Hot damn! This is some serious smokin' soul. It's no longer a secret that Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings are THE go-to group for contemporary true sounding soul that does what real soul music is supposed to, make you move and feel!
They've proven it with their three great previous albums, and they've sealed the deal with what is probably one of the best live shows around, and they show no signs of slowing down. Soul Time! is a collection of tracks from various singles, a bunch of unreleased gems, including several songs that anyone who has seen them live will recognize as being show stoppers on stage like "What If We All Stopped Paying Taxes?" There's also a killer cover of the Shuggie Otis classic "Inspiration Information".
We've been blasting this like crazy and falling in love so hard all over again with the grit, chops, and soul that oozes from these songs. The Dap-Kings are without a doubt the tightest band around, and with Sharon Jones running the show with her commanding voice, this collection proves they aren't rehashing, but instead they are keeping the spirit of hard hitting soul alive and kicking. So damn good.
Recording in Paris in 1976, legendary Brazilian songstress Joyce teamed up with percussionist Nana Vasconcelos (he has worked with everyone from Milton Nascimento to Don Cherry) and multi-instrumentalist/producer Mauricio Maestro to create this truly stunning record of textured psychedelia, laced with the colorful flourishes of samba and Tropicalia, the immediacy of acid folk and a wonderful mystical haze that seems to permeate the entire album.
For some reason, Visions Of Dawn was never actually released, at least until now, which is shocking as this really is one of the best, if not THE BEST Joyce records we have ever heard. You can hear here the sounds that would influence generations of performers, even decades later, like Juana Molina and Samara Lubelski, both of whom would largely base their sound and style on the magical music of Joyce. From start to finish this is an unbelievable album, it starts with more of a samba-pop vibe, but as the record progresses the rich mood and atmosphere of the instrumentation along with the breathtaking vocals begin to swirl in the air, floating through the clouds and refracting the sunlight. This record really belongs in the pantheon of the best discs by folks like Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, Gal Costa, and Milton Nascimento. Visions of Dawn is truly a lost classic!
It's always exciting to get to experience an artist at the beginning of what you know will be a long and rewarding journey of musical and artistic exploration. We first encountered Julius Smack (aka Peter Hernandez) by chance. Some of us here love the avant-drag party High Fantasy thrown every Tuesday night at one of the last standing gay bars in the Tenderloin, Aunt Charlie's. One night we saw an artist whose performance consisted of cool projections, a super distinctive look and persona, meditative movements and even some full on voguing. But what struck us the most, was the alluring music playing during this performance, especially some beautiful entrancing vocals. Our first thought was "Oh my god, how cool, a drag/performance artist using unreleased Arthur Russell tracks as his music!" So we approached him after his stunning performance and asked what the music was and if it was Arthur Russell as we suspected? He humbly replied that the music and the vocals were his own, and that's when we know we had encountered something special.
This debut release features his take on left-field electronic pop, with warm melting synths, and that irresistible voice. It's impossible to not hear Arthur Russell in Julius Smack, but we also hear touches of Owen Pallett and maybe a more clubby version of David Sylvian. This ep features four original tracks, some tasteful interludes laced with field recordings, a few remixes of the title track, and two covers. His take on Al Green's "I'm Still In Love With You" is a stunner... and make sure to stick around for the 'secret' Arthur Russell cover (of course) which appears after the last track.
This is music that is both delicate and self assured, bold without being flashy, and sensual without relying on played out signifiers. Not sure how many of these were pressed, so best to grab one quick so you can say you knew him when...
First cd issue of what is reportedly a highly sought after record of UK psychedelic rock. The singer's got a nice Skip Spence strain in his voice, and there's a lot of sitar on top of the more traditional instrumentation, and the winsome harmonies are
While many have followed their lead, aping their electro fueled indie-pop, Junior Boys still have so much more class and sophistication than the wannabe masses that flood the scene with their watered down sounds these days.
Begone Dull Care is the Junior Boys' third album and while their songs have always been slow burners, this album is probably the slowest yet, with a bit of patience required to fully appreciate, but if you stick with it, the rewards are pretty damn great! It's tricky to make an album of electro-pop that isn't totally initially catchy or in your face, but Junior Boys have proven that they understand so well how to create an overall mood and sound that can take a few listens before the impact is truly felt! Always the perfect soundtrack for late nights and coming down sessions, enticingly sleek and so richly smooth. While so much of electro-pop these days is about flashing fluorescent colors as bright and obnoxiously as possible, Junior Boys remind us all that it's possible to create something much more fluid and composed while still being able to move bodies with such ease.
Over the last few years there has been no shortage of '80s inspired bands, creating electronic infused pop with an indie sensibility. But well before this retro explosion of bands boldly proclaiming their love for the '80s, Junior Boys hit the scene at a time when indie pop was in such desperate need of something more sensual danceable, an indie pop sound that did more than just flirt with the dance floor. What's given the group lasting power is that they aren't just about tapping into an era, or sound, or giving you ironic winks about the keyboards they are playing or the outfits they are wearing. While many continue to nail the strictly aesthetic side of '80s electro-pop, Junior Boys are one of the only groups who truly capture the romantic and emotional side of this often cheapened landscape. There is so much soul and substance in the songs they create, and Jeremy Greenspan has one of the smoothest and most seductive voices of any singer around.
It's All True continues their streak of great albums, filled with steaming movers, and sizzling slow burners. Imagine Aphex Twin getting a hold of George Michael and Boy George and helping them create their most understated and sexiest recordings ever. Or New Order reworking Japan's Gentleman Take Polaroids. As refreshing as Junior Boys were when they originally hit the scene, their continued earnestness and ability to craft songs that have an emotional weight to them is equally as refreshing in this moment in time when it all seems to be about irony and capturing just the surface of another moment in time. Highly recommended.
We've always been big fans of Jose Gonzalez's soft touch sensual guitar playing and breezy songwriting, but with the latest from his full band Junip we think we've been hit with the most impacting and satisfying album he's created yet. The record is brimming with an immediacy that matches the intimacy that Gonzalez always excels in bringing to his songs. But with Junip, there is much more of a driving vibe and a wider range of sound that makes for such a satisfying listening experience. We hear nice touches of Arthur Russell-like innerworld melodies and nuanced delicate and unique elements within each song that remind us of the first couple Pinback records. There are even some awesome and tasteful hints of prog-pop that we've been digging so much. This has everything you want in a really smart and emotional pop record, the playing is impeccable and draws you in from the get-go, and Gonzalez's warm and woozy voice becomes the icing on the cake, total seduction! Fans of The Sea & Cake, Pinback, Kings Of Convenience, Elliott Smith, Iron & Wine, Arthur Russell, American Analog Set, make sure not to sleep on this, as this is becoming a major contender for one of our favorite records of the year!
Hot damn! No sophomore slump here, Justice return with a fucking cool follow up to their awesome debut from four years ago. Audio, Video, Disco finds the group pushing in a much proggier / poppier direction, in fact everytime we listen to this it sounds more and more like an amazing combination of Daft Punk and Rush, in the best possible way. A little less four on the floor and in your face than the debut, but with much better actual songwriting. In fact there are parts of this record that rival the ecstatic pop of folks we love like Cut Copy and Hot Chip, but instead of pulling from '80s pop bands for inspiration we get the feeling Justice has been listening to as much Emerson Lake and Palmer, King Crimson, and Queen as they have dance bangers since they released their debut. It serves them so well, as their sound now seems to have a more expansive reach, without losing the immediacy and intensity that made us first fall in love with them. There's even an awesome reference to the great CSNY song "Ohio" on here. But don't worry the record still packs a dynamite dance floor punch!
Super exciting to see a group who got tons of attention and popularity, not play it safe and make the same record twice but instead push themselves and come out with something different yet still totally rewarding.
The Miasmah label has been on fire lately! Without a doubt they have become one of the most consistently dependable labels releasing layered, dark, haunting, droned out mysterious sounds. This time around the label has gone back to the '90s to unearth some amazing sounds that somehow never managed to get a proper widespread release. It makes sense that this Norwegian band's moniker means 'abyss'. The music makes the listener feel like they are floating around the charred remains of a civilization that has been doomed, yet there is still something so paralyzing and beautiful about the void and desolation.
It's so impressive that this was recorded between 1996-1998, a decade before the outburst of so many drone based recordings that we have constantly freaked out over. With a sound that is so haunted, nuanced, layered, and so perfectly executed, taking in the more ambient and creepy side of black metal and doom drone luminaries like Burzum, SUNNO))) and Paysage D'Hiver, the soundscape imagination of Philip Jeck, and the minimalist intensity of Tony Conrad and Deathprod.
Like the soundtrack to a horror movie that isn't as much about shock and awe as it is about casting a very real spell that shimmers with isolation and a beautiful kind of despair. As with most things on Miasmah, so very recommended.
Newly reissued, now as a 2-on-1 with another, later album, we've previously listed a cd of Kirikyogen, organist/pianist Kuni Kawachi's 1970 recording with hard rockin' Japanese psych geniuses Flower Travellin' Band (which barely preceded those AQ faves debut on their own, Anywhere, also 1970). Kawachi came from sixties Group Sounds band The Happenings Four, and made a great decision in teaming up with the nascent FTB (who had started off as Yuya Uchida and the Flowers, another GS act) for Kirikyogen, especially since Flowers/FTB had recently recruited Joe Yamanaka, the inimitable vocalist whose trademark wail did much to make Flower Travellin' Band band stand out from the pack later on. With Joe on the mic, and guitarist Hideki Ishima coming into his own, Kirikyogen is very much Flower Travellin' Band, the prequel! Meanwhile, Kawachi's Hammond organ grumblings add a nice touch to the tracks here, which he also wrote, for the most part. In addition to Kawachi's organ, singer Joe plays his harmonica more than he did on later recordings, giving these recordings a bluesier sound. While we're not going to tell you this is anything near as great as FTB's Satori or even Made In Japan, it's got some great heavy psychedelic jams (like the title track, and "Works Composed Mainly By Human") that are certainly as good as anything they did for their first album. If anything, they are a lot closer to what ended up on Satori, albeit a great deal more primordial and lacking the taughtness of their later works. It should also be noted that Kirikyogen is about 1/2 heavy Hendrix-y grooves, 1/2 more acoustic-y (but lovely), not as heavy melodic material.
Also to be noted, as alluded to above, this cd reissue also includes Kawachi's 1972 follow-up Love Suki Daikirai, which is appears as the first 14 tracks here for some reason rather than being presented in chronological fashion. Love Suki Daikirai doesn't feature any FTB folks (and is thus automatically less rockin'), but does have Kimio Mizutani on guitars, whose solo album A Path Through Haze was also recently reissued by Bamboo and reviewed by us (and which happened to feature, yes, Kuni Kawachi on keyboards!). Much more gentle and meandering than its predecessor, this later album certainly has its beautiful and/or freaky moments, but Kirikyogen, #25 in Julian Copes "Japrocksampler" Top 50, is still the primary reason to pick this up.
The last week or two of our so-called "summer" here in San Francisco, has been pretty darn gray. Cold, overcast, gray, a bummer. But, getting the long-awaited new album from Finland's Kemialliset Ystavat (aka Jan Anderzen and friends) has made a big difference! You know how we love love love all things Finland, and Fonal. That magic hasn't abated. Lively, lovely, colorful; woozy and wonderful, this Kemialliset is just what the doctor ordered. Have you heard 'em before? Kemialliset, and their fellow Fonal artists, have been referred to by us (and others) as "Finnish Forest Folk". Fairly accurate... as long as you're ok with folk music made using computers. From a forest that's full of brightly colored trees and plants whose pharmacological uses are probably entirely recreational and specifically hallucinatory. Populated by strange creatures like gibbering gnomes and tittering trolls. And of course, they ARE from Finland. Of course of course.
Carefully constructed by Jan in his forest laboratory, a collage of contributions from folks like Roope Eronen (Avarus, Maniacs Dream, Pylon), Kevin Regan (Fricara Pacchu, Anaksimandros, Avarus), Jussi Lehtisalo (Circle, Pharaoh Overlord), C. Spencer Yeh (Burning Star Core), Neil Campbell (Astral Social Club), Markus Maki (Anaksimandros, Avarus, Kiila), Pekko Kappi (Kiila), Hitoshi Kojo (Juppala Kaapio), Joshua Stevenson (Jackie-O Motherfucker) and others, this is, as you might expect, a delirious and dense tapestry of seamlessly flowing, ever-changing, psychedelic soundz. 14 tracks total to delight the ear with such teeter-tottering elements as lilting layered female vox, bleepy glitchy background electronix (track six sounds like they've wandered into an '80s video arcade to record), wheezing harmonium drones, rattling ritual percussion, cartoon SFX, snippets of synth melody seemingly snatched from a '70s Bo Hansson record, and much much more, from krauty rhythmics to lullaby babble, and hybrids thereof. It's part Incredible String Band, part Raymond Scott or Bruce Haack. Or imagine a completely dosed and demented Black Moth Super Rainbow making a cd-r for Jewelled Antler, maybe.
Truly a phantasmagorical tour-de-force, utterly what we needed to brighten these grey days and/or make 'em cosier. The compact disc version is packaged in a tri-fold digi with a thick booklet packed with beautiful full-color photographs and some very interesting text in both Finnish and English, and the vinyl is nice too.
Whatever you do, don't let the godawful cover art fool you. This is not some crappy new age cd you'd buy in an art gallery in New Mexico, while picking up some healing crystals. This is some seriously demented, gloriously inspired outsider free jazz abstract psychedelic dub tribal weirdness. You'd never know from the cover though. A super cheesy crayon drawing of the band beneath some pyramids... ugh. Inside there's a bad ass photo of the band, killer afros, leather jackets, cravat, one guy holding a flute, leaning against a wall, looking ready to unleash some seriously cosmic musical might. Had that picture been on the cover you'd know exactly what you were getting into. Cuz this is indeed some seriously cosmic shit.
Released originally in 1973 in a run of 300 copies, this disc by vibraphonist Khan Jamal has become a jazz head free music freak holy grail. And it's easy to see why. A heady mix of vibes, marimba, clarinet, drums, glockenspiel, guitar, bass and percussion. But it's all about the drums. These four lengthy tracks are all about rhythm. If the opener doesn't totally blow your mind, there is something seriously wrong. A completely effect drenched burst of free jazz drum splatter, careening and echoing all over the place, horns bleating, reverberating into infinity, adding more tripped out percussive swirl to the already chaotic soundfield. Eventually the drums drift off, and the track morphs into some dizzying glockenspiel marimba jam, all tinkle and shimmer, still drifting in swirls of FX and random clatter. This track alone makes this disc essential. But it's only the beginning.
The second track is like a supercharged, blown out, extended version of the opener, just with more horns and a more obvious rhythm. A groovy free jazz drum jam, beneath skronking horns, shouting and hand clapping, reverb drenched horns, a total wild and wooly free for all, before the marimba comes in, and things coalesce into a slightly less abstract funky free jazz percussion blow out. So good.
Track three is the most subtle of the bunch, but that in no way means it's any less weird or tripped out. A droney bass line, some jazzy smokey guitar, all beneath a dense swirl of percussive shakers, wrapped in tons of FX, a sort of dubbed out ambient jazz. A slow mellow groove that sort of drifts and slithers, occasionally bits of freaky effects float by, but for the most part it's all late night mellowness, a slow stroll through a moonlit alley, or hold up in the dark corner of some alien jazz bar.
The final track takes the smokey moonlit ambience of track three and gives it the King Tubby treatment, Sounds are dubbed to kingdom come, melodies become distorted and crumble into pieces before they're sent careening into the ether, drums shuffle and stutter, occasionally being propelled dubwise, the whole thing sounding like some Wes Montgomery b-side produced by Lee Perry. A supreme, super laid back dub drenched free jazz freakout of the highest order.
In fact this whole disc is some sort of cosmic dub drenched free jazz from beyond. Some seriously Sun Ra meets King Tubby in the great hereafter shit. A divine jam session transmitted through some mysterious sound system and captured on tape.
Totally and completely mindblowing.
It all started with a video on YouTube. Odds are one of your music nerd friends sent it to you already, or maybe you WERE one of those music nerds, sending it to everyone you know. Check it out: KHUN NARIN ELECTRIC PHIN BAND [http://youtu.be/IYGl-l0Toig?list=FLCuwmGlbaOAStwXMiPVY5Kw] A mysterious video with very little in the way of description, but really, it hardly needed a description, the sound was incredible, a wild, percussive, effusive, droning psychedelia, like a Thai version of Konono No.1, all buzzing distorted melodies, hypnotic rhythms, we, like many of you, must have watched that video a hundred times. And the visuals too, a group of musicians, relaxing in plastic chairs, in a town square, all in matching red vests, presumably from their jobs as taxi drivers, the sound pumped out through a wheeled, home built PA, all manner of instruments, double necked guitar style lutes, hand cymbals, drums, percussion, while all around them, people mill about, seemingly oblivious, to the psychedelic genius going on right before their strangely averted eyes!
Well somehow, some fella got in touch with the band in the video, and organized a proper recording for the group, which we discovered was in fact, Khun Narin Phin Sing, or Khun Narin's Electric Phin Band, the name taken from the group's use of an electrified, double necked version of a traditional Thai instrument, the lute-like phin. As for the folks in the video that seem to be ignoring the music and the musicians, apparently this sort of music is pretty commonplace in Thailand, even former aQ staffer Byram, who lived there for the last few years, told us he'd wander past bands like this playing all over, all the time, but for the rest of us, this stuff is a revelation, and Khun Narin Phin Sing crazy new Thai psych rock stars that we're totally obsessed with.
The record itself was recorded in a way to as closely as possible replicate the YouTube video, no fancy studios, no expensive mics and multi-track recorders, no overdubs, instead, the band set up in a field right outside their town, in the mountains on Thailand's Northern border, and the music was captured field recording style, live, one take, the group made up of multiple generations, from kids in high school, to men in their '60s, the band running their instruments through chains of guitar pedals, using home built instruments and amplifiers, and of course that custom PA system, a visually and sonically striking behemoth made of 8 loudspeaker horns mounted atop a huge bass cabinet, with wheels of course, and the group just let loose, unfurling a glorious sprawl of droning, buzzy, heady, hypnotic Thai psychedelia, spidery distorted guitar melodies over motorik rhythms, minimal percussion, loping sinewy basslines, the sounds growing more urgent and frenzied, the wild phin shredding drifting atop a roiling bed of constantly swirling and shimmering buzz and thrum, gloriously mesmerizing, and totally transcendent, so utterly amazing, and absolutely recommended to anyone into weird and wonderful sounds, but especially fans of Sublime Frequencies style desert psych, who will be in heaven!!
Vinyl version comes with a download card, btw.
Along with folks like J. Lesser and Matmos, Kid 606 has been one of the key figures in bringing the world of techno and electronica to a more punk minded listenership. And over the years the music of Kid 606 has taken many twists and turns, never one to shy from diversity and eclecticism he's put out everything from hardcore four on the floor techno to drill n' bass to ambient blissed out dreamscapes.
We have to admit we haven't always been the biggest fans of all his releases, but he's hit us with enough moments of total musical bliss and magic that we make sure to at least check out every new release he puts out. And while we weren't in love with the last few, we are beyond BLOWN AWAY with what he's created on this deliciously smart-ass-titled new outing. In fact there is something to be said for how smart ass the title and back cover artwork on this record is, because for as clever and mindfucking as Kid 606 can be, it's sometimes the problem with his music. Fortunately he's gotten the snarkiness out of his system via the non musical aspects of this record, and allowed the sounds within to just totally flourish in immaculately crafted, wide ranging electronic sounds.
The albums opener, is almost like some amazing lost kosmiche kraut gem, tones that are so rich, patient and inviting. We were immediately reminded of some of our favorite Kid 606 releases from the past that get overlooked as they show off the non techno side of his musical leanings and are more about creating rich atmospheres with true emotion. Records like The Soccer Girl EP, PS I Love You, PS I Love Me, and the utterly beautiful Resilience. As the record unfolds, Kid 606 still shows that he can draw from a wide range of electronic palettes but it never veers into techno land, instead it reminds us of those glorious days when IDM actually meant something. Those records by Oval, Aphex Twin, Matmos, Autechre, that made so many of us embrace a form of music we had for so long no relationship with.
But this isn't just some kind of IDM rehash, Kid 606 also shows that he can soar, drone and bliss out with the best of them. As there are so many amazing moments on this record that you could think was coming from AQ favorites like Emeralds, Tim Hecker or Oneohtrix Point Never. He also works in some influences of some of our favorite 20th century minimalist composers like Terry Riley and Steve Reich, especially on one of the album's hypnotizing standout tracks "Periled Emu God". And fear not, for those who like a bit of dissonance with their electronica, the Kid still interweaves some more challenging sounds into these tracks, yet manages to do so in a way that creates something larger and organic instead of just being difficult for the sake of being difficult. While there are brief moments with an almost Mego vibe (mostly just on the album's closer) the record while touching on many shades of electronica has an overall unique viewpoint that just sound so so perfect. This is the kind of electronica we haven't been able to find lately. Sure we love dubstep, space disco and drone, but we've been craving the kind of innovation and nuanced composition that so many of our favorite electronic albums of a prior age intoxicated us with. Somehow channeling both the best of electronica's past and creating a vision of its future at the same time, Kid 606 has proven that someone who has created something you love in the past, is surely capable of doing it again. Totally stunning!
We were a little hesitant to check this out at first, even though we've loved all the tracks we've heard on various comps, because for some reason it was described as dark dubstep with "spoken word vocals". Spoken word? Ugh. Thankfully, one person's spoken word is another's woozy warbly mumbly crooning, 'spoken word' not in the crappy poetry slam sense, but as in brooding smoldering, slow motion toasting, totally reminiscent of classic Tricky, especially Nearly God, the music too, all hazy, and druggy and somnambulant, the beats, cough syrupy, gorgeous late night, rain soaked, glacial tarpit slow jam ballads. Totally dubbed out and minimal, the production hazy and gauzy and softly psychedelic. There's a new Massive Attack out this week too, and it's not bad, but listening to this, all we can think is this is how we wish Massive Attack sounded now.
Every track is a bleary eyed, druggy drift through warped, slow melting downtempo dubscapes, the rhythms, clipped and skittery, horns moaning in the background, wheezing keyboards, clouds of record crackle, the vocals, both male and female, wreathed in reverb and echo, draped over the slowly undulating grooves, sultry and sexy, so darkly languorous, murky and mysterious, the beats thick and dense and heavy, all wrapped in a laid back and lysergic, grimly psychedelic atmosphere, which makes sense considering the man behind the King Midas Sound is none other than Kevin Martin, aka The Bug!
WAY RECOMMENDED!
Many moons ago, a strange disc passed through our doors from a mysterious Swedish post-punk outfit called Kitchen & The Plastic Spoons. That disc collected one of the band's albums plus a bunch of random odds and ends. Dark Entries has now reissued that album proper from the collection - Screams To God. Weird. Fucked-up. Angular. Totally great. Here's what we had to say about K&TPS way back when:
An amazingly weird synthy Swedish new wave punk band that burned bright for one short year way back in 1980. Kitchen & The Plastic Spoons were herky jerky, full of demented pep and enough deranged energy to make themselves a seriously freaked out and super unique proposition. Sort of how we always wished new wave sounded, not overly polished but instead kind of demented and mad in all the right ways. Like The Pop Group and the Dead Kennedys all mixed up with Siouxsie and Johnny Lydon taking turns on vocals. As much as this makes us think of some of the more well known (relatively) bands of the era like The Slits, Raincoats, Au Pairs, Liliput and Maximum Joy, there is something so singular and unique about Kitchen And The Plastic Spoons that makes it kind of surprising that this is the first time these tracks have been dug up in almost 30 years. It's amazing how vibrant and timely this still sounds. It's hard not to imagine that bands like Erase Errata had somehow gotten their hands on one of the few hundred original lp's and used it as a sort of template or inspiration. With all the hype in recent years over lost punk reissues this might just take the cake for a long overdue rediscovery of a truly weird punk classic!
Last list we reviewed the new Young People album which we quite liked. Its minimal avant pop and stripped down approach got us thinking of Young Marble Giants and a record by a UK band called Klang that came out a few years back but sadly didn't seem to make much of a splash here in the states. This is that record. So seductive, sensual and mesmerizing in it's ability to rope you into its luring world of post krautrock fake-em-out-with-simplicity approach to indie rock that will make you think of groups like Broadcast, Quixotic and Electrelane. The vocals of Donna Matthews (ex-Elastica) are so perfectly suited for this style. We're so happy she left Elastica to form this outfit as this is leaps and bounds more creative and satisfying then anything her previous band ever did. One of those records that ends before you want it to and never has a weak moment throughout. They leave you wanting so much more and we'll keep our fingers crossed for something new from them soon. Until then make sure you check this out!
Before there was Joanna Newsom, there was Carol Kleyn, a young hippie spirit with an ethereal songbird voice who wrote rapturous paeans to love and nature on her harp. So it makes sense then that Newsom's label, Drag City, would reissue this lovely private press recording from 1976. Studying at the University of Santa Barbara, Kleyn befriended Bobby Brown (the instrument builder who recorded the amazing old aQ fave The Enlightening Beam of Axonda) and she assisted him with his constructions and live performances. He gifted her the harp, and she began to learn to play and write her own songs, eventually opening for Gregg Allman. Instead of waiting to get a record deal, she decided to make a record on her own and released it on her own label. She recorded two other lps soon after, before devoting herself full time to her family.
Love has Made Me Stronger divides its compositions between harp and electric piano. Her tone is bright and the songs exude a sunny yet eccentric warm energy. Similar to the beautiful Collie Ryan and Connie Converse reissues we listed a while back, Carol Kleyn's debut is a much-needed positive ray of sunshine in these dark days.
There are two facets to the Kompakt sound. The thump thump thump house music side, and the shimmery blissed out 'pop ambient' side. We definitely much favor the the sleepy glistening swoonscapes that define that warm welcoming pop ambient sound (although there are a few Kompakt records where the house beats are just murky and muted enough that the resulting Heroin House sound pushes all those same buttons) and no one does it better than Klimek. Responsible for maybe the defining pop ambient track "Milk And Honey", the perfect blend of electronic drones and subtle simple indie melodies, Music To Fall Asleep continues in a similar direction, exploring post-Eno ambience, and offering up a huge sleepy swirl of sound, that is, duh, perfect to fall asleep to. Warm thick whirls of dense droning synths ebb and flow like a midnight tide, guitars are chopped up and stuttered into smooth sleepy smears, like some sweet slab of indie rock left out in the sun so long it melts into a big puddle, rich chords shimmer into vast expanses of reverb and delay, each melody slowly developing over minutes instead of seconds. What else can we say? This is gorgeous and gentle, delicate and dreamlike, sun dappled and absolutely perfect. Essential for fans of all things pop ambient, and something to hold you over until the next Gas record. And like we even need to say it again, the perfect drifting off to sleep record!
From the very first notes of Assume Crash Position, we're immediately transported right back to Kinshasa in the Congo, a bustling town square, people going about their business, cars zooming past, children playing and shouting, people sitting at tables on the sidewalk drinking, eating, catching up, birds perched in the trees, chirping, just a regular bustling African city, except maybe for a certain group of musicians, creating their own soundtrack to daily life, conjuring up a gorgeous, rhythmic, hypnotic and strangely psychedelic racket, equal parts classic African folk music, High Life, and junkyard percussion. The musicians are wielding a strange array of hand built instruments, there's lots of rusted metal, car batteries, old cracked loudspeakers, various drums, and most notably, some fantastic looking, and even more fantastic sounding amplified thumb pianos. By now, regular readers of the aQ list most likely know we're talking about the truly amazing Konono No.1, quite possibly one of our favorite African ensembles ever, past or present. When we first hear them a few years ago, we were blown away, the super distorted thumb pianos spitting out clouds of rapid fire chiming notes, tangled melodies, all locked into super hypnotic drum driven grooves, call and response vocals, simultaneously festive and danceable, dark and mysterious, raw and feral, primitive and DIY, lush and melodic and like nothing we had ever heard before.
When we first threw on Assume Crash Position, our first thought, was that very little had changed, and to a certain degree that's true, all of the above mentioned elements are still present, the wild thumb pianos, still the focal point, their sound curious but so warm and sweetly melodic, the call and response vocals, the tribal percussion, the groovy rhythms, but from the first track it IS in fact evident that some things have changed. That opening track, "Wumbanzanga", is far more melodic, far more pretty and almost more like some of the other traditional African music we've heard in the past, with great female vocals, the vibe super festive, but those thumb piano melodies definitely add a distinctly Konono vibe. Then the next track, "Thin Legs" explodes in a frenzy of whistles and tribal drumming and vocals, that's it, but it too manages to be super melodic and totally effusively celebratory.
It's not until "Mama Na Bana" which opens with that Konono style stop start THRUMP THRUMP THRUMP, where the whole group locks in, before launching into classic Konono, it's really hard to describe, but those fuzzy buzzing metallic melodies wrapped around the repetitive rhythms and the super emotional vocals, the whole rest of the record is classic, albeit a bit more polished and melodic, Konono junkyard Congotronics...
Some of the highlights this time around include "Makembe", with its buzzing melodies, crooned vocals, and the sounds of kids playing and birds chirping, before there's a BIG crash, apparently the sound of a concrete wall collapsing, a wall the vocalist was moments earlier leaning against, and then the band launches into one of the best jams on the disc. Or the gorgeous closing lullaby of "Nakobala Lisusu Te", with muted thumb pianos, super tangled melodies, and a sweet soulful croon, so dreamy and blissful, the perfect way to unwind after a wild, sweaty, funky, groovy, Congotronic workout.
The packaging is cool too, with tons of photos of the local scrap yard / junkyard, where the band gather up most of the material they use to build their instruments, not to mention a shot of that collapsed wall that crumbled mid-song. As with past Konono's, utterly and absolutely wholeheartedly recommended!
So here it is! Hard to believe it's finally here -- some of us have been waiting forever for this record, or at least ever since we discovered a tiny, super compressed, thirty second long sound clip on the internet over a year ago. In all of half a minute, we became OBSESSED. Completely captivated by this band's totally alien, lush, organic 'world music' weirdness. We eventually tracked down a (great) live record by Konono No.1, which we listed here a few weeks back, and then after tons of internet sleuthing and a bunch of emails we finally managed to get in touch with someone at the Crammed label in Belgium who was willing to sell us this brand new studio album directly, since they are without US distribution. Phew! So was it worth it? Hell yeah! Anyone who heard that infamous sound sample (which was from this album), or who got to hear the live record, knows that this band is totally amazing, and indeed this record is beautiful, wild and wonderful, chaotic and festive, totally perplexing but completely mesmerizing. For those who missed out on the live record (which we've also just restocked!) or are new to the wonders of Konono No.1, here's the story: twenty five years ago, Konono formed in Kinshasa, an area between Congo and Angola, performing their own version of traditional Bazombo trance music, incorporating the then-unwanted distortions of their haphazard homemade sound system. They left the bush and settled in the capital where they were forced to compete with the harsh sounds of the city: cars, trains, buses, shouting, etc. So with very little to work with they fashioned pick-ups, microphones, loudspeakers and amplifiers from stuff they could find on the street -- old car batteries, pots and pans, magnets, even branches. Their main instrument is the likembe, a kind of thumb piano. Konono features three of 'em (bass, medium and treble) and the sound of the electrified and amplified likembe is what defines their sound. Accompanied by dancers and percussionists, the likembes wail and drone, buzz and moan, totally overblown and distorted, sounding a little like sixties fuzz guitars, turning a glorious high life jam into something much more strange and wonderful. Super rhythmic, and thick with the buzzing melodies of the likemebe's, Konono weave a massive sound. It's the wildest weirdest street party you've ever been to. Throbbing with energy and emotion, rambuctiously rollicking and totally infectious. Seven lengthy tracks that all sort of bleed and fuse into one epic world-psych jam. The African high life Hawkwind? So so great!
Check out this video clip:
KONONO [http://www.crammed.be/craworld/movies/konono_promo.mov]
We have been totally obsessed with these guys (as have the rest of you judging from how many folks have called and emailed about them and already bought a ton of copies from us before this review even was written) for at least a year if not more and until now there hasn't been a thing (other than a minute long mp3 sample available on Crammed Discs' website) which has been taunting us with the promise of a full length from these guys. So until that fabled Crammed Discs release actually comes out we've got this little nugget to tide you over. And it's no small shakes neither. Though we only learned of them recently Konono No.1 have been around for some 25 years. Hailing from Kinshasa, Congo, Konono No.1 are true African punk rock. They are real D.I.Y. Not putting on shows and printing zines, no, how about building their own instruments from found scraps and dismantled machinery and retrofitting and electrifying traditional instruments! For instance the lead musician Mingiedi Mawangu has taken his likembe (thumb piano), rigged it up to pickups (self-built from hammered parts purloined from car starter motors) and amplified it with a custom built amplifier driven by a car battery, using microphones built out of copper wire and branches. How cool is that! And the sounds these instruments produce is amazing. The likembe, with its muted gentle melodic thrum, is turned into an overdriven buzzing melodic powerhouse that sounds like nothing you've ever heard. Well, sometimes it sounds a bit like some sort of psychedelic alien fuzz guitar, but mostly it just sounds amazing and bizarre. The songs are all very melodically similar and mesh into one massive hour long jam, with wild percussion, chanted vocals, and of course the wailing Likembe. So completely amazing. Every time we play this in the store, someone buys one. Immediately.
Seven extended tracks, recorded live and released on the Ex's label Terp.
As much as we love so much of the noisier and heavier psychedelic sounds that come out of the Japanese underground, we have to say lately it's been some of the more blissed out and dreamy records from Japan that have been moving us the most. Folks like Fuqugi, Painting Petals On Planet Ghost, and Eddie Marcon have shown us that just as so many Japanese bands have mastered blown out psychedelic madness, others know how to conjure an equally entrancing sound, but replacing the all out assault with a gorgeously tranquil and languid state of sound.
We loved what we heard last from Koss, his 2008 outing Four Worlds Converge As One, but we're even more entranced and deliriously lost at sea with Ancient Rain. Such tender and delicate movements of sound, that maintain an element of melodicism while still capturing an overall mood and ambience. For sure in line with the great Pop Ambient sounds out of the Kompakt camp, like Gas and early Klimek, as well as the more washed out and ethereal sides of Fennesz, Murcof, Jan Jelinek, The Fun Years and Colleen.
Majestic and flowing, evoking deep sleep, dark drifts, set to the sounds of the waves on an ocean. Tapping into a feeling of lightness and ease with subtle undertones of something a bit darker bubbling just below the surface, Koss creates a sound that throughout the entirety of Ancient Rain manages to feel so honest and organic, lush, rich, and otherworldly, a soundtrack to the perfect daydream...
So interesting to see what new directions people take when faced with similar turning points. Out of the ashes of Pocahaunted, Bethany Cosentino embraced her love of pop and girl group garage glory, forming Best Coast. On the other hand, her former bandmate Amanda Brown went the other way, riffing off the layers of fractured/damaged sounds that Pocahaunted were creating into something more dubbed out and beat orientated. What's so cool is they both created such great music while taking utterly different paths.
LA Vampires seem to thrive on collaboration. Her record with Zola Jesus last year was a narcotic dubbed out slow burner and she also collaborated with Matrix Metals and shared a slice of vinyl with Psychic Reality. Ital is the new left-field dance project by former San Francisco resident Daniel McCormick (Mi Ami, Sex Worker). We were super excited when we heard McCormick was working on a new project focusing on weirdo electronic dance tracks. We knew he had such a great ear for the underworld of damaged dance sounds and damn does this collaboration between him and LA Vampires kill! Dubbed out, tripped out, swirling with infectious yet hazy melody and sensual rhythm. It's a 12" that merges the steaminess and sexiness of Throbbing Gristle's "Hot On The Heels Of Love" with the Chromatics "I Want Your Love." We've been playing this nonstop!
Rob Crow has been paying much more attention to his metallic leanings as of late. With his Goblin Cock release a few months back he was finally able to unleash a side of himself that the smooth sounds of Pinback don't really allow. Being HUGE fans of Mr. Crow back from his beginnings in Heavy Vegetable (-especially- in HM!) there is no doubt that Crow has always had a scrappy / scizophrenic / ADD element to his aesthetic, which definitely showed on those Heavy Vegetable records and even his records with Thingy. Being able to go from bursts of guitar and drums to the sweetest melody all at the drop of a coin. The Ladies find him re-exploring that chaotioc split personality, hard meets soft side of his song writing skills. The Ladies are two fellas, the abovementioned Mr. Crow and Mr. Zach Hill (of Hella). Sounds promising, doesn't it?
The two bring their totally recognizable and seemingly incompatible sounds together to create a record that's choppy, rocking, proggy, noisy, poppy, sweet and satisfying all at the same time. There are moments when Zach's Hella sounds comes to the front with intense drumming and noisy outbursts, but underneath it all Rob Crow shows again how no matter what elements he's working with, he has the ability to bring out whatever great pop song or hidden hook that lives underneath it all. Another exciting chapter in the always ongoing and prolific world of Rob Crow. And quite possibly our favorite batch of Crow tunes since Heavy Vegetable or the first Pinback record!
Wow! What a dreamy Spanish psych-folk gem this is! A gorgeous sonic gem from the late 70's only making it to our eager ears nearly 30 years later. Turns out this is the only album that Pep Laguarda released, but what a timeless record left for future generations to enjoy. With production and assistance from Daevid Allen of Gong and Soft Machine, Brossa d'Ahir is the kind of record you put on and then just drift away and get lost with. So breezy and well crafted, these are songs designed for long daydreams, windows down as the wind comes rushing in and the scenery breezes by. Pep Laguarda & Tapineria is reminding us of the Chilean cosmic psych-folk of Congregacion, the tender touch of Caetano Veloso and the sprawling beauty of Neil Young albums like On The Beach or Comes A Time. We can imagine that if they aren't already, current day folks like Brightblack Morning Light, Devendra Banhart, Will Oldham and Vetiver would be drooling over the beautiful melodies and flowing ambience of this three decade old document of psych-folk perfection!
Markus Asher had once been quite a prolific producer of avant poptones, beginning way back when with the underappreciated Village Of Savoonga and moving onto the arcing indietronica brilliance of The Notwist whose zenith occurred with Neon Golden back in 2002. Lali Puna was an Asher project that ran concurrent to both Savoonga and Notwist, with often sublime impressionist songs matching the breathy vocals of Valerie Trebeljahr with percolating electronics wrapped around twee pop ballads. Our Inventions is the first album by Lali Puna in quite a long time. Six years since the last proper record. Five since a collection of B-sides and remixes. Not much has changed for Lali Puna. The band settles upon polite, slightly melancholy melodies that flicker upon delicate rhythms built out of clockwork sequences and restrained tappings on the drumkit. Delicate as always.
Lanaya are a trio from Mali, all three members of so called griot castes, groups who pass on the traditions and musics of their culture from generation to generation, responsible for protecting the legacy of their people and allowing it to live on forever. That's quite a responsibility for a young African three piece still in their early twenties, but their music is wise beyond their years, most certainly an indication that for this generation at least, the sounds of Mali will live on, a sweetly melodic, liltingly hypnotic take on traditional Malian folk music that is at once musically complex but also soft and simple. The instrumentation consists of the kora, a 21-string luteharp (played by Djibril Diabate, who you might remember from a past aQ list, and whose gorgeous album Hawa, also on Terp, we raved about a few years back), the balafon, a sort of African xylophone a bit like a marimba, and the ngoni, a small sized 7-string African guitar.
The sound Lanaya conjure up with these instruments is truly sublime, a multilayered late evening soundscape of dense and dexterous melodies, dreamy and hypnotic, and so well crafted it's easy to forget how complex they actually are.
The background is a rich tapestry of warm muted percussion and repetive melodic figures, played so fast and so smoothly that they sort of bleed into each other, each note drifting subtly into the notes beside it, the result is a slowly shifting warm and warbly dreamlike smear, while in the foreground, each instrument takes its turn with one extended improvisation after another, sometimes drifting and meditative, but just as often nimble and lively. The perfect blend of tranced out Eastern ragas and soft focus African folk music. Sweetly swoonsome and delicately dreamy. Perfect early morning, twilit evening, rainy day, drifting off music.
So totally lovely.
Wow! To be able to make music that is both charming and soulful is a feat few can meet. This collective from Bogota, Columbia have done just that. Crafting really colorful minimalist pop that totally hits its mark. Eighteen short 4-track recorded songs that all feel like tiny treasures you want to keep in your pocket for good luck. Their ability to keep intact the most satisfying elements of primitive song writing while allowing themselves to explore all kinds of different sounds and styles. Think tropicalia meets The Residents meets Young Marble Giants meets a Smithsonian Folkways record of the future. Excellent!
From the mysterious black cover and gothic font, we initially thought that this was some new vinyl release by Amort or Striborg or any number of black metal hordes we see day in and day out. But no, this is in fact quite an awesome surprise, a beautiful early-seventies drum-centric spiritual jazz record by the unknown to us, David Lee Jr., and it's really quite killer! Right up there with the likes of Steve Reid, Rashied Ali, Roland P. Young or Khan Jamal!
Hailing from New Orleans and moving to New York where Lee played in Roy Ayer's Ubiquity for a few years, Evolution was recorded in 1974 and is Lee's only solo record originally released on his own Supernal records imprint (not to be confused with the black metal Supernal!). Centered around martial rhythms and syncopation with a left-field avant jazz sensibility and even some blazing psych rock and soul flourishes, the disc is 14 short tracks with the title track centerpiece being a 7 minute extended drum solo. There are even a couple of short vocal tracks, one of which should just be skipped over at the very end called "I Want Our Love To Always Last" (even the Soul Jazz site won't let you sample it). But other than that one misstep, this is a highly recommended album for fans of vintage beat-heavy seventies jazz from the likes of P. E. Hewitt, Lee Miller, or any of the cool cats we mentioned above!
Stereolab named a song after them, Belle & Sebastian and the Magnetic Fields have made careers of taking their influence from them, and we hope the Left Banke finally get the widespread love and attention they so deserve all these decades later. Born out of the orchestral pop strands of The Beatles' "Eleanor Rigby", The Left Banke were the teenage pioneers of the Baroque Rock sound, marrying minor key melody with chamber pop arrangements of harpsichords, string sections and woodwinds. Though the sound ultimately took off more in Britain, The Left Banke were the sole innovators stateside giving them an edge as their two biggest (and sadly only) hits, "Walk Away Renee" and "Pretty Ballerina", propelled them towards a short-lived wider recognition. Sundazed has done a great service reissuing both of the bands records to show that they were much much more than just a two-hit band.
Too is the bands lesser known and last release from 1968 and while the band lost main songwriter and keyboardist Michael Brown for most of it (he returned to record the single, "Desiree" which baffingly didn't chart!), there is plenty to recommend it. Slightly more upbeat than the first album, the vocal harmonies (including the presence of Steven Talarico aka Aerosmith's Steven Tyler on backing vocals!) push the feel toward sunshine pop, sounding much closer to the Beach Boys than before. Yet the melancholy of Brown's contributions plus the beautiful but quirkily titled "Dark is The Bark" give the overall mood a complex prettiness. Lush orchestrations and studio wizardry (lots of backwards effects and psychish phasing) make this album just as gorgeous as the first, and we're glad its lost status is finally seeing some well-deserved light. Recommended!
Stereolab named a song after them, Belle & Sebastian and the Magnetic Fields have made careers of taking their influence from them, and we hope the Left Banke finally get the widespread love and attention they so deserve all these decades later. Born out of the orchestral pop strands of The Beatles' "Eleanor Rigby", The Left Banke were the teenage pioneers of the Baroque Rock sound, marrying minor key melody with chamber pop arrangements of harpsichords, string sections and woodwinds. Though the sound ultimately took off more in Britain, The Left Banke were the sole innovators stateside giving them an edge as their two biggest (and sadly only) hits, "Walk Away Renee" and "Pretty Ballerina", propelled them towards a short-lived wider recognition. Sundazed has done a great service reissuing both of the bands records to show that they were much much more than just a two-hit band.
And that may be hard to gather from a debut record named after those two biggest hits, but Walk Away Renee / Pretty Ballerina from 1967 is one of the finest sixties pop albums ever! Fronted by vocalist Steve Martin-Caro and keyboardist/songwriter Michael Brown, The Left Banke were the more melancholy and introspective counterpoint to the Beach Boys sunny outgoing harmonies. We bring up the Beach Boys because both bands had further similarities. Both bands employed session musicians and both had managers who were also fathers of the main bandmembers that were subsequently fired when they started getting more successful. Further rifts occured right away when Brown, taking cues from Brian Wilson, didn't feel he had to to tour with the band, complicating band dynamics to the point of him leaving the band after this record, only to return to record one last single ("Desiree" featured on Too) that sadly didn't chart.
But band complications aside, this record is on par with the Zombies' Odessey & Oracle and Something Else by the Kinks. Seriously. Songs like "She May Call You Up Tonight", "Let Go Of You Girl", and "Barterers and Their Wives" show that their antiquated look and arrangements were far from a gimmick, but a means to get into some deeply complex and heartfelt songwriting. These records sound better than ever. Essential!
Awesome collection of many of the jams Larry Levan would play (and many he mixed) at the legendary garage in the heyday of the New York disco scene. Everyone from Talking Heads to Gwen Gutrhie, Teen Gardner to Patrice Rushen. Carefree, groovin and so much fun!
One of the more intriguing private press recordings we've heard, this 1983 soft-focus epic of romantic longing and regret is shrouded in mystery and conjecture. The music itself is a brooding country-western tinged affair of delicate airy synth washes, gentle loping piano and soft acoustic guitar strums lushly arranged into expansive emotional ballads sung with a ghostly mumbling barely-there vocal delivery that reminds us a lot of Arthur Russell, but much more introspective. Newly reissued and remastered by Light In The Attic, not much information was given out in the original release except for a dedication to swimsuit model Christine Brinkley, a photo credit to legendary punk photographer Ed Colver and the Germanic movie star good looks of the artist himself, who has since disappeared without a trace.
Trying to uncover the mystery of who Lewis is (or was) and what happened to him, has only led to more questions as rumors began to swirl of the singer being a con-artist who arrived in LA seemingly out of nowhere driving a white convertible Mercedes with a beautiful model, stayed at the Beverly Hills Hotel, hired session musicians, recorded this album and did a photo shoot only to skip town without paying any of his bills. The record eventually showed up at flea markets and fell into the hands of private press aficionados where its cult-status grew. While the larger than life mystery of the singer largely fuels the appeal of such a bafflingly sensitive and otherworldly record, the music is actually quite captivating once your ears are opened to its languid and slowly unfolding pace. Definitely a headphone record, it's a narcoleptically sublime take on the Western landscape in musical form offering up a romantic big sky worldview with a dreamy celestial-minded quietude.
We only have the cd version available now. The lp version will be released next month.
Since we reviewed the reissue of the mysterious private press album L'amour by the equally mysterious single-named crooner Lewis, who was rumored to have disappeared shortly after its release in 1981, a lot has happened. First, there was a discovery of not just one, but of two previously undiscovered albums he released in the early eighties, of which Romantic Times is one, now reissued. But perhaps more importantly is the news that Lewis himself has been discovered, complete with last name, Baloue, alive and well in Canada, and he apparently has no interest in drudging up his previous life as a hopeless jet-setting and rumored bill-skipping romantic. In the L'Amour review, we mentioned the legendary rumors of his arrival into Los Angeles seemingly out of nowhere in a white suit and white Mercedes with models on each arm before running up a fancy hotel bill and studio time and then skipping town, tapes in hand, without paying his bills. While those rumors may be dubious, it's hard to argue with the cover photo of this newly discovered record of Lewis in fancy white suit with not only said Mercedes, but a white private jet to boot!
If L'Amour was all about epic space and heartbreak, an atmospheric personal lament projected onto the big open landscape, Romantic Times is much more about inviting and nurturing love back into life. Some of the songs sound like classic love songs with new words, for example the opener, "We Danced All Night", is basically "Strangers In The Night" with new lyrics and a snail's tempo. The spacious synths are tempered by narcoleptic waltz rhythms from a drum machine, and there is, of course, also some romantic sax inflections. Lewis's croon is more soulful and breathy, kind of like a mumbling Bryan Ferry, that quivers and soars with each pulse of the drum machine. But with all the romantic allusions, the slow dancing, candlelight and roses, the silhouettes shot through a brandy glass, there is this pervasive creepy stalker vibe that we imagine women would run for restraining orders if they heard this music on a date. Which is kind of why we are digging this so much, the allure of romance and affluence blind-sided by some creepy sentimentality makes for an incredibly bizarre listen.
Record number two from this French fuzz dream pop duo, not sure how we missed the first one, but we're digging this one a lot! The music a heady concoction equal parts modern garage rock and classic French pop, swirling synths wrapped around ukulele (!), simple propulsive almost krautrock drumming, new wave basslines, the sound crystalline and dreamily druggy, the vocals washed out and woozy. Some of the tracks sound a bit like like Moon Duo, that sort of stripped down kraut-psych, while others sound like old French Ye Ye music channeled through the woozy drugginess of Spacemen 3, melding sultry French spoken word, to wheezing psychedelic organ and those krautrocky grooves. The ukulele is possibly the strangest part of the equations, adding a truly distinct and unique sound to the proceedings, even when the band unfurls a thick swirling blast of buzzing guitars, it's underpinned by a lilting melody played on the ukulele. The slower tracks here play like some alternate universe sixties girl group, all fuzzy and shimmery and dreamy, but the bulk of the tracks are droned out organ / ukulele / fuzz guitar zoner-psych groovers, that we can't seem to get enough of.
Beardo Disco? That's a term we have heard bandied about lately when referring to the new wave of mutated house/electroclash/indie dance-rock sounds of acts like Ratatat, Justice, and Norwegian duo Lindstrom and Prins Thomas. Whatever it means, we've been digging it a lot lately. Here Hans-Peter Lindstrom has parted ways with his former collaborator and given us a compilation of solo 12" singles from the Feedelity label released between 2003 and 2006. Arranging with maximal effect without overdoing it, Lindstrom takes cues from Italo Disco, Morodor electro, and Loft-era party mixes to give us a set that will keep us bopping through the holidays. Recommended!
Lindstrom has been a major player in the last several years, offering up and ushering in a movement of modern disco inspired space-surfing jams. He's proven to be unafraid of switching things up, working in different settings and collaborating, as he has with folks like Prins Thomas and even The Boredoms. For his latest outing he's teamed up with a vocalist called Christabelle who has shown up from time to time on some of his earlier recordings, but this time the record centered around her vocals and the two have created an album of ten distinct songs that owe as much to disco queens like Grace Jones and Donna Summer as they do to soul/funk icons like Prince and Vanity 6, not to mention a big healthy does of vintage Italo-disco.
This is one of those records that when played has most folks assuming it's some amazing obscure early 80's disco-treasure. It's got that vintage cloudy and sequined sound yet it doesn't come off like some cheap and easy throwback. One of Lindstrom's greatest strengths is his ability to create such infectious grooves, and we tend to be more drawn to his tighter song based productions than his grandiose epic waves of sound like much of Where You Go I Go Too.
Christabelle and Lindstrom sound so perfect and perfectly balanced together. One never seems to dominate the other. The songs allow for passages that are total trademark Lindstrom, yet Christabelle's vocals lend a lightness and breeze that allows these songs to travel with an ease and freeness that past Lindstrom records were not quite able to reach. Sonically similar to what the folks in the Italians Do It Better/Johnny Jewel camp (Glass Candy, Desire, Chromatics, etc.) have been doing, yet somehow this comes off as a bit less self conscious and flows so smoothly and easily...
We have been hearing about Little Dragon for quite a while now as lots of folks around here had seen them live and been blown away and kept urging us to check out their stuff and to see what an amazing presence their Swedish-Japanese singer has. Unfortunately, most of LD's releases where hard-to-track-down imports up 'til now, but luckily with the release of this newest album Machine Dreams we get to hear why all our friends were so excited about Little Dragon.
Machine Dreams is completely refreshing, bright and colorful electro-pop that eschews all the detached and cold cliches that so many in the scene rely on, opting instead for elements of soul, house, downtempo, and an overall warmth and sincerity of sound that really makes LD stick out.
Imagine a more uptempo and cheery Fever Ray, or if Lali Puna stopped navel gazing and reached their hands and hearts to the sky, or if Matthew Herbert got to produce a record for Gwen Guthrie! We hear wonderful hints of LD's influences too, everything from Massive Attack to Pizzicato Five, yet they manage to really shine with their own identity, displaying a really great range, from uptempo catchy dancefloor moments to more drowsy, sultry bittwersweet slow burners. We are feeling this so much!
Without a doubt one of the most creative and pleasurable groups making electronic tinged dance pop these days. What sets Little Dragon so far ahead of the crowd is that they are such innovative music makers as well as having the amazing talents of lead singer Yukimi Nagano, who really does have one of the most soulful and seductive voices around. Ritual Union is one of the most perfect electro pop albums of the year. The songs and sounds on the record let you go deep into you body. But it's not just a surface high that makes you shake it for a moment, but instead something you feel dig into you deeper and actually grab a hold of your spirit and soul. Like some of the best work that Herbert & Dani Siciliano made together, or if Prince in his prime teamed up with Lykke Li to make a record smart enough to want to spend intimate time with, yet fun enough to want to blast so loud when your friends are around. Colors, shapes and melody all swirling together into something so intoxicating, and so totally good for you. This is becoming our absolute summer jam!
We kind of slept on this record when it came out a few months ago but when we finally gave it a chance we totally fell in love. Most supergroups tend to be kind of all hype and no substance, but the opposite is the case for this trio consisting of Fabrizio Moretti (The Strokes), Rodrigo Amarante (Los Hermanos) and Binki Shapiro. Seems like being in Little Joy really let the players truly have fun and create sweet and breezy songs that make you want to get lost wandering with your friends or that special someone as you lay in the park or daydream on a hammock letting the weight of the world just drift away.
Injecting lots of tropical sounds influenced by Hawaiian, Brazilian & Latin American soft-psychedelic pop with such great results. Makes a lot of sense that this was produced by Noah Georgeson who's had a strong hand in the works of folks like Devendra Banhart and Joanna Newsom. Devendra adds his voice to a few of the songs and you can tell that Little Joy have a strong feeling of kinship with him, as this record really taps into the more laid back sound of Smokey Rolls Down Thunder Canyon and Cripple Crow. Breezy, easy and so delightfully catchy and assured.
We pretty much thought the well had run dry as far as great lost tropicalia gems goes. A few years back there was an explosion of amazing finds from this fertile era in Brazilian music history, with records by folks like Som Imaginario, Ronnie Von, Paulo Bagunca and Alceu Valenca & Gerardo Azevedo.
While there has been totally essential reissues of many of the biggest names of tropicalia (Jorge Ben, Gal Costa, Caetano Veloso, etc.) it was looking like we were going to have to concede that there might not be anymore totally obscure gems left. Of course time after time we're always blown away by unearthed discoveries that just sound way too damn good to have remained obscure and unheard for so long. Such is the case for Liverpool, who released this record in 1969 and of course by their name you know they were influenced by some of the paisley sounds coming out of the UK, and they incorporated that influence into their own take on breezy and driving tropicalia. With a vocal delivery and arrangements that would sound right at home on some of Caetano Veloso's best outings, Liverpool were just as potent mellow and sun baked as they were rocking and psychedelic. We're so happy this has been unearthed for us to finally appreciate, an absolute classic!
A beautiful reissue of spacey melancholic chanson from this Belgian chanteuse who notably won the Eurovision song contest in 1968 a year before this debut release. But what sets this apart from standard '60s Euro-pop are the electronic, almost avant-garde arrangements made mostly with an Ondes Martenot, a theremin-like electronic keyboard famously used in the Star Trek theme and championed at the time by French avant-classical composer Olivier Messaien. Fans of Stereolab and Broadcast as well as Linda Perhacs and Brigitte Fontaine will surely find lots to love here, and we would love this even more if the reissue retained the original cover which is more haunting and ethereal than the nineties /sixties space-age bachelor pad design featured here, but that's a very small complaint. Limited stock!
While Bradford Cox is Deerhunter's front man and charismatic focal point, there is no denying that his bandmate Locket Pundt plays a major roll in Deerhunter as well, with his blissful guitar playing and daydream vocals helping define the band's sound. Now the rest of the world will get a chance to see what a talent he is with the release of his solo project, Lotus Plaza.
Much like the way Bradford Cox was able to explore more of the ambient textures of Deerhunter with his Atlas Sound record, Pundt seems to be using Lotus Plaza to really concentrate on exploring a swirling blissed out orbit that Deerhunter songs only rarely enter, although when they do, we so often wish they would stay there and luxuriate in those far out sounds. Taking cues from classic shoegaze records like Slowdive's Pygmalion and of course My Bloody Valentine's Loveless, as well as some of Kranky's early records by bands like Labradford, Amp, Windy & Carl, etc., Floodlight Collective is a washed out and blissful affair incorporating melody and song structure but ultimately more concerned with creating mood and ambience. A bit like some of the newer M83 stuff, if it was perhaps a bit less produced and instead was created as a soundtrack for bleary eyed late nights staring at the stars...
So nice!
There is almost a curse in creating something that so many people praise as "genius" and as your "defining moment". Such is the case with the legacy of one of the best west coast psych bands of the '60s, Love. For most people the story of Love begins and ends with Forever Changes, their undeniably classic album from 1967, a record that's been included on all sorts of best album of all time lists and has been the subject of entire books and magazines articles. Rightfully so, as it really is one of those classic timeless records that we turn to time and time again. But sadly the attention Forever Changes now attracts has obscured the fact that Arthur Lee (essentially the driving force of Love) created a whole lot of other amazing music that's not on Forever Changes. Lately we've been spending lots of time with Love's 1969 outing Out There which was originally released as a double lp and was pretty much a commercial flop (as was Forever Changes when it first came out!)
After disbanding and changing lineups almost every year in the late '60s and into the early '70s Love was pretty much the vehicle for the enigmatic world of Arthur Lee (who for some funny reason calls himself Arthurly in the credits of this record). Out There contains some of Lee's most devastating material, songs like "I'm Down" paint such a moving and sad portrait of the internal anguish that haunted Lee throughout a lot of his life. This disc really is all over the place, containing more playful and breezy tracks like "Run To The Top" and quite possibly one of our favorite Love song of all time, the ultra dreamy "Willow Willow", as well as the smart ass and anti-military "Discharged", the twelve minute percussive freakout of "Doggone" and the Hendrix like rocker "Stand Up".
While it's not without a few misses this still is one of the best records in the Love back catalog and strong proof that there is more to the story and Arthur Lee's genius than just Forever Changes.
Here comes another one from the vaults displaying Phil Spector's production glory. But before we go giving Spector all the credit, there is no doubt that Darlene Love is one of the greatest singers of all time! Just ask folks like Sam Cooke, Dionne Warwick, Gene Autry, The Beach Boys, and Aretha Franklin who all employed her at one point for her vocal prowess. A founding member of The Blossoms, she would then meet Phil Spector in 1962. He was so in love with her voice that he even released some songs he recorded with her under The Crystals moniker, since he owned the name, even though none of the actual members of The Crystals were on the record. This collection brings remastered versions of seventeen of her classic tracks together on one disc, many of which could only be found on different compilations until now. Spector's wall of sound production only adds to the overall glory and power of Love's voice. Pop perfection!
What's there to say about Low that hasn't been said before. Without a doubt one of the most inspiring, emotionally riveting and chill inducing bands of our generation. Their ability to capture mournful emotion and conjure up deep mystery in their songs has often been imitated but one rarely gets to that same satisfying bittersweet state of sound that they do. While the first half of their career found them as leaders of the slowcore movement, in recent years they haven't been afraid to play with their sound and speed things up a bit, and even rock out from time to time. But no matter how they allow new sounds and styles to enter their fold, they always sound like Low, and that is a very good thing indeed. C'mon introduces an almost twang like sensibility on several of the songs. But ultimately it's still about the way they can transform a four minute song into a meditation on sadness, longing, and despair. Like all of their records, C'mon takes a few listens to really start seeping in, but damn once it did we realized we have yet another great Low album that we'll be listening to for years to come.
One of the most emotionally devastating and beautiful records of all time. We couldn't be more happy that this classic album by Low has finally been reissued on vinyl. It's an album really made to be listened to in the solitary refuge of your bedroom, so hopefully your turntable is in there. Produced by Shimmy Disc mastermind Kramer, and released in 1995, this will always be the way we hear the sound of Low when we close our eyes and think of all the times their music has been the soundtrack during times of heartache, confusion, and despair. The pinnacle and defining moment of slowcore, every single song on Long Division slowly creeps its way into your subconscious. No other bands could use such a minimalist approach and achieve such a heavy & haunting aura. Songs like "Violence", "Caroline", "Shame", and "Alone", are not only some of the best Low songs ever recorded, but they are simply some of the most emotionally impacting songs of the last two decades.�
Long Division is not a record you put on in the background or when you're just hanging out with friends, this is a record you listen to during moments of introspection, of soul searching, loneliness and sorrow yet they're also infused with a sense of hope. Music doesn't get more emotionally intense or elegant then this. A perfect album!
Holy shit... they did it again! Two plus decades into their career and Low have managed to make yet another breathtaking record, a collection of songs that even on first listen, induced the sort of chills that only the most special records ever do. Along with Yo La Tengo, Low have proven to be one of the most consistent and reliable bands to emerge from the indie landscape in the last twenty-five years. Pioneers of the slowcore sound, their music has always been rich with wrenching emotion and a relentless power.
Over the years, they have experimented with more rocking and poppy directions, but even then, their slowcore roots remained, and somehow they always ended up, if not back where they started, at least sonically expounding on all the glacial beauty that came before. With Ones & Sixes, Low they have created maybe one of their best records yet, one that most definitely belongs with other Low faves of ours, alongside Long Division, Secret Name, and Things We Lost In The Fire. Everything we love about Low is in full flower here. Alan and Mimi's aching vocals, soporific songs that unfold like slowly blossoming flowers, with melodies that have us humming along - and in a perfect world, could/should/would be all over the radio. Low have never compromised their singular vision, and like the rest of Low's records, this is exactly it sounds like when a band remains connected to their truth and purpose. Brilliant!
Another gorgeous collection of dreamy downer pop brilliance from these slowcore legends, and like on 2010's C'mon, it's hard to know what to say about Low, that we haven't already, but on The Invisible Way, some things have definitely changed. Not just the sound, but the songs as well. The sound, is massive, lush, and layered, much of the record sounding like some classic pop record, baroque and majestic, the instruments perfectly preserved, the sound live, and ALIVE, as if they were playing right there in front of you, but also meticulously recorded to perfectly capture every nuance, no matter how subtle. The harmonies, always an integral part of Low's sound, are even more beautiful this time around, so much so, that in places it seems like the instrumentation has been purposefully dialed back to let the vocals carry the whole song, and they do, and it's sublime. There's also lots of piano this time around, and what sounds like strings. There's one track with a weird sort of handclap beat, that almost sounds like a drum machine. It all makes for a gorgeous record, one that remains true to the group's slowcore past, but is definitely pushing the sound in exciting new directions. Jeff Tweedy from Wilco produced the Invisible Way, so he can probably take credit for some of this new sound, but then there's the shift in Low's sound, which in places, definitely sounds a bit twangy and even a little bit country, but in others like seventies British folk, and in others like baroque pop, and still in others like some sort of ethereal blues. All of those elements definitely existed in the band before now, but never has each of those been so perfectly honed, the songs here achingly beautiful, heartfelt and haunting, and yet still impossibly catchy. As much as we sometimes think to ourselves, "oh ok, another Low record, ho hum", the second we hear it, we are immediately transfixed, utterly smitten, and are reminded that Low is one of the rare bands who seem unable to make a bad record, and who just get better and better and better, even after nearly twenty years. And once we begin listening to a new Low, we can't help but let ourselves get fantastically and inexorably lost in Low's dreamlike soundworld. And The Invisible Way is no different.
