What's cool? Martin Gore, Europa Hymn

Unscripted reflection

When I was a kid, I loved to go to the natural science museum and look at the dinosaurs. There was something cool about seeing the articulated skeletal fossils next to artists' renditions of how they might have appeared in life. It was a while before I realized that those sketches were basically just guesswork, but that epiphany opened up possibilities in my mind as I imagined alternatives to what had been put before me. Even now, I prefernot to have everything all spelled out. The best books, movies, or music leave a bit of mystery that pushes some of the work onto the audience.



That's exactly why Martin Gore's new single, "Europa Hymn" is so enjoyable, It's more like a gesture drawing than a fully developed song. Even though it's barely more than three minutes, Gore takes his time to place a small set of elements -- synthesizer swells and electronic beats -- and he lets them just reverberate within the sonic space. The track is moody and reflective, but the sparse arrangement doesn't provide much additional narrative direction. It rises from the synthesizer waves, builds up some rhythm to suggest a kind of down-tempo electro-pop, and then sinks back under the lonely surface, leaving room for a world of interpretations: it could represent the arc of a relationship, the ebb and flow of life, or even the sense of a sculptor finding the shape that hides within a block of marble.

Gore is best known as one of the founding members of Depeche Mode, and it's easy to hear the connection between this and his band work. But while the palette is familiar, this song distills synth-pop down to its electronic essence, discarding the urgency and tension to focus on an ethereal sense Zen purity, where the listener project their own meaning.

"Europa Hymn" is one of 16 tracks from Gore's new album, MG, which came out at the end of last month.

What's cool? The Very Best with Mafilika, "Hear Me"

Roots come together from opposite worlds 

Sometimes, you can travel to the ends of the earth and still find yourself back at home. Esau Mwamwaya was an experienced singer when he left his home in Malawi and moved to London in 1999. A serendipitous meeting led to an unlikely partnership with the production team of Radioclit to form The Very Best. Their electronic production complemented his soulful singing to create an intriguing mixtape that featured some surprising contributions from acts like Santigold and samples from a variety of pop and indie bands.

Fast forward a half decade and The Very Best was centered on Mwamwaya and DJ Johan Hugo. The pair had temporarily relocated back to Lilongwe, Malawi in 2013. They left the capital for village life in M'dala Chikowa to work on their new album in earnest, which edged their sound to away from its electronic foundations to develop a more band-oriented focus. The resulting project, Makes a King, just came out this month. It still ties back to their earlier work, but it's looser and more vibrant.

"Hear Me" is the first single off the new album, and that version features bass work from Chris Baio (Vampire Weekend). The glitchy production adds a brittle quality that emphasizes the fragility of Mwamwaya's voice. It straddles synthpop reminiscent of Tears For Fears along with a deep African heart. While the studio take is pretty nice, this live version, recorded with Malawi Afrojazz band Mafilika, has a more organic feel.



Mafilika mixes in live drums to go with the drum machine beat, which softens the stark edge of the studio recording. Hugo's production touches are still there to maintain the modernity of the song, but the sadness and resignation of the vocals comes through even stronger than before. Listening to the two perspectives side by side, it's easy to hear how the live version taps into the soul of the song as it first entered the world, before the studio production added a veneer of complexity to shade the tune.

Both takes are strong signs that Makes A King is worth digging into to hear how roots from opposite ends of the earth can intertwine.

Recording review - Föllakzoid, III (2015)

Sink into hypnotic rhythms and dark echoes

^4.0/5.0

World music -- that vague catch-all label -- largely falls into two flavors, neither of which reflect too well on the Westerners who coined the term. The bulk of it is “delightfully exotic” or “strange but cool”, showcasing some culture’s musical heritage, but repackaged in easy to digest servings to appeal to the jaded palate. Worse than that are the half breed mutants that hover between appropriation and cargo-cult aspiration, sometimes with rock artists harnessing foreign musicians without understanding their cultural context, other times with those musicians trying with mild success to emulate Western pop. Even so, I’ll confess that I’ve enjoyed my share of all of these, sometimes with a frisson of guilt.

Föllakzoid’s sophomore album, III, neatly sidesteps this minefield by focusing on their creative vision and building rich, long-form trance excursions. The Chilean trio taps into a hypnotic flow that has served numerous traditions from Indian ragas and Sufi dervishes to Krautrock drives and dancehouse electronica. Their music may draw somewhat on South American rhythms, but those influences don’t stick out as much as the motorik percussion, Indian polyrhythms, trance psychedelia, and Goth rock moodiness. Why waste time pedantically analyzing the cultural referents or feeling hiply superior when you can surrender to the swirling syncopation and trippy echoes?

III is a full length album split into four tracks, but the songs seem to share thematic elements even as they change up their production. In particular, the first two tracks, “Electric” and “Earth” have a lot in common: each begins with syncopated beats built from echoed percussion, they build into trancy electronica, and they feature heavily reverbed vocals. But the two songs develop completely different moods. “Electric” latches on to a slinky bass groove that pushes into Ozric Tentacles territory. Electronic washes and a deep, pensive throb create a beautiful tension that complements the crystalline bite of guitar and gives a surreal edge to the faint vocals that sounds like distant PA announcements. The song wraps up with a sci-fi flavored interlude featuring robotic sound effects and shimmering static.

“Earth” rises from this sonic soundscape with a metallic percussion that develops into a deep tribal rhythm. The bass is strong here, too, but now it’s heavy and impassive, reminding me a bit of Joy Division. The effect is much darker than the first track, suggesting shadowy hallways where barely noticeable electronic grinding suggests alien threats lurking just out of sight. Despite that undercurrent of danger, there’s also a thoughtful element as the piece hypnotically wraps in on itself, occasionally running into dead ends and moving on while the echoes hang on a little bit.

The shortest piece, “Feuerzeug”, closes out the album with an intense nine minutes of pensive Krautrock that ambraces the Gothic sounds of Joy Division and Bauhaus. The main theme is thick with tension and has me expecting to hear Ian Curtis break in with the vocals for “Transmission”. Then some heavier flashes of guitar against the steady beat suggest Bauhaus’ “Terror Couple Kill Colonel”. At the same time, Föllakzoid aren’t aping those bands. They make their own statement by playing with the sonic palette to blend in harsher, low-fi tones that contrast against the softening echoes and electronic touches. They fill in a host of disjointed details that drift in and out before the song gradually deconstructs itself.

If III has a weakness, it’s one that many trance-oriented projects share: it’s too easy for a casual listener to dismiss the whole collection as repetitive and miss the nuances between the songs.“Feuerzeug” may stand as the best argument against that criticism, but I think that Föllakzoid could have varied the tempos a little more to create more differentiation. Ultimately, those are minor issues that won’t distract as you sink under the album’s spell. Best of all, it’s not “world music”; it’s just music, perfect for an early Spring bike ride or as a soul-refreshing barrier against workday monotony .

What's cool? Hot and cold electronic pop from Coeds and Tei Shi

Mirror images and musical reflections

Browsing through virtual piles of music this week, I found myself trapped between two extremes. Even though both of these tunes are rooted in electronic pop and feature strong female singers, they reflect radically different sensibilities. One runs hot with retro synthpop passion, packed with noisy energy. The other is a chill blend of polished pop vocals and precise sequencing.



Coeds' new single "Sensitive Boys" kicks off with Ryan Kailath's tight synth riff and a solid drum machine loop and quickly captures the retro new wave synthpop of Men Without Hat's "Safety Dance" along with some Billy Idol edge. Merideth Muñoz doesn't sneer like Idol, but she can summon a post-punk Blondie-style glee on lines like, "New chicks/ The same tricks/ Six six six." The production on her voice is just a little saturated, so she sounds like she's ready to rip right through the speaker. Her knowing tone fits the lyrical theme as she chastises all of the sensitive boys who will never be the kind of player that she is: "Who said anything about love?" Coeds fill the track with percussive bits and pieces, which makes it as danceable as it is catchy.



Tei Shi is every bit as memorable with "Go Slow", but instead of overtly pumping the track full of energy, she lets it simmer with repressed tension. The verses are buttoned down, with a sparse electro-pop groove behind Shi's breathy vocal. The brief bridge opens up into a freer expression when she loosens her control and sings, "Baby, won't you reach out to me." Almost immediately, though, she bottles it back up. The production is exquisitely choreographed, balancing the movement of rhythm and bass into a give-and-take dance of advance and retreat. It's clear that every sound is carefully chosen and placed. That precision is in turn complemented by the dreamy softness of the vocal line.

I love listening to these tracks together, where the heat and life of Coeds can contrast with delicate crafting of Tei Shi's music. Either one sounds great alone, but together they mirror one another. It's a dichotomy where both sides are right. 

Concert review - Beardyman with Shank Aaron and Sureshot

13 March 2015 (Beta Nightclub, Denver CO)

^3.75/5.0

I've been to my share of nightclubs, but I'm much more a denizen of the bar show and concert hall. Unfortunately, DJ sets and electronic acts are always a bit out of their element at concert venues when they try to recreate the dance club/rave feel. It's hard to overcome the wrong geometry, the lack of a real dance floor, and a very different atmosphere.

By contrast, catching Beardyman at Beta delivered the genuine dance club experience. They had the lighting setup, including lasers and a pixelated display around the DJ, not to mention a sound system capable of massaging internal organs with bass throb. While the show never caught the wild rave feel of a Beats Antique or Glitch Mob show, Beta was a decent venue. Unlike most of the clubs I've been to, the space was voluminous and could have accommodated a much larger crowd; the dance floor was fairly full, but the back and edges offered plenty of room to move around.

Shank Aaron and Sureshot

The first thing to remember is that this evening was all about the club vibe rather than a concert. So, there were no breaks or rests as one DJ melted into another. Sureshot led off with fairly standard set of electronic mood music, but he never even spoke to the crowd. The transition to Shank Aaron picked things up a bit, with a harder edge bass and a buddy on the mic, but the emphasis remained on driving the insistent beat and keeping people moving.

Soaking in the experience on the dance floor, it reminded me about the power of variable-interval reinforcement schedules. Okay, I lost a few of you there. This is what makes gambling, email, and Candy Crush Saga so addictive: a stable pattern interrupted with tiny rewards. The DJs provided this by constantly manipulating the sonic signature with grinding bass or free-fall washes, all without dropping the beat. Each novel twist -- is that the sound of industrial robot mating calls? -- triggered a new wash of dopamine and flush of satisfaction. In the club sensorium, where the volume dominated and the visuals provided pseudo-random shifts, the effect was electric. The only real way to react was to move and dance, and there was joy in that surrender.

Beardyman

Beardyman slipped into the booth at the end of Shank Aaron's set and did his systems check while the final changes propagated through the mix. But once he took up the reins, the difference was huge as he demonstrated the difference between mere DJ and performer. It wasn't just how he layered his vocal loops to create an order of magnitude more complexity; it was his playful sense of improvisation and the amount of personality he injected. He warmed up by showing off some of his musical chops, then he got on the mic and riffed for a while on Denver, mentioning his last tour through here that ended early when he got sick. Then, apropos of nothing, he shot off on a tangent. He mentioned, "I probably shouldn't have taken that acid 30 minutes ago," which pulled its comic effect from the vocal mutation that added the requisite disconcerting echoes and pitch shifts. It was a cheap gag, but it worked to loosen up the crowd.

It was interesting to contrast this nightclub experience with his more concert-oriented shows. He never got quite as antic or creative because he kept the set in full service to the dance floor, but the performance element distinguished Beardyman from his more prosaic competition. It's not just that he was live looping the mix and tweaking vocal samples on the fly to create his grooves, it's how he toyed with the electronic dance structure and kept his audience off balance. If the normal dance club formula builds on short attention span twists on the beat, Beardyman upped the ante by whipsawing his set between inciting the crowd with intensely powerful rhythms and then shattering the mood with comic or surprising side trips. So, he broke up the heavy pounding beat with an introspective instrumental piano interlude that was disrupted yet again when it picked up a grinding dubstep bass. Later, a bouncy pop song was deconstructed and deformed into weirdness. But he never forgot his milieu, pushing the dancers into constant motion. He also handled these shifts organically as he flowed between them.

Throughout the night, he made it clear that all of his set was relatively improvised, sometimes with subtle moves, like lyrical riffing specific to Denver, but just as often by overtly bragging about it and explaining what he was doing in a sing-song dancehall style voice.  This looseness meant that he could build up some elaborate ideas, but then abandon them if they didn't connect as well. Having seen some of his other performances, there were some familiar bits, although they had their own flavor here. One of these, "Ghost Town" by The Specials, reworked  the uneasy darkness of the tune until it unwound into glitched out blocks of tone.

This show at Beta wasn't as polished or clever as that Seattle show linked earlier, but it was exactly what the venue called for. It was a full night of tribal dance rites powered by visceral bass and tight syncopation, and Beardyman's special touch made it something to talk about afterwards, trading memories of odd references and riffs.

(Note: Lighting and logistics made it hard to get any other usable photos) 

What's cool - Rebekka Karijord, "Use My Body While It's Still Young"

Comfortably numb? Not necessarily...

Is it time to turn away from what we take for granted and challenge ourselves? The path of least resistance promises a smoother trip, but without stepping off that path, we'd never know what we're missing. I think about this as my high school aged son is an exchange student overseas, immersing himself in another culture and other assumptions. It also rears its head when I talk to my friends about the bands that excite them the most. Music can be like comfort food; many of us just want to soothe away the irritants of the day with familiar soundtracks. It's nice to know that that band you loved in high school never changes...well, they never change if you don't listen their later work or clean your palate with some fresh sounds. I have my comfort foods, but if I were still only eating the food I loved at 15, I'd never have tasted curry, harissa, or wasabi. And even though I never became a big fan of wasabi, I'm a better person for having tried it.

Norwegian born singer/songwriter Rebekka Karijord has never blipped on my radar before this, but I just came across her song, "Use My Body While It's Still Young" and it made a strong impression. The piece is the first single off her 2012 album, We Become Ourselves, which is due to see its American release on February 5, 2015 and I'm looking forward to hearing more. She describes the song as a "momento mori", a cautionary reflection on mortality, and the lyrics take us to a place that most of us would rather not think too much about:

Use my body while it’s still strong.
Wrap yourself in all of this warmth,
This aching love
Come use it while it’s alive
This aching love
Come use it while it’s alive
We’ll all be gone in hundred years

Those philosophical lines are paired with a dreamy electronic pop groove. The music takes a song that could be brooding and nihilistic and turns it to celebration. Just as Karijord's words recommend, the song surrenders to the joy of dance and movement. Sweet and sour, she savors her gifts even as she feels the passage of time.



The video complements this with a powerful collaboration with Siv Ander, a Swedish dancer in her 70s. The visual contrast is sharp, with loving closeups of Ander's body and her choreography evolving from stiff and static to richer physicality.

This is the perfect finish to a day: discovering fine music from an artist I've never heard of, seeing a video that moves me, and having it help me think about the choices we make from day to day, while we can. Let them be conscious ones.

Recording review: Bassnectar, Noise vs. Beauty (2014)

Trippy, danceable, and catchy as hell

Go ahead, judge Bassnectar’s latest release by its cover. Bits of analog are scattered into the digital interstices, the repetitive patterns turn out to be somewhat irregular and it’s not clear what the overarching meaning is, although one is implied. Noise vs. Beauty delivers on all of that as it juxtaposes both titular elements in a fairly satisfying proportion. Longtime fans will find plenty of the throb, grind, and intensity they’d expect, but Bassnectar continues to color outside the traditional electronic lines, which makes him accessible to other audiences.

He indulges his predilection for crossing the organic with synthetic sounds right from the start. The opening track, “F.U.N.”, is a collaboration with Seth Drake, remixing one of Drake’s original symphonies. It launches with a lightly reverbed piano motif that is quickly woven into a pretty tapestry, with synth string layers and delicately echoed tones. This intro creates a sense of plans unfolding, but then gives way to a mix of dark, orchestral strings and shriller violins that portend an approaching threat. Bassnectar takes that tension and seamlessly transitions into an electronic buildup. Swirling mechanical vibrations and dubstep belches of bass drift in and out of the mix, but a quiet interlude reveals the piano and string skeleton that seemingly still underpins the piece. After another anxious slab of head-twisting pressure, the thoughtful finish virtually suggests that despite the Sturm und Drang, everything will play out as intended. Another nice feature of this track is that it’s purely instrumental. While most of Noise vs. Beauty reflects the personalities of the guest vocalists, “F.U.N.” and a small handful of instrumental tracks let the music and production speak for itself. Aside from the opening cut, “Ephemeral” is another intriguing instrumental, offering crystalline mazes of introspective distraction.

Although those voiceless islands provide fine moments of clarity, the guest singers do make some strong contributions. In particular, W. Darling adds the perfect pop polish on the lead single, “You & Me”. The song leads off with a U2 guitar riff that captures the Edge’s trademark chorused echo, but instead of Bono’s strident tone, W. Darling’s breathy sweetness is refreshing. Early on, the tune sounds like a Missing Persons reissue, but it slides into EDM with a tight rhythm and pulsating synth arpeggios. The chorus is an infectious affirmation that makes this song the earworm track of the album. Bassnectar does a good job of matching production to the guest. In sharp contrast to the easy flow of “You & Me”, “Noise” chops and mutates Donnis’ low key, casual rap delivery into a confrontational assertion, “I do what I want to do/ I do what I like.” His untreated voice is a touch defiant, but the pitch-shifted, cough syrup-infused sections darken the mood into sociopathic menace. When the noisy clash of saw blade whine and bass scrape eventually take over, it just feels like an inevitable explosion, like Chekhov’s gun.

Aside from “You & Me”, “Mystery Song” is most likely to catch on with a wider audience. The mix takes a solid synth-wave tune worthy of Siouxsie and the Banshees and gives it a wicked, electronic serrated edge. Samantha Barbera from BEGINNERS effortlessly flips from detached moodiness on the verses to wilder acting out for the chorus. The lockstep beat and sawtooth bass update the sound, but stay in service to the song’s innate new wave pop. Bassnectar throws in some odd ideas that ultimately work out very well, especially the mid-song drop that pushes everything deep underwater before letting it bob back up to the surface. As a result, Noise vs. Beauty is trippy, danceable, and catchy as hell.

(This review first appeared on Spectrum Culture)

Recording review - Trans Am, Volume X (2014)

A whirlwind tour with little chance settle into appreciation

If there was ever a band to demonstrate that labels are meaningless, it would be the long-lived but under-the-radar band Trans Am. Wikipedia sticks them under the vague umbrella of post-rock, but their tongue in cheek web site declares their sound as “heavy American electro rock”. Whatever you call them, over the years, they’ve been happy to appropriate elements of just about everything they’ve ever heard: classic rock, electronica, new wave, heavy metal and Krautrock just begin the list. Volume X, their appropriately named 10th release, tries to shoehorn in all of these into a single muddled heap of songs. While the plaid and polka dots juxtaposition is clearly intentional, it’s hard to tackle the album as a coherent whole, even though the individual tracks are pretty good.

Trans Am kicks off with “Anthropocene”, where an ethereal wash of synth heralds in a grinding psychedelic excursion into the middle of some arcane rite. Saw wave guitars set a plodding zombie pace, accented by the band’s trademark savant drum work, full of flourishes and hyperactive fills. Echoed and twisted shreds of keyboard provide a hint of relief to the otherwise oppressive heaviness. It’s a solid start, promising further journeys through heady darkness and brooding obsession. Rather than build on this intensity, they springboard into an unexpected direction. “Reevaluations” lives up to its title, calling the last five and a half minutes into question. Where the previous track trudged through a thick grungy miasma, the one percolates, blending Devo style new wave with Ozric Tentacles space rock. As a standalone piece, the crystalline structure and repressed tension work together to lure the listener in deeper, but in context it’s just a jarring transition. Even though the next couple of tracks gesture towards continuity, with synthesizers and syncopation, they don’t actually mesh either. By the time we persevere through these additional flavors of electronica to reach the fifth track, the band seems afraid that we’re getting complacent. So they decide to reshuffle the deck and dive into a metallic shredfest for “Backflash”, locking into a repetitive fan-blade rhythm vamp. We’re halfway through the tracklist and it feels more like a well-shuffled iPod playlist than a planned series of songs by a single band.

Trans Am’s established fan base may well be used to the short attention span. In any case, they’ll find plenty of familiar elements on Volume X, like the tight drum work, twisted electronics and processed vocals. But it’s hard to imagine the group winning many new converts with this grab bag collection. It’s frustrating, because I can find things to like about most of the multiple personalities they try on and discard on this album. Still, it’s telling that my favorite track is probably the least representative. That should be a high bar to pass, but “Insufficiently Breathless” has little to do with any of the other tunes. Rich flourishes of 12-string acoustic guitar provide a stately canvas for a variety of melodic additions. Where most of Volume X favors unsettled tension if not overtly stressful moods, the album closes out with a gentle psychedelic tip of the hat to short-lived progressive rockers, Captain Beyond. Trans Am does a decent job of referencing more than just the title, falling into the same introspective meandering that their inspiration delighted in.

As pleasant a finish as this is, it still leaves me a bit dazed. Almost any step along this winding path could serve as a jumping off point for a whole record’s worth of creative exploration. By trying to hit them all, Trans Am barely manages to look out their window at the possibilities.


Trans Am - I'll Never from Thrill Jockey Records on Vimeo.

(This review first appeared on Spectrum Culture)

Recording review - John Frusciante, Enclosure (2014)

Arbitrary fragments and electronic agitation

Anyone who knows John Frusciante’s guitar work with the Red Hot Chili Peppers and other rock bands will be completely nonplussed by his latest release, Enclosure.

It may even surprise the true fans that already know his avant-garde side. From his first solo album, Niandra Lades and Usually Just a T-Shirt (1994) through 2012’s PBX Funicular Intaglio Zone, Frusciante’s solo work has always distanced itself from his rock stylings, but it’s striking just how challenging this latest release is. Enclosure features some interesting guitar playing, but it’s positioned more as decoration than the central focus, which is made clear from the very start. “Shining Desert” is a loosely structured electronic soundscape. It begins with a pensive beat and peripheral swells of sound. Frusciante’s processed falsetto overlays itself but remains so low in the mix that it’s difficult to make out all of the lyrics. It’s an intentional gesture that seems to indicate that the words are not nearly as important as the mood he’s trying to create. The guitar doesn’t make its entrance until a full minute into the piece, ushered in with a tom-heavy drum flourish. From that point on, jittery percussion dominates the tune, accompanied by densely layered guitar and keyboard textures. Like a patchwork of corduroy, gingham, and silk, these fragments seemed arbitrarily tossed together without a clear artistic sense. When it can be teased out, the guitar playing is fluid and technically complex, but without a stronger context, it’s hard to appreciate.

This inauspicious beginning is followed by the slightly more coherent “Sleep”, which centers on a theatrical vocal delivery. Unfortunately, the overly busy drum machine beat eclipses the rest of the arrangement, reflecting a short attention span as it jumps from pattern to pattern. The first half of Enclosure stumbles from one experimental jumble to another. It’s not just a matter of defying rock expectations or conventions; the project seems trapped in the echo chamber of Frusciante’s studio-borne flashes of quixotic inspiration and obsessive dabbling. Music like this can sink in and grow on me over time, but the album’s first four tracks never clicked.

Perhaps in recognition of this self-indulgent noodling, Frusciante redeems himself somewhat with the fifth track, “Fanfare”. The simpler electro-pop groove is refreshingly accessible, and he reins in his restless rhythms. With a change of instrumentation, this could find a home in the Red Hot Chili Peppers’ catalog, perhaps along with the tunes on By The Way (2002). His lyrical structure is fairly open, but the quiet intensity is pleasant. Eventually, he brings in some guitar during the more aggressive bridge section, but he closes the tune with a cool, Adrian Belew style section, replete with swells of reverse-gated runs. In this case, the outsider approach ornaments the introspective dignity of the piece.

On the next track, “Cinch”, Frusciante finally opens up on the guitar. This instrumental establishes a mournful procession, which provides a good base for his expressive riffing. As the drums sink into nervous, over-the-top fills, the guitar finds a balance between the dolorous foundation and the distracting syncopation. The remaining songs aim for something in between “Fanfare” and “Cinch”. They have a lot more musical structure than the first half of the album, but the scattered drum complexity is a relentless shadow.

A quick sampling of Frusciante’s most recent releases suggests a developing artistic arc. The Empyrean (2009) was more traditionally structured, but incorporated synth elements and a fair amount of production. PBX Funicular Intaglio Zone leaned more heavily on electronic influences, albeit with a Zappa-esque flair, but flashes of drumbeat anxiety do surface. Enclosure magnifies that sense of agitation and embraces it. The promotional push for the album offers another perspective. The album was sent up on a small Cube Satellite and streamed to a custom mobile app for the week or so before the release date. Enclosure’s lack of flow and clarity may just reflect where Frusciante’s head is at these days: somewhere out in the fringes.

(This review first appeared on Spectrum Culture)

Concert review - Beats Antique with Blockhead and Itchy-O Marching Band

11 April 2014 (Fillmore Auditorium, Denver CO)

A Thousand Faces and a thousand stories. Beats Antique took to Kickstarter last year to raise money, not for their planned album, A Thousand Faces, but to create a world class show to tour their new album. Showmanship has always been key for this exotic electronic group. While their music is heavily produced and full of intriguing layers of sound from around the world, their shows are rituals of tribal dance fusion driven by insistent rhythms and spectacle.

Choreographer and belly dancer Zoe Jakes deserves a lot of the credit for shaping the band’s stage presence. When I first saw the group in 2011, I was entranced by her dancing, which not only provided a context for the tunes, but also inspired the audience to abandon themselves to the physicality of the music. Jakes and her partners, David Satori and Sidecar Tommy Cappel, balanced at a nexus of rave, cultural outreach and ritual. The Fillmore was several times larger than that 2011 concert venue, and the new show took full advantage, delivering an overwhelming spectacle that rivaled any big pop band production. The Kickstarter money was well-spent on video projection technology from Obscura Digital, top-notch lighting and, of course, alluring costumes and choreography.

Opening acts: Itchy-O Marching Band, Blockhead

The opening acts each found their own contact points with the Beats Antique experience. Denver’s Itchy-O Marching Band paraded around the outside of the venue with their chaotic electro-rhythmic blare before making their entrance through the main doors. Their bright and blinking uniforms couldn’t offset the dark menace of their masked faces.

In contrast, producer/DJ Blockhead (Tony Simon) didn’t try to compete visually. Instead, he kicked off his set with a spooky riff full of intensely layered percussion. The sound of spirits in the shadows and foreign scales suited Beats Antique’s sonic palette, but he went on to evolve long-form pieces, moving through dance, sexy R&B and jazz before returning to the stranger tones he started with. His sample selections—a well-placed and mutated bit of “The Lion Sleeps Tonight,” a jazzy take on “Sunny” against a moody soul groove—sprinkled tasty little surprises throughout his set.

Beats Antique

Before Beats Antique began their show, their stage was filled with boxy blocks that looked like a collection of white birdhouse blanks. Along with the backing scrim, these would become screens for the video projection. Cappel’s drum kit was behind and above one line of blocks while Satori’s collection of instruments was set behind the other. As the music started, these boxes became a small village with a large gnarled tree in the town square. The effect was strong, with Cappel and Satori embedded within the scene. The music was a blend of live instrumentation and pre-recorded parts. So, in addition to his other gear, Satori played producer, mixing parts into the song. As the tune built up energy, the projection turned psychedelic, flashing swirls of high contrast op-art over the stage, but still preserving the tree as a centerpiece.

The imagery shifted for each song, becoming a Southeast Asian temple for Jakes’ first dance. Later, we’d appreciate the versatility of the set up as it transitioned through a mind-blowing collection of tableaux: retro Asian pen-and-ink animations, a game show set, a giant snake’s lair and a video game battlefield among others. The set designers did a fantastic job of delivering this variety without letting the technology become the focus. It was easy to forget the initial blocky appearance and become immersed in the show. Similarly, the set and live instrumentation distracted from the technical aspects of the backing tracks.


Jakes’ stage craft also played a strong part. Her mesmerizing movements created a focal point and storyline for the songs to hang on. Aside from belly dancing and modern interpretive dance, she used elements of Kabuki, Balinese dance and other cultural traditions. She was stylized and theatrical, but still drew on an earthy physicality. One of the strongest moments came during “Viper’s Den.” Her costume simulated snakeskin with a slinky sheath and cobra-like headpiece. After writhing around in sinuous seduction, she melted back into the set and another dancer enveloped her from behind, hiding her from view. Suddenly, the pair unfolded and revealed Jakes’ costume change. Her dress and headpiece were gone, and the two were decked out as fan dancers. Where her earlier expression had been wicked and intense, now she played the tease with broad bawdiness.

Even the campier tunes from A Thousand Faces played well. During the game show pastiche “Doors of Destiny,” a volunteer took his chances picking one of three doors to receive either “Eternal damnation, everlasting life or unlimited bandwidth and one year’s free technical support.” Of course, that didn’t go well, and he was attacked by a giant inflatable demon during the song’s glitch-step grinding climax. Later, Beats Antique performed their song “Beelzebub” with a pre-recorded Claymation by Les Claypool.

The overwhelming spectacle, exotic music and visceral bass punch contributed to the rave atmosphere. Dozens of Zoe acolytes danced their own steps, and every third person wore some kind of crazy outfit. The audience often competes with the stage at this kind of show, but glow sticks and LED displays merely added ambiance.

More photos on my Flickr.

Recording review - Bike For Three!, So Much Forever (2014)

Can a true partnership be bigger than Kanye's ego?

Sometimes, it seems like hip hop has become a kind of musical cilantro or bacon. It’s the hipster ingredient to add to any tired or bland project to give it a spark of relevance. Mashed up the other way, pairing a rap delivery with an unexpected backing track (Classical! Country!), the juxtaposition usually serves as an ironic in-joke. It’s not really even clever anymore, and I’ve gotten tired of strained cross-breeding that tries to pass itself off as creativity. Which brings us to Bike For Three!, the unlikely partnership between rapper Buck 65 and electronic producer Greetings From Tuskan (Joëlle Lê). Their story follows a Hollywood anti-pattern; let’s call it “not-meet-cute.” The conceit is that the rapper and the Belgian producer connected on MySpace (cue the endorsement ops), but have never met in person, despite collaborating on two albums now.

Buck 65 has always favored more unusual backing tracks, so Lê’s electronic grooves fall well within his abstract M.O. The surprise is that the two have created a unique fusion that reflects a balanced dynamic between their two worlds. Their latest release, So Much Forever, is no mere gimmicked mashup; it’s outsider hip hop that pushes creative boundaries. Rather than grafting one approach onto the other, these two artists bring each of their own worlds together, and neither one truly dominates. The tracks reflect a mutual respect and openness; together they accomplish things that neither could achieve alone. An album like this stands in direct contrast to a project like Kanye West’s Yeezus. West is a self-proclaimed genius, and while he fished around for ideas to flesh out his creative vision, there was never a doubt that every provocative piece of Yeezus was part of his overarching plan. Bike For Three! is less interested in making their audience prove their love than in challenging one another. Lê’s electro-pop dreaminess makes the tunes float while Buck provides the grounding. His emotional honesty rises to the top, but then her ethereal vocals, mostly in French, can transform the songs to find a more objective perspective.

The give and take keeps either voice from drowning out the other. Buck often syncopates his flow to augment the solid beat of the backing track, but Lê in turn takes his vocals and mutates it into more fodder for the mix. Exotic and solid, organic and electro-mechanical, tight with tension and freely floating – the dynamic balance holds your attention for the whole duration.

The album eases into view with a gentle, ambient track, appropriately titled “Intro”. The calm heartbeat and soft washes provide little preparation for the slick armored sound of the first real song, “Full Moon”, which is built on a foundation of Berlin-style synth pop. The steady pulsation creates a delicious tension. The pair sets up a cool trick they’ll use throughout the whole album, alternating Lê’s softly-echoed feminine vocals with the harder edge of Buck’s tightly wound male bass. The tagline, “Who can sleep, at a time like this,“ repeats, evolving from simple observation to indignant accusation before Lê mutilates her sweetly floating vocal line and moves the song into a more modern glitch electronica.

That caught my ear, but a couple of songs later, “Heart As Hell” sealed the deal. Built on a thoughtful, electro-pop base with tentative brushes of reverberating piano, the initial singing is distant and dreamy, more of a memory than a lead line. Buck’s lyrics are somber and emotionally bare, “I have two hearts and one of them is hard as Hell.” His imagery is beautifully economic, fitting a lot into the tight rhyming runs: “It’s vertigo in reverse/ Devoted and cursed/ It hurts/ Exploded and worse.” A ratcheting drumbeat clicks like the clock ticking away his time. The second verse flowers into a longer series, maintaining flow and rhythm, relentlessly checking off an inventory of dissatisfaction. It culminates in a bitter, “Sometimes the mind is paradise/ And the heart is Hell.” At this point, the production processes Buck’s voice and blends it into the electro substrate. The constant see-saw of “heart” and “hard” creates its own ambiguity. The moodiness ripples across the remaining tracks.

“Heart As Hell” proved to be my favorite track, but there are plenty of other strong contenders. The motorik drive and introspective lyrics of “Ethereal Love” make it a standout tune. “Stay Close Until We Reach The End” is also compelling as it builds on a droning start with creepy shards of disquiet as Lê’s chopped and damaged vocals page through a catalog of despair française, “Désillusion/ Fatale/ Tragédie…”. When Buck comes in with his precisely off-kilter delivery, the disturbing quality deepens.

By the time So Much Forever closes on “Outro” and its faster heartbeat, it’s impossible to say which of the two collaborators is figure or ground because the contributions are so interdependent. Bike For Three! may not be as confrontational as Kanye’s Yeezus, but it’s just as strong an artistic statement.

(This review first appeared on Spectrum Culture)

Recording review - The Glitch Mob, Love Death Immoratlity (2014)

Insistent rhythm, flow, and physicality

It all begins with an organic splash of guitar, wrapped in a light haze of feedback. Anticipation continues to build as the Glitch Mob launches into “Mind of a Beast”. A busy keyboard figure restlessly loops within cage bars made of simple, solid chords. The percussion comes in, tapping into a well of nervous energy. A dark grind of bass and start-stop beats propel the song forward, but it flags all too soon. Barely started, the track fades down and dissipates. Of course, this is merely setting the stage for a stunning resurrection. After a second of silence, the tune returns in full force. Wheeling electronic acid trails weave through a marching Goliath beat that splinters into glitchy reflections before falling back into sync. The motif is not particularly intricate, but the band imbues it with a monomaniacal focus and then puts it to the test. Ratcheting electronics shatter against the implacable wall of its confident intent. This is the Glitch Mob at their best: like a cinematic score or videogame theme, the music tells a story filled with action.

Their debut release, 2010’s Drink the Sea, excelled at combining this kind of narrative sense with phenomenal electronic chaos. “Mind of the Beast” provides an auspicious start for the band’s second full-length album and shows that they are still capable of grand gestures. It turns out, though, that Love Death Immortality is not trying to cover the same ground as Drink the Sea. Instead of exotic sonic locales and rich tidal arrangements, the Glitch Mob seems more interested in exploring the rhythmic drive of EDM. The net result is a very listenable album, but it’s not as groundbreaking as their earlier work.

Songs like “Skullclub” and “Fly By Night Only” set the standard. They settle into a tight danceable beat and then toss out a ton of hooks. Fortunately, though, the band still plays with the form enough to keep things interesting. “Skullclub” starts mellow with a short piano riff and ramps up the energy while layering in keyboards. A heavily processed vocal kicks in, “We are the wild ones,” and then the race is on. The zipper bass, sharp drum machine punches and stutter-cut vocal samples come together like a club-friendly remix. Catchy as hell, these tunes are geared for getting the crowd dancing when the Glitch Mob goes on tour.

Even if insistent rhythm is at the heart of the album, Love Death Immortality recognizes the need for dynamic shifts and delivers some very nice change ups. “Becoming Harmonious” luxuriously slides into a dreamy, hypnotic zone. Guest singer Metal Mother (Taara Tati) wordlessly vamps for a bit and then drops the lyrics with stark simplicity, “Becoming harmonious/ Sensory confluence/ See through me/ My only wish/ To animate experience.” The slow-burn sizzle is deeply pop, but the languorous tempo is a wonderful contrast to the surrounding tracks. The closing song, “Beauty of the Unhidden Heart”, has a similar pop character. This time the femme vocals are provided by the Oakland duo, Sister Crayon. The soothing electro-pop flow favors soft washes of strings and water drop ripples of harp, but it also accommodates an edgier synth solo and tight break beats.

Some fans may be disappointed that the Glitch Mob isn’t pushing Drink the Sea’s creative vision or scaling similar artistic peaks and it’s a fair criticism. But if their debut was intended to impress with flashy extremes, Love Death Immortality is more about flow and physicality. It may not make as many waves, but it delivers plenty of satisfying moments.

(This review first appeared on Spectrum Culture)

Concert review - El Ten Eleven with Bronze Whale

Friday, 21 February 2014 (Fox Theatre, Boulder CO)

Having a favorite band is often like walking a tightrope. You want them to stay comfortably the same, but not stagnant. You want them to offer up surprises without reinventing themselves into something unrecognizable. The bands often feel that pressure from the fans and it shows in their performance, either by going through the motions with a predictable set or in their frustration as they confront the audience with their "new sound".

El Ten Eleven seems oblivious to the challenge. Over the years, their music has evolved, but they've maintained a creative edge without complacency or belligerence. Having seen the band several times and reviewing their albums and show, it's a challenge to talk about their performance without plagiarizing myself: the duo continues to amaze with a savant blend of technical ability, enthusiastic stage presence, and moving music. 

Bronze Whale

Regardless of whether you think of El Ten Eleven as math-rock, post-rock, or its own intense flavor of instrumental music, it's hard to see a synergetic connection between their set and an electro-dance opening act. Austin's Bronze Whale offered little to help draw that connection. The two DJs were mostly absorbed by their MacBook and the collection of mixers and other toys they brought along. If the pair had sonically played off one another or created any sense of interaction, it would have registered as more of a performance. Instead, their heavily layered tracks sounded like most of the work had happened long before this evening and their role was to hang back and admire what they had already done. 

The remix grooves themselves weren't bad, especially if you like electronic dance music, but their only effort to connect with the audience was to step back occasionally and move to the beat. The crowd responded autonomically to the rhythm with nods and swaying, but a fair number of the people who danced were carefully ironic. Late in these set, one of the DJs finally spoke and greeted the audience, but still offered little of his own personality. 

El Ten Eleven

As I mentioned, everything I've written about an El Ten Eleven show could be copied verbatim here and it would capture the essence of the band's performance. Even though two years has passed, all of the high points remain the same: Kristian Dunn's enthusiastically physical stage presence, the layered complexity of the music, Dunn's dexterous manipulation of guitar, bass, effects, and loops, and Tim Fogarty's intuitive drum work. That continuity, while impressive, is only the surface. The band has continued to evolve and refine their show. They've tweaked arrangements and added some new tunes -- "Nove Scotia" from their recent EP For emily was in the setlist -- and they've improved their stage lighting.

Lighting is often taken for granted; it's ignored when things go well and only noticed when there's a problem. In this case, though, the musical mood changes were accentuated by the combination of on-stage lighting trees and overhead spots along with a delicate hand at transitions. 

This performance also emphasized the real-time, live nature of El Ten Eleven's stage show. The songs can be quite complex with simultaneous bass and guitar as well as on-the-fly knob twisting on the effects. While the studio versions are all polished, it can be very challenging for the band to pull it all together. Plenty of improvisational players are adept at rising to the occasion and transforming "mistakes" into magic, often without the audience knowing. El Ten Eleven shares that skill, but they don't mind letting us in on the secrets. At one point, as Dunn was adjusting the end points for a short loop of percussive bass growl, he twisted it into a jerky beat (Fogarty followed along on the drums). Dunn toyed with it for a moment, then smiled out to the crowd, "This is an accident, but I like it." 

The setlist bounced around the band's catalog: aside from "Nova Scotia" and opening song "Transitions" from their last album, they also played early tunes like "Fanshawe". Their cover of Radiohead's "Paranoid Android" was particularly fun, sounding tighter and richer than the version they released on 2008's These Promises Are Being Videotaped. Dunn was every bit as dynamic as the musical selections. His boyish exuberance and flamboyant expressiveness contrasted nicely with Fogarty's tight focus. 

After explaining the open secret of rock band "fake" encores, Dunn warned us that there were only two songs left. After finishing "My Only Swerving", they prepared to leave the stage, but couldn't resist giving us one last song. Despite some teasing from the audience the band closed with their standard finale, with Fogarty coming out from his kit to play Dunn's bass strings with his drumsticks while Dunn tossed in some guitar arpeggios. Every time I see this I smile.

More photos on my Flickr.

Recording review - Nine Inch Nails, Hesitation Marks (2013)

Resurrected from the same old ground

No matter where you go, there you are. Temporary distractions and denial eventually bow to the truth and the truth is not pretty. Over the last two and a half decades, Trent Reznor used Nine Inch Nails to circle back repeatedly to these themes, that we are stuck within ourselves with all of our base drives and messy thinking. Much like probing a nasty toothache, his music satisfied a natural fascination with pain, darkness, and nihilism. Embracing this bleak perspective for a while offers catharsis. Reznor worked and reworked this ground, challenging his audience to follow him deeper into the blackness, but by 2009, he flagged. He decided to put the band on hiatus and focus his energies on other projects. His film scores garnered praise, including an Oscar for his score on The Social Network (2010), and he lined up a new group called How to Destroy Angels with his wife, Mariqueen Maandig, and longtime collaborator Atticus Ross. Something must have been missing, though, because, four years later, Hesitation Marks resurrects Nine Inch Nails and it’s like nothing has changed. The album stands up well to Reznor’s back catalog, but also offers little in the way of new extremes or untried directions for the band except for a stronger reliance on electronic influences.

After “The Eater of Dreams” creates a brief soundscape with the requisite undercurrent of strain and isolation, the album truly gets underway with “Copy of A”. This tune pairs nervous 8-bit electronica with a tight, motorik drum machine. Reznor’s vocal detachment serves the theme of nihilistic self-abnegation: “I am just a copy of a copy of a copy/ Everything I say has come before.” The chorus channels a more amorphous frustration, but, although the piece follows a classic NIN structure of deadly calm transforming into anger, it promises more of an explosion that it delivers. Despite this lack of resolution which permeates the whole album, the track creates a satisfying tension. The syncopation and interlocking textures build a compelling electro-prog headspace that celebrates both Krautrock and dance club roots.

Throughout Hesitation Marks, Reznor plays with rhythm and pressure, pacing his dynamic shifts to maintain a calculated level of friction and uneasiness. This makes the low-key, hypnotic dreaminess of “Find My Way” particularly powerful. The sparse, pensive arrangement is centered on an electronic beat constructed of random bits of percussive sound. The chanted verses are simple, but the chorus gives the song its depth: a scattering of reverbed piano notes and a moaning vocal riff create a sense of longing and the promise of transcendence. It’s well developed as a standalone piece, but it also serves the role of softening the listener for the cold-splash, cynical spacy funk of “All Time Low”.

Even if Hesitation Marks largely sticks close to Reznor’s home ground, it still reflects his long-term passion for rhythm, especially intricately interlocked parts and interesting time signatures. That continues here, from the jittery start and hard-edged funk on “In Two” to the bass-heavy grind and percolating beat on “Disappointed”. These songs use the beat to create unique contexts and moods. Aside from the references to Krautrock and bits of trance and synth-rock, he finds some more accessible influences, as well. On “Various Methods of Escape”, he summons a repressed mechanical energy that comes to resemble Peter Gabriel’s “Big Time”, albeit in a more pessimistic light.

With all these familiar elements, Reznor’s only misstep is the high energy pop of “Everything”. On the surface, its contrasting sections fit the NIN formula, but the uplifting pop drive dominates the loud, noisy angst, casting it more as a whiny complaint. The poor placement in the playlist doesn't help either. It would have been better to set up a deeper immediate low to follow. Instead, it leads into the Prince-style funk of “Satellite”. It could be dismissed as a weak track, but I think he intended this to be the more mature heart of Hesitation Marks, the experienced hindsight borne of surviving the suicidal drives suggested by the album’s title. Unfortunately, it’s an unconvincing answer in the face of such a big question.

So, here we are. The truth is still not so pretty and catharsis is probably the best we can hope for. It’s not so scary gazing into Nine Inch Nails’ latest abyss, but the soundtrack certainly has its moments of grandeur.

(This review first appeared on Spectrum Culture)

Recording review - The Octopus Project, Fever Forms (2013)

Art-school music offers a suite of musical facets

The octopus has many arms and sometimes, the left, er.. tentacle can’t quite guess what the others are up to. Rather than settle for a definable sound, The Octopus Project juggles an odd collection of eclectic electronica and various fragments of indie rock ‘n’ roll. Driving motorik rhythms may veer off into synth pop or frantic 8-bit scrabbling, but somehow the band forges an ADHD mish-mash of influences into an engaging, playful fusion.

Throughout Fever Forms, guitars and synthesizers collide and blend DNA. On “The Falls”, an ambient wash heralds the first faltering steps of the song before it acquires an insistent guitar riff. The keyboard resonates and repeats the occasional note. The band slides into a steady trance groove, wrapped in shiny, tin-foil guitar feedback. At just over three minutes, the song quickly evolves into a Krautrock exploration, but the catchy descending waterfall of notes remains the central focus.

In sharp contrast, the following track, “Pyramid Kosmos”, jump cuts the vibe, tying a videogame theme to anxious, skittering beats. But even here, analog touches flavor the digital stew, adding tastes of whining guitar and cymbal shimmer. It’s an unsettling transition, but there’s little time to dwell as the tune quickly zips off into a tripping, chaotic jumble of sound, anchored to off-beat rhythms. While never soothing, the track is wrapped in dense layers of sound that hide a host of intriguing details. The song appropriately returns to its 8-bit roots to wrap up on a “game over” vamp.

Juxtaposing such diverse sounds is a fundamental part of the band’s experimental approach. Each track offers a different facet, but a uniform portrait begins to emerge, casting the band as a hopeful, inquisitive collective. While electronic music can seem cold or stiff, The Octopus Project overcomes that with their exuberant attitude. This shines through brightest on “Mmkit”, my favorite earworm on Fever Forms. It kicks off with glitchy static and a techno beat which should foreshadow a club-friendly dance track. It’s a promising intro, but it delivers a surprising three minute gem. The mechanical percussion is quickly buried under a spacy, indie rock mix and chiming guitar line. Then the bass takes over, sounding like New Order on a mix of mood stabilizers and crack. Beeps and whistles, frenetic drum rolls, and crystalline tones fill out context for the relentless, snaking bass line. The manic ride finally subsides into a simple beat, speedily growing sparser until it gives way to the bouncy electro-pop of the next track, “The Man with the Golden Hand”.

“Perhap” offers a similar bait and switch. Dreamy electronica loops lazily with trembling synth accents, creating an island of calm. But a short, punchy drum solo shatters the relaxing reverie and sets a simple swaggering rhythm. Throbbing tremolo and thick reverb link back to the drowsy beginning, but the heavy drumbeat precludes drifting away. Echoed guitar arpeggios set up the next step where the song moves into a lush exotica groove, anchored by a singing, soprano keyboard line that seems ready to cover the “Theme from Star Trek”. The whole package has timeless feel because the retro style is moderated by a modern percussion mix.

Musical surprises like these can be gimmicky, but The Octopus Project brings a brash confidence that could excuse a multitude of musical sins. Even as they flit from updated synthpop (“Whitby”) to Devo-esque new wave (“The Mythical E.L.C.”), it’s easy to hang with the changes, trying to anticipate what comes next. The only pigeonhole for this genre-hopping project is to file it under “art school” music. Indeed, the album’s promotion and packaging all point in this direction, from the stereoscopic album trailer and custom View-Master slides to translucent gold vinyl and “psychotraumatic” CD art. All of this may seem too precious, but it’s worth letting the music speak for itself, even if it sings in a multitude of tongues.

(This review first appeared on Spectrum Culture)

Recording review - Gold Panda, Half of Where You Live (2013)

Meditative travelogue wrapped in a bubble

Gold Panda’s Half Of Where You Live is a trance-inducing travelogue. This is his second full album after the well-received Lucky Shiner. He continues to mine the same Southeast Asian influences from his earlier work, but this time he extends them with the sonic imprints from other corners of his far-ranging touring experiences, including North and South America. Each track finds its own meditative flavor and sense of time or place. Synthesizer washes and jittery techno beats lay the foundation, but the album is spiced up with a wide variety of instruments from delicate chimes to marimba, as well as vocal and musical sampling. Unlike his remix projects over the last couple of years, this album works best when taken as a whole. A few songs muster enough personality to stand alone, like “Flinton” and “An English House”, but the whirlwind world tour feel of the collection makes a stronger statement than any single track.

“Flinton” rolls by with a lazy, glitchy R&B progression peppered with low-fi record pops. A hazy memory of a disco-soul summer night, maybe a reminiscence of a sweet first meeting on the dance floor, the song’s laid back tone soothes and savors the mood. Eventually, the edges unravel as the reverie slips away and the present reasserts itself. There’s similar sense of lassitude in “An English House”. The sonic collage intro offers the sole sense of urgency -- a windy night and a stranger comes seeking entry. After that, the song’s stutter-beat electro-pop offers a charming, off-kilter stroll towards some unnamed goal. Whispery swells and light chiming sounds blur the corners of the song, creating an ASMR effect. The fluting solo line and warm vocal fragment, “In this house…”, are calming even if the beat becomes a tad insistent.

While Gold Panda has infused these songs with interesting details, there’s a definite sense of distance between the music and its inspiration. It resonates with the idea of world travel, but from an observer’s perspective. On “Brazil”, the steady syncopation picks up a dripping rainforest rhythm. The pulsing electronic ornamentation changes constantly, like browsing a rich catalog of exotic animals and insects, but it’s not so much a direct experience of South America as it is a view from an insulated window. Elsewhere, “My Father In Hong Kong 1961” uses bells to evoke an Asian feel, but Gold Panda is channeling Mike Oldfield more than Chinese roots. The effect is hypnotic, but disengaged.

That disconnection makes it easy to dismiss Half Of Where You Live as musical wallpaper and it would serve that purpose well enough, whether as an exercise soundtrack or to kill distractions at the office. But Gold Panda’s music is actually designed for meditation, where his evocative palette can clarify thoughts and provide an intriguing perspective. His Zen approach isn’t concerned about the destination of a given piece; it focuses on the greater journey of the whole album. For a listener with receptive ears and mind, it can be the perfect recording to sink into. If that’s not you right now, you can still play it as light background music.

(This review first appeared on Spectrum Culture)

Recording review - Colin Edwin | Jon Durant, Burnt Belief (2012)

 A winding trip through space and mind

Colin Edwin is most well-known for his moody bass work with the progressive Porcupine Tree, but his side projects have tackled contexts from ambient to metal. On Burnt Belief, he partners with guitarist Jon Durant to explore a mix of ethereal space rock and multicultural new age instrumentals. Edwin's expressive playing forms the foundation, but Durant's sense of texture colors each song, creating unique settings.

The early tracks on the album suggest Ozric Tentacles, with sinuous bass, keyboard fills, and engaging syncopation. "Altitude" fades in with a pulsating, liquid ripple. Once underway, fluting synths and a steady beat create a sense of movement. The song hints at the quiet opening of Porcupine Tree's "Arriving Somewhere, But Not Here", but with a more fluid bass line. The guitar soars over the top periodically before dropping back to let the song catch its breath. As the title suggests, the piece clambers ever higher, but with the untethered finish, the song overshoots the top and drifts free to unknown destinations.

From here, Burnt Belief slides into the percussion-driven "Impossible Senses". Hints of tabla and polyrhythm give the song a worldbeat flair. Once again, the smooth guitar meshes with Edwin's slinky bass, but this time it takes on a greater sense of purpose. The repetition of the melodic theme becomes a mantra. Each return reworks the idea a little further, like an expanding mosaic that eventually reveals a larger pattern.

From these spacy beginnings, the album moves into new age realms, with ambient shimmers and fog. The epic showpiece track "Uncoiled" starts with muted swells. Low bells and taps flicker, like a dark house settling around you at midnight. Lightly jarring drips of piano ripple in the hazy darkness, creating a mix of expectancy and disquiet. Wandering the halls, a previously unnoticed doorway comes into focus. Slowly opening, a glowing desert is revealed, complete with Native American flute and soft percussion. Stepping into this new world, sparse elements add to the unreal sensation: metallic harping, echoing piano, and restrained bass. The song eventually coalesces into a hypnotic procession of guitar and bass that continues to support the out-of-body vibe.

Most of the music on Burnt Belief is stellar. Durant and Edwin are natural collaborators. Each voice stands strong without eclipsing the other. There are, however, two weaknesses with the project: one conceptual and the other musical. The duo presents the album as a contrast between faith and reason, inspired in part by Leon Festinger’s When Prophecy Fails, an account of a doomsday UFO cult in the 1950s. But the songs don't reflect that theme and it proves distracting. Ironically, the one track that might draw on that idea suffers from its sense of discontinuity. "The Weight of Gravity" lacks the coherence of the other songs as it mashes up too many unrelated moods. Its slow, meditative start creates a sweat lodge atmosphere. This arbitrarily transforms into a futuristic, electro-psych groove with a sense of purpose which clashes with the opening relaxation. The further drift into an organic fusion jam is less jarring, but lacks any clear sense of flow. While the intention might have been to show the conflict between religion and science, the pair miss their mark.

Despite that, Burnt Belief delivers enough beauty that its flaws can be overlooked. The thoughtful bass line and delicately interleaved guitar and piano on the closing track, "Arcing Towards Morning", cleanses the palate and lets the album end in moment of clarity.

(This review originally appeared on Spectrum Culture)

Recording review - Massive Attack, Blue Lines (1991, reissue 2012)

The birth of trip hop is still fresh and relevant

Blue Lines was a seed crystal dropped into a super-saturated British music scene back in 1991. A new band with the unlikely name of Massive Attack first released a couple of singles: the spacy hip hop of "DayDreamer" and then the game-changing "Unfinished Sympathy". Soon, the band's unique mix of down tempo beats, trippy interludes, and introspective soul became the standard bearer for the new genre of trip hop. The slower rhythms provided an open structure where contrasting parts could be juxtaposed into innovative combinations, inspiring a generation of producers. Although it seemed like Massive Attack appeared out of nowhere, they were an outgrowth of Bristol's Wild Bunch soundsystem, who developed the foundation of the style by blending Jamaican dub, electronic grooves, and American hip hop.

Coming into adulthood at 21 years old, Blue Lines shows some age with old school beats, turntable scratching, and lower fidelity samples. But this reissue is not just a history lesson or faded memory; the album still sounds fresh and relevant. Its mashup mix of soulful vocals and dub rhythms continues to be a mainstay in modern pop music and several of the tracks foreshadow the lasting trends that would follow. The lazy, bass-driven funk of "Safe From Harm" could turn up on a recent release without sounding overly dated. The band would continue to develop in this direction, layering ever more complex combinations of soft synth fills over deep, moody riffs and soulful vocals.

Similarly, that early hit, "Unfinished Sympathy" may rely on an older style of rhythm loop, but the string swells and dreamy R&B groove feel timeless. It's easy to see why this did so well on the charts of the day. Turntable scratching and sampling provide a hip hop vibe, while the keys and strings pull the song towards synth pop. The combination has a chilled distance with an undercurrent of nervous tension. Shara Nelson's warm voice cements the two contrasting elements into a compelling track that works as well in the club as with headphones.

Massive Attack would later edge away from the more direct reggae dub feel of tracks like "One Love", but the tune packs a powerful punch. The sparse rhythm is stripped down to its barest essentials, lightly accented with scratching and a light organ riff. It casts a disquieting shadow on the lyrics. In another setting, "It's you I love, and not another/ And I know our love will last forever," might be just a pretty sentiment, but the dark music and Horace Andy's reedy quaver create a sense of menace.

Listening to that menace leads to understanding, both of the album and Massive Attack's name. Bluster is just wasted energy. Better instead to harness the power of inertia, set something big into motion, and watch the momentum bury everything. Just as the universe is dominated by dark matter and dark energy, Blue Lines is filled with a massive, unseen threat. We can only perceive the understated tension and breathless silence that gives each layered part a hefty weight.

The sole respite from the darkness is the cover of William DeVaughn's "Be Thankful for What You Got", which preserves the original's Curtis Mayfield soul sound under a patina of electronic percussion fills. The arrangement follows the same minimalist aesthetic of the other songs, but the more uplifting lyrics and Tony Bryan's warm vocals create an eye of comfort. In a world of conflict and threat, this reflective moment is sweet. Robert "3D" Del Naja later suggested that the song was too soft and retro for the album, but that contrast makes it all the more valuable. "Five Man Army" follows up with a rich 2Tone sound and trade-off raps, easing us back into the rest of Blue Lines' chill groove.

This reissue respects the band's stripped down approach by not tacking on any distractions. There are no remixes or other extra tracks. Aside from some mixing tweaks, the message is clear: "why mess up a good thing?"

(This review originally appeared on Spectrum Culture)

December Singles

Let's wrap up the year with an old friend and a small collection of newer bands.

They Might Be Giants - "Call You Mom" (from Nanobots, due March 2013)


They Might Be Giants are promising a lot with their upcoming album, Nanobots: namely a full serving of bass clarinet. Regardless of whether they have their pulse on the market demand,"Call You Mom" delivers that classic TMBG aesthetic. Quirky yet compelling, the lyrics follow a Freudian Slip 'n' Slide of Oedipal images. The solid retro rock music adds the perfect frantic energy.

FIDLAR - "Gimme Something" (from FIDLAR, due January 2013)



Speaking of retro, über-ironic FIDLAR brings a house party atmosphere laced with healthy sense of humor. Their video for "Gimme Something" claims, "Our friend found this video of us playing a couple years back. Back when cocaine was good for you." While the band pounds their way through the jangly rocker, the video splices footage of Credence Clearwater Revival (circa 1970) to match FIDLAR's track. It's a clever joke, but there's an ounce of truth as the band's guitar sound borrows a fair amount of Fogerty's tone.

Wax Idols - "Sound of a Void" (from Discipline & Desire, due March 2013)


We'll continue the retro run with a great, high energy post-punk jam on "Sound of a Void". The thick wave of rhythm guitar and bass packs the dynamic space as Hether Fortune's accusatory tone channels '80s angst amidst shards of angular fills. "Let's turn down the static world" -- Wax Idols build a delicious dark tension with echoes of Siouxsie Sioux and Romeo Void.

A. Chal - "Dirty Mouth" (from Ballroom Riots)


Back to the present - Our last single for the month is a tripped out electronic groove from A. Chal. He sets up "Dirty Mouth" with a sparse drum machine beat and shimmery washes of synth. The heart of the tune is a chopped and processed vocal line:

Dirty mouth and she just can't
Get it good to be on that
Daddy issues and cognac 

It's hard to tell if I got that second line right, but the moody chill of the mix implies that things probably won't end well. This is wonderfully evocative track, but it fades out way too soon to fully satisfy.
 

Recording review - The Soft Moon, Zeros (2012)

Darkwave updated with modern electronics

Imagine an alternate reality where Factory Records didn’t implode in 1992 but instead carried their trademark sound forward to the present day, a timeline where the darkwave sounds of Joy Division, New Order and Bauhaus matured and incorporated modern electronic music. The Soft Moon recorded Zeros with more than half an ear listening to that world’s music.

These songs resonate with the purest sonic elements of that classic, mid-80s period. The stark, treble toned drum sounds are filtered through the same tight reverb that adds its own touch of distortion. The bass lines have the same gaunt, hollowed out tone. Luis Vasquez even catches a lot of the same retro synthesizer sounds. More than that, Vasquez seems tapped into a similar dark headspace where the staccato beat and choppy bass create a Gothic misery. Philistines may hear the echoes of that period’s pretentious excess, but The Soft Moon never wallows in gloomy self-indulgence.

Despite the obvious reverence that the band holds for that era, they add their own twists, such as applying a modern production aesthetic and blending in a touch of Motorik drive. On "Machines", the droning synth and looped drum machine are pure Krautrock, but the bass riff sounds like it was lifted from an early New Order track. In a contemporary move, The Soft Moon turns away from period simplicity and layers in a full assortment of synth accents with a sharply stereo mix. The vocals are processed and low, so the words can’t be discerned but the alienation comes through.

With a touch of Bauhaus flair, "Insides" sets up a strong contrast between a pensive, controlled surface and chaotic depths. It feels like spying on the mind of a stalker. The bass and beat are purposeful and threatening, but the suggestive vocals lurk like an inner voice and the sharp, repeated notes signal a barely repressed tension. As the synth adds some more piercing tones, it’s a tasty frisson of fear that draws the song closer to action.

It is good, though, that Zeros doesn’t dwell completely in the past. "Die Life" starts with a venomous synth stab that creates an immediate tension. This intro transitions into a mechanically percussive groove. When that drops back to make room for the threatening vocals, the bass and drums still sound darkwave, but the speedier tempo leans more towards urgency than gloom. Sandpaper scratches, whirring and grinding machinery and electrical pulses interlock to weave a modern electronic rhythm.

A few songs later, the band once again relies on a complex Motorik beat for "Want". But this time the band ties the steady drive to a choppy, electronic sounding bass and creates a hypnotic trance feel. Dueling stereo percussion riffs set up a drop out break that could have used more space, but like the song says, “I want it/ Can’t have it.” A droning note comes in and climbs steadily, preparing for a climax. The sudden end of the track resolves nothing.

Little thwarted expectations like that make Zeros a more interesting album. The Soft Moon uses the dark proto post punk and Krautrock to make a statement, but they’re talking to their peers, not the past. Or maybe they’re just connecting with a parallel universe.

(This review originally appeared on Spectrum Culture)