Review Round-Up: September 2013

John Wizards
John Wizards

By day, John Withers makes music for TV commercials.  In an utterly uncynical way, that fact feels directly relevant to the 25-year-old Cape Town native's remarkable debut album, if only in that, like the stuff of rapturous ad-man fantasies, this is music that's instantly, innately, wordlessly evocative (of summertime, adventure, tropical travel, first love, you name it...) while at the same time invitingly open to your own subjective experience.  It's directly personal in a broadly appealing way.  It's music that just makes you feel really good.  One big happy kaleidoscope of sounds that, on paper, comes across as impossibly frantic, John Wizards is a hydra-headed hybrid of disco-funk, airy electro, casio-enabled dub reggae, bliss-pop, jazz fusion, township jive, high-energy Shangaan dance music and playfully abstract, organic house.  Withers' wizardry is in somehow spinning that pan-continental patchwork laundry list into a dreamily relaxed, infectiously bubbly, hugely melodic whole, even shifting gears multiple times within a single track (as on opening showcase "Tet Lek Schrempf") without feeling forced or overambitious.  Somewhat inevitably, given the (welcome, if curiously understated) presence of Rwandan vocalist Emmanuel Nzaramba, it's tempting to think of this as a chillwavier, more autotune-friendly variant on Sweden-to-Malawi post-globalists The Very Best, but a closer reference point is the preternaturally summery "jamz n jemz" of Rhode Island sample-meisters Javelin – although it's hard to imagine that cheeky duo coming up with anything as earnestly pretty as John Wizards' beatific, Mali-inspired closer.

Ane Brun
Songs 2003-2013

A major star in her native Norway, and gaining substantial traction in her adopted home-base of Sweden – 2011's It All Starts With One, her biggest hit to date, overcame deep-rooted ancestral rivalries to make her the first Norwegian to top the Swedish album charts – warbly-voiced folk-pop songbird Ane Brun offers this abundant retrospective of her first decade; equal parts victory lap and crash course for newcomers.  Across the pond, with less context, it makes a somewhat unwieldy introduction – in either event, one could question the necessity of a thirty-two-track career-spanner from an artist with only four proper LPs under her belt (she's also issued two live albums, one record of demos and another of reworked duets, all amply represented here.)  But while a leaner set might've been more forceful, everything here is still emphatically worth hearing.  If the smattering of duets (with Peter Gabriel and José Gonzalez, among others) and covers (PJ Harvey, Nina Simone, Arcade Fire, a particularly magical take on Cyndi Lauper's "True Colors") break the spell ever so slightly, it's merely a testament to the power of Brun's own creations, and the haunting, slightly dark expressiveness of her singular voice, which, as this collection affirms, have been consistent from the very start.

originally published in Magnet Magazine

King Krule
6 Feet Beneath The Moon
[Folk-Punk/Singer-Songwriter]

Archy Marshall has a voice that double-dog-dares you to like it: audaciously blunt, brashly accented, borderline tuneless.  It might not raise an eyebrow if the 18-year-old Londoner – who sports the suitably garish sobriquet King Krule – were bleating alongside some squalling agit-punk outfit, but it's another story hearing him dribble his prickly-sour urban outsider poetry atop the chilled-out, noir-ish coffeeshop jazz that fills his remarkable debut; all languidly strummed major-seventh chords and the occasional dusty, sampled backbeat.  Give it some time, though, and damn if that disjunct doesn't just make 6 Feet Beneath The Moon (True Panther), in all its rough-edged beatnik spontaneity, all the more heartbreakingly poignant.

Jessy Lanza
Pull My Hair Back
[Pop/Electronic]

When Junior Boys started swirling svelte tech-pop with the seductive pathos of mainstream R&B, they sparked a quiet revolution whose influence and potential are still continuing to crystallize a full decade later.  It was only a matter of time before an aspiring electro-soul diva would enlist Jeremy Greenspan's production talents for herself, as Jessy Lanza does on her effortlessly elegant, house-damaged Hyperdub debut.  Pull My Hair Back plays, predictably and thrillingly, like a female-fronted JBs record, clinching that impeccable icy romanticism, although Lanza – a breathier, more restrained vocalist than Greenspan himself – makes it an especially discreet, coyly intimate affair.

Factory Floor
Factory Floor
[Techno/Dance/Industrial]

DFA Records' September album releases offer sharply contrasting visions of the label's post-punk/disco aesthetic: where Holy Ghost's sleekly aspirational synth-house is lush, smooth and warmly uplifting, Factory Floor's long-awaited long-playing debut is anything but.  The London trio have made some impressive friends lately – members of Throbbing Gristle, Joy Division and The Fall, among others – and it's not hard to hear why within these seven nightmarish extended workouts: sparse, deathly funky lockgrooves of loose-cannon percussion and acid-washed industrial squelch that churn like Kraftwerk at their bleakest, or like a hookless twist on the Knife's Silent Shout – spiked with Nik Void's steely, demented mutterings.  Your body may be powerless to resist; just try not to surrender your soul.

Califone
Stitches
[Americana/Experimental]

After a mightily productive first decade, Califone fell atypically silent for the last four years.  So Stitches ( Dead Oceans) needn't add anything to their well-stocked trick-bag to come as an especially welcome return: in this case, a rest is at least as good as a change.  Even if it's (debatably) the band's most streamlined, song-oriented offering yet, the album's crux remains their distinctive confluence of sounds: scrappy folk-blues and roughed-up digital artifacts; rusty slide-guitar scrapes, found-object percussion, lusty group harmonies and weird little noises, plus Tim Rutili's familiarly inscrutable, Pollardian language-play.  Sublimely strange business as usual for a group that still sound like none other.

Arp
More
[Art-Pop]

Arp (Alexis Georgopoulos) used to make hazy, minimalist synth music informed by 1970s German Kosmiche, so his third outing – an album that scampers from quaint music-hall piano ditties to buzzy guitar stompers, princely harpsichord filigree to swaggering saxophone chorales, with a majority of tracks featuring vocals – comes as quite a curveball.  His heart may remain largely in the same decade – Berlin-era Bowie and "rock" Brian Eno are obvious touchstones – but More (Smalltown Supersound) is more slippery than a simple summation of its influences: both breezy and lush; beautifully tailored and casually cluttered, it plays to both sides of the experimental/pop divide with a studied determination that feels gloriously effortless.

Arctic Monkeys
[Rock]
concert preview

Arctic Monkeys somewhat infamously saddled their debut with a breathless, cheekily cocksure mouthful of a title (to go along with their schoolboyish larf of a bandname, maybe) so A.M. (Domino) – the band's fifth full-length in just over seven years – is the closest they've come to a self-titled effort.  The name fits: the album is similarly stripped down; not just back to basics but, arguably, more primevally basic than they ever were to begin with, particular on a ferocious front-loaded run of snarling, blues-damaged riff-heavy rockers.  No longer the frantically antsy, punk-inclined lads of their early days, they've found their way to swagger and groove along with maturity and control; incorporating lessons from recent tourmates The Black Keys and former producer/guest axeman Josh Homme, plus the classic rock canon they've increasingly internalized (one song mentions the Stones by name; another cites "War Pigs" instrumentally but no less overtly.)  Those hip to Alex Turner's perennially punning ways may note traces of glam, psych and swooning, Beatlesque romanticism (the winkingly titled "No. 1 Party Anthem") but nothing you'd really call A.M. pop – the album's blackened heart, however, is unambiguously dedicated to the seedy, sex-soaked noir of the early A.M. hours.

Barrence Whitfield & The Savages
[Rock'n'Roll/R'n'B]
concert preview

A missing link in the lineage of wild-man rock 'n' soul shouters that runs from Little Richard and Screamin' Jay Hawkins to latter-day contenders like King Khan and Black Joe Lewis, Boston's Barrence Whitfield (born Barry White; stage name embellished for obvious reasons) built up a mighty reputation for tearing up stages (and record grooves) from the mid-80s and into the 90s, before mellowing out a bit and generally disappearing from view by the turn of the century.  But the man and his band of Savages – including several vintage punk rockers from the original line-up who'd been out of the fold for decades – are back in action, and on the evidence of the in-the-red, don't-you-dare-call-it-retro Dig Thy Savage Soul (Bloodshot), at least as hungry and unhinged as ever.  The new record's dozen scorched, greasy originals and covers of twisted record-bin obscurities muck up the lines between primal '50s R&B and jump-blues, gritty '60s soul, Nuggets-style garage rock and spirit-of-'77 punk just enough to remind you that there really wasn't any difference in the first place.

Wavves/King Tuff/Jacuzzi Boys
[Rock/Punk]
concert preview

In a goofy way, Wavves' Nathan Williams seems like the dependable, seasoned old timer among this stacked, tri-coastal scuzz-rock triple-bill, even though both of his tourmates have actually been kicking around a bit longer.  Maybe because he's shown the most signs of "maturing" beyond his (admittedly pretty puerile) blazed, beach-dissing skate scum origins – the San Diegan's recent Mom + Pop bow, Afraid of Heights, ups the fi once again and stands as his most presentable, earnest slab of grunge revivalism to date.  Florida trio Jacuzzi Boys followed a similarly slicked-up trajectory (relatively speaking) for their self-titled third long-player (Hardly Art) – their last album was called Glazin', but that title feels a little more applicable here – but their slack, surfy fuzz-pop still retains a certain neanderthalish thump despite the occasional baroque trumpet or glockenspiel.  As for Vermont's Kyle Thomas – his (self-appointed) majesty King Tuff – he flexed some stadium-worthy glam and power-pop moves on last year's triumphant, eponymous breakout, but 2008's excellent Was Dead (recently reissued on Burger) proves he and his drooling guitar can be just as credibly royal in scrappier surroundings, and just as much freaky, endearing fun.

Danny Brown/Action Bronson
[Hip-Hop]
concert preview

Danny Brown and Action Bronson popped up a couple years back as two of the most charismatic, appealingly quirky MCs in the underground.  Also, two of the most exquisitely filthy minds (and mouths) around.  Since then, the Queens-repping former chef Bronson has sacrificed some of his initial charm over the course of several generally on-point but increasingly graceless mixtapes, lately abandoning the goofball gourmet food metaphors that helped make his incessant, piggish sex brags a bit easier to stomach.  This year's Saaab Stories (Vice) is straight-up icky from the cover on down.  Meanwhile, Detroit's squeaky-voiced, frizz-headed Brown has proven himself as insouciantly good-natured as he is gleefully vulgar, making friends left and right with countless irrepressible guest verses and his inimitable hipster-raver thrift-store swag.  The forthcoming Old (Fools Gold) is a typically batshit party out of bounds, with everyone from A$AP Rocky and Freddie Gibbs to Purity Ring and Charli XCX  on the invite list and an amped-up Brown switching at will between ghetto life real talk and pill-popping debauchery, equally comfy atop Oh No's feisty, crate-digging boom-bap and next-level neon trap bangers from Rustie, A-Trak and SKYWLKR.

Austra
[Electronic/Pop]
concert preview

Next to the spartan black, white and mustard-yellow abstraction adorning 2011's Feel it Break, the cover of Austra's new-ish Olympia (Domino) is a startling thing to behold: a shot of bandleader/vocalist Katie Stelmanis, casually slumped in a pale pink pantsuit, her fire-orange hair popping almost palpably against the gaudy green and turquoise of a bucolic painted backdrop.  The Toronto outfit effect a similarly bold and vibrant shift here musically: without abandoning their basic operating template – crisp, statuesque electronics undergirding Stelmanis' otherworldly, demi-operatic siren wails – they've expanded upon their alluringly witchy but rather bloodless debut with an astonishingly human set of lush, colorful, classicist house-derived pop that suggests Hercules and Love Affair as fronted by Fever Ray.  Actually scratch that.  Even if Olympia isn't afraid of brazenly courting yet more dull-edged comparisons to mid-period Knife (consider the creaky gender trouble of "I Don't Care (I'm A Man)," or the island rhythms and synthetic timbales of "We Become"), it comes as an affirmation that Austra are their own singular entity, one that sounds increasingly comfortable in their own skin even as they venture beyond their icily reserved comfort zone.

Zola Jesus & JG Thirlwell
[Art-Pop]
concert preview

For many artists, releasing an album of old songs redone with a string section would be a clear sign of having run out of ideas.  For forbiddingly dark art-pop chanteuse Zola Jesus (Niki Roza Danilova), it feels like a vital move in the ongoing development of her musical approach: further stripping back the more off-putting and esoteric aspects of her sound (specifically, her inclinations toward lo-fi noise and industrial music) and downplaying her self-consciously gothic image manipulation to highlight the simple beauty and emotional potency of her songwriting and her singularly arresting voice.  Versions (Sacred Bones), which grew out of a performance last year at the Guggenheim Museum, is not exactly Sarah McLachlan territory – Danilova's co-conspirator here, who's written some highly complex and captivating arrangements for string quartet and the occasional drum machine, is experimental music stalwart JG Thirlwell (a.k.a. Foetus) – but it is tantalizingly close.  All those arty industrial vampires must be awfully confused.

Laura Mvula
[Pop/Vocal]
concert preview

The most striking moments on Laura Mvula's debut, Sing To The Moon (Columbia) – and there are many – come when the singer is surrounded by multiple copies of herself, swirling and swelling in thick, knotty, jazz-steeped choral harmony: the arresting a capella opening of "Like The Morning Dew," the lustrous baroque-pop ba-ba-bas of easy-flowing AM ballad "Is There Anybody Out There," the blithely defiant Swingle Singer stomp of "That's Alright," surrounded by blaring horns and martial drumbeats.  Sure, her voice is potent enough in the singular to do the soulful solo singer thing just fine, but she stands decidedly apart from the post-Winehouse parade of Emeli Sandés, Lianne La Havases, and so on.  A conservatory-trained composer and active choir director who brings her full arranging prowess to bear on her pop output, Mvula earns her overused Nina Simone comparisons more by hearkening to the icon's stately, sophisticated orchestral jazz and classical chops than her more frequently invoked earthier side.

Majical Cloudz
[Experimental/Singer-Songwriter]
concert preview

It would take surprisingly few tweaks in his musical approach for Devon Wright to come off as the new Rufus Wainwright.  He's already got the Montrealer roots, the slyly indelible sense of melody, the arresting, emotionally vulnerable, piano-based songwriting (electric piano, in this case, and admittedly more of an emo-indie confessional stripe than Wainwight's archly witty Tin-Pan-Alley-lineage pop) and, most crucially, the quavering, swooningly romantic voice.  Instead, being the type to pal around with arty electro-weirdos like Grimes and Doldrums, Wright has joined forces with production accomplice Matthew Otto, engaged in a bit of absurdist aesthetic misdirection via the unconscionably fey moniker Majical Cloudz, and cluttered the internet with a small smattering of weird, arty electronica.  The bewilderingly direct Impersonator (Matador), though, turns out to be only minimally weird (the title track's lovely, swirling wordless-vocal-sampling backdrop is about the extent of it), minimally, unobtrusively electronic, and arty only in a minimalist, radical-expression kind of way, a tack that's the conceptual launching point for live sets reported to be starkly, almost harrowingly intimate.

Dustin Wong/Dodos
[Experimental/Rock]
concert preview

Mild-mannered delay pedal phenom and longtime Baltimore scenester Dustin Wong (who recently relocated to his native Tokyo) has established a highly specific and uniquely rewarding approach to solo guitar composition/improvisation over the course of his three exploratory, loop-based Thrill Jockey opuses.  His latest – the carefully titled Mediation of Ecstatic Energy – is being billed as the conclusion of a trilogy, but it feels equally like a springboard for something new.  Whereas 2010's Infinite Love borrowed its name from a mantra, it's worth stressing that the first word of this record's title is not "meditation."  It may have its moments of daydreamy bliss – like when oddball-pop princess Takako Minekawa turns up to coo atop the lulling, airy final track – but this is easily the most adventurous, combustible and (at times) aggressive solo Wong has ever sounded; piling on fragmented, ping-ponging melodies in increasingly unpredictable, occasionally jarring ways, and expanding his timbral palette so much that it feels almost limitless.  Wong's visually unassuming but aurally resplendent performance should make a tangy and startling appetizer before the bread-and-potatoes indie rock comfort food of San Francisco duo Dodos, whose pleasingly meticulous new one, Carrier (Polyvinyl), finds more pedestrian but still highly redolent uses for the electric guitar.

Julianna Barwick
[Experimental/Ambient]
concert preview

Julianna Barwick's music has often felt impossibly delicate and personal; like a series of small, secretly whispered wisps of reverie that might just dissolve if they drift too far from the solitary world of her own imagination – perhaps the private paracosm suggested by the title of 2011's The Magic Place.  But for her third full-length album (and debut for macro-indie Dead Oceans), the Louisiana-bred, frequently bedroom-based Brooklynite took a trip to Iceland, island of vast glacial vistas, mythic intensity and general all-around epicness.  Also, not coincidentally, the homeland of her current tourmates and spiritual forebears Sigur Rós (i.e. the guys who almost single-handedly brought New Age to the indie/alt-rock masses), whose sometime confederate Alex Somers has helped impart a newfound expansiveness and grandeur to Barwick's ethereal meanderings.  The Somers-produced Nepenthe sees her augmenting a typically infinitesmal array of airy, wordless vocalizing with orchestral textures (courtesy of Sigur string sisters Amiina), piano, an additional cohort of choristers and even (fleetingly) discernible English lyrics, while also exploring considerable compositional space and movement beyond her usual pile-ups of endless inward-leaning loops.

Date Palms
[Instrumental/Ambient]
concert preview

You don't need to see the parched, limitless landscapes adorning the cover of The Dusted Sessions (Thrill Jockey) – or, for that matter, 2011's Honey Devash – to suspect that Bay Area zone-out unit Date Palms have a thing for deserts.  Taking their name from a species that does grow in California but which originated and proliferates most widely in the Middle East, their patiently unfurling drone-rooted compositions/explorations equally evoke the broad, arid expanses of both hemispheres, particularly now that they've expanded from a duo to a quintet; adding the otherworldly thrum of Michael Elrod's tanpura and the dusty rumble of Noah Phillips' electric guitar to Marielle Jakobsons' keening violin and the mirage-inducing shimmer of Gregg Kowalsky's synthesizers.  (Curiously, it's Ben Bracken's electric bass that often provides the most palpable forward movement, against the anchor of the hazy, slowly meandering collective ambience.)  The augmented line-up doesn't necessarily mean that more is going on in the group's music; rather, it makes the relatively little that does happen – the gradual swells and ebbs; the careful, mantra-like melodic elaboration – happen all the more richly.

Grails/Lilacs & Champagne
[Post-Rock/Experimental]
concert preview

Last year, when Alex Hall and Emil Amos, two members of Portland's heavy-psych post-rock unit Grails, branched off to explore sample-based cut-and-paste trip-hop as Lilacs & Champagne, it felt like a leftfield move even considering their main band's stylistic omnivorousness.  Hot on the heels of that duo's sprawlier, increasingly stoned and solo-happy sophomore jaunt, Danish & Blue (Mexican Summer), Grails' Black Tar Prophecies, Vols. 4, 5 & 6 (Temporary Residence) – which follows the same curious hybrid format as a similarly titled 2006 release; reshuffling one previously released EP and the band's portion of an earlier split release alongside entirely new tracks) – offers evidence that the group had already begun incorporating similar MPC-jocking methodologies well before Lilacs' on-record unveiling: "I Want A New Drug," from 2010's Vol. 4 EP, kicks off with an ancient, warped-and-warbly choral snippet, while "Invitation to Ruin" could pass as Rjd2 on a particularly dozy day.  Otherwise, while little here approaches the doomy drone extravagances of some past outings, it remains the case that nearly nothing is off-limits for these guys – acoustic or electric; jazz or folk; delicacy or force; beauty, terror, spiritual transendence or soundtrack-ish schmaltz – and they make almost all of it work extremely well.

originally published in Philadelphia City Paper

AMG review round-up, volume XXII: 2010 third quarter, -ish

gotta wrap it up. here's a bunch of records, mostly from july-september 2010 (with a few secret stragglers, including some a year or two late), roughly in order of what they're like and how much i like them.

Allo Darlin': Allo Darlin' review

Allo Darlin' are a quintessential, dyed-in-the-wool twee pop band (and a pedigreed one at that – frontwoman Elizabeth Morris plays in Tender Trap with twee icon Amelia Fletcher, while bassist Bill Botting is a member of Darren Hayman's Secondary Modern) but their potential appeal extends far beyond the typically homespun, insider-y indie pop scene, since their music conveys all the genre's sweetness and enthusiasm without (or at least without too much of) the sappy infantilism and amateurish shambling that turn off most listeners of the genre. On the basis of their self-titled 2010 debut, it's not hard to imagine this London outfit finding the kind of widespread devotion enjoyed by leading lights like Camera Obscura, the Lucksmiths, or even Belle & Sebastian. Certainly, Allo Darlin' is most reminiscent of these artists' earlier, scrappier efforts, but the sophistication is there, most crucially, in Morris' songs, which strike just the right balance of clever and heartfelt, wittily specific, and broadly relatable. And, without exception, magnificently tuneful. Vocally, she's got all the charm of, say, Camera Obscura's Tracyanne Campbell, but with a much more upbeat, outgoing personality (and her Aussie-via-London accent – even just her pronunciation of the word "telephone" – is worth melting for). The band never stray far from the Platonic template of crisp, vibrantly produced '60s-style guitar pop, with tinges of soul, country, and Afro-pop, generous use of ukulele and lap steel, and a healthy sprinkling of ba-bas and sha-la-las. The playing is consistently strong and, with a few tender-hearted exceptions, briskly bouncy and grooving – particularly apt for the first three songs, which are about going out dancing (though they're also about heavenly embraces, Polaroid photographs, and youthful cash deficiency, respectively.) Other pivotal topics covered include falling in love (in an amusement park; whilst making chili) and listening (and making references) to pop music. In the time-honored tradition of the Pooh Sticks, Morris fills her songs with canny cultural nods: lifting lines from Weezer, quoting Johnny Cash and Doris Day, citing fellow twees the Just Joans. (Meanwhile "Woody Allen" – which switches to film references for a change – is melodically reminiscent of the Magnetic Fields' "Strange Powers," while the blissfully lovely "Let's Go Swimming" lyrically echoes their "All the Umbrellas in London.") Maybe best of all, "My Heart Is a Drummer" reps for Paul Simon's Graceland: "we know it's everybody's favorite/deep down in the place where music makes you happiest." Clearly, that's a place that Morris and Allo Darlin' know extremely well.

The Books: The Way Out review

"Welcome to a new beginning" declares a voice at the start of The Way Out, and this album does indeed mark a fresh new chapter for the Books: a return to record-making five years after the fantastic Lost and Safe, on a new label, with a newly open-ended, wide-ranging approach to their work. It may not initially sound that way: opener "Group Autogenics I," one of several pieces that draw on guided meditation-style self-help recordings, feels almost like Books-by-numbers, with a gently humorous, disorienting oddness, juxtaposed with genuinely deeply relaxing sonics, that will be immediately familiar to fans of their past albums. After that, though, the duo stretches beyond its comfort zone in multiple directions at once, pushing at the boundaries of an already utterly singular style. The acoustic strings (primarily guitar and cello) that dominated their earlier output are still present, but they share space with a dizzying array of instrumental and quasi-instrumental sounds, from twinkling music boxes to a full-scale sample-generated orchestra of archaic brass and woodwinds. And while scavenged spoken word samples remain the most defining element of the Books' music, anchoring each of these cuts save for the four sung, lyric-based "proper songs" (including the gloriously geeky, math-worshiping chorale "Beautiful People," which announces, slightly disingenuously: "We genuflect before pure abstraction"), they're less concerned with constructing linguistic puzzles out of their samples here – cleverly editing them to evince a sublimely witty illogic and absurdity – than with exploring their emotional nuances and often surreal humanity. Most tracks focus on a small number of voices, creating a sense of context and resonance without necessarily allowing for full comprehension. Hence, we get a tentative, intimate series of answering machine messages; a nonsensical bedtime tale about a Peter Rabbit-like character named Hip Hop; an inexplicably prickly grammarian vehemently insisting that "I Am Who I Am." "A Cold Freezin' Night" is a hilarious, slightly chilling tour de force built around a battle of (increasingly violent) words between a young brother and sister, set to a thumping disco beat. "I Didn't Know That" is even more striking musically – the closest thing yet to a Books pop hit, and definitely the funkiest they've ever been, recalling Squarepusher's nimble bass playing and Akufen's micro-sampled funk barrages. The stated intention for The Way Out was for each track to be "its own rabbit hole," and the album does indeed manage to survey an impressively disparate set of worlds and modes. Still, each one remains readily recognizable as belonging to the Books' own unique, unequivocal universe, which, happily, seems to be expanding at least twice as rapidly as our own.

ceo: White Magic review

ceo is Eric Berglund, one half of the Tough Alliance and co-CEO of Gothenburg's Sincerely Yours label; his first solo venture is another clear winner from that inscrutable but highly dependable camp. While its brightly colorful melting pot of indie pop, ersatz tropicalia, chintzy new age, and electronic dance-pop doesn't stray far from the distinctive, neon-hued sound of TTA, White Magic feels tighter, lusher, and more polished (especially vocally) than most of the duo's output, with an earnest, romantic emotional outlook far from TTA's typically enigmatic, performative sneering. Berglund wastes no time announcing his ambitions here, starting with the swaying orchestral expanse of "All Around," over which he declares: "I'm coming home to face the demons on my own." It's a grand opening statement, but it's only one part of the ceo equation: alongside weightier material like the ruminative "Oh God Oh Dear" and a solemn, churchy rendition of "Den Blomstertid Nu Kommer" (a hymnlike ode to summertime that's traditionally sung at the close of the Swedish school year) that ends the album with the same string figures that opened it, the balance of White Magic's eight tracks consists of cheerfully melodic dance-pop. "Illuminata" and "Love and Do What You Will," in particular, are about as buoyant as they come, and "Come with Me" is widescreen Balearic pop at its glistening, tuneful best. The title track shades slightly darker, with its vaguely sinister, pulsing tribal techno punctuated by jungle noises, steely guitar flourishes, and percolating pan flutes, while TTA's recurrent hip-hop-inflected fascination with violence rears its head on the otherwise blithe-sounding "No Mercy" with an excellently deployed knife-sharpening sample (the song also features offhand lyrical references to bondage, incarceration, and smoking crack). Without shortchanging Berglund's melodic abilities and his knack for sharp, effective mood juxtapositions, ceo's greatest attribute is his fearlessly inventive, highly detailed approach to arrangement, bringing together an unpredictable assortment of sounds on nearly every track, and somehow making these largely synthetic productions feel dynamic and vibrantly alive. Phil Spector and Brian Wilson come to mind – the baroque strings and clip-clop percussion of "Oh God Oh Dear," specifically, suggest discreet nods to each – and, indeed, pace Wilson, the whole affair might be aptly summed up as a "quarter-life symphony to God." At under 30 minutes, White Magic could feel painfully brief, but it's so dense with creativity, melody, and life that it seems churlish to want more.

Clubfeet: Gold on Gold review

At first blush, Clubfeet seem like yet another of the countless faceless bands plying the intersection of rock, pop, dance, and electronic music in the early 2010s, but this Capetown-via-Melbourne trio is slightly more of a puzzle than its "sounds like" list suggests. For one thing, despite the band's floor-friendly moniker and appearance on the dance-oriented Plant label – and despite its sleek, synthy sheen and plethora of electronic beats – Gold on Gold feels too restrained and contemplative to really come off as a dance album. You could probably dance to most of these tracks if you had to, but on the whole it's more of a mood-setter than a floor-filler, recalling fellow Melburnians Cut Copy at their less vigorous (but still lushly anthemic), suggesting a sprightlier, fleshier take on the xx's darkly stylish veneer and updating the epic romanticism of early U2 (specifically their guitar textures) and early Stars. For a band so centrally concerned with tone and texture, Clubfeet's most impressive feat here – and what sets them apart from many of their contemporaries – is the amount of personality they're able to convey while maintaining a consistent dominant mood. It operates in subtle ways – never overbearing, nearly genteel – but their distinctive charm is nevertheless apparent throughout, often in the touches of humor and lightness they bring to what's largely a sober-minded affair: an oddly chipper tropical beatbox undercutting the lavish melancholy of "Fall from Up Here," a sweet, simple piano figure running through the achingly languorous "Six Days," or the spoken word group chants in both "Teenage Suicide (Don't Do It)" (which, Heathers-referencing aside, seems essentially straight-faced about its titular subject, making for a noble message of perhaps dubious utility in a dance-pop song) and "D.I.E. Yuppie Scum" (which, contrarily, is pretty plainly a gag). The latter two songs are the album's most immediate, attention-getting standouts and most likely dance jams, mostly by virtue of those chanted hooks, but ultimately neither one measures up to "Count Your Lovers," which gets by on pure melody and prettiness. Another highlight is a candy-sweet synth pop rendition of James' "Say Something" which, in addition to being a well-chosen and beautifully executed cover, is one of few moments where Clubfeet set aside their guitars entirely, meaning that perhaps the most electronic thing on the album is a version of a rock song. Who needs pigeonholes anyway?

Dragonette: Fixin' To Thrill review

It's telling that Dragonette titled their second album Fixin to Thrill, and not just straight-up Thrillin', even if it absolutely makes good on that stated intention. Notwithstanding the band's uber-stylish panache and the dangerously glitzy, fabulously sordid rock & roll lifestyle their music projects, there's no denying that the frequently fantastic fun and giddy thrills to be found here are the upshot of some serious craftsmanship. Dragonette are, above all, pop perfectionists, carefully culling all the shiniest bits from '80s new wave (from Duran Duran to the Go-Go's), '90s alt pop (they bear a passing resemblance to No Doubt, a more striking one to the sweet 'n' dirty electro-rock crunch of Garbage), and full-throttle '00s teen pop to concoct an obviously familiar but still effortlessly modern sound to match their punky-spunky energy. But that wouldn't count for much if not for the earworm-y melodies this album boasts in spades, with almost every cut packed full of naggingly catchy synth riffs, vocal hooks, and guitar lines. Fixin may lack a clear, massive standout to match Galore's "I Get Around" (the title track's a decent attempt, but it falls a bit short) but otherwise it marks a slight but noticeable improvement on the band's already-pretty-great debut, a more consistent batch of songs paced so that the highlights keep on coming. For the most part, the odd-numbered songs tend to be the strongest, including the sinuous, sinister "Liar," the goofy, superhero-themed "We Rule the World," and the irresistibly bouncy "Okay Dolore," quasi-cheerleader pop with enough (synthetic) handclaps to do Toni Basil proud. While the band's tendency for oddball stylistic detours is toned down here next to Galore's unscheduled excursions to Bollywood and Tin Pan Alley, the peppy banjos on "Gone Too Far," the kids choir breakdown on "Stupid Grin," and gentle cabaret stylings of "You're a Disaster" keep that sense of playfulness alive in a somewhat more integrated fashion. But the most striking and promising new development here may be an emotional one. "Easy," by some margin the album's best song, is an unusually tender expression of doomed, devoted love with a slinky, sparsely funky electro groove that drops out partway through for a rare moment of vulnerability from the normally all-sass Martina Sobrara: a sweetly harmonized, awkwardly phrased plea imploring her lover not to play games with her fragile heart. It's a total sucker move coming from these guys, an arresting, affecting moment regardless of whether you hear it as unfettered emotionalism or simply a top-notch example of how true pop greatness is to be found in the small details, a lesson that these crafty popsters have definitely taken to heart.

Copy: bio and Hard Dream review

Though he restricts himself to a palette of retro-sounding synths and straitlaced, reasonably dancefloor-friendly drum programming, never straying too far from the distinctive (if hardly earth-shattering) instrumental techno-pop vibe he's made his signature, Copy (alias Portland beatmaker Marius Libman) still covers considerable ground, emotionally, and stylistically. Hard Dream, Copy's third full-length, is titled after and loosely conceived as a score for an unrealized horror movie concept – for a flick about mysteriously televised nightmares – and, fittingly, it has its share of dark, moody, and menacing passages. But it's got plenty of pep and sweetness too, thanks to Libman's unrepentant tunefulness and full-color approach to composition; his synthesizers, which often manage to sound gleaming and gritty at the same time, are just as likely to sparkle and soar as to burble and brood. At the album's frequent best, he's often got multiple synthetic strands of melody going at once, layered into a dense, satisfying analog stew, as on the eight-minute opener "One Less Time"– a slow-building, slow-motion disco epic which might not quite live up to its Daft Punk-baiting title, but still finds some frothy, intoxicating territory to explore – or the sunnier, rather ornate "Breakfast." Copy also does well in sparser settings – "Real Scared," juxtaposing music box arpeggios and archly Baroque synth leads against a spare, swaggering, hip-hop beat – is a clear standout (and one of a few tracks to blatantly recall sometime-confederates Ratatat), while "Stay Away from It"'s herky-jerky, 8-bit bleep-thrash closes the album on a particularly fun, frenetically chirpy note. Only a few tracks are functionally devoid of melody, and they're the weakest links here: the murky, fairly generic dubstep foray "I Didn't Know" and the jittery, Kraftwerk-ian autopilot chase scene music of "It Could Have Been More" make for fine-enough mood shifters in the context of the album, but mostly they seem like rote genre exercises whose failings can be summed up by the latter's title. Generally, though, Libman's compositional gifts don't steer him wrong, and Hard Dream is much more nuanced and engagingly listenable than its stylistic trappings initially suggest. Deliberately or not, Copy's music tends to come off as primarily party fodder, well-crafted but essentially superficial, trading heavily on novelty and kitschy '80s nostalgia, but it's equally possible to see it in the tradition of thoughtful, palatable electronic "listening music," of the sort once peddled by µ-ziq and Plaid, and lately revived by Copy's West coast peers like Eliot Lipp and Nosaj Thing.

Restless People: bio and Restless People review

Restless people indeed, the members of this Brooklyn foursome cycled through several permutations and projects together – as three-quarters of dance-punk second-stringers Professor Murder; as the neotropical production/remix duo Tanlines – before emerging with this concise but emphatic statement of purpose, which can be seen as a synthesis of all that came before it. Taking Tanlines' lighthearted, percolating electronics as a jumping-off point, Restless People add an equally upbeat, accessible pop/rock songwriting slant, arriving at a very 2010 middle ground between the poppy, globe-trotting indie dance of Delorean, Cut Copy, and El Guincho, and the danceable, globe-trotting indie pop of Vampire Weekend, Foreign Born, and Yeasayer – think of them, perhaps, as Williamsburg's answer to the Very Best. At first blush, the album feels even slicker and poppier than any of the above, bursting out of the gate with the Day-glo synths and air horns of "Days of Our Lives," a glossy, euphoric club cut with a relentless stream of simple, continually recycling vocal hooks. "Constant Panic" is even more insistently kinetic – high-NRG neo-disco with a Caribbean lilt, canned handclaps, chopped vocals, and a couple of well-placed percussion breaks. Even the relative breather "Little Sky," which brings down the pace with a nostalgically poignant lyric ("I was born under a great big sky/Now I look up and see a little sky"), is a gleaming, widescreen synth epic that would've been a sure-fire radio staple were it released 25 years earlier, in the age of Peter Gabriel and "In a Big Country." Even with considerable rhythmic variety – "Don't Back Down" crossbreeds new wave piano pop with hiccuping ska; "Practical Magic" shapeshifts from half-time reggae to a frenetic soca jump-up – Restless People has a tendency toward sonic samey-ness: it might all seem like so much faceless, peppy prettiness if not for Eric Emm's enthusiastically earnest vocals. Though not a conventionally great singer, Emm sounds clear-eyed and charismatic, urging on the crowd with a motivational energy pitched somewhere between dancehall toaster and positive hardcore frontman. His intermittent shouts of "Ay, Restless people! Okay!" comes across as both a rallying cry to his bandmates and a sincere, if slightly lackadaisical, life-affirming call to arms for anyone within earshot. That mostly latent punkish energy comes to the forefront on closer "Victimless Crime," the album's only serious misstep (or at least misfit), whose cheerful mess of synth squiggles and incoherent chanting atop a crunched, chugging groove can hardly keep pace with the streamlined pancultural effervescence that preceded it.

Tanlines: Settings and Volume On reviews

A short list of artists for whom Tanlines have provided remix work – El Guincho, the Tough Alliance, Memory Tapes – gives an almost too-perfect snapshot of the stylistic terrain this Brooklyn duo traverses. Along with their True Panther labelmates Delorean, these acts are at the forefront of a particular late-2000s approach to electronic music that's decidedly poppy and danceable but without the formal rigidity of dance-pop proper, featuring plush, treble-heavy synths, thickly burbling percussion, and warmly layered, tropical-flavored grooves. That's a fairly straight-ahead description of what you can expect to find on Settings, a highly enjoyable release that nevertheless tends to blend into its surroundings (both aurally and stylistically) rather than asserting its individuality. The clearest standouts, or at least the most memorable moments, come with "Real Life" and "Policy of Trust," both enhanced (though not exactly dominated) by Eric Emm's appealingly low-key vocals, which ruminate on life's unknowable roads ("For a minute I was lost/I looked away/My destination was unknown") and make sideways nods to Depeche Mode. The third vocal cut, "Bees," is less melodically engaging, flirting with slightly more aggressive, calypsonian rhythm, while the closing "Z" is a lovely, more electro-leaning showcase for the glassy, wordless vocals of labelmate Glasser. At six songs and 24 minutes, Settings comes off as a reasonably generous EP, not least because it seems like about the limit for what these guys are able to accomplish without in some way broadening the parameters of what they do – any longer and its commendable cohesiveness might start to seem more tiresome. A true full-length effort from these two could be a very appealing prospect; they might just have to vary up their portfolio a bit to pull it off.

Arp: The Soft Wave review

Alexis Georgopoulos' debut as Arp, 2007's In Light, was an almost forbiddingly minimal collection of glacially paced analog synth excursions and sparse, meandering drones. The Soft Wave follows that outing with a set that's equally subdued and nearly as restrained in its compositional approach, yet feels strikingly rich in comparison to the utter starkness of its predecessor. There are a few obvious departures here, including an expanded sonic palette – featuring electric guitars and basses, pianos, beatboxes, and even (on one track) vocals in addition to the expected array of vintage synthesizers (which occasionally veer into patches of fuzz and abstract noise instead of remaining clinically pure) – and the fact that many of these pieces boast what could legitimately called melodies, or at least melodic motifs. But the biggest change is more than anything one of mood: while both albums are calm and contemplative, there's a warmth and restfulness to Wave that was distinctly absent from the sometimes naggingly unsettled, sometimes downright chilly In Light. It's right there in the track list: titles like "Catch Wave," "High Life," and "Summer Girl" evoke a pretty specific vibe, and they're not lying – the latter two in particular offer a hazy tunefulness that makes them, along with the groovily fluid guitar-looping "White Light," the first Arp tracks that could be considered infectious. You're probably unlikely to jam them on your way to the beach, but they're perfect for laying back and dreaming about summer, regardless of the actual outdoor temperature (well, as long as you don't mind the occasional squall). The same is equally true of the lengthier pieces that make up The Soft Wave's two poles: the stately, gently triumphant two-part opener "Pastoral Symphony," which is the closest this album comes to In Light's hermetic analog purity, and the blissfully languid slow-motion bossa "From a Balcony Overlooking the Sea" (the aforementioned vocal number, reminiscent of "rock album" Brian Eno and, curiously, the Sea and Cake), clearly the farthest thing here from Arp's established wheelhouse. Though these two pieces don't sound very much like one another, the feeling they create is surprisingly comparable. Much as Georgopoulos' compositions gradually evolve and mutate out of an initial sense of stasis, he's found a way to vary his approach – if only, in the scheme of things, fairly slightly – that moves it forward, slowly but surely, from simple clarity toward a rare luminescence.

Drivan: bio and Disko review

Norwegian producer Kim Hiorthøy has a knack for cobbling together small scraps of sound and melody in a careful but seemingly arbitrary fashion that can make the simple and familiar seem oddly curious and make the coarse and unexpected feel innocently sweet. Disko, the first output from Drivan – a group consisting of Hiorthøy and three female performance artists who serve here primarily as vocalists and co-architects – is the least overtly electronic recording he has been involved in, although most of its tracks do feature his typically low-key, rough-hewn, hip-hop-styled beats for at least a portion of their running time. For the most part, the album uses the melodic but not particularly song-based linear structures familiar from his solo work. Tracks tend to build from a basic rudimentary riff, melody, or chord progression, typically picked out on acoustic guitar or a slightly out of tune piano, with the vocals – exclusively in Swedish, usually solo or in unison, and tending toward a plain, uninflected tone that sometimes takes on a childlike, singsong cast – layered on top. Beats filter in and out, tracks develop and disintegrate in fluid but unpredictable ways, and Hiorthøy tacks on little bits of incidental noise and sonic detritus: the ambient sounds of talking, laughing, scuffling of papers; spectral, unidentified samples of this and that; whistling and squeaking electronic toys and synthetic strings and cheap-sounding keyboard organ solos. There's one clear standout and centerpiece in the six-minute "Det Gör Ingenting," which is the fullest-sounding and most melodically compelling piece here, its sweetly hypnotic throb suggesting an epic, pulsating dance track as performed by children, or heard from several rooms away through slightly worn-out speakers. (It's the only time the album comes close to the danceability suggested by its devious title, though it's still probably a bit too mellow for that.) Otherwise, it's all gently shambolic, mildly folky, slightly inscrutable, and generally quite likable. One gets the sense that Hiorthøy and his cohorts could easily continue turning out these strange, sweet, and satisfying songs in similar fashion for quite some time, if they so chose, and it would be hard to complain if they did.

K-X-P: K-X-P review

A good deal heavier and murkier than the electronic prog-disco fare sometimes associated with Smalltown Supersound – though far from unrelated to that aesthetic – K-X-P is the first fruit of the eponymous project fronted by Op:l Bastards' Timo Kaukolampi. Effectively a synth-bass-drums power trio – with the slight twist that the lineup alternates between a pair of drummers – K-X-P specialize in dark, elemental, monolithic grooves with an obvious debt to your typical slate of gritty, texture-oriented post-punk minimalists (Suicide, Spacemen 3, This Heat) and motorik Krautrockers (Can, Neu!). Each of these eight cuts has its own distinct rhythmic flavor – "Mehu Moments" sports a simple, steady jazz-funk beat; "Elephant Man" rides a hypnotic, herky-jerky tribal pounding; standout "18 Hours (Of Love)" is a stomping T. Rex/Goldfrapp/Battles shuffle – but they maintain a fairly consistent tone and approach, with plenty of groaning, throbbing drones, noisy squalls of synth noodling, and other bits of psychedelic electro-sonic detritus. Vocals crop up occasionally on three or four of the songs, but they're typically too distorted to make much of an impression – the exception being "Pockets," wherein they're intelligible as English and recognizably melodic though fairly grating (after grappling, largely successfully, with conventional song form, the track's second half retreats into an unexpected morass of fluttering, electro-disco synth arpeggios). As the album progresses, it grows more heavily electronic and increasingly spacy, with the gauzy soundtrack synths of "New World" offering a more subdued moment of cosmic reverie and "Epilogue" closing things out with some beatless, meandering organ drones and wispy wordless vocals. Despite its general seedy overtones and occasional moments of harshness, K-X-P is far from an unpalatable or unpleasant record; indeed, its relentless intensity can even feel oddly calming.

Eddy Current Suppression Ring: Primary Current review

Eddy Current Suppression Ring's second album is essentially of a piece with their self-titled debut, meaning here are ten more blasts of direct, primitive, tuneful punk from the bowels of Melbourne. Rough and scrappy but too giddily enthusiastic to come off as snotty or sneering, ECSR tap in to the primal, fun-loving energy of frill-free rock & roll, a spirit that feels every bit as immediate and relevant as it is familiar and timeless. Their sound may be derivative (of any number of past clatter-masters – perhaps most notably the Stooges, but also Wire, the Fall, the Feelies, and on and on), but it's not formulaic, and certainly not monotonous: Primary Colours employs a fair amount of rhythmic and textural variety within its basic template of straightforward lock-grooves and minimalist guitar shredding. So for every all-out skronkfest like "Sunday's Coming" and "Which Way to Go," which maintain a fairly steady barrage of thick guitar noise, there's a sleeker, spindlier cut like "Memory Lane" or the bored anti-media rant "Colour Television" ("Another Wheel of Fortune/Another million tortured") to keep their squalls in check for just the right moment of release. Punk love song "Wrapped Up" is bouncy and infectious with a strong, slinky riff, the Feelies-esque instrumental "That's Inside of Me" finds a herky-jerky funk groove, and "We'll Be Turned On" loosens up even further with some sloppy organ pounding and a righteously bashed-out rhythm track. That song also features a particularly goofy turn from frontman Brendan Suppression who, with his affable Aussie twang and unpretentious reflections on ordinary stuff like relationships and modern life (or, in this case, sex and television), comes across like a far more relatable version of Mark E. Smith.

Kathryn Calder: Are You My Mother? review

The most striking moment on Kathryn Calder's solo debut comes early. Halfway through the prettily subdued opener, "Slip Away," the song bursts unexpectedly free of its gently dappled piano tones and measured calm, the drums kick into rollicking gear, and Calder lets loose a joyous, irresistible, wordless vocal line strikingly like the ones her uncle, Carl Newman, used to write for Neko Case to sing with the New Pornographers. But those glorious, fleeting seconds (the eruption happens again later in the song) are the closest Are You My Mother? comes to the unbridled power pop/rock favored both by that group (of which Calder has become an increasingly active member) and by Immaculate Machine, the band of high-school chums turned indie rock pros that was until recently her primary outfit. Somewhere between a "traditional" singer/songwriter album and an exercise in one-woman popcraft à la Newman's band-based solo records, Mother finds Calder alternating between rhythmically driven uptempo numbers (the peppy, noodly two-step "Castor and Pollux"; the frantic, somewhat slapdash-sounding "A Day Long Past Its Prime") and mellower, more introspective fare. She strikes a happy medium on the folksy, metrically quirky "If You Only Knew," a jaunty singalong complete with handclaps and shambling, desultory group percussion, and on the breezy "Follow Me into the Hills," which manages to suggest both loping acoustic country and tiki-lounge exotica with its mandolin breaks, swaying tropical beat, and big twangy guitar. But by and large, in spite of Calder's rocking pedigree, Mother is generally most effective at its most restrained. With repeated listens, cuts like the autumnal, string-laden "Down the River" and the wistful waltzes "Arrow" and "So Easily" (the former a piano-based lilt, the latter stripped down to the sparsest picked acoustic guitar notes and featuring an understated harmony from Case) stand out as the album's most resonant, if only because their sparer settings allow Calder's finest gifts – the strength of her melodies and the girlish sweetness of her winsome vocals – to shine through most clearly. Despite its poignant back-story – Calder recorded the album at her family home in Victoria while caring for her ailing mother, who died a year before its release – Mother's emotional impact tends to be more indirect and evocative than specific and tangible. Its varied but always thoughtful musical character, as much as its nuanced, sometimes ambiguous lyrics, make it feel like an understated, vital reminder to bring a gentle approach to life's struggles.

Jenny Wilson: Hardships! review

The second album by this acclaimed Swedish songstress largely jettisons the appealing if skewed pop sensibility of her debut, along with most of that album's electronic underpinnings, for a prickly, nebulously political collection of songwriterly art-pop, emphasis firmly on the "art." While Love and Youth wasn't exactly light listening, it could somewhat reasonably be mentioned in the same breath as Wilson's friends and collaborators (and compatriots) Robyn and The Knife; Hardships!, though, plods a portentous path far from the Scandinavian synth-pop superhighway, evoking instead the idiosyncratic likes of Kate Bush and Tori Amos. Wilson's curious, powerfully theatrical soprano has earthy hints of gospel and soul, while the piano-led chamber arrangements offer occasional flashes of levity, particularly in the percussion department – though the album's menagerie of handclaps and xylophones can just as easily sound sinister as cheerful. But most of the interest here (human or otherwise) derives from the lyrics, which deal explicitly with domesticity and motherhood, forming a loose song cycle/concept album that addresses those topics primarily through themes of struggle, escape and disillusionment. Wilson combines narrative details redolent of rural poverty (strong-willed horses, threadbare socks, burnt soup and potatoes) with military, maritime, natural world and nursery-rhyme imagery to create vivid, uneasy juxtapositions, not unlike the rifle she wields with such impassive poise on the album's cover. The dinner-time escalation in "Pass me the Salt" is typical: "Come on now eat your food/cartridges, fried and stewed/this table has become a combat zone." The title song likewise compares the trials of motherhood to the stuff of bloody battlefields, bemoaning the unheralded heroism involved in an implacable, oddly antagonistic tone that reduces a well-reasoned feminist viewpoint to bleak, heartless logic. Wilson adopts a similarly chilly, queasily pragmatic, almost resentful view of family relationships throughout, with partners and children alike: when she wails, by way of a lullaby, "I wanna leave you baby/but our veins are entwined," you get the sense she really does want to leave her infant. The final two songs represent something of a thaw, musically as well as lyrically (one features a loose-limbed sax solo) – tellingly, they're the only ones save for the surreal memoiristic opener "The Path" ("I wanted to be born, so I crawled out of my mother") to contain the word "love." Love does not come easily in a world filled with hardships. And Hardships! is not an easy affair on any level.

AMG review round-up, volume X: smalltown vacation edition, or, balearic ballywho

i spent a good portion of last year continuing to track down various strains of so-called "cosmic disco" (some of which is documented in this installment), along with the related electronic sub-genre of balearic, a hazy but buzzy style which is on the mellower, less actually-danceable end of the same continuum. these records don't necessarily all fit into those categories, but they're mostly somewhere in that vicinity. the first five are on the rather stylish norwegian label smalltown supersound (also home to dominique leone and diskjokke whom i covered here), though the first several of those are slightly older releases that are more IDM/abstract than disco/psychy. the first four are norwegian artists, the next three san franciscan and incestuous, studio are swedish, and the last two are comps on the very like-minded permanent vacation label, which is based in germany.

Toy: bio and Toy review

Rarely has a band been so well named as Bergen, Norway's delightful Toy, but take note, children: the sparkling playthings heard on the group's eponymous debut offering are no mere gaudy baubles, but rather are intricately handcrafted future-retro gizmos and whiz-bang gadgets of the finest quality. Though they share a similar wistful sweetness and winsome naïveté with gentler electronic regressionists like Plone and ISAN, Toy pack a good deal more wallop into their tunes, stuffing these 44 minutes with a dizzying range of musical ideas, merry melodies, and goofy sounds. Things start out on a particularly giddy note with "Grass Beatbox"'s whirlwind of Looney Tunes-ish xylophones and "Don't Be"'s screwball vocoder fantasia, though it's not all a madcap sugar rush; the "kid in a candy store" approach occasionally settles down for midtempo fare which is considerably mellower than your average rambunctious toddler. Throughout, the duo's arrangements balance multi-layered complexity with electro-orchestral lushness, but they never feel overly electronic -- although it certainly sounds like plenty of vintage synthesizers are involved, it's tempting to imagine their recording studio as a sort of Santa's workshop, filled with curious trinkets and cobbled-together scraps culled from rummage sales and grandparents' attics. It's not too hard to think of parallels and precursors, electronic and otherwise, for this kind of kitschy but sophisticated novelty music (Luke Vibert's work as Wagon Christ and parts of the High Llamas' Cold and Bouncy come to mind, though there are certainly more vintage referents as well, from Raymond Scott on down), but Toy have an extensive bag of tricks and a sense of delicious fun all their own, and their retro-inspired 21st century vision of Toyland is well worth exploring. Recommended for ages one to 101.

Kim Hiorthøy: bio and My Last Day review

Like many of his electronically inclined Smalltown Supersound mates, longtime label associate Kim Hiorthøy approaches his work with a decidedly offbeat sensibility and a fair amount of humor. My Last Day is Hiorthøy's first proper full-length since his 2001 debut Hei, and its prevalent quirkiness is immediately apparent in the nutty songtitles ("I Thought We Could Eat Friends") and head-scratching cover art (which is not by Hiorthøy, though he is a noted graphic artist and designer.) It's evident in the music as well, but the general effect isn't so much overtly goofy as it is curious and off-kilter in a naïve, almost accidental-seeming way. This is an album of abstract listening electronica (for want of a better term), but it's presented with none of the sense of purity, in sound and form, that the genre often entails: neither immaculate inhuman precision nor lush organic warmth, but a rough-cut bushwhack between the two; deliberately messy and faltering. With few exceptions, these pieces are primarily built around simple melodies picked out on somewhat out of tune pianos and other tarnished-sounding instruments, which are surrounded with all sorts of sonic detritus (scraps of ambient noise, found-sound percussion, stray notes from other sources, distant vocal fragments), frequently yoked to choppy, hip-hop-inflected beats, and cut and pasted into casual but careful assemblages which feel purposefully unfinished, but not incomplete. It's as though Hiorthøy is attempting -- at times successfully -- to find a relatable form of musicality which is resistant to compositional conventions (though he does occasionally fall back on stock beats and pieces), driven not by willful absurdity but blithe happenstance.

Bjørn Torske: Feil Knapp review

In the six years between his 2001 album Trøbbel and this 2007 follow-up, the Norwegian electronica scene that Bjørn Torske helped to pioneer has gone international, thanks mostly to a number of his friends and collaborators, among them Röyksopp, Lindstrøm, Prins Thomas, and Erlend Øye. Given that context, the album has the makings of a major comeback statement, but the reality of it is a good deal more down to earth; Feil Knapp is nothing more or less than ten tracks of thoroughly personable, unassuming electronica encompassing a considerable array of styles -- house, ambient, psychedelic disco, dub reggae, instrumental pop -- while maintaining a distinctly lighthearted, amiable sensibility. In less subtly charismatic hands, this degree of eclecticism could come off as glibly chameleonic, but Torske approaches each track as an opportunity for unconstrained, good-humored exploration -- and often, gentle subversive juxtaposition -- rather than rote genre exercise. Hence, the stately serenity of opener "Hemmelig Orkester," with its warm ambient tones and wash of constantly billowing synths, is slyly undermined (though not disrupted) by a meek, unceremonious harmonica; the breezy disco-funk of "Hatten Passer" finds room for bongos, spry clavinet and vibraphone noodling, and a sprightly, faintly preposterous whistled refrain, as well as a few minor explosions (nobody harmed, evidently). Torske's greatest gift here is his lightness of touch; neither his irreverence nor his reverence comes off as forced, and neither seems to exist for its own sake. Though it initially comes off as a novelty, even the album's most overtly humorous moment -- when "Spelunker" sets video game splutters and a snaky, Eastern-tinged eight-bit melody against a slow-cooking dub reggae groove -- ends up feeling surprisingly, unsurprisingly, natural.

Lindstrøm: It's A Feedelity Affair and Where You Go I Go To reviews

In this post-millennial age of anxiety about the continued relevance of the album format, Hans-Peter Lindstrøm has handily established himself as the king of neo-future-retro-disco without ever bothering to release a "proper" album of his own material. Technically speaking, Where You Go I Go Too marks the Norwegian's first full-length foray, although his zealous, literal-minded approach to the format hardly makes for a more conventional "album" than the 2006 singles comp that was his solo CD debut, It's a Feedelity Affair. Where You Go has but three tracks -- roughly 30, 10 and 15 minutes long, respectively -- which play as the movements of a single, epic, hour-long work rather than as individual pieces. While each has its own distinct set of constituent material (motivic polyrhythmic patterns, melodic riffs, arpeggiator settings), they tend to be developed in similar ways, none of which should be new to Lindstrøm's followers: constantly growing and kaleidoscoping layers of instrumental texture, lovingly teased and tweaked electronic filters and effects, unexpected and dazzling harmonic shifts, and occasionally spacy synth swooshes that come along to tear everything down, only so it can be built back up again. This is unquestionably music about exploring and relishing the process of change and mutation itself, rather than advancing any specific, tangible musical content. Even the 29-minute title piece contains only as many discernible musical ideas as your average five- to seven-minute techno track, but its luxurious length lets those ideas stretch out gloriously and (for both artist and listener) indulgently, allowing a slow, fluid evolution that gestures towards a cosmic infinity.

Arp: bio and In Light review

In Light's opener, "St. Tropez," the simplest and sparsest piece on an album notable for its simplicity and sparseness, consists entirely of a single two-note figure in a pure-sounding electric piano tone, repeated continuously while a second voice in the same timbre meanders sympathetically, soloistically around it. It firmly and economically establishes a sense of stillness and contemplative calm: not quite the warmth and contentment suggested by the piece's Mediterranean title or the album's grainy cover shot of a sunset (presumably, Arp being Californian) over the sea -- though certainly far from the opposite of those things -- but a gentle, hopeful quietude with the slight air of clinical detachment. A similar sense carries, somewhat less deterministically, throughout In Light, whose title accordingly seems to connote the figurative light of clarity and reason more than the tender, comforting light of the sun, but that doesn't mean that this is a sterile or foreboding listening experience. The gradually mutating analog textures that Alex Georgopolous has synthesized here often have an engagingly natural quality, as does his fluid, intuitive approach to composition, particularly on the indulgently expansive 16-minute "Odyssey," which was recorded in a single, unedited, improvised take. As inviting as these pieces often are -- five of them were initially conceived for an installation wherein listeners would lie in a cozy featherbed nook -- several of them do come off as subtly, unexpectedly unsettling, with vague traces of instability and unease -- barely perceptible discordant flute overtones gilding the lush piano ambience of "The Rising Sun"; woozy high-pitched warbles floating atop the lusciously buzzy "Fireflies on the Water"; and insistent, dizzyingly jaunty arpeggios underscoring the Baroque "Premonition of the Sculptor Steiner." Meanwhile, the striking "Potentialities," which appears first as a wholly synthesized piece with a steady percussive pulse, and then in a largely organic arrangement featuring a string trio and acoustic piano, has a tense, restlessly searching quality. None of this is overtly off-putting, to be sure, but it does create a slight, constant edge that belies and complicates the straightforward simplicity of Arp's minimalist premise, serving as a reminder that light can be cold and stark as well as warm and reassuring, and that neither is necessarily any less revealing, or less beautiful.

Hatchback: bio and Colors of the Sun review

Some albums sound just the way you'd imagine them. It's only natural and fitting that a record called Colors of the Sun, by an artist (from San Francisco) named Hatchback, with song titles like "Carefree Highway," "Open Valley," and "Horizon," would be warm, wistful, vibrant, hazy, summery, autumnal, and evocative of free-spirited road trips and nostalgic bliss. What's impressive about this particular album is how simply and sweetly it satisfies all of these distinct yet impressionistic expectations suggested by its nomenclature -- so aptly conveyed as to seem almost inevitable, but not nearly so readily achieved -- resulting in a gorgeous, glowing journey that is at the same time sublimely relaxed and restful. The pieces that make up these pieces (oodles of analog synths, loping drum loops, fluid streams of electronic-sounding, organic-feeling melody, guitars and pianos and horns that might be sampled or synthesized or played) fit together so seamlessly, yet in such subtly shifting combinations, that one begins to wonder whether the effortlessness they project reflects an unusually intuitive, ingenuous creative approach, or if it masks a deliberate, painstaking, no less ingenious process of integration and formulation. To be sure, Hatchback is not without an extensive range of precursors and influences. Producer/composer Samuel Grawe has listed a wide array of inspirations for his work, both musical (1970s Krautrock -- particularly the namechecked Neu! -- and prog rock, vintage film soundtracks, Italo disco, Herbie Hancock, Stereolab...) and experiential (travel, friends, sunsets, windy roads, romance...) Which set of reference points is the more useful may depend on the listener, but the truth is that Colors of the Sun somehow manages to lives up to all of them. It will inevitably get lumped in with the Cosmic Disco movement (although little of it is remotely danceable) and the Balearic revival of the late 2000s, but this is a lovely and transporting listen regardless of times and trends, and one of the finest album statements that these loosely defined scenes have yet produced. Dig it.

Windsurf: bio and Coastlines review

One gets the sense that a lot of careful work went into making Coastlines the immaculately shimmering creation that it is, which is sort of a shame considering how difficult it is to concentrate on while it's actually playing. You could say that that's precisely the point, that this is music deliberately resistant to concrete awareness, its soft-focus surfaces designed to deflect attention away from itself and from anything else that might be going on. But there's a fuzzy line between getting lost in the music -- something these luxuriously extended grooves seem to invite -- and the music itself getting lost. Anyone who's enjoyed the solo work of Hatchback and Sorcerer (the two producers who make up Windsurf) will know what to expect here, and they are likely to be satisfied, as their collaborative material is very much cut from the same cloth: slow-moving, '70s-inspired semi-electronic tracks that blend Krautrock, disco, soft pop, and jazz fusion in a soothing, sun-dappled synthesis. A couple of tracks add understated, undistinguished vocals in a manner reminiscent of Studio (the Swedish fellow travelers whose music is among Coastlines' closest stylistic relatives), while a couple (synth-flecked "Pocket Check," goofy tropicale "The Big Island") boast beats bouncy enough to make dancefloor viability slightly more than a passing daydream. Otherwise, loungily lush widescreen epics are the order of the day, be they chugging ("Moonlight Sun"), tech-tonic ("Windsurf"), or amniotic (the shapeshifting, nearly beatless apotheosis "Crystal Neon.") To be sure, there is bliss to be had in these suspended moments, whether they come to you in a desk chair or a deck chair. But while artistic affect (as opposed to aesthetic qualities and craftsmanship, both of which are very finely defined in Windsurf's work) is especially difficult to assess in music that's so much about evoking emotional atmospheres, it's hard to shake the feeling that these California boys aren't glowing quite as warmly this time around.

Studio: Yearbook 1 and Yearbook 2 reviews

Studio's second Yearbook compilation is a collection of their remixes for other artists, rather than their own material, but their transformations are so thorough and their distinctive sonic fingerprints so prevalent that this is as good a place as any to get acquainted with the Swedish duo's lush, languorous style. Indeed, if not for the mötley assortment of vocals that occasionally intrude into the mix, ranging from Shout Out Louds' indie pop wispiness (on "Impossible," the most straightforward inclusion here) to Kylie Minogue's glam diva swelter (on "2 Hearts," an unlikely pairing that makes for a scintillating, revelatory high point), it wouldn't be hard to mistake Yearbook 2 as a more or less unified work by a single artist. As with Studio's original work, the agenda here is all about atmosphere. Whether the starting point is Love Is All's scruffy indie rock or Williams' faithful re-creation of Tangerine Dream's ethereal soundtrack work scarcely matters -- it all gets slathered with limpid laser-point guitar lines, washed out, reverberant synths, dubby disco grooves and, most prominently, immaculately crisp acoustic strums. Which is not to say that Studio are insensitive to their source material or that they simply work from a formula, they're just generally more interested in using it as a platform to their own ends. Certainly, they know what sounds they like and they stick with them, but their nuanced complexity and attention to detail, even on a hazy ten-plus-minute instrumental epic like their remake of A Mountain of One's "Brown Piano," is enough to rule out any notion of autopilot. Highest marks, however, go to perhaps the most minimalist offering here: a "version" (really a wholesale refashioning) of Rubies' soul-pop tune "Room Without a Key" which retains only the wordless background coos from the original as window dressing for an airy, hypnotic eight minutes suspended on a drifting, time signature-flouting bassline that feels utterly, impossibly fluid.

[Various Artists]: Permanent Vacation and Permanent Vacation 2 reviews

The inaugural release from Munich's Permanent Vacation label is an eponymous mix CD, compiled by label heads Benjamin Fröhlich and Tom Bioly, which feels very much as the title suggests: unhurried, luxurious, infinitely lush and relaxing, and warmly indulgent. It essentially embodies the spirit of the eclectic, laid-back, post-disco style of DJing and music-making, termed "balearic" in honor of the Mediterranean vacation spots whence it germinated in the mid-'80s, which was resurgently popular in electronica circles around the mid- to late 2000s. The differences between the vintage cuts and the work of the revivalists, while occasionally evident, are often strikingly hard to discern, which makes this both a cohesive listening experience and a decent argument for the cross-generational continuity of semi-electronic, slow to midtempo European disco music. All told, there is a stunning amount of gorgeousness on display here. Highly recommended to anyone curious about balearic or experimental disco, or anyone in need of a good pleasure cruise.

Permanent Vacation 2: On the whole, this mix feels more pedestrian than its inspired predecessor, maintaining a similar lilting spirit (with perhaps a slightly sharper dancefloor focus), but without so many unexpectedly magical selections. Still, it's nice enough stuff, and an admirably direct summation of an undeniable late-'00s zeitgeist.

Alexis Le Tan & Jess/Various: Space Oddities review

As per the subtitle, "a compilation of rare European library grooves from 1975-1984," these nineteen cuts of vintage library music -- that is, stock music composed and recorded for production music houses to be anonymously licensed for film and television -- are united primarily by their focus on rhythm and groove. Given the era surveyed and the fact that this collection was issued on the stellar electronic disco revivalist label Permanent Vacation, it's no surprise that most of the selections are of the funky disco persuasion, quite a few of them boasting some form of electronic instrumentation. Space Oddities was prepared as an evident labor of love by French DJs Alexis Le-Tan and Jess; one can only imagine the copious stacks of generic, hackneyed, and otherwise unfunky soundtrack fodder they must have waded through in order to glean these gems, and all of them are properly licensed and credited, which may well have required just as much effort. This is a true treasure trove of striking, inspired, and compositionally masterful material, selected with a DJ-friendly eye on the dancefloor, but containing enough unexpected twists to make home listening just as stimulating. Much of this material bears an undeniable likeness to the hippest cosmic disco sounds swirling out of Oslo and elsewhere in 2008. It will likely sound hopelessly kitschy to some, but for anyone curious about that recently spotlighted strain of electronica's patchwork heritage, or anyone looking for a freaky, funky good time, Space Oddities barely sets a foot wrong. Sensational stuff.