- Administrator
- Albums and Singles
Underground hip-hop allstars cLOUDDEAD either win people over in excess or lose them completely, and their sophomore full-length isn't likely to change that much. There is no compromise in this music: there is only with or against this interesting lot.
Combining indie folk musical sensibilities with unique rhyme delivery and odd subject matter and effects, each track bubbles and builds towards a common understanding or ultimate light-bulb moment. It's not easy to stomach, and certainly doesn't go with the traditional concept of hip-hop, but it truly is forward-thinking and a worthy effort. I was listening and couldn't escape the mental image of sitting in front of the TV, watching as a child in complete disbelief, not knowing the words to express the emotions I felt. Catchy beats and melodies abound on Ten, though not always in the same place, and from time to time I heard complete brilliance. "The Keen Teen Skip" features a fantastic sample, then a multitude of voices speaking as one on such bizarre lines as "youngsters today are not prepared to buy plants or collect stamps" as a dirty beat and ringing bells provide the impetus to continue. Eventually the chants become harmonized simple singing, and skips and repeated words create awkward breaks, like an idea struggling to get out of the brain. And so it goes, the perfect formula that gets the point across through juvenile-sounding voices and simple tones and instruments. Sometimes it doesn't get there — like on "Rhymer's Only Room," a chant and march that grated on my nerves — but there's a consistent feel, a commentary on society that cannot be denied or even understood on occasion ("Strawberry in an ostrich throat"?). "Son of a Gun" and "Rifle Eyes" address real issues with an off-kilter bend, rapid-firing and driving the point into the mind with freight train force. That they get these points across through such an odd combination is commendable, and I certainly hope that their detractors are few. This is the new style, and may the collaborators and peers reign.
samples:
Read More
- Administrator
- Albums and Singles
![](http://www.brainwashed.com/brain/images/tenaw2.jpg)
Read More
- Administrator
- Albums and Singles
![](http://www.brainwashed.com/brain/images/the_hafler_trio-normally.jpg)
Read More
- Administrator
- Albums and Singles
![](http://www.brainwashed.com/brain/images/guapofivesuns.jpg)
Read More
- Administrator
- Albums and Singles
![](/../../../../brain/images/individual-180_bullets_per_man.jpg)
Read More
- Administrator
- Albums and Singles
![](/../../../../brain/images/nels_cline_and_devin_sarno-buried_on_bunker_hill.jpg)
Read More
- Administrator
- Albums and Singles
![](/../../../../brain/images/knowledge_of_bugs-my_way_no_way.jpg)
Read More
- Administrator
- Albums and Singles
![](http://www.brainwashed.com/brain/images/paul_wirkus-inteletto_damore.jpg)
Read More
- Administrator
- Albums and Singles
Abner Jay was a classic ragtime song-and-dance man, learning his trade with Silas Green's Minstrels in the 1930's and WMAZ Minstrels in Macon during the 40's and 18's. Lap dissolve to the late 60's, and Abner Jay had transformed himself into a one-man-band and traveling nostalgia revue, issuing a series of private press LPs that now trade hands for ridiculously high prices. Sweden's Subliminal Sounds recently released this compilation, collecting material from three of Jay's best albums.
Jay billed himself as America's Last Minstrel Show, and he played an energetic combo of finger-picked banjo and harmonica, working the bass drum with a foot pedal. He introduced each song with bad puns and raunchy jokes, his deep Southern drawl a deliberate caricature of old-time Uncle Tom minstrelsy. It would be tempting to dismiss Abner Jay as a politically-incorrect anachronism, were it not for the obvious talent and intelligence with which he approaches his racially-charged material. By fearlessly accentuating the house Negro stereotypes that defined and imprisoned black performers in the post-Civil War South, Abner Jay is able to transcend them, exorcising the pain of his ancestry.
Nowhere is this more clear than in the heart-breaking song "I'm So Depressed," a track so beautiful and haunting that it floored me upon first listen. Beginning as a traditional-sounding blues lament, Jay's voice suddenly shifts into a high lonesome wail, choking back tears and belting out a series of deeply felt emotional cries that express an ancient sadness. "I was born during the hard depression days...My folks were sharecroppers/We had nothing, we had nothing, we had nothing/But grasshoppers/Looking back over my life/O lord, I'm so depressed."
On "Swaunee," Jay talks at length about his beloved Southern river, it's legacy and importance. Jay's narration is layered over an atmospheric instrumental track punctuated by the chorus of the traditional song, treated to sound like an old 78. Because of my penchant for outsider music, I have heard hundreds of hyped reissues of vanity pressings and much-vaunted musical oddities. Rarely have I heard anything as impressive as Abner Jay's evocative, recollective race-folk. One Man Band is currently the only widely available edition of his music, making it absolutely essential.
Read More
- Administrator
- Albums and Singles
The glam rock era was the first time that popular music openly acknowledged its own superficial tendencies. The first time that the extravagance, glitter and condescension attendant to the rock n' roll lifestyle became an aesthetic badge of honor. Glam, through its emphasis on the primacy of make-up, wardrobe and snarling supercilious attitude, was pop music's first postmodern movement, containing both the substance of rock n' roll, and the commentary on the same. As such, it created a fleeting moment in history where anyone with the right combination of style, poise and bearing could become an overnight sensation, and often just as quickly fade into obsolescence.RPM
For every David Bowie, Brian Ferry or Marc Bolan, there were scores of glam divas-in-waiting like Jobriath and Brett Smiley. At least Jobriath, the world's first openly-gay rock star, got a chance to release two monstrously campy and epic LPs before public backlash silenced him forever. The winsome and sinewy Brett Smiley did not fare as well, recording Breathlessly Brett during a flurry of interest by the international music press, only to have the album cruelly pushed aside by an uncaring record industry and shelved permanently. Smiley was the willowy, blonde personification of glam, discovered and promoted like a classic Hollywood ingénue by Rolling Stones producer Andrew Loog Oldham. Oldham's vision for Smiley was to elevate the young man to the rarefied status of untouchable superstar before his first single was out. On record, Oldham accentuates the breathy, effete qualities of Smiley's voice, framing it in a series of impossibly dense Phil Spector-style teenage rock symphonies. And I mean dense: in addition to three guitars, Oldham wields orchestral percussion, a full horn section, synthesizers and strings. It's so unbelievably, absurdly overwrought that it somehow achieves a kind of righteous transcendence that makes for an entertaining listen. The muddy, reverb-heavy mix works beautifully for Bowie-style space oddities such as "Space Ace," a diamond in a Velvet Tinmine if I've ever heard one. A cover of Neil Sedaka's saccharine "Solitaire" sounds like a lost cut off of George Harrison's All Things Must Pass, replacing Harrison's sincere delivery with Smiley's affected sigh. Brett's only single, the raucous "Va Va Va Voom," stands up next to the best of glam's bubblegum hits. Oldham and Smiley threaten to burst into flames from sheer flamboyance with the ludicrous medley of "I Can't Help Myself/Somewhere Over the Rainbow," sounding very much like Judy Garland stuck in a K-hole. After hearing this magnificent atrocity, it doesn't surprise me at all that poor Brett turned up a few years later with a giant drug habit, starring in a series of pornographic movies. Released 30 years too late to be even slightly relevant, Breathlessly Brett still provided me with some rhinestone-studded revelations. 
Read More
- Administrator
- Albums and Singles
![](http://www.brainwashed.com/brain/images/joel_stern_and_michael_northam-wormwood.jpg)
Read More