Dabrye - "Get Dirty" EP

Dabrye - Game Over (feat. Jay Dee & Phat Kat) (Flying Lotus remix) (Ghostly International 2008)

Dabrye - "Get Dirty" EP / Ghostly International

There remains little doubt after 2006's Two/Three that Dabrye aka Tadd Mullinix is a man to watch no matter what he does. Burying himself in the forests of Ann Arbor and emerging with an industrial edge that could only be obtained through countless hours spent chopping down trees with high-powered buzzsaws, Mullinix is notorious for his dark, deviant beatmaking. It was by pure coincidence that I stumbled back across him and the brand new Get Dirty EP, having not checked the Ghostly International site in several weeks. I'm glad I did. This thing is awesome.

Every so often we review EPs here that we happen to like, no matter how big or small. Compared to our recent feature on The Field or the Flying Lotus EP from last year, Get Dirty is relatively short with three songs (The b-sides are instrumental versions of the a-sides) topping out inside a quarter of an hour. So why bother? The reason is because some of our favorite artists are on this plate. The shortlist: J Dilla, Kode9, Phat Kat, Flying Lotus. The better question ought to be: Why not bother?

Initially the interest is with the title-track featuring AG, a wobbly stab with dubstep overtones that would fit right in with the Hyperdub crowd. In fact, this song is two years old and first appeared on the third Ghostly podcast shortly after Two/Three was released. This doesn't mean it's any less potent as a single, and its beat sounds as fresh now as it did, er, a year and a half ago. Its notoriety comes from being the only actual Dabrye-only beat on the EP, since the two songs that follow are remixes. This also does not make it any less potent.

Kode9's remix of "Air (feat. Doom)" would ordinarily be the cat's meow on any single or EP with a group of remixes, paranoid synths holding high-pitched station in the background while crunk keys take the melody somewhere else and, of course, the lowest end of your speakers worry about their safety while the bass thumps madly in love with itself. Doom does his usual deep bass bit as well, a naturally heavier voice adding weight to an already dark song.

But the real party-starter here is Flying Lotus switching up "Game Over" to his own liking. "Dilla wit' Kat / It don't get sicker than that." No kidding, except even Dilla could not have foreseen how Steve Ellison has brought his own touch out from LA to school the Motor City stars featured here. Carte Blanche was one of my favorite records last year, and it's good to be reminded how tight Kat is with Dabrye, and how tight Dabrye was with Dilla. That Flying Lotus brings in his handclaps and strong grooves only adds to the good vibes going around.

The flip of the vinyl only confirms that you don't even need the emcees to show how great these beats are. Mullinix has built inherently strong rhythms that fellow visionaries can come in and tweak to their own end, tweak to add their own touch. That these particular artists have come together on such a small space of musical geography must only be some kind of cosmic coincidence, a gap in the space-time continuum, a glitch in the red pill soma of everyday life. The gods have been kind today. They must have known people were looking for something fresh to party to. "Let's get it up like it's Monday night." I'm down. Are you?

Singleversity #44

Audiversity’s weekly column, slightly modified, on random music in a predetermined number of words between 1 & 150. This week's randomly generated number: 101

MA:



Not really a collection for diehard diggers of the genre, but one of the latest Heartbeat Records compilations, When Rhythm Was King, culls some of the best pairings between Studio One’s impeccable rhythm section and Jamaica’s top vocalists. Besides choice cuts from Alton Ellis, Johnny Osbourne, Dennis Brown and Dillinger among others, it also includes maybe my favorite Sugar Minott number, "Come on Home". With a sparse riddim clicking and clucking, Minott pines for his lost lover with that unparalleled soft soul croon. Track in a few swooning horns and an organ flutter, and you have yet another Studio One classic.

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Though Michael was less enthusiastic about Hell Hath No Fury, Clipse’s sophomore album remains on my heavy hip-hop rotation even now (Is it sad to want more of the intro?). The Re-Up Gang released two exemplary mixtapes during that downtime to keep sharp. After signing with Columbia last October, the Clipse have made the wait short for their next appearance: This week, We Got it 4 Cheap: Vol. 3 was released. Ab-Liva and Sandman also sound as up to snuff (No pun intended) as the Thorntons here on "Good Morning." Too bad the rest of the title is too long to remember.

The Sword - "Gods of the Earth"

The Sword - To Take the Black (Kemado 2008)

The Sword - Gods of the Earth / Kemado

Dead Meadow's new album Old Growth came out recently, and maybe you'll see Michael's review for it here soon (Update: Sure enough, here you are). If not, here is what we both agree on without giving away some of the zingers of his write-up: It lacks a certain psychedelic flourish that made the band such a big deal for Matador in the first place. The epic, larger-than-your-living room element of expansive exploration that preceded their move to Lost Angeles was why we loved them. Now, with three-minute stoner jams, we have an oxymoron.

Another band has taken that same approach with their second album, but with the opposite effect: By tightening up their sound on Gods of the Earth, Austin, TX natives The Sword are now even more menacing than on Age of Winters. Or on their earliest EP, which I copped during a show opening for ...And You Will Know Us By the Trail of Dead and The Octopus Project in early '05. What a brilliant tour. Can you imagine these guys opening for The Octopus Project now?

Thanks to some beefy production and a lethal dosage of distortion, I sure as hell can't. "The Sundering" starts out setting the mood with a mid-tempo rocker and thundering drums, but the band has cleverly opted for starting with an instrumental to maximize the anticipation. This subtle choice in tracking inadvertently gives the band exactly what Dead Meadow lacks, even with those short song lengths: cinema. It's no secret this band was built for the big time because, after all, look at that album art. Look at the song titles (The first single is "Fire Lances the Ancient Hyperzephyrians," an inspired choice). Look at the quotation this album was christened for:

"The moon is dark, and the gods dance in the night; there is terror in the sky, for the moon hath sunk an eclipse foretold in no books of men.... At last! In the dim light I behold the gods of earth!" - Barzai the Wise

Apparently JD Cronise and HP Lovecraft have met somewhere during the course of "The Other Gods." These guys have always been about fighting dragons and using their otherworldly superpowers to demolish demons and all that, but here they've got some inspired riffing to go along with it. It's heavy as any underworld you can imagine, and pretty much every leaf from the Black Sabbath handbook has been ripped out and memorized. But come on, you could do a lot worse than covering "Under the Boughs" (which they did for a Kemado compilation called Invaders and which reappears here). Is it that The Sword are just that blatant in ripping Black Sabbath off? Or are they now just that good?

The former might've been true before. When I first heard Age of Winters, I was pleased that it was such a step up from their demo. But listening to this, it is easy to hear a band that's moving forward to find their own feet. There are dissonant elements and faster tempos that did not make Age of Winters as interesting to listen to. They've got tasteful solos ("The Black River" comes to mind), but never does guitar wankery trump sheer aural fury. The power behind this record is obvious. Alongside that other amazing rock record by another Black band, The Sword are demonstrating that conventional rock formulæ can be as invigorating as ever when done with the imagination that's required to keep up with someone like HP Lovecraft.

The Field - "Sound of Light" EP

The Field - Night (iTunes 2008)

The Field - "Sound of Light" EP / iTunes

Axel Willner has gone and sprung some conceptual hijinx on the music community not even one month into the new year. After winning over the press with From Here We Go Sublime in '07, The Field has returned with his trademark sound on a commission from the Nordic Light Hotel in Stockholm. The fundamental question that lies within the commission - What does light sound like? - is ripe for conceptual examination in itself. If Sound of Light represents four times of the day, do they effectively evoke the time of day they were written for?

Armed with this question, I spent several days with Sound of Light listening to it at all times of the day in a kind of dream journal free-for-all method. In the morning getting ready for work before dawn, mid-afternoon on a lazy weekend (The only time of week I can be lazy, really), at night brushing teeth before I get ready for bed. I left the notepad out and the window open to record the thoughts in my state at the time. This is what I had to say, though I don't remember writing it all...

I. Morning

Friday, February 1st: I really don't want to go back to sleep. Seriously. Fucking techno. But wait, I think I follow: "Morning" bursts to life just as the sun rises, and for a few minutes it's really exciting to see the white-hot ball of fire over the horizon. Then it drains you. That sounds like the light I know. Still not seeing the sense in "Day." Light doesn't sound that mechanical; why should music sound the way we feel?

II. Day

Saturday, January 26th: I have just listened to Field of Light for the first time. One of the main reasons I didn't like From Here We Go Sublime was because the beat was off, the tempo was wrong, it was too formless, it didn't feel like it had structure. This is different. It doesn't seem that way initially on "Night" or "Morning" - in fact, the latter sounds exactly like Willner did last year. Virtually a replica of the opening seconds from "Over the Ice" for a less attentive listener, but the beat changes subtly and at the 3m15s mark it opens up into a harmonized vocal loop that bursts to life just a quarter of a minute later. Definite attention-getter, but it was difficult to sustain for the 15+ minutes that it ran.

I get the industrial undertow of "Day," the workmanlike machinations obvious to anyone with a 9-to-5er. But is this what light sounded like to Willner during his stay? After four minutes it jolts you as "Morning" did, but it sounds more apprehensive and nervous. It's the busiest track here, and maybe the harshest. In that respect, I suppose I understand. I am slowly coming to understand why this is as good as it is.

III. Evening

Monday, February 4th: The slim window I have to relax at home on Mondays, and here I am wasting my time with this album to see what more I can understand of it. My commute home is a long, northernly denouement that ends one stop short of Loyola U. From the bustle of the rush to be first on the train to the ultimate formlessness and sparse scattering of passengers as I debark to walk home. In this sense, "Evening" doesn't fit quite right given that is more alive at the end of the song than the beginning... But I guess when you take into account the fact that my evening is about to be filled with drinking and fairly loud dance music, it makes more sense. "Night" is the ultimate nocturnal denouement. Barely there, but definitely alive. I must use this.

IV. Night

Thursday, February 7th: Maybe this is The Field's greatest achievement: With just four songs, Willner has created cuts that adjust for the time of day, but more importantly, the type of light. Few other artists could have executed it so well, because few have the ability to run the assembly line futility making up the majority of "Day" with the radiant outbursts that come with a smoke break or lunch when you can get the hour off. Equally crucial is how "Night" plays like the broken dreams of REM sleep, glitches here and there where you swear you can hear words and phrases and then, like that, phased out again. In and out, flickering eyelids, deep unrest.

I don't remember where I heard that Kompakt weren't happy about how this album was released, but Willner has demonstrated to the loyal that his debut was no fluke and opened eyes to a few new followers with a commission that sounds neither hasty nor half-assed. The return for the German label ought to be much better when he gets around to that second album. Sitting in darkness trying to finish this, I cannot think that far ahead. All I see is the light of the laptop screen in front of me. And what a beautiful sound it is.

L'ocelle Mare - "L'ocelle Mare"

L'ocelle Mare - "Untitled Track 5" (Sick Room 2008)

L’ocelle Mare – L’ocelle Mare / Sick Room

Maybe more than any other cognitive aspect of life, balancing your mindset into a comfortable manner of reasoning between the instinctual and the over-thinking is key to a healthy sanity. Music is no different. The mid-point between the sheer urgency of impulsive, emotional release and obsessed-over, highly composed musicianship is where the most effective music can be found. The minimal guitar explorations of Frenchman Thomas Bonvalet circle this median constantly. He plays with knee-jerk veracity, but the warm chordal products have to be the result of some serious premeditation. It’s music lined with curiousness, played with gut feeling and looking to balance the polar sides of music creation.

Though now recording and performing under the solo moniker L’ocelle Mare, Bonvalet is best known as one-half of Cheval de Frise. With drummer Vincent Beysselance, they purveyed a sound similar in concept: a balancing of refined experimentalism and primitive noise rock. Bonvalet’s first solo outing, this self-titled exploration into the melodious immediacy of the acoustic guitar released on RuminanCe in Europe and Chicago’s Sick Room Records in the States, stays the defined course. Sixteen tracks in under twenty-five minutes recorded in secluded spots throughout France, and each one more curious than the next.

Bonvalet almost approaches the guitar in the same manner Cecil Taylor did the piano. A heavy inhalation of the immediate surroundings, a concentration of thoughts, ideas, momentary inspirations, and finally a shove of the culminating feelings originating in the deepest auricle of the artist’s inner-creativity traveling near-instantaneously into the fingertips and immediately on to the instrument in a flurry of awkward rhythms and chords. The rush is typically over in less than a minute and the result somewhat unnerving and confusing on the cursory listen. But with each concurrent study, the odd tunings begin to make sense, the hiccupping rhythms take an understandable shape and the music comes together into a sort of awe-inspiring rumination of individualism.

To texturize and diversify the sound, Bonvalet not only utilizes the individual reverberation of his particular settings – a different one for each track – but occasionally takes a small piece of hand percussion into his strumming hand or attaches a harmonica stand to his neck. So while “Untitled Track 12” is simply a study of upper harmonics on his acoustic, the following song adds a faint rattlesnake hand-shaker rhythm for eeriness… or is that crickets chirping in the background? Where “Untitled Track 14” initially sounds akin to the soft guitar experiments of Gastr del Sol, the atonal harmonica swell and unnerving rattle that offset the warm acoustics bring Jandek to mind. On one side of the album you’ll find skittering, full-fret board workouts not unlike Hella’s Spencer Seim, and on the other side the pieces echo John Fahey during his introspective best.

L’ocelle Mare is not for those looking for a pleasantly humming acoustic guitar album, nor is it for those hoping for an aural onslaught of guitar experimentation. It is somewhere in between, galloping and bucking one second, teetering and nodding the next. Bonvalet doesn’t sound as if he is completely improvising on spot, but utilizing his many years of exploring the sonic possibilities of the guitar to conceptualize instinctive urges. It’s a balance. An evening of the cognitive seesaw so that his mind neither runs amuck at each drop of a thought, nor spends hours on end deconstructing the situation. Our ears – and his sanity – are the beneficiaries.

Radio Show Playlist: 2/6/08

6a:
1. Velvet Underground - Ocean - Live with Lou Reed 1969 (Mercury 1974)
2. Thee More Shallows - Walk of Shame - More Deep Cuts (Turn 2005)
3. Adrian Orange - It's Ain't Me Baby - Second Marriage Record Compilation (Marriage 2007)
4. Quinn Walker - Chicken Wire - Laughter's an Asshole/Lion Land (Voodoo-Eros 2008)
5. All Night Radio - You'll Be on Your Own - Spirit Stereo Frequency (Sub Pop 2004)
6. Valet - Fire - Naked Acid (Kranky 2008)
7. Human Bell - Splendor & Concealment - Human Bell (Thrill Jockey 2008)
8. Sandy Bull - Memphis, Tennessee - Inventions (Vanguard 1964)
9. Michael Hurley - Knockando - Ancestral Swamp (Gnomonsong 2007)

7a:
1. Shuggie Otis - Oxford Gray - Here Comes Shuggie Otis (Epic 1970)
2. Ray Charles - Ring of Fire (live) - Best of the Johnny Cash Show: 1969-71 (Sony 2007)
3. Arthur Prysock - In the Rain - Arthur Prysock '74 (Old Town 1974)
4. Penny & the Quarters - You & Me - Eccentric Soul: The Prix Label (Numero Group 2007)
5. The Impressions - Jealous Man - The Young Mod's Forgotten Story (Curtom 1969)
6. Grant Green - Down Here on the Ground - Alive! (Blue Note 1970)
7. Nina Simone - Obeah Woman - It Is Finished (RCA 1974)
8. Nicole Mitchell's Black Earth Ensemble - February - Black Unstoppable (Delmark 2007)
9. Steve Reid Ensemble - Jiggy Jiggy - Daxaar (Domino 2008)
10. Matana Roberts - Thrills - The Chicago Project (Central Control 2008)

8a:
1. Jonny Greenwood - Open Spaces - There Will Be Blood (Nonesuch 2008)
2. Scott Walker - It's Raining Today - Scott 3 (Fontana 1969)
3. Vashti Bunyan - I Want to Be Alone - Somethings Just Stick in Your Mind (Dicristina 2007, originally 1965)
4. Arthur Russell - A Little Lost - Another Thought (Point 1994)
5. Magnetic Fields - Drive On, Driver - Distortion (Nonesuch 2008)
6. School of Language - Rockist Pt.4 - Sea From Shore (Thrill Jockey 2008)
7. Pants Yell! - More Purple - Alison Statton (Soft Abuse 2007)
8. Dead Meadow - Ain't Got Nothing (To Go Wrong) - Old Growth (Matador 2008)
9. Black Mountain - Stormy High - In the Future (Jagjaguwar 2008)
10. Danava - Unonou - UnonoU (Kemado 2008)
11. Mahjongg - Pontiac - Kontpab (K 2008)
12. Fellini - Zum Zum Zazoeira - Sexual Life of the Savages: Underground Post-Punk from Sao Paulo, Brasil (Soul Jazz 2004)

Autistic Daughters - "Uneasy Flowers"

Autistic Daughters - Hotel Exeter Dining Room (Kranky 2008)

Autistic Daughters - Uneasy Flowers / Kranky

The dark brick road (Or is that concrete?) that walks off into the darkness of this album cover is a literal suggestion for you to follow Kranky into the blind if you have not heard New Zealand's Autistic Daughters before. There is a great deal of anxiety, a great deal of uncertainty, no reassurance in the opening seconds that suggest the cover is misleading in any fashion. These artists have come together to create something very muted, very dark and, as the pattern of the bricks may suggest, not of the ordinary shape and arrangement. Artists always have a way of eschewing these preconceptions.

And truly, the members recording here are artists with a substantial background in the avant-garde. A brief summary: Vocalist and guitarist Dean Roberts was in Thela and White Winged Moth; guitarist Werner Dafeldecker was in Polwechsel and The Year Of; double bassist Martin Brandlmayr was in Kapital Band 1, Radian and Trapist. Uneasy Flowers in particular also features Dafeldecker and Brandlmayer's cohort Martin Siewert; a dude from The Necks, Chris Abrahams; and Palermo, Italy native Valerio Tricoli.

Needless to say, it's a cast of accomplished musicians at work for Autistic Daughters' second album. The sonic straddle between barren minimalism and improvised folk for all seven songs on this LP, continuing exploration and processing into the realms of the 'Daughters' first release in 2004, Jealousy and Diamonds. Though Roberts never loses control by emoting all over the microphone, the vocal snippets (largely a near-whisper though they may be) instead stir you to pay closer attention through the story that works as a loose thematic structure. Based around a character named Rehana (who maybe has a child), the story takes lucid turns as only a record made for night listening (or made in the night recording) would.

Also, "You're a bunch of cunts / The lot of you / And everything is / moving slowly / for a king / who is slightly drunk" between lonely handclaps on "Rehana's Theme" will be sure to get your attention. If you weren't paying attention before the first of 36 minutes on the album, that should do the trick.

The most engaging aspect of the music may be the way the guitars are used, whether they be looped or manipulated or droned or even strummed to provide the very melody these songs are based on (Imagine that). Some of the most intrusive guitars are the distorted six-strings used to great effect on "Gin Over Soured Milk." As one of the highlights of the album, this song minimizes the negative sonic space that the other tracks are so good at doing (much like Susanna on Sonata Mix Dwarf Cosmos) and, though the instrumentation is spare, the chorus is heartbreakingly memorable.

There are no easy flowers on this record, but "Hotel Exeter Dining Room" is as optimistic a conclusion as one could hope for. The tapped cymbals ring in pianos and a chorus that whispers alone but collectively urges a better future, a brighter hope for Rehana. Even when the words don't match the music, the feeling evoked from this song is one of relief from the oppressive loneliness one feels after the first six songs. The pace is faster. The piano is twinkling. The light is on, but it no longer matters what the gaping black hole on that cover holds. Full speed ahead, into the darkness, the future, the unknown. You can never know too much. Autistic Daughters know as well as anyone. They'll go forth anyway, onward, upward, ahead. The light may dim, may flicker, may even burn out. But this is life, for Rehana, for you, for me. There are no easy flowers in life. Autistic Daughters know, and they're trying to make it easier. For Rehana, for you, for me.

Michael Hurley - "Ancestral Swamp"

Michael Hurley - "Light Green Fellow" (Gnomonsong 2007)

Michael Hurley – Ancestral Swamp / Gnomonsong

I’ve been searching for just the right way to place the minimal folk of traveled songwriter Michael Hurley in context with contemporary music for a good hour now. I don’t think it can be done, at least not snugly. Ancestral Swamp, the folk veteran’s twentieth LP and first for the Devendra Banhart-helmed Gnomonsong imprint, acts as a sort of wormhole in music. Though his voice reflects his mid-60s age and wavers with the wear of some forty-five years in and out of the music business, the warm, unassuming recording quality, mellow-paced and rustic instrumentation, and general nod toward Delta blues can’t differentiate too much from the music being captured by Folkways Records in the mid-60s where Hurley recorded his debut album – in fact on the same reel-to-reel that taped Leadbelly’s Last Sessions nearly twenty years prior. It must be quite the curious thought for Hurley to connect just how exactly he went from being the budding star of the rebellious Greenwich Village folk scene of the mid-60s to presently be recording with the core of a group looking to emulate just that in their rural Northwest homes, and somehow dodging significant – or at least widespread – reverence all the while.

It’s hard not to be swooned near instantaneously by Ancestral Swamp, a collection of songs – five original, five covers and one a lyrical duet with, curiously enough, Edgar Allan Poe – culled over the last eight years. Album opener “Knockando”, as my roommate just put it, sounds a lot like the soul-tinged, blues-derived Americana of Will Oldham, though he obviously got the roles reversed. Hurley slips into a soft falsetto as the electric-tinged guitar scuffs and struts. His compositions are deceptively simple, unflinchingly patient and near impossible to ignore despite their unassuming nature.

“Dying Crapshooter’s Blues” follows and features Hurley showing his age, that is to say, following his instincts into traditional folk, at least from a songwriter perspective. His odd, concerned-only-with-storytelling phrasing teamed with the slow gurgle of electric guitar recalls Delta blues at its finest, right down to the hummed coda. Keeping the listener guessing, the song is succeeded with “Lonesome Graveyard”, a duet between Hurley’s downtrodden, trembling voice and a moonlit electric piano. The soft wavers in volume do nothing to dissuade my mental picture of Hurley rocking back-and-forth painfully in front of the mic as he sings.

Though the show here is all Hurley, he is joined by three multi-instrumentalists that skillfully accompany his vocals with equally intricate musicianship: Dave Reisch, Louie Longmeyer, and earnest indie-rock innovator Tara Jane O’Neil. As well as being responsible for a bit of the recording, O’Neil also provides subtle background vocals on “El Dorado”, the previously mentioned track in which Hurley trades verses with Poe. She later captured an off-the-cuff improvisation during “Light Green Fellow” by leaving the tape running without his knowledge. The result is a slightly rollicking folk song that echoes as much blues and early gospel as it does Johnny Cash.

Released in September of 2007, Ancestral Swamp is a slow-burner, an album that resonates patience if only that it is the result of forty-five years of craft perfecting. Hurley’s sound, a comfortable mesh of folk, Delta blues, Appalachian country, rural Americana and bare-bones soul, is somehow idiosyncratic despite its deep traditionalist heritage. It’s charming and comfortable, inviting and lulling. A lesson of passion-via-patience and wisdom that so many of us need to learn.

Singleversity #43

Audiversity’s weekly column, slightly modified, on random music in a predetermined number of words between 1 & 150. This week's randomly generated number: 104

MA:



With one of the most interesting fusions of styles in modern music, Thomas Mapfumo’s chimurenga music intertwines funk, soul and 60’s pop-rock into Zimbabwe’s native Shona music. While the groove of a track like "Matiregerera Mambo" [please refer to this site if you are still interested] (which I have a sneaking suspicion is actually titled “Hokoyo” and my tracklisting is just off) may reflect a Motown aesthetic in the music, the lyrics are unabashedly political and rebellion rousing. Pulled from Mapfumo’s debut album with the Acid Band, the 1978 LP Hokoyo! (Shona for “beware” or “watch out”), the message nearly condemned the “Lion of Zimbabwe” to jail by the then suppressing white minority government.

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Though it’s been over two years and I’ve done a lot of growing since, Million Dead will always occupy a very special place for me; as such, I keep up with even the most trifling matters of its former members. Turns out that while they’ve all been busy pursuing separate projects, three unreleased instrumental demos and a flat-sounding Total Rock session surfaced this past week from their former band on the fansite Milliondead.org. This "Pop-punkyone" is, like the others, of subpar sound and mostly unremarkable bar a spacey middle section that hints at a new sonic angle they unfortunately never survived to see realized.

These New Puritans - "Beat Pyramid"

These New Puritans - Numbers (Domino 2008)

These New Puritans - Beat Pyramid / Domino

So here's a funny story: I saw that Times New Viking record Rip It Off lying among a pile of scattered records on the floor of WLUW's music department, you know the one, and having just recently read about how good These New Puritans was, I was pretty certain it was the same thing. Rip it off, beat pyramids, very close as you can see. But I definitely just popped it in and realized, whoops! This isn't the record I wanted to review. I was thinking something a little more... Wirey. Fally. PiLy.

But this is 2008 (February already?) and as we like to say around here at Audiversity, fuck the haters. So this won't be about Times New Viking and their lo-fi love, but rather a very different story full of sharp guitar tones and unexpected harmonies emerging from the discordance of jittery rhythms and deadpan deliveries. This is the distinctly British beauty of These New Puritans.

You might be aware that the record is coming out on Monday in the UK and on March 18th in the US. I mean, they're on Domino. They've got Tim Goldsworthy remixing them already. They've worked with Hedi Slimane for a Dior Homme show. It's like if Interpol actually cared about keeping up their fashionista image and wasn't so concerned about making the great leap forward of using more than three colors in album art. Gasp! Guffaw! But fuck the haters, we're not here to talk about Interpol either.

Unfortunately, These New Puritans tend to invite these kinds of comparisons. They tread a minefield of musical influences that have the fiercest critics and the most ambitious of music fans calling out every name they can recall from the Factory roster from 1978 to 1982. Yet, at the center of it all, the men play the cards close to their collective chests by shunning the influences question and namechecking dubstep or the Wu-Tang instead.

It's not for nothing as this doesn't play like your average post-punk record. It's got the sound, the crisp plucks and vaguely dancey beats and enigmatically anthemic choruses. But it has something else: A willingness to not fall into 4/4 propulsion by default and a self-awareness of when to quit. So while Jack Barnett's vocals on "Infinity Ytinifni" are mostly monotone, it only takes 2 minutes and 24 seconds for the song to play out to its logical conclusion. Not one of these songs sounds tired at the end of it; in fact, in many cases you find yourself wishing there were more to it than just... I mean, was that really it? Just when it was getting so good...

The closest ancestor to Beat Pyramid is thus Wire's Chairs Missing. The record isn't quite a full nod to far-out experimentation, but it's also not barebones punk incognito. Two decades later, These New Puritans have captured the gray transition that Wire were in their first incarnation, experimenting with synths and other new technologies while still maintaining that "We'll go until we don't like it anymore" attitude that makes these bands so endlessly fascinating even to people who can't necessarily enjoy them. It's the ethos, the work ethic behind the musical detours, that makes post-punk so challenging and so loved even now (It's also producer Gareth Jones, who's worked with Wire before). These New Puritans fit in the same frame of mind by having the listenable moments ("Numbers," "Costume," a host of others) mesh seamlessly with the less listenable ones ("Colours," "£4," etc.) for a cohesive experience.

And cohesive is really the buzz word for this band. They didn't require any time to come together as The Nein did before Luxury dropped jaws last year. The Southend-on-sea quartet have arrived fully formed and dressed to impress. 2008, the year of the "T'-word New Somethings? These New Puritans have made their case, anyway. If they wind up like Clinic, at least we can say we remembered when Beat Pyramid bowled us over like... Well, you can drop your own Super Bowl reference here. I'll be over there hogging the chips and dip. Every number has a meaning, man. 42.

Luis Gallardo - "Music for People Who Like Music"

Luis Gallardo - Aperibe (Self-released, 2007)

Luis Gallardo - Music for People Who Like Music

I doubt it was a coincidence that after the whole Billboard thing we were nominated for (and obviously didn't win... I think?), emails started piling up in my inbox from independent artists submitting random mp3s and telling us how much they loved our blog when they probably hadn't ever read it or heard the music on it before. We're definitely going for an aesthetic here, but what that is even we're not exactly sure yet. All we know is what Stereogum tells us is good.

But seriously, the inbox was flooded. I'm still sifting through some of it, actually, but it hasn't all been for nought. Luis Gallardo aka Redd of has been a genuinely pleasant surprise and a nice find, something refreshing and defiantly tropical in a time of year when brittle post-punk and disconnected avant-rock seem to be more apropos for the CD player I mean iPod I mean whatever you listen to.

Tropical is both an excellent way of describing the general feel of this jazzy album and a literal metaphor for Gallardo's home in Puerto Rico. He made his name working in the Georgia-based hip-hop collective Forbidden Dialect, who continue to operate and who I would also encourage you to check out. At the moment, Redd is helping to finish up the touches to Minus a Few's LP Sounds Like Change, which won't be long in coming. Details are a little spotty at the moment, but the five-week visit allowed Gallardo to stretch his considerable beat-making skills and a preview of one of those tracks can be found on the MySpace above.

The album reviewed here, Music for People Who Like Music, is actually from way back in 2006 but only formally hit the streets last year as best I can tell. In the time since, he's done production for Rype and made a breaks record of his own. The man likes to keep busy, but his music is mercifully uncomplicated in contrast.

At least sonically. There's a lot more going on than a cursory listen of Music for People Who Like Music might suggest. Between the imperial horn of "Leicester" or the echoing trip-hop ambiance of "Tippo" and the bluesy harmonica wallop of "Ripley" lies something overtly political. Proof can be taken in the clip from "Tippo," a poem well known to Puerto Ricans both at home and abroad and first read in 1969 by Pedro Pietri at a Young Lords rally. In its entirety here, this is the excerpt Gallardo uses:

They worked
They were always on time
They were never late
They never spoke back
when they were insulted
They worked
They never took days off
that were not on the calendar
They never went on strike
without permission
They worked
ten days a week
and were only paid for five
They worked
They worked
They worked
and they died
They died broke
They died owing
They died never knowing
what the front entrance
of the first national city bank looks like...

And all of this as preface to an otherwise harmless jazz-hop rhythm just as suited to the Inner Current label or maybe as a lost beat from Madlib's first Beat Konducta duet before he went curry on us. Despite its tropical guitar strums and palms swishing in the gentle winds on the shores of the Caribbean, there is a tropical storm that lurks beneath. "Tel Aviv" and "Lafayette" are two of the darkest tracks here, more in the vein of a scary Sixtoo joint than easy breezy laid-back island instrumentals. I would guess that Gallardo tried to contextualize his own sound in reference to the city which he has titled the vast majority of these 16 tracks, and the sometimes sinister air about them has made for a vibrant album that I'm very fortunate I gave a listen to.

The Forbidden Dialect collective are a busy bunch and it seems like they have plenty of projects keeping them busy well into the foreseeable future. Gallardo hasn't rested on the laurels of this LP (which probably makes sense given that I don't think I saw any press on this album last year) and as well he shouldn't, but his production sensibilities are as A-grade as anyone else we've featured here since we've started. We'll be keeping tabs on this lad to see what comes next, but for now, Music for People Who Like Music will suffice because it is just that. The irresistible horns of "Aperibe" dare you to disagree.

Chef Menteur - "The Answer's in Forgetting"

Chef Menteur - "Tonalli" (Backporch Revolution 2007)

Chef Menteur – The Answer’s in Forgetting / Backporch Revolution

“touts les rêves perdus et réalisés
à la novelle orléans”

On the lower right-hand corner inside the sparse one-fold booklet of Chef Menteur’s sophomore full-length, The Answer’s in Forgetting, this short phrase floats alone. Roughly translated (roughly because sadly I have no experience with French and am stuck trusting an assortment of free online translators): “all the lost and realized dreams in New Orleans”. Drifting in a murky painted setting where the land is made up of colored-over map pieces, the water is teal and light blue overrun by swabs of olive green and muddy brown, and in the sky looms an out-going black cloud, the context of the quote is obvious. It must be hard to reflect on anything else in the recovering southern American city, yet the remaining artists in residence have enough inspiration, despite it being more of the negative stimulus, to last for decades to come.

There are growths protruding from the painted body of water though, coral or pedicle-like structures perhaps symbolizing the life yearning to propagate once again from just beneath the surface. Seeds drift around the stalks, and dandelion clocks float through the air just above them. In the distance, varying lengths of connected stem and seed are congregating in a city-like structure. It is a dimly hued painting scattered with symbols of regrowth, an analogy obvious to the city of New Orleans and a worthy one for the music of the Crescent City-based Chef Menteur.

The overall tone of The Answer’s in Forgetting doesn’t stray too far from the caliginous setting of the artwork. The studio-barricaded three-piece – only two of which remain from the band’s 2005 debut, We Await Silent Tristero’s Empire – make good use of warmly resonating feedback and duskish synthesizers as background color to each track. With that setting in place, they purvey a Constellation-friendly brand of stadium-sized post-rock with occasional excursions into other sub-styles: the Southwestern-teased instrumental rock of Friends of Dean Martinez, the apocalyptic emotion of Sigur Ros, the sprawling alternative metal of godheadSilo (of which newest member, multi-instrumentalist Dan Haugh, stems from) and the exotic explorations of Cul de Sac.

This more rock-oriented turn by the band may discourage fans of their initial release, which was dubbed more in the electronica direction. More often than not with this second attempt, the trio – joined briefly by banjo and sitar player Brian Abbott – ditch the curious oscillating synth swirls and snipped drum machine rhythms for the hugely pummeling drums and atmospherically sweeping guitar melodies that have pretty much lined every album classified as post-rock since Mogwai, Sigur Ros and Godspeed! took super-indie status at the turn of the millennium. It may not be the smartest or most intriguing move for a band looking to develop their sound in new directions to a wider audience.

That being said, The Answer’s in Forgetting does not completely let down; the highlights just come from the more unsuspecting sections of the record. The menacing chirp of tapped analog synthesizers creeping in the background of the impending, feedback-drenched “Parasitic Oscillation” surely reflects the ominous nighttime environment of post-hurricane New Orleans. And it leads into a rather warm “Tonalli”, a patiently shuffling, effect-heavy number reminiscent of the overlooked Lateduster. Where songs like “1491” and “Goodbye Callisto” rumble on past the seven-minute mark, never really introducing a particularly individual element, a track like “OT III” clocks in at barely two-and-a-half minutes but its intriguing interaction between a twangy banjo and a buzzing sitar with swelling synthesizer tones anchoring makes for a much more fulfilling listen.

Despite a few woes in their stylistic progression, the important aspect here is that Chef Menteur (and any other New Orleans-based artists for that matter) is back to recording material in the confines of and inspired by their hometown. Like their immediate surroundings, The Answer’s in Forgetting is the product of being in a state of regrowth. Perhaps before pushing forward, one needs to return to what one knows best. Collect your thoughts, remember your roots, learn from your mistakes, and then, as the album’s title seems to imply, you forget the immediate past and move on. Maybe this is just their recollection, their stem’s regrowth before they can once again flower. I’ll be interested to hear the band in blossom.

Radio Show Playlist: 1/30/08

6a:
1. Royal Trux - Back to School - Singles, Live and Unreleased (Domino 1997)
2. Black Mountain - Wucan - In the Future (Jagjaguwar 2008)
3. Earthless - Cherry Red - Rhythms from a Cosmic Sky (Tee Pee 2007)
4. Human Bell - Ephaphatha (Be Opened) - Human Bell (Thrill Jockey 2007)
5. Sam Shalabi - Billy the Kid (pt. 2) - Eid (Alien8 2008)
6. Kamilsky - Krumpaci Zasrany - Post-Asiatic: Lost War Dream Music (Urck 2007)
7. Nemeth - Luukkaankangas - Film (Thrill Jockey 2008)
8. Atlas Sound - On Guard - Let the Blind Lead Those Who Can See but Cannot Feel (Kranky 2008)
9. Valet - Kehaar - Naked Acid (Kranky 2008)

7a:
1. Lichens - Vevor of Agassou - Omns (Kranky 2007)
2. Chef Menteur - 1491 - The Answer's in Forgetting (Backporch Revolution 2007)
3. HiM - What's Up Tonight - Peoples (Bubblecore 2006)
4. Tortoise/Autechre - Adverse Chamber - Adverse Chamber/To Day Retrival 12" (Thrill Jockey 1998)
5. Sao Paulo Underground - Pombaral - Sauna: Um, Dois, Tres (Aesthetics 2006)
6. Music Inc. (Charles Tolliver, Stanley Cowell, Cecil McBee & Jimmy Hopps) - Felicite - Live at Sugs' Vol. 1 (Strata-East 1972)
7. Nicole Mitchell's Black Earth Ensemble - Cause & Effect - Black Unstoppable (Delmark 2007)
8. Max Roach: His Chorus & Orchestra - Lonesome Lovers - It's Time (Impulse! 1962)

8a:
1. Matana Roberts & Fred Anderson - Birdhouse 3 - The Chicago Project (Central Control 2008)
2. Vieux Farka Toure - Toure de Niafunke feat. Toumani Diabate - Vieux Farka Toure (World Village 2007)
3. Orchestra Baobab - Jin Ma Jin Ma - A Night at Club Baobab (Oriki 2006)
4. Extra Golden - Osama Rach - Ok-Oyot System (Thrill Jockey 2006)
5. Mahjongg - Problems - Kontpab (K 2008)
6. Cornelius - Gum (Prefuse 73 Flavor Burst Rock Gum Mix) - Gum 12" (Everloving 2007)
7. Spiller Whale - Raptures & Drynessess - Fresh Tables EP (Uncle Grandpa 2007)
8. School of Language - Rockist (single mix) - Sea From Shore (Thrill Jockey 2008)
9. Rafter - zzzPenchant - Sex Death Cassette (Asthmatic Kitty 2008)
10. Pants Yell! - Reject, Reject - Alison Statton (Soft Abuse 2008)

Mahjongg - "Kontpab"

Mahjongg - "Problems" (K 2008)

Mahjongg – Kontpab / K

As the opening track “Pontiac” rumbles out of the back alleyway of Southside Chicago and into my speakers, with its duct-taped metallic and plastic entrails loosely hanging and clattering together in a claustrophobic-yet-groovy rhythm, I immediately remember why, despite my weak stomach for indie-dance whatever, I have always had a warm place in my ear’s heart for Mahjongg. They have the ability to exist outside the chic underground music spectrum, while still appealing to the current crowd. The Chicago-based band, strapped shoulder high in analog synthesizers, crisscrossed wiring, samplers sampling samplers, digital drum pads, hand percussion, modified guitars and ear-encapsulating headphones, can transform an art space from humdrum carousing and whispered snobbery into a massive bulge of simultaneously grooving hipsters. Their music and appearance appeals as much to the collective-obsessed freak-folkers as it does the trashy, neon-make-up plastered dance-punks, not to mention the current wave of fans obsessing over the weirdly exotic-sounding Brooklyn bands (a movement paralleling the mid-80s realization that there are other styles of music outside the States), and you know, us, the writers with keyboard-glued fingers that refuse to listen to anything unless it is derived from Can.

Mahjongg first appeared in 2004 on the short-lived Derek Fudesco imprint Cold Crush Records. It was instant love for me. I mean c’mon, the first track of their debut Machinegong EP, a dubby Gang of Four-derived dance-punk number featuring these barely understandable, odd, insular and atonal vocals, was titled “Jamdek”! That same simple-yet-clever wordplay translates within their music. The riffs and rhythms are not necessarily overtly complicated, in fact, most of them are rather rudimentary, but the way they layer and mold, building songs vertically through a patchwork of archaic effects forces multiple listens before you even begin to crack the substratum of the music.

Kontpab, Mahjongg’s second proper full-length and first for the venerable Northwest label K Records, stays true to their established sound. The grooves and melodies are a bit more refined and patient than their previous releases, but thankfully the recording and retro-instrumental aesthetic remains heartily intact. Their sound derives from a number of sources: early 70s European krautrock (Can, Neu!, Faust, Harmonia), 70s NYC avant-garde rock (Silver Apples, Suicide), 80s dance-punk (Gang of Four, Public Image Ltd, Wire), an odd collection of more contemporary acts (Dub Narcotic Sound System, Chik Chik Chik, Timbaland, the GSL roster, Konono N°1) and the manic polyrhythms of more traditional African and Cuban music. Claustrophobic yes, unharnessable no.

After the percussion-heavy opener, “Problems” reverts to a simple boom-bap beat. Funky-snipped guitar riffs, early rap synth effects and glockenspiel twinkles join a heaving synthesizer melody. There are vocals, but they are patched dryly through a vocoder and utilized in the same manner you would a sample, so they act as yet another rhythmic device. “Those Birds are Bats” displays more of an anthemic approach from the band, complete with yell-along vocals and steady drum kit backbeat. They do however bury any sense of accessibility deep into the mix, letting weirdly pulsing guitar pings take the forefront and smoldering the main riff in a kaleidoscope of analog feedback and old-school psychedelic effects. Near the end of the disc, “Mercury” sounds like the Silver Apples jamming with Prince; a slightly sexy, spaced-out number that simultaneously spins in the orbit of psych-funk and obscuro art-rock.

I am glad to see Mahjongg reaching for bigger and better things now that they are signed with K Records. Most of the Cold Crush bands have dwindled and dissolved in the wake of the imprint’s demise. Their music, crossing both genre and crowd boundaries, remains handmade and collective influenced, but still sounds as if they are progressing as songwriters… well groove-makers. The analog patching makes for a refreshingly lo-fi sound, one that tends to escape most dance-punk purveyors as they can’t seem to shake the now ominous (and annoying) Daft Punk influence, which makes their new label home much more sensible. There may be some religious – er, cultish – aspect to Kontpab as well, though I’m guessing that is more just the product of a clever K press writer, but I can certainly see how Mahjongg’s music could groove you into a devout hypnosis.

Singleversity #42

Audiversity’s weekly column, slightly modified, on random music in a predetermined number of words between 1 & 150. This week's randomly generated number: 132

MA:



With the first gaggle of 2008 releases from Chicago’s Thrill Jockey Records comes the follow-up to the excellent debut from the Rob Mazurek-helmed Exploding Star Orchestra, We are all from somewhere else. (which is also now available in a limited, beautiful looking and sounding double gatefold 180g LP). Bill Dixon with Exploding Star Orchestra finds Mazurek teaming up with the similar-minded free jazz trumpeter Bill Dixon (duh). A bit more sprawling than the previous release, Dixon utilizes the darkly glowing backdrops to propel his intensely poetic and spacey solos. Think a combination of Don Cherry, Art Ensemble of Chicago, Sun Ra, Modern Jazz Quartet and the Chicago Underground concoctions. Each of the three tracks is in the 20-minute range, but here is an edited excerpt of the first track, “Entrances/One”.

PM:



Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy cropped up this week and inspired me to go back through some of his works at random to see what I could find. As ever, the fastest route was through YouTube; the esteemed talents of Jacqueline du Pré and her equally talented mother Iris are on display here for the German composer’s Lieder ohne Worte, part of an eight-cycle composition of six songs each that was only finished two years before the Hamburg-born composer passed away in 1847. A life’s work that morphed as Mendelssohn’s ear did (though he has been regarded as one of the more conservative/subtle composers of the era), Songs without Words only needed to be played, ahem, once to catch my ear. As you can see, I am not quite so subtle.

Earth - "The Bees Made Honey in the Lion's Skull"

Earth - Hung From the Moon (Southern Lord 2008)

Earth - The Bees Made Honey in the Lion's Skull / Southern Lord

Duh nuh nuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuhhhhhhhhhhh. If there were ever three words to describe Dylan Carlson's ongoing doom-drone archetype, those would be something pretty close. The Seattle native has been helming this planet of ours for nearly two decades now, but after bursting out with a few fresh releases at the turn of the 1990s, Carlson retreated quietly while Earth went on the backburner, standing still as the world turned around it. Last year's welcomed Hibernaculum arose a slumbering beast, but it wasn't quite as fresh a return as you might've expected; after all, three of the four tracks were staples of the group's live show and the fourth was from a Sunn0))) split.

The Bees Made Honey in the Lion's Skull, Earth's sixth proper full-length, is thus the true milemarker of what's happened to this band in 18 years, or at least since the dawn of the millennium. The results are interesting; this turn of light has revealed a band that sounded very dark and withdrawn just one year ago. The cover art says it all in a round-about way: Though there is still the theme of decay, traces of color hint at something else, from purple to red to that eternal speck of hope: green.

Oh sure, it starts with "Omens and Portents I: The Driver." What better way to kill the hope of that colorful album art than by making the opening track the most foreboding on the record? Carlson's sense of humor is there, but in addition to his usual cronies, there is added guitar texture from an unlikely source: Jazz guitar great Bill Frisell. The chicken-and-egg scenario of which came first - Carlson's decision to try something a little different or Frisell's presence adding an extra head to come up with something creative - doesn't really have an effect on this opening track. It is most like Old Earth in its unrelenting brutality. It may be my favorite track, but not by much. I've heard it before, so naturally I am comfortable with its familiarity.

Duh nuh nuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuhhhhhhhhhhh. That's what you'd expect spelled out from "Rise to Glory," just like you'd expect it from the rest of their expansive, post-apocalyptic onslaught. But hear those skewed guitars? Sounds a little like Japancakes, doesn't it? And maybe "Rise to Glory" isn't exactly an overt nod to the country-tinged drone-rockers from Georgia, but even through the discordant heap of thundering guitar downstrokes, a faint trail of slide guitar and tinkling piano breathe a straw of life into what would otherwise feel like "I Am Legend" without Will Smith: At once horrifying and relieving. It's just fiction, right? Relax.

And so the great transition of the band - from duh nuh nuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuhhhhhhhhhhh to nuh nuh nuuuuueeeeeeeuuuuw - occurs right from the get-go of the second song. Frisell only played on three of the album's seven songs ("Engine of Ruin" and "Omens and Portents II: Carrion Crow" are the others), and he can be heard when he is present, but Carlson has taken a new direction and it involves a few new tricks for an old dog.

Oh, and piano. Earth is traditionally all about guitar heaviness disintegrating your eardrums at a tenth of the speed of normal bands. But what the hell is this? Zombi man Steve Moore's piano playing on "Hung From the Moon"? Are you hearing a Radiohead ballad-to-be like I am? (Correction: Maybe it sounds like a ballad, but Steve Moore from Zombi it is not. - Ed.) At a still-respectable 7m43s, "Hung From the Moon" is one of the glimmering highlights of an album of otherwise intriguing new heights. The pace is still as glacial as ever, but those cymbals and that grand piano dominating the spotlight push the mammoth guitar tones to the back. It won't be for the last time either, because Carlson uses the piano to his great benefit for the title-track that closes the record out on a very different note from where we started.

And where we thought we'd be, for that matter. Doom-drone says Wikipedia, but I am no longer wont to agree. This is a brave new world, planet, earth that is. This is the sound of resurrection, of coming out of the caves of doom and into the brave new world of post-ambient post-metal post-rock post-thinking about how heavy it can be and making something beautiful instead. There is a deep-rooted beauty in The Bees Made Honey in the Lion's Skull that no hex could ever prevent blossoming. The bees are making honey in the mouth of the beast. The lion is dead; long live the king. I expect Rafiki knew all along.

Mike Ladd - "Nostalgialator"

Mike Ladd - Trouble Shot (!K7 2004; re-released Def Jux 2008)

Mike Ladd - Nostalgialator / Def Jux

This has been out for over three years, so fresh assessment of Mike Ladd's Nostalgialator is impossible. That said, the ubiquity of blogs was a lot less prevalent in 2004 than it is now, so perhaps this good word will put out the word that much faster. Mike Ladd. This story starts with Mike Ladd.

Ladd was not initially a musician, choosing instead the poetry route which in fact won him the Nuyorican Poets Café Slam and got him published for 1996's intriguing racial analysis "In Defense of Mumia." The turn to music was never really complete - in between releasing albums such as Easy Listening 4 Armageddon and Father Divine under his own name and a few others under side projects like The Infesticons and Majesticons, respectively - Ladd was able to find time to write for Bostonia and Long Shot Review. Needless to say, the man has a colorful history that includes moving from Boston to Paris, where he currently lives.

The City of Light is an appropriate place to begin a re-evaluation of Nostalgialator three years on from its European debut and near-release in the US. So much has happened to music in the intervening years, but the big story in the last year at least has been Paris and the collective of DJs/artists/hangers-on that have made dancing not just fun but fashionable again. "We Are Your Friends" came out in 2004, but who's to say Xavier and Gaspard didn't take note of the giant, in-your-face electro-rock-hop this album is doused in? Daft Punk is not necessarily the alpha and the omega.

"Dire Straits Plays Nuremberg" is a fine example. The distorted synths add music to the heavily echoed recording and massive applause for what one can only assume is Dire Straits. It functions as an amped-up opener to get you ready for what's to come. That is to say, anything and everything, and you should be prepared. "Trouble Shot" drives the point home. Asteroid lasers and 70s funk brass turn up the heat for a busy afro rocker that turns into a Italo-disco war rant out of nowhere. Mixing politics and the solar system, Ladd destroys the boundaries of space and then time when we fly back to the main hook.

This is the delicate balance that Ladd conducts throughout the album. Between the full-on adrenaline rush of dirty synthesizers and brass bands and the lilting electro of decades never really past. 60s funk and soul, 70s disco and dance, 80s synths in overdrive, 90s sampling and sourcing, eternal themes, and there at the center of it all is Ladd, trying to hold it together. "Wild Out Day" is a great example of how it nearly blows apart halfway through with its break-neck pace. And then, just when it seems like it can't get itself under control, just at that point where a listener decides that there's no point in keeping up...

Then Nostalgialator takes its breather. Sorely needed, the spoken-word roots return for "How Electricity Really Works." This track is an anomaly, a dreamy, Mario-underwater ballad that floats on the illuminated synths and subtle brass touches. Yeah, Subtle. They were probably paying attention to this, too. Where was everyone else?

"Off to Mars?" keeps things slower, with no rush to return to the manic first half. The backside of the album keeps itself together at a much more sedate pace (with the exception of "Afrotastic") and cements Nostalgialator as an album very much running the gamut of emotion and expression. This is the essence of Mike Ladd. By using his numerous artistic potions to concoct something potent, Ladd caught the shape of Paris to come. By extension, he caught the musical landscape just as it was beginning another upheaval. It's too bad I wasn't paying as much attention to !K7 in 2004 as I am now, because I would've been all over this even more than I am now. But maybe this is for the best. Maybe Ladd christened it Nostalgialator for a reason: We can look back just as we look forward, commemorating and defiling as we go. Young and invincible and full of it. Nostalgialator is.

Quinn Walker - "Laughter's An Asshole / Lion Land"

Quinn Walker - Smile for Me (Voodoo-Eros 2008)

Quinn Walker - Laughter's An Asshole / Lion Land / Voodoo-Eros

A few weeks ago, Michael remarked to me candidly that he was getting back to his "country roots" - not so much the part about dipping Skoal and fishin' on the river and drinking Southern Comfort on the river all day, but more the part about Willie Nelson and Shooter Jennings and outlaw country from across the South. Good thing, too, because I don't think we could've stayed on speaking terms for the, um, "revival" without me rolling my eyes at him in public over and over.

For most of these past few weeks, I've been playing Eurotrash Ibiza fetishizer to his Good Ol' Boy bubba. But Quinn Walker led me to an unexpected place and got me out of the minimalist rut that I'd dug myself in since the beginning of December. With a massive two-disc compilation of wholeheartedly organic psych-folk, Mr. Walker's debut cracks 2008 open with an expansive scope copping all sorts of sweeping gestures and infusing grandiosity to songs begging to be taken to the big-time.

It is interesting to note, then, that with an iconic Southern drawl on tracks like "Chicken Wire," Quinn in fact hails from Brooklyn. And initially you don't see it. You wait to hear for all the weirdo hipster bedroom fucking around that could only come with a Brooklyn ZIP code. The body of instruments is massive in the grand traditions of Sufjan Stevens or Architecture in Helsinki to the point that the drums, the tambourines, the maracas, whatever the hell else is stuffed in there feels just a little too cluttered. Somehow, through all of that, crystalline melodies appear and you find yourself pushing repeat. Which is weird, because if you've only made it three songs in to the first disc, you haven't got a clue about what's going on here.

For what discussion there's been of Walker's double-disc debut, most seems to revolve around the pastiche of instruments that work their way into otherwise innocuous tracks. There's definitely a glut of sound recalling everybody from TV on the Radio's Siteknics to The Dirty Projectors' erratic melodies no one will ever really duplicate to Andrew Douglas Rothbard's steamy bayou folk-after-dark to Ariel Pink, end sentence. And I mean these in the best possible way: There are so many reference points that it no longer becomes functional to simply namedrop. That's the very definition of a good album. We are most fortunate to have received two at once.

But even though the numerous studio tricks don't seem forced or even excessive (Pacing is everything, and a perfect balance between orchestral opulence and plucked isolation has been struck here), what they do is take away from a very critical part of the success of this album: the innate greatness of the songwriting. Beneath the layers of choral swooning and Casios and whatever else Walker could find in his closet lies a collection of songs that could work as well in a concert hall as in an old money frat house. This adaptability makes for a universal enjoyment that even the most staunch country conservative would find acceptable and, dare I say, enjoyable... Just beware Lion Land. It functions as the quieter nocturnal moonlight werewolf to Laughter's An Asshole's brimming brightness.

Look, we can't all be Panda Bear and write Person Pitch and let the media take over. Some guys have to take those same oddball psych influences and twist them into something new, creative, original and make their own reward. Quinn Walker is one of them. Don't be fooled by all of the Brooklyn references you've gotten in this particular review (not to mention the handful of others); Walker is writing some very alternative country, and it sounds great. Throw back some more Jim Beam, sing along to any number of these songs, and you'll see what I mean - "When you get wasted, you still walk a perfectly straight line," he sings on "Rita Lolita." That's what this record is about. It's intoxicated with psychedelia and yet still manages to walk a perfectly straight line South, back to the sticks, back to the roots, back to the dusty trails of the Appalachians. Quinn Walker may live in Brooklyn, but his musical heart lives elsewhere. Ours too, maybe.

Sascha Funke - "Mango"

Sascha Funke - Take a Chance With Me (Bpitch Control 2008)

Sascha Funke - Mango / Bpitch Control

Ah! Few things on earth please me as much as a new Bpitch Control release (even if it's only a single - Thanks a lot for making me wait, Ben Klock...). My love for Berlin minimalism was born with this label and everything surrounding it - sometimes you just have to block out the wordpress and press play to see what the hot fuss is about. I've busied myself excavating Berlin and beyond ever since, but ground zero for me will always be Ellen Allien's imprint.

As with anything though, you play favorites. Sascha Funke has never been my go-to guy for some reason. Despite the relative strength of 2003's Bravo, Funke's steady stream of output (which includes a slew of 12s and remixes for various artists that continues even now) never registered on my radar. Or maybe it was just that I was suspicious of his Günther-esque facial hair and press foto-posturing. Whatever the case, visiting Mango was something I felt necessary to at least give him the benefit of the doubt.

For the record, Sascha Funke has grown up. There is a reserved air of maturity about Mango that can be evidenced in songs such as "Take a Chance With Me," a track that has these glowing synths and beats that crackle with the same vinyl blip as LCD Soundsystem's "Someone Great." You know what I'm talking about, where the beat is just so muted that it sounds like it's struggling simply to go on at all. Plucked guitars slowly phased in and out give it a "Miami Vice" feel, but it never explodes into an overwrought celebration of self-pity. The emotion is reserved, for better or worse, sleazier or safer. It is smarter. It is sleeker.

It would seem, then, that all of those remixes of Télépopmusik and Gui Boratto and his fellow Bpitchers have helped him crystallize his own sound. As the beat snaps its fingers in on the first single, "Double Checked," Funke plays it cool enough to ensure that Mango will endure at least long enough to be one of minimal's heaviest hitters in the first quarter of '08. Beyond, who knows? But at least Funke has shown that he is capable of running with the big guns, and not just through association via label or remix.

It pleases me that the warm synthesizers and nods to both early-80s Italo and post-millennial minimalism are so prevalent on this record. Mango is the sound of a man who has worked hard to get where he is, and in so doing has reached a level of completeness that he had previously only been hinting at. Ripe with summer and winter jams alike, Sascha Funke has delivered an album that demands attention by pushing it away. "Du bist okay," says the headline on MySpace. Appropriate in that sense, and like the music, an extension of the man behind it. Delivered with a wink and loving every coy second. We the people? Well, we'll just dance to it, thanks very much. Yeah Sascha, you are okay. Just don't stop because we think you're better than that. Okay? Okay. Yeah. You're okay. Stay that way.

Matana Roberts Quartet - "The Chicago Project"

Matana Roberts Quartet - "Thrills" (Central Control 2008)

Matana Roberts Quartet – The Chicago Project / Central Control

It has gotten to the point where I think it is justifiable to use the AACM as a subgenre tag within jazz. It is certainly not because the long-lived non-profit Chicago organization schools artists in a redundant style of progressive jazz; it’s because the highly talented members and students all seem to emit a specific vibe of spirituality, and in turn specific sound quality, with their music. With an ethos of obsessively forward-pushing experiments, the music of AACM members tends to encounter a cross-section of stylistic jazz niches: post-bop, modal, modern creative, free, avant-garde, experimental big band, soul-jazz, African and Afro-Cuban. It never settles on a singular method, instead letting the player reflect on the elder statesmen of the group, and then forcing the individual to look inside to create their own idiosyncratic sound. The adjectives ‘earthy’ and ‘spiritual’ almost always come to mind, and for good reason. This is emotional music, never straight cacophony and never simply melodious. It’s music that speaks to that inner ear and the complexities of human emotions.

The now NYC-based reedist Matana Roberts is one of the youngest current members of the AACM. She heartily enlivens the ethos established by her senior teachers, including developing her own musical concept (Panoramic Sound Quilting) to build a series of sound-montage based concerts (Life Lines) and a specific on-going familial and ancestral narrative called Coin Coin. And in the same breath, she is able to exist and contribute in contemporary music’s interlocking collaborations, appearing on recordings by Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Daniel Givens, Savath y Savalas, Guillermo E. Brown, and as a member of Sticks and Stones, amongst many others. For her latest venture as a bandleader, Roberts has formed a quartet with three of her fellow hometown luminaries, all interestingly enough of about the same age. With guitarist Jeff Parker, bassist Josh Abrams and drummer Frank Rosaly, The Chicago Project is a prime example of Chicago’s contemporary AACM sound. Behind Roberts exhaustively emotional alto saxophone, the band lulls and shrills, pleads and exclaims, croons and wails, all the while blurring the lines between easily-defined stylistic tags and singular expressions.

The most accessible and thematic of the pieces, “Thrills”, comes early in the hour-long album. Parker introduces one of those rousing and cyclical electric guitar phrases that have become his penchant as Tortoise’s chief melody-maker with Roberts closely in tow. Rosaly’s increasingly chaotic drum rolls spur Roberts to drop into counterpoint before everyone releases just in time for Abrams to deeply pluck a husky bass line that is downright bluesy. After returning to the theme a number of times in the first half of the song, the track breaks down into clustering individual and seemingly improvised lines by each player never again reintroducing the initial phrase. “Nomra” is also deserves special mention as Roberts’ saxophone takes on a warm and somber tonal quality. Somewhat a lulling tune, it would evoke reflections of Coltrane’s late-50s Prestige output (especially Lush Life), if only Grant Green would have been part of the session.

On three tracks, Roberts is solely joined by Fred Anderson, one of her most notable influences and a founding member of the AACM. Anderson’s full, bluesy tone swings perfectly with Roberts’ more cutting quality. Each of the dichromatic songs, “Birdhouse 1”, “Birdhouse 2” and “Birdhouse 3”, features a sort of theme setting-and-reaction call-and-response from the two saxophonists. Both players sound perfectly in tune with each other stylistically as they trade and interlace aerobic lines of improvisation. As each track progresses, you almost lose track of which tone belongs to which player.

Despite now residing in New York City, the Chicago spirit and AACM sound will never be completely lost on Roberts, not that I suspect the move was to try and distance herself from her upbringing. It very well could have been an attempt to spread her learned sound and influence other players in a new geographic location. Either way, The Chicago Project is a prime example of what excellent, forward-pushing-yet-rooted music the younger generation of AACM members is capable of producing. It can almost be looked at as the contemporary sound of the legendary institution. And on a completely surface level, it is just a fine jazz record.