No Eyed Bird

Sa DingDing, one half Han and one half Mongolian (two different Chinese ethnicities) releases Alive to the world. With her Chinese and international appeal, Sa’s US release is ambitious and perfectly timed as the Beijing Olympics commence near the album’s release date. Sa uses the various languages of Mandarin, Tibetan, Sanskrit, and her own self-created language to weave together a complex mix of musical styles that spans across pop, electronic, and the traditional music of the various ethnicities of China. For those who don’t know, there are 55 different ethnicities (minorities!) that are officially recognized and categorized by the Chinese government. In China, cultural identity is not as simple as it may appear on the surface. In this way, Sa works to bring together different cultures with the melding of different styles of music. The opening track “Mama Tian Na” shows off the variations of styles that she is capable of, from muted chants to epic drums to driving soundtrack beats reminiscent of various movements in the works of Harry Gregson Williams. This epic style is repeated in the two versions of “Alive” (tracks 2 and 8), which is delicately layered with a mix of traditional Chinese instruments along with modern rock beats and basslines. Track 7 “Flickering With Blossoms” is one of my favorites on the album, incorporating lyrics written by a woman who submitted them onto Sa’s blog, and employing a sultry downtempo instrumental track. Track 6 “Lagu Lagu,” is also of note, written in her own self-created language, binding the album together and allowing her to completely appropriate her own music in a work that is unique to Sa DingDing.

Lucibel Crater is a New York 3-piece band, cranking out bits of funk and jazz elements along with some indie shoegaze. The Family Album is a 10-track exploration of eclectic elements coupled with lush instrumentals and Leah Coloff’s singing/spoken word. Oftentimes moody and mysterious, the music definitely does not drag. For example, track 6 (”Blue Stationwagon”) is a long jazzy instrumental piece, sounding like semi-improvised explorations of sound set on top of brilliantly frenetic drumming. If The Doors had known shoegaze, they might have made something like this, bringing a harder edge to “Riders On The Storm.” Track 9 “Swimmers” broods on for the first 3 minutes of the track; the guitar theme then mixes with the drums at the 3-minute mark, congealing into a catharsis of dissonantly beautiful melodies, before abruptly ending at around 5:30, shaking the listener out of its kaleidoscope of manic action. The best piece on the CD is arguably track 7, “Where You Are,” showing off Coloff’s excellent vocal talents and enveloping the listener with a haunting, repetitive melody. Perhaps not as focused as it could be, The Family Album nonetheless showcases the project’s excellent musical ideas.

The Mountain Goats have tiptoed back onto the scene with Heretic Pride, another dreamy album of hushed acoustic pop.  On Heretic Pride, The Mountain Goats touch on everything from pretty girls, cryptozoology, and singer John Darnielle’s own personal history.  Darnielle writes lyrics with a remarkable candor and honesty, offering glimpses into some very personal and very specific moments.  His untrained vocals add an air of earnest authenticity, and as the album goes on, you begin to feel as though he is sitting on a lawn chair in your backyard, a beer in one hand, telling these stories amongst good friends from your own hometown.

Fans will be accustomed to Darnielle’s confessional style of writing, but to unfamiliar ears, his nostalgia can become overbearing at times.  While much of the tracks sparkle with Darnielle’s and bassist Peter Hughes’ distinctive chemistry, songs like “San Bernardino” and “Marduk T-Shirt Men’s Room Incident” are constantly walking the line between poetic and sappy.  Both songs about long-lost lovers and relationships gone wrong, the choruses hop back and forth from cute to clingy to creepy, and just when you’re ready to skip to the next track, back to cute again.

Though the Mountain Goats perform in their usual acoustic style on Heretic Pride, they are masters of mixing it up.  Their sound shifts greatly from track to track, showcasing the skills they’ve honed from a decade and a half as songwriters and performers, and proving that a simple six-string can be one of the most liberating and flexible instruments around.  The Goats still sound as fresh as ever, and establish on Heretic Pride that they remain a force to be a reckoned with, and a benchmark for every kid who quits their day job in pursuit of a musical career.

On his full length debut with Stones Throw, James Pants absolutely oozes groove. There’s no other way to describe the Spokane, WA DJ/Multi-instrumentalist’s approach to music. Pants deals not in songs and hooks, but grooves that slowly creep at the edges of your brain. This is not to say that Welcome is a hookless album. The synth bass of “We’re Through” and the quietly irresistible vocoder riff of “Cosmic Rapp” will nab the listener like a bear trap on first listen. Rather, these obvious hooks service an atmosphere so thick you can breathe it. James’ layered keys and funked-up beats create an aural world so nasty and sexed up as to be almost pornographic. This strength becomes Welcome’s only major weakness as well. Pants occasionally becomes so enamored with atmosphere that he forgets to come back to earth and bring the listener along or the ride, “Prayers of the People,” in particular, overstays its welcome as more of a 2 and a half minute long experiment than an actual song. Throughout the album, Pants seems to fall in love with his own oddness and the vintage of his synths and sometimes forgets to fall in love with actual songcraft. Still, within the larger album context, “Prayers” makes a lot of sense, and most of Welcome’s finest moments come in the form of a slow creep: sounds that didn’t catch in your head the first time, but pull you further down the rabbit hole with each subsequent listen. The more time the listener gives Welcome, the more likely the listener is to fall in love with the same oddness and sounds that Pants has himself.

Producer Simon Smart’s project Sonanaut is focused on music that could be classified as ambient house/acid jazz chillout. Not quite as funky as Ninja Tune (acid jazz), nor as mainstream-sounding as Naked Music (deep house), and certainly not as experimental as Eno (experimental ambient), Smart crafts music that rests between all of these genres, incorporating clean, layered soundscapes along with some dubby beats and slow, sludgy trip-hop sonic aesthetics. In addition, he samples other sources to link to the bigger musical community. Track 8 “Don’t You Know?” is quite possibly the best one on Sinking Upwards, and brings together beautiful electronic drumbeats, phased-and-filtered synthesizers, and complex harmonies, into a piece reminiscent of some of Morgan Geist’s more abstract work. Through Smart’s smooth movements and transitions between tracks, we hear rehashes of musical themes that make up the core of previous tracks on the CD, bringing compelling coherence to the entire release. This is definitely good music for chillout fans, and many others will be interested in the collection of Sonanaut music videos as well.

When one thinks of Scandinavian 5-piece bands, they usually think of The Cardigans, which is a pretty hard act to follow. However, with The Cardigans making most of their greatest songs in the 90s and waning since then, The Beatitude, a five-piece Danish band, crashes onto the scene with some fresh new tunes. Whereas The Cardigans referred back the the 1960s mod scene with its cool, calm instrumentals and cute vocals, The Beatitude refers back to the alternative rock and grunge bands of the 1980s and 1990s with its collection of loud songs. Apart from being Scandinavian and being very good at imitating retro music (yep, 90s music is “retro” now, and I hear Nirvana songs being played on classic rock stations now), the musical styles of The Beatitude and The Cardigans aren’t too similar. Instead, The Beatitude sounds like a mixture of Weezer, The Pixies, and The Breeders, with its poppy distorted guitars and hilarious lyrics. Somehow, opening track “Jump!” reminds me a bit of Morningwood’s “Nth Degree” with its loads of fun punk energy and its very listenable melodies, giving a glimpse of the sound that makes up the rest of the CD. Not obnoxiously political, The Beatitude intelligently discusses some pretty hefty philosophical arguments with tongue-in-cheek humor. For example, in track 2 “Hymn To The Hen,” singer Karin Jonch Clausen questions the view that there is uniqueness or agency in individual consciousness (aligned with Nietzsche, Althusser, Foucalt, etc) with its critique of 18th century French Enlightenment assumptions (as well as the views of Denmark’s own Soren Kierkegaard). In track 8 “Dualism Fails” the band questions the philosophical stance that the world is separated into material and spiritual worlds; in short, they argue that the spiritual world cannot exist outside of what we can see. Hegel, of course, would not be happy. However intellectual the lyrics can be, listeners can definitely enjoy the CD at a musical level as well. Other songs of note are tracks 7 and 10 (”The World Is Wrong” and “Blown Away”). “The World Is Wrong” has a good guitar melody and a nice driving beat, whereas “Blown Away” is a cover of the song by the same name originally done by The Pixies, at a much faster pace and with a cleaner sound. Throughout the whole album, The Beatitude plays some very cool music that is definitely worth a listen. The only gripe I have is that some of the lyrics are hard to hear and it would be awesome if they were included with the packaging. In any case, if you like early 90s alternative rock and grunge, this is for you!

The fourth album from the Mars Volta finds the band pondering a difficult, but common predicament. When your last album brought a step down in both critical and commercial reception after a career previously marked by enthusiastic fans and even more enthusiastic rock journalists, how do you go about putting the pieces back together?
For The Mars Volta, the answer seems to be to go back to what has worked before. Gone are (previous album) Amputechture’s individualized songs and thematic inconsistencies. Bedlam features the return of the album as capital-A Art. Featuring a backstory involving (the band swears) a production process plagued by an evil spirit, TMV returns to the single-story concept album format with songs that are mixed to run together, much like De-loused in the Comatorium and Frances the Mute before it.
The return to form is both the source of the album’s greatest strengths and weaknesses. On the one hand, the songs presented are just as strong as anything on their much-lauded first two albums, and the few truly new moments definitely stand out. Especially successful is the increased emphasis on instruments other than guitar, as wildly tweaked keyboards dance throughout the entire album and tracks such as “Soothsayer” feature beautiful string and horn arrangements (and do I hear a clarinet in there?) by guitarist Omar Rodriguez-Lopez. A stronger sense of melodic focus is also both evident and welcome. However, the album feels a bit like an epileptic fit, forgoing the slower melodic breaks usually inserted by the band, and causing The Mars Volta’s trademark freneticism to grow a bit tedious at times. Bedlam can also at times feel all too familiar, as the band seems to fall back on tricks that they know will work. To be fair, though, who can blame them? The Mars Volta has returned to what works because, well… it works.

7/10

Today, we end this three-part editorial with two reviews of some very amazing, very fresh artists in the electro-house genre. Even with electro-house being relatively new (10 years young), it has had time to permeate into mainstream culture. The following two projects, however, are examples of ones that bring back the old Daft Punk - Homework aesthetic; I bring to you Justice - † (Cross) and Boys Noize - Oi Oi Oi!

Read the rest of this entry »

Yesterday I spoke a bit about Daft Punk emerging during a time when artists such as Alice Deejay and ATB were popular. Today, we will look at electro-house itself as a genre in more detail.

In 1997, French musical geniuses Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo released the influential album Homework with its cutting edge mix of warm, funky 70s disco and cold, harsh 80s synthesizers. By layering samples on top of each other and adding in generous helpings of buzzy sounds (not the mention samples of some very famous drum machines), Daft Punk reinvented disco for a new generation that was eager to digest it (in contrast to the more established, older American population who hated disco all throughout the 80s). Fortunately, music fans got it, and understood the tongue-in-cheek, slightly eccentric way of expressing nostalgia for the older tunes. Daft Punk would go on to influence other musicians that worked around the same electro music aesthetic.

This wave of funky, cut-up disco music came be known as “French house” with its touch of heavy compression and filter sweeps. Ishkur humorously claims in his famous Ishkur’s Guide To Electronic Music that “If anything of value has ever come from France, it’s this music right here. At this point, you can’t NOT [sic] deny the genius that is Thomas Bangalter. He is the only reason why the world does not sack France.” However, France did not and does not have a monopoly on the upcoming resurgence of disco music… Read the rest of this entry »

As you all know by now, the Germans lost 0-1 to the Spanish in the UEFA Euro 2008 soccer championships. German soccer fans, please do not fret! Click here for the consolation prize to all you second-placers: Corenell Vs Lisa Marie Experience - Keep On Jumpin.’ This is a remix/cover of a disco track of the same name by Patrick Adams. Enjoy the cheesy music and the cute soccer babes, and forget the German loss! More after the jump… Read the rest of this entry »

Healamonster crafts warm electronic with a bit of hip-hop in the release Nine Tons Of Blood with a bit of help from longtime collaborator Tarsier . Tracks 3 and 8 are more drum/beat-oriented, and are only fairly interesting with their spoken word layers. Better tracks would be tracks 4 and 5, with the former track (”Didn’t Even See”) including audio samples of a nostalgic childhood (who the child is we do not know), and the latter track (”Ghost Tale From New Brunswick”) telling us a masterfully-crafted story with an interesting, but ambiguous conclusion. The best tracks are tracks 2, 7, 9, and 10, which feature musical collaboration with Tarsier. With these, one can hear the influences from electronic music heavyweights Lali Puna and Solvent. Tracks 2 and 10 are the same (”Home”) with the last track being an instrumental version. Persuasive melodies and simple vocals from Healamonster and Tarsier make this the best track on the CD. Warm and melodic, the music on this CD is certainly worthy of a listen.

Already out of press vinyl release on Sweet Rot Records by heavy distortion folk band duo from Portland featuring “Meth” Matt Hunter (guitar) and “Teeth” Kyle Raquipiso (drums) should freak you out with the cover art alone. Likely the work of Raquipiso, former art school student and recipient of Sub Pop’s Loser Scholarship, the sickly orange bus paint color and balloons with killer 70’s cartoon smiles are just gently held by a buried dead hand. Meth Teeth could plausibly be buried alive, and if they are, what they create underground is a hyper hoped up retreat into blown out speaker paper 70’s folk without the creepy drone of the Vancouver WA street people they idolize. Meth teeth are horrible abominations of disgust and nightmares to all the pretty indie children frolicking Portland with their crest white strips not to mention that actual pictures of the teeth are fucking rancid. The analogy is thus: Normal teeth are folk music, clean and innocent, but after the band corrupts them with filthy distorted garage musical style over them, they become Meth Teeth. It ‘s actually the exact way the band came to be as Hunter originally began the band as an acoustic folk solo project. The group is supposedly a trio now, so for the sake of this review, lets call them a four-piece.
-johnny darko

Famoro Dioubate is the virtuoso balafon-ist (African xylophone) of this group Kakande, and with Dununya releases to the rest of the world a glimpse of this rich African traditional music mixed with modern western instrumentation. From the opening track “Kakande” to the ending track “Temedi Kota,” the lush orchestration envelopes the listener with charming melodies and plenty of energy. At the forefront is Dioubate’s virtuoso chops on the xylophone. Swirling around it is a mix of backing vocals, flutes, strings, bass, guitar, drumset. Even though I don’t understand the lyrics, the booklet insert explains the meanings behind each track, revealing a flair for storytelling, dealing with the subjects of community, positivity, and tradition (vague and trite words, perhaps, but go pick up a copy and check it out yourself). The music is simultaneously familiar and strange. The scales are similar to that of western music, carried by modern instrumentation along with jazz-structured progressions (choruses, solos, etc). The languages of Malinke, Susu, and Jakanke that are featured on the release bring a fresh change to the staleness of ensemble band music.

Natalie Janssen in her EP Split is focused on melodramatic acoustic pop. Blessed with a good voice (but unfortunately not so much with a good sense of composition), she sings about a variety topic such as Colorado, sleepiness, horny truckers, and schmaltzy love. Well-recorded and well-mixed, the only flaw is the fact that the EP isn’t very catchy, and it contains very few memorable passages. Unfortunately, this means that the release comes out to be rather mediocre. Two tracks that break out of this mediocrity are tracks 7 and 8, “Song Of Your Sleep” and “Brick In The Boot,” respectively. “Song Of Your Sleep” is an introspective little ditty composed in tiny tinkling triplets. This track is clearly a lullaby and Janssen certainly matches the musical content with the intent. “Brick In The Boot” is the star of the EP, with jangly banjos and crass ironic humor. “Now I’m stranded on Interstate-40. And I’m scared ‘cuz the truckers are horny.” is a fantastically funny line from the song, complemented by Janssen’s dramatic dynamics and hilarious match of accompaniment. This EP is a collection of mediocre tracks surrounding the brilliance of “Song Of Your Sleep” and “Brick In The Boot.” I highly recommend the latter track if you have a chance to listen to it.

Heather Waters‘ CD Propeller is a 10-track exposition featuring Waters’ powerful voice over pop rock arrangements. Decidedly simple, rustic, and charming in its own way, the music contained within draws from the different genres of gospel, blues, country, and good old American rock ‘n’ roll. The recording was mixed to be very clear and very loud, which results in some nice effects such as in track 1, where one can hear the rusting of paper. In other instances, however, some not-so-nice effects show up such as harsh sibilance in the voice, and also the harsh clipping in the music at the loud part in track 5, which unfortunately renders Waters’ voice barely listenable (engineers, you have all got to learn to quit mixing and mastering so damn loud!). The artwork is also very good, and I recommend checking out the digi book of the CD from the website. The pieces look like those by Mark Ryden, except for the fact that they speak with a more wholesome accent. The artwork alone is beautiful and complements the music quite nicely. In all, this is not a bad collection of songs.

The misguided trio who is actually a 5-piece has done it again, but this time on 12 inches of fury. Monkey Power Trio gets together once a year and spends a few days writing and recording original songs. Their 2007 release “House of the Mechanical Sun” is actually made up of 2 recording sessions from 2005 and 2006, which took place in Minneapolis and Oregon. They decided to ditch cover art and have commandeered old Beatles, Hitchcock and kids record jackets for the limited to 150 release I was fortunate to come across. As usual the bands songs are all a bit off and many from the Oregon session are accompanied by a fancy song flute. Their rap song ‘Another Year’ puts them in the indie Weird Al realm. ‘Meaty Girls’ may get a chuckle out of your gut but I still think NOFX did the fat girl praise better. I like Monkey Power Trio’s more innocent songs, like ‘Hop On The Monkey Bus”. Its like those Six Flags commercials where someone so stupid and creepy looking is dancing and flailing their arms so maniacally that you can’t help but wanna join them. Tracks like ‘Little Billy Oshin’ just plain scare me. Do they have something against Billy Ocean? I wouldn’t want that fuceker living in my foreskin! His “Jewel of the Nile” soundtrack hits were enough for me. It’s too bad this isn’t a cd, since it flows well from start to finish. Perhaps all guilty pleasures include vinyl in some way shape or form. Oh yea, “I live in the suburbs, I drive everywhere, my back always hurts and I’m losing all my hair” sounds like Happy Monkey Trio is content in Orwellian 1984.

Sweetbleeders‘ album Bzzzz. is an excellent collection of 10 songs that meander about, painting a beautiful kaleidescope of chord progressions and catchy vocal melodies, as sung by a melancholy-sounding Robin Vining. This collection of talented musicians and composers draws from influences of all sorts of genres and the members combine forces to create a musical masterpiece. Track 2 “Safety” pegs in at more than 10 minutes, evoking pleasant connections to early Radiohead with its amazing melodies and its transitions between hard and soft. Track 4 “Never Be The Same” is a nice acoustic rock song with such bittersweet feelings, painting an old human experience in a new musical way. Track 5 “If In Trouble” brings the worthy flavors of Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” to the release with its amazing collection of instruments along with spastic transitions into movements, lined up one after another. Track 8 “Lu Nan Jen” is by far my favorite song on the release, with the music flowing in between the dreary verses and the glossily epic choruses that bring such a catharsis near the end of the album. Track 10 “Run Away” closes the album on the melancholy note that it presented early on, urging listeners to “keep on running away.” Sweetbleeders sure ran away with this album, pouring heart and soul into the composition, the instrumentation, and the varying dynamics; they bring out such bittersweet feelings by gradually shading in and out the subtle melodies.

At first glance from the CD art, I thought the music contained inside would be terrible. This is clearly an instance of “don’t judge an album by its cover,” because the tracks were loaded with some of the best tracks I have heard in a while. Filled to the brim with an eclectic mix of shoegaze and soul, peace and power, rhythm and restlessness, Marshall Star’s Cosmos is a winner. From the first track “Goodbye Truly,” I was presented with a taste of vocalist Mandy Bright’s powerful breath competing with the complex, noisy layers of post-punk sound, and I knew that there were going to be some gems on the recording. Track 4 “The Pleasure Seekers” eerily reminds me with its desolate lyrics and its heavy synth-pop beat of Eurythmics “Sweet Dreams (Are Made Of These).” Track 12, unlisted on the recording (but elsewhere as “Take Me”) is a frantically-paced mixed of dissonance and heavy drums along with Mandy’s sweet voice. The best track on the album, of course, is track 2 “Hopes And Aspirations,” which sounds a bit like Cocteau Twins, but without Elizabeth Frazer’s dull vocal performance. Instead, with the bright and layered wall of noisy melodies, we are given a chance to witness the tour de force of Mandy’s vocals coupled with a powerful marching beat. The aggressive lyrics “got my hopes and aspirations driving me insane” reflects perfectly the maddening movement of such a beautiful track. All I can hope for is for listeners to look past the artwork, and to fully immerse into this album, especially into the more manic tracks.

Luthea Salom’s album Sunbeam Surrounded By Winter is a rather agreeable excursion into light acoustic rock. Singing and playing guitar throughout the whole album, Luthea presents a generous serving of listenable music. Using simple melodies and simple lyrics, she paints a nuanced picture of what pop can be. The music in this collection is very well-mixed and mastered, and sounds nice and clear. My one gripe with this album is that the only track that truly stands out is the cover of Bowie’s “Rebel Rebel,” (which is, in itself, quite well-done). The only other track that defines itself apart from the others is “Dragonfly.” Unfortunately, these two songs occupy tracks 2 and 3, respectively, of the CD. The end result is that the more mediocre songs drag all the way until the end. This release contains a nice collection of well-done pop acoustic, and it’s worth a listen for anyone who is a fan of this genre, but I believe out of personal taste that the single Rebel Rebel is probably a better deal.

Duo from Brooklyn, Jeremy Earl & Christian DeRoeck bring barren lo-fi indie-folk recordings alive with catchy melodies, playful lyrics as both boys sing their hick hearts out. Great line in track 5 Silence is Golden “Love takes time and time takes money. Love takes lots and lots of money.” This is a re-release of a previous 2005 cassette sold from their Fuck-It Tapes label (which also released Raccoo-oo-oon, Magik Markers, Wooden Wand). Most tracks are acoustic, and when drums are added, they are minimal. Falsetto warning! Slow tempo ballads and live recordings make each track unique like the distorted screaming vocals on God Hates The Faithless (# 7) & electric guitar whines on instrumental In The Woods (# 11).

–johnny darko