the inclusion of Monolake's "Invisible", a playlist favorite of mine for a minute now. This track is all cold metal, giving off creepy dystopian vibes; it'd be a proper soundtrack for a remake of Logan's Run. Villalobos's "Ichso" is another older track culled from Achso, released on Cadenza in 2005. Smartly placed near the end of the mix, its nine minutes of amazing track-building skills, further proof that Villalobos is some higher form of being.

This is another solid release from Ellen Allien. Her aural tour of Berlin is darkly serene kinda like the waining moments before a solar eclipse, beautiful to behold but foreboding all the same. The track selection is choice, pushing the fact that Berlin is the current heartbeat of electronic music. Listen. Start saving now. Or if you're near to Berlin, just go. This "soundtrack to a city" coupled with the included DVD showing these awe-inspiring temples of electronica worship, it all looks like a killer time so everyone please remember that you gotta give it up if you wanna live it up. Get out there and get at it.





Ghislian Poirier - What It Look Like (Ghislain Poirier remix) (self-released 2007)

Ghislain Poirier - Bounce Le Remix 2 / self-released

I first ran across Ghislain Poirier about two years ago, around the time he released the criminally slept-on Breakupdown. I was heavy into The Fader and Turntable Lab, annoying all my friends by bumping TTC or Young Jeezy everytime we hung out. I've stopped wearing bandanas and for the record I never spent $150 on a single atrocious streetwear hoodie, but unlike some stuff from that era Mr. Poirier has retained a place in my heart.

Falling somewhere between Prefuse 73 and Diplo, Poirier has stamped his name in diamond-plated chrome all over the Montreal scene with the legendary Bounce Le Gros monthly, a night fusing rap, ragga, grime, and other diasporic musical styles. But far from some Hollertronix-influence ripoff, Poirier's solo work gives a nod towards skeletal instrumental hiphop, the kinda beats that don't sound like being rhymed over until someone like Omnikrom or Mr. Lee G spits hot fire all over the track.

So here we have Bounce Le Remix 2 and its vintage Poirier, right out of the box smelling like a pair of new sneaks. Theres a definite clash of "high" and "low" culture here, so if you can't stomach Ciara because its "commercial" then I suggest you turn back now. But I have faith in you, loyal Audiversity reader, and your spirit of adventure, otherwise you wouldn't be here right? So, yeah, Ciara sings her smash hit "Oh" over the tightest leadpipe beat ever, and Poirier decided to keep Luda's verse because if you wanna go platinum you know who to g-g-g-get with. Clipse is parachuted into the world's largest lazertag arena, making for some unstoppable headnod medicine. Busta Rhymes's banger, "Touch It", gets similar treatment with menacing synth spliced with the original's untouchable drums of death. Spank Rock gets two remixes, both of which are the strongest tracks here, totally disproving my usual maxim about mash-ups that two rights always make a wrong. "What It Look Like" gets laid over Daft Punk's "Da Funk" resulting in an electro-rap burner sure to kill any sweaty house party, and "Bump" hops on a bouyant ESG bassline making for a real fun ride.

This collection of remixes is all about Poirier flexing his theoretical music, showing how to properly crash thru different barriers, how to create a passage for seemingly opposing forces like mainstream v. commercial, hiphop v. electro can grasp hands in brotherhood. Or better yet, they've always existed as paper constructs, silent weapons employed by the man just to keep a good thing down.

Audiversity's Quarterly Concern

Michael: We here at Audiversity have been toying with the idea of a quarterly review highlighting some of our favorites from the first three months of 2007. The biggest problem with this idea: All we do is champion our favorite records, so what the hell would be the point of doing this? The point is… well there is no point to be completely honest, but points are overrated and you know it. What's the point of year-end lists? To showcase your heartfelt opinions obviously and concurrently open them up to your peers' often-harsh criticism. And what the fuck is up with some of that?

Recently a good friend and colleague of mine had a video of her browsing Reckless Records and talking about her DJing displayed on the front page of YouTube, and some of the comments left were just straight appalling. The shroud of anonymity is both exhilarating and dreadful in our current interwebbed world. I'm glad she has a strong personality because I would have suffered an anxiety attack if I were in her place (and nearly did when we were featured in the Wall Street Journal a few weeks back).

Jordan: This quarter's been about finding my feet as a reviewer. It's hard finding words in the heavy air of the blogosphere, and it can become a race to beat the other guy to the critical punch, but that would be losing the plot. You blog because its fun and it doesn't feel like homework. I think we Audiversitarians try our best not to deliver proclamations from on high. We're just trying our best to keep afloat in the massive flow of information; fiercely curious dudes who like music and feel the need to write about it. Triangles are a perfect shape as evidenced by soccer, and our three-cornered assault will hopefully continue for a long time to come.

Patrick: And quarterly reviews aren't just about thinking of the past. If we summed it all up by saying how much of a failure LCD Soundsystem's #46 chart position in the opening week on the Billboard charts was for the elitist indie underground, we wouldn't be telling you anything you already knew. In the media world, they call the phenomenon of foresight "spinning it forward:" How do we take the big stories of the first three months of the year and transform it into something useful for you for the future? How does our bloated sense of self-worth relate to you?

We try hard to make music you might not ordinarily hear as humane and as mundane as possible. That sounds like a slight, but it's not: By disguising the far-out sounds of Andrew Douglas Rothbard or subtractiveLAD and by recontextualizing (a favorite word of mine) Frank Turner or The (International) Noise Conspiracy, we hope we can at least convince you to reconsider what you thought you already knew.

Michael: But we confusingly digress; this is supposed to be about music. Looking back at the albums presented on Audiversity in the last three months, it's hard to pick one favorite. My recent obsession of everything West African is all too obvious, both the wonderful Western Saharan blues of Tinariwen and the bubbling, exotic electric guitar of Group Doueh had a big impact on me. Not to mention that great Golden Afrique box set, but that was actually southern African music.

I've also been very moved by some of the great ambient music being produced lately, especially the gorgeous swells of Stars of the Lid and Ethan Rose's excellent Ceiling Songs.

The hype proved true on a few occasions, especially Marnie Stern's shredding In Advance of the Broken Arm, Deerhunter's swirling Cryptograms, Panda Bear's hazy Person Pitch and The Twilight Sad's epic Fourteen Autumns & Fifteen Winters.

Then there are the dependables like the excellent new albums from El-P, Low and most everything Thrill Jockey has put out recently, especially Bobby Conn, Arbouretum and the Exploding Star Orchestra's "Cosmic Tomes Part 2", which gets my vote for best song of 07's first quarter. That just leaves us with the surprises, which I'll have to reward to Kode9 & the Spaceape's menacing Memories of the Future, Woods' folksy At Rear House and Baja's laptop psyche Maps/Systemalheur.

Jordan: After spending a year or two out in the wilderness, its fun being an information cowboy once again. Checking all the Boomkat and Forced Exposure update emails, digging deep into Oink! for that cassette only release of some impossible to obtain Jeweled Antler material. This first quarter is sprinting off with strong "its my noise" releases from Not Not Fun, Night People and the ever steady Important Records. Over in the electro world old players are still making powermoves. BPitch Control, Kompakt, and the "upstart" Ed Banger churning out tons of great music. Did I mention Kavinsky's "Dead Cruiser"? Well, Kavinsky's "Dead Cruiser." And !!!.

Patrick: I spent last quarter immersing myself heavily in the business side, but it was always the personal spin that got the better of my supposed journalistic integrity: I went to CMJ, but instead of seeing Justice and Digitalism at Studio B in Brooklyn at 1.30 in the morning, I got lost in Queens when I missed a train and then wandered around thinking I could walk my way to Williamsburg. What a fool.

This quarter was different: I've been doing a lot of school and caring less and less about music. No endless SXSW reviews, no barrage of half-assed live shots, no gushing "shoulda been theres" to speak of… Other than Battles in Chapel Hill, but anytime Battles plays and you're not there, you shoulda been.

What hit me musically hit me harder, in other words. And that's kind of how this blog has evolved beyond Chicago, beyond Columbia, beyond The Wall Street Journal: We only do reviews because we want you to feel the full impact, the brute force of something like Gallows or Deerhunter. Sometimes, the most powerful music in words hits the ears most delicately. Sitting in bed during one of my few moments of respite this year, a playlist including LCD's "Get Innocuous," 8yone's "Glacial Sunburn" and something from Soft Circle, I don't remember what… This is what hits me hardest nowadays.

Jordan: I would like to think we make good meat&potatoes, solid reviewing on a daily basis, working out a smart one touch style of blogging. Sure, we could be more intensive, but we all have lives to lead. Not to mention that we'd have to cut back on all those raucous bar convos where the night ends with a knife stabbed into the table. Always value the necessity of intoxicated discussion and the resulting half-cocked ideas for revolution.

Michael: Not bad at all for just three months worth of music.

Used-Bin Bargains: Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers - Les Liaisons Dangereuses

Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers - Miguel's Party (Polygram 1960)

Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers – Les Liaisons Dangereuses / Polygram

Tweaking the idea of our weekly Essential Classics column, we have decided to keep the premise of concentrating on need-to-hear albums from yesteryear, but shrugging off the “classic” tag since it is so relative. Instead, we are going to keep our nose deeply buried in the used section of our local record stores and highlight our favorite bargain of the week. This first week was tough, because as at every record store that has a used section, you have that one guy who periodically brings in a box of brand new, still shrink-wrapped albums that you know he lifted from somewhere, but you don’t really care because: 1) it’s not your problem; 2) you get choice pick at drastically price-reduced CDs. From this last visit from our mystery deviant, I was able to score John Coltrane’s Kulu Sé Mama, Alice Coltrane’s Eternity, a Soul Jazz compilation called Studio One Selector and Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers’ soundtrack to the 1959 French film Les Liaisons Dangereuses. It was basically a toss up on which one I should write about, but I opted for the latter of the group because writing about John Coltrane intimidates the fuck out of me, I’ve already written about Alice Coltrane a lot as she is one of my favorite artists ever, and I’ve been itching to write about Art Blakey for a good while now; not to mention it’s a relatively obscure album in the sense that not many people seek it out. So, with the first installment of our newly dubbed column, Audiversity’s Weekly Used-Bin Bargains (Patrick had to talk me out of both Used-Bin Bonanza and Used-Bin Humdinger… damn his cool-headiness), we dive into the hard-boppin’ world of Art Blakey.

I have always liked Art Blakey, if only because you can just about blindly pull any album out of his 50+, 40-years long discography and be presented with a solid, if not extraordinary record of pure hard-bop. But while such longevity and consistency must be rightfully respected, it also means that Blakey purveyed only the single style for his entire career, leading the way in it’s original rise to popularity in the 50s and it’s resurgence in the 80s. Because of this hard-headiness and refusal to experiment or thoroughly explore an unfamiliar niche, Blakey is sometimes left out of the jazz geniuses conversation, which is a shame because he could certainly hold his own against such luminaries as Max Roach, Chick Webb or Gene Krupa. The band he adopted from Horace Silver, the Jazz Messengers, also acted as practically a breeding ground for young jazz talent; basically, once you could hang with Art, you were ready to venture out on your own. During the 30+ years the Messengers were under Blakey’s guidance, he unleashed a laundry list of prominent names in jazz including but no where near limited to: Lee Morgan, Jackie McLean, Clifford Brown, Freddie Hubbard, Wayne Shorter, Donald Byrd, Chuck Mangione, Keith Jarrett, Johnny Griffin, and Wynton and Branford Marsalis. Maybe he was simply a good mentor, maybe he was a one-of-a-kind motivator or maybe it just took a particularly high degree of talent to keep up with his unrelentingly driving drum style, but any way you want to define it, Blakey’s influence as a bandleader is near unparalleled. Personally, I lean towards the latter, because his percussive concentration was always on momentum and rhythm; he left all melody and tone in the hands of his accompaniment, further pushing them to be on top of their game. His drumming style was somewhat the antithesis of his contemporary, Max Roach. Where Roach would wholly concentrate on the precise tone and timbre of his drums, Blakey’s heartbeat was all rhythm. He’ll never be known as an innovator, but there will never be a name so synonymous and genuinely important to the genre of hard-bop jazz as Art Blakey.

The Pittsburgh native was born in 1919 and was somewhat of a child prodigy. Playing piano professionally and leading his own commercial band by the seventh grade, Blakey was usurped by the equally prolific Erroll Garner in the club they were both gigging at and was forced to switch to the drums. Heavily influenced by the unrelenting competitiveness and thundering energy of percussionist and bandleader Chick Webb, Blakey developed his own style in the late 30s and early 40s while playing with pianist Mary Lou Williams and Fletcher Henderson. During the mid-40s, he joined Billy Eckstine’s big band, which placed him in the heart of the burgeoning bebop scene and gigging with the likes of Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker and a young Miles Davis. Very curiously, Blakey claimed that in the late 40s he visited West Africa where he discovered both polyrhythmic drumming and Islam; even going to the point in taking the name Abudullah Ibn Buhaina, which led to his nickname “Bu.” No one truly knows if this trip actually took place because some dispute that he was never absent from America during the time period that he claimed to be visiting. Either way, this is the period that Blakey’s reputation as an acclaimed drummer was quickly spreading and the first rendition of the Jazz Messengers appeared as a 17-piece rehearsal ensemble called the Seventeen Messengers; he as well was regularly backing the likes of Davis, Bud Powell and Thelonious Monk, who interestingly enough, utilized Blakey on both his very first recording session as a leader in 1947 and his very last in 1971. The official Jazz Messengers was established in a 1954 recording co-founded by both Blakey and Horace Silver, who was actually the first official leader of the group. That ensemble, which also featured Hank Mobley and Kenny Dorham, was essential in the development of the hard-bop movement in reaction to the West Coast cool jazz scene. Officially known as Art Blakey & the Jazz Messengers by 1956, the collective heavily pushed a soulful gospel influence into bop, freeing up the rhythm section to explore much looser and more bluesy feelings. Highlights from this era include 1956’s Hard Bop and Hard Drive, 1957’s Reflections on Buhania and 1958’s Moanin’.

This brings us to the album at hand, 1960’s Les Liaisons Dangereuses on Polygram. The French cinematic New Wave scene, or la Nouvelle Vague, was in full bloom by 1959 with François Truffant, Jean-Luc Godard and Éric Rohmer cultivating the idea of the auteur director. Much like Roger Vadim’s modern rendition of the scandalous 1782 French novel by Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, Les Liaisons Dangereuses, these New Wave films would feature experimental soundtracks, many utilizing the American jazz music they heard in the clubs at night. The second of the Vadim films to feature such a soundtrack (the first being 1957’s Sait-on Jamais, which was scored by the Modern Jazz Quartet), it was supposed to be a project recorded by Thelonious Monk, whose only session was used in the film, but never released on it’s own. Art Blakey and his Jazz Messengers were called in for the two-days following that initial session and those recordings is what you hear on this album. Featuring Blakey on drums, Lee Morgan on trumpet, Duke Jordan and Bobby Timmons on piano, Jimmy Merritt on double bass and Barney Wilson, who was only in the band very shortly between Benny Golson and Wayne Shorter, on soprano and tenor sax, the ensemble got to jam out a bit on rare material conjuring a boisterous, freewheeling and sophisticated soundtrack to the seductive film. Interestingly enough, the liner notes go on about how the French reedman Wilson had only moved over to soprano a few months prior, and that his unique style on the instrument predated both Coltrane’s same move to the higher-pitched sax a year later and Steve Lacy’s popular career. In the actual film, you see a quintet featuring Kenny Dorham, Duke Jordan and Barney Wilson onscreen, but Dorham wasn’t even a part of the recordings you hear. The album features multiple versions of “No Problem,” “No Hay Problema” and “Volmontana,” but my personal favorite is “Miguel’s Party” which highlight’s Morgan’s passionate trumpet at length.

As I went into earlier at length, Blakey’s career post-50s rarely abandoned his love for all things hard-bop. He recorded heavily in the 60s with a rotating cast of talented supporting players; exceptional albums include 1961’s The Freedom Rider, 1962’s Live Messengers and Caravan (a personal favorite), and 1964’s Indestructible. Along with touring heavily in Europe and Northern Africa, the Messengers also became the first American jazz band to play in Japan in 1960; they were received whole-heartily, even being greeted by hundreds of fans just in the airport. By the 70s, when jazz was being explored through the avant-garde and fusion, Blakey chugged right along with his hard-bop. Though recordings slimmed considerably throughout that decade, the late 70s and early 80s proved Blakey’s determination to be fruitful as the advent of neotraditionalist jazz took over the mainstream jazz audience. With trumpeter Wynton Marsalis acting as musical director, the band was once again selling out venues night after night. Blakey continued to incubate young careers throughout the 80s, and at the time of his death in 1990, the Jazz Messenger aesthetic dominated mainstream jazz. Art Blakey may never be grouped in with the great innovators of jazz, but he will forever be known for his skilled, fiery drum playing, confident band leading and rousing spiritual guidance.