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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The Statler & Waldorf label wanted to kick things off with a sampler based around the concept of European electronic musicians working with the theme of hip hop. Were this not an already a redundant assignment given the world-wide cribbing of hip hop mannerisms in all forms of electronica, it might seem like an interesting cross-cultural experiment. The trouble is that no one on this compilation is a stranger to hip hop, as hip hop's place as the world's dominant youth culture paradigm makes a concept like this a laughable afterthought unless its executed with brilliance. Unfortunately, it isn't. Most everything here is a rehash of the last couple of years of Bip-Hop, ~scape, and Force Inc. releases and the already myriad spin-offs and imitators. One track has a little bit of dub, another goes for the minimalist click and drone, another cuts up standard hip hop loops with quirky but highly predictable laptop tomfoolery—it's fairly workmanlike. And while not everything on the disc is a waste (in fact, a lot of the tunes are quite well-put-together,) the whole thing feels like an excursion into the very well traveled. It's like going on an exotic vacation to the mall: you can pretend to be curious and interested in the cultural zoo, but it's really just a bunch of people buying crap and it's about as lame as imaginable. If nothing else, Teeth makes a good case for these (mostly Scandinavian) artists to break out and do their own thing. This same group of artists working with an assignment like "make electronic music from the theme of Bluegrass" would probably be at least worth checking out just to see the culture clash. There's a lot to like about Teeth in a superficial "these are nice beats" kind of way, but it has about as deep an understanding of hip hop culture as a DJ scratching in a soda commercial. 
The newest release from micro-indie label Mile 329 is a fun slab of nostalgic oddity that anyone who's spent time furiously tapping A and B buttons is sure to enjoy. This is the first I've heard from Naked Intruder, and The Last Vestige is his love letter to the musical engine inside the classic 8-Bit Nintendo Entertainment System. Composed from a Frankensteined NES-turned-synthesizer that I won't even try to understand or describe, the EP's central conceit is that the NES is its ONLY sound source: no effects or processing were used to gussie it up. This adherence to an arbitrary albeit admirable formality gives the record its charm while also hamstringing it as a novelty. The limitations of the sound capabilities of the NES' native sound processor mean that while the compositions are more interesting than a lot of standard game music, they nevertheless can't sound like anything BUT game music with overly-loud lead melodies and a sometimes grating dynamic range. Naked Intruder and Mile 329 wouldn't have it any other way though, and for that, the record scores major points for the fun little curio that it is, and not stacked against what it 'could' or 'should' be. The music itself is rich in melody and plays darkly against game music's usual palette of silly, chirpy sing-songiness. It's hard not to smile when each track uses the exact sounds I've heard thousands of times while blasting aliens with a flamethrower, but uses them in a new and purely musical way. There's a surprising amount of bass in the tracks, and the rhythms while stiff are about as funky as one can probably coax out of the Nintendo's sound chip. To cap it all off, the 3" CDR is housed in a classic Nintendo game cartridge that's been gutted and slapped with a Naked Intruder label. Even if it's the kind of thing I only listen to a handful of times, the NES cartridge with Naked Intruder on the spine will be a great conversation piece for my CD collection for years, and for $6, I can't ask for anything more. 
Picture this: you're taking an ethnomusicology class as an elective and it turns out that the professor is not only the campus' most highly touted party DJ, but he's also the advisor for the student activist group and the organizer of a weekly poetry slam. All this wrapped into one person would seem too good to be true if I hadn't spent the last couple weeks trying to dissect the different personalities of the man known as DJ/Rupture as laid out in his newest LP, Special Gunpowder. I'm still wondering how he pulls it all together. The truth is that DJ/Rupture's putting on a master class with this record in how to synthesize influences without either ripping them off or pandering to an audience who wants the flavor but not the substance. With a gaggle of guests helping out on everything from drum beats to sung and spoken vocals to programming, Special Gunpowder finds DJ/Rupture trading in his role as DJ for that of bandleader, in a sense. While this record under his own name is far more disparate in its attentions than recent work from Rupture's band-proper, Nettle, it does work as a perfect go-between for a talented DJ/Producer who is used to mashing things up and dropping the science in equal doses. While the production is a bit uneven from track to track (due in part to the many guest musicians and their input, no doubt) the whole thing is held together by a sincere love of rhythms and melodies, no matter their origin. And if those beats and words can be used in service of some sort of socially-conscious message, even better! Some will undoubtedly find the skipping back and forth from genre and culture and language to be a slight distraction, but anyone familiar with Rupture's DJ mixes should be able to keep up and will appreciate the album's raucous dancehall and rap alongside its playful tropicalia and folk songs. As always, DJ/Rupture remains one to watch, and Special Gunpowder is his most accomplished and mature work to date, leaving me only to wonder what he's got left for the next record.
Antony's album was reissued on Secretly Canadian last year,Devendra Banhart included "The Lake" on his epochal, scene-defining Golden Apples of the Suncompilation, and Antony appeared in a couple of high-profile guestappearances on albums by Lou Reed and Rufus Wainwright. It seems thatthe androgynous singer-songwriter is poised on the edge of abreakthrough success, making the long-overdue release of his secondfull-length album a timely event, to say the least. I must admit hereto being a full-fledged member of Antony's cult, having flown to NYCseveral times to witness his live performances (after being tippedabout the debut album on The Brain so many years ago). Because of myunhealthy Antony obsession, my hopes for his sophomore album wereperhaps too high, and it took a few spins of I Am a Bird Now touncover its many treasures. It's a much more pop-oriented album thanthe first, with a decidedly less somber outlook. Gone are the myriadesoteric lyrical allusions to Biblical apocalypse and the transcendentqualities of pain and sorrow. In their place, Antony's centralpreoccupation seems to be physical and spiritual transformation, bothin literal terms (androgyny, transvestism, transsexuality) as well asfiguratively (man into bird, the transmigration of the soul). The albumworks as the conceptual twin sister to Lou Reed's 1972 Transformer,and may indeed eventually prove to be as classic and influential. Onthe whole, the music is very much more upbeat than the funereal jazz ofthe first album, with bright arrangements of piano, horns and strings.Several tracks take advantage of extraordinarily well-executed vocalmultitracking, most notably on the opener "Hope There's Someone," inwhich Antony's falsetto chorus is multiplied and harmonized tospine-tingling effect, leading into the song's lush crescendo,featuring an angelic choir of Antonys in a resounding lamentation thatreaches into the heavens. "Man is the Baby" has been a live favoritefor years now, a haunting, fragile plea for tolerance that is easilyone of the most memorable tracks on the album. Then, of course, thereare the much-vaunted duets and guest appearances. "You Are My Sister,"which features an unexpected vocal by Boy George, sounds like thereuniting of artistic brethren, protege and mentor. Other pairingsdon't fare quite as well: the track featuring Rufus Wainwright is fartoo short, and feels more like an outtake from Rufus' Want Twoalbum than an Antony song; Devendra's warbling on "Spiralling" isprecious, but incongruous with the rest of the song. These are minorquibbles, as the majority of the songs on I Am a Bird Now havethe feel of a classic song suite, and are the perfect entree' forAntony to achieve a wider audience. The album is incredibly short atonly 35 minutes, making me suspect that this is somewhat of atransitional effort. Next time out, I'm hoping that Antony will includesome of the great cover songs that he invariably performs in his liveshows - Nina Simone's "Be My Husband" or Billie Holiday's "StrangeFruit," to name a couple. Antony's singularly evocative interpretationsof those classic vocal jazz songs, as well as his originalcompositions, leave no doubt whatever that he is a uniquely talentedvocalist, and one of the most compelling artists of our time. samples:
While things soundedgreat, it's tricky to put a lot of skilled musicians who don't quiteknow each other inside and out in the same room and hope for somethingmagical: results often border on performing arts music schoolsterility. Luckily Jones and the Dap Kings didn't head down that route,and after touring like mad for the years following the debut, it'sclear that the synergy between Jones and the Dap Kings has grownunbelievably strong. Naturally cuts a straight line into theheart of soul, with a variety and finesse miles beyond the debut.Jones' presence is much stronger and the bonds between her and the bandare much tighter here. While the record opens up with a verymathematically-driven off-beat funk-band jam "How Do You Let a Good ManDown?," it's by the second song, "Natural Born Lover" where all theelements collide perfectly: this is the stuff vocal soul masterpiecedreams are made of. The hooks on tunes like "Natural Born Lover" and"How Long Do I Have to Wait for You?" are powerful enough to block outeverything else going on while listening and Jones' voice and words areinfectious enough to beg for repeated plays for singalongs. Other takesat different styles include the perfect slow dance prom theme "You'reGonna Get It," the cute interplay with guest vocalist Lee Fields on"Stranded In Your Love," and the down and dirty James Brown's funkypeople-style "Your Thing is a Drag." With Naturally, not onlyis Sharon Jones is becoming a powerful band leader and front woman, butthe movement for more raw, gut-wrenching, uncanned unprocessed soul canonly get stronger. samples:
Though conceivedand recorded well before the tragic events of last November, inretrospect the album has been dedicated in memory of the dearlydeparted friend and collaborator, subtitled Moonsongs for Jhonn Balance.Beta-Lactam Ring have outdone themselves with this release, a deluxedouble-gatefold package with colorized versions of the original sleeveart from the 1986 Mentrual LP (never noticed that giant purplephallus), as well as a beautiful bonus silkscreened picture 7"containing edited versions of the original two mixes, included withinitial pressings of the album. The glossy, colorful sleeves set a newstandard for Beta-Lactam releases, and the heavy, substantial vinylshould satisfy any serious collector. Here's hoping for more deluxeeditions of hard-to-find Current 93 back catalog material given thistreatment. The music on How He Loved the Moon is a tangentialreturn to an earlier Current 93, when the name stood primarily forlong-form, dark ambient noisescapes; multilayered cacophonies composedof dusty drones and spooky tapes loops of rattling chains anddisembodied whispers. Each sidelong track is named after a chapter andverse of the Bible. "Ecclesiastes XII:2" ("While the sun or the moon orthe stars be not darkened") mixes the source material into a series ofsubterranean, reverberating arterial tunnels in which all of theoriginal elements become nebulous and subliminal. On the flip side,"The Song of Solomon VI:10" ("Who is she, fair as the moon, clear asthe sun, and terrible as an army with banners") transforms the materialinto a slowly percolating dubby rhythmscape, with submerged samplesbubbling to the surface and a persistent megaphone voice intoningtantalizingly inaudible imperatives. "Psalm VIII:3" ("When I considerthe heavens, the moon and the stars which you have put in place") isthe most haunting, with voices obscured behind layers of murky silence,each muffled reverberation reduced to metallic alien syllables divorcedfrom all linguistic sense. For those who have steered clear of Current93 for all these years because of the increasing emphasis on DavidTibet's spoken-word poetic cycles, How He Loved the Moonrepresents a satisfying return to the early, atmospheric C93 thatreally just wanted to scare the hell out of you. For others, this albumwill seem like yet another superfluous stopgap on the path to thebrand-new studio album, due later this year. For myself, I quiteenjoyed this atavistic salute to lunar concerns, and could practicallyimbibe the exudations of magickally charged menstruum, reinvigoratingme with adumbrations of the hidden nightside aeon. 
Live albums are a tricky lot. Very few are actually representative of the live music experience. If recorded well, they can deliver a very close approximation of a band's live sound, but they ultimately by their very nature fail to deliver any sense of the band's visual performance. With Jason Molina's Magnolia Electric Co., this is perhaps not a huge loss.
They play their songs with a perfunctory stage presence, not moving around very much, and so besides a few frenetic guitar solos, not much is missed without the visuals. I think I might be doing some injustice to seeing MEC live, such as ignoring the interplay between band and crowd and the overall fervor and excitement in the club/concert hall, but very few live albums have ever been able to capture sufficiently the combination of kinetic and potential energy at a truly compelling live performance. In order to supplement the lack of a visual element, the live album needs to record not just the energy and sound of the performer but also the crowd's energy and sound (the latter being less important since crowd chatter can be quite a detriment to the band's actual sound). Documenting these two separate energies as they intertwine and feed off one another makes the experience more palpable and real to the listener of the live album. James Brown's "Live at the Apollo" is the foremost example of a live album which perfects this blend. "Trials and Errors" is no "Live at the Apollo," but it does have a elegantly rendered and recorded Magnolia Electric Co. performance which is valuable both for the seasoned Songs: Ohia veteran and the neophyte. An estimable bootlegging culture (fully endorsed by the band) has arisen around Jason's Molina's projects over the last few years: there is an entire website dedicated to sharing of live material and it is exciting largely because there are plenty of songs in Molina's repertoire which never make it into the studio for a proper recording treatment. What Trials and Errors accomplishes is one of the better sounding recordings of a show from Brussels in 2003 featuring some Magnolia standards from 2004 as well as songs which are to be recorded for the upcoming studio full-length, What Comes After the Blues. The album works well as a promotional piece for the studio album and perhaps that was part of the reasoning behind its release. To me, however, that sounds a little too calculating for a band whose main ambition seems to be to play a lot of shows and to write a lot of songs. There are a few cuts ("Cross the Road" and "Ring the Bell") from the grand Didn't It Rain album which are comforting just to remind us that songs from the Songs: Ohia era have not been forsaken. Whereas those songs had a driving and forceful eye-on-the-prize execution on Didn't It Rain Magnolia Electric Co. give them a meandering and less straight-ahead treatment which is in line with the overall tenor of Molina's present ensemble. "North Star" and "Leave the City" are familiar to Ohia fans who heard these songs on the radio broadcast from Brussels in 2003 when Molina played them solo and stripped down to their most vulnerable, bare, and beautiful. The songs were inconceivably amazing then and since then MEC has adapted them well for the full band, adding the typical band instrumentation along with some trumpet to delicately ornament the whole presentation. Other live standards like "The Dark Don't Hide It," "Don't This Look Like the Dark," "The Big Beast" (sometimes called "The Mess We're In"), and "Almost Was Good Enough" seem to pop up at every live show the band plays and accordingly they do so here with enough aplomb but perhaps a little less excitement and vigor. Molina tacks his variation of Neil Young's "Out on the Weekend" onto "Almost Was Good Enough" almost as a preemptive strike (though issued too late) against critics who bemoan Young's influence on man. The remaining two songs are recent concoctions which have a good probability of turning up on new album. "The Last 3 Human Words" is a quiet and constant rumination recalling Bob Seger's more introspective moments, while "Such Pretty Eyes For a Snake" is a long narrative song (pre- or post-lapsarian, your choice) which climaxes aggressively and then falls asleep innocuously by the end.
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Though the LP is split into two side-long pieces, this is very much onepiece, as part one and part two sound similar. The forthcoming CDedition would benefit by combining them into one uninterrupted listen.The atmosphere here has here a lot of open space. As all music made byMirror could accompany films entirely shot in slow motion, Still Valleycontinues their consistency in vision and in excellence. Although theyare subtle, there are shifts in dynamics here, as during both partsthere are minor crescendos during the generally consistent ebb and flowof the patterns. One noticeable difference between this and other quietMirror affairs is the presence of oscillating pulses. These analogtones occasionaly accentuate the constant guitar drones, adding ashimmery quality, rather than becoming a competing element. While themusic is comparably quiet, it is still very powerful and affecting. Oneof the unique aspects of music such as this is its ability to defy thelaws of the passing of time. It's extremely difficult to tell whetherfive minutes or 15 minutes have passed while immersed in this soundworld, which adds to its appeal and prompts repeated listens. Althoughhe is more than ten years removed from his work with HNAS, it stillstrikes me as miraculous that in Mirror Heemann has since built up suchan impressive body of work based on retsraint and small gestures.HNAS's cut-up Surrealist approach was as far from the slow-moving,linear development in Mirror's work as possible. From the die-cut caton an otherwise blank olive green sleeve to the gorgeous soundscontained on the LP within, Mirror once again prove that less can bemuch more. samples:
The resultwould be something quite like quirky and eccentric MC Busdriver, parthip hop bohemian ("I used to be on the list of top five/ Fresh hip hopguys/ now I thaw out chicken pot pies"), angry unappreciatedBaraka-esque intellectual ("No one wants to hear me retrace my ancestryfrom a transatlantic boat cruise/ they want to hear my frantic energydiffused through pro tools") part anti-scene demagogue ("Rappers saythe darndest things you'll ever hear/ like I'm edgy and risque and Isay better luck next year") and two parts pure lyrical ability ("Idumbfound in the coffee shop/ looking like Jean Michel-Basquiat"). Fewmicrophone musicians can spit as quickly and as intelligently - theaforementioned couplets are delivered rapid fire, almost too quicklyfor the brain to process before the next obscure name-drop or poeticreference. Such has been Busdriver's claim to fame - or to the cynical,the gimmick that sustains an otherwise tired act. Either way, it's keptcoming at a steady pace: a prolific artist, Fear of a Black Tangentis Busdriver's third full-length in a little under two years. Theproduction duties are carried out admirably by several "big" (byunderground standards, anyway) names - Danger Mouse and Dadaelus amongthem, and their varied efforts — some glitchy, some jazzy- all seemwell-suited to match Busdriver's manic pace and frame of mind. But fora former battle rapper who has had significant critical acclaim andmodest (for an underground rapper, moving 20,000 units is a solidrelease) financial success, Busdriver spends far too much time bitchingand moaning. He decries the state of the industry ("Entertainmentindustries and bureaucrats/ Selling the ultimate brain freeze/ Thisyear I'm Sambo/ On the Clear Channel"), his lifestyle ("I hate my pad/I don't want to visit/ I need new brake pads on my Honda Civic") andhimself ("What kind of name is Busdriver?/ It suggests a wack allegory/that can't be justified by any background story/ I hear he sucks live/Only appeals to hipsters who dress like Russian spies"). Busdriver canrhyme all night, and no one can question his ability to do so, but bythe disc's fourth track the materialÕs run thin. How much endlessself-deprecation can a listening audience (who is supposedly beingentertained by it) be expected to withstand? Of course, the same can besaid of rock songs about love. Where Busdriver the songwriter may beserviced by moving on, Busdriver the rapper should be commended. It ishis microphone magic that keeps otherwise ancient subject matter freshand interesting, though a little diversity would have been nice,especially on a record called Fear of a Black Tangent.samples:
This seemed like an unexpected return toform until I checked the liner notes and discovered that these pieceswere, in fact, recorded from 1993 to 1995. To anyone familiar with thework of the duo from this period, the sounds on this LP will be veryfamiliar. Beequeen have always been extraordinarily good at creatingdusty, low-fidelity machine drones that have a grainy, organicresonance in which one can hear all manner of buried and obscuredmelodies. Their textures have a distinctly antiquated feel to them,like the penetrating buzz of a sodium streetlamp on an Amsterdam streetcorner in the late-1800s. On many of these pieces, Freek and Frans takeadvantage of the substance of tape itself, building pieces from therhythms produced by a slowly queuing cassette tape, or using thefundamental technical limitations of magnetic tape to intensify thelived-in, archival feel of much of this material. Even the name of thealbum conjured images of a long-neglected psychiatric hospital archive,full of disintegrating reel-to-reel tapes of long-forgottensignificance. "I'm Searching For Field Character" is the perfectsoundtrack to an Orwellian Room 101: a distorted voice with the weightytone of a Soviet social engineer reads aloud a block of text meant toreprogram us with revolutionary propaganda. All the while the clockticks loudly and distant air raid sirens blare. It has the effect of afrightening Cold War radio drama pulled into near-total abstraction.With interest I've tuned into the current wave of heavily hyped NewWeird American drone artists like Double Leopards and Dredd Foole, butthis brief LP by Beequeen comprised of material more than a decade oldseems fresher and more adventurous by far. Beequeen are careful not tostray too far from theme, mood and substance, so their work is alwaysenriched by the myriad symbolic associations that each listener bringsto the experience. The same cannot be said of the aforementionedartists, who often prefer to just play the same tone as loud as theycan for over an hour, as if endurance alone could prove the merit oftheir work. Aughton is a refreshing antidote to this kind ofamateurish noodling, and I highly recommend it to any who have foundthemselves disappointed by this sort of thing in the past. samples:
