The common misconception about punk is that no one knew how to play.Truth is, many a band were solid from the start and became all the moreaccomplished with time. A good example is the turbulent, many membered,up and down, off and on again run of The Damned (which I'm a longtimefan of). And here we are a quarter century later, five years after thelast album, with 13 new studio tunes. Finally, something new to add tothe live set lists. Alongside vocalist Dave Vanian, fellow foundingmember Captain Sensible is finally back in the fold. Vanian's richvoice sounds as good as ever as he indulges in his gothic silver screenfantasies while the good Captain indulges in his own Floyd meetsHendrix guitar stylings. Monty Oxy Moron adds plenty of keys andbassist Patricia Morrison (Vanian's wife, ex-Gun Club and Sisters ofMercy) and new and improved drummer Pinch provide a strong rhythmsection with backing vocals by all. "Grave Disorder" not only soundsfresh and new, it sounds like The Damned - that colorful mix of sillyfun, romantic horror, melodic pop and punk rock. They sound great andevery track is thumbs up. Lyrically they once again take the piss outof politicians, including barely elected Bush in "W", and religiousfanatics, as well as internet junkies, John Lennon and Michael Jackson."Democracy?" and "Would You Be So Hot (If You Weren't Dead?)" areinstant classics with irresistible melodies. "Song.com" features somemean organ soloing and "Absinthe" some theremin atmosphere by Vanian."Amen" winds down nicely with several minutes of beach side samples andsynth. Captain's "Neverland", originally from his '96 solo album "MadCows & Englishmen", is re-recorded with Vanian on vocals. "Beautyof The Beast" is a classic Vanian piano ballad circa "Phantasmagoria",a fitting conclusion. It was worth the wait! Get the gold logo embosseddigipack version with 12 page lyric insert if you can. The Damned areon tour in the States through early November then on to the UK for therest of the year.
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When I heard talk about this, I was rather excited. It seemed to bepart of a collaborative effort — perhaps with four contributors allbasing music around selected Hebrew prayers. Arthur Baker was allegedlyat the helm of this project, with a superstar team which includedengineer Steve Albini, and a completion to be mastered at Abbey Road.But what happened in the meantime? Some plug must have been pulledsomewhere and us, the consumers are left with this $6 remnant whichmimics a dangling participle. Mogwai's one-track single here stretchesabout twenty minutes, and if you've seen them live at all in the lastyear, you've heard it already — it's the very last track they've beendoing in concert — you know, the one that gave me hearing damage in myleft ear in Boston and set the PA on fire in Baltimore. The song isinstrumental and starts off quiet and peaceful, with a repeated themeand builds and builds and builds, to a blurry, gritty climax. Strangelyenough, however, there seems to be so much compression performed onthis in the mastering process that it feels like it came in on the samevolume it goes out in. It's not -bad- per se and it sure as hell rocksout, yet on it's own, I'm rather disappointed. I feel it's sort ofmissing something. This song would be great at the end of this year's"Rock Action" LP or on a compilation with four other remotely anthemic20 minute-long pieces. I'm going to suggest this item only for the bigfans who can't live without a recording of their concert finale. 
Vote Robot are Canadian duo Scott August and Kevin Rivard and "In MeormNA" is their second album, first on CD, for Scratch Recordings.Thirteen mostly 1 to 3 minute tracks, all with seemingly non-sensicaltitles, provide about 33 minutes total of sparse glitch-flow. A littlesticker on the jewel case proudly declares "NO laptops, sequencers,samplers, drumboxes, etc." so I'm assuming these are improvised pieces.What's more pretentious - declaring what you do use or what you don'tuse to make music? Judging from the disc's cute and cuddly animalthemed artwork, I don't think Vote Robot take themselves all thatseriously, unlike, say, the Rastermusic posse. The sound palette isvaried but maintains an anonymity. It sounds like line noises, foreverechoing input/output pops, dismembered tones/drones/notes, morse codeblips, the gentle shuffling of small objects, etc. It's very warm andeasygoing and Oval-like at times, only more 'musical' and, ultimately,listenable. A few tracks are a tad noisier than the rest but certainlynot enough to disrupt the pleasantness of it all. 
The new EP from Mira Calix comes with 2 tracks. One by Mira Calixherself, and one Andrea Parker remix from her first album. The MiraCalix track is divided into four parts, and starts out with roughmachinery sounds and a dark static flowing from side to side. A sawwave and beautiful voice then coats these sounds, accompanied by a slowclassical piano melody. The machinery and static morph into a complexrhythm at the very top of the sound range, with a low bass beat in thecenter. The soft voices make sounds that compliment the saw-wave synthmelody very nicely. They warmed my heart. After the beat ends, a flutemelody and a dirty resonance (much like a storm or crickets) arrives.This is coupled by sounds of flapping water, like a seal clapping.Weird stuff. This track is very, very, very peaceful, and could bringme up when I'm at my lowest low. Parker's remix is darker and more beatoriented, and while it's ok, it doesn't evolve over the course of thetrack and gets old.
Korean born artist Nam June Paik is widely credited as the founder ofvideo art and for over 40 years his work and performances have crossedpaths with the Fluxus group and such experimental luminaries as JohnCage, Karlheinz Stockhausen and Joseph Beuys. "Works" is the first CDrelease of Paik's music and it contains 5 tracks spanning 21 years andranging from 20 seconds to nearly 29 minutes. The first, "PreparedPiano for Merce Cunningham" from 1977, is the lengthiest and is muchmore atmospheric than melodic. Paik (rhymes with 'cake') improvises onand moves about a de-tuned piano, the majority of the piece composed ofdampened lower register notes with an eerie timbre that resembles thatof gently struck steel drums. From the 1958-61 period, "Hommage A JohnCage", "Simple" and "Etude for Pianoforte" are all short hand splicedtape collages. 'Samples' of varying length - prepared piano, sped-upsongs, crying babies, Paik screaming - seem to be randomly, yetskillfully, juxtaposed. "Duett Paik/Takis" is just that, about 26minutes worth of Paik improvising on piano while Greek kinetic artistTakis performs on his sculptures. By 'perform' I mean sporadicallyslamming pieces of metal while Paik softly, non verbally hums/sings andquietly plays a pretty but sad song, never breaking concentrationdespite the very jarring interruptions. It makes for a very strangeeffect in that an austere beauty is forced to cohabit a space withindustrial noise, neither apparently mindful of the other. Oddlyenough, for the final 6 minutes Takis audibly bows out and Paikswitches to what I'm guessing is a harpsichord for a much brighterconclusion. While the 3 shorter pieces are yet another reminder thatsomeone else has already done most everything that's being done todaymany years ago, the 2 longer pieces are truly, curiously compellingworks of music/art that bear repeated listening.
This EP surfaces a whole 20 years after the last full album from this Coventry, UK-based quartet. These four songs are short enough to grace a 7" and the songs are of the same caliber of what made the group so popular 25 years ago. It's a brief teaser/taster of hopefully more punchy, catchy, sugar-coated pop to come.
Cold Cave's embarrassing attempt at crossover success opens with "The Great Pan Is Dead," a dull, emotionally overwrought synth-rocker slathered in Wes Eisold's affected, fake British accent (he's from Boston) that sounds like a nu-goth approximation of the Killers. Cold Cave may be aiming to win over the synth-pop revival crowd, but the Killers are more popular than Cold Cave (and headlining sold-out arenas) for one simple reason—they write better tunes.
Ryoji Ikeda and Carsten Nicolai have made some of the most intense, exciting and intriguing electronic music of the last 20 years, mostly apart but they came together as Cyclo. ten years ago with a terrific self-titled album. When the follow up landed on my doorstep recently, I was expecting something great and got something unexpectedly better than I hoped for instead. Their debut was only a warm up, a training session. id is the real deal. Combining Nicolai’s hard yet yielding rhythms with Ikeda’s lust for ear-bending sounds, the duo has created a stunning album that aims to fuse their music (and their concept of music) with the visual arts.
Jackamo was a pretty odd and uncompromising album, but some insightful person at Atco still managed to see commercial potential in it and Annie wound up with a major label record deal.  Unfortunately, that partnership did not get a chance to flourish, as Atco dissolved before her completed follow-up album could be released.  In fact, that album still hasn't been released.  Undeterred, Annie returned to On-U Sound and recorded Short and Sweet (1992), a very fun, accessible, and dance-friendly effort that ironically seems like it could have been wildly successful if it had had a major label's promotional budget behind it.
Eleventh Dream Day has got to be one of the most well-adjusted bands ever, loosely holding together for over two decades despite never quite achieving the level of success they deserved and sharing members with Freakwater and Tortoise.  More remarkable still is how well they've continued to evolve and remain vital after all this time, as 2006's Zeroes and Ones ranked among their best efforts. Riot Now! picks up right where that album left off and continues EDD's late career momentum beautifully, sounding very much like a great rock band at the top of their game.
