09 May 2006

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Albums and Singles

2nd Gen mastermind Wajid Yaseen also works under the alias Uniform with partner Alice Kemp, and Protocol is their latest effort for Planet Mu. Despite Planet Mu's ruptured dance tendencies, 2nd Gen's reputation for heavy break beats, and Uniform's first album for Ad Noiseam of abstract beat compositions, Protocol takes a hard left turn into unexpected territory.

 

Planet Mu

Protocol is at once a dense, bleak, murderous kind of record that works on a purely visceral level. The songs appear mostly as loosely structured experiments centered around the dirty, scab-ridden, blood-clotted themes that the album takes on. There are almost no discernable beats this time around, and what rhythm exists seems almost like the breakbeats that Yaseen is known for stretched almost imperceptibly long like sinewy tissue that is tearing.

The tracks are almost exclusively composed of intensive waves of grumbling low end and harsh, manipulated synth figures. In fact, there's so much going on in the low frequencies that a lot of this album is simply lost without a good sub because the weight of most tracks is being carried in a frequency range that bookshelf speakers and earbuds just can't reproduce. That's both an asset and a drawback for the record; with the sub blasting and the volume cranked, the album recreates the bludgeoning force of its themes, but coming through a standard car stereo or from an mp3 player, the record may fail to connect.

A range of guest vocalists provides the personification of the album's unrelentingly dark themes. The voices usually take the already brutal sound design and drag the songs further through filthy gutters, but then Lydia Lunch, Alan Vega, and Dälek aren't known for an up-with-people vibe. It can all be a bit overwhelming in fact, and I find the record hard to listen to straight through because it's soaked with a very palpable dread, but allowing it to work its dark magic, there's no denying that it DOES work.

Like a lot of art that isn't actually pretty to look at or fun to watch, Protocol can be difficult, but there is a certain beauty in how capably it renders a world of violence and grime. I'm not always in the mood for a Park Chan-Wook film or for Michael Gira's writing, and I imagine that I'll need the right headspace to really appreciate Protocol on repeated listens, but there's no doubt that Uniform have captured ugliness here in a way that is affecting.

samples:

• A Swollen Vendetta (feat. Dälek)
• If
• No One Saw the Difference (feat. Franko B.)

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08 May 2006

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Albums and Singles

Japanese instrumental group Anoice cherish melodies over everything. This, their debut release, doesn’t redefine music but it does carve out its own little space somewhere near the sea and sets up its own nest of ideas.

 
Important Records
 
Most of the songs are led by Yuki’s piano and Utaka’s viola, both instruments sketch some repeated lines which the whole band build up into a fully fleshed out flourish. They never resort to forming a wall of sound to accommodate all the instruments. Instead, they act more like an orchestra—even when all players are going at it hammer and tongs—each member adding their own element to the melody. Anoice hit all the blissful and joyous emotions and only rarely dip into melancholy like most bands of the same ilk.

The album’s nine pieces are split into two categories: four with titles, which are the straightforward songs of the album, and five untitled ones, interspersed between the others, taking a little more experimental experimental direction. The first two untitled pieces are droney glitch bits which bookend the song “Aspirin Music” (probably the most rock bit of the album, also the best) quite well. The untitled pieces all act as prologues and epilogues to the named songs; it is a unique way of doing the album. It disrupts the flow slightly but when each named track starts, it starts from a blank slate. This allows the band to start afresh and build up new moods and textures. I like this approach a lot.

Anoice might at first seem liike Important Records' attempt at finding another Larsen but they are more than that. Remmings is a damn fine album. It took a few listens to fully appreciate it but now that I have gotten into it I’m listening to it quite a lot. The range of music on the album goes from the simple and minimal to complex and dense pieces. A lot of craftmanship has gone into Remmings, it doesn't sound like the songs were just jammed out. They sound like they were carefully sculpted and coloured. As good as the album is, I never felt though as if Anoice ever got to full power. Hopefully Remmings is what will become a rich back catalogue.

samples:

• Aspirin Music
• Liange
• Untitled 5

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08 May 2006

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Albums and Singles

With their sixth full-length album, Drew Daniel and M.C. Schmidt once again approach their music from the conceptual level, hitting upon a brilliant idea and elaborating it perfectly. The ten "audio portraits" that comprise the album evidence a precision of concept and working method that is almost fetishistic in its exactness, but nonetheless provides an engaging, humorous and often illuminating listening experience.

 

Matador
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The theme of the album is audio portraiture, each track named in honor of a favored personage. Where another more traditional group might pay homage in song by penning lyrics that reference the subject directly, Matmos utilize their signature strategy of object sampling, approaching the challenge obliquely and ingeniously. For each subject, a series of appropriate objects (and sometimes texts) are chosen, then sampled, mutated and molded into a song whose genre roughly corresponds to the chosen subject's aesthetic. In the case of "Steam and Sequins for Larry Levan," for instance, the club music pioneer is evoked with samples of hissing steam vents and sequins being affixed to fabric, which are magically transformed into exactly the kind of infectious mutant disco white-label side that might have been produced by Levan, Walter Gibbons or Arthur Russell back in the Paradise Garage heyday.

Though this working method undoubtedly results in a series of audio portraits that are wholly overdetermined by their subject (who couldn't have guessed that Joe Meek would be memorialized with a heavily phased, reverb-drenched rock instrumental?), I was nevertheless surprised by the many left turns and counterintuitive choices made by Matmos. Also, because nearly all of the subjects chosen by Matmos were confirmed or rumored to be homosexual (or sexually ambivalent), the album seems also to function as a kind of alternative "queer positive" historical thread running through the past 150 years of Western culture. By placing such maligned, misunderstood figures as "Mad King Ludwig" II of Bavaria and Valerie "I Shot Andy Warhol" Solanas in the same company as esteemed writers and philosophers (Wittgenstein, William S. Burroughs, Patricia Highsmith), Matmos create a broad category of uniquely eccentric queer cultural pioneers, suggesting that perhaps the originality that these figures displayed was part in parcel of their unorthodox sexuality.

All conceptual trappings aside, the music on The Rose Has Teeth is frequently brilliant, and would seem so even to a listener entirely ignorant of each track's subject or source material. The album's title is taken from its opening track, a particularly whimsical bit of text drawn from Wittgenstein's influential and inscrutable "Philosophical Investigations," the peculiar linguistic twists of logic being read aloud by Bjork and Marcus Schmickler of Pluramon, among others, while samples of roses and teeth are processed into the kind of crunchy, bottom-heavy psychedelic techno that has become the group's signature sound.

"Public Sex for Boyd McDonald" samples surreptitiously recorded anonymous sex acts, forming a haunting and sleazy funk track redolent of bus station bathrooms, video booths and pay-by-the-hour sex motels. The perversity continues, in a less seamy and more fantasmatical form with "Semen Song for James Bidgood," a tribute to the famous photographer and director of Pink Narcissus, which samples the dripping semen of Drew Daniel, the stereo-phased vocals of Antony and the lovely harp playing of Zeena Parkins. The track is the most hypnotic and ravishing on the album, a gauzey and hallucinatory boudoir fantasy raised to the solemn dignity of a funereal ode.  The music of Coil is an obvious touchstone here, and it would not be hard to read this as a dual tribute to Jhonn Balance as well as Bidgood.

The longest track on the album is, not surprisingly, also the most conceptually daunting. How best to memorialize transgressive writer William S. Burroughs, whose life and work does not immediately bring to mind a specific musical genre? In his film adaptation of Naked Lunch, David Cronenberg opted for Middle Eastern-inflected cool jazz soundtrack featuring the playing of Ornette Coleman. Eschewing such easy formalism, Matmos instead create an epic 13-minute track that travels seamlessly through several different possibilities: from ragtime piano noodling, to percussive solos on adding machines and printing presses, through to full-blown Moroccan joujouka, and all the steps in-between. It's a masterful track that more than justifies its extended length.

In many ways, this is the most consistently musical album Matmos have yet created. There are very few extended passages of willfully arrhythmic electronica or noise, and in their place are fully fleshed-out songs with rigidly determined themes, that nonetheless miraculously transcend their digital precision, frequently laying bare the passion and interest that the duo undoubtedly feel towards their subjects. This enthusiasm and adventurousness is quite infectious, and endless pleasure can be derived through the examination and deconstruction of the concept behind each track, making this unreservedly my favorite Matmos album to date.

samples:

• Steam and Sequins for Larry Levan
• Semen Song for James Bidgood
• Rag for William S. Burroughs

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07 May 2006

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Albums and Singles

Numero Group's fifth number covers the output of this southern gospel/country singer, a collection of recordings that, unlike the other Numero releases, was recorded for a major record label, however equally challenged with facing extinction as the others. Fern's album Singing a Happy Song was recorded for Paramount's Dot imprint but it soon became the property of MCA following a buyout and basically layed dormant for 25 years before being returned to Fern Jones after a lengthy letter campaign.

 

Numero Group

Fern Jones' style of rockabilly gospel is the type of music I fondly recall hear when digging through the dingy used record stores on the weekend. It's a bit of Sunday salvation with a spice enough to make it lovable and not repulsive. Fern began playing guitar and piano at 12, by 14 years old was singing on Saturday nights, and by 16 was married to a man who soon thereafter heard the calling to become a preacher. With her hand in her husband's, his hand in god's, she embraced the gospel and devoted her life to the music of the lord, playing to thousands in tents and small churches for years around the south for years until her retirement in 1960.  Like JS Bach, Fern was a voice of God, claiming that she only wrote down the music that came to her from divine power.

Fern's music was about belief and hope, of the salvation she has seen, and it's inspiring. Her voice is shining and full of conviction. Jeff Lipton's nearly made me a believer, as his remastering job makes these nearly 18 year old recordings sound as good as the recording equipment captured them back in the day. I find myself in agreement with her lyrics that the people who go to church every weekend but are as evil as the devil during the week "Ain't Got Nuthin';" I'm convinced she truly believes in the word of the bible verbatum, as Pentecostals do, when she assures her belief in the stories on "I Do Believe;" while her renditions of "Didn't It Rain" (see Songs: Ohia) and "The World Is Not My Home" (see: His Name Is Alive) are like divine artifacts.  Her original "I Was There When It Happened" even became a popular tune, with recordings made by both Johnny Cash and Jimmy Swaggart.

Like Numero 003, the Bandit label release, the accompanying booklet provides a great little story on her life and recordings, as it's something unique, original, and unfortunately something we'll probably never be able to see a documentary or feature length on.

samples:

• I Do Believe
• I Was There When It Happened
• Let Tomorrow Be  

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07 May 2006

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Albums and Singles

Not unlike 2002's Amore del Tropico, the focus on The Spell is on love. Devastation, remorse, seduction, memories, and a whole host of emotions ranging from despair to anger occupy every thought and every syllable of every song. Whittled down to a five piece, now including The Album Leaf's Jimmy LaValle, the band sounds forceful. The entire album buzzes with a apprehensive energy, summoning the spirit of Alfred Hitchcock with equal parts lone poet and repenting sinner.

 

Touch & Go
 
I knew this was about love from the moment I saw the cover; a tattooed palm carrying the universal symbol of passion is front and center, emanating an energy made tense by the presence of a crow also featured in the drawing. The booklet reveals a clone army of nude women, a hypnotic spell pulsing from their bodies. The first song, "Tangled," gravitates between romantic sentiment and a sense of ominous control: "Trapped in your web I'll always be / Wrapped around my heart like thorns you sting / Tangled in my heart you will stay." Paul Jenkin's sense of poetic creativity isn't on par with Leonard Cohen's, but its bare honesty and Jenkin's delivery suits the music almost perfectly. Everything from the artwork to the distinctly American, distinctly gothic music the band belts out revolves around a theme of helplessness and confused intentions. The band backs these themes up in spirit, morphing from impressionistic dirges into dark country western ballads featuring beautiful lap steel and string performances. This album is for love, against love, and inextricably bound up in all its conceits; it is a perfectly sequenced and conceived album with absolutely zero loose strings.

Just another love album would be dull, though, if it weren't for the layers of ideas and music that The Black Heart Procession has woven into this record. Jenkins draws straight lines from desperate love to worldly loss and dizziness. Love mired in a foggy world is far more desperate and impossible than love examined on its own and the band draws exclamation points around this fact. "The Fix" snakes a lusty course around the impossibility of change. Jenkins sings, "We can't change the course / We can't get the fix / We can't win the world," feeling the disparate lives everyone pursues growing further apart and less compassionate. Tobias Nathaniel plays organ and guitar over a gypsy-like violin part, emphasizing the busy world that grinds forward around everyone else, around the quiet prayers and hopes that people slowly abandon forever. It is remarkable to hear a band this in tune with the subject matter on a record. It's as if every member has a secret chart by which to translate every feeling into the appropriate chords and rhythms. The violin on a song like "The Letter" is astonishing, matching the intensity of the lyrics with an effortless cry. The instrument sounds alive all over this record and it's a fucking miracle to hear it played that way. Songs peak and sky rocket just when they should, escalating into mountains of sound at times and diving into deep, abysmal sadness seamlessly, without the first sign of sweat. The musicianship of each member is only matched by the mood they evoke through their talents. The sadness on "To Bring You Back" is almost choking, placing the world of lovers distinctly in the realm of the night, where tender emotions have to be hidden if they want to survive the universe at daylight.

I'm more of a fan of abstract music than anything, always taken by surprise when such unusual sounds can effect me personally. There are a few bands around, however, that take pop, rock, and other variations thereof and wind them up into something special and heart felt. The Black Heart Procession has taken forms of music everyone will be familiar with and turned them into an exciting, new, and powerful sound.

This is one of the best records I've heard this year and it'll be damn hard to top. Whoever does it will have to figure out how this band merged all their ideas together so well and addressed a topic so tired without sounding silly. In fact, The Black Heart Procession comes away sounding just the opposite, they've reinvented the topic of love and utilized with cutting precision. Oh, and on a side note, "Not Just Words" gets my vote for being the catchiest, most subtly depressing song in recent memory. I can't stop singing its chorus and at the same time it puts a pit in my stomach that makes me wish I could.

samples:

• Not Just Words
• The Letter
• Places

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06 May 2006

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Albums and Singles

This mysterious UK noise collective bring out the torture chamber intern side of Thurston Moore and get Jim O’Rourke as pumped as your average everyday metal teen. The omission of Chris Corsano's name, however, seems like an oversight as he deserves credit for the five and a half minute hardcore percussive finale.

Hospital Productions

I had expected an overwhelming three-way collaboration but The New Blockaders play with Moore and O’Rourke separately on the two pieces here. A bobbing siren drone providing a steady bed for the experiments above underpins the title track, but this is the only stable part as Moore and The Blockaders kick up intense rustles with no apologies and no lulls. In the full on twister there’s a high frequency cheese wire whine standing out that feels near to taking slivers of brain tissue. These streams wind up and over the drone like ivy barbed wire. The guitar damage feels like borehole assaults, with Moore trepanning every slow string groove sound from his guitar.

As entreating as that is it can’t hold a candle to O’Rourke’s collaboration on "840 Seconds Over," thanks in a large part to the playing of drummer Chris Corsano. He really should’ve been credited equally with the New Blockaders and O’Rourke on this one. After an intro of tense cymbal scraping and manipulated static hiss, Corsano gets into a five and a half minute hardcore finale. The track spins furiously, totally propelled by the percussion. He and O’Rourke seem to be totally of the same mind, hitting peaks and run-ups exactly on time. Corpses of guitars are dragged behind pick-up trucks, hitting bumps that throw up embers of igniting energetic free playing. With spending much of his time producing a lot projects which seek to sound lazy and laid back, its good to hear him hit full throttle.

samples:

• The Voloptulist
• 840 Seconds Over

 

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06 May 2006

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Albums and Singles

Numero 004 is named after Yellow Pills, the magazine that Jordan Oakes began publishing in 1990, dedicated to the power pop sounds discovered through obscure 45s from bands he thought of not as "has-been"s or "never-were"s, but "could-have-been"s.  That, however, is up for debate.

 

Numero Group

The collection is an ambitious two CD set of 33 tunes, all of which are extremely fun, but were just a bit too derivative or a bit too tacky to become truly timeless. I wouldn't be surprised if some of these groups were some of the nameless bands who showed up in teen flicks of the early '80s as prom bands or incidental soundtrack music for the B-films that didn't produce soundtracks or top 40 hits.  Once again, Jeff Lipton's mastering skills are utilized, this time his role it seems was more to create a collection of songs to actually sound well together, as the condition of these recordings aren't nearly as beaten into the ground as was the case on the Eccentric Soul releases.

The goal, musically, was to present lost tracks from power pop bands between 1978 and 1982, focusing on the bands who had smaller catalogs, were infrequently compiled elsewhere, and remain relatively forgotten. It has accomplished that goal and made for something that's enjoyable to listen but clearly "borrowed notstalgia for the unremembered 1980s" for most people reading or listening. Expect a parade of songs about desire on disc A, and it's almost always about a girl ("Not My Girl Anymore" by the Bats, "She's the Girl (Who Said No)" by the Tweeds, "Somebody Else's Girl" by Randy Winburn, and "Hey Little Girl" by Mr. Peculiar). "I Need That Record" by The Tweeds, however, is one of those songs that is probably far more amusing to a music critic, DJ, or record store employee, not only because it's obsessive about music, but because it manages to be completely derivative of The Who, The Cars, and Thin Lizzy, all at the same time (see: Ted Leo and the Pharmacists). Disc B is more of a reflective collection, whether it's self reflection ("I Wanna be a Teen Again" by the Toms) or societal ("Growing Up American" by The Colors). I've honestly never heard (nor even remember if I did hear) any of these songs, but things like "Hello Mr. Jenkins" by St. Louis' The Finns (which ironically is from the 1990s) take me back to my first memories of hate and fear by bigoted Republican/Christian types, a time when Ronald Reagan couldn't even utter the word "AIDS" with its lyrics "AIDS is punishment sent down from Heaven."

Accompanied is a deluxe booklet with an extended indie rock music critic wit-heavy diatribe (see 'clever' lines like the one about a former musician going to work for Subway because "there's no real bread in the music biz" to self referential remarks around wanting to be a teen again) from Jordan Oakes, commissioned to compile this release, where I'm actually left with more questions than answers.  While I completely understand the joy of digging through record bins trying to find the fun things that aren't dreary or painful to listen to, often going on the covers alone, I can't understand what his point actually is on a few things. He makes bold statements how this period of the early 1980s was the last true era of power-pop rock music, and that the bands trying their hand at it now are derivative, but he goes on and name-checks bands every step of the way when describing this music. (The Beatles, for example, appear on nearly every page!)  Although Oakes talks about the all important "guitar solo," in all of the 13 pages of small type he fails to recognize perhaps the most important thing about "the all important guitar solo" is that while the easy lyrics, catchy tues, and pretty faces existed to woo girls; the guitar solos were there to prove to the guys they were manly enough for guys to enjoy as well.

While the music is as enjoyable as an early XTC or Ted Leo and the Pharmacists record, I'm somewhat let down by the lack of biographical information. I'd like to know where each band are from, the year of each song, where it originated from (the name of the single/LP/comp) and the record label.  It's basic information but it's far more helpful to get a good reference from than what's been presented.

samples: 

• Luxury - Green Hearts
• The Toms - Sun
• LMNOP - Forever Through the Sun  

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05 May 2006

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Albums and Singles

Out of all the stories of small indie record labels that vanished almost without a trace, none screams more for a cinematic representation than the Bandit label out of Chicago.  Founder Arrow Brown was more than just a producer and visionary, he was like a polygamous cult leader, who lived with with his singers, who he referred to as his daughters, all in the studio and label HQ.

 

Numero Group

The Bandit label's stars included the Majestic Arrows, a group who's membership was kept anonymous on their only full-length album; Johnny Davis, who was brutally murdered in 1972; arranger/composer Benjamin Wright, who found fame and fortune arranging strings on Michael Jackson's Off the Wall along with albums by Outkast, Destiny's Child, and Aretha Franklin; and seven year old Altyrone Deno Brown, one of Arrow Brown's numerous sons, who would go on to act in a few commercials, win a Tony, and make a cameo appearance as a dancer in the Blues Brothers film. The label released very little music from the years of operation 1969-1981, ceasing operations due to Brown's aging and the groups splitting. Upon the death of Arrow Brown in 1990, the house was cleaned out, master tapes gone, and, as some eyewitness accounts, records strewn across the streets below.

Once again master of all masters Jeff Lipton has been brought in to restore the audio foraged from old record bins and remaining relatives, and the results are, for the most part, fantastic. The lengthy string-heavy openings on songs like "Doing It For Us" and "Another Day" by The Majestic Arrows are nothing short of grand.  Songs like the blistering "Glad About That" by soul temptress Linda Balintine, however, were in sadder shape but Lipton has managed to make the wear and tear as minimal as possible to allow the music to be the foreground.

Arrow Brown was a bit over the top in terms of production but the lyrics just weren't quite there. There's no argument for the talents of the singers and players for the entire label. From the powerful vocal delivery of Gloria "Poolie" Brown on "I'll Never Cry for Another Boy" to little Deno's prepubescent conviction on "Sweet Pea," and the Neville-like crooning of Johnny Davis on his power ballad "The Love I See Now."

More than any small indie soul label, Bandit probably knew best what it was like to sing from the trenches. Most of these people didn't live well but it's clear they held on to their dreams, and it's that glimmer of hope that makes everything on this sampling so sincere, so much more real than anything from any multi-plantium, "blue-eyed-soul" act that the mainstream has been brainwashed the masses into believing for decades.

samples:

• The Majestic Arrows - Doing It For Us
• Altyrone Deno Brown - If You Love Me
• Linda Balintine - You're a Habit Hard to Break
  

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04 May 2006

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Albums and Singles

Antena was a French trio whose adoration for Brazilian samba/pop combined with a mastery of synths and guitars could easily be sited for the blueprint of Pizzicato Five or Stereolab, however, in 1982 the audience simply wasn't there.  Numero Group issued this collection featuring their 1982 mini LP Camio del Sol in 2004, expanded to include tracks from other singles and compilations originally issued on Les Disques du Crépuscule, and now LTM, the primary label issuing the old Crépuscule and Factory Benelux catalogue has issued their own version boasting two more tunes.

 

Numero Group (US) / LTM (UK) 

Antena was a female-fronted bright, fun, and sexy pop band.  Their output was cocktail music for the swinging bachelor, which was completely the opposite from the dark, bleak, and frighteningly common suicidal crew of dudes in nearly everything that was associated with Factory was seemingly about at the time. 

They varied production from the full, rich sounds of "Camino del Sol" and their cover/adaptation of "The Girl from Ipanema" (becoming "The Boy from Ipanema") to the minimal fare of guitar, hand percussions, and saxophone for the very Astrud Gilberto-influenced "Silly Things" and "Bye Bye Papaye."  The sound has been well preserved and only a rare tune here or there sounds dated, and it's never painfully so.  During the early 1980s, drum machines like the Roland 808 and 909 were so artificial sounding that they would always sound artificial, it's a much easier predicament than the late '80s drum machines which mimiced real drums (and poorly). Songs like "Unable" and "Frantz" are two with the most prominence of the 808 but Antena managed to program the drum machine originally enough to make it not sound like the rest of 1982's output.

Following the mini LP of Camino del Sol, Antena released a single, appeared on some compilations, but soon split.  Singer Isabelle Powaga continued to record and release music as Isabelle Antena, keeping up the Brazilian lounge flavor, but not making nearly as notable works as what's collected on Camino del Sol. While I do enjoy this release, I'm not completely blown away like I have been with other Numero Group releases. With the amount of paper used to make the booklet, it would have been nice to see more story on the production of the music or the origins of the non-Camino material. It is nice to see the front and back covers for the mini LP and the "Boy from Ipanema" single but there is surely more in the vaults for this group.

samples:

• Camino del Sol
• Silly Things
• The Boy from Ipanema

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04 May 2006

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Albums and Singles

The first thing that comes to mind when reading about modern Jewish music born out of a multitude of influences, backgrounds, and traditions including both Eastern European Gipsy and 20th century jazz/improv matched with lyrics which come from Jewish poetry is Klezmer, but Black Ox Orkestar, formed from members of Silver Mt. Zion, Godspeed You Black Emperor, and Sackville, does not play Klezmer.  Klezmer is vocal dance music, often used for festive occasions like weddings, born from hardship but designed to lift spirits while the Orkestar take a much more solemn approach.

 

Constellation

While I don't think the quartet are out to change their sound, Nisht Azoy (which translates to "Not Like This") is more upbeat and varied than their debut, Var Tanszt?.  Once again split down the middle for vocal and instrumental pieces, the eight song album has three fast-paced uplifting dance numbers.  The air is still thick with sorrow on the slower, heavier songs, which, entirely sung in Yiddish, thankfully have English and French translations in the accompanying booklet.

After the slow, almost weeping sound of the opener, "Bukharian," follows the lyrical "Az Vey Dem Tatn," (Sad is the Father) which is explicitly sad, with lyrics from an anonymous poet who writes about being sent to war and shot, but is actually moderately more upbeat.  Here, singer Scott Levine Gilmour calls out as the rest of the group sings out their response while the group skillfully flex their mastery of what is most likely an oud and mandolin, playing along with the drums and fabulous Eastern strings that come in towards the end.  Fans of the One Ensemble of Daniel Padden live CD released last year would find a lot to love here.  "Violin Duet" is the first real dance number but is like two different songs: a lengthy opening with only two violins playing gives way to a lively instrumental tune equipped with hand claps and everything. The emotion returns for the slow and at times, sparse "Ikh Ken Tsvey Zayn," side one's closer, where Steve once again gives a heavy delivery, this time a poem by a Polish-Jewish author, written in 1948 after his move to Montreal.

Side two (or track 5 of 8 for a CD person) opens with the vibrant, exciting, bright instrumental dance piece "Ratsekr Grec," equipped with plenty of wind instruments: a trumpet solo and some interplay from what is most likely the clarinet and contrabass. The seriousness returns with the epic "Tsvey Taybelakh" (Two Doves), another anonymous poem, this one a story about the love that cannot be denied despite the powers that try to separate the two lovers.  While it's a message of hope, assuring "you will not drown in sorrow" and "you will not be burnt in sorrow," it is heavy with emotion, begining slow, breaking down during an instrumental break with droning strings and a lonely clarinet solo, all of which build to a rushing climax.  "Dobriden" is the last upbeat dance song, sounding more like a European renaissance-era piece before the stunning closer "Golem," written by singer Scott Levine Gilmour.

Black Ox Orkestar have managed to both diversify their sound and make something more concentrated, more focused with these powerful eight songs. Be sure to show up early at the Silver Mt. Zion shows this summer because the Black Ox live show is something not to be missed, and those who don't believe me can watch The Eye special for proof.

samples:

• Violin Duet
• Tsvey Taybelakh
• Golem

 

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