New Music: Alex Delivery, Lifesavas

Alex Delivery - Milan (Jagjaguwar 2007)

Alex Delivery – Star Destroyer / Jagjaguwar

It is going to be very hard for anyone to talk about Alex Delivery’s debut album on Jagjaguwar without dropping the krautrock tag. Mostly because the New York-based quintet purvey the genre so well and have created an album that sounds as if it could have actually been made in the early 70s if it weren’t so crisply produced and layered so densely. While being immersed in the rhythmic river of psychedelic sounds that band together to form Star Destroyer, it is very hard to not continually think back to names like Can and Faust and Neu!. But do not necessarily think of Alex Delivery as a cover band, they wrap up the metallic maelstrom in warm melodies and hypnotic vibrations making this debut album a very promising start to their budding career.

There are three main tracks to Star Destroyer: “Komad,” “Milan” and “Sheath-Wet,” which each clock in around the 10-minute mark and mesh and mold in what can only be described as a molten metal myriad of music. “Komad” opens the disc with a slightly dubbed-out rhythm of what sounds like two sheets of scrap metal being scraped together, but what is probably an analog synthesizer with the high frequencies tweaked to hell. This is really the only consistent sound throughout the song as it drives through three stages of rhythmic cacophony. Stage one consists of a thunderous one-two snare-cymbal beat, a deeply sparse bass bounce and warbling vocal coos. It builds up consistently before ebbing away into stage two, which brings in a new barrage of analog synth grooves and spacey sound effects. At one point any semblance of rock melts away into a robo-dance floor track that Arthur Russell would merrily drop the needle on. But the metallic abrasions scrap on and stage three is a bellowing of factory disco with one keyboard after another taking the lead before coming full circle and dissolving into a pleasant piano melody.

“Milan” kicks off with washes of scrapped synth sounds breaking on a delicate shore of almost orchestral hums. It quickly opens into a krautrock groove of distant cowbell clatter, bass pulses and deeply reverberating keyboard melodies. Mid-point through the song, you enter into the most soothing span of the record with the abrasions taking a quick coffee break for the warm synths to effervesce together. All the while, the rattle of a vintage roller coaster seems to clatter around in the background; the screams of adventurous joy at that first demanding hill really take the melodramatic melodies to a whole new level. Everything is layered to perfection and it opens up a much softer side to Alex Delivery, one we can appreciate both that they have the talents for and that they keep continually just off-stage so we do not get lost in soap opera post-rock.

The third of our concentrated trifecta is “Sheath-Wet,” which returns to “Komad” and Faust territory. With a heavy emphasis on the drum kit, the rest of the music swells in bubbles of psychedelic turmoil. One second it is carnival keyboards that take center-stage and then sing-along choruses and then industrial ambience. The continual turnover of musical concentration really keeps the song interesting, a characteristic that a lot of krautrock purveying acts fail to take a grasp of. While “Sheat-Wet” most certainly rides a mechanical rhythm that seemingly could only arise from German factories, everything around it is extraterrestrial and nearly impossible to decipher. I am not sure where these kids scrounged up their barrage of analog synthesizers (perhaps they mugged Nettelbeck himself), but they make for a wonderfully classic sounding album in Star Destroyer.

It seems like Jagjaguwar has once again scored a great addition to their already impressive line-up of odd-but-hypnotic sounding bands. You can go ahead and chalk up Alex Delivery next to Oneida, Parts & Labor and Wilderness as the go-to set of modern experimental rock that owes a lot to the heyday of the genre, but certainly carves out a path all their own. So if you are down for a hearty helping of krautrock, musique conrète, space rock, electro-organic mutations and a little bit of industrial disco, go ahead and pick up Star Destroyer because you will not be disappointed. As for me, I’m hitting up the tour schedule, because I very much want to experience this carnival synth maelstrom in person.






Lifesavas - Night Out ft. George Clinton & Mega*Nut (Quannum 2007)

Lifesavas – Gutterfly / Quannum

The current rap scene is at an interesting crossroads. In the late 90s it stemmed a very potent and discernable underground with a number of labels taking advantage of an audience growing bored with the increasingly mundane mainstream. Stones Throw, Mush, Anticon, Solesides/Quannum, Rhymesayers and Def Jux all made a living off pushing the genre into new directions, challenging their audiences and not really giving a fuck what the masses were eating up. A decade later and that very same audience all of a sudden is starting to take notice. No longer do you have to sit up all night listening to college radio or paging through specialized zines, all the information you need on up-and-coming rappers is easily accessible via the internet and the entire music game has been rapidly changing (duh). Madlib and Aesop Rock are household names, Anticon has turned to new genres to keep themselves on their toes, the mainstream is for some reason obsessed with nerd-hop, goddamn Kanye West is a superstar (sigh), and the underground is far from being actually underground. The original rebellious tributary is reconnecting with the rushing river, and elements that were only heard on one side of the spectrum are intermingling as one. Lifesavas, a Portland-based rap duo is pretty good proof of this; they are dropping their sophomore album some four years after their very underground-centric debut and without some biographical knowledge, you wouldn’t be able to tell whose team they are playing for.

For better or worse, Lifesavas is very much a Quannum rap group. They are descendents of the cerebral back-and-forth banter of Latyrx and directly building off the Blackalicious sound; hell, they were discovered and mentored by Chief Xcel himself. And though their musical foundation of buoyant West Coast funk is stronger than ever (which is pretty hard to hate on), Jumbo the Garbageman and Vursatyl are mixing up their flow and adding a little bite to their bark (Jurassic 5 regretfully headed in the opposite direction). As a creative catalyst, the NoW (thanks Patrick) duo along with DJ/producer Shines have created the soundtrack to the long-lost blaxploitation film Gutterfly that truth be told is completely made up itself. Is this theme necessary? No, but I can imagine it was a lot of fun to make and it’s hard to hate on some creativity, so we’ll play along. In the film, Portland is known as Razorblade City, Jumbo is Sleepy Floyd, Vursatyl is Bumby Johnson and Shines is Jimmy Slimwater, though for the most part I’m going to ignore those names because monikers of monikers is just too damn confusing.

Though the theme is fun and “scenes” narrated by Ike Willis do string a loose narrative together, the actual songs would pretty much stand strongly on their own thanks to muscular rhythmic flow and inventive, well produced music. Like their debut, the decent but forgettable Spirit in Stone, Lifesavas purvey a socially conscious brand of rap, but Gutterfly thankfully adds a degree of grit to keep the cheese level bearable. Not to mention the boys have rounded up a good amount of big name friends to help further develop their sound. On the production side of things, Jumbo handles the majority, but Oh No, Jake One, Vitamin D and DJ Rev Shines all contribute significantly, along with instrumental help from Living Colour’s Vernon Reid, Fishbone’s Angelo Moore and even The Decemberists’ Chris Funk (no doubt a relationship formed from both calling Razorblade Ci… er, Portland home). Helping Vursatyl with mic duties are notable but aged acts like Camp Lo, Dead Prez and Smif-‘n’-Wessun. Since Lifesavas are definitely riding a classic rap tip on Gutterfly, they all sound in their element and their contributions are warranted.

So, as you can see, the back-story has eaten up the majority of this review, and like the album itself, it takes a little away from some of the great tracks hidden beneath the concepts, themes and notable guests. After an excellent contribution from Stone Thrower Oh No on “Double Up,” the album doesn’t really find its stride until “Dead Ones” about halfway through. Angelo Moore’s horn arrangements help lift a mediocre song into excellent territory, taking it on a rap-meets-The Specials trip. “Superburn” excels in that it sounds so radio-friendly without losing that underground edge, which leads to the album highlight, “Night Out.” George Clinton, yessir George Mother-fucking-Ship Connection, contributes growling vocals to grind beneath a subdued electro-funk track while some cat regrettably named Mega*Nut spits a quirky narrative in between a Parliament derived chorus. It sounds mostly like something Outkast would produce, and that is absolutely a compliment. The rest of the album wanes a bit, but hidden at the very end is the excellent “Tailormade Razorbladez,” which bumps along oddly Wu-like giving a brief nod to the always fun martial arts film.

Gutterfly excels in the current state of middle-ground rap. It owes as much to Blackalicious as it does Outkast, and will please fans of both. The well-versed theme is a fun addition, but somewhat unnecessary, and on occasion quality tracks get lost in the muddled hour of music you have here. But this is definitely one of the strongest albums I have heard out of the NoW scene, one which I have not been pleased enough with to embrace. So if you are a hip-hop fan, especially one looking to find a throwbackish album, I would give Gutterfly a good listen, because Lifesavas may be what you are looking for no matter if you are coming from the mainstream or underground.