After a few years of absence, Tara Jane returns with only a four song EP, but it's beautiful enough to wet my appetite in anticipation from her forthcoming release that's currently being promised later this year.
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Douglas Lilburn was already an award-winning composer when he turned from conventional music to focus on electronic music, founding New Zealand’s first electronic music studio at Victoria University of Wellington in the late 1960s. The three CDs and the DVD comprising this collection contain many valuable pieces that highlight Lilburn’s contributions to the electronic form.
For the sixth Numero release, the group plunges the archives of music from the small Central American nation of Belize, a country which tends to associate itself more with the Carribbean countries than the surrounding Mexico and Guatemala and nearby Honduras. Its disco, R&B, and funk captured here more resembles reggae and soul influenced tourist-friendly party music.
Beefed up to a more rhythmic trio for this release, Religious Knives do their best work so far as part of the so far untouchable No Fun Rotten LP series. Mouthus’ Nate Nelson joins Maya Miller and Mike Bernstein in bringing a secular adhan audience to a matinee horror performance.
Nadja is the heavy guitar-driven project between Aidan Baker and Leah Buckarell. Listening to the overloaded intensity and slow, but forceful grit is like trying to stand firm while being deluged with gigantic buckets of shockingly cold water.
Floret Silva is a pure 70s art rock project, from concept to execution, a progressive folk adaptation of the 13th-century medieval songs collectively known as the Carmina Burana. Remarkably, it does not collapse under the weight of its own concept, and holds up quite well nearly 30 years after its recording.
Graveyards are the most organic and traditionally structured of all of John Olson’s (Wolf Eyes) side projects. With improvisational jazz relying more these days on chemistry than the highs and distances of what’s left to explore, this trio are consistently drawing me ever closer, and deeper, to the heart of their sound.
Dwayne Sodahberk's latest for Tigerbeat6 pushes some of the glitchy electronics with which the artist is often associated to the background, allowing the simple pop melodies to rise to the fore. Though perhaps less experimental than some of his other work, Cut Open wins by being direct.
Anticipating a new full length, Sonig reissues every side of non-album Lithops material on one disc, with unreleased tracks from the same time period. At least three of these singles have been long out of print, and as bittersweet as it is to see my $2 copy of “Tubino-see-through / Filterabend” (Static Caravan 1, clear-vinyl, hand-stamped sleeve, decal insert) swiftly devalued, having the rest of these immediately available is almost better than a new record from Jan St. Werner.
Maybe it’s a bit too early to call, but right now I’d say it is safe to say that Stay Afraid, the latest release from Brooklyn noise-rockers Parts and Labor is the first great fist-in-the-air rock record of 2006. With all the instruments jacked up within an inch of their lives, the band goes flat out on every song here, and comes up victorious for the most part.
