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Mohsen Namjoo: Meet the Iranian Jim Morrison

Richard Gehr — Mon, 30 Sep 2013 19:30:52 +0000

Although his music has been haunting my headspace for the past several weeks, I can’t pretend to understand the poetic, classical or political context in which Iranian singer-songwriter Mohsen Namjoo works. The main problem is that Namjoo, who was born in 1976 in the town of Torbat e-Jam in northeastern Iran, sings in Persian, and only a handful of songs from his six albums have been translated into English. He also composes from deep within the Persian classical tradition, brilliantly and subtly blending it with both black and white blues. For all that, Namjoo still speaks to me loud and clear in a festival of different voices.

If Namjoo must be compared to a musical resident of our hemisphere, that person would be Brazil’s Caetano Veloso, with whom the Iranian shares a mutual concern for love and society, a passion for both traditional and nontraditional music, a history of political banishment for their art and adoration by both the masses and intelligentsia. And just as Veloso has chronicled the history of Brazil’s ’60s-kindled Tropicália movement, Namjoo, whose own work dips into the era regularly, provides an insider’s analysis of Iran’s 21st-century “underground” music scene in essays and lectures.

Namjoo was in “unplugged” mode when he stepped onstage at Manhattan’s Asia Society recently. Dressed in sandals, flared jeans and a long-waisted shirt, he carried the setar, a three-stringed long-necked lute, he would play all evening. Drummer Yahya Alkhansa, who notably, perhaps symbolically, played traps rather than traditional Persian percussion, joined him. The duo performed pared-down versions of songs Namjoo had recorded originally with full bands, thereby shifting the emphasis to his remarkable classical and extended vocal techniques and a relatively rudimentary setar style.

ZZ Top met 14th-century Iranian poet Hafez in “Del Miravad” (The Heart Slips), a cross-cultural boogie that found Namjoo yelping and growling in registers high and low like Captain Beefheart singing John Lee Hooker. Just as blues singers reconfigure familiar stanzas for their own purposes, Namjoo samples and re-edits verses by Hafez, Rumi, Saadi and other Persian poets in his songs, sometimes adding his own words. In “Del Miravad” he choogled out to Persian lines like “O master most generous/ In gratitude to your health/ One day bestow your grace/ Upon this dervish of no wealth.” Namjoo, however, is rich in references, and a later song, “Morghe Shayda” (Lovesick Bird),” was based on an Arabian rather than Persian scale while borrowing its musical guts from the opening riff of David Bowie’s “The Man Who Sold the World.”

A week after his Asia Society show, Namjoo discussed underground music in Iran at the museum with the help of an interpreter. He spoke about his musical background, noting that his first exposure to Western rock was the Doors’ “Break on Through,” which he appropriates, along with “People Are Strange,” in the jazzy vocal trippiness of “Ro Sar Beneh” on both his remarkable 2007 studio album Toranj as well as in a longer, stranger live version on his audacious 2012 live album, 13/8, recorded in Berkeley with a jazz quartet.

If Islamic culture lacks a Dionysian carnival tradition, as Namjoo believes, his passion for the Doors is pretty easily understood. As a recording artist in Tehran, Namjoo was required to submit his songs to the Ministry of Culture and Islamic Guidance for approval. Every album was obliged to include songs praising either Islam’s Messiah or Ibn Ali (the Prophet Muhammed’s cousin and son-in-law), and Namjoo paid his dues accordingly. In 2009, while touring in Italy, he learned that he’d been sentenced in absentia to five years in prison for an allegedly “contemptuous recitation” of Quranic verses in his song “Shams.” He denied the charge, apologized unsuccessfully and has resided in the United States since.

Thanks to the Internet, permission to produce music was no longer necessary, or even possible, and Namjoo found himself an involuntary “underground” musician when his first and unfinished album Jabr was leaked without his knowledge. (On stage, he insisted his new songs not be filmed.) He ended the show with the 14-minute title track of his 2011 live album Alaki. Reminiscent of Leonard Cohen in its epic accretion of detail and obliquely melancholy minor key, “Alaki” (meaning phony) is ultimately hilarious. Namjoo, who wrote the entire poem, delivers his verses in increasingly absurd voices. “O! The ’60s were very fun (phony nostalgia, phony nostalgia)/ There was manhood in the old days, (phony figures, phony physiques)/ When we were children, there was homemade bread (phony flavors, phony flavors)/ Now men only have mustaches (phony mustaches, phony mustaches)…”

Namjoo’s music speaks to an expatriate community that would prefer to still live in Iran but refuses to toe the fundamentalist line. His music is funny, deep, ironic and border-erasing in the best of ways. What he really needs is a proper introduction to the West, a righteous translation that could also serve as an introduction to Iran’s rich and vibrant musical culture past, present and future. Tehran’s loss, meanwhile, is Brooklyn’s gain.

Royal Rhythm: Maracatu North and South

Richard Gehr — Wed, 18 Sep 2013 17:28:53 +0000

(Photo by: Kevin Yatarola)

When Dona Marivalda Maria dos Santos took the stage at Lincoln Center in Manhattan recently, she flickered like a psychedelic Snow White.

The glittery queen, priestess and president of Maracatu Naçao Estrela Brilhante wore an elaborately spangled, mostly red and white hoop-skirted gown she had sewn herself and would wear for but a single year. She was flanked by a pair of equally dazzling “ladies of the palace,” who carried the calunga dolls said to contain the ancestral spirits who guide this 96-year-old maracatu drumming “nation” (or nação) from the city of Recife in the state of Pernambuco in northeastern Brazil. Her king, holding both scepter and sword, danced beside her while a large androgynous “slave” had the wearying task of holding an oversized parasol above the royal couple. Behind the court, seven Estrela Brilhante (“Bright Star”) drummers created a titanic wall of rhythm. Like master of ceremonies Mestro Walter de França, who led the call-and-response songs that characterized their set, they wore Estrela’s blue and white garb adorned with namesake stars that lent an interstellar vibe to the affair.

Maracatu is both a percussion style and a culture in Brazil. Played on a variety of drums, cowbells and shakers, the music starts, stops and shifts gears at the leader’s whistling direction. During Carnival, maracatu groups of some 150 drummers and as many flamboyantly attired dancers fill the streets of Recife amid millions of spectators. Founded in 1906, Estrela Brilhante is a renowned and respected example of a 400-year-old tradition that bears a large and somewhat uncanny resemblance to that of New Orleans’s Mardi Gras Indians — as demonstrated by opening act Big Chief Monk Boudreaux & the Golden Eagles.

Two days before the show, ringleader Scott Kettner, who performed with both his Brooklyn-based Nation Beat and Maracatu New York groups, explained to me that both the Indians and maracatu nação were created by African slaves and flourish during Carnival in unique costumery created new every year. They blend African roots with indigenous influences to deliver loud, raucous call-and-response parade music. Maracatu nations, however, are aligned with Brazil’s syncretic Candomblé and Jurema religions. Dona Marivalda is both the group’s spiritual and secular leader. And maracatu drumming in Recife, where city-sponsored competitions have goosed the drummer body count upward, is both more rhythmically complex and simply more overwhelmingly populist than its New Orleans equivalent. Some, however, feel that competition has been a negative influence on maracatu groups, whose popularity increased through its association with the funky, fusion-y Mangue Beat movement of the early ’90s spearheaded by Chico Science’s Nação Zumbi.

Nation Beat drummer-bandleader Kettner’s first learned of maracatu from drumming teacher Billy Hart. Invited to play a Paraguay jazz festival in 1999, Kettner subsequently flew to Recife, where American ethnomusicologist Larry Crook hooked him up with Jorge Martin, the longtime Estrela Brilhante member who became the 22-year-old’s mentor. Communicating solely through the language of rhythm, Martin taught Kettner both how teach maracatu, as well as how to play it, by taking him into the favelas (shanty towns) where he taught drumming to children. Since opening his own maracatu school in Brooklyn in 2002, Kettner has brought Martin north several times as well as taken groups of students to study in Recife and to parade with Estela Brilhante.

In 2005, Kettner took his Brazil-New Orleans–jazz-Celtic fusion band Nation Beat south to record their debut album Maracatuniversal with Estrela Brilhante. These “bumpkins from Brooklyn,” as he describes his posse of young jazzers, became the first contemporary band to record with a traditional maracatu group. The experience “changed our lives,” he says simply. “We ended up throwing away all our notions about what music could or should be.” Nation Beat returned home a new attitude, a striking homage to the thunderous and beautiful world of Estrela Brilhante, and a new singer in Brazilian native Liliana Araújo.

Teaching maracatu drumming to gringos allowed Kettner to educate his potential audience, avoid flipping burgers for rent money, and spin off Maracatu New York the band from his school of the same name. Consisting of a half-dozen professional and semiprofessional percussionists filled out by students who’ve risen to the top, Maracatu New York released its own debut, Baque do Brooklyn (Brooklyn Beat), in July 2013. Nation Beat’s musical “cousin” adds horns and jazzy solos to traditional maracatu percussion arrangements that pay tribute to its sources without mimicking them overtly. “It’s a challenge,” Kettner admits. “I’ve been very careful artistically to not try to recreate what the traditional maracatu groups do. That’s a battle you’ll never win. I want listeners to say, ‘What is that?’ when they hear it. I want my music to lead people to the traditional groups.”

Tal National, Kaani

Richard Gehr — Tue, 10 Sep 2013 13:00:47 +0000

A revelation of updated traditionalism from West Africa

West Africa’s largest nation, Niger, has one of the region’s smallest musical profiles. But that should change once the world gets wind of Kaani, the thrilling third album (and first export) by Tal National, a Niamey-based group that emits as much jubilant energy as any on at least a couple of continents. Formed in 2000 by guitarist (and current municipal judge) Hamadal “Almeida” Moumine, Tal National combines high-speed contrapuntal guitar lines, hard chikita-chikita beats, and chattering mbalax-flavored talking drums into a breakneck polyrhythmic skein. “Kaani” means “sweet” in the Zarma tongue, and the title track is a seven-minute thrill ride that delivers an appropriate rush. The band also sings in Hausa and French, a polyglot stew reflected in music that can evoke Zairean congotronics, Sierra Leonan Bubu and Kenyan benga without sacrificing any originality. Tighter than 2010′s A-Na Waya, Kaani is a revelation of updated traditionalism in a regional scene currently noted more for exceptional crate dives than the intoxicating here-and-now.

John Wizards, John Wizards

Andy Beta — Tue, 03 Sep 2013 13:00:41 +0000

African and Western, traditional and modern, mashed together in a way that defies separation

When in the 1980s African artists began to make their way to world music circuit, the biggest acts — Fela Kuti, King Sunny Ade, Ali Farka Touré — were also the most unadulterated, their music with clear lineages back to their highlife, juju and griot roots. But in the 21st century, the African acts most likely to break through are instead a messy and bright jumble of genres. The Very Best, the acts on the Shangaan Electro comp and Cape Town’s John Wizards offer a panoply of sounds both African and Western, traditional and modern, mashed together in a way that defies separation.

As the music project of John Withers — in conjunction with Rwandan vocalist Emmanuel Nzaramba — John Wizards dials back the cacophonous density, aggressive BPMs and neon-bright synths of their contemporaries. On their debut, they instead meld together the languid, leisurely sounds of everything from reggae to R&B slow jams. Chameleonic opener “Tet Lek Schrempf” feels dreamy but soon picks up the pace, with shimmering synths and pygmy song at its core. “Limpop” percolates in neon bubbles much like Shangaan Electro would, but cuts the latter’s 160 BPM rate with some chillwave. “I’m Still a Serious Guy” evokes the synthetic tropical sound of Level 42 and I-Level, but the vocal melody of Withers here most resembles Vampire Weekend’s Ezra Koenig, who was once criticized for aping African music. John Wizards suggests that the heartiest musical sound might be a mutant strain.

Billy Bragg Picks His Favorite Albums

Andrew Perry — Tue, 03 Sep 2013 13:00:31 +0000

To celebrate Billy Bragg’s being honored for his Outstanding Contribution to Music at the Association of Independent Music awards 2013, we invited him to burrow through eMusic’s vast catalog and pick out some of his own favorites. What follows are Billy Bragg’s favorite records on eMusic, with some commentary from the man himself. He also nominated the soulful Tennessee singer/songwriter Valerie June for an interview and sat down with Andrew Perry for a long interview himself.

Pushin' Against A Stone

Valerie June
2013 | Concord Records

Snakily be-dreadlocked chanteuse raised in Memphis, Tennessee, brings the gospel/country/blues roots for 2013.

What an incredible record. I've been listening to it every day for the last two weeks. I bored the band with it on the way to Belgium. My understanding is, she's from Tennessee. I heard her playing the first track live on "Woman's Hour" [on BBC Radio 4] in the car, would you believe, and I was just like, I... must remember — Valerie June. They didn't have it in the local store, so when I got home — I don't often just download things immediately, but I did, 'cos I liked the bits I heard.

I think the playing's amazing, the singing is great, the songwriting is just impeccable — great hooks, with echoes of all sorts of different styles. I don't even know if she wrote all the songs herself, or if someone else helped her write them. But a really great record, my favorite record of the year so far! I'm hoping I'm gonna get the chance to see her play at the Electric Picnic in Ireland in a couple of weeks, because she's on the bill. Just amazing.
more »
The Show Goes On: Songs Of Ronnie Lane

Slim Chance
2012 | Fishpool Records / The Orchard

Erstwhile backing combo for Faces/Small Faces legend Ronnie Lane keep his memory alive with a brand-new, barnstorming live set of his tunes.

I was a huge Ronnie Lane fan. I still am. He's probably the only artist whose CD never left my car, and that's saying something — I had this best-of under the dashboard. I was a big fan of the Faces, but when he left I thought they lost something that... they never found again. He just managed to bring together something really special ¬— he takes me to that sweet place somewhere between English music and American country music.

His old band Slim Chance have just got back together recently, I saw them at Glastonbury, and they've put an album out. Obviously Ronnie had an iconic voice, which is kind of irreplaceable, but keeping those songs alive, they're doing us all a favor by doing that, so more power to them.

So this is something contemporary, they're still out there doing it, and the fact that it harks back to the famous travelling show that Ronnie did, the picture on the cover, no-one's ever really done that thing — taking rock 'n' roll round in a tent, just setting up and playing — without permission! It's a crazy hippie type thing to do, but I'd love to do it. They did it in some old diesel van — there's great stories in that Faces biography about him doing it in the '70s — totally crazy, but you have to do those kind of things.
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One True Vine

Mavis Staples
2013 | Anti/Epitaph

This year's second hook-up with Wilco's Jeff Tweedy for gospel-soul icon and sometime Staples Singer.

Since Mavis signed up with Anti-, she's made some great records. I'm a huge fan of The Staples Singers. Their album Soul Folk in Action — I mean, talk about folk-punk [as Bragg himself has been categorized], what a record that is. So to see her be reborn, initially working with Ry Cooder, now with Jeff Tweedy, I... think they've both been really sympathetic to what she does well. I did some shows with her in 2011, and she's still got the spark. She let me get up and sing [The Band's song] "The Weight" with her, in Los Angeles — how incredible is that? It blew my mind.
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Zoom

Rachid Taha
2013 | naïve / Naive

54-year-old Franco-Algerian maverick, this year blending North African raï with Western rock, funk and blues with typical garrulousness.

Rachid did an Arabic cover of "Rock the Casbah" [by the Clash], didn't he? I think I may have played with him at Glastonbury one time, when I was doing [Damon Albarn's] Africa Express. That thing tends to be a whole lot of people onstage all playing together, so we didn't hang out as such,... but he was a dude, an amazing guy. For someone from Algeria, he seemed to be pretty rock 'n' roll to me.
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Barbed Wire Blues

Wilko Johnson
1989 | Jungle Records / The Orchard

Proto-punk R&B guitar-mangler from Canvey Island, in mid-'80s, post-Dr Feelgood solo majesty.

He was down here [in Dorset] a couple of years ago; I took my son along to see him. It just blew his mind. Wilko was very important, coming from Essex, as I do. Much more important than that even, the Feelgoods were the British Ramones, in the sense that they woke everybody up to the possibility of going back to... basics. Wilko is our Johnny Ramone. He's the guy who says, "You can look like a dork, and still be cool." And for those of us that already looked like dorks, that was visionary!

I remember seeing him on the television, and it just did my head in, as a guitar player who at the time was being fed images of Peter Frampton as a guitar hero. You know? Wilko Johnson invented punk just by doing up the top button of his shirt — that's all he had to do, to invent it. He pointed us the way. I didn't ever see him in Canvey back in the day, sadly, but I did see him in Bridgeport last year. That was pretty good.
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Satan Is Real

Louvin Brothers
1996 | CAPITOL NASHVILLE

Ira Lonnie Loudermilk and Charlie Elzer Loudermilk, aka the Louvins, were one of country music's finest old-time duos — here, in fine, god-fearing mood in '59.

One of the greatest country records ever made, if only for the cover — it's a picture of them standing in front of the flaming coals of hell. I love the Louvins for their pure harmony style. They were very influential on the Everly Brothers, and Simon... & Garfunkel. Their songs are just so sad. Someone usually dies in the first verse, or the second, or sometimes they save it right until the end.

But for me it's that high lonesome sound that they've got, which still resonates. If you ever spend any time driving round Appalachia in the United States of America, the Louvin Brothers provide the ideal soundtrack. And there's some crazy Christian songs, too, like "I Love the Christian Life," as covered by the Byrds in Sweetheart Of The Rodeo — that's on here.
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Wassaic Way

Sarah Lee Guthrie and Johnny Irion
2013 | Rte.8 Records / Redeye

Scion of the Guthrie folk dynasty strikes out in more alt-rockin' direction for 2013, in team-up with her hubby Johnny.

Sarah Lee I know, obviously, from working with the Guthrie family [on Bragg & Wilco's 1997 collection of unrecorded Woody songs, Mermaid Avenue]. She's a great songwriter as well, and this record, I think, really speaks for her talent as herself. She's moving away from being Woody Guthrie's granddaughter, and coming into her... own now, and I think that's really great to hear. Broadly, I guess it's Americana, and Woody's almost like the father of that, but she's getting her own spin on that now, getting an edge on it, moving out of the shadow of her parents' generation, which includes Arlo Guthrie of course, and into something altogether her own.
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Imidiwan: Companions

Tinariwen
2009 | World Village / The Orchard

Malian Afro-blues troupe, who wield electric guitars with the same defiance as they do AK-47s, in their sideline as political freedom fighters.

They're great. The rhythmic aspect to what they do is so hypnotic, I really, really like that. There's a tiny little bit of that griot playing in the first track on that Valerie June record — she does this weird little rhythm that made me think I must go back and... rediscover some of that stuff, like Tinariwen.
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Big Smash

Wreckless Eric
2007 | Stiff Records / The Orchard

The irrepressible Eric Goulden, wildcat songsmith of New Wave-era proto-indie Stiff Records, as-was in 1980.

A great album, one of my favorite releases on the old Stiff label. Wreckless Eric, again, is almost forgotten now in the pantheon of punk songwriters, and if remembered at all, it's usually for his first album, rather than this, which is his second. But this has got some great songs on it: "Broken Doll" is an amazing... song — I've always wanted to do a cover of it. In fact, Cliff Richard did a version once, I read somewhere. I don't think my flabber could be more ghasted than by the idea of Cliff covering Wreckless.

He's maybe best known for "Whole Wide World," off the first record — I hear my son playing that some nights on his guitar. I saw him play a few times, he was in vogue at Go! Discs [Bragg's old label] for a while, under his real name, Eric Goulden, so I knew him in that period. He was pretty hairy — pretty out there. He didn't have the same self-control, that knotted, chip-on-his-shoulder sensibility that early Elvis Costello had. He kind of let it go. He started out like that, but then he had a few too many drinks, and slept in his clothes. But we've all done that — I certainly have! He's still out there somewhere, still gigging.
more »
Electric Landlady

Kirsty MacColl
2012 | Union Square Music / The Orchard

Bawdy Anglo-Irish chanteuse, whose cover of Bragg's "A New England" charted high in '85. Tragically, she died at sea in 2000.

A brilliant, brilliant record. You have to understand, Kirsty was the real deal. She was an incredible songwriter, but also an amazing singer. When she makes a record that has both "Walking Down Madison" with Johnny [Marr] on it, and "My Affair," which sounds like something Bette Midler would record — there's... an amazing mind at work there. I know she wasn't a confident performer, she didn't like going out on the road, but when she did, it was amazing.

By the look of things here, it also has me and her dueting on a song called "Darling, Let's Have Another Baby." Hang onto your hat here — it was the B-side of a Johnny Moped single on Chiswick, back in the '70s. Kirsty and I both had our first records out on Chiswick, at the same time — me with Riff Raff [Billy's punk combo], and she was part of a group called the Drug Addix. Chiswick put three EPs out at the same time, and called it Suburban Rock 'n' Roll, all people from outside London. It was the Duke, Riff Raff and the Drug Addix.

Because she'd been on Chiswick, she was familiar with Johny Moped. We were on the Nicky Campbell Show, and we decided to have a go at "Darling Let's Have Another Baby," which is a great song. [Quoting lyric] "Let's make one soon, on our second honeymoon." [Calls it up on computer, song plays in background] Yeah, this is the stuff! [Quoting again] "Darling, if you ever leave me, I'll cry a million tears/ I'll go to the nearest boozer, and drink 10 pints of beer."

There's a Johnny Moped movie? A biopic, with Johnny Depp playing Johnny Moped? That would be so fucking great. Oh, it's a documentary. [A little disappointed.] Oh, OK.
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New Boots And Panties (Deluxe Edition)

Ian Dury
2007 | Demon / The Orchard

Utterly classic, none-more-English album of New Wave-era observations of East London, set to visionary, Clash-influencing blend of jazz/funk/reggae/blues.

Again, the "Essex man" thing. That really came totally out of leftfield. I'd always locked into Stiff via Elvis Costello, who was a hero of mine. But when you're coming out with stuff like "Billericay Dickie" and "Plaistow Patricia" and "Clever Trevor"…Yeah, it was a world I knew.

That's what punk was all about. It... brought rock 'n' roll home. It was away from the stadiums and the glitter. That shop he's standing outside of on the cover, we had shops like that in Barking — big shop fronts, with loads of hand-written signs. His love of place, I found that really inspirational. That's something I tried to connect with, both in my songwriting, but also in my book, The Progressive Patriot.

Are you familiar with the song, "England's Glory," that's on this Deluxe Edition? He originally wrote it for Max Wall [slapstick comedian]. It's a great song, amazing. It should be our national anthem, really.
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Os Mutantes, Fool Metal Jack

Richard Gehr — Wed, 07 Aug 2013 14:11:31 +0000

Hoisting their freak flags aloft on their ninth album

“Open your mind, it’s time to get high,” sings Sergio Dias, the sole original Mutante here, in “Once Upon a Flight,” an art-rocking incitement to “trip, trip, trip, trip…” Dias and company hoist their freak flags aloft on the group’s ninth album, their second since reemerging in 2009. While their sound is somewhat more orthodox, little has changed thematically since Os Mutantes spearheaded the burgeoning Tropicália scene with youthful hippie fervor, hedonist politics, and producer Rogerio Duprat’s uncanny knack for one-upping George Martin with homegrown psychedelia. Fool Metal Jack‘s trajectory leads out of the charnel house (the title track and cover’s mutant war pig) toward the blissed-out regions of “Valse LSD,” wherein synths mimic minds exploding. And just as the three original Mutantes tweaked Brazil’s military dictatorship, the latest iteration bites the Bush regime, in the faux-reggae “Ganjaman,” and religious orthodoxy via the George Harrison-flavored “Bangladesh” and its chant of “Hari Rama, Hari Krishna, Hari Lucifer.”

Etran Finatawa, The Sahara Sessions

Michelangelo Matos — Tue, 30 Jul 2013 13:00:19 +0000

Few desert-blues bands are this captivating

Etran Finatawa’s back-story is resonant — the 10-piece unit from Niger features members from two traditionally antagonistic ethnic groups, the Tuareg and the Wodaabe. But each of the band’s four albums plays easy and cuts deep, whether you know the first thing about the band or not. The Sahara Sessions isn’t markedly different in tone than their first three. Dry-toned, fleet-fingered guitar runs dance atop ruminative rhythms, like a mind unreeling after a long day’s work. Lead singer (and lead guitarist) Ghalitane Khamidoune’s warm, slightly parched voice is conversational and full of gravity without sounding heavy-handed; the pinched pitch of second lead Alhousseini Mohamed Anivolla lends the stretched vowels of “Djojaréré” a kind of homespun surrealism. Simple tunes like the easy-swinging “Matinfa” and its more searching twin “Is Ler Is Salan” keep opening new doors. Few desert-blues bands are this captivating; in fact, few bands are, full stop.

The Krayolas, Tormenta

John Morthland — Tue, 30 Jul 2013 13:00:17 +0000

A uniquely natural, uncompromised fusion of Mexican and American

Largely critical favorites and cult heroes up to this point, the Krayolas introduce themselves to the rest of the world with Tormenta, which deftly combines 10 tracks from previous albums with an equal number of new ones. The San Antonio quartet, led by songwriter-lead singer Hector Saldana, made its name locally in the ’80s with hard-rocking power pop and Beatlesque harmonies, broke up for 22 years, then reformed to cut the seductive “Little Fox” with Augie Meyers in 2008.

They’ve been going strong regionally ever since; in this incarnation, the sound has more of a mexicano and a garage band flavor, as well a heightened social conscience, to go along with the acutely pop sense of hook and melody. Theirs is a uniquely natural, uncompromised fusion of Mexican and American, starting with the burbling Latin-flavored groove of the opening “Americano” and continuing through the bonus-track remake of Dylan’s “All I Really Want to Do.” “Corrido Twelve Heads in a Bag” and “Tony Tormenta” both speak eloquently to the depths of the Mexican cartel drug wars, while “Fruteria (The Fruit Cup Song)” and “La Conquistadora” are impossibly buoyant English-language songs that happen to have Spanish titles. Soft, sweet and sorrowful acoustic tunes like “Epitaph Street” rub shoulders with the likes of a jangly, bilingual remake of the Ramones’ “I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend” and the squeezebox experimentalism of “Wall of Accordion.” There’s nothing else quite like it, and that’s ’cause it’s puro San Antonio.

Summer Soundtrack: EMI’s Balearic Compilations

Barry Walters — Fri, 26 Jul 2013 18:24:39 +0000

Like Krautrock and Northern Soul, Balearic Beat is a genre not recognized by those who created it. And, like the aforementioned musical categories, it was the Brits who bestowed this name on the sound they “discovered.” As the story goes, UK DJs Paul Oakenfold, Danny Rampling and Trevor Fung holidayed in Ibiza, one of Spain’s Balearic Islands, in 1987. Chicago’s thumping house beats were sweeping clubland’s most forward-leaning dancefloors while aggressive, four-to-the-floor house remixes started streamlining and homogenizing records originally recorded as R&B, Latin freestyle and synthpop.

But in Ibiza, dance music was still all over the board: Quirky recent Europop hits, New Wave oldies, early house, offbeat disco, art-rock, jazz-funk, world music, dub reggae, near-ambient cuts — nearly any ’70s/’80s style with a syncopated rhythm that felt good in warm weather and got tourists dancing — were all being played at clubs like Amnesia, which sported an open-air dancefloor that heightened the free-spirited Mediterranean vibe.

Oakenfold, Rampling and Fung then brought Ibiza’s eclectic programming philosophy back to London. Unlike other genre trends favored by the DJ cognoscenti, the resulting Balearic Beat didn’t take hold because it was intrinsically pan-genre and anti-trend — like Northern Soul, the name referred to the region that claimed certain records as its own, and not to their place of origin. Balearic’s embrace of anything-goes grooves slower and gentler than house’s pounding 120-and-up BPMs paved the way for massive international hits by Soul II Soul, Enigma and other acts that went on to inspire chillout and trip-hop. As the current wayward programming of Lindstrøm, Aeroplane and other recent EDM fusionists have proven, Balearic is arguably hipper than ever today.

We’re explaining all this because we’d like to share our enthusiasm for a ridiculously entertaining series of compilations that have been in our library since last fall but feel particularly right for this summer. Compiled in Sweden by EMI staffer Jens Peterson Hällefors, the Balearic series is arguably the most out-there digital-only collection of music ever presented by a major label. At 11 volumes specializing in house, rock, soft rock, leftfield dance, electronic, world, reggae, pop, ambient, progressive rock and “blend” (an introductory sampler), Balearic goes deep, deeeeeep into the aesthetic to embrace both familiar cuts and oddities that will delight even the most dedicated diggers. Some are bona-fide Ibiza classics while many are choice cuts presented in the same boundary-crossing spirit, yet with a Scandinavian slant: This is the first time that most of the Danish, Norwegian and Swedish acts presented here alongside their American, English, German, Jamaican, Japanese, Brazilian, French, Belgian, South African, Australian and Spanish brethren have ever snagged a legitimate international release. (We’re crossing our fingers that Hällefors’s latest three Scandinavia-specific Balearic comps will sometime soon be released here.)

So pour a cool beverage, dance around the pool, throw a roof party, head to the nearest beach or simply imagine yourself on vacation with similarly inclined celebrants, and stretch out with these everything-but-the-kitchen-sink collections. If you’d just like to dip your toe (or even shake them), may we suggest our own 30-track playlist that’s sequenced like a Balearic DJ set? Prepare yourself to hear everyone from Simple Minds to Peter Tosh in a way you may never have heard before.

Balearic Blend

Various Artists
2012 | CAR W.S. NEW RELEASE

The most eclectic of EMI staffer Jens Peterson Hällefors's Balearic collections serves as an introduction to the Balearic series. Encompassing the folky classical minimalism of Penguin Café Orchestra, various permutations of UK New Wave and art-rock (Simple Minds, Spandau Ballet, Kajagoogoo, Roxy Music/Bryan Ferry), funky prog from Germany's Eloy, funky EDM from Japan's Logic System, Marcos Valle's Brazilian jazz with Bond-like strings, Working Week's gentle bossa nova, and much more, Balearic Blend... emphasizes that Ibiza's dancefloor aesthetics are far more concerned with mood than beats. Much of it is happy: You can't get more light-hearted than Sly Dunbar's reggae variation on the Sesame Street theme. But other tracks aren't exactly perky, as the "Death Disco" of Public Image Ltd. makes abrasively clear. The warmly inclusive result is only nominally club-friendly, and that's as it should be: This is what people dance to only when they're on vacation and/or very, very drunk.
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Balearic Leftfield

Various Artists
2012 | CAR W.S. NEW RELEASE

Balearic Leftfield focuses on offbeat dance records of the '80s, which is basically what this Balearic series is about. It's where the eccentric and disco-centric circles of UK New Wave (and their European cousins) overlap. Of course that includes Thomas Dolby's biggest hit, Duran Duran's first Giorgio Moroder-aping single, oft-overlooked Human League (and their pseudonymous spin-off, the Men), and Simple Minds at their most hypnotic. But it also includes Laid Back's club... classic, buried disco-not-disco treasure from Belgium's Telex and Allez Allez, Germany's Deutsch Amerikanische Freudschaft spoofing anti-immigrant phobias, a strikingly erotic UK hit from Hot Chocolate and some arty funk from prog guitarist Steve Hillage. And if you're looking for Swedish dancefloor esoterica, Diggy Tal & the Numbers, Micke Hagström and Ragnar Grippe have your number.
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Balearic Electronic

Various Artists
2012 | CAR W.S. NEW RELEASE

Although much of the Balearic series is a forerunner to today's EDM, Balearic Electronic is where its sounds are most pointedly synthetic. This is synthpop, unabashedly robotic for its time, yet also elegant in its emphatically European, quasi-symphonic alienation: '80s dance music doesn't get more estranged than Anne Clarke's poetically pained cult club hit "Our Darkness." An apt remedy to the summer heat, nearly everything else here is refreshingly chilly: OMD's 1980... early UK breakthrough "Messages" remains the coolest in its long discography. As with most other installments, there's a US pop smash here, When in Rome's deeply romantic 1988 single "The Promise," but a lot more from the margins, courtesy of B-sides, album cuts and should-have-bit-hits by early Heaven 17, China Crisis, Ultravox and other staples of the decade's alternative dancefloors.
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Balearic House

Various Artists
2012 | CAR W.S. NEW RELEASE

Leaving behind the synthpop era, Balearic House focuses on the late '80s and '90s to explore how the sound of Ibiza changed after it initially captured the UK imagination. House music may have ultimately lost much of its early quirks, but this installment of the Balearic series still packs plenty of diversity. There are the requisite divas — Judy Cheeks, Inner City's Paris Grey, Kym Mazelle, Soul II Soul's Do'reen, Loose Ends'... Jane Eugene and, of course, Adeva — but there is also plenty of textural, tonal, melodic and harmonic variation that far exceeds the house norm. Norway's Mental Overdrive goes on for 15 minutes in "About Erot," but the ever-evolving cut builds like a mini DJ set, encompassing ambient, jazz-funk, Afrobeat, and other flavors along the way. The Land of Oz mix of Frazier Chorus's "Nothing" captures Paul Oakenfold at the early '90s peak of his remixing powers, and Sasha's Quat Mix of Cheeks' "So in Love (The Real Deal)" is similarly shaded with emotional nuance. There's so much passion here.
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Balearic World

Various Artists
2012 | CAR W.S. NEW RELEASE

Given Ibiza's status as a tourist destination, one that was decidedly more esoteric in the '80s before its nightlife reputation exploded, it's totally appropriate that its club-music approach would be emphatically international. Balearic World combines two distinct takes on world music — native expressions of local styles, and appropriations from outside. Recorded under his short-lived Jesus Loves You moniker, Boy George's "Bow Down Mister" celebrates the Hare Krishna spirituality that helped the... star overcome his heroin addiction; it's wacky, but oddly moving. The Brazilian acts on the other end of the authenticity spectrum — Quarteto Em Cy, Os Borges, Evinha, and Elza Soares — all combine indigenous vibes and language with boundary-crossing sounds. The rest embrace exotica that's sometimes campy, sometimes sincere, but nearly always soothing.
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Balearic Reggae

Various Artists
2012 | CAR W.S. NEW RELEASE

A defining feature of the Ibiza DJ-ing approach is individuality through diversity, so it makes sense that Balearic Reggae is not only of the broadest collections of Jamaican (and quasi-Jamaican) music you'll hear, but also one of the most idiosyncratic. This is probably the only place where roots reggae, dub reggae, reggae-disco, reggae hip-hop, reggae trip-hop, a chart-topping reggae-ska smash and a Culture Club B-side all come together. As the inclusion of... the Mighty Diamonds, Burning Spear, Culture and other purists attest, there are plenty of authentic island sounds — no Swedish reggae here. But Sly Dunbar, Peter Tosh and Keith Hudson all mix their grooves with angular funk to rump-shaking effect. As their song goes, one-hit-wonders Althea & Donna are "strictly roots," but that didn't stop this female teen duo from topping the UK pop chart in 1978 with an unpolished gem that unjustly flopped in the US, "Uptown Top Ranking."
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Balearic Pop

Various Artists
2012 | CAR W.S. NEW RELEASE

Flaunting some ultra-mainstream names ordinarily anathema to other exhaustive catalog exhumations, Balearic Pop combines the familiar with the obscure to make the point that great music is great music, no matter who sings it or how it's marketed — a key tenant of Ibiza's club philosophy. Adult contemporary queens Kim Carnes and Sheena Easton rub shoulders with the far artier likes of Talk Talk and It's Immaterial, yet the whole set flows... smoothly from start. Don't be ashamed — you know you love Kajagoogoo's "Too Shy," particularly in Mark Kamins's 12" mix. Eighties pop doesn't mix sonic sophistication and psychological rawness better than the Blue Nile's "Tinseltown in the Rain," a taster from an album waiting to be rediscovered by today's fans of Rhye and Jessie Ware.
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Balearic Rock

Various Artists
2012 | CAR W.S. NEW RELEASE

Combining glam, punk, post-punk, New Wave, Neue Deutsche Welle, space rock, alt-rock and several spaces in between, Balearic Rock is way hipper than its title or even its lineup implies. The oft-bootlegged "Theme from Great Cities" is a genuine Ibiza classic hailing from those pre-Breakfast Club days when Simple Minds proved themselves unlikely masters of trippy quasi-Eurodisco — just listen to that rattling bassline rip. Suzi Quatro gets sultry on an overlooked,... keyboard-led cut from her otherwise rowdy 1974 debut album while late '90s Norwegian surf rock revivalists Kåre & The Cavemen aka Euro Boys here suggest caffeinated Air.
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Balearic Soft Rock

Various Artists
2012 | CAR W.S. NEW RELEASE

Much of what's here isn't exactly soft: Would someone tell that guitarist in the Little River Band's otherwise lovely opus "It's a Long Way There" to just knock it off already? But there are mellow cuts from typically more anxious acts (Bryan Ferry/Roxy Music, Billy Idol, Kevin Ayers), funkiness from the otherwise folky (Julie Felix), a ridiculously catchy ditty from Shakespearian actor Brian Protheroe ("Pinball"), the Waterboys' horn-blasting hit ("The Whole of... the Moon"), and striking sensual balladry from the usually corny (Bobby Goldsboro). As usual, Scandinavians generate the most alien cuts: The voice of Woody in the Swedish edition of Toy Story, Blue Swede leader Björn Skifs steals the show with his jazzy translation of Carole King's classic "It's Too Late."
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Balearic Prog

Various Artists
2012 | CAR W.S. NEW RELEASE

With the exception of Babe Ruth's "The Mexican," a DJ staple on NYC's disco and hip-hop scenes, this brazenly esoteric set wanders furthest into murky areas of the European EMI catalog where the US could not follow. It also strays significantly from the smooth and sunny sounds commonly understood as Balearic; it's hard to imagine most of this unsteady stuff generating much action on any dancefloor. But even the gnarly bits sometimes... give way to unexpected grooves — dig that savage drum break in Swedish band Storm's crazy "Lt. Calley Bjuder Upp," a sonic blueprint for today's indie freakout favorites Goat.
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Balearic Ambient

Various Artists
2012 | CAR W.S. NEW RELEASE

Dance music for the very confident and/or very stoned, Balearic Ambient is, of course, low on beats and high on underwater vibes. Slow, sustained notes abound, and although there's often still too much going on here to qualify for Brian Eno's strict sense of what's ambient, much of it comes pretty close. Japan's brooding and strikingly beautiful "Ghosts" was a No. 5 pop hit in 1982 England; Talk Talk's even more abstract... "The Rainbow" signaled the band's 1988 break from its New Wave past. The rest is all instrumental and more minimal. Klaus Schønning and former the Soundtrack of Our Lives member Björn Olsson supply the Scandinavian connection; the former's 1982 cut "Cygnus" suggests the smoother side of current Daft Punk.
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Gogol Bordello, Pure Vida Conspiracy

Andrew Mueller — Tue, 23 Jul 2013 15:33:36 +0000

A welcome addition to a catalog that's becoming a genre unto itself

From the first notes of the surging opening fanfare “We Rise Again,” Pure Vida Conspiracy fulfills every expectation that one might harbor of a Gogol Bordello album, which is to say that it would not be altogether surprising for any given track to be abruptly interrupted by a visit from the riot police. “We Rise Again” is a delirious, joyful cacophony even by the group’s standards, and the pace it sets rarely drops.

The distinguishing aspect of this album is Gogol Bordello frontman Eugene Hutz’s determination to bring the influences of his adopted homeland of Brazil to bear upon the Ukrainian folk that animated the group in the first place. This is most apparent on tracks like the giddy “Malandrino,” which recalls the occasional Latinate excursions of The Pogues, and in the flamenco flourishes which decorate the roistering sea shanty “Name Your Ship”. Elsewhere, ever, things proceed apace, and Pure Vida Conspiracy is another welcome addition to a catalog that is becoming a genre unto itself.

Hidden Treasures 2013

eMusic Editorial Staff — Mon, 22 Jul 2013 12:00:21 +0000

Every year, hardcore music fans wrestle with the same wonderful problem: There are too many records. Even if we listened to nothing but new records, non-stop, the numbers just don’t add up; we’re going to miss something, it’s certain, something strange and special. But what? What are we missing?

We at eMusic know this exquisite pain better than anyone; the question “What are we missing?” keeps us up nights. Our Hidden Treasures feature is a partial answer. The records in this list span genres, from vintage soul to frozen Gothic pop; from death-obsessed classical song cycles to sloppy garage rock; from chamber music to churning doom metal. Some of these records were overshadowed by higher-profile releases in the same style; some are on labels that never get the attention they deserve. Some of these records are simply damned weird. They all caught our ears and hearts, however, for one reason or another, and we think they’ll do the same to you.

Bleak Visions

Lang: Death Speaks

David Lang
Cantaloupe Music

First, I feel it's important to say that, as of this writing, David Lang is nowhere near death. I see him walking through the neighborhood from time to time and he is his usual cheery, deadpan self. And yet the Bang on A Can co-founder has produced an incandescent string of pieces in recent years focused exclusively on death and dying. His Pulitzer Prize-winning Little Match Girl Passion gravely watches a poor... young girl freeze to death as passersby ignore her. His yet-to-be-recorded Love Fail takes an oblique look at the fatal love affair between Tristan and Isolde. His haunting, drifting Salle des Departs (recorded here under the title "Depart") was written for a hospital morgue. And then there's Death Speaks, a five-movement work which takes up most of this recording. Here, death is not an event, but a figure, like something out of an engraving by Albrecht Dürer. But unlike the American folk song "O Death," in which Death is a scary, implacable foe — the singer asks, "oh Death, won't you pass me over another year" — Lang has assembled a text in which Death is addressing us, with a message that is ultimately reassuring, and comforting.

The text is built around the many and varied instances in the songs of Franz Schubert in which the figure of Death speaks. The music, as in the other death-themed works named above, has a transparent texture that sets off and subtly colors those texts, and the voice delivering it. That voice belongs to Shara Worden, one of the current breed of musicians who move fluidly between the worlds of classical music and indie rock. While still leading her own band, My Brightest Diamond, Worden has become the go-to voice for the so-called "indie classical" crowd. The rest of the ensemble here is equally remarkable: Bryce Dessner, one of the twin electric guitarists from the popular rock band The National, and a fine composer himself; Owen Pallett, the violinist, vocalist and composer who formerly recorded as Final Fantasy; and Nico Muhly, the in-demand composer and keyboardist whose works range from choral to electronic. With essentially an all-star band, Lang has chosen to write music which is not conventionally virtuosic, relying instead of the quartet's musicality and precision. The results are quietly stunning. Highlights include the gentle, chiming minimalism of part 1, "You Will Return"; the resonant percussive use of the piano's bass end in part 2, "I Hear You"; the deft, rhythmic use of the violin in part 3, "Mist Is Rising"; and the lovely duet that blossoms in part 5, "I Am Walking."

After Death Speaks, the album invites you to relax in the dark-hued but warm ambience of "Depart," for chorus and strings. Probably best not to think too much of the French morgue for which it was written.
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Meir

Kvelertak
2013 | Roadrunner Records

Metal typically exists in a kind of "either/or" dichotomy: either bands are grinding and infernal or they're triumphant and anthemic. The Norwegian group Kvelertak is strictly "both/and." Their scorching second record Meir pairs the bludgeoning brutality of bands like Cannibal Corpse Rotting Christ with the kind of sugary hookiness typically found on an album by Andrew W.K. "Manelyst" is the perfect example: It opens with a barrage of barnstorming chords, a terrifying... asteroid shower of sound, before cruising up into a refrain that's practically singable, sounding like something from the Rocket From the Tombs catalog, if someone set vocalist John Reis on fire. "Burane Brenn" opens full-hurtle, frontman Erlend Hjelvik's wrecked-larynx howls offset by a holler-along soccer-anthem chorus. Kvelertak ride AC/DC's "Highway to Hell" right to its fiery end, and stage a never-ending kegger amid the flames.
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Excavation

The Haxan Cloak
2013 | Tri Angle Records / SC Distribution

It may be glib to assume that London-based producer Bobby Krlic dwells exclusively on the dark side, but given the evidence it's hardly unreasonable. His alias references a 1922 Scandinavian docudrama about witchcraft and inquisition, and his 2011 self-titled debut album aligned him with avant-black-metal/doom acts like Mayhem and Sunn O))). And the sleeve of his gloomily titled follow-up depicts a single length of rope coiled into a noose.

However, The Haxan Cloak's... thrillingly dark and chilly aesthetic goes far deeper than the kind of parent-bothering occult primer these details might suggest. There are echoes of Burial's cavernous dub and Demdike Stare's haunted techno in Excavation, but its magnificently maleficent, post-dubstep soundscapes have more in common with musique concrete, Expressionist cinema soundtracks and medieval monastic cantos than so-called witch house or drone metal.

Krlic's sounds are again rooted in acoustics (cello, violin, guitar, vocals) and field recordings, but this time they've been heavily processed — magnified, stretched, dissembled, reconstituted and rearranged — to produce nine micro-symphonies of stark beauty and extraordinary menace. Whether suggesting the dull throb of an old nuclear power plant, the spooked echo inside an abandoned iron foundry or the howl of an Arctic wind at a remote scientific station, they evoke a compressed anxiety that seeps into every note, causing the likes of "Dieu" to heave and quiver before it dies away and underlining the fact that despite its title, epic closer "The Drop" is concerned with something rather more ominous than build-and-break patterns.
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Abandon

Pharmakon
2013 | Sacred Bones Records / S.C. Distribution

Pharmakon is noise artist Margaret Chardiet, but you'd be forgiven for thinking it was some infernal ghoul. Abandon opens with a scream, and then plunges to unholy depths, full of icepick electronics, horrifying turbine wooshes and suffocating layers of static. It makes Swans sound like The Byrds.
A Breathtaking Trip to That Otherside

Alexander Spit
2013 | Decon

Alexander Spit's bleak, baleful Breathtaking Trip to That Otherside is not good-times music. Spit is from California, but his dank, druggy rap music feels allergic to sunshine. Spit produced the entire album, and his sticky, bleary sound owes more to Dilla and RZA. Everything seems to move through a thick film, including Spit's raps, which gob up into bits of blacklit surrealism about Roswell and chemtrails and unspool into long spleen-venting rants.... If you've ever sat, stoned, in an apartment during a blazingly hot day with the blinds drawn, Breathtaking Trip will feel clammily familiar.
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Vexovoid

Portal
2013 | Profound Lore / Revolver

Nirvana once wrote a song called "Endless, Nameless." Take a look at this picture of Portal's lead vocalist, and then submit to the swirling, backed-up churn of "Orbmorphia," from the Australian death metal band's fourth album Vexovoid, and you may find yourself with an entirely new appreciation of what those two words can mean.

Portal, as a band, is all texture, no melody. But they have mastered so many different textures... that you never think to yearn for melody. The down-tuned guitars, gurgling beneath the ever-shifting blastbeats of the drums, bring to mind all kinds of things, none of them musical: the alarming suck of wet mud when you walk in loose boots, the sounds old motorcycle engines make. The album title evokes a zone of confusion, a place where you can't get your bearings and the ground is constantly shifting. Exactly.
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Arriving Angels

Helen Money
2013 | Profound Lore / Revolver

Play any of the songs on the harrowing third record by Alison Chesley — who records as Helen Money — on electric guitar, and you'd have one of the most brutal, unnerving metal records of the year. But play them as she does on cello, and — well, you still have one of the most brutal, unnerving metal records of the year. Much of this comes from Chesley's command of dynamic. Aptly-titled... album-opener "Upsetter" starts with a low thrum that skitters forward like a tarantula before erupting into slasher-film goring, Chesley's instrument so distortion-caked it sounds like a rotary saw. She's joined by Neurosis drummer Jason Roeder on "Beautiful Friends," which progresses from seasick lurch to undead horse stampede, growing more violent and insistent as it goes on. It's a snarling, suffocating record, and by the time you get to the avalanche that concludes "Radio Recorders," it's clear the angels of the title aren't coming down from the sky, but up from below, horns gleaming, eyes yellow as old bones.
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Obsidian Spectre

Crosss
2013 | Telephone Explosion / The Orchard

In the chilling video for CROSSS's "Bones Brigade", a figure in an ominous black cloak kneels motionless on a beach, staring blankly off into the grey sky, as if in a trance. He remains like that, stock still, hypnotized, for a full three minutes and 30 seconds, his motionlessness becoming more sickeningly unsettling the longer it lasts. Finally, at the end of the video, he bows — as if in supplication... to some god or spirit or eerie form that only he can see. He straightens, and the video cuts to black. That turns out to be a handy encapsulation of the Halifax group's aesthetic: slow-moving, hypnotic and deeply, deeply creepy. Sounding something like Thee Oh Sees slowed down to about 2 RPM, the group tops grimy, repetitive chord patterns with wicked-warlock sneering, making for a final product that feels invested with prime '70s sorcery rock black magick. "Smoke" warns, "Look into your mind's eye/ don't forget to not let your guard down" as guitars churn and boil like the steaming liquid in a witch's cauldron. "Old Sound" draws its dark strength from its continual, gooseflesh-raising dives from major to minor key. Throughout, its members acquit themselves as if they've all just done kegstands with the blood of Kali Ma — dead-eyed, dutiful, and wearing sickening grimaces.
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Lost Mixtape Gems

Out of View

The History Of Apple Pie
Marshall Teller Records

On their debut album Out of View, London quintet The History of Apple Pie blend the most precious of indie-pop impulses with the messiest squalling noise-rock has to offer. Vocalist Stephanie Min's feathery vocals float high in the mix, leaving her teen-romance lyrics ("We're having so much fun in the light of the sun/ You're so cool") faintly discernible above the thick clouds of My Bloody Valentine-style glide guitar that threaten to... overwhelm them. It's that constant give-and-take between pop and art-rock chaos that keeps Out of View interesting: A gruff chord or two always cuts the cotton candy at just the right moment, like when the full-on breakdown interrupts the strawberry lemonade-flavored workout "I Want More." On "Mallory," the daydreaming verses and the yearning melody are tossed about by an underlayer of sneering riffs and distorted noise. No one side ever wins out over the other for long and the seesawing can give you a powerful sugar buzz.
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Cruise Your Illusion

Milk Music
2013 | Fat Possum Records

On Cruise Your Illusion, the first proper full-length from Olympia, Washington's Milk Music, the quartet wedges itself somewhere within the SST Records-Neil Young-Wipers universe, pitting sweat-stained, heavy hardcore punk against indelible melodies and endless sincerity. Since their early output, a 2009 demo cassette and a 12-inch in 2010, the band has turned their DIY determination into full-fledged ambition, and the songs on Cruise are as honest and spiritual as they are messy... and loud. On "Lacey's Secret," Alex Coxen's shouting, imperfect voice cuts through the instrumental heap with lines that that scan endearingly like poetry in a rest-stop bathroom: "You got to get all you can here/ when you're burning every night".

The songs on Cruise Your Illusion bask in youthful charm. "…And although the sun sets heavy on the dreamer/ You can feed your pain to the song," Coxens sings on "No, Nothing, My Shelter" as the band rips into the overdriven wail of "Coyote Road" before running amok on "I've Got A Wild Feeling," a populist manifesto that might as well be the band's anthem. When Milk Music started out, their songs were loud, fast and full of Big Muff. And while the sound is still bruising on their debut, they've found a larger scope and a deeper message. On "Cruising With God" Coxen invites the listener into the band's inner sanctum: "They all love our songs/ But even with the music on/ Baby you've got it all wrong/ You haven't danced in so long."
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Sock it to Me

Colleen Green
2013 | Hardly Art / Sub Pop Records

Colleen Green writes simple songs about simple things and records them as simply as possible. The first song on the irresistible Sock it to Me is basically just Green singing, "Oh yeah, uh-huh, oh God, I really love my boyfriend," and the lazer-light dollar-store Elastica song "You're So Cool" builds to an equally straightforward refrain: "You're so cool, how do you do it? You act like there is nothing to it." Her... logo is a stick-figure drawing of herself that looks not entirely unlike Fido Dido's long-lost sister, and her music is defiantly, joyously basic: just Green's distorted guitar, pouting voice and a Goodwill Store drum machine.

But lean closer in and the images start to distort. Green opens the provocatively-titled "Every Boy Wants a Normal Girl" by singing, "Sometimes I wish I was a normal girl," and then follows it with the height of abnormality: "Like the ones on TV, like the ones in the movies." The drowsy "Darkest Eyes" scans quickly as plainspoken puppy love, with Green celebrating her true love's eyes and contemplating how to retain his affections. And what's her solution? "There's no better way to keep appearances preserved/ than a razor to the optic nerve." And then you skip back to that first song, the one where she's singing about loving her boyfriend, and catch what she says near the ending: "When he tells me that he loves me, I lose the air from my lungs/ his love has finally killed me." Sock it to Me is strychnine-laced Strawberry Fanta.
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Mozes And The Firstborn

Mozes And The Firstborn
2013 | Mozes And The Firstborn / The Orchard

Anyone looking for a 21st-century analog to Weezer's "El Scorcho" should start with "I Got Skills" from the debut album by the Belgian group Mozes & the Firstborn. It's got a similarly motley, gang-hollered chorus, that same nerdish braggadocio ("I got skills to make it through your doorway") and a shambling, thrown-together aesthetic that is charming in spite of itself. The rest of the record pinballs between that same kind of... Jr. High sheepishness — "Skinny Girl" is what Mellow Gold might have sounded like if Beck was a teenager when he recorded it — and genuine star swagger. "Peter Jr." opens with an instant-classic rock couplet — "The longer you work here/ the less you get paid" — before sailing straight into the kind of cruising melodicism that characterizes the best Brian Jonestown Massacre songs (its cocky stride singlehandedly earns the group the right to own this coat) Mozes and the Firstborn are teenage panic and grown-up confidence all at once.
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Paper Moon

Georgiana Starlington
2013 | Hozac / Revolver

As K-Holes, Jack and Julie Hines kick up an unholy racket. Their work as Georgiana Starlington is different in sound, but just as grim in feel. Their dusky, country-influenced songs foreground their dazed, trancelike vocals as they glide over arid guitar like phantoms across the prairie at midnight.
Ex-Cult

Ex-Cult
2012 | Goner / Revolver

Boasting the same feral ferocity as '70s US post-punkers like Rocket From the Tombs and Pere Ubu, Ex-Cult (nee Sex Cult) solder clambering riffs to half-spoken, half-hollered vocals and drench the resulting songs in enough echo to make them sound almost alien. Much murkier and moodier than the music of their producer Ty Segall, Ex-Cult seethe and stalk where Segall storms right in. "Shade of Red" circles and circles, guitars humming like... old Cessnas looking for a place to land. "On Film" is doomier — its downcast bassline could have been lifted from Unknown Pleasures, its howled chorus coming off like some dark warning from a fortune teller. Throughout it sounds both ragged and well-aged — like a relic from an earlier era, recently unearthed. That they are both new and still active is to our great fortune.
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Ultramarine

Young Galaxy
2013 | Paper Bag Records / The Orchard

On their fourth LP, Young Galaxy go big, trading woozy, lo-fi-leaning dreampop for busy, dancefloor-ready electropop hits. They returned to producer Dan Lissvik, who worked on 2011's Shapeshifting, but this time the group traveled from Canada to Lissvik's studio in Sweden instead of sending their unfinished recordings overseas. The result is slick, cinematic and cohesive: There are disco influences ("Out the Gate Backwards"), tropical beats ("Fall For You"), and glorious pop anthems... ("Pretty Boy," "Fever"). In losing all hints of the haziness that masks their earlier releases, Young Galaxy simultaneously shed the Slowdive comparisons and make their best record yet.
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Peach Kelli Pop

Peach Kelli Pop
2013 | Burger Records / Redeye

Like a lollipop caught in a lint filter, Peach Kelli Pop nestles sticky sweetness beneath layers of cottony fuzz. The group, fronted and more or less embodied by White Wires' Allie Hanlon, takes their name from a Redd Kross song, and in many ways, they're that group's cheaper, sunnier analog. Both bands have a fondness for immediately-memorable hooks and piles of guitar, but Peach Kelli Pop seems to be constantly operating in... fast-forward. "Panchito Blues II" sounds like the Shangri-La's trying to outrun The Monkees, and "Julie Oulie" is floor-filler at a jackrabbit sock hop. By the time your brain has caught up you're ready to savor the sweetness, the next song is half over.
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Ready For Boredom

Bed Wettin' Bad Boys
R.I.P. SOCIETY

Australia's Bed Wettin' Bad Boys are basically a drunker version of The Faces, a bunch of hooligans getting shitty on Foster's then stumbling over to their guitars, cranking the amps and seeing what happens. Their live shows are notoriously sloppy (and, depending on whom you talk to, hilarious or infuriating) — bend members swap instruments, goof off interminably between songs and pound beer after beer after beer.

We're spared all of that on... the amazingly-titled Ready for Boredom, skipping instead right to the busted Mustang riffing and the blown-throat vocals. "Sally" is to The Rolling Stones "Happy" what Turkish Star Wars is to regular Star Wars: It has a lot of the same component parts — a blues lick deep-fried in axle grease, a somersaulting two-note hook — but is decidedly lower-budget and flaunts its inattention to detail. Their closest US analog is probably The Men — both bands mine classic rock for its junkiest spare parts — but the Bad Boys are sloppier and soggier still. The glistening album-closer "Keep it From You" is the closest they get to actual sentiment, but Nic Warnock's heartsick lyrics sound like they're coming from the business end of a drunk dial. He may not remember what he said in the morning, but he sounds like he means it in the moment. And isn't that all that matters?
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White Orchid

French Films
2013 | GAEA Records

The phrase "French Films" doesn't generally evoke the happiest images: the last-act betrayal in Breathless, a stricken Jean Pierre-Leaud standing balefully on the beach in The 400 Blows, pretty much all of Shoot the Piano Player. So chalk up the fact that this impossibly hooky Finnish band chose it as their handle to either irony or bad translation. Or move right past it and get right to the main thing that matters:... the songs. And what songs they are: French Films force-feed uppers to the Field Mice and kick the keyboard player out of New Order, delivering a batch of breathless Britpop-inspired songs with gargantuan choruses and guitar lines that glisten and glide like tiny tin airplanes. "Never let me go, never let me go," is the central plea on the rocketing "Where We Come From" — which, sonically, is the Pains of Being Pure at Heart by way of recent Mikal Cronin. As if shaking free of songs this addictive were even an option.
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Rare Birds & Strange Beasts

Sing to the Moon

Laura Mvula
2013 | Columbia

"I don't need love to rescue me/ I'll be all that I choose to be," Laura Mvula sings on "Make Me Lovely," the second track on Sing to the Moon. The British soul singer's voice is as strong as her sentiment, augmented further by delicate orchestra flourishes, soulful handclaps and college-a cappella-style vocal acrobatics. Elsewhere, Mvula fights against ideas of conventional beauty ("That's Alright"), sings about the power of music during hard... times ("Sing to the Moon"), and triumphs over loves that didn't work out ("Flying Without You"). A truly stunning, powerful debut.
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Apocalypse

Thundercat
2013 | Brainfeeder

Apocalypse, the follow-up to the madcap jazz-fusion/Saturday-morning-cartoon hallucination that was The Golden Age of the Apocalypse, explores the more chilled-out and unzipped side of Stephen Bruner. Bruner's command of jazz, R&B, Quiet Storm and straight-ahead bachelor-pad pop is stunning, and this gorgeous album makes a nice companion to the new Daft Punk.
The Moths Are Real

Serafina Steer
2013 | Stolen Recordings / PIAS Digital

Creating a sense of mystery in an age of instant information is difficult, but Serafina Steer manages it beautifully with her third album, The Moths Are Real. There's nothing particularly enigmatic about her CV — classically trained London harpist who has worked with Bat For Lashes, Patrick Wolf and John Foxx — but left to her own devices, Steer enters a world of her own, drawing you in by her side. Produced... by Jarvis Cocker, The Moths Are Real flickers between the physical realities of love, sadness and urban life — the naked romance of "Skinny Dipping," the wintery alienation of "Ballad Of Brick Lane" — and a frosted mythological wonderland that lurks the other side of the looking glass. It's a record that trembles on the threshold between worlds, not just in its merging of folk, psychedelia, prog and electronica, but in the way the lyrics are sweetly conversational one second ("Of course, my scanty life philosophy, as you suspected all along, is actually based on lines from songs," shrugs "Disco Compilation") and as stylized and strange as a temple oracle the next ("Island Odyssey," "Lady Fortune"). The reference points might seem to be in place — Joanna Newsom, Shirley Collins, Alice Coltrane, Robert Wyatt — but Steer sends the compass needle spinning, charting the places where magic and mystery poke through threadbare normality.
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Flume

Flume
2013 | Mom & Pop Music / The Orchard

Few have ever looked to Australia for the latest trends in electronic music. Although it has produced its fair share of innovators, from disco flirts Vanda & Young to hip auteurs The Avalanches, Down Under electronic music is largely seen as the foppish cousin to rock's more masculine manoeuvres. There was a brief flirtation with acid house in the early '90s, mainly fueled by British ex-pats, but interest was always confined to... pockets of aficionados. Until, that is, the arrival of Flume on forward-thinking label Future Classic.

With comparisons to The Weeknd and Toro Y Moi (whom he supported on a recent London date), 21-year-old Harley Streten has seemingly risen from nowhere to produce one of the most exciting electronic debuts of the year. Breakthrough single "Holdin' On" is a sublime slice of wobblesome R&B, while the instrumental "Ezra" has crunk beats leavened with a hook that could have been lifted from the Art of Noise. "Left Alone," which features Melbourne's magnificently-named Chet Faker, feels delivered straight from a Pentecostal church rather than a precocious kid from the Sydney 'burbs, while "More Than You Thought" veers towards stomping Skrillex territory without ever resorting to the easy pay-offs the American producer favors.

This album has already knocked Justin Bieber off the No. 1 spot in Australia — an astonishing achievement for music that is still some way from being pure pop. From a trickle to a torrent: This Flume is unstoppable.
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Leave Me Midnight

My Gold Mask
2013 | Goldy Tapes / CD Baby

At this point, the breakup album has been bent into countless shapes. So rather than try to re-shape it, on their debut album My Gold Mask's Gretta Rochelle and Jack Armondo simply amplified its effects. They didn't skimp on dramatics, with Rochelle's pleading vocals, Armondo's spiraling guitar riffs and lyrics that grapple with psychosis and reference Gothic literature and Italo horror flicks. The result achieves a spellbinding emotional intensity that's easy to... inhabit.
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Baroque

Nadia Sirota
New Amsterdam

Nadia Sirota is the violist of choice for the New York contemporary-classical scene, and on Baroque, she follows up her astoundingly assured debut, First Things First, with fresh works from many of the composers who contributed to that recording. Judd Greenstein's piece for seven violas (all of them multitracked by Sirota), "In Teaching Others We Teach Ourselves," employs a variety of dizzying riffs, separated by episodes of subtle pizzicato, in order to... evoke the many stages of cosmos-crossing undertaken by the famous "Golden Record" shot into deep space by NASA back in 1977. It's also a tour de force opportunity for Sirota to show off her otherworldly chops and a variety of techniques: Nico Muhly's jaunty "Etude 3" is as memorable as the two others in his series, which he gave Sirota the first time around, and is a showcase for Sirota the player.

But there are new composers this time as well, even if they are generally familiar to the New Amsterdam coterie. Shara Worden's "From the Invisible to the Visible" is a brief, attractive offering that introduces keyboards and organs into the mix to considered effect. Missy Mazzoli's "Tooth and Nail" continues the electronic theme and is the album's standout, featuring some exciting hyper-glitch programming by the composer in during its opening minutes. Solid pieces from Paul Corley and Daniel Bjarnason complete this satisfying program, which, while more tricked-out electronically than Sirota's first offering, retains her aesthetic imprint.
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Smart Ass Black Boy

Fat Tony
2013 | Young One

Fat Tony is the kind of guy fated to slip between the cracks. He's from Houston, but sounds like no Texas rappers; occasionally political, but not much of a firebrand; muted and thoughtful, but no one's idea, really, of a "conscious rapper." He has a casual, conversational voice, and his raps tumble out like early Common, before he got too serious. There are dumb puns, a few trenchant insights and, above all,... an appealing confidence. The entire project was produced by Tom Cruz, a producer with a rubbery, cut-and-paste style, and Smart Ass Black Boy slips by agreeably like a late night dorm room bull session.
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Your Turn

Ceramic Dog
2013 | Northern Spy Records / Redeye

"We have a new business model, we'll blow you for a nickel." This is the acidic guitarist Marc Ribot, summing up the effect that the internet has had on the value of recorded music, in one pithy quote. Ribot, who played with Tom Waits just as the singer was morphing from hobo crooner to glass-spitting carnie barker, has never been afraid of sharp edges, and has made his career since his Waits... days in the avant-garde circuit. But Your Turn is a veer back into rock-song territory, albeit rock songs with big crayon doodles all over them: Title track "Your Turn" is a driving motorik groove defaced with a sloppy guitar solo that could be a Shreds video.
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Clayton: The Julius Eastman Memory Depot

Jace Clayton
New Amsterdam

In his performances as DJ/rupture, Jace Clayton has been part of that experimental breed of DJ/producers who draw on the sounds of the classical avant-garde. But while names like Edgard Varese, Iannis Xenakis and Karlheinz Stockhausen have become hip in DJ culture, Clayton has turned to one of music's true outliers, the gay African-American composer Julius Eastman. (Both his sexual orientation and race figure prominently in his titles.) The Julius Eastman Memorial... Depot is neither a mash-up nor a straight remix. It is a recasting and reimagining of two of Eastman's most important and defining works, "Evil Nigger" and "Gay Guerrilla," both originally for four pianos but arranged here for two pianos and live electronics. And it is a remarkable, heartfelt tribute to a man who was a fixture on the New York "downtown" scene in the '70s and '80s, performing with Meredith Monk and singing the lead role in Peter Maxwell Davies's Eight Songs For a Mad King before succumbing to alcohol and drug addiction, homelessness and death at the age of 49.

"Evil Nigger, Part 1" is almost pretty, with the layered chiming of its minimalist pianos; Part 2 abruptly switches to a more obviously electronic sound; Part 3 takes on a darker, dramatic hue as the music descends to the bass end of the keyboards, heaving and rolling in waves of increasingly dense sound that almost sounds like a kind of broadband drone. The final part announces itself with the sounds of glitch electronica, while the piano textures thin out, creating a sense both of space and of expectation that something will soon come rushing in to fill it. Shards of gamelan-like piano, impossibly rapid trills and tolling chords hover around the edges of the mix, until a brief explosion of massive piano sounds takes over. It ends as ambiguously as one of Bela Bartok's nachtmusik ("night music") pieces, with the half-remembered echoes of those earlier trills in a haunted electroacoustic haze.

"Gay Guerrilla," in five parts, begins with the steady pulse of the pianos; Clayton's electronics are subtle but telling, often hard to distinguish from the pianos themselves. In Part 2, a web of shifting electronic drones grows out of the patter of almost bell-like tones in the upper registers of the keyboards. When the pianos return, in a gently galloping rhythm, the result is perhaps the most conventionally beautiful music here. "Conventionally" being a relative term, of course. Part 3 begins to build up rhythmic counterpoint that sounds reminiscent of Steve Reich's work, but no sooner does that happen then the sound of a turntable dying brings the music to a grinding halt — at which point we hear Martin Luther's hymn "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God." (This appropriation appears in Eastman's original version of the piece.) Echoes of that tune flit through the thick piano textures of Part 4; and Part 5, with its endlessly ascending pianos, has a more reflective, even valedictory cast.

The album concludes with a Jace Clayton original, a short song that takes the wry humor of Eastman's own work and turns it on the usual "equal-opportunity employment" speech, turning it into a pensive contemplation of a man who was driven to despair in part by a lack of employment opportunities.
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Betty Rubble: The Initiation

Mykki Blanco
2013 | UNO NYC

Mykki Blanco is a performance artist, a black gay drag queen and a rapper. She is the center of her own Venn diagram, in other words, and on Betty Rubble she went from "promising" to great. Her voice is raspy and manic, a bit of Lil Wayne at his most enthusiastically unhinged and a bit of Young Dro in how audibly she relishes the vowel and consonant sounds leaving her mouth. The... beats on Rubble are a collision of electro, snap music and Neptunes, a lot of empty space and room for attitude and personality. Blanco obliges, calling herself "Richie Rich with a clit in the middle" and interpolating "If I Was a Rich Man" on "Angggry Birdz" and telling a hilariously detailed story about a tour-stop conquest on "Vienna."
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Out-of-Time Dispatches

Sudden Elevation

Ólöf Arnalds
2013 | One Little Indian / The Orchard

The most attractive thing about Ólöf Arnalds's music is the sense of mystery. Beginning with her beguiling 2007 debut Við og Við, Arnalds spun songs that felt like recitations from some yellowing old elvish spell book, her soprano curling like enchanted vines and gentle guitar spinning out notes like spiderwebs reflecting sunlight. That she sang in Icelandic — with its strange vowel runs and twisting cadence — only made her songs feel... more otherworldly. So it's no small risk for her to write and sing the entirety of Sudden Elevation in English; like a sitcom actor suddenly deciding to go Method, peeling away Arnalds's gauzy façade leaves the raw essence of her music exposed.

The good news is that the songs can bear the scrutiny. Sudden Elevation contains all the tender beauty of Arnalds's previous efforts — the wandering-bard guitar playing, the vocal melodies that bob like butterflies in a spring breeze. And though her lyrics are in English, that doesn't mean they're any more easily parsed. The verses in the gently waltzing "Return Again," for instance, are tangled as old riddles. Though the decision to forsake her native tongue could be read as a bid for more mainstream acceptance, thankfully, Arnalds has resisted any temptation to further burnish her sound. There are no horn charts, no swooping orchestras, nothing much beyond Arnalds's guitar and voice. All of this only contributes to Sudden Elevation's dreamlike feel: You can understand the words and make sense of the general narrative, but the overall meaning remains as alluringly ambiguous as ever.
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Leanin' On Slick

Aceyalone
2013 | Decon

From the breaks that first propelled Kool Herc's parties in '73 to Dre's minimoogs to Mystikal's manic James Brown tics, funk has not only provided a foundational structure to hip-hop, it's often risen to the surface and flat-out driven it. West Coast indie-rap vet Aceyalone has spent more than 20 years riding the outskirts of that territory, through his time with Freestyle Fellowship to his cult-classic solo debut All Balls Don't Bounce... to the later-career triumph of RJD2 teamup "A Beautiful Mine" (aka the Mad Men theme song). So after a long career — concurrent with a stab at making another excursion into grown-man rap — Leanin' on Slick sees Aceyalone toeing that line between underground rap and the traditions that scene built its base on.

The title track draws off the J.B.'s sound more in a way befitting a '70s indie-label garage-funk band (or a Daptonian revivalist group) than, say, the Bomb Squad, and the lyrical conceit isn't the only throwback — Acey's smooth-rolling delivery relays hustler tales from days when Caddies rolled long and low instead of high on 24s. That's not the only nod to vintage soul: "I Can Get It Myself" cockily struts through the door that James Brown demanded be opened back in '69, the handclaps and horn stabs of "What You Gone Do With That" is an old-school road-show with Acey's own overdubbed echoes standing in for call-and-response vocalists, and the pairing of his steady-job grind motivation with a wailing Cee-Lo chorus makes "Workin' Man's Blues" the closest Aceyalone's come to a genuine but uncompromised potential pop crossover. If the record vibe skews older, it's by design — leadoff cut "30 and Up" practically decrees it — but if this is the album young Aceyalone figured he'd be making once he approached middle age, he had some right-thinking foresight.
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The Coming Tide

Luke Winslow-King
2013 | Bloodshot Records

The 29-year-old singer/songwriter, slide guitarist and eMusic Selects alum Luke Winslow-King is from Michigan, but he has called The Big Easy home since 2001. On his third full-length, you can hear that the city has made its way into his bones. On The Coming Tide, Winslow-King masters the art of revivalist folk, seamlessly blending New Orleans jazz, Delta blues and ragtime into an album as sweet and satisfying as devouring plate of... beignets and sipping a café au lait on the banks of the Mississippi.

Accompanied by his girlfriend, the sugary-voiced, washboard-wielding Esther Rose, Winslow-King amasses a fine collection of traditionalist originals and personalized covers on The Coming Tide. Rose sings harmony while a thumping upright bass and a brass section leading call-and-repeats accompany them, and the album sways with easy confidence. Winslow-King particularly shines in his blues numbers, namely a faithful, slower rendition of Blind Willie Johnson's "Keep Your Lamp Trimmed and Burning" and a slide-driven cover of "Got My Mind Set On You," made famous by George Harrison in the late '80s. Nostalgia rains heavy on The Coming Tide, but Winslow-King reins it in, refashioning weathered words and sounds and branding them his own.
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The Stand-In

Caitlin Rose
2013 | ATO Records

Given her avowed love of old Hollywood glamour (just check out that album cover), the title of Caitlin Rose's sophomore full-length likely refers to the 1937 backlot comedy The Stand-In, about a love triangle between the title character, a hapless number cruncher and a hopeless film producer. While Rose does write about similar romantic confusions, the film reference nevertheless comes across as false modesty: On these dozen songs, she emerges as a... confident, distinctive pop-country artist with a biting lyrical style and a smart way with a hook. Perhaps A Star Is Born sounded too cocky?

Like any good actress, Rose has impressive range. The Stand-In has roots in classic country, displaying the poise of Tammy Wynette on "Everywhere I Go" and the assertiveness of Loretta Lynn on "Waitin'." Standout "Golden Boy" casts her as a countrypolitan chanteuse against a widescreen arrangement that recalls Owen Bradley, and she turns that chorus into a gently devastating plea: "Golden boy, don't go away/ I won't ask you what you're here for/ If you stay." Occasionally she holds her twang in check, but for the most part her vocals are expressive, building from the conspiratorial whisper of "When I'm Gone" to the full-throated belt of "Only a Clown."

Rarely reverent to one style or genre, The Stand-In mixes country with classic rock, radio pop, and even speakeasy jazz on closer "Old Numbers." The rollicking Hank- and Tennessee Williams-inspired "Menagerie" and first single "Only a Clown" both hinge on Byrds-style guitar riffs that suggest an affinity for West Coast nuggets, and the Las Vegas-set "Pink Champagne" is debauched country folk, a sad-eyed and slightly sloshed reimagining of Gram Parsons's "Sin City." No matter how blue she sounds, there's always a lively hint of humor even in her despair — a distinguishing trait that suggests she may be ready for her close-up.
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Berberian Sound Studio

Broadcast
2013 | Warp Records

When it came to soundtracking Peter Strickland's horror film Berberian Sound Studio, about a British sound engineer working for an Italian film company in the 1970s, there could have been no other name on the list than Broadcast. The band, aka Trish Keenan and James Cargill, were recording this album when Keenan died from pneumonia in 2011, age just 42, and it is a sublime, sad reminder of a remarkable talent lost.... On their own albums, the pair's haunting songs are constructed from elements that evoke half-remembered television themes, or a ghostly folk group transmitting from the future. It's rare that a soundtrack album constructed from fragments of music and snatches of dialogue is a rewarding listen, but Broadcast — perhaps because they are so adept at creating otherworldly sounds from pop's detritus — managed it beautifully here. Some of the tracks are genuinely unnerving, such as "Mark Of The Devil," its mean electronic pulses and chants sounding like wraiths in charge of a power station, or the guttural gabbling of "A Goblin." These terrifying moments are contrasted with pastoral instrumentals, built largely from flute, xylophone and organ, which could soundtrack a cold, misty morning as well as the original film. A bewitching last Broadcast.
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Kid Face

Samantha Crain
2013 | Ramseur Records / The Orchard

Singer-songwriter Samantha Crain has always sounded like an old soul, her dusty alto worn down by restless thoughts and free-floating anxiety. On the autobiographical Kid Face, the Oklahoma native sounds even more wizened as she explores loneliness, wanderlust and emotional disruption. Produced by John Vanderslice, Kid Face is a sparse record, laced with stark folk and Americana signifiers: acoustic guitar, wobbly piano, curled pedal steel and keening violin. Shambling banjo, stabs... of synthesizer or electric guitar add occasional jolts of urgency to the mix.

But significantly, Crain comes into her own as a lyricist on Kid Face. Besides being a meticulous wordsmith ("I'm going to shows, counting my toes and crying over you" is how she describes one particularly trying breakup), she offers thorough, unflinching self-analysis. Crain uses Kid Face's songs to examine her place in the world — and figure out how her actions affect others, for better and for worse. "Churchill" addresses the realization that "my whole life I thought I was an opportunist/ But I'm not"; "Sand Paintings" struggles with overcoming self-sabotaging tendencies; and "Ax" is a call to be kind in the face of negativity. Perhaps most impressive is "Never Going Back," which describes (hopefully) breaking free from a disastrous affair: "The ending of 10,000 dreams/ My soul has finally been set free from his cool eyes." The song is devastatingly effective because of its economy, the same trait that also makes Kid Face a wonderful record.
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Fairouz: Native Informant

Mohammed Fairouz
Naxos

Native Informant begins with a tense, mournful clarinet, sobbing quietly in bent phrases. The soprano Melissa Hughes joins in, her voice blending eerily with the clarinet. The piece is "Tahwidah," by the composer Mohammed Fairouz, and it blends harmonic languages and geography in a way that will remind modern classical listeners of the famous Osvaldo Golijov, before the composer got lost in his own hype. The piece is meant as a lullaby,... but it carries a deep sadness that could curdle milk.

Native Informant is an arresting showcase for Fairouz's voice, which is plangent, melodic, folkloric and unpredictable: His lines spool out in ways that don't follow your ear's predetermined path for them. He wrote eloquently of soaking in Armenian and Lebanese art and poetry for the Huffington Post, and Fairouz's music is that of a thoughtful traveler: Native Informant traverses boundaries without ever losing its gentle footing.
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Nightmare Ending

Eluvium
2013 | Temporary Residence Ltd. / SC Distribution

As gentle as mist settling over a lake at daybreak, Nightmare Ending, the latest album from Eluvium, is a work of tender beauty. Piano drifts down slow as snowflakes, soft bands of sound expand and Yo La Tengo's Ira Kaplan turns in a lovely, fragile vocal on "Happiness."
Selected Studies Vol. 1

Lloyd Cole & Hans-Joachim Roedelius
2013 | Bureau B

Hans-Joachim Roedelius is a towering figure of Krautrock: He formed Qluster (later renamed Cluster) and Harmonia, and his deceptively simple synth pieces in the late 1970s and early '80s are a genre unto themselves. Lloyd Cole is better known for literate guitar rock than synth drones, but here the two find a serene common ground, creating an airy, spacious album full of twinkling, twirling little mobiles. The music seems to move forward... and backward at once: Roedelius's genius was in creating gently hypnotic pieces out of minimal materials, and Selected Studies, belying its forbiddingly dry name, sparkles.
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Lady

Lady, The Band
2013 | Truth & Soul Records

This invigorating retro-soul album comes from a duo consisting of one-time UK 2-step garage star Terri Walker and Nicole Wray, whose "Make It Hot" (under her first but not last name) was one of a half-dozen Jeep bombs Timbaland concocted in 1998. Nothing about Lady, also the name of their act, feels forced — Walker and Wray sound like they're having the time of their lives, not least because nothing is stopping... them from getting to dig in lyrically. "If You Wanna Be My Man" analyzes a relationship sharply but without rancor ("You changed, and I changed/What we used to be") over a groove that's equal parts Spinners and Bill Withers. And the amazing "Money" is a bad-boyfriend anthem (she likes the green better than him) that doubles as a proud feminist declaration ("I feel proud that I'm an independent lady") — not to mention a classic soul single, whatever the calendar year.
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Underdogs and Introverts

TORRES

TORRES
2013 | TORRES / TuneCore

The debut album by this woman who calls herself Torres (real name: Mackenzie Scott) was recorded in a creaky old Nashville house that happens to be owned by Tony Joe White, he who gave the world "Polk Salad Annie." But that may have just been a lucky coincidence. These songs feel as if they were bound to come crawling out of Scott's body no matter what she did or where she was,... a strange litter of scowling, writhing fuzzballs just dead set on getting born. Dominated by the wavery tones of her Gibson 355 electric, the songs explore the fragile architecture of human relationships, often finding Scott standing amid a steaming pile of rubble, wondering not about what caused the house to fall but what to do, now, with all the shattered pieces left behind. "Everything hurts, but it's fine, it's fine," she sings — almost seethes — on "Honey," the album's lead single, a languid meditation on stasis and confession that builds up slow around a ground-out guitar line and crests in waves of pummeling drums, frayed vocals, frayed everything. Though lit up with distortion and drum-machine pulses, Torres is easily imaginable as a stripped-down acoustic affair, and in some ways might be better as such; "Come to Terms" finds Scott unplugged and fingerpicking, allowing lines like "just because the two of us will both grow old in time/ don't mean we should go old together" the time and space to make their full devastation known.
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Ripely Pine

Lady Lamb the Beekeeper
2013 | Ba Da Bing! / Revolver

The first two minutes of Lady Lamb the Beekeeper's Ripely Pine seem to reinforce the notion of fragile acquiescence that 23-year-old Aly Spaltro's stage name suggests. "Take me by the arm to the altar/ Take me by the collar to the cliff/ …Take me by the braid down to my grave," she croons on "Hair to the Ferris Wheel" over a languidly-thumbed electric guitar, the ghost of an autoharp shuffling around in... the background. But on this, Lady Lamb the Beekeeper's first record cut in a proper studio, nothing is quite as it seems. Just when a lesser song might be content to wrap up its delicate reverie, the wool is ripped away and a Technicolor blast of crunchy guitars and detached-garage drums gush forth, Spaltro's dusky voice bottoming out over the deluge. This is par for the course on Ripely Pine; these songs tend start in one place, end in another, and cycle through sometimes a dozen imaginings of themselves on the way — like "You Are The Apple" which, over seven minutes, slides from a nervous acoustic twitch to a swampy low-slung romp to a billowing, spiking orchestral swoon. The album's lyrical turf is both elemental and surreal, like a funhouse mirror turned on a dream of an anatomy lab; hearts are eaten like strawberry cake, blood is canned like jam, love is handled like a newborn's skull. By the end, it's clear those opening lines weren't a coy feint, but a trap; it's you who is being led, and Lady Lamb the Beekeeper with her claws in your arm. And you will go with her — to the altar, to the grave, wherever — and love every weird minute of it.
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A Love Surreal

Bilal
2013 | eOne Music / Entertainment One Distribution

Bilal's career is odd: He is indelibly associated with the rise of early-'00s neo-soul, and while he hasn't become as famous as some of his contemporaries, he also didn't disappear down a wormhole like D'Angelo. Bilal's elastic, glorious voice has been a reliable presence on Roots records and other rap projects over the last 10 years, but his solo career, hampered by the usual setbacks, sputtered. His name seemed destined to be... forever preceded by a "ft."

A Love Surreal, released last winter, is only his third in 12 years, a batting average only slightly higher than D'Angelo's. The album doesn't reflect any bitterness or discontent, however; it is a lush, relaxed album, one that pivots neatly between styles. "West Side Girl" is grotty, sexy and Prince-ly; "Slipping Away" gazes at the stars like Donny Hathaway; "Lost For Now" even sounds remarkably like Big Star.
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Open the Crown

Arrington de Dionyso's Malaikat dan Slnga
2013 | K Records / SC Distribution

Now 16 years into his career, Arrington De Dionyso is essentially doomed to be underrated. His work with the brilliant, ignored Old Time Relijun channeled the same chaotic mania of The Pop Group, full of slashing voodoo guitars, hyperventilating percussion and De Dionyso's urgent, terrified howl — which bore more than a passing resemblance to Pop Group frontman Mark Stewart. Since embarking on a solo career in 2006, his work has only... gotten more daring and more fascinating. It's guaranteed to appeal to anyone with any measure of fondness for pioneering late '70s UK groups like the Slits, Swell Maps and PiL. Like those groups, De Dionyso dismantles jazz, dub and reggae and uses the individual elements to create something riveting and otherworldly. "There Will Be No Survivors" crawls grimly forward, a strangled saxophone punctuating De Dionyso's seething promise: "We're going down in flames." "I Create in the Broken System" is essentially Satanic reggae, De Dionyso doing his best Don Van Vliet over burnt-to-a-crisp, undead two-step. The title track is glorious cacophony, full of falling-down-the-stairs drums, horror-house organs and De Dionyso's madman proclamations ("I am the shapeshifter! I am the song of psychic fire! 10,000 tigers in my temple!") It's one of the year's most fearless records, daring music for those who dare investigate.
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House of Woo

Maxmillion Dunbar
2013 | RVNG INTL. / SC Distribution

Maxmillion Dunbar, a DJ/producer from Washington, D.C., makes sleek, spacious electronic music pitched between the current vogues for the rhythmic action of vintage Chicago house and the heady contemplation of cosmic synthesizer jams. About half of House of Woo plays as certifiable dance music, with upright rhythms that assert themselves with force, while the other half has nary a beat to speak for. Representing the former, "Slave to the Vibe" opens with... unbound '80s keyboard sounds, patiently arrayed in floating fashion, that snap into a formalist grid when the beat kicks in a little more than two minutes in. The way the hi-hat hangs in what sounds like a sweaty expanse of the stratosphere evokes old Chicago house anthems by the likes of Larry Heard (Mr. Fingers, Fingers Inc.), but "Woo" pulls back, quiets down, and drifts into comparatively ambient territory. A few beats still clack and clang, but the background textures creep the fore, and a wandering, thinking-out-loud synth-riff establishes itself in a way that remains present in tracks like "Coins for the Canopy" and "The Figurine (Nod Mix)." The funky dancefloor-filler "Ice Cream Graffiti" goes big and beat-intensive again, but it's never long before the sound spaces out and spreads in a manner befitting the title of "Loving the Drift."
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Ugly Heroes

Ugly Heroes
2013 | Mello Music Group / The Orchard

Ugly Heroes is comprised of two rising emcees, Verbal Kent and Red Pill, and one veteran producer, Apollo Brown, who set out to create rap music that embodied the spirit of the diminishing blue-collar workforce. "It's the person that works on your car. It's the factory worker that's counting parts all day, smelling like oil and grease," Brown says. "That individual that provides for their family, makes a living and is a... human being — that's a ugly hero." Ugly Heroes' debut, self-titled album takes a hard look into a life of grueling work: clocking in long hours, drinking afterward and somehow maintaining enough strength to continue.
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Haw

Hiss Golden Messenger
2013 | Paradise of Bachelors / Redeye

After making music for nearly 20 years, veteran Michael Taylor is just now finding his largest audience with Hiss Golden Messenger. It's actually his third band, following the short-lived punk group Ex-Ignota and the longer-lived San Francisco alt-country act The Court & Spark. When the latter broke up in 2007 — after four albums and nearly a decade of near-constant touring — Taylor settled down in Durham, North Carolina, where he started... a family, pursued a degree in folklore, and made music more as a hobby than as a priority.

Over several albums — a few self-released, a few more via North Carolina indie label Paradise of Bachelors — Hiss Golden Messenger has alternated between an austere solo acoustic project for Taylor and a full band featuring Scott Hirsh on guitar and Terry Lonergan on drums. For Haw, the fourth and arguably best release under the HGM moniker, they added members of Lambchop, Megafaun and the Black Twig Pickers to the line-up. Whether alone or with friends, however, the primary elements of Hiss Golden Messenger remain constant: Taylor's voice, which sounds both genial and mysterious, and his lyrics, which examine thorny issues of faith, fidelity and family.
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Bazooka

Bazooka
Slovenly Recordings

The house band at the Wild Rumpus, Greek grime peddlers and brothers-in-arms with fellow countrymen Acid Baby Jesus and Gay Anniversary deliver big, clanging songs built for late-night deep-woods campfire dancing. They've got two drummers, which is probably part of what makes the music feel so frantic: "Koritsi Stin Akti" roars forward like some kind of demonic Mustang out for one last, doomed street race; "Bye Bye Girl" is deranged country, twanging... guitar and full-gallop percussion while "Ravening Trip"'s steady chug almost sounds like a bunch of greasers mocking Madchester, its shuffling backbeat smothered by horror-film riffing. This is party music for 20-foot monsters.
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Come Cry With Me

Daniel Romano
2013 | Normal Town Records

Singer/songwriter Daniel Romano hails from Canada but sounds like he's from America's Deep South as he writes old-school country ballads sung in a deep, Man-in-Black drawl. On his latest record, this year's aptly titled Come Cry With Me, there's a dirge about unrequited love, reflections on being a rejected middle child, and a rambling saga about getting a ride with a guy who calls himself Chicken Bill.
Jay Arner

Jay Arner
2013 | Mint Records / Revolver

Jay Arner's self-titled solo debut begins with a low bass groove that sounds like an engine idling, ready to rev "Midnight on South Granville" into high gear. To say the song never bolts away is no complaint, though, as the lyrics recount a night spent catching the bus, missing your stop, getting lost and wandering aimlessly. Set against that chugging bass line, those buzzy synths and that stoner guitar, half-drunk anomie has... rarely sounded quite so epic. A Vancouver-based musician who has helmed album by Mount Eerie, Apollo Ghosts and Rose Melberg, Arner recorded these new songs during lonely sessions at his practice space, recording straight to laptop to emphasize a DIY mid-fi sound, and the resulting Jay Arner mixes mopey postpunk instrumentation with power-pop song structures. Even though the unhurried tempos are far too laidback to sell the "power" in the pop, that spacey, narcotized vibe can be deceptive: The music reveals new sonic and lyrical details with each listen, whether it's the M.C. Escher hook on "Broken Glass" or the world-weary cautions of "Nightclubs," which finds a tricky balance between wry and romantic.
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Johnny Hallyday, The Collection 1960-1962

Lenny Kaye — Wed, 10 Jul 2013 15:48:16 +0000

A cruise through the French Elvis's early catalogue

Forever subtitled the French Elvis, Johnny Hallyday’s contributions to rock ‘n’ roll have always been undervalued. Though virtually unknown in America, partially because of the language barrier and partially because of cultural myopia, his effect on Europe’s appreciation of the music’s joie de vivre impacted an entire continent. A superstar “over there” for half a century, he early on became a symbol of rock’s unruly spirit and sensuality, and a cruise through his early catalogue, as gathered here, shows why.

Hallyday was in his mid teens when he caught wind of Elvis. He was already an entertainer through his family, and began incorporating Presley’s hip-shake into his cabaret act. In early 1960 he was signed by the French company Vogue, and scored a breakthrough with “Souvenirs Souvenirs,” a bright piece of pop with a bouncy guitar solo. Perhaps a better analogy than Presley would be the idols cresting in his wake, a Ricky Nelson or a Bobby Rydell. Hallyday covered American hits — “Itsy Bitsy Petite Bikini,” “Let’s Twist Again” — and songs that sounded like American hits — “Toi Qui Regrettes” could be a transplanted Brill Building romancer, while “Si Tu Restes Avec Moi” is rockabilly at full epiglottal roar. But if he didn’t return the hits from whence they came, his rebellious image and role model made him an icon in his homeland. There is something appealing about the soft vowels and inflections of French set to a beat, and in paving the way for the Ye-Ye movement of coyly innocent pop double-entendre-ing, Hallyday’s place as provocateur is unassailable. These early songs would ring in a career that followed the timeline of rock’s worldliness, his persona roughening as the ’60s progressed into the ’70s, along with a tabloid life that would be the envy of any Behind the Music.

Bob Marley, Legend Remixed

Barry Walters — Tue, 25 Jun 2013 13:00:07 +0000

A sturdy retooling of the ultimate gateway drug to Marley's work

The latest of several Bob Marley remix albums provokes the initial knee-jerk reaction that greets all most post-mortem alterations of sacrosanct artifacts, namely: “Blasphemy!” The same was said of the 1984 issue of Legend, which included five relatively subtle remixes that were replaced on all pressings from 1986 and thereafter (but ultimately revived on the bonus disc of the 2002 deluxe edition). Then as now, Legend remains the ultimate gateway drug to Marley’s work, one that at approximately 25 million global sales, is by far the planet’s most popular reggae album. It is sturdy enough to sustain the tinkering.

Legend: Remixed takes that classic status and stirs it up with drastically different remixes that downplay reggae in favor of largely bombastic hip-hop and EDM beats. The generally far-more-aggressive results aren’t always spiritual or spliff-friendly: The inevitable dubstep track, Stephen Marley’s interpretation of “Easy Skanking,” features a counter-intuitively uneasy bass rattle that suggests Skrillex. Stephen pulls many of the same tricks, with greater success, on his dad’s “Buffalo Soldier,” which itself is about dislocation and therefore suits the disjunctive new arrangement.

But although nothing here betters the originals, some tracks offer revelatory new elements. Roni Size’s drum ‘n’ bass rendition of “I Shot the Sheriff” messes with the tempo, initially slowing it down slightly, and then doubling it, as if the song’s protagonist were literally running from the law. It’s an irie move, and yet Size preserves plenty of the Wailers’ original riffs. Thievery Corporation achieve a similar balance in their dubbed-out interpretation of “Get Up, Stand Up,” which like roots reggae itself, mixes tranquil parts (womblike bass, gurgling sound effects) with enervating qualities (the punchy snare, Marley’s righteous vocal).

The rest isn’t always this savvy, but many cuts, like Jim James of My Morning Jacket’s oddly hypnotic twist on “Waiting in Vain,” get better with repeated plays. Legend: Remixed may not ultimately age well, but for Summer 2013, it’s an audacious party record.

Bombino: The Music is Political

Justin Davidson — Thu, 06 Jun 2013 14:05:46 +0000

Some years ago, the American documentary filmmaker Ron Wyman was bouncing around the northwestern hump of Africa, in the borderless land framed by the artificial nations of Niger, Mali, Libya, Algeria and Burkina Faso populated mostly by the Tuareg people. The long drives were accompanied by the sound of a languorous guitar on a bootleg cassette tape, each tight phrase linked to the next in an endless chain of riffs that stretched across the desert. “Who is that?” Wyman wanted to know. “Bombino,” he was told: a skinny, shy young man from the city of Agadez, in Niger, named Omara Moctar, though everyone called him by the bastardized Italian word bambino — “little kid.”

It took two years for Wyman to find and befriend Bombino, because the instrument he played was so important to the ferociously independent Tuareg that for a while the government of Niger banned it. It’s too dangerous in Agadez; try the capital, Niamey, Wyman was told — no, wait, he just left for Ouagadougou. But whatever city The Kid happens to be calling home, his real habitat is a floating jam session that might be taking place in a friend’s living room, in the courtyard of a house, at an outdoor wedding, or miles out in the bush, where a long cable links a clattering generator to the musicians sitting cross-legged on an old carpet spread out on the ground.

Bombino’s first album, Agadez, captures the casual camaraderie of the Tuareg world, the sense that music is an aid to friendship and festivities. An armed rebellion in 2007 and the ensuing crackdown flung many Tuareg — including the Moctar family — into exile; when peace returned, Bombino celebrated with a concert in the plaza in front of Great Mosque in Agadez. The stage was a grid of mud bricks covered with a rug, and the crowd quickly overwhelmed the few rows of plastic chairs. The guitarist was swallowed by the throng, until someone thought to hoist him on their shoulders; Bombino kept playing without a hiccup, drawing raw energy from the audience and beaming it back out to them transformed into smoky, sophisticated guitar licks.

Bombino claims Jimi Hendrix and Mark Knopfler as early influences, and while you can hear his affinity for big-sound blues and rhapsodic solos, his playing has a less showy, more disciplined spirit. He doesn’t spin off into stratospheric guitar-hero noodling. Instead, he threads his way through the weave of rhythms, circling around the tune, kneading and bending as if constantly trying to find its most perfect form. He sings, too, exhorting his people in a plaintive tenor that’s carried on the interlocking gears of percussion and guitar.

Agadez had the happy, handmade feel of music played while over a nearby fire, a goat roasting slowly on its spit. The second album, Nomad, is a different story. In the last few years, Bombino has vaulted beyond his local celebrity and started touring abroad. Dan Auerbach of the Black Keys invited him to his studio in Nashville, where he found the exact opposite of his home terrain: a soundproofed wonderland of new technology and vintage amps, and the rich, moist petri dish of Delta blues, country and southern rock. Bombino had been reared on the art of making do; now he had to adapt to the burden of open-ended possibilities.

The result is both fascinating and frustrating. In Nomad, he sounds like a great guitarist with a signature style, fronting a band that only sort of speaks his language. The slippery twang of a lap steel guitar, the rock ‘n’ roll drum kit, the brawny girders of electric bass, the churchy reverb added at the mixing console — all these luscious American additives mix awkwardly with his plainer outdoor style.

A quiet, self-effacing man who communicates with the non-Tuareg world in idiosyncratic French, Bombino doesn’t have much use for authenticity. His people were nomads, leading camel trains across the Sahara to the cosmopolitan ports of the Mediterranean. Later, they drove, fed and guided tourists, and these contacts fed into their rich cultural hybrid. They have absorbed Islam and adapted it to their use; they have also done the same with music. Today, that part of Africa is once again isolated by violence, so it’s up to a new kind of nomad, the international touring musician, to go hunt down new sources of cultural wealth. That’s what Bombino was doing in Nashville: mainlining new sounds the way, as a teenager, he internalized Hendrix. The end result is not Nomad, but some future development in a tradition that never stays still.

Various Artists, Real World Records Label Sampler

eMusic Editorial Staff — Wed, 05 Jun 2013 21:25:55 +0000

Since its inception in 1989, the Real World label has been home to some of the most forward-thinking, boundary-shaking music from around the globe. Founded by Peter Gabriel as a kind of recorded complement to his WOMAD festival, the label soon took on a life of its own, releasing records by giants like Tabu Ley Rochereau, Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Jocelyn Pook and more. This sampler is a good place to start if you’re looking to discover the label’s all-encompassing sound.

Orchestra Super Mazembe, Mazembe @ 45 ROM Vol. 2

Chris Nickson — Wed, 05 Jun 2013 17:59:40 +0000

Glorious and uplifting tracks from the late '70s and early '80s

In the ’70s, it wasn’t unusual for soul and funk singles to be so long that one track was split over both sides of the record. But in Kenya, in the ’70s and ’80s, every single was like that. Five minutes was never enough; the audience wanted a track to last eight or nine minutes and the artists were happy to comply. And there was another, more important, reason: people didn’t have the money to buy entire albums, but they could afford singles.

Orchestra Super Mazembe, from Zaire via Nairobi, were the kings of this Kenyan pop scene. They hit it big in 1977 with their infectious “soukous” style, a sped-up descendant of Congolese rumba. Their lilting vocal harmonies and cascading guitars struck a chord across East Africa, and once they reached the top they stayed there until the mid ’80s, releasing more than 40 singles, all of them hits. The fact that they sang in Lingala, a language from the other side of the continent, was immaterial. This was all about the music.

These nine tracks from the late ’70s and early ’80s are glorious and uplifting, with glistening lead guitar, fiery horns and percussion that defy the feet to stay still. There’s a formula to the Super Mazembe sound: each track has a four-part structure, starting off restrained before catching fire around the two-minute mark, then fading out halfway so the record could be flipped over. Then the main riff returns, fast and frantic. Sometimes, as on “Yo-Mabe” horns trade lines with the guitar to send the music spiralling higher and higher. On “Mwana Nyiau,” the singers miaow like cats, while the music teeters on the edge of chaos, a piece of brilliant madness.

There’s so much warmth here that it almost feels like it raises the temperature a couple of degrees. The pleasure is palpable — you can almost hear the smiles. Yes, there’s a formula to the music, but the effect is so joyful it really doesn’t matter.

The Lee Thompson Ska Orchestra, The Benevolence Of Sister Ignatius

Andrew Harrison — Sun, 02 Jun 2013 13:00:00 +0000

Classic-era ska covers from members of Madness and Nutty Boys

Like disco, Northern Soul and the Chunky Kit-Kat, ska is one of Mother Nature’s few absolutely unimprovable phenomena. And those who get the bug for syncopated, horns ‘n’ Hammond proto-reggae at an impressionable age tend to be drawn back to it. Hence this album of classic-era ska covers from Madness saxophonist and songwriter Lee Thompson, aided by Nutty Boys bassist Mark “Bedders” Bedford and a suite of collaborators including Madness associates Terry Edwards and Seamus Beaghen. They play the raucous dancehall tunes that changed their lives with sufficient verve and spirit to make you understand that, if you’d heard them in the right place and time, they’d probably have changed yours too.

The album is named after the Jamaican nun who encouraged future conquering lions of ska Don Drummond, Rico Rodriguez and John “Dizzy” Moore — founder of The Skatalites — at the Alpha Boys School in Kingston. But it’s no arid tribute. Though projects such as these risk losing something indefinable to the vain precision of modern recording, Thompson enlisted modern ska guru Mike “Prince Fatty” Pelanconi to produce and the result is full of original Studio One grit, grind and gusto. It’s just a little easier to hear what’s going on here.

From the opening version of the Baba Brooks Band’s “Gun Fever” (party-time ska in its rude essence, all gunshots and spry electric organ), via a sinuous take on Desmond Dekker’s “Fu Manchu,” through deliciously woozy vibe-ups of “Napoleon Solo” and the “Mission Impossible” theme (’60s Jamaica was always big on spies) this is impossibly infectious music, played for the joy of it. Guest singer Bitty McLean aside, the vocals are best characterized as charmingly amateur but this stuff was always life-affirming first and professional a distant second. This is why ska never dates.

Perhaps a few novice ravers searching for Skrillex will discover TLTSO’s “Bangarang” by mistake — Thompson and co.’s version of the oldie by Stranger Cole and Lester Sterling has all the upsy-downsy euphoria of Toots and the Maytals’ “Monkey Man,” plus the new clarity imbued by Fatty’s mix. You can imagine a whole new generation falling in love with it.

Miguel Zenon & The Rhythm Collective, OYE!! Live in Puerto Rico

Ken Micallef — Tue, 28 May 2013 13:00:04 +0000

An exemplary fusion of Latin rhythm, rich improvisation and beautiful melody

On OYE!! Live in Puerto Rico, alto saxophonist, composer and MacArthur Foundation Fellow Miguel Zenon and his quartet (Tony Escapa, electric bassist Aldemar Valentin and percussionist Reynaldo De Jesus) make good on their stated mission, which is to bring greater jazz awareness to their native Puerto Rico. In this recording, they are treated like conquering heroes; the quartet has the rare ability to communicate jazz’s art and relevance to all audiences, and the fervent applause heard on this recording is testament.

Zenon is no stranger to merging jazz and Latin music, as you can hear on recent Marsalis Music recordings such as Esta Plena and Alma Adentro. But OYE!! is first and foremost a live recording, and it’s infused with all the blood, sweat and glory of both a great performance and at times, a street fight. It communicates on a visceral level, each musician improvising and scorching the earth clean with Zenon’s often beautiful, always spirited alto saxophone leading the way.

OYE!! opens with a stomping downbeat accent and a percolating Latin rhythm, leading into the Tito Puente cha cha cha-turned Carlos Santana hit, “Oye Como Va.” Zenon manipulates the song’s familiar melody while The Rhythm Collective cooks the groove with a dry funk charge. The group constantly teases and toys with the song’s changui rhythm, electric bass prowling, drums floating and stinging — playful, but musically serious and powerful. “El Necio” increases the tempo and the melodic fervor, trading between Zenon’s alto excursions and Valentin’s fragrant solo bass, which recalls Jaco Pastorius by way of John Patitucci, his warmth connecting on a gut level. “JOS Nigeria” culls an Afrobeat, Fela-styled vibe, its undulating rhythm also recalling Weather Report’s sweltering “Black Market.” “Double Edge” closes the album in high vamp mode, Escapa and Valentin laying down a scalding rhythm while Zenon sails above the fray.

Though fusion is a bad word even today, OYE!! Live in Puerto Rico is an exemplary fusion of Latin rhythm, rich improvisation and beautiful melody all held aloft by excellent leadership. If jazz had 10 more Miguel Zenons, the idiom would be in much better cultural standing.

eMusic’s Alternate-Universe Eurovision

Laura Studarus — Thu, 16 May 2013 17:04:55 +0000

The Eurovision Song Contest was established as way to bring European countries together after World War II. The first competition was held in the town of Lugano, Switzerland, on May 24, 1956. Since then, it’s become a sprawling behemoth that makes American Idol, The Voice and X-Factor look downright quaint. The first year, seven countries entered. Now in its 58th year, 39 countries are competing for the top prize.

To participate, musicians must submit an original, unpublished song. Since residents of their home country can’t vote for them, the goal is to woo an international audience. As a result, language, content and staging is all up for interpretation. Read: This is a contest of big, bigger biggest.

eMusic’s Laura Studarus complied a fantasy Eurovision Song Contest lineup. How would artists and songs stack up against each other if the laws of time, space, and competition were suspended in favor of good taste and outstanding musicality?

Denmark: Mew

Mew And The Glass Handed Kites

Mew
2012 | Columbia

Song submitted: "Zookeeper's Boy"
Odds of winning: 4:1

Mew may be the most likely to catch viewers off-guard with their sneaky combination of ethereal hooks and grinding guitars. "Zookeeper's Boy," from the band's 2005 album And the Glass handed Kites, mixes prog with just the right amount of whimsy, making it perfect for mass consumption. (Sample lyric: "If there's a glitch, you're an ostrich.") Add to that the band's propensity for Edward Gorey-style visuals... and frontman Jonas Bjerre's doe-eyed charisma, and right out of the gate you've got a band to beat.
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England: Chad Valley

Young Hunger

Chad Valley
2012 | Cascine / Redeye

Song submitted: "Fall 4 U (feat. Glasser)"
Odds of winning: 20:1

For his debut full-length Young Hunger, producer Hugo Manuel (aka Chad Valley) brought quite a collection of friends with him, including Twin Shadow, El Perro Del Mar, Active Child and Glasser. And what does a gathering of pals plus music equal? A party. Which is completely in line with Eurovision's reconciliatory nature. While any song on the album could be a competition-worthy single,... Manuel will bring along Glasser to perform restrained electro love duet, "Fall 4 U." Will top awards to go the ghost of 1980s film soundtracks past? With a coupling this chemistry-heavy, it's not impossible.
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Estonia: Maria Minerva

Will Happiness Find Me?

Maria Minerva
2012 | Not Not Fun / Revolver

Song submitted: "Sweet Synergy"
Odds of winning: 600:1

Estonian sound-collage artist Maria Minerva isn't your standard Eurovision song competitor. But if Belgium can enter Telex — a band whose idea of a chorus is chanting "Eurovision Eurovision Eurovision" — surely there's a room to think outside of the box. Minerva's debut album Will Happiness Find Me? is a series of atonal experiments, woozy minimal disco, and cascades of samples. Underneath it all beats a... spooky, fractured-pop heart. Let's be honest: Minerva's chances of winning are slim. But she won't go down without a fight.
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France: Daft Punk

Get Lucky

Daft Punk
2013 | EP/SINGLE

Song submitted: "Get Lucky"
Odds of winning: even

There's a subgenre in music known as "schlager." In German, it means "a hit." But loosely translated in Eurovision Song Contest speak it means, "A pop song with a hint of cheese you gladly overlook because it's so damn catchy." No song in this year's fantasy field comes close to Daft Punk's recently-released single "Get Lucky." The helmeted Frenchmen have combined 1970s disco funk, handclaps, Pharrell... glitter-glam vocals, and just a whiff of vocoder to create the kind of tune you can imagine kids little kids getting down to and adults, er, "getting down" to. You might want to start engraving the winner's trophy now.
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Italy: Porcelain Raft

Strange Weekend

Porcelain Raft
2012 | Secretly Canadian / SC Dist.

Song submitted: "Unless You Speak From Your Heart"
Odds of winning: 100:1

Eurovision is Porcelain Raft's (Mauro Remiddi) chance to show the world that he's about more than hazy pop choruses constructed from drum loops, gently strummed guitars, whispered vocals, and tape hiss. Strange Weekend single "Unless You Speak From Your Heart" combines the dream pop hallmarks with a hip-hop beat, and crisp pace that splits the difference between Beach House atmospherics and Jam-style... posturing. Bedroom recording wimp? Hardly. Here's hoping the one-man-band brings a few friends to help him fill the big stage.
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Norway: Sondre Lerche

Two Way Monologue

Sondre Lerche
2004 | CAROLINE ASTRALWERKS - CAT

Song submitted: "Two Way Monologue"
Odds of winning: 7:1

A Norwegian scene stalwart, Sondre Lerche's eight albums have covered a lot of ground: from pop to garage rock to film scores to bossa nova. Which pretty much means Lerche can be anything we want him to be — including a Eurovision champion. Single "Two Way Monologue" (taken from the 2004 album of the same name) is his greatest chance to take home the title.... Striking a happy medium between singing and crooning, Lerche isn't just out to perform for the audience, but seduce them. And you know what? It just might work.
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Poland: KAMP!

Melt

Kamp
2013 | Discotexas / GoodToGo

Song submitted: "Melt"
Odds of winning: 70:1

Eastern Europe's answer to Friendly Fires, Polish dance trio KAMP! gravitate towards slick production, bouncy Balearic beats, and lush beds of electronics. It might be a hard sell, since generally the competition favors more straight up pop-driven fare. (Just don't tell the 2006 winner, Finnish death metal band Lordi, that.) But if anyone can sweep viewers up in their undeniable wave of ready-for-primetime dance club energy, it's... a band so vibrant they had to include an exclamation point in their name.
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Scotland: CHVRCHES

The Mother We Share

CHVRCHES
2012 | EP/SINGLE

Song submitted: "The Mother We Share"
Odds of winning: 16:1

Eurovision favors the over-the-top statement. Backup dancers, feathers, light shows — these are people who are likely to laugh at the suggestion that you merely "put a bird on it." No one's music lends itself to embellishment quite like electro-pop outfit, CHVRCHES. Like The Knife rendered in primary colors, the Scottish trio favor icy electronics and ambitious musical gestures. CHVRCHES lean towards the emotional... though, their tales of love and hate framed by frontwoman Lauren Mayberry's fairytale-worthy vocals. Sure they've been known to stand still when performing, but that just makes it easier to frame them with rings of fire and chorus girls.
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Spain: Devendra Banhart

Mala

Devendra Banhart
2013 | Nonesuch

Song submitted: "Mi Negrita"
Odds of winning: 150:1

Fun fact: There's no rule that an artist has to actually hail from the country they represent in Eurovision Song Contest. Which is why, in 1988, Céline Dion won on behalf of Switzerland — despite being Canadian. With multi-genre provocateur El Guincho in perpetual hiding, the nation will tap Spanish-influenced Devendra Banhart to fill in. The laid-back folkie may not have the razzle dazzle factor of... other acts, but Tropicália-accented balled "Mi Negrita" won't go completely unappreciated.
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Sweden: Jens Lekman

Night Falls Over Kortedala

Jens Lekman
Secretly Canadian / SC Dist.

Song submitted: "The World Moves On"
Odds of winning: 2:1

In 1974, ABBA won the Eurovision Song Contest with their rendition of "Waterloo," which went on to appear on the band's second album of the same name. Who better to carry on the tradition than Jens Lekman? The closing track of his 2007 album Night Falls Over Kortedala "Friday Night at the Drive in Bingo" contains the same simple syrup-laced pop that saw Benny... Andersson and the gang to victory — right down to a horn-filled chorus and nostalgic location name-checking. Bonus: Lekman squeezes in an offhanded mention of rabbit sex. Let's see the dancing queens try to do that.
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Various Artists, Kenya Special (Selected East African Recordings From The 1970s & ’80s)

Richard Gehr — Fri, 10 May 2013 19:24:57 +0000

Highlighting local tribal rhythms, Nigerian afrobeat and Congolese rumba

East African music has long taken a backseat to the sounds of West Africa, at least abroad. Soundway offers a sprawling and entertaining corrective with this double-album follow-up to its Nigeria and Ghana “Specials.” From the ’60s into the ’80s, Nairobi’s River Road commercial district, with its hundreds of record shops, fed the country’s seemingly unquenchable appetite for seven-inch singles. Kenya Special spotlights 32 bright, bouncy ways that local tribal rhythms, Nigerian afrobeat, Congolese rumba and American funk and soul came together in regional hits and small-run gems.

In Kenya, no sound was bigger than benga, which originated among the Luo people. Benga’s synchronized guitars are in full effect on “H. O. Ongili,” the DO 7 Band track that popularized the style. But check out the Kalamba Boys’ Kamba version, which replaces benga’s fast instrumental section with a thrilling garage-rock exit strategy. And dig the Arabic tinge to Hafusa Abasi & Slim Ali’s “Sina Raha” (I’m Sad), not to mention the funky eight-minute Swahili-rumba epic “Sweet Sweet Mbombo” by Orchestre Baba National. Tanzania’s Afro 70 almost seem to go Sun Ra in “Cha-Umheja.” And on and on. How exceptional is Kenya Special? There’s not a slack track to be found, and presumably plenty more yet to be excavated.

Samba Touré, Albala

Chris Nickson — Fri, 10 May 2013 17:48:38 +0000

Shaping up to be a towering figure in his own right

If the late, great Ali Farka Touré has a spiritual heir, it’s Samba Touré — who’s no relation, despite the name. Samba was a protégé of the godfather of Mali’s desert blues and the sinewy guitar textures and incisive licks he brings to his lean, loping songs are eerily reminiscent of Ali Farka. Samba’s third release, though, shows he’s shaping up to be a towering figure in his own right, with a style very much his own.

That’s most evident on “Idjé Lalo,” which starts out as a lovely, swirling mass of sound, guitar, ngoni lute and sokou violin playing against each other to psychedelic effect before resolving into a relentless groove. As with most the material here, it draws lyrical inspiration from the fractured state of Mali, where a military coup in 2012 brought an abrupt end to democracy. The only track Touré didn’t write is “Fondora” — “Leave Our Road” – a traditional tune to which he’s put new words. Recorded in late 2012 when Islamist forces were taking over northern Mali, it’s an impassioned plea for peace, with a refrain of “I say, leave our road/ All killers, leave our road,” and a spare, looping riff that conjures up the wide spaces of Mali’s desert region.

This is a wonderfully mature album, one where less is often more — a lesson Touré has absorbed from his mentor. On Albala, Samba has really come of age and created something warm, wise and deliciously melodic, his own desert blues.

Mark Gergis, I Remember Syria

Richard Gehr — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 17:35:41 +0000

A stunning, evocative man-to-nation love letter

The final track on 2004′s I Remember Syria — producer Mark Gergis’s evocative man-to-nation “love letter” consisting of street sounds, political commentary, homosexual confession, random bursts of radio, plus a few actual musical selections — is a conceptual stunner. “The Norias of Hama (Blood Irrigation on the Orontes)” is eight minutes of what sounds like jets but is actually Hama’s famous wooden water wheels, which have been adopted as a symbol of resistance to current president Bashar al-Assadh, son of former president Hafez al-Assad, whose tanks and bombs killed some 30,000 Syrian Sunnis in 1982. I Remember Syria is thus more timely than ever, and its re-release benefits the Syrian Arab Red Crescent (Red Cross).

More than 70,000 Syrians have been killed during the current civil war, while another 2.2 million have either been displaced or fled abroad. I Remember Syria, with one disc dedicated to capitol city Damascus and another to its hinterlands, celebrates an ethnically and culturally diverse country noted for its hospitality and beauty. The religious chants of “Ramadan Radio,” the wonderous chaos of “Dueling Cassette Kiosks,” and Assyrian star Jermaine Tamraz’s lovely “Moumita” offer audio snapshots of the conflict’s catastrophic cultural cost.

Discover: Vampisoul

Richard Gehr — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 16:09:44 +0000

For Vampisoul founder Iñigo Pastor, it all began as a fanzine that mutated into a label with global aspirations. At age 15, Pastor began publishing La Herencia de los Munster (The Legend of the Munsters) from his home in Spain’s Basque region. Following flexidisks featuring Spanish garage bands, Pastor’s first vinyl release on his Munster label was an EP containing one track by Spacemen 3 and “two Spanish bands nobody outside of Spain knows.” Although it was essentially a label devoted to singles and albums from the fringes of punk, DIY and psych-rock culture, Munster’s most successful release turned out to be what Pastor believes to be the world’s first compilation of tracks by mildly raunchy R&B diva — and short-term Miles spouse — Betty Davis.

By 2002, Iñigo had traveled and listened widely enough to realize the need for a parallel label for his new international enthusiasms. “My musical friends made me listen to stuff and enlarged my spectrum. I got into Latin music, black American music, African music, everywhere’s music.” Assisted by his widening network of contacts, “We built up a nice catalog in a short period of time,” he says. Vampisoul’s first release was Back to Peru, a mixture of underground rock and tropical tracks from the 1960s and ’70s. Vampi slipped under the wire and managed to cut a deal to reissue classic albums by Joe Bataan, Joe Cuba, Pete Rodriguez and Ray Barretto shortly before the legendary Fania salsa label was sold again (and then once again). “It was kind of a dodgy label,” he recalls, “but you could somehow get a license from someone in New York City.” Releases of Nigerian afrobeat and highlife, Italian library music, vintage jazz from the Czech Republic, and Iranian underground rock soon followed.

Hits from the Vampisoul catalog include afrobeat co-founder Tony Allen’s albums with Nigeria ’70 and Latin boogaloo star Joe Bataan’s 2003 comeback, Call My Name. The latter, written and produced by the Phenomenal Handclap Band’s Daniel Collas, was one of the first Daptone studio projects and has the 1967 vibe to prove it. Other reissues include Peruvian cumbia from the Amazon, aka chicha, reconstituted from labels that haven’t existed for more than thirty years (which makes royalty payments difficult). Vampisoul has even spawned its own protégé label, Light in the Attic. Matt Sullivan, its founder, interned with Pastor while studying in Spain. “We became very good friends,” Pastor says. “He took the concept back to the United States, where he has surpassed us in many ways because his releases are so fantastic. Now he handles the Betty Davis stuff.”

Here’s Iñigo Pastor on some of his favorite, and odder, Vampisoul and Munster releases.

Los Pirañas,Toma Tu Jabón Kapax

Toma Tu Jabón Kapax

Los Pirañas
2012 | Vampisoul / The Orchard

These three young guys from Bogotá had the same backround as I did in rock, punk and DIY, and they decided to bring back cumbia in their own manner. They recorded this live studio album in a very free, experimental way. When their recordings came into the office, we had to figure out how to tag them for distributors: Basically, it sounds like Krautrockers playing experimental cumbia on bass, guitar, and drums... with no overdubs. Their main sound is cumbia, but it's a natural sort of fusion that really works. Their other bands are Frente Cumbiero and the Meridian Brothers.
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Cumbia Beat, volumes 1 & 2

We did this in collaboration with a good Peruvian friend who turned me on to his country’s music. He brought all his records to Europe and played me stuff every time I was at his place. This Amazonic psychedelic stuff was totally unheard and really vibrant. He said, “Let’s put them out. No one else is and I know the labels and musicians. I saw some of these bands with my father as a kid. On Sundays we’d go to a park and drink beer, eat food, and dance.”

Cumbia Beat Vol. 1

Various Artists
2010 | Vampisoul / The Orchard
Cumbia Beat Vol. 2

Various Artists
2012 | Vampisoul / The Orchard

Back to Peru, volumes 1 & 2

When you open a music book in the occident, it says things like, “In the ’60s, rock ‘n’ roll turned into the British invasion, then psychedelia, then progressive and then blah blah blah.” Peru has a similar progression but it’s not so clearly defined: It’s very mellow and mixed and special. Back to Peru is provides a general introduction to Peruvian music of the ’60s and ’70s. There’s some dance music, like the Gozalo compilations, but there’s a lot that’s moodier, midtempo and more psychedelic, like good Badfinger or late Beatles. They’re also good with melodies, like the Brazilians; maybe it has to do with their weather, food and education. Most of them are self-taught but were serious about making it sound good in the studio. You can find stuff like We All Together or Telegraph Avenue, who make a terrific sound comparable to any American band of the time.

Back To Peru Vol 1

Various Artists
2010 | Vampisoul / The Orchard
Back To Peru Vol 2

Various Artists
2009 | Vampisoul / The Orchard

¡Gózalo!, volumes 1 & 2

Gozalo means “enjoy” in Spanish, and these compilations focus on tropical dance music for partying and good times. Like Colombia, Peru is like a little continent unto itself. So much was happening there in the ’50s, ’60s and early ’80s, before the military took over in South America and everything turned a bit grayer. Listening to this music makes me jealous of anyone who lived there during that time because it was very open.

¡Gózalo! Vol 1

Various Artists
2010 | Vampisoul / The Orchard
¡Gózalo! Vol 2

Various Artists
2010 | Vampisoul / The Orchard

¡Saoco! The Bomba and Plena Explosion in Puerto Rico 1954-1966

¡Saoco! The Bomba and Plena Explosion in Puerto Rico 1954-1966

Various Artists
2012 | Vampisoul / The Orchard

We got in touch with Yannis Ruel, a French journalist. His wife is Puerto Rican, so he spent a lot of time there and found out about all this music. It was like when we started reissuing Fania stuff: You could find it in markets on cheaply done CDs with no liner notes. He thought it should be done right, and very few albums in Puerto Rico are like it. He wrote... an incredible essay that reads like a sociological and musicological dissertation. We're at work on volumes two and three.
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Rangarang: Pre-Revolutionary Iranian Pop

Rangarang

Various Artists
2011 | Vampisoul / The Orchard

A guy based in Washington, D.C., claimed to be the grandson of the guy who recorded these tracks. His grandfather was killed by the Iranian revolutionaries. He sent us a bunch of material to select and compile. It was very difficult. We couldn't find much information about some of the artists. We went by the music rather than by famous names or big hits. It's fascinating to think about this music in... the context of where it was being made and what came before it — a musical explosion in a strange social moment.
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Bola Johnson, Man No Die

Man No Die

Bola Johnson
2010 | Vampisoul / The Orchard

The guy representing Nigeria's Premiere label sent us a batch of 1960s and '70s material this trumpeter and bandleader recorded for Phillips. We learned that Bola has even more recordings out, but we don't know how many because even though he's on Facebook, he never replied to us for information or pictures or anything. He's still playing but doesn't seem to care. The world may seem much smaller these days, but there... are still big holes everywhere. Bola's a complete performer who can play all kinds of African music. This compilation has everything from soft highlife to hard funk like Fela Kuti's, who influenced him.
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Flipper Psychout

Flipper Psychout

Various Artists
2010 | Vampisoul / The Orchard

This was compiled by Alessandro Casella, a record collector and DJ who runs Rome's Micca Club. He got deep into Italian library music and was hired by Flipper to go into its vaults and find material to offer to labels. Mainly, it's music done for publicity, films and television in the early '70s, and the number of different moods and styles was endless. Alessandro came to us with tracks that are psychedelic,... sexy and quite incredible. That kind of music was being produced in Britain, of course, but it was also being done in southern Europe — France, Italy and even Spain. There's a lot more on the way. We're working on a project with the Spanish library music of Warner Chappell, which has something like 15,000 recordings. But it's too much. You need an expert or else you'll spend half your life on it.
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Los Saicos, ¡Demolición! The Complete Recordings

¡Demolición! The Complete Recordings

Los Saicos
2010 | Munster / The Orchard

This is the most significant Munster release at the moment for me. Los Saicos recorded six singles in 1964 and '65, but no albums at all. It was very mysterious. I used to play them for all my friends. I'd put the needle down and they'd say, "What is this?!" The band only played its own stuff, no covers. Their themes were a bit sinister: cemeteries, jails, executions, bombings and demolition. They... even had their own Peruvian TV show. They were stars, and then they split up, quit and didn't play any more music. The bandmember we got in touch with lives a very wealthy life in Washington, D.C., where he works for NASA. He became an engineer. We've gotten many licensing requests for them. I'm very proud of this because we may never see anything as unique as Los Saicos again.
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Lyres, Lyres, Lyres

Lyres Lyres

Lyres
2012 | Munster / The Orchard

I really worshipped the Lyres during my formative years when I was doing the fanzine, and I saw them live a few times. A gap opened between the punk explosion and grunge, and the Lyres were one of the more interesting bands to appear. It was not easy to deal with Jeff Connolly; he's a bit of a perfectionist [laughs]. But it's very good music and I'm glad we did it. No... one else had reissued them except for Matador more than 15 years ago. I'm happy we've made them wider-known.
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Red Baraat: An All-American Immigration Saga

Richard Gehr — Fri, 12 Apr 2013 17:56:44 +0000

Describing New York’s Red Baraat dhol ‘n’ brass band is like those blind guys and the elephant, only in reverse: What you hear depends on what touches you. South Asians will immediately recognize Bollywood hits like “Dum Maro Dum” and “Mast Kalendar,” devotional music like “Samaro Mantra” and “Aarthi, and the joyous party vibe of the baraat, a bridegroom’s wedding procession. Dancers in Virginia and Washington, D.C., will hear a go-go influence right off the bat, especially once sousaphonist John Altieri starts rapping. New Orleaneans will feel right at home once the brass kicks in, jazzbos will feel the swing, and Brazilians think it sounds like samba.

When the loud and proud nonet toured the UK for the first time in early 2013, however, founding dhol drummer Sunny Jain says “they thought it was a punk-rock band,” adding, “I’d never heard that one before.”

Formed in 2009, Red Baraat is the happy multicultural outcome of an all-American immigration saga. Sunny Jain was born in 1975 and raised in Rochester, New York. Originally from Pakistan’s Punjab region, his parents were devout Jains, adherents of the Indian religion noted for its commitment to nonviolence. Sunny was raised a strict vegetarian and prayed at pujas, Jain religious ceremonies, where he learned South Asian bhajan, or devotional songs. Outside the house he played ball with his American friends; inside he played “table tabla” with his uncles and father, an amateur harmonium player and Ravi Shankar fan, jamming out to vintage Bollywood hits and bhajan.

Jain’s two worlds didn’t entwine until he began writing jazz tunes while studying drums and composition at Rutgers. Frustrated by the music’s 32-bar AABA form, he yearned to return to the sounds he heard growing up. “They hold a place in my heart,” he says. “I began studying all the Tin Pan Alley standards when I was 10 years old. But when I started writing, I wanted to explore my standards.” As a bandleader, the drummer released three jazz albums — As Is (re-released as Mango Festival), Avaaz and Taboo — that inventively blend Eastern and Western styles no less distinctively than slightly older desi groundbreakers, and sometime-colleagues, Vijay Iyer, Rudresh Mahanthappa, and Rez Abbasi. Jain, however, was becoming increasingly ambivalent about the jazz scene; he missed the fellow feeling that connects musicians and audience in a communal moment.

Red Baraat was assembled as the wedding band for Jain’s own ceremony. A few years earlier, he’d pick up the double-head dhol drum, a sticks-struck staple of Punjab’s bhangra beats, and fell in love with it. Playing the dhol in drummer Kenny Wolleson’s Himalayas marching band rejuvenated Jain’s love of performance, and he realized that no one to date had combined Indian music, jazz, and electronic music with dhol. “I wanted to do something that reminded me of being a five-year-old in India watching my uncle getting married, when this brass band ensued, a dhol player showed up, and this cacophonous sound started happpening.”

Jain conceived Red Baraat as “another egg in the basket,” just one project among many. But it took on a life of its own. “I only wanted drums and horns, no electrified instruments,” though Altieri occasionally triggers electronic effects. “I wanted to take to the streets with a big boisterous sound.” Red Baraat joined a robust local brass-band cohort that included Slavic Soul Party!, Brooklyn Qawwali Party and Frank London’s Klezmer Brass All Stars. “I wanted a group where I could just play dhol and not drum set. But it’s taken over my life to the point where I hardly ever play drum set nowadays. I knew it was going to be unique, but I didn’t think it would take off like it did.”

Red Baraat’s new Shruggy Ji takes the energy of 2010′s Chaal Baby and 2011′s live Bootleg Bhangra and focuses it in a slightly new direction. As Jain explains, after the India Partition of 1947, “the eastern side gravitated to a rhythm called chaal, which you can hear all over Shruggy Ji. But the western side, and I’m simplifying here, went more to the faster-paced dhamaal, which you hear in ‘Dama Dam Must Qatandar,’ a three-centuries-old Sufi song. The Sufi dhol approach is much more intense.” Jain has been studying that approach on YouTube, picking up licks from the astounding “godfather” of Sufi dhol drumming, Pappu Saeen. “He’ll put the drum strap around his head and start swinging around, playing the most intense stuff and twirling for minutes. It’s ridiculous. I can do it for about 20 seconds before I fall down.”