Being thankful for an earful.
Brand new music by Marie Davidson, Niecy Blues (feat. Joy Guidry), CEL, Marisa Anderson and Luke Schneider, Stina Stjern, Carmen Villain, Murcof, A Lily, and Far Golden Pavilions, with music from the vaults by Tomaga, Ozzobia, Jan Jelinek.
Sushi photo by Lindsay.
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Followers of Michael Gira's storied career might have anticipated his latest work with The Angels of Light as a natural reduction of his emotional approach to songwriting to its most basic form.
Gone are the instrumental passages and long, orchestrated songs that build and explode and then fade only to build again and pummel the listener. Gone (or at least greatly reduced) are the images of death and blood and fire and the stark, unflinching colors with which Gira has chosen to paint over the years. Instead, this record, which may sound from the title like it should be an album full of cover tunes, is a quiet, acoustic homage to "other people" as disparate as Michael Jackson, Saddam Huessein, and Gira's band mates. The sonic reductionism gives The Angels of Light a chance to strip down to bare banjos and guitars, strings, and a chorus of voices courtesy of the Akron/Family, and lets the words stand at the center of a dark stage under an uncomfortable spotlight. Of course the danger with Gira stripping away the layers of instrumentation and accompaniment is that we are pushed ever closer to the man himself, and towards his dark, creaky voice and all of the terrors it feels compelled to spill. After years of seeing Gira live, listening to his records and reading his books, I'm not sure I want to be this close and that's what makes the record so hard to take. Though this is a very different Angels of Light record, Gira's dark lyrical wit and emotional directness are as in tact as ever. He shifts in and out of different characters, but his voice remains clear and focused with little variation other than extremes of spooky-quiet and spookier-loud. In this new and more intimate setting backed by out-of-tune pianos and folksy vocal chants, Gira's limited vocal range actually becomes a distraction, causing the songs to blend together in a creepy half-sung, half-spoken haze. He channels his best Lou Reed during "The Kid is Already Breaking," and erupts into a rage (well, as raging as the Angels of Light ever get) on "Michael's White Hands," and by the third or fourth time through, the record leaves me feeling claustrophobic and anxious. After a while, it becomes impossible to tell when he's paying homage and when he's vilifying, though perhaps that ambiguity is the result of reading too much into these songs that are as simplified as can be. At this point in his career, Michael Gira is no longer building a fan-base or making friends with his music, and with this album it's clear that he's not simply handing out easy retreads to those who have followed him through the years. Fortunately for him, he's still doing creative work in distilling the essence of his sound and life into a kind of concentrated musical bullion. Unfortunately for me, the result is a little overwhelming making the record one for which I have little taste.
Fame may finally be taking its toll on the man, or perhapsit's his heavy touring schedule, or just good old substance abuse. Orit may all be hearsay, as the rapper himself has yet to directlyaddress the subject. The only explanation the public will receive is onthe resulting intensely personal and uncharacteristicly emotionalrecord. At first glace, little has changed: Manuva's signature styleremains constant, his authoritative patois commanding respect andattention from track to track, whether he's getting the ladies todance, warning would-be steppers to steer clear, or crying out to thehigher powers for salvation. Never a technically dazzling rapper,Manuva's three quarter speed cadence and stacatto delivery areperfectly suited for his sound, simple but infectious and truly unique:obvious reggae, dub and dancehall influences pervade the fourteentracks, but not without a healthy dose of UK electronic. Thecombination serves to make Manuva at home delivering stomping dancehalltunes, violent diss tracks or thoughtful inner monlogues alike—andsometimes all on the same track. At times, the diversity is borderlineschizophrenic, threatening to disrupt Awfully Deep's balance.It may be intentional or a result of Manuva's emotional frustrations:"I can't figger out what they want from Smith," he laments in"Thinking." Either way, despite of or maybe because of his side issues,the South London steppin razor has delivered his best album yet, asonic and emotional rollercoaster. samples:
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Duran Duran Duran's "A God Among Men" opts for a moremartial arts inspired succession of kick drums, sharp snare blasts andsynthesizer gurgles delivered from all directions. This relativenewcomer seems to be the only contributor who understands that at twicethe speed of most normal "songs" a minute and a half is sufficient timeto deliver all the blows necessary to completely tire out anyonelistening. By using the same samples over and over amongst splattereddrum breaks, "Dyslexic Funky Droid" by Repeater wears out it's welcomeat about the two minute half-way point. Pure's own contribution, "Fight'Em" stands out and warrants its seven and a half minute length bybeing a potent mixture of his relatively recent foray into abstractanalog synthesizer explorations and his beginnings as one ofbreakcore's originators. He uses extended sections of beatless frayedelectronic circuitry to build up tension in between bursts of Amenbreak trickery. This use of dynamics lends the track a more composedfeel, yet it doesn't lack in sheer power. Curtis Chip's "Chainsawpanda"is the most subdued track of the lot, with a steady 4/4 grooveproviding a solid backdrop for complex drum programming. JasonForrest's "Sadist Hop" is successful in that he paces himself a bit,starting out the track with a mid-tempo hip hop beat complete withfunky piano loop. The former Donna Summer actually waits 25 secondsbefore attention defecit disorder takes over and causes him to throwdrum fills from every imaginable source into the mix. Forrest's skillsat chopping samples into tiny crumb-size pieces allows him to get awaywith using source material such as the guitar riff from The Eagles"Life in the Fast Lane." The juxtaposition of little reminders of theexcesses of music's past, rather than the mashing up of entire sectionsof instantly recognizable songs, with beat manipulation that isunmistakably current is what makes Forrest's work unique andrefreshing. Although some of these tracks may be forgotten years fromnow as genre exercises, in the present they collectively represent thesound of a new wave of skilled producers that don't take themselves tooseriously and aren't afraid to make music that is at once incrediblyintricate and simply a perfect excuse for jumping up and down.samples:
It's notclear where the digital technology employed in these compositionsbegins and where the acoustic instrumentation ends, but that kind ofdeconstruction of method and technique is superfluous when a record isas direct and one-dimensional as this one. While there are six songslisted in the liner notes, the parts play out more like movements orrepetitions of a single theme, where ambiguous clouds of melody floatin and out of the sunlight, marking the passing of meditative time,choosing not to get in the way. Perhaps the zen quality of music thatis this natural and reflective is lost on me in a busy world oftechnological noises and urban landscapes, but I find it hard toconcentrate on Jules' compositions for what they are rather than whatthey could be. With a simple theme such as "Autumn Leaves," my mindraces to imagine the myriad ways the subject could be approachedsonically. What Jules provides here is a pretty and warm but ultimatelydetached look out the window of one of those angular steel and glasshomes that I see in design magazines. The leaves outside are calming.They are soaked with a fresh rain on an overcast Sunday morning, and Herbstlaubis playing in the background as I sip espresso in my slippers and itall seems ideal and sanitized and beautiful and vacant, forcing me tolisten again to see if I've missed something. In the end, this isinconsequential mood music made deftly and softly by a craftsman withan ear for fragile melodies and an eye for nature, but with a voicethat could be saying much more. samples:
Their peculiar,eclectic recombinations of rock, dub and dance music idioms that seemedat once retrograde and startlingly new was truly something to behold,and Street Dad was one of the most cleverly arranged, performedand mixed albums in recent memory. Their music was buoyant, playful,and experimental; appealing on a cerebral as well as a visceral level:complex, cluttered, effects-heavy arrangements with a solid backbone ofrubbery basslines, resounding drums and uncannily clever rhythmprogramming. The debut album was so perfect that anything Out Hud didfor an encore was almost bound to disappoint on some level, though theycertainly have every right to grow and change as a band. The big riskthat Out Hud take with their sound on Let Us Never Speak Of It Againis obviously the introduction of vocals from Phyllis and Molly. Ontracks like "It's For You," the vocals have the effect of introducingfar more structure into an Out Hud song than we might have come toexpect, and the song is reduced to radio-friendly length. The dualfemale vocals, liberally dropped into the echo chamber, add a sweet,innocent sexuality to the music, akin to Tom Tom Club or the morerecent Chicks on Speed. At first I was disappointed by the vocaltracks, still wistfully recallling the weird, amorphous, kitchen sinkinstrumental approach on the first album. Much of that anarchic spiritis indeed alive and well on Let Us Never, but the album isunmistakably tighter and more restrained, a strategy that seems to payoff brilliantly, even if it seems alienating at first. Take for theexample a track like "Old Nude," with a meaningless vocal refrain thatimmediately places the listener in seemingly comfortable pop territory.But Out Hud have other things on their mind, placing the vocals into ahall of mirrors and using each cadence as a jumping-off point for theirjarring eclecticism: mid-80s Prince-style distorted synths rubbingshoulders with On U-Sound sound dynamics, with lots of little squiggly,digital details buried in the mix. Then Molly's trademark, expressiveArthur Russell cello comes into the mix, introducing the song'shaunting coda. All of this in the span of four and a half minutes; I'mimpressed. Of course, there are also some instrumentals here that soundlike they could have fit in perfectly on the first album. "The Song SoGood They Named it Thrice" picks up where "Dad, There's A LittlePhrase..." left off: a grandiose, unfolding musical drama that seems totake in the entire history of dance music in its scope, creating aninfectious and indescribably funky mix of early house, epicMoroderesque disco, motorik Krautrock and Detroit electro, togetherwith sudden, death-defying plunges into cavernous echo and distortion.The hilariously named "Mr. Bush" is the album's most epic track, andthe one that I've found myself returning to most often; an unstoppableleftfield rhythmic structure serves as a foundation for a series of OutHud-style variations on a theme, undertaken with the same vivacity andspirit of experimentation as early Chicago house, but ending up in anoddly beautiful, neoplastic discotheque of their own totallyidiosyncratic creation. Even though the album initially seemed to be anattempt to rope in a wider audience, after a few listens I couldclearly see that Out Hud are still flying their freak flag, makinggloriously incomprehensible music that is eminently danceable in spiteof itself.samples:
For an artist like RDJ, who almost out of the gate wasbeing referred to by overenthusiastic critics as a mad genius, beingcalled "maestro" and drawing comparisons to Mozart, it must berefreshing to produce music that is in no danger of ever being referredto as genius by anyone. The music on the Analordplatters is vintage AFX, produced with analogue beatboxes andsynthesizers, recalling early 1990s underground Detroit and Chicagoacid techno. These tracks do not represent an attempt to reinvent thewheel, nor is it a hyperkinetic digital blur of fractured, overcomplexrhythms. No prepared pianos were harmed in the production of thismusic, and there are no self-aggrandizing, aggro-industrial pop singlesalong the lines of "Come to Daddy" or "Windowlicker." Mostrefreshingly, these five pieces of wax contain no financially motivatedremixes of major label artists or annoying post-gabbercore dancehalldrum n' bass mashups. Instead, each contains a full compliment ofsquiggly, buttery retro-acid groove, each track more deceptively simplethan the last, all of them eminently entertaining. Thick, rubberybasslines slide over subterranean keyboard melodies echoing throughabandoned metal buildings. At turns slinky, sexy, seedy and druggy,this is a pitch-perfect recreation of the classic underground technosound that informed all of RDJ's early work. Ever since the release of I Care Because You Do,Aphex Twin seemed to be involved in a dialogue with his critics andfans, constantly trying to live up to the ridiculously exaggeratedpraise heaped upon his merely competent work. The Analordseries is a conscious step out from under the shadow of his reputation,and though this will inevitably draw ire from critics and fans whothink RDJ owes them a masterpiece, I'd rather listen to these fivesingles than nearly anything that Aphex has released in the last fewyears. "SteppingFilter 101" immediately creates a paranoid underseaatmosphere akin to the finest work of Drexciya, all old-school drummachine kicks and slippery, lubricated acid lines with beats randomlydropped into the echo chamber. AFX's intuitive sense of simplistic,almost subliminal melody is in fine form throughout the five platters,most especially on the killer sidelong retro-electro oddysey of"Phonotacid." I almost started laughing when I first heard "Pissed Upin SE1," a cheesy, emotional new wave excursion that shamelessly laysit on thick and maudlin. The beautiful "Bwoon Dub" submerges distanthorn fanfares into a thick, substantial stew of dubby, infectioustechno. Analord 03 ups the Nintendo quotient by severaldegrees, sounding like childlike tossed-off videogame theme music on"Boxing Day" and "Midi Evil Rave." "Halibut Acid" is a particularlycompelling track from the otherwise tame fourth volume, and the fifthsingle is possibly the weakest of the lot, containing only two tracks,which both seem a bit too hyperactive for their own good. At their veryworst, however, the Analord EPs are always fun and energetic,effortless in their ability to recall the days when underground technowas fun and hadn't yet been co-opted by pedantic critics and fascistIDM listees. 
