06 July 2014

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Albums and Singles

Shivers is a new jazz trio (of sorts) featuring Machinefabriek's Rutger Zuydervelt, though "anti-jazz" might be a more accurate descriptor given their willfully plodding rhythms and murky anti-virtuosity.  What the trio have going for them instead, however, is a distinctive strain of creepy, broken-sounding sci-fi brooding, which makes a great deal of sense for a band named after an early David Cronenberg film.  Appropriately, my opinion of this debut closely mirrors my opinion of almost every Cronenberg film that I have ever seen: an inspired aesthetic and some cool ideas, but it seems like it probably could have been a bit better.

Miasmah

While Shivers is ostensibly a new project, both of Zuydervelt's bandmates have been Machinefabriek collaborators several times in the past, just not together.  Perhaps that is why this album frequently feels more like an atypically heavy Machinefabriek album than any kind of fresh, equal partnership.  There are a couple exceptions though, most notably "Otomo," as bass clarinetist Gareth Davis initially unleashes quite a squawking and howling cacophony over Leo Fabriek's clattering free-jazz drumming before the whole thing collapses into buzzing and humming industrial ambience.  Leo and Gareth take charge yet again on the exceedingly baffling "Rabid," but with much diminished results, meandering along in a sleepy vamp for several minutes after a promising introductory firestorm of blown-out drums, noise, and overloaded bass.  I have absolutely no idea what Shivers were hoping to accomplish with that particular piece, as it seems inconceivable that there is anyone alive who wanted grinding industrial heaviness combined with a lazily pastoral clarinet jam within the same song.

For the most part, however, Shivers' aesthetic is much more seamless and successful, though still somewhat unfocused and occasionally a bit perplexing (the synth-heavy "Brood" sounds like a straight-up John Carpenter pastiche, for example) .  The best pieces are the ones that bookend the album, the most impressive of which is probably the opening "Ash."  Built upon a quivering haze of Rutger's guitar noise, crackling electronics, and heavy synth drone, "Ash" weaves a deliciously throbbing and menacing backdrop for Gareth's eerie warbles and whines.  The only downside is that Leo Fabriek's sole contribution seems to be sporadic drum-machine-like punctuations of snare hits and bass thumps, which seems like a waste of his talents (though he eventually comes in with some appropriately shivering brush-and-cymbal work).  Also striking is the comparatively minimal "Spacek," which locks into a lurching, hollow-sounding groove embellished with metallic cymbal swells and a host of squiggles, squeals, and dissonant keys.  Weirdly, however, it sometimes sounds like Davis is playing in another room entirely and that Fabriek just recorded a cool percussion loop and went home.  It is still quite a fine piece though.

"Replicant" closes the album on yet another high note, as Fabriek locks into a stomping industrial-damaged groove while Davis drifts in and out of Rutger's swelling and crackling electronics with melancholy Eastern-tinged snatches of melody.  Gradually, it settles down into a gently simmering shuffle that would not sound at all out of place on a Twin Peaks soundtrack before unexpectedly surging to a snarling close.  More than any other piece on the album, it sounds like both a legitimate collaboration and a legitimate composition.  I wish more of these six songs felt that way, as Shivers too frequently feels like Zuydervelt pieced together soundscapes from improvisations.  That is not inherently a bad thing, but I feel like this debut could have been better with some more effort, more time, and a more coherent focus (more of Shivers sounding like Shivers, less jamming and less John Carpenter).  As it stands, this is roughly just half of a very good album, but it is a promising start to a compelling vision nonetheless.

• Ash
• Spacek
• Replicant

 

06 July 2014

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Albums and Singles

Flame is only Skodvin's second solo album under his own name (following 2010's Flare), but he has long been quite a prolific fellow in both his Svarte Greiner solo guise and as one-half of Deaf Center.  While I do not yet have a comprehensive command of Erik’s entire oeuvre, this latest effort seems like a significant detour from the bleakly heavy drones that I normally associate with him.  Flame is still dark, of course, but it is more of a gently smoldering darkness than a crushing, oppressive one.  More importantly, this is a wonderful album, as Skodvin's lighter touch, clarity, and increased use of space combine to bring his excellent ideas into sharp relief.

Sonic Pieces

Flame is apparently the final installment in a two-part series of albums inspired by "nocturnal Americana" (Flare being the first part, naturally).  While that inspiration did not exactly jump out at me when I first heard the album, it makes a lot of sense in retrospect, though maybe Skodvin and I have differing definitions of "Americana."  At the very least, it explains the occasional blossoms of tormented-sounding blues guitar that sometimes surface.  In most other respects, however, there is nothing conventionally "Americana" about Flame at all, as it is largely a brooding mélange of eerily tinkling piano, dark and subtly dissonant string swells, and unconventional percussion.  The overall effect is quite a cinematic one, evoking flickering Lynchian images of black cars slowly creeping through deserted suburban streets in the dead of night.  Often the term "cinematic" is a polite code word for "music that does not quite stand on its own," but that is not the case here.  Flame creates its own images rather than seeming like a decontextualized part of a multimedia whole.

Admittedly, there are many other albums that sound like alternate soundtracks to Twin Peaks, Lost Highway, or Blue Velvet, but Flame is different, as it does not sound at all indebted to Angelo Badalamenti.  Rather, Skodvin has found his own neo-classical path to ominous and subtly hallucinatory nocturnal atmospheres.  While I certainly appreciate that originality, Flame's greatest asset is its execution: Skodvin and his collaborators (Anne Müller and Mika Posen on strings, Gareth Davis on clarinet) organically keep things at a menacing simmer without ever lapsing into static ambiance or blundering into heavy-handedness.  The best example of this mastery is "Reflections," as an eerie repeating piano motif twinkles with perfect rippling clarity amidst darkly massing strings, demanding (and deserving) my complete attention.  Also, Skodvin ingeniously keeps Flame lively with some surprisingly varied and wonderful percussion, like the oddly timed clapping/clacking rhythm in "Shining, Burning;" the lurching, hollow thump of "Black & Bronze;" and the buried metallic plinking of "Cypress Reverb."  Notably, however, the album highlight (the closing "Drowning, Whistling") works beautifully with no percussion at all, as its drones gradually build to an achingly beautiful crescendo of oscillating warmth with minimal accompaniment.

While there are admittedly a few songs that did not make a particularly strong impression on me, I ultimately loved Flame anyway.  It is refreshing and inspiring to hear something so nuanced, anachronistic, and meticulously crafted in today's musical landscape: this album is a feast of quiet power, attention to detail, appealing textures, well-used space, mood, and effective dynamics.  Also, I always appreciate it when someone crafts an album using people, wood, and steel rather than synthesizers and laptops, as it creates an appealing illusion of timelessness.  Equally importantly, this album was a huge surprise and I love surprises—I always knew that Erik was good, but never suspected that he was this good.  This is definitely one of the finest releases yet to come from the wonderfully aberrant Miasmah/Sonic Pieces milieu.

• Shining, Burning
• Black & Bronze
• Moving Mistake

 

 

 

06 July 2014

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Albums and Singles

A collaboration between these two artists makes perfect sense, given how both have carved out their individual niches working with rhythmic sounds in non-traditionally rhythmic situations. Russell Haswell has worked overtly in both realms, and his recent work with power electronics legends Consumer Electronics has him going as far as conventional techno beats. Pain Jerk's Kohei Gomi, on the other hand, has worked mostly as a harsh noise artist, but one of the few that has shaped harsh noise outbursts into ersatz rhythms. Split into two discs (one edited by Haswell, the other by Gomi), this is a sprawling, brilliant mass of sound culled from solo recordings and live performances that stand out strongly amongst both their other work.

Editions Mego

Personally, I am more familiar with Gomi’s Pain Jerk output than I am with Haswell’s prior work.Pain Jerk always stood out as a unique project in the often crowded Japanese noise scene due to his penchant to not only work with hyper-speed edits and micro-cuts of sound, but to frequently get "stuck" (for lack of a better term) in short loops that made for excellent, memorable bits of clanging industrial rhythm before dissolving back into an unadulterated roar.This technique can be heard throughout both discs, but he does not overly rely on it, even on his own disc.

Of the two, "Russell Haswell’s Mega Edit" is the most varied and diverse, which is important since his is over twice the length of Gomi's (73 minutes versus 35).Here the electroacoustic part of the wordy title of the set are the most fitting, with filtered radio static and tonal swells that nod back to the earlier days of experimental electronic music showing up frequently in its early moments.Different passages seem sourced from the high brow world of modular synthesis, then back to the dirtiness of guitar pedals. Some archetypical Pain Jerk junk loops appear, but with a different laptop DSP sheen to them.

A junky drum machine does appear about half way in, making for the only traditional rhythmic accompaniment on here, but buried under harsh expanses of squeal and distortion to work as a perfect symbol of Haswell’s two extremes.At times it even drifts into some Autechre like pseudo-generative rhythmic synthesis before just coming apart in sheets of pure noise and overdrive.

On the other disc, "Pain Jerk’s Mega Edit" begins with probably the most peaceful moments of both discs, with filtered static and processed feedback smoothing out most of the most abrasive elements of a noise recording into an almost calming ambient expanse.This is short lived, as I had expected (and hoped), because soon it just becomes a paired ultra high and low frequency blast, like the world’s most annoying hearing test left on for way too long.

From here, things slip more into Gomi’s comfort zone, emphasizing the harsh noise moments versus Haswell’s occasional nod to academic electro-acoustic sound.He relies less on his looping as a form of rhythm and more as a texture, such as the extended, frozen moment towards the middle that, sustained for as long as it is, seems to slip into some sort of melodic mood (but might just be my brain pretending that it is).Regardless of that, he chooses to end the mix on his standard blown out noise style, resulting in an appropriate harsh climax.

Gomi and Haswell had been in touch for some 15 years before actually collaborating live in 2012, which is where the source material for these mixes originated.In performance, the two were using solo material both had exchanged for years prior as their source, so this set is a convoluted bit of solo material-live collaboration-solo edits.Given how strong both discs are, and how distinctive each of them make their respective mixes sound, I would say that the collaboration is a definite success.

samples:

• Russell Haswell's Mega Edit (Excerpt 1)
• Russell Haswell's Mega Edit (Excerpt 2)
• Pain Jerk's Mega Edit

 

29 June 2014

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Albums and Singles

OOIOO has always created a musical language all its own. Under the leadership of Yoshimi, also a founding member of Boredoms, the group has recorded six albums that have subverted expectations and warped perceptions of what constitutes pop and experimental music. Four years of work went into making Gamel, their bold new album inspired by the Javanese style of gamelan and the first new music from Yoshimi in over five years. Gamelan is an ancient form that has inspired a great many composers and musicians over the past century, from Erik Satie and Claude Debussy to Mouse on Mars and Sun City Girls. The introduction of this traditional form transformed the group into a super tribe, side-stepping the road between the past and the future. Their focus is not to replicate these ancient styles, but to incorporate them into their consistently inventive, constantly shifting musical frameworks. They take their love of indigenous music into an entirely new dimension by freely weaving organic and electric tones into a vivid tapestry, employing their keen sense of color and texture.

While previous OOIOO albums have been largely studio creations, Gamel is the most accurate portrayal of the band's overwhelming, forceful live presence they have released yet. Yoshimi leads her minimalistic rhythm ensemble by making quick, impulsive shifts in tone and attack, the group acting as one mind under her expert instruction. While the gamelan elements will be brand new to many listeners, the band offsets the bizarre with familiar, at times even nostalgic and childlike, melodies. Gamel is euphoric, bursting at the seams with an exhilarating frenzy that is universal yet uniquely their own. OOIOO’s music is reflected in the ear of the beholder, with each listener taking away something different.

Yoshimi began her music career in 1986 playing drums in UFO or Die with vocalist Eye, and later joined him in the revolutionary noise-pop group Boredoms. Her explosive drum performances captivated audiences and even inspired Wayne Coyne to name a now-famous Flaming Lips album in her honor. While the band’s tours of the United States are infrequent, they are as The New York Times has stated, transcendent.

More information can be found here.

29 June 2014

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Albums and Singles

For the past decade or so, Polish musician Michał Jacaszek has been exploring a new, resolutely modern chapter in Eastern Europe's long, storied love affair with classical music. His creations are painstakingly crafted collages of electronic textures and baroque instrumentation, harpsichords being swarmed by woolly static one minute and pulled apart by billowing wind the next. A push-and-pull tension runs deep and constant throughout. Ambient music is rarely so sonically challenging. Jacaszek has recorded for Ghostly International, Miasmah, Gusstaff Records and Experimedia and other labels. This is his first release for Touch.

Michał Jacaszek writes:

"When poets and writers declare their enchantment for the forms of nature, they often use musical terms as metaphors. Visual artists' creations often resemble graphic partitas, when recapturing the rhythms of landscapes.  Confirming, in a way, these musical intuitions, composers write great music deeply inspired by birdsongs, wind rustlings, waves repetitions etc."

More information can be found here.

29 June 2014

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Albums and Singles

This album is about resonance: on Saman, which means "Together," Hildur melts her voice with her cello, connecting the two instruments together. The result is a highly involving and moving album, recorded, mixed and mastered in Berlin. Hildur's sylph-like vocals contrast beautifully with rich cello tones, resolving the tension between light and dark to produce a unique listening experience.

More information can be found here.

29 June 2014

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Albums and Singles

Last year's Collected Works Vol. I – The Moog Years was one of my favorite albums in recent memory, so I was very much looking forward to this suite of entirely new modular synth pieces from Gengras.  Naturally, my anticipation turned out to be justified, but the meditative, pastoral Ishi has a radically different feel than its moodier, more haunting predecessor.  While I happen to vastly prefer moodiness to serenity, Geddes' compositional talents and intuitive understanding of both space and pacing ensure that Ishi is still a characteristically enjoyable effort.

Leaving

All other qualities aside, Ishi is likely to be the most conceptually ambitious modular synth album that I will ever hear, as it takes its name from "The Last Wild Indian," who was "discovered" in 1911.  That, however, was only the starting point for Gengras' inspiration, as Ishi’s story got him thinking about the gulf between our world and life on the fringes of it.  In essence, Ishi is an album about "the man who walks into our world understanding none of it but forced to live in it regardless."  Importantly, that is not abstraction, but a description of actual people from Gengras' actual life.  Given that (and Ishi's own nightmarish experience of losing absolutely everyone he knew), I would have expected this album to be a bit of a brooding and melancholy effort, but Geddes surprisingly went in the complete opposite direction: Ishi is a rather transcendent, celestial, and turbulence-free affair from start to finish.

It is also a rather brief one, consisting of just three songs and clocking in around 35 minutes.  The comparatively brief title piece opens the album with a dreamy, blissful thrum of lush swells enlivened by a bit of buried stuttering amidst the billowing chords.  The following "Passage" does not overtly stray terribly far from that template at all, but it is significantly better (and longer).  A lot of that success is due to the added length, as "Ishi" ends before it has a chance to become fully absorbing–being nearly twice as long, "Passage" does not have that problem.  There are some other notable enhancements to the formula as well though, as "Passage" is also considerably more vibrant, embellishing its heavenly reverie with layers of dynamically undulating, twinkling, and flanging synthesizer.  Also, its bliss-ocean is not entirely pure, as it is muddied by some welcome hints of spacey, retro-futurism.

The closing 18-minute epic "Threshold," however, brings the album unambiguously back to untroubled, oceanic synth bliss, evoking flickering shafts of sunlight amidst a sky filled with slow-moving clouds (or something similarly poetic).  In any case, it is quite pleasant and immersive, though the subtly more divergent "Passage" still feels like the album’s clear zenith.  That said, I cannot emphasize enough how similar Ishi’s three pieces all feel to one another–this album truly is just three variations of "warm swells of drifting bliss."  That is not necessarily a bad thing, as it makes for a well-sequenced and connected whole, but it makes differences between the individual pieces feel a bit beside the point.

All of that, of course, adds up to yet another solid effort by Gengras, but a comparatively minor one that feels less distinctive than much of his other recent work.  While Collected Works had an undeniable advantage in gradually taking shape over a few years of cassette releases, I do not think Ishi suffers from being rushed or from a regression or weakness of Gengras' compositional talents.  Geddes did not make any bad or false moves-he just skillfully made an unusually radiant and edgeless album that is probably exactly the album he wanted to make.  I am still a bit troubled by Ishi's lack of distictiveness, but I suspect that Gengras made a conscious effort to work as purely and egolessly as possible on this album.  Even if I am wrong, it certainly sounds like he did.  Of course, it is always dangerous to hypothesize about artist's motives and methods, so the real conclusion here is this: Ishi is a lush and pleasant album, but those looking for something deeper than that should investigate some of Gengras' previous work instead.

• Ishi
• Passage
• Threshold

 

29 June 2014

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Albums and Singles

After what almost seemed like a begrudging festival reunion to play Streetcleaner, it was exciting to see that the pieces were coming together for a true Godflesh reunion, and even more so when the likelihood of new material appearing got higher and higher. Unexpectedly announced as a precursor to the upcoming full-length album, Decline & Fall sounds as if it could have been recorded around 1993 through 1995, because it has such archetypical Godflesh sound, which is reassuring to say the least.

Avalanche/Daymare

These four songs (none of which are expected to appear on A World Lit Only by Fire this fall) rigidly stick to that early Godflesh template of Justin Broadrick's screeching, barely controlled guitar harmonics, chugging riffs, Ben Green's blown speaker-cabinet bass and the rigid, unflinching percussion of a drum machine (which sounds like it is still the venerable Alesis SR-16).There are no surprises or unexpected diversions to be heard, likely because Broadrick has compartmentalized all of his favorite genres into their own specific projects.Godflesh is pretty much officially reserved now for just industrial tinged metal sounds.

I have mixed feelings about this, because I find many of my favorite Godflesh songs to be the ones that push out of those boundaries, like the (post)punk-y Tiny Tears EP, the techno-tinged Slavestate and the glorious untitled bonus song hidden at the end of Hymns.At the same time, though, anyone who followed Godflesh knows the identity crisis that started happening at the hip-hop influenced Songs of Love and Hate into the dour electronics of Us and Them (which I feel, while not perfect, is very underrated) and the straight forward, bland metal of Hymns lead to diminishing returns.

Which is why I pegged Decline & Fall as sounding specifically from that aforementioned timeline, because it was then their sound was most consistent."Ringer" is not far removed from the rock tinged from Selfless, but lacking that sterile, clinical sheen that at first turned me away, and then endeared that record to me.It is a bit less depressive than Selfless, but darker than Messiah and its prototypical groove direction, channeling the aggression that Broadrick had been holding back on the Jesu records.

The hip-hop drum machine shuffle blended with the idiosyncratic guitar melodies and barked/growled vocals of "Dogbite" resemble a further refinement to the sound of Pure, but livelier and more energetic in comparison, and more than a passing resemblance to "Mothra.""Playing with Fire," on the other hand, sticks with the bleak, depressive Godflesh sound that arose heavily on Us and Them, but without the electronics, and an overall arrangement more consistent with the Selfless era and a good pairing of Broadrick's singing/screaming vocal dynamic.

The title song is perhaps where the album stands out the most unique: a frenetic jerky rhythm that bounces between slow to fast with Broadrick’s guttural vocals.The voice sounds like a conscious attempt for a Streetcleaner throwback, but the music itself is harder to pin down, with a constantly changing tempo and melodic passages, but sounds definitively like Godflesh.Both the Japanese Daymare pressing and the digital download direct from Avalanche include two bonus dub remixes, one for "Playing with Fire" and the other being "Ringer".Like other mixes from Broadrick, he sticks with the classic definition of a dub mix, stripping back the guitar to emphasize the drums and bass, extra effects on both and minimized vocals.Neither are essential, but they do give a different perspective on the songs.

The most striking aspect of Decline & Fall is how Godflesh-y the whole thing feels.I was expecting a trajectory more like Broadrick's long-time influence Swans' return after a similarly long absence peppered with side projects, where finding their specific identity took a bit of time.This EP does not have any overt moments that sound like Jesu, or Pale Sketcher, or JK Flesh, or [insert project here]: it is purely a distillation of the early days of Godflesh.If this reactivation is for the long term, as it seems to be, I am not sure how this strictly compartmentalized approach will be.For the span of an EP it works wonderfully, and it is reassuring that Broadrick and Green have not simply tried to capitalize on their past glories by resurrecting the name.However, my concerns are how this very specific adherence to their old sound will be over the span of one or many full-length albums.Given who it is, and how much of a fan I am of their entire discography, I have no problem giving them the benefit of the doubt though.

samples:

• Dogbite
• Playing with Fire
• Decline & Fall

 

29 June 2014

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Albums and Singles

This is the solo debut from Burch, who is probably best known for being the man behind The Spring Press label. Using a palette of consisting primarily of acoustic guitars and modular synths, Jeff offers up two very different long-form pieces.  While the lazily drifting ambience of "The Nine Points" definitely misses the mark for me, the jangling, mesmerizing psychedelia of the closing "La Perouse" is intermittently spectacular.

Important

For all its faults, "The Nine Points" is initially quite a fine piece, as it opens with a single repeating acoustic guitar strum beneath a languorous and melancholy saxophone melody courtesy of guest Marcus Whale.  While I cannot say that I am a big fan of subdued, melodic saxophone playing in general, it works well within its context, as Burch gradually doubles the acoustic guitar with a distorted electric one and some massing swells of feedback begin to hang in the periphery.  It makes for excellent headphone listening once it all coheres and the endlessly repeating strum keeps a pleasantly hypnotic pulse.  If the piece had continued to blossom in that vein, I suspect I would have liked it a lot.  Unfortunately, the strum fades out around the 8-minute mark and "The Nine Points" segues into 10 minutes of gently drifting serenity that sounds like a handful of uninspired improvisations stitched together into an unnecessarily long, meandering multi-part epic.

In contrast, "La Perouse" is instantly distinctive, focused, and propulsive, as Jeff weaves a loopy, off-kilter groove from a simple insistently repeating motif, a couple of chords, and some toms and tambourine from guest percussionist Stephen James.  Gradually, the charmingly stumbling rhythm gains momentum and Burch, James, and Psychic Ills' guitarist Tres Warren do their best to keep it in a deliciously unpredictable state of flux, offering up vibrant eruptions of guitar snarl and cymbal flourishes.  Curiously, however, it all gets sucked into a black hole of metallic grinding and howling feedback around the half-way mark and re-starts as fairly static soundscape of chirping and whining modular synthesizers.  While I actually like both the chirping and the accompanying cymbal shimmer just fine, the transition stops the song’s momentum dead and maddeningly dilutes an otherwise flawless, wonderful, and hypnotic piece.

While I am sure that Jeff constructed the album the way he did for a reason, his questionable compositional choices undermine the album in an exasperatingly fundamental way for me.  As a result, this effort far more promising than it is successful: there are certainly some excellent and striking ideas executed beautifully, but they tend to be blunted by too-long songs and over-ambitious structures.  On the bright side, this album can at least boast a 7 ½ minute stretch of near-perfection, which is something that few other releases this year are likely to deliver.  It also boasts some very cool cover art from Roni Horn.  You cannot lose with owls.

• The Nine Points
• La Perouse (excerpt one)
• La Perouse (excerpt two)

 

29 June 2014

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Albums and Singles

As elements of New Orleans Bounce music has been slowly drifting outside of its largely southern borders, Big Freedia, also known as Freddie Ross, has become the unofficial ambassador for the genre, making various high profile TV appearances and rather memorable live performances.  Just Be Free is his first true full-length album, and has the polish that could gain new fans, but never strays far from his roots and manages to stay undeniably fun.

Queen Diva

The bounce music scene is an insular one to say the least.Largely centered in New Orleans, performers stick to the same sampled loops ("Drag Rap" by The Showboys), a repetitive, shouting vocal style based heavily in repetition and delay, and a lyrical focus on ass shaking.In-roads have been made based on appearances in HBO's Treme and, probably most disgracefully, Miley Cyrus' televised twerking performance (twerking as a dance is heavily associated with bounce, but existed before in the late 1980s Miami Bass scene as booty clapping, and surely before that in different forms). Unexpected attempts at crossover have happened as well, with Big Freedia having a brief stint opening for the Postal Service, befuddling the indie crowd who now may react more positively in an attempt to retain their hipster credibility.

Anyone with a passing familiarity with his previous work will easily be able to tell that this is a record aimed at garnering wider recognition, if for no other reason than the polished production and variation in material.It also tends to have lighter disposition than the sexually explicit "Walk Wit a Dip" and "Big Freddie Kay Ready," or the underlying violence of "Gin in my System."The exception may be the oddly fatalistic "Shake, wiggle, work/now kill yourself," part of "Dangerous," which stands out surprisingly dark amongst the upbeat remainder of the song.

As a whole, the production on the first half of the album sticks to the genre tropes of high BPMs and stuttering vocal samples, but with a greater implementation of synths to keep things from being as overly same-y as many of Freedia's contemporaries.This results in some entertaining misdirection:"N.O. Bounce" might start out with some uncomfortably cheesy horns, but soon comes together in a battery of delays and razor-sharp beats that are enjoyably raw, but underscored by a simple, house piano backing."Jump On It" starts a bit obnoxiously pop, but develops into a mix heavily focused on bass and Morse code, peppered with jazz horn samples.

Most of the second half of the album fits in better with the rawer singles from before, heavily focused on that sped up 808 drum loop and old school orchestra hits sampled from the Showboys."Explode" is probably the most dramatic example of this, all stabby beats and Big Freedia's aggressive, boisterous vocals slipping into dancehall toasting, but avoiding what could be problematic repetition.

The album's oddest moment comes at the end, and I would not characterize it as a misstep but rather an odd and unexpected side-step."Mo Azz," a reworking of "Azz Everywhere," drops the rapid bounce pace of the original and dials the BPMs down to the double digits, with some chopped and screwed effects and conventional hip-hop production.It is not necessarily a bad version, but just feels like an odd choice, given the original was one of his most aggressive and energetic performances slowed down so much.

The best moments have far more in common with difficult music than it would seem on the surface.The aggressive vocals, repetitive sampling, and harsh rhythms are not all that dissimilar from some of the noisier industrial music in my collection.What may superficially just seem like a bunch of songs about dancing has its own idiosyncratic sense of dissonance that manages to cross-over into less conventional styles as well as traditional ones.What it boils down to it is just plain fun:the energy is undeniable, and it is quite obvious that it is the intended purpose of the record.Not everything has to be challenging or difficult as far as music goes for me.

The cynic in me of course wonders if this current interest in Big Freedia is one based in novelty:he is an openly gay, gender non-conformist who identifies as male but presents feminine who sings songs about shaking asses.I personally cannot even say my initial listening was immune from that, if for nothing else than the fact that orders to "shake one's butt" are coming from a different place than the traditional objectification/misogynistic one (although it should be noted that butts are not gender specific, and his shows feature male and female dancers simultaneously).Sexual and gender politics aside, Big Freedia is an exceptional performer of the genre, carefully traversing the intentional repetition with just the right amount of variation, while keeping songs just long enough to be satisfying, but not so long as they overstay their welcome (a common problem in a genre more tuned to a live performance than recorded medium).Even though Just Be Free may be poised for mainstream recognition, there is enough here to keep weirdos like me entertained as well.

samples:

• N.O. Bounce
• Explode
• Mo Azz