Some of my favorite releases of the last year or so come from the US indie hip-hop contender, Mush. Their recent find, a Japanese import called Neutrino, is being sent out with a sticker comparing the release to DJ Krush, claiming that Krush isn't the only player in Japan's instrumental hip-hop scene. That may be true, but Krush is still a few moves ahead of the rest of the pack if Neutrino's eponymous release is any indication.
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Some of my favorite releases of the last year or so come from the US indie hip-hop contender, Mush. Their recent find, a Japanese import called Neutrino, is being sent out with a sticker comparing the release to DJ Krush, claiming that Krush isn't the only player in Japan's instrumental hip-hop scene. That may be true, but Krush is still a few moves ahead of the rest of the pack if Neutrino's eponymous release is any indication.Mush
The tracks are classic Mush: slow and moody with a nod to hip-hop and jazz record sampling, but with a sophisticated touch and layered production style. These don't sound like tracks in search of an MC, but rather they function as whole songs on their own. For nodding background music or the score to a student film about 'urban landscapes', Neutrino is just fine. There's enough warmth and depth to the compositions that they held up to repeat spins as I drove around town and then set up my wireless network at home. However, whenever I tried to focus on the album, it seemed to be built on an all-too-familiar set of rules and loops. It's groovy downtempo stuff, no doubt, but it fails to capture the imagination the way last year's Villain Accellerate record did. This is polite and tidy beat-making, with windchime accents, chirping bird samples and the occassional disembodied voice-snippet that almost lend it a depth worth exploring more. With a shelf full of exceptional releases from other Mush artists, as well as their forebears like the aforementioned DJ Krush, DJ Shadow, and almost all of the early Ninja Tune stable, it's difficult to make room for Neutrino, though he does make enough of a case for giving it a try. 
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Clairecords
Keyboards and vocals by JeannetteFaith are the base, and then Wes Steed takes it to a whole other levelwith computers and homemade synths, resulting in a sound that is notjust songs, it's a whole atmosphere. The techniques are used to greateffect in creating a feeling of absolute detachment, like a dependenceon computers for everything in life just so it doesn't require effort.The titles could be articles in Reader's Digestor some corporate pamphlet, and as such they belie the elegance ofwhat's inside. When sounds escape the speakers, though, the mood isrealized immediately, and an almost menial state of mind takes shape,like drone-esque office work. Troubadours used to sing about thestruggle of the working man #&151; farmers, mechanics, factoryworkers — in angry tones meant to seize attention and changeperceptions. This music is about the new under-appreciated orendangered species due to workload or stress at work or at home: thedesk jockey. Rather than knock people out with brute force, this is acoaxing way of encouraging results. This is a new step for the duo,since their last album did not deal with themes anywhere near this, butthey are perfectly suited to the task. Lyrics like "how many red eyeshave you taken?" and "home is where the heart breaks" float out onFaith's processed voice, immediately cutting in and burrowing for along stay. This is a bubbly and cheery-sounding record on the surface,but beneath it there is pain and longing. I couldn't stop listening,and it is now the preferred soundtrack for my mundane day jobexistence. Maybe I'll find the hidden message and escape, and I thinkthat's exactly what these songs are meant to persuade the listenertowards.
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Load
A consistent barrage ofwailing scratches and interstellar waves covers up, for a majority ofthe album, strangely distorted natural sounds like accordians, bells,clocks, and laughter. This combination of failing equipment andindefinite references to some kind of ghost world run by clowns staysfairly interesting from beginning to start; but Nautical Alamanac'sformula rarely changes. The rigid structure of each song somehowbecomes apparent through all the smoke and noise half way through thealbum and makes the remainder feel like a repeat of the first filteredthrough some altered dimesion. I can't help but think that this randomassortment of sounds is somehow comedic at its heart, maybe just a bitsurrealist. The assault of scratches, wheezes, and whines are neverthreatening and, even at loud volumes, never inspire any kind ofmadness or unbearable torment. The spasmodic current of the album neverallows for a consistency to build; any residue left behind by one soundis immediately destroyed by the following. "Cross Dementia" doesnothing short of spread laughter and the closing "Ocularis" only windseverything down to a calm and and slightly more silent end. So what'smissing? When the hidden track(s?) finally end and I'm left sitting inmy room, I feel like Nautical Almanac forgot some important ingredientsin their noise soup. For all their wackiness, Nautical Almanac somehowmanages to tell the same joke over and over. Where another group orindividual might succeed in making nonsense noise by severely wideningthe sound palette, Nautical Almanac stays static, relying on thegimmick of "no computers, no electricity" (if that is actually thecase) to carry the album. It boils down to this: the noise just soundslike noise. It has no compositional value and just seems like ahindrance on some of the other sounds that are trying to be heard. Hadsome more variety been packed into the noise end of the album and thencombined with all those excellent samples of the recognizable world, Rooting for the Microbes would have come away a lot more addicting than it is now.
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Alhough it does little to follow through on its genre-addressing title, cheeky or otherwise, The D&B Album still emerges as one of Bowindo's more accessible releases to date. From the playful motorik pulsings of the opening "Cascocity" it's clear that the musicians choose not the weighted expressionism or colorful electroacoustics that characterized the label's previous output and will opt instead for "electro" alone, forging a new brand of body music for new kinds of bodies.Bowindo
Domenico Sciajno and Gert-Jan Prins (or "Do shine O." and "Prinsjan" as their adopted b-boy names read) improvise with small electronics, computer, and radio manipulations pulling together arrhythmic roller coasters of clipped, squelching highs and dizzy, rumbling lows, not dance music by any means, but a lot of fun regardless. The one reference point I can imagine would be Nerve Net Noise's music, for as synthetic and aloof as The D&B Album sounds, it can never be called faceless, always bursting with enough cartoon-ish energy to push for the next nauseating, limb-shaking, speaker-busting plateau. The scattered references to "acceptable" electronic musicianship, a few straight-ahead breaks, down-beat bass patterns, and antique modal synth lines, exist submerged within a surface scurry of digital scraps that never feels too indulgent for justification in the disc's humorous undertone or simple, rump-shaking oddity. For their part, Prins' static-coated radio captures help to emphasize the music's reclamation of the friendly or commonplace within otherwise alienating circumstances. And if one thing must be taken away from The D&B Album it might be this idea, that through their chiding title, invented alter-egos, and schizophrenic presentation, the artists compile a subtle statement about the tendency towards depersonalization in current majority of experimental or improvised electronic music. It is more tempting, however, to forget the commentary altogether and just nod along with this wackiness, probably the more progressive attitude anyway. 
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DNA played angular freak noise for spastic punks; fiercely intellectual, bordering on the psychotic. The Brazilian-born Arto Lindsay played guitar in the most anti-musical, reptilian brand of non-funk that had ever been heard outside of music hour at the local laughing academy, barking and shrieking like a constipated Artaud in clipped fragments of opaque poeticism. Ikue Mori played a drum set with big taiko sticks in a manner that suggested neo-tribalism but delivered cold, muscular propulsion. Robin Crutchfield's synths unsympathetically reveled in circular insanity, and later, Tim Wright's bass danced around flittingly like a dying mosquito, never finding a foothold, falling over itself in a mad rush to the end of the song.
No More
Sure, it's noise, but noise as precise and deadly as DNA's deserves your attention. DNA were the longest-lived of the brief No Wave scene in late-70's New York City. Highlighted on the famous Eno-produced No New York compilation, DNA always seemed like the most vital of this grouping of high-energy avant-punks. Their four tracks from that compilation, as well as 28 other studio and live tracks, many rare and previously unreleased, comprise DNA on DNA, this definitive new collection from No More Records. Critics often lazily attempt to place DNA squarely in line with the previous generation of boundary-pushing jazz-improv mavericks like Albert Ayler and Sonny Sharrock (and the liner notes to this collection are no exception), but I've always felt that DNA have much more in common with Damo Suzuki-era Can freakouts, their influence continuing in a straight line to Japanese freak-metal noise outfits like the Boredoms and Ruins. DNA sit more comfortably on the margins, unabsorbed into an easy critical assessment of their music as some kind of punk-improv. Believe me, this stuff is much more entertaining when you back off from neatly-considered definitions and surrender to its oddness and angularity. For anyone who has collected other reissues of the band over the years, all the familiar stuff is here: the superlative debut "You and You" single, the vaguely teutonic keyboard-driven NNY stuff, and the jagged, chaotic intensity of A Taste of DNA. But where this collection shines is in the inclusion of the live material and never-released studio outtakes like "Grapefruit," a five-minute nervous breakdown on record, all non-verbal chanting and instinctively structured rock abstraction. Surprising, since previously, the world had never heard a DNA song that exceeded the three-minute mark. There are five tracks of alarmingly evocative instrumentals meant to accompany a theater piece. "Egomaniac's Kiss" should be, but is never mentioned in the same breath with the classics of the punk era, a miniature epic of raw, aggressive emotion and minimal rock construction. Put simply, DNA were a great band, and this indispensable document proves it. 
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