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The Bandit label's stars included the Majestic Arrows, a group who's membership was kept anonymous on their only full-length album; Johnny Davis, who was brutally murdered in 1972; arranger/composer Benjamin Wright, who found fame and fortune arranging strings on Michael Jackson's Off the Wall along with albums by Outkast, Destiny's Child, and Aretha Franklin; and seven year old Altyrone Deno Brown, one of Arrow Brown's numerous sons, who would go on to act in a few commercials, win a Tony, and make a cameo appearance as a dancer in the Blues Brothers film. The label released very little music from the years of operation 1969-1981, ceasing operations due to Brown's aging and the groups splitting. Upon the death of Arrow Brown in 1990, the house was cleaned out, master tapes gone, and, as some eyewitness accounts, records strewn across the streets below.
Once again master of all masters Jeff Lipton has been brought in to restore the audio foraged from old record bins and remaining relatives, and the results are, for the most part, fantastic. The lengthy string-heavy openings on songs like "Doing It For Us" and "Another Day" by The Majestic Arrows are nothing short of grand. Songs like the blistering "Glad About That" by soul temptress Linda Balintine, however, were in sadder shape but Lipton has managed to make the wear and tear as minimal as possible to allow the music to be the foreground.
Arrow Brown was a bit over the top in terms of production but the lyrics just weren't quite there. There's no argument for the talents of the singers and players for the entire label. From the powerful vocal delivery of Gloria "Poolie" Brown on "I'll Never Cry for Another Boy" to little Deno's prepubescent conviction on "Sweet Pea," and the Neville-like crooning of Johnny Davis on his power ballad "The Love I See Now."
More than any small indie soul label, Bandit probably knew best what it was like to sing from the trenches. Most of these people didn't live well but it's clear they held on to their dreams, and it's that glimmer of hope that makes everything on this sampling so sincere, so much more real than anything from any multi-plantium, "blue-eyed-soul" act that the mainstream has been brainwashed the masses into believing for decades.
samples:
- The Majestic Arrows - Doing It For Us
- Altyrone Deno Brown - If You Love Me
- Linda Balintine - You're a Habit Hard to Break
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Numero Group (US) / LTM (UK)
Antena was a female-fronted bright, fun, and sexy pop band. Their output was cocktail music for the swinging bachelor, which was completely the opposite from the dark, bleak, and frighteningly common suicidal crew of dudes in nearly everything that was associated with Factory was seemingly about at the time.
They varied production from the full, rich sounds of "Camino del Sol" and their cover/adaptation of "The Girl from Ipanema" (becoming "The Boy from Ipanema") to the minimal fare of guitar, hand percussions, and saxophone for the very Astrud Gilberto-influenced "Silly Things" and "Bye Bye Papaye." The sound has been well preserved and only a rare tune here or there sounds dated, and it's never painfully so. During the early 1980s, drum machines like the Roland 808 and 909 were so artificial sounding that they would always sound artificial, it's a much easier predicament than the late '80s drum machines which mimiced real drums (and poorly). Songs like "Unable" and "Frantz" are two with the most prominence of the 808 but Antena managed to program the drum machine originally enough to make it not sound like the rest of 1982's output.
Following the mini LP of Camino del Sol, Antena released a single, appeared on some compilations, but soon split. Singer Isabelle Powaga continued to record and release music as Isabelle Antena, keeping up the Brazilian lounge flavor, but not making nearly as notable works as what's collected on Camino del Sol. While I do enjoy this release, I'm not completely blown away like I have been with other Numero Group releases. With the amount of paper used to make the booklet, it would have been nice to see more story on the production of the music or the origins of the non-Camino material. It is nice to see the front and back covers for the mini LP and the "Boy from Ipanema" single but there is surely more in the vaults for this group.
samples:
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While I don't think the quartet are out to change their sound, Nisht Azoy (which translates to "Not Like This") is more upbeat and varied than their debut, Var Tanszt?. Once again split down the middle for vocal and instrumental pieces, the eight song album has three fast-paced uplifting dance numbers. The air is still thick with sorrow on the slower, heavier songs, which, entirely sung in Yiddish, thankfully have English and French translations in the accompanying booklet.
After the slow, almost weeping sound of the opener, "Bukharian," follows the lyrical "Az Vey Dem Tatn," (Sad is the Father) which is explicitly sad, with lyrics from an anonymous poet who writes about being sent to war and shot, but is actually moderately more upbeat. Here, singer Scott Levine Gilmour calls out as the rest of the group sings out their response while the group skillfully flex their mastery of what is most likely an oud and mandolin, playing along with the drums and fabulous Eastern strings that come in towards the end. Fans of the One Ensemble of Daniel Padden live CD released last year would find a lot to love here. "Violin Duet" is the first real dance number but is like two different songs: a lengthy opening with only two violins playing gives way to a lively instrumental tune equipped with hand claps and everything. The emotion returns for the slow and at times, sparse "Ikh Ken Tsvey Zayn," side one's closer, where Steve once again gives a heavy delivery, this time a poem by a Polish-Jewish author, written in 1948 after his move to Montreal.
Side two (or track 5 of 8 for a CD person) opens with the vibrant, exciting, bright instrumental dance piece "Ratsekr Grec," equipped with plenty of wind instruments: a trumpet solo and some interplay from what is most likely the clarinet and contrabass. The seriousness returns with the epic "Tsvey Taybelakh" (Two Doves), another anonymous poem, this one a story about the love that cannot be denied despite the powers that try to separate the two lovers. While it's a message of hope, assuring "you will not drown in sorrow" and "you will not be burnt in sorrow," it is heavy with emotion, begining slow, breaking down during an instrumental break with droning strings and a lonely clarinet solo, all of which build to a rushing climax. "Dobriden" is the last upbeat dance song, sounding more like a European renaissance-era piece before the stunning closer "Golem," written by singer Scott Levine Gilmour.
Black Ox Orkestar have managed to both diversify their sound and make something more concentrated, more focused with these powerful eight songs. Be sure to show up early at the Silver Mt. Zion shows this summer because the Black Ox live show is something not to be missed, and those who don't believe me can watch The Eye special for proof.
samples:
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![Scott Walker - The Drift](http://ax.itunes.apple.com/images/badgeitunes61x15dark.gif)
This reception is not likely to change with the release of The Drift on 4AD, the long-awaited follow up to Scott Walker's previous solo effort, 1995's Tilt, a masterpiece of utterly unclassifiable and counterintuitive songwriting; the over-emoting existentialist MOR lounge pop of Walker's late-'60s output abstracted and stretched into a brutal suite of operatic and disturbing ambient sound sculptures. The Drift clearly demonstrates that Walker isn't planning on retreating into familiar territory anytime soon; no Jacques Brel covers or maudlin reflections on Bergman films to be found here. Instead, Walker presents nine songs, each more hallucinatory, skeletal and cryptic than the last, each articulating a different trauma, fearlessly collapsing the line that usually divides personal anguish and public catharsis. Walker's painfully enunciated vocals tackle traumas as diverse as 9/11, the evils of mass culture, the Slobodan Milosevic regime and the execution of Mussolini, but in uneasy ways that don't let listeners off the hook, not even for a second. There is a sense in which living through the six-and-a-half minutes of Walker's 9/11 meditation "Jesse" more than once could be thought of as a more traumatic experience than living through the terrorist attacks themselves.
Walker's vocals are just as arch and constipated as they have always been, dripping slow like moldy treacle through the crepuscular recesses of each song's tortuous anatomy. Apologies to those who think that Walker's voice is beautiful, expressive and operatic; on the contrary, I have always likened Walker's voice to that of Arcesia, the acid-damaged big-band leader who recorded the harrowing and hilarious 1968 LP Reachin'. Walker's painfully affected vocals invite derision, especially the older and more willfully obscure he gets. Like them or hate them, you've got to admit that no one else's voice would work nearly as well on a Scott Walker album. When he breaks into a malevolent impression of Donald Duck on "The Escape," all one can do is admire the artist's fearless audacity.
Similarly, Walker's lyrics are just as esoteric and purposely befuddling as they've always been. Advance press for the album revealed that many of the lyrical couplets in the album's opening track "Cossacks Are" were stolen from snatches of news articles and TV soundbites, and that "Jesse" is a dream-condensation combining anecdotes about Elvis' deceased twin brother Jesse with the attack on the twin towers. It would be useless for me to comment on whether or not these poetic conceits are successful, since their "meaning" has only been gleaned from secondary sources. Suffice it to say that I think Walker's lyrics are precisely as powerful as they are opaque; their opacity serves to abstract the signifying function of language from Walker's text, leaving only the tactile, gestural countours of each painfully emoted phoneme in place of meaning. This is confirmed in "A Lover Loves," when Walker subverts what has the potential to be the most lovely and melodic track on the album by simply blowing and hissing into the microphone.
Though one may occasionally encounter a lush orchestral swell or a long passage retaining basic melodic progression and rhythmic sense, the overwhelming shape of the album remains structure-less and palpitating, shifting blocks of sound aghast at finding themselves in one another's presence. Much has been made of the percussive use of raw slabs of bacon on "Clara," but in contrast to the object-sampling strategies of a group like Matmos, Walker is only interested in the potential of objects to produce jarring, industrial noise that will dissolve the borders of the listener's comfort zone. Sprinklings of acoustic guitar, smatterings of electronic chatter, subtle tonal irritations and hypnotic undercurrents of subaquatic drone are all utilized by Walker for essentially the same multi-pronged purpose: to background and foreground the drama of his anguished utterances; to undermine the listener's expectations, bringing them dangerously close to that frightening realm of painfully exhilarating enjoyment, the traumatic core of the real place before language. Antonin Artaud would have approved.
samples:
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By my count this is the third version released of this 'infamous' Belgian Magik Markers show. The interest in this particular May 9th 2005 show stems from the fact that it ended with Elisa Ambrogio impersonating Carrie at her bloodiest after a bass in the face. This may not be the definitive release, but with Prurient editing and remastering the gig for, and I’m quoting here, "maximum dog shit sound" it’s the heaviest.
Ripped from the Undead in Belgium CD-R, this version of events is an overloaded, deconstructed and wordlessly violent witness statement. It's a combination of muffled purposeful neglect on the vocals / percussion and convulsing feedback of some smoking lighter fuel stinking snake charmer. There’s a glint sometimes from the jagged edge of the meat-punching drums that sound more like glass showered pummelled fat.
The smoke of uprooted municipal buildings hides Elisa’s harridan marching orders as they are rammed back in the mix. This mishmash of Gysin splinters, customer complaints and broken minded rant infrequently comes into focus as if carried by a random wind.
The near constant beat of some amphetamine metronome is driven though the floor like utterly derailed hardcore. This single song ploughs though steel tracks, gravel, grass, dirt and homesteads before ending smoking in a twisted heap. Prurient (aka Dominik Fernow) has also made the correct move to edit out the show’s "Louie Louie" finale. Without this song the set is removed from the oft-discussed musical (from garage to punk to hardcore to free) and cultural (American abroads) context and sits them outside and alone in Belgium. The word ‘ugly’ gets thrown around a little too often in reference to sound and atmosphere; this needs to be one of the new benchmarks.
 
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At the radio station I DJ at, somebody had managed to get a hold of three of the first four Numero releases. I'm a sucker for series releases and the spines and cases stacked together was the first noticable thing. They looked like they belonged together on the shelf. Opening them up, the deluxe booklets were arresting: the clean layout and calculated attention to detail was incredible, featuring stories, biographies, scans of the records, and photographs of some of the people involved. Somebody obviously has paid a lot of attention to this release and the least it deserved was my ears.
The restoration efforts don't end with the packaging. The Numero Group enlisted the very important "fifth Beatle" of Jeff Lipton, the man who truly deserves the title of "master," as mastering these recordings from records is no quick and easy feat. (Jeff Lipton's resume includes a ton of remastering work for Rykodisc and ArchEnemy labels along with acts like Flaming Lips, Magnetic Fields, 27, Empty House Cooperative, and Sebadoh.) The music is vibrant, alive, with full, warm bass sounds and crisp and clean cymbals; and, despite a few vinyl pops here and there, probably sounds better than these old records did on old record players back then.
So the Capsoul label wasn't a great success, perhaps overshadowed by the soul from Detroit and Chicago, but probably more challenged by the lack of money and distribution available to small labels back then. Label founder Bill Moss was notorious for selling records out of his trunk. He was a popular DJ back when DJ actually meant something: he had a great ear, and the music is every bit as powerful and sincere as the heavy hitters of the labels like Stax and Motown.
For a label with a small number of releases, Capsoul captured a substantial spectrum of contemporary soul. "You're All I Need to Make It" is pure heaven, launching the collection with the sugary sweet, but powerful crooning from the group Johnson, Hawkins, Tatum & Durr. It's infectious in the mere first seconds and doesn't falter one bit. Marion Black, another fantastic singer, who's represented on this collection by two cuts gives the bluesier side of soul with the more upbeat "Who Knows" and heart-tugging gospel-tinged "Go On Fool." Kool Blues kicks up the pace with the bouncy, infectious "I'm Gonna Keep On Loving You" (no relation to REO Speedwagon), but take things down to the slow dance with their ballad "Can We Try Love Again." Songs like "Sock It To 'Em Soul Brother" by Bill Moss and "Hot Grits" (inspired by Al Green's scalding incident in the south) are firey singalongs that would have been great to see live, at least to read about them in the accompanying booklet would be nice however. Johnson, Hawkins, Tatum & Durr return near the end with the grand mid-tempo ballad "A World Without You," which, with its strings and even harpsichord could have even given "Mercy Mercy Me" a run for its money. It's easy to tell that Bill Moss and crew went all out in production and, rightfully so, had some fantastic material to do it with, but at the time hits were regional, and while some of these songs were big in the Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Cleveland areas, the important trend-setting music hubs of New York and Chicago simply couldn't be cracked.
In fact, of all the 19 songs on here (including two "bonus cuts"), just about any these songs could have become bigger hits. The talents are undeniable, the songwrtiting was wonderful, and there was clearly a lot invested into the original recording sessions, and, as the story goes, after only a dozen singles and one LP, the label was forced to close, the masters destroyed by a flood, and a box of the remaining stock dumped. The efforts of the Numero Group remind me that the best reason to start a record label isn't "because I want a record label" but "because I have these excellent recordings that more people have GOT to hear." As a person who's had a longtime interest in audio preservation and restoration, it's exciting to see a small operation like the Numero Group put so much time, passion, and attention to these great causes. We have the easy job of simply being able to listen.
samples:
- The Four Mints - Row My Boat
- Ronnie Taylor - Without Love
- Elijah & the Ebonites - Hot Grits!!!
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For my money, Merciless was the high water mark for Broadrick's previous rock band, and it's a sound I had always hoped he'd return to. Instead, Godflesh's last gasps were sputtered out over experiments with breakbeats and dub remixes that were often brutally straight-forward, leaving little of the suspense and weight of the band's earlier material. Jesu fixes all of that, calmly picking up where Broadrick left off before the excursions into proto-jungle metal hybrids, something that given Broadrick's skill as a drum n bass producer always seemed less exciting than they should.
Silver is a return to the long, morose, damaged songs to which Broadrick simply owns the trademark. His signature guitar sound and wall of drone and noise is all over this EP, along with the long delaying echoes of tortured moaning that he uses for singing in this mode. What's noticeably absent and what keeps this from sounding fully like a Godflesh project with another name is the clacky rumble of Ben Green's bass. Blasphemous though it may sound, I don't miss that on Silver. Without the bass mixed to the front of each song, the layers and textures have more room to breath and develop, giving the songs something closer to a meditative feel. If I had to explain this quickly, I'd say that Jesu is a bit like the Godflesh take on the Kranky sound, and when I think of it like that, it's no wonder that Jesu is responsible for some of my favorite records in the last year.
samples:
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The second album by Pateras and Fox finds them raiding the human body for sounds and reorganizing them in convulsive detail. Their improvisations logically find the duo favoring texture over form, yet after a while the constantly shifting dynamics becomes a form of motionlessness in itself and at times I found my mind wandering.
The natural sources of the material surface only fleetingly before drowning in a tide of processed electronics. "Olfactophobia" uses flapping cheeks, heavy breathing, mouth pops, gasps, and kissing sounds in the creation of bubbles and percolations that sound surprisingly organic, while "Throat in Three Parts" sounds more like amplified molecules moving through the bloodstream and colliding with each other than it does specific throat noises. "Flux and Belch," consisting of processed belches and throat eruptions, is a fitting end to a feast of bodily transformation. The sounds they come up with are frequently entertaining, but often it seems that Pateras and Fox are running through a catalog of possibilities for these sources rather than arriving at a destination. Not every track has an obvious connection to the body, and a couple of them that don’t are among the better tracks on the album. "Freckle Cream" initially sounds like ruptured speakers crackling before beeps, twonks, and rips intrude, culminating in a rhythmic interplay of white noise that ends just as the song heads into exciting territory. "$2.18," conceivably named after the amount of currency involved, uses dropped coins as percussion to feed metallic clatters and droning overtones that, because of the brevity of the piece, never feel distracting. The juxtapositions Pateras and Fox concoct along their fantastic voyage are enjoyable enough, but I felt many of these tracks are intellectual exercises as much as musical ones, which kept me from fully enjoying them as a visceral experience.
samples:
 
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This release, the second in a seven inch trilogy, sees a further distillation of the band’s gorgeous organically structured songwriting. These two pieces are instantly noticeable as more electronic sounding than the first instalment, even though some of the strongest melody lines here are analogue in origin.
The more immediate "Pick me up" is a very distant cousin (mainly in its use of guitar) to their "Come to Light." The song instantly settles into a melody supported by a delicate clockwork factory beat, system default bleeps unwind and restart on a rolling 3-D loop between the hits. These electronics mesh into and out of the rougher de-emphasized patches of metalwork percussion. Gentle helixes of picked guitar move, sliding into a whirl as harsh early acidic squelchy synths fizz. The production places a real importance on the building and removal of different elements to the fore while other parts morph away happily into the background; the process sounds more organic than mere fader manipulation. Hopefully all this seven inch action is building up to an LP release.
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Rump
Mere Rum is on one hand a laid back electronica album, not unlike the thousands churned out every year by every schmuck with a laptop but on the other hand it also other elements peppered through the album to add a little spice. I hesitate to use the term “experimental” but there are leanings towards using unconventional sounds and structures. Granted these days that odd meters, washes of noise (such as the water-like sounds on “Tape Swamp” and “Vintertog”) and glitches are about as 'experimental' as eating hot food but it's enjoyable when they are used well. On “Plus3dub,” Christiansen uses a lot of these techniques tastefully and in less than usual contexts, the drum programming wouldn’t be out of place on an Autechre or Aphex Twin release but here the BPM is turned way down and combined with a melody, unlike the epileptic assault of the other two. Alas, he may be using these techniques well but he doesn’t show any innovation of his own.
However, at no point during the album do I feel this is ever more than a bedroom project made for himself alone. Nothing ever makes it past slightly interesting mediocrity. Attempts to bring some excitement to the music by using traditional instruments along with the electronics make it sound even duller. Glockenspiels, saxophones and electronics are a tired combination. Very occasionally there was a nice little bit of guitar, such as on “Overtone.” Apart from that, there is little in the way of originality.
Mere Rum is destined for that bottom shelf of the CD rack reserved for the releases I have no particular urge to listen to again.
samples:
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