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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Nothing against Techno Animal or Curse of theGolden Vampire, but I am guessing that most of Broadrick's hardcorefans were just biding their time until he unleashed this long-rumoreddebut full-length from his new band Jesu. The album is released at avery serendipitous time, as the resurgence in interest and popularityof post-metal and noise rock has reached a fever pitch, just the righttime for Broadrick and crew to show everyone how things are reallydone. And show them he does, unleashing a longform rock album thatrecalls the best slow-burn doom metal and shoegazer psych-rock, withoutreally sounding like anything else other than itself. People willdoubtless attempt to refer to this as "metal," but it's no more "metal"than Godflesh ever was. Instead, it's a unique combination of elements:rumbling, speaker cone-obliterating bass to rival the mostbowel-voiding moments of Sunn O))) together with thick, textural layersof grinding, melodic guitar, powerfully sparse drums and a blindingwall of wintry keyboards. Broadrick's vocals are desolate and emotive,plaintive wails that are artificially time-stretched, vocodered andharmonized to stunning effect. With the heady sense of chillingambience provided by the synthesizers, I was reminded of Burzum's Filosofem,though the vocals share more in common with Alice in Chains or someother reference point bound to scare the beard-strokers away. The albumis composed of eight somber rock dirges of generous length, each onecompounding layers of distortion and echo throughout their length,filling the room with forceful surges of sound that funnel down noisywhirlpools or crest to awe-inspiring heights. Jesu is more than the sumof its parts. From a collection of essentially down-key, depressingmusical elements, the music at times achieves a sort of heavenlyspiritual transcendence. Case in point is track two, "Friends AreEvil," in which melody is provided by Broadrick's funereal, downcastvocal mantra along with ferociously belted guitar and punishing basscrunches. By the seven-minute mark, however, the song has becometriumphant and majestic, aspiring to the ecstatic "Jesu, Joy of Man'sDesiring" heights suggested by the band's name. The band's effect islargely visceral and thus difficult to translate into words, I amcertain this will please longtime fans of Broadrick as well as fans ofHydra Head, Southern Lord, Robotic Empire, and related businesses.samples:
It seems her father was a leader of the Tamil rebellion attemptingto win independence from the Sinhalese majority, which made her earlylife one of violence, poverty and constant flight from governmentforces. Apparently, this background accounts for the political andrevolutionary overtones of many of the tracks on Arular,though I'm not sure I ever would have detected these themes had I notalready been aware of Maya's story. The Sri Lankan beauty has some goodbuzz behind her because of a pair of ace singles released last year—Galang and Sunshowers—thatintroduced M.I.A.'s signature combination of Timbaland-style beatcraft,Peaches-style electro, dancehall reggae and UK grime/garage-scentedhip-hop. Also there was the popular illegal mashup mix Piracy Funds Terrorism Vol. 1with Diplo, which pitted L.L. Cool J against The Clipse, Missy andCutty Ranks. Her debut is released on XL Recordings, home of DizzeeRascal and Basement Jaxx, both of who seemed to have informed elementsof M.I.A.'s sound. Most tracks are built from a Roland MC-505 beatboxspitting out pounding, distinctly dancehall-style beats, decorated witha myriad little squiggles and acid squelches. The emphasis on clean,laser-sharp, eyeball-vibrating synths bears more than a passingresemblance to Timbaland's production style, which is no accident, asit seems M.I.A. is trying to position herself as thepolitically-conscious, across-the-pond answer to Missy Elliott.Although she perhaps comes by it more honestly, M.I.A. also includes alot of the banghra and worldbeat elements that have become de rigeurfor all modern hip-hop post-"Ger Ur Freak On." Except for a fewpointless tracks of filler, the majority of Arular is raucousand entertaining while maintaining a certain kind of relentlessforcefulness that seems at once scary and sexy. It's the very model ofan entirely derivative sound palette, and M.I.A.'s vocal stylings andlyrics are in no danger of being admired by anyone, but the albumaspires the rarefied heights of alluringly disposable club culture. I'dsuggest that anyone interested in the album immediately go look forlabel advances in cutout bins or on your favorite RIAA-baitingfile-sharing service, because the official release of the album, whichwas scheduled for this Tuesday, has been indefinitely postponed becauseof an unauthorized sample issue. Enjoy. samples:
The album rotates about the shamanistic experiences of aCzechoslovakian man named Jiri Nepomuk Prihoda. In 1967 he escaped hishome and lived among the Inuit, Samoyed, and Chukchas of Siberia forover 30 years. Apparently Prihoda was witness to or a participant in aritual that involved submersion into ice-cold waters for weeks at atime. This practice was meant to facilitate an understanding of thesubjective nature of the reality all individuals seemingly share.Aranos, whether or not he has captured the hypothermic qualities ofthis practice, has crafted Bering Seawith an ear to the skeptical view of reality these shamans held. Themusic is consumptive in two ways: each sound swallows and regurgitatesitself or other sounds in a series of digital effects, gongs, low windblasts, and processed string and metal whirlpools so that the piecesounds as if it is actually turning itself inside out and reinventingitself throughout. Beyond the musical element, Bering Sea isalso space consuming and, especially out high volumes, tends totransform the environment it is being played in. Shadows that creepacross the room suddenly become far more noticeable and ominous, lightsflicker with a greater intensity, and natural light feels far morecomfortable and safe than the darkness just over the horizon. Onemoment the music can be nearly electric in its outbursts, the sizzle ofunseen energy bursting and dying immediately in a constant flux ofthoughts, and the next moment it can be wholly material. The spirit ofthis record is both terrestrial and magickal and it moves between thetwo realms seamlessly. Aranos actually remarks on the back of therather beautiful packaging that he kept this album at roughly an hourlong because of concerns related to disrupting the "space-timecontinuum;" I highly suggest listening to this on repeat and becomingcompletely consumed by its rumbling chaos and strange movements. Themore these gusts of sounds spill over me and get inside my head, themore my brain shakes and slowly transforms the objects around me.Besides, Aranos does provide a small spot of relief in the last fewminutes of the album as reversed singing and guitar begin to fade inand provide a ray of light over the flow of introspection thatpreceeded it. It's as though Aranos has gathered everyone around a fireto talk about what's just happened and to sing happily of its effects. Bering Sea is available for purchase from Aranos; all the details needed are available at his website. 
The most obvious change is the addition of vocals by Phyllis Forbes andMolly Schnick, the two founders and leaders of the band. The dualfemale vocals bring a level of pop coalescence to Out Hud's music thatmay have been present on past recordings, but not as immediatelyobvious. Where before, Out Hud tracks seemed to meander through aseries of amorphous transitions, odd instrumental bridges and deathdefying plunges into the dub chamber, "One Life to Leave: A Requiem fora Requiem" retains a tightness and focus from start to finish thatsuggests a evolution of the band's sound. That's not to suggest thatall the bizarre eclecticism is gone, however, as proven by the mutanthybrid of early house music, Bananarama vocals, funk guitar licks andthe barest outline of jagged, PiL-style abrasiveness on "OL2L." Thefirst track on Side A is a longer, alternate mix of the album track,and is entirely informed by the band's usual kitchen-sink maximalism,subjecting the song to layers of complex, hermetic production gimmicksand completely unexpected left turns. There are even a few distortedblasts of speaker-cone destroying industrial percussion that recall thebest track on their first LP, the oddly named "Dad, There's a LittlePhrase Called Too Much Information." And speaking of weird song titlesaddressed to the ubiquitous Out Hud patriarch, Side B is entirely takenup by a massive 10-minute track entitled "Put It Away, Put It Away, PutIt Away Dad." I suppose dear old dad is trying to embarrass hisdaughters again, and Out Hud respond with an infectiously wackylong-form psychedelic odyssey through every retrograde musical gestureof which they are capable. The number of competing styles that areforced to groove in one another's presence is truly stunning; the onlyappropriate comparisons I can think of are Sigue Sigue Sputnik's "LoveMissile F1-11" or Steve Miller's "Macho City." Though Out Hud's musichas spawned the usual bevy of imitators, they are still very much themasters of their own style, and this generous teaser has me positivelysalivating for the upcoming long-player.samples:
Mirror is aware of something hiddenbehind the world of appearances; walking silently in the wake of theirmusic are all manners of hushed events and murky images culled from thesleeping side of the imagination. Their process of assembling uniquesounds into colossal monuments of musical energy has resulted in atapestry of intrigue on Shadows.It begins quietly, as many Mirror records do, and escalates into acomplex thread of throbbing oscillations, warped choirs of naturalsamples, and synthetic wounds. The music is almost taunting me attimes, acting as though it will reveal the source of its whistles andsirens and just as I am about to uncover the spring that feeds one ofthe sounds, it shifts and slips away. It either speeds up, flowingforward in time and distorting itself in fits of interference or itslows down and goes where I can't: backwards towards its own origins. Afigure begins to emerge within the single 45 minute track as it creepsalong, forming the impression that every second on Shadows isdedicated to an occurrence that continues to resonate long after it hasculminated and ceased to be. I want to speculate that the aftershock ofa murder has somehow been stretched through time, but the sweepingdynamics of this recording suggest something far more revelatory andcomplex. Whale calls, no... radio signals (maybe both) begin to lurkwithin this sound-picture before it is even half over and the subtleinclusion of static or rainfall paint a portrait of a lonely figurelost at sea and crushed by the weight of hopelessness. Steady machinefuzz, bird calls, faintly rhythmic reverberations, wrecked gongs andbells, and the possible sound of smeared screaming and guitar allregister throughout Shadows, but every listen reveals that Ihad the sound source wrong. Police sirens take the place of wailing,water drops materialize where plucked strings or computer chirpsexisted before, and the album takes on a whole new shape in aperplexing and exciting way each time it spins. It's impossible toenumerate everything happening on this record as what I think might bethere at times escapes and reshapes itself the second I try to pin itdown. This is undoubtedly one of the finest Mirror recordings I haveever heard. Its constant metamorphosis is transfixing and meditativeand undeniably beautiful.samples:
This track has a pleasantly loose feel, with Newman lettingquick, fingerpicked phrases and patterns fly from his acoustic guitaras if by stream of consciousness. Newman sounds as if he makes thismusic because he needs to, not because of a need to fit into any genre.It feels as if he is communicating these tunes directly from his headto tape, and this immediacy makes his music refreshingly inviting. Afew tracks seem more thoroughly composed, such as "Cloud City," duringwhich a slower intro section is a prelude to a main body which seesNewman off to the races with rapid-fire melodies. After threeconsecutive tracks involving solo acoustic finger-picking, "It's A Trap(Part One)" comes whirling out of nowhere and sets Accidents With Nature and Each Otherapart from countless solo guitar affairs. Gorgeous, abstract hauntingtones shimmer in and out of focus, sounding like a train travelingalong on a foggy night. Although "A Thousand Stolen Blankets To KeepYou Warm" utilizes old-timey slide guitar playing, Newman also coaxeslong ringing tones out of his instrument during the midsection.Ultimately, small gestures such as this elevate Newman's work abovebeing an exercise in antiquity. Bruce Cawdron's percussion also adds anelement that gives Accidents With Nature and Each Other a broadrange of textures. His ramshackle playing style is a perfect foil forNewman's free-flowing phrases on "Lords & Ladies." The percussiongradually moves from steady tambourine playing to a solid backbeat,before breaking down into free-form chaos, the result is the sound ofWar-era Larry Mullen Jr. being thrown from the drum stool by Animalfrom The Muppets. His shuffling brushwork and melodic glockenspielplaying on closer "Driving All Night With Only My Mind" make this amemorable end to an album that expands the possibilities of theacoustic guitar-based project. While Newman's guitar playing stillcommands the spotlight, the flourishes added throughout the set are atestament to his individuality. samples:
The breadth and scope of Sumatra's indigenous musicalculture was fascinating, as were the bizarre cross-culturaljuxtapositions that often resulted in hilariously corny but eminentlylistenable pop hybrids. The material on this disc is much the same asthat earlier disc, except that all of this music was captured from FMradio broadcasts throughout Sumatra, Java and other parts of Indonesia.Anyone who has heard past volumes of radio collage from the SF labelknows that Bishop is particularly talented at editing and sequencingthese volumes with a listener in mind. He intersperses disparatemusical styles with radio station IDs, sections of Sumatran talk radio,karaoke call-in shows, signal jamming noise and other assortedunexplained audio phenomena. Bishop has an ear for the chaotic clash ofethnic styles that is only possible in a place like Indonesia,deliberately segueing from Islamic Folk to Gambus Rock, from saccharinefemale vocal pop to punk and heavy metal pastiches. Some of the songsare utterly excruciating, others are strangely beautiful, but none lastlonger than three to four minutes, so there's always relief around thecorner if your ears can't take any more. Sumatran culture in particularseems to fascinate Bishop because it plays into his aestheticpredilection for adulterated, post-modern cultural half-breeds, whichhe clearly sees as superior to ideas of cultural purity or classicism.Through the years, the music that Bishop has made with the Sun CityGirls has freely and unceremoniously dipped into various ethnic musicforgeries with an admirable lack of political correctness or humility.With Sublime Frequencies releases like these, Bishop's ideas of "worldpsychedelia" come into clearer focus; the continued cross-germinatingand interlacing of popular art forms create a complex and chaotictangle of ethnic noise that resists deconstruction or analysis, buthints at a vast cultural archive simmering below the surface. The lackof information about the performing artists, recording dates or othercontextualizing information provided with these releases tends tosupport this view. For Sublime Frequencies, it doesn't really matterwhere or how or why, it just matters that we can tune into something atonce exotic and familiar that forces us to consider the rapidlyconverging world community.samples:
This is ironic inthat the number of Cambodian recordings in American distribution isstill extremely small, and those that exist, at least those thatpre-date the Khmer Rouge takeover, lack what most would consider thebare minimum in historical notation. Part of the appeal of releaseslike the Cambodian Rocks compilations, or Sublime Frequencies' own Cambodian Cassette Archives,comes from the covertness of their sources: dilapidated,poorly-recorded, unpreserved cassette tapes, hocked (as the story goes)by anonymous cabbies in Phnom Penh, or approaching obscurity inforgotten drawers of the Oakland Public Library. As fun as it may be toimagine a country whose pop culture exists as a kind of romantic ruin,an attic assemblage of label-less artifacts, the story of Cambodian popcomes colored with the darker presence of the Khmer Rouge, whose riseto power in the late 70's resulted in the death of many of thecountry's most talented and popular musicians. Today, in an ironiceffort to preserve the youth's interest in Cambodia's musicaltraditions, the older, classic songs are essentially "re-mixed" forbroadcast, fitted with the punchy rhythm tracks and the syntheticmelodies of a new age. In this radio collage from capital Phnom Penh,Bishop does little to untangle the cultural mish-mash of this people'ssound. Instead, he is content to let old and new songs (broadcast on AMan FM respectively) commingle among the country's already diversepalette of pop and rock influences to create an image of Cambodia todayjust as veiled and illusory as any promoted by Cambodian Rocks.It is impossible to deny that in the 60's and 70's Cambodia producedsome truly vital, though largely unheard pop and rock music. Theirscontains all of the manic, hyper-colorful qualities of Burmese andother Southeast Asian popular styles but receives a more generous doseof the Western rock sound, no doubt the result of the country's statusas a French colony during the 18's, and neighbor to the Americanpresence in Vietnam soon after. There could surely be a new Nuggetsbox compiling Cambodian assimilations of the garage rock sound, theirbright vocal, bell, and horn melodies turning the most generic fuzzygrooves to ecstatic, timeless reveries. Straight Beatles covers meetalongside raga jams from the Indian coast in a fusion that might'vemade George Harrison cringe at his own feeble attempts. There areclipped, funky breaks Dr. Dre could've sampled, slinky opium-denballads, nostalgic wedding songs, and raucous love songs wherecall-and-response vocals dip and soar to vicious, theatric extremes.Unlike past Radio releases on his label, here Bishop leaves thesongs themselves as the primary focus, limiting the commercialsnippits, DJ-speak, and noisy dial-spinning that created such exciting,"real-time" atmospheres on previous discs. As a result, Radio Phnom Penhfeels more like a subconscious document of Cambodia's musical history,where the myriad of influences, old and new, foreign and domestic,creates a crowded snapshot of today, offering little more in terms ofhistorical notation than its predecessors, but remaining anirresistible and invaluable witness. samples:
This album is released into a market that is currently saturated withethnic field recordings of the kind proffered by Sublime Frequencies,Touch and other labels, and amidst the current vogue for treated andlaptop-edited field recordings that lose all sense of context. Indian Soundscapesdistinguishes itself in being almost entirely dissimilar from all ofthis other material; by simply presenting crisp, clean, unprocessedrecordings that don't aspire to any lofty academic goals. Theserecordings were simply undertaken as a method for a traveler toencapsulate and memorialize the rich audio landscape encountered in anexotic land. As such, it can be experienced as you would experience alengthy trawl through a friend's collection of slides or home videosfrom a recent trip. Depending on your patience and level of engagement,this could either be a recommendation or a warning. Listening to thesediscs, I was treated to two hours of audio snapshots from around India,many taken on street corners and public spaces, where a cacophony ofhuman noises combine with site-specific open-air sounds, randomsnippets of radio music, the tinkling of bicycle bells, the PA systemat a train station, the thick buzz of nighttime insects, birds chirpingand monkeys howling. For the most part, these soundscapes are notedited within an inch of their lives, and many of the tracks areallowed to play until one can fully immerse oneself in this particularlocation. For listeners like me, with extreme synaesthesiacassociations between sound and sight and smell and touch and taste,records like these are a special treat. I was able to fill in thesensory blanks provided by these richly rendered audio documents,smelling the rich smell of spices, engine exhaust, rotting garbage,sulphurous water, musky jungle odors and complex combinations of these.I was reminded of the liberating sense of confusion often experiencedin a foreign place whose language and customs are largely a mystery.There are also some incredibly haunting moments, such as the "EchoingChildren" on the second disc, or the spirited communal singing andmusical performance in the third extract recorded at the TirupatiTemple. The packaging for this collection is lovely: a wooden boximprinted with a colorful primitivist collage houses the double-CD (thealbum is also released on vinyl), and the booklet inside contains manywonderful color photographs of India, also taken by Powne. Thiscollection certainly provoked many moments of self-reflection, where Iquestioned the complicated layers of artifice that Western societyrequires, that seem especially alienating when juxtaposed with thepurely human simplicity of poverty and a daily struggle fortranscendence that characterizes the life of an Indian villager. samples:
However, thistime out the classic songwriting hooks and riffs which grabbed myattention on previous recordings aren't as plentiful. Prewitt'ssongwriting and arrangements have become fragmented with a fair bit ofdynamic shifts to create drama ranging from joyous to sullen, sometimeswithin the same song. While good and strong progressions and melodiesabound, on tracks such as "Leaders" and "O, KY," it sounds as thoughPrewitt hadn't been too concerned with smooth transitions betweensections. Instead, he uses a fair bit of stops/starts and forced tempochanges that come across as stream-of-consciousness songwriting.Although an interesting approach for a concept album, Prewitt's takingliberties created a fair bit of distraction and had me checking myplayer's tracking to see if I was still listening to the same song.Drop-tuned acoustic guitar matched with piano, strings and bowed vibesenhance the great sense of loss on "No More" with wavering vocalssinging lines such as "There's no more running from it now / I haveoften wondered what's our move / There's no more wondering about it now/ Now our time is here." Prewitt quickly became one of my favoriteguitarists after I saw him perform years ago as part of fellow Sea andCake member Sam Prekop's band, thanks in part to a combination of hischord voicings, which added a slight jazz complexity, and his overalltone. I spent the better part of a year listening to Prekop's solorecord, not just for its overall musical greatness, but also forPrewitt's augmentation which I could clearly pick out from havingwitnessed it live. That same style of slightly angular performancewelcomingly turns up on the smokey "Think Again" and pushes on with theheavier-handed, strings and horns-dotted "Cheap Rhyme" for an overalluplifting number. The moods of Wilderness gradually become morecheerful with each passing track thanks to lush vocal layers and otherorchestral augmentation. I considered the possibility of this being a"concept" album, only to give it up and take it for what it is: aquirky yet sincere pop record. 
The album was a strictly low-fidelity affair, a bedroomrecording which placed no distance between artist and listener, Beam'ssoothing voice unmediated by ostentatious production. His gentle,literate and introspective songs recalled the best work of Nick Drakeand Neil Young, without imitating either. Apparently the low-fi soundof the first record was less of an aesthetic choice than one offinancial necessity, as every Iron & Wine release since that firstalbum has added greater and greater technical sophistication to theproduction. With the release of the Woman King EP, Beam takes aclear and deliberate step into indie mainstream, as it were, producinga six-song suite with a big band sound, lots of composition and layersof vocal harmony. The gentle banjo and guitar are still there, but arenow joined by piano, violin, electric guitar and percussion. First off,without sounding like too much of a humbug, I'll go ahead and profferthe opinion that this bigger production style just doesn't work forBeam's intimate folk songs. Second, two albums and two EPs into hiscareer, Sam Beam's songs are starting to feel a little too familiar forcomfort. Playing this album directly after listening to 2004's Our Endless Numbered Days,there is definitely a formula behind Beam's songs. He's got arepertoire of about four or five tempos and chord progressions that hekeeps recycling, varying the instrumentation and key between eachtrack. A certain feeling of deja vu sets in after listening to Iron& Wine for a while, and while some might call this a "signaturestyle," I am tempted to dismiss it as repetition and self-plagiarism.Lyrically, this EP is all about the female of the species, with songsabout woman kings, "Jezebel" ("She was born to be the woman we couldblame"), "My Lady's House" and Lilith ("We were born to fuck eachother/One way or another"). The thematic conceit is interesting, butcan't distract from the uniform quality of these songs. The moments ofpseudo-Appalachain twanging heard throughout the album are toopredictable for anyone who has listened to Iron & Wine's pastalbums. As a brief spacer in anticipation of a new full-length album,the EP works well enough, but the new emphasis placed on the cluttered,mainstream blues-folk composition is an altogether unconvincing movefor Iron & Wine. I won't be surprised if Beam and company continueto rack up the critical accolades, and perhaps they are deserved, butI'm going to have to tune out from this point forward. samples:
