AMG review round-up, volume XVII: the second best of 2009

carrying on down the list...

{#26} Fuck Buttons: Tarot Sport [CP concert preview]

Fuck Buttons have a way with paradox, an uncanny aptitude for smoothing over uncomfortable juxtapositions. Just check that improbably cuddly band-name, for instance (or is that just me?) On last year’s majestically visceral Street Horrrsing, the U.K. duo made borderline-abrasive swaths of droning, monotonous electronic noise feel downright warm and cozy, yet also awesomely epic. Their nifty new Tarot Sport replicates that trick and adds a few new ones too, toning down the demonic shrieks and amping up the tribal/triumphal drumming, for maximal adrenalized pummeling hypnotic techno-bliss.

{#28} Fool's Gold: Fool's Gold [+ bio]

In a similar spirit to artists like Extra Golden and NOMO, the music of L.A.'s Fool's Gold is fundamentally rooted in – not merely inspired by – international (and more specifically, African) sounds and styles, even if they essentially emerged within the context of American indie rock (for one thing, three of the band's members overlap with the more straight-ahead indie outfit Foreign Born.) This self-titled debut finds the group – a twelve-strong cohort led by bassist/vocalist Luke Top and lead guitarist Lewis Pesacov, featuring a pair of saxophonists and a full four members devoted to percussion and chant-like auxiliary vocals – delving energetically into eight spicy, polyrhythmic, highly danceable compositions whose emphasis is firmly on groove and riff, as opposed to song per se. Top's curiously resonant, commanding vocals do provide a focal point (he sings primarily in Hebrew, a significant personal distinction for the Israeli-born vocalist, but one which non-Hebrew-speaking listeners will find merely adds another subtle layer to the general ethnic ambiguity at play here), but they are interspersed throughout to give equal weight to the rest of the ensemble, and especially to Pesacov's deliciously nimble fretwork, which is central to the album's idiomatic credibility (cementing, in particular, the buoyant opener/lead single/instant standout "Surprise Hotel.") To some listeners, the stylistic accuracy and pan-ethnic eclecticism of the group's highly informed cross-cultural homages/borrowings (an Ethiopiques-styled number here, a Tuareg blues-informed one there) may come off as somewhat glib and generic, and indeed the album has a bit of the faceless feel of, say, a Putomayo: Africa compilation. But that in itself is, all things considered, an impressive feat for a motley crew of Angelenos; the fact that, far from dry mimicry, Fool's Gold offers up an abundance of joy and soul makes it both a significant statement – further testament to the limitless potential of global musical cross-pollination – and, much more importantly, a hell of a party record.

{#29} Anna Ternheim: Leaving On A Mayday

For her third album -- which would become her second U.S. full-length, following the compilation release Halfway to Fivepoints -- Swedish songbird Anna Ternheim enlisted the assistance of Björn Yttling, best known as one-third of Peter Bjorn and John but increasingly prominent in his own right via production work for Lykke Li, Shout Out Louds, Primal Scream, and others. It was a savvy move -- for one thing, the collaboration netted Ternheim a Swedish Grammy for Album of the Year -- and the results were a modest but significant step away from the accomplished but slightly faceless and overstuffed jazzy lounge-folk of her earlier work, toward an edgier, more distinctly pop direction. While hardly as gritty as Yttling's work on Lykke Li's Youth Novels, or his own band's 2009 album Living Thing, Leaving on a Mayday shares with those records an inventive sparseness -- achieved more through a spacious openness in the sound than a reduction in the number of instruments, per se -- and in particular a relative paucity of guitars in favor of, among other things, surprisingly prominent percussion. That's especially true of the album's first half, where the pulsing, stripped-down grooves are colored by majestically thick string arrangements (penned by Yttling, who also contributed his multi-instrumental talents throughout.) For all its sonic distinctiveness, though, this is still fundamentally a singer/songwriter album -- the arrangements may sometimes be more initially striking than the songs they are designed to serve, but with further listening, they emerge as well-conceived if unconventional complements to a fine slate of lyrical compositions steeped in the autumnal melancholy favored by so many Scandinavians (Ane Brun, Stina Nordenstam, Britta Persson, Sarah Assbring,etc.), with an especial tinge of romantic desperation (Ternheim sometimes seems just as distraught and unsettled by the prospect of an actual romantic connection as she is over the absence of bygone and unattained lovers.) That said, several of Mayday's finest and most striking moments are at least musically upbeat, as with gloriously harmonized choruses of the sweeping opener "What Have I Done" and especially the thundering, Fleetwood Mac-ish "Make It on My Own" (one of two Yttling co-writes, and a key track added to the album for its U.S. release.) The tail-end of the disc finds Ternheim in a folkier vein, with the simply, sweetly strummed "Summer Rain," the tense, fingerpicked "Off the Road," and the foreboding, folkloric dirge "Black Sunday Afternoon" offering a nice reminder of her stylistic breadth.

{#31} Naomi Shelton & The Gospel Queens: What Have You Done, My Brother? [AMG review]
{#36} El Perro Del Mar: Love Is Not Pop [CP Interview]

{#38} Hynotic Brass Ensemble: bio and Hynotic Brass Ensemble review

"Hypnotic" may be somewhat misleading: the word suggests something lulling and gently soothing, but the music made by this band of brothers is fiery and dynamic, anything but sleepy. While occasionally reminiscent of more established brass band traditions (Balkan, New Orleans), with a hint of soul and a dash of Afro-beat's frenzied intensity, their music is best described as jazzy instrumental funk: compositionally sophisticated, highly contrapuntal, and infused with thorny harmonics undoubtedly picked up from their father -- avant-jazz notable Kelan Phil Cohran -- but always rhythmically direct and unfailingly tight. Anchored by sturdy, simple drum parts and Tycho Cohran's supple, syncopated sousaphone basslines, the Hypnotic Brass Ensemble blow dense chord clusters, indelibly soulful unison melodies, and tuneful interlocking counterlines, with only occasional focused soloing and emphasis on accessibility and groove. The album -- their first widely released full-length, which features re-recordings of many selections from their earlier self-released CD-Rs -- is consistently strong though fairly stylistically homogenous, containing mostly upbeat, party-ready tunes with either straight-ahead funk or Afro-inflected grooves, but there are a couple of curve balls in the lush, languorous (and yes, plausibly hypnotic) "Jupiter" and the especially manic, Balkan-esque Moondog cover "Rabbit Hop" (which reappears at the end with the addition of some spacy, wobbly electronic sounds). The only notable flaw in the flow comes toward the end of "Party Started," with some crowd-hyping chants that come off as moronically fratty -- though the group shouldn't necessarily avoid vocals altogether: by contrast, the street-corner scatting that closes the slinky "Ballicki Bone" is a special highlight. As a whole, it makes for an exceedingly spirited and largely unique listening experience.

{#39} Hot Leg: Red Light Fever [AMG review]
{#41} Hess Is More: Hits [AMG review]
{#43} Jill Sobule: California Years [CP concert preview]
{#44} Kikumoto Allstars: House Music [AMG review]

{#46} Two Fingers: bio and Two Fingers review

Through the late '90s and beyond, drum'n'bass cut-up maestro Amon Tobin was widely hailed as one of electronica's most exciting and innovative artists. His popularity and critical cachet have waned somewhat since the early '00s, as his output slowed and electronic trends drifted elsewhere, but the late-decade collaborative project Two Fingers should shoot him right back to the center of attention for anybody interested in forward-thinking, urban-inflected electronic beats and pieces. Working together with U.K. producer Joe "Doubleclick" Chapman, the now-Montreal-based Tobin has crafted his most thrilling and visceral work in ages, if not his entire career, freely borrowing elements of grime, dubstep, dancehall, and Dirty South hip-hop, among other styles, to fashion a sound that, while often only tangentially connected to his earlier output, ultimately sounds like little else out there. Two Fingers interpolates jittery, junglesque beat programming, a junkyard barrage of unpredictable percussive sounds and textures, and a sly, omnivorous approach to sampling ("Straw Men" opens the album with a woozily distorted riff that sounds like a refraction of the Turtles' "Happy Together," while "Jewels and Gems" coasts atop a slew of blazing sitar licks), all combined in a whirl of dark, edgy intensity -- evoking dubstep's curious ability to sound simultaneously spacious and impenetrably dense -- with relentlessly gritty, kinetic energy. Equally crucial to the album's impact are the solid contributions of several MCs; most prominently the London-based rapper Sway, who graces seven of these twelve tracks. Mostly setting aside the waggish wordplay and somewhat mawkish tendencies of his own recent work, Sway is a revelation here, sounding thirstier than ever and imbuing his typically breakneck delivery with a markedly tougher stance, without entirely excising his wry wit. The sparser, slinkier cuts tend to be the domain of female MCs, with dancehall diva Ce'Cile adding the requisite ragga flava to the simmering "Bad Girl"; Philly's Ms. Jade turns up for some stone-faced tough talk on "Better Get That," and coyly coos over the Neptunes-style minimalism of "Doing My Job." And the pair of instrumental cuts -- the eastern-tinged "Keman Rhythm" and broodingly twitchy, blasted "Moth Rhythm" -- are menacing and compelling, easily among the album's highlights. If there's a relevant contemporary reference point for Two Fingers, it's probably the Bug's London Zoo, another broadly synthesizing opus helmed by a veteran electronic producer whose post-industrial urban soundscapes draw on a similar array of styles and make comparably vital use of guest MCs, but whereas Zoo was often oppressively, crushingly bleak, hardly a party record despite its insistent dancehall riddims, Tobin and Doubleclick (and Sway) inject enough glimmers of levity and spirited playfulness -- rhythmic, sonic, and verbal -- into their often foreboding murkiness that Two Fingers should manage to engage a wide swath of movers and listeners.

{#48} Permanent Vacation records: Selected Label Works Nº 1 review

This lavishly abundant selection -- two and a half hours over two discs -- of prime modern disco and lush Balearic house represents the cream of the first few years of output from the Munich-based Permanent Vacation label. The focus is entirely on the imprint's original offerings rather than its laudable reissue efforts. Of the 22 tracks here, half of them remixes (three are also included in their original form), the vast majority are culled from the label's 2008 12" releases, and most are appearing for the first time on CD. Simply put, this is a treasure trove, not only for DJs and collectors (who should be glad to note that the compilation is unmixed) but for listeners of any stripe whose tastes run to fluid, funky, slightly spacy disco-doused grooves. The whole affair is remarkably consistent in terms of both quality -- singling out favorites is a daunting proposition -- and sound: plenty of languid acoustic strums, free-floating synths, buzzy melodics, and the occasional bit of low-grade prog-lead pyrotechnics, with an assortment of tasty vocal turns, always tethered to cozy midtempo 4/4 cadences ranging roughly from torrid to torpid, strutting to sultry. A star-studded list of contempo-disco remixers (among them Aeroplane, Todd Terje, Holy Ghost!, Superpitcher, and Hercules & Love Affair) work their distinctive brands of magic to typically lovely effect without deviating terribly far from the prevailing vibe, while the original tracks offer plenty of their own delights, from the quirky-jerky Italo-squelch of Bostro Pesopeo's "Communquis" to the slow-building, woozily anthemic filter-disco of Good Guy Mikesh & Filburt's "Someone Told Me" to the wispy acoustic noodling and dubby phasing of Dølle Jolle's "Balearic Incarnation" (made only all the more lavish in Terje's electro-kinetic Extra Doll Mix) to the classic congas'n'piano vocal house of "Tic Toc," an exclusive cut laid down by label heads Tom Bioly and Benjy Frölich with assistance from the ever-winsome Kathy Diamond. You could fault Permanent Vacation for their lack of range, or perhaps for their excessive generosity, but taken on its terms this is one solidly classy offering, right down to the intriguing, thoughtful package design, and nigh-on impeccable.

{#49} Obi Best: Capades review
L.A. singer/songwriter Alex Lilly, Obi Best's frontwoman, also tours and records as a backing vocalist for the Bird and the Bee, whose retro-inflected sophisti-pop makes an almost too handy reference point for her own work. It's an apt one, though, both in terms of Lilly's light-spirited, keyboard-based songwriting and, especially, her jazzy, mellifluent, and playfully nuanced voice, which is uncannily reminiscent of Inara George. But she's got her own distinctive style to offer as well, an infectious, wide-eyed freshness particularly evident in her curious approach to writing melodies. Fluid but quirky, swooping and sauntering with conspicuous pleasure through unexpected intervals and off-kilter rhythms, her melodic lines sometimes take on an otherworldly, vaguely oriental cast, as on "Origami" (fittingly enough) and the bouncy, carnivalesque "Swedish Boy" (perhaps more incongruously -- though the song is about "a made-up country" -- but to superbly catchy effect). The melodies mostly connect up well with Lilly's similarly ruminative, charmingly colloquial lyrics: the merger isn't always completely natural, as the words can come off clunky and half-formed (like on the somewhat perplexing rant "It's Because of People Like You"), but her beguiling voice and prevailing sweetness go a long way toward smoothing things over. Elsewhere, along with some touchingly ambivalent relationship songs, "Days of Decadence" and "Green and White Stripes" deal quite nicely with, respectively, nostalgia and ineffability. Songwriting aside, plenty of Capades' appeal lies in its playfully inventive soundscape. Lest one forget, Obi Best are, at least ostensibly, a band, comprised of L.A. studio vets (whose credits include work with Beck and Jenny Lewis) who adorn Lilly's guitar and piano stylings with all manner of fizzy, dreamlike sounds and lush, offbeat electronic effects, underscoring the warmth and whimsy that make this such a welcome, winsome debut.


{#52} Hervé: Cheap Thrills, Vol. 1 review

Beneath the suitably massive, trashy-looking, superhero-sized letters of the title -- which create the somewhat misleading if perhaps not unintentional impression of a disposable mass-market club comp -- Cheap Thrills, Vol. 1 promises to provide "The Sound of the U.K.'s Leading Dance Label: A Mix of Ghetto Bass, House, Dubstep, Electro, B-More Club and Bassline." The accuracy of the first claim may be up for debate, but there's no question that this compilation is every bit as wide-ranging, heavy-hitting, and fist-poundingly, well, thrilling as advertised. Offering no shortage of sirens, fidgety electro breaks, and gloriously corny vocal interludes, and veering wildly (sometimes within a single track) from the grittiest, rawest throbbing dubstep bass to the glossiest, unabashedly poppy stadium-trance synths with no regard for the niceties of subgenre demarcations, the only constant among these tracks -- apart from their compulsive, beats-forward danceability -- is their utter lack of restraint. It's an approach to dance music that's been sorely underexploited since the big beat heyday of the late '90s, and the lack of subtlety here is marvelously refreshing, particularly since it never comes at the expense of accessibility and tunefulness. Effectively a showcase for the imprint of the same name headed up by DJ/producer Joshua Harvey (aka Hervé, the Count, Action Man, Speaker Junk, etc., etc.), who has his hand as producer, remixer, or otherwise in nearly half of these tracks, Cheap Thrills is culled from the label's first two years (2008-2009) of output, with eight additional exclusive cuts thrown in. Only ten tracks overlap (sometimes in remixed form) between the two discs (the first is unmixed, the second a relentlessly high-energy DJ mix by Hervé -- obviously each has its place and purpose, but the mix is unquestionably the best way to experience this material), which means there are a generous 25 distinct tracks included across the 35 cuts. The quality remains impressively high throughout (though even the considerable variety may not stave off listener fatigue over two-plus hours of both discs), but definite standouts include Fake Blood's bouncy, pouncy "Fix Your Accent," Jack Beats' cannily deployed dubstep wobbles on both "U.F.O." and "Labyrinth," the pounding filter-house of His Majesty André's "Puppets," and the cartoonish "tribal" drums and incessant builds of Hervé and Jack Beats' "Rainstick."

{#56} Matthew Sweet & Susanna Hoffs: Under The Covers, Vol. 2: The 70s [CP live review}

{#59} Etienne Jaumet: Night Music review

Despite having one album of Kraut-horror-disco (as half of the duo Zombie Zombie) and one well-received 12" (Repeat Again After Me) under his belt, Etienne Jaumet came to his debut solo full-length still a relative newcomer and a self-described outsider to the world of electronica. Perhaps that explains why it stands out as such a fresh and distinct piece of work, well removed from any obvious contemporary electronic trends. Historical reference points for the album, sonically and structurally, include early Detroit techno, the "kosmische musik" of Manuel Göttsching and Klaus Schulze, and perhaps, on a more fundamental, conceptual level, the minimalism of Steve Reich -- of course, these are seminal and inevitable touchstones for all electronic music, certainly including the entire minimal techno wave of the 2000s and especially the late-decade revival of cosmic (neo-)disco and the like. But Jaumet manages to incorporate these influences in a refreshingly pure, direct way, crafting a sincere homage to oft-elided originators while avoiding the pitfalls of mere stylistic mimicry, in part, through his unusual use of organic instrumental sounds and elements of free jazz. Night Music is a significant title, appropriately evocative yet non-specific: this is unquestionably dark music, redolent in particular of urban and somewhat seedy nocturnal activity, and it would lose much of its power and cogency if exposed to sunlight.

The track names do suggest a more precise programmatic conceit of a single night's journey through sleep and dreams, but this is hardly a restful affair. As hypnotic as it is, "For Falling Asleep" -- the album's 20-minute opener, centerpiece, and statement of purpose -- would be nearly impossible to actually sleep to, and would seem to portend, at best, highly troubled dreams. The track, built on a constant yet constantly shifting arpeggiated analog synth figure, sometimes accompanied by hissy, wobbly beatbox percussion, glides through a gradually evolving soundscape populated by unobtrusively ominous synth pads, eerie wordless female voices, and a haze of noodly saxophones -- only giving way in its final minutes to a curious, beatless liminal space where, of all things, a deftly plucked harp crops up, coexisting somewhat queasily with still-menacing synth swells. It's a small moment of repose after an exhausting but majestic journey of seemingly endless unfolding, but it's a necessary palate-cleanser, because from there we plunge directly into "Mental Vortex," which rides a sturdier, robotic Detroit groove and a taut, entrancing four-note synth riff into progressively squelchier territory. The album grows marginally calmer, if not necessarily gentler, as it proceeds -- the briefer "Entropy" once again features an insistent synth bass ostinato, but it's more spacious, almost funky, while "Through the Strata," a disquieting drone-based piece dominated by the unexpected and not entirely harmonious sound of a hurdy-gurdy, is propelled only by an intermittent kick drum pulse. Finally, "At the Crack of Dawn" is beatless but throbbing, a study in vague but unremitting tension generated primarily by a clutch of dense, sleazy saxes. It's striking stuff -- definitely not easy listening, but well worth the effort, even if it feels like a slightly lopsided affair, with the final four tracks overshadowed by one terrifically effective and truly inventive epic.

{#62} Here We Go Magic [CP concert preview]

Part breakout debut, part third-times-the-charm rebranding for indie-folkster Luke Temple, Here We Go Magic (Western Vinyl) swirls a kinda-'90s lo-fi approach with a whole host of late-'00s hipster-hippie tropes: hazy electronics, ethnic-y polyrhythms, submerged platitudinous chants and sunny Afro-pop guitar lines, along with a generous side helping of blank drone.

{#63} Nosaj Thing: Drift [AMG review]

AMG review round-up, volume XVI: the very best of 2009

skipping the genre-specific entries for a more all-encompassing approach to finally posting the massive backlog of reviews i've been building up. this might require a few installments: all remaining 2009 album reviews (and a handful of other writings), starting with my favorites, in the order they appeared on my best of '09 albums list:

{#1} The Very Best: Warm Heart of Africa

At the very least, this is some of the most joyous, life-affirming music out there. The Very Best's debut album finds Malawian singer Esau Mwamwaya and London-based production duo Radioclit (Etienne Tron and Johan Karlberg) more than making good on the promise of the internet mixtape that introduced their partnership to the world. That tape, one of 2008's most celebrated (and celebratory) releases, displayed a truly boundary-defying yet immediately cohesive and recognizable sound: a euphoric global mélange of pop, dance, hip-hop, world-folk, sunny indie rock, electronica, cinematic new age lushness, and the African sounds of marabi, highlife, and kwaito, all highlighted by Mwamwaya's deliriously infectious Chichewa crooning. This time out, without the launch pad of familiar source material that sometimes made the mixtape's slew of remixes, interpolations, and covers feel slightly like a cheeky arithmetic mashing-up of reference points, the threesome have crafted something even more distinctive and organic, dissolving together their panoply of influences into a set of songs (not merely "tracks") that feel blissfully free of formulas and forerunners.

To be sure, the Very Best's sound is essentially an extension of the globalism already increasingly prevalent in 21st century indie and dance music; a connection reaffirmed by a pair of delightful guest appearances from two of that trend's most visible exponents. Ezra Koenig of Vampire Weekend, whose "Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa" was marvelously reworked on the mixtape, returns the favor here by duetting with Mwamwaya on the album's irresistibly effervescent title track. The other big guest shot, naturally enough, is from M.I.A., reigning monarch and mascot of globetrotting beat excursions, who can't help but inspire some smiles on the silly, spunky "Rain Dance." But Mwamwaya hardly requires a famous foil to be utterly captivating. His voice, which is often multi-tracked into toothsome harmonies, is equally capable of conveying majesty, urgency, and exuberance; sometimes -- as on the giddily anthemic "Julia" (which borrows a bit of "Paper Planes"' lazily loping swagger) -- all three at once. But if that voice is undeniably essential to the group's sound, Radioclit's contributions shouldn't be understated either: Karlberg and Tron have outdone themselves with a kaleidoscopic array of Afro-leaning grooves to complement Mwamwaya's contagious melodicism, relying remarkably little on their typically gritty, muscular "ghetto-pop" style. While there are some traces of more straightforward club-derived rhythms - the percussive "Nsokoto" and glittery "Mfumu" both gesture toward disco's 4/4 thump, while the string-laced "Kada Manja," in an amped-up variation on the mixtape's "classical" version, flirts with the hard-hitting sound of kuduro - most of the album is eminently danceable without slotting neatly into any specific idea of "dance music."

But as vivacious and energetic as it is, there's something even more fundamentally potent and potentially profound going on here (not to suggest that dancing isn't profound -- indeed, that might be precisely the point). Take "Chalo," an unabashedly uplifting barrage of Enya-esque synth stabs which was reportedly (amazingly) recorded on the same night that the group's three members first met, and whose lyrics they've described as about "using love to stop the world's problems." This is the sort of thing that helps explain why the Very Best can sport such a ticklish moniker with such evident aplomb: somehow, with these guys, it comes off not so much as a boast (albeit an improbably credible one) but as an encapsulation of the boundless optimism and idealism reflected in their songs and in their sound -- a fervent, infectious belief in music's power to bring out the very best in the world and in the human spirit.

{#2} Jonathan Johansson: En Hand I Himelen [+ bio]

It seems strange to recommend a songwriter of Jonathan Johansson's caliber on the strength of a cover version, but non-Swedish-speaking audiences may find the most immediate point of entry into his second album (which, given its stylistic differences from his first, his change of moniker, and increased exposure, feels effectively like a debut) to be "Alla Vill Ha Hela Världen." It's an essentially faithful rendition of a familiar song -- Tears for Fears' 1985 hit "Everybody Wants to Rule the World," rendered in Swedish as "everybody wants the whole world" -- but it provides a good indication of the album's approach: rich, gleaming layers of keyboards and guitars; distinctive but not overpowering midtempo rhythms that land somewhere between danceable and drivingly triumphant, and effortlessly buoyant melodies, delivered in Johansson's gorgeously understated octave-doubled vocals. That he can pull off a welcome reworking of a brilliant pop classic without changing it all that much (save for the translation and a slightly synthier sheen), and then make it fit by filling the rest of the album with originals that feel just as enduring and elemental, is quite a feat. But En Hand I Himlen is not a showy album; if anything, it's relentlessly smooth, gliding from the insistent, Arcade Fire-ish pulse of the title track to the breezy, almost Caribbean lilt of "Innan vi Faller," which flows seamlessly into the loping sweetness of "Högsta Take, Högsta Våningen," and so on from there. One highlight after another, without a single subpar track -- Johansson's solemn, hymn-like choral pieces ("Du Sa" and "Psalm Noll Noll") are just as alluring as his scintillating, pointillist wide-screen electro-pop ("Aldrig Ensam," "Sent för Oss.") Indeed, any of these songs could be a forgotten 20-year-old smash single -- or a worthy candidate for an English-language revisiting two decades hence. Even the album's timely 1980s-era referentiality, as prominent as it is, slathered in gauzily synthetic textures, is ultimately secondary to the timeless majesty of its melodies. Highly recommended.

{#3} Mayer Hawthorne: A Strange Arrangement

i still haven't written anything about mayer for publication, but i've probably been more excited about him than any other artist in the last twelve months... if i made this list now, this would be {#1} easy. and he's just as great in concert...

{#4} JJ: JJ Nº 2 [+ bio]
Call them the Tender Alliance. The stark, iconically "edgy" cover of JJ's tersely titled N° 2, with its splatter of blood and grayscale cannabis leaf, seems almost comically incongruous when contrasted with the wispy, blissful sweetness of the music contained inside, which offers nary a tough edge. True, the album does feature one blatant drug track, with a hip-hop sample to boot -- the slow-rolling, reverb-drenched "Ecstasy," which lifts the drippy keyboard line and swaggering stutter-step cadence of Lil Wayne's "Lollipop" -- but the effect is more sluggish (or, to go by the lyrics, huggish) than thuggish. Elsewhere, the pervading haze is not so much psychotropic as simply tropic, with steel pans, timbales, and talking drums flitting up through the burbling electronic undercurrents which, along with singer Elin's bewitchingly languorous alto, transform songs like "Things Will Never Be the Same Again" and "My Love" from perfectly lovely gentle indie pop tunes into something quite a bit more special and intriguing. Even at their most stripped-down, as on closer "Me and Dean," which consists of little more than some lazy acoustic strumming, a bit of background chatter, and a repeated refrain half-borrowed from Taylor Dayne's 1987 hit "Tell It to My Heart," JJ can be entirely endearing; their finest moments -- the intricate instrumental "Intermezzo," whose chintzily Baroque, chiming synth motif floats atop a bed of tabla, beatbox bossa nova, and woozy sound fragments, and especially the gloriously lush, groove-infused "From Africa to Malaga," which features some arrestingly lovely self-harmonizing -- are nothing short of intoxicating. The whole affair lasts less than 27 minutes, but it feels satisfyingly complete as an album, with a balmy, carefree ambience and a level of sonic detail that both invite and richly reward repeated listens.

{#5} Adiam Dymott: Adiam Dymott [+ bio]

A far cry from your typical twenty-something Scandinavian songstress -- among her Razzia labelmates, she has as much in common with guitar-heavy (male) rock acts like I Are Droid and Dundertåget/Thunder Express as with the gentler, more girlish likes of Firefox AK, Maia Hirasawa, and Hello Saferide -- Stockholm's Adiam Dymott distinguishes herself on this succinct and immensely likable debut with a fresh and impressively assured take on classic rock/pop songcraft. The opening cut may be named for John Denver (it's about freewheeling down country roads with a certain unspecified song of his playing on the radio), but a better clue to her affinities is her choice to cover Neil Young's "Too Far Gone" (which provides this album's sweetest, sparest moment). Like Young, Tom Petty, and even Bruce Springsteen, her songs convey a certain literate but unpretentious populism, filtered through a raggedly rootsy, vaguely punkish musical sensibility: good old American rock & roll, albeit from the perspective of an African-descended Swede. Add to that a rich and throaty singing voice reminiscent of P!nk and Liz Phair, inflected with pop and soul in equal measure, and you've got the makings of a refreshing and distinctive new talent. The uptempo rockers here are a total blast -- especially the handclappy singalong single "Miss You" and the driving anti-mainstream youth anthem "Pizza" (which features the delicious call-and-response chorus "My generation's fucked/You left a pile of garbage/Way too big to clean up") -- but there are some real gems among the slower, quirkier numbers as well, like the mellow-grooving "Mrs. Dymott," which muses on the difficulties of having a strange name. The song's chorus spells her name out for listeners (and even offers an etymology) -- pay attention; it's one worth remembering.

{#6} Buraka Som Sistema: Black Diamond [AMG review]
{#7} Camera Obscura: My Maudlin Career [CP live review]
{#8} La Roux [CP track review]

One Track Mind: "Bulletproof"

La Roux sure do lead a thrilling, treacherous life. Well, so the titles of their singles would have you believe: the well-coiffed dance-pop duo debuted with "Quicksand" and assailed the UK charts with the ferocious "In For The Kill." Even if it's all metaphorical (yeah, they're pretty much just love songs), there's enough real menace and fierceness in their tracks for the violent conceits to hit home. Nowhere is that more true than on "Bulletproof," their finest achievement and the most urgent, insistent, and utterly invincible sliver of synth-pop from a decade of unabashed retro-wonkery. Call it an '80s-retread if you must; you can’t shoot it down. Ben Langmaid's gritty keyboards pierce like tiny neon shards, and Elly Jackson's spitfire vocal delivery (she of the Tilda Swinton-esque androgyny and opinionated, dubiously-reasoned public statements) offer nothing but glisteningly sharp edges. That is, until the song's gleaming chorus – the sort that's simply one line repeated four times, because that's all it needs to be. "This time I'll be bulletproof," Jackson wails, betraying the slightest hint of vulnerability. More likely, we're the ones who need protection.

{#9} Darren Hayman: Pram Town [AMG review]
{#10} The Boy Least Likely To: The Law of the Playground [CP track review]

One Track Mind: "When Life Gives Me Lemons I Make Lemonade"

Even by the sugary standards of twee-sters The Boy Least Likely To's addictive, adorable sophomore record, The Law of The Playground (+1 records), this cut's Pollyanna-meets-MacGyver premise is saccharine to say the least. But the fizzy clatter of handclaps and vibraslaps, banjos and fiddles, electronic twitters and piano glisses surrounding our pragmatically positivist protagonist (who also uses raindrops to make rainbows), and a chunky, cheery groove that falls somewhere between the vaudeville-hoedown stomp of Fozzie and Kermit's "Movin' Right Along" and a kiddie-disco version of Franz Ferdinand's "Take Me Out," help give it just the right touch of tart-n-tangy freshness.

{#11} Birdie Busch: Pattern of Saturn

Birdie Busch's third album -- her first to be self-released following two records for Bar/None -- is another fine helping of cozy, abundantly warm-spirited folk-pop. Not too much has changed for the West Philadelphia songstress this time around: she's still working with more or less the same affably rootsy band that backed up her up on Penny Arcade (a title that she coincidentally recycles for this album's opening cut), still seeking simplicity (and searching for love) while pondering the complexities of a life lived somewhere in between the tangible and the ineffable. Pattern of Saturn is a modest offering -- a mere nine songs (and two brief instrumentals) lasting a short, sweet 33 minutes -- but it's easily her best collection yet. Every one of these tunes is an absolute charmer, brimming with soul, tunefulness, and a compellingly youthful wisdom. Ranging from the spirited romantic antics of "Roll It" (a sidelong glance at a saucy suitor), the gee-whiz clip-clop of "Tenderoni," and the rollicking album standout "Bordertown" (a love song for immigrant kitchen workers, with a chorus for the ages) to more contemplative cuts like "Passwords" (a rumination on the oddly intimate aspects of Internet security) and the subdued "Lampshade" (a bluesy ballad of resignation that contains the quietly devastating line "I tried not to write this song"), the whole affair is relaxed, heartfelt, and tremendously inviting. This is truly one to cherish.

{#13} Sissy Wish: Beauties Never Die

Among the legions of Norwegian and Scandinavian pop artists, Sissy Wish (real-life alias Siri Wålberg) is not one of those whose Platonic ideal of pop is derived from Orange Juice and the Field Mice, on the one hand, nor from Madonna and Kylie Minogue on the other. If anything, she seems to take her cues more from the Beatles and Phil Spector, which, in a sense, places her in the same lineage as ABBA. It certainly aligns her with the likes of her countrymen Sondre Lerche, Marit Larsen, and Bertine Zetlitz -- all versatile artists and top-notch writers with a sharp pop sense and a distinctly modern sensibility, rooted in a clear affinity for the classic pop of the past -- though she's hardly a classicist, per se, and she may just be the most musically omnivorous of the bunch. Beauties Never Die, Wålberg's third full-length and her first to see U.S. release (a full two years after it was issued in Norway), is both more adventurous and more distinctive than its predecessor, 2005's Tuning In, trading that album's rootsy, overtly '60s-influenced rock stylings for a vibrantly eclectic musical smörgåsbord. Rather than abandoning the guitars, Wålberg and producer Jorgen Traen (who's worked with Lerche, but has also generated his share of mirthful electronic mayhem as Sir Dupermann and as one-half of the whimsical Toy) simply layer them in along with everything else: plenty of synths and electronics, but also strings, trumpets, organs, pianos, steel drums, stacked backing vocals, and an expansive array of percussion including castanets, a tap-dance solo, and a squeaky sound that might be somebody rubbing a balloon. It's an impressive and often exhilarating Wall of Sound approach, mashing together rock crunch, electro sparkle, kitchen-sink pop playfulness, and moments of unexpected beauty (with just a smidgen of punkish grit), but somehow managing never to feel overstuffed. All that instrumental pizzazz wouldn't necessarily amount to much, though, if not for the songs, which are consistently strong and intriguingly crafted: harmonically intricate, lyrically rich, melodically inventive but always memorable, particularly as delivered in Wålberg's powerful, distinctive voice (it's a hard one to place, but comparisons to Chrissie Hynde, Karen O, or Regina Spektor wouldn't be entirely invalid.) The standout is probably the lilting title track, a dreamy, girl group-flavored charmer which offers the indelible insight that "it takes a lifetime to find out someone's happy to see you every day," but other highlights abound, including the fiery electro-rock of "DWTS" (whose hook is the persistent yell "do what they say!"), the tender, curious "Music on the Radio," and the bouncy, goofily Beatles-ish closer "Book." Consistently enjoyable and wonderfully captivating, if not quite outright dazzling, Beauties Never Die is nevertheless one of those albums which leaves the impression that its creator is capable of just about anything.

{#14} Jeffrey Lewis & The Junkyard: 'Em Are I [AMG review]
{#15} The Bird and the Bee: Ray Guns Are Not Just The Future [live review]

{#16} Tiga: Ciao!
In the wryly cheeky interview video "Ciao! Means Forever," created to correspond with the release of his second artist album, the preposterously pseudo-pompous Tiga Sontag affects a perfectly deadpan disdain to describe his aversion to touching musical instruments, explaining how he's "forced to use his voice" as his only means of musical expression. The impish Montrealer is in fact credited with co-production on each of Ciao!'s tracks (and, in one case, 808 "live programming," whatever that means) which probably gives the lie to that particular bit of eccentric-artiste whimsy, but in any case he's enlisted some highly qualified operators to handle much of the menial knob-twiddling here, mostly longtime collaborators and friends who just happen to include several leading lights of 2000s electro-house: the Belgian Dewaele brothers (better known as Soulwax and/or 2 Many DJs), Finnish producer Jori Hulkkonen (aka Zyntherius), Sweden's Jesper Dahlbäck, fellow Canadian Jason "Gonzales" Beck, and James Murphy of DFA and LCD Soundsystem renown. Tiga acknowledges their contributions in the liners with his allegedly well-known "false humility," admitting that without them he'd be "just another extremely funny guy who is amazing at football" — but in all seriousness their generous and readily discernible input helps to make Ciao! one of the most assured and enjoyable electronic pop/dance albums, front to back, in recent memory. Of course, "seriousness" is hardly the point here: Tiga's lyrical and vocal approach (which is indeed quite expressive, a definite step up from his sometimes undercooked past efforts) makes sure of that, with a slew of tongue-in-cheek tracks playing on his self-obsessed, hyper-glamorous persona — "What You Need," "Sex O'Clock," "Overtime," "Luxury" ("this is my reality but for you it's just a dream") and the quasi-novelty self-duet "Shoes," which plays like the missing link between the Kelly (Liam Kyle Sullivan) YouTube sensation of the same title and the Black Leotard Front's eccentric-erotic "Casual Friday" — all with club-ready, bassline-driven funky electro grooves and squelchy acid-laced synths to match. The covers that dominated his earlier output are absent here, happily enough, though there are a few notable musical "borrowings," particularly on the album's more subdued and genuinely sensitive latter half: slow jam "Gentle Giant" (co-written with Murphy, and sung with Scissor Sisters' Jake Shears) cribs its hook (wittingly or not) from the Beta Band's "Dry the Rain," while the touching, lilting "Turn the Night On" compounds its '80s homage with a groove lifted directly from Joe Jackson's "Stepping Out," and a melody (and lyrical sentiment) that recalls Bowie's "Modern Love." But calling out Tiga's influences and sources (something that his covers have obviously done throughout his career) should in no way be seen to diminish what he, and his estimable crew of machine manipulators, have accomplished here: Ciao! is at once a tremendously enjoyable piece of dancefloor fluff and an impressively unified statement from a master synthesist of electronic pop pleasures.

{#18} Memory Tapes: Seek Magic
Former Hail Social frontman Davye Hawk traffics in a voguish synthesis of dappled electronic beats, gauzy tropical textures, and amiable indie pop melodicism (with a hint of burnished post-punk), a variegated style that he unveiled across a series of EPs and Internet tracks released under several guises in 2008 and 2009. Seek Magic, his first full-length effort as a solo concern, works as an excellent summation of that particularly elusive, endlessly summery late-decade Zeitgeist, splitting the difference between the gossamer dream pop he makes as Memory Cassette and the more up-front, dancy electro of his Weird Tapes guise (hence, presumably, the conflated moniker). By any name, Hawk emerges here as a chameleonic sound sculptor of considerable range and finesse, able to render guitar-laced pop nuggets, ambient instrumental excursions, and straight-up dance jams all with a consistent, shimmering hazy warmth, and with an engaging looseness that belies his equally conspicuous, nuanced craftsmanship. It's as though he holds at his disposal all the tools of electronica and indie rock, deploying them liberally, but judiciously, with his focus attuned not so much to style or form as to the particular qualities of the sounds themselves. Broadly speaking, the more indie rock-derived elements (which is to say, the guitars) can be found toward the front and back ends of the album -- the languorous, heavily reverbed figure that opens "Swimming Field"; the needly lines that underpin "Green Knight"; the woozy strumming that forms the core of the synth-kissed "Plain Material"; and the gnarled fuzz that eventually subsumes the blissy finale, "Run Out" -- while the midsection contains more purely electronic material: the gorgeous, rippling, faux-Asian mod-exotica of "Pink Stones" and the dancefloor-ready electro-pop of "Stop Talking" and "Graphics" (although the former does admittedly climax with an immense, intoxicating, and very guitar-heavy coda). As it plays, though, the album forms a remarkably fluid whole, stylistically as well as sonically, and what jumps out is not the songs themselves so much as the diverse array of sounds and countless individual moments that stand testament to Hawk's pervasive attention to detail. In many ways, Seek Magic calls to mind Cut Copy's spectacular In Ghost Colours, another gloriously sound-stuffed album that offered a similarly organic-feeling blend of dance, pop, rock, and haze, but while that Australian outfit's work boasts somewhat stronger songwriting and more immediately overt dance appeal, this album may well trump it in terms of atmosphere. One potential sticking point for some listeners is Hawk's voice -- not that it's bad or even particularly unpleasant (and in any case it's rarely the most prominent feature in any given track), but it is somewhat rough and reedy, and not all that well suited to this type of lushly melodious material.

{#19} Kitty Diasy and Lewis: Kitty Daisy and Lewis [CP live review]

{#20} Mungolian Jet Set: We Gave It All Away...Now We Are Taking It Back [+ bio]

What makes the Mungolian Jet Set's decadently overstuffed productions so sublimely engrossing -- whether encountered individually, as they initially appeared, in piecemeal fashion, on 12"s and compilations over the past several years, or taken as a fluid whole on this gloriously epic trawl through their remix work to date -- is not simply their bent for inspired, unmitigated lunacy, but the surprisingly artful way they manage to fold their far-reaching, campy, perversely unexpected, and downright goofy musical ideas into cogent and highly nuanced (albeit undeniably maximalist) compositional structures. Restraint might seem like a foreign concept to these guys -- you can get a decent inkling of their comedic sensibilities by scanning the track list for grandiose remix titles and nutty monikers ("Pizzy Yelliott," the "16th Rebels of Mung") -- but at least they know how to take their time. With a luxurious two hours to fill and track lengths hovering around and sometimes well beyond eight minutes, they've got plenty of it. So it's a good thing they pace themselves, always making sure to establish a sturdy groove (generally midtempo, disco-derived 4/4, with generous percussion layering) before heading off on their interstellar flights of fancy, and sometimes venturing through silky, synth-flecked space for minutes before introducing any overt oddness, frequently in the form of (nearly inevitable, but never predictable) vocals, which range from cartoonish to ethereal. There's even a stretch on the first disc which could plausibly be described as subdued, at least in relative terms, what with the dubby downtempo of "Big Smack and Flies," the darkly stirring ethno-lounge of "It Ain't Necessarily Evil," and a (somewhat failed, but still glorious) stab at minimal techno (infused with snatches of contemporary classical) on "Madre (Epics Part 2)." Of course, that's only after the tone-setting ritual incantation of mumbo-jumbo, the slow-building bewilderment of "Creepy" (the lone new, non-remix inclusion here, featuring both soothingly lush female harmonies and spooky, quivering, PiL-ish shrieking), and the utterly demented Bob Marley cover "Could You Be Loved" (notably this collection's briefest and looniest proper track, shoe-horning electro-funk, patois-pastiche hip-hop, acid house, and more into less than five minutes) -- and before the dizzying cosmic heights of their back-to-back Lindstrøm tag teams.

Disc two may open with the blissfully beachy "Ocean 0304," but it wanders soon enough into stranger, dancier territory, highlighted by the delightfully absurd "Milano Model," which melds orchestral bombast, accordion gypsy stomp, "Drop It Like It's Hot"-style vocal percussion, and a deliciously wigged-out disco-funk climax. So yes, there's zaniness aplenty to be found here, but there's uncommon beauty as well, perhaps no more so than on the two closing cuts: the relatively straightforward Shortwave Set rework "Glitches 'n Bugs," which in this context feels refreshingly unambitious, marinated in sub-tropical exotica but with the original's pleasantly pedestrian pop choruses left largely untouched, and "Moon Song," a glittery take on the like-minded space-prog outfit They Came from the Stars I Saw Them which serves as one final epic, starry-eyed but resolutely earthbound. These more song-centered offerings, while still a decent distance from conventional, come across as loose, relaxed, and (impossibly) almost normal after the unbridled sonic extravagance that's come before, making for a fitting homecoming and come-down after an exhilarating, exhaustive, and expertly paced extraterrestrial journey. "Mungolia", wherever it may be (good money says it's somewhere in the vicinity of the KLF's Muu-Muu), is a fantastically fascinating spot, a can't-miss destination for all electro/eclecto-phile thrill seekers out there -- and this sumptuous set has got everything you'll need to make the trip.

{#23} A Camp: Colonia [CP concert preview]

Nina Persson was at the forefront of the Swedish Invasion back in 1996 with the Cardigans' world-conquering (and still irresistible) "Lovefool," a crystalline pure-pop smash powered by her personable voice and slyly cynical outlook. These days she's got a different sort of conquest on her mind: Colonia, the intriguing new album from her intermittent side project A Camp, is inspired by themes of colonialism and empire, blending savage and majestic imagery and kicking off with a surreally terrifying joint coronation/decapitation. Initially a nominal solo effort, A Camp has solidified into a supergroup of sorts, with Nathan Larson of art-punkers Shudder to Think (also Persson's husband) and Niclas Frisk of Swede-rock stalwarts Atomic Swing. The sound is rootsy, warm and mellow, verging on lush, nodding to classic pop and Americana of decades gone by — but don't get too comfortable. Persson may have shed much of her blond ambition, but she hasn't lost any of that candy-coated cynicism, as Colonia's biggest hook will attest: "Don't you know love can kill anyone?"

{#24} Amadou & Mariam: Welcome to Mali [CP concert preview]

{#25} Little Boots: Hands
A good year on from catching ears and sparking potentially damaging levels of next-big-thing hype with her first single, "Stuck on Repeat" -- a sleek, buzzy, self-fulfilling prophecy of "metaphor pop" with obvious debts to Kylie Minogue and Giorgio Moroder, and a writing/production assist from Hot Chip's Joe Goddard -- Little Boots (aka U.K. popstress Victoria Hesketh) finally showed her Hands. When it arrived, her full-length debut amply justified the hype even while slightly disappointing some of her faithful. It's true that only a handful of Hands' cuts can stack up against the stunning "Stuck" in terms of sonic distinctiveness and sheer hooky inevitability, and realistically, despite some clear mainstream potential, it's unlikely to achieve the sort of massive crossover success that some may have envisioned -- certainly not in America, where the album's street date was pushed back considerably beyond its June 2009 U.K. release. Frankly, Little Boots isn't doing anything especially musically innovative -- as she well knows -- and Hands fails to add any buzz-stoking specifics or publicity hooks to her persona beyond the already established basics: her savvy pop-positive hipster cred and playfully retro videogenic appeal, neither of which give her a leg up on the more quirkily personable likes of Robyn, Lily Allen, or Lady Gaga. But that's perfectly fine, because what Hesketh and her highly pedigreed collaborators have accomplished here is nevertheless a surprisingly rare, deceptively difficult achievement: a practically flawless and entirely enjoyable album of pure electronic pop: "pure" in the sense that, apart from the tacked-on (and unlisted) solo piano title track, there are no sounds on this record other than synthesizers (including synthesized drums) and vocals. Also in that, while the synths are often distorted, filtered, and otherwise electronically muddled, Hesketh's voice is to a large extent tonally pure, and generally devoid of specific inflections, coming across not as blank or chilly so much as just slightly anonymous (in contrast to the undeniably distinctive pipes of her oft-compared compatriot, La Roux's Elly Jackson.)

Although the album, in typical 21st century pop fashion, features a plethora of producers -- including Goddard, chart champion (and Gaga accomplice) RedOne, the increasingly omnipresent Greg Kurstin (Allen, Minogue), and Bertine Zetlitz collaborator Fred Ball -- and a corresponding variety of musical moods -- the brash and buzzy strut of "New in Town," the decidedly Hot Chip-y clank'n'chug of "Meddle," the darkly glossy trip-pop of "Hearts Collide" -- they seem to have condensed on a consistent, elegantly simple synth pop vibe that sets up a sonically unified, satisfyingly streamlined listen. The directness and consistency of the album's production, vocals, and stylistic approach leave a great deal of the focus on the songs themselves, which is good, because songs are arguably Hands greatest asset: a solid batch with several standouts (mostly the singles, including the stomping, club-ready "Remedy" and the absolutely massive-sounding "New in Town," along with the indomitable "Stuck on Repeat") but no space-filling duds or truly weak links. The songs, too, have a distinct conceptual purity, marrying effortless melodic mastery to a kind of lyrical facelessness, often eschewing any kind of personal specificity for general-purpose love/relationship commentary delivered in extended metaphorical conceits about driving ("No Brakes"), broadcasting ("Tune into My Heart"), medicine ("Remedy" -- which is technically, and fittingly, about dancing, not love), and math (not only the bouncy "Mathematics," a treasure trove of senseless arithmetic and algebra jokes ("your x is equal to my y"), but also "Symmetry," a duet with Human League's Phil Oakley that takes on geometry and the general concept of opposition). As restrained and mild-mannered as she may be, Hesketh at her best manages to make even these obvious generic abstractions feel truly affecting: a neat feat she pulled off on "Stuck on Repeat," finding the spark of aching humanity inside the manifestly mechanical (both lyrically and musically), and one she repeats here on the sweetly soaring "No Brakes," a gorgeous, paradoxically calm testament to the delirious uncontrollability of love. Such is the power of great pop, a power that rests firmly within Little Boots' very capable Hands.

AMG review round-up, volume XV: sleepytronix

well, speaking of nosaj thing, that review i linked to is nearly nine months old at this point, and i have fallen way behind in my amg review rounding-up. no wonder, looks like i only did five last calendar year. my project for the month of february is to write a record-review-a-day (falling behind there too: only 15 for the first 24 days, though it's actually 27 if you count all publish-able pieces of writing – bios and cp previews – so that's not too shabby – or alternately it's only 18 days if you don't count the weekends, fewer for snow days and holidays...) but i thought as a corollary to that i could get up-to-date on these round-ups. so, here's one.

in something like ascending order of mellowness:

Nosaj Thing: bio and Drift review

California has long been a prime breeding ground for instrumental hip-hop, from DJ Shadow's pioneering work in the form through Madlib's tireless explorations and iterations, and that's never been more true than in the late 2000s, as a cresting wave of interest in the work of the late J Dilla helped to spark something of a stylistic resurgence, while a handful of Los Angeles-based producers coalesced into a recognizable local scene centered around the venue Low End Theory. That scene's first prominent breakout star was Steve Ellison, aka Flying Lotus, who earned widespread notice with his 2008 Warp debut Los Angeles, but 24-year-old Jason Chung (Nosaj Thing) followed shortly thereafter, dropping his aptly named LP, Drift, the subsequent spring. As with FlyLo's work, Nosaj pushes well beyond the customary bounds of hip-hop into glitchy IDM, ambient, and even dubstep territory, foregrounding highly abstract electronic textures more reminiscent of artists like Prefuse 73, Aphex Twin, and Burial than the beatmakers referenced above, with hip-hop's rhythmic drive never entirely absent but often reduced to a spare, skeletal framework. But despite some clear stylistic parallels, Drift is a notably more austere, measured work that feels classically restrained in comparison to the fragmentary, static-soaked clutter of Los Angeles. With a distinctive sonic palette of muted squelchy synths, wordless vocals, and largely inorganic-sounding percussion, the album is curiously playful in spite of its somber, almost funereal tone, as it floats from the airy twinkles and reverberant handclaps of the opening "Quest" to the denser, menacingly murky electro-funk of "Coat of Arms" and the sinuous "1685/Bach." The album's latter half takes on an unexpectedly spiritual cast, partially due to Nosaj's use of decidedly churchy, organ-like textures. Though brooding, minor-key tonality and middle-range tempos remain dominant nearly throughout, the brief, nearly beatless "2222" and hazily serene "Us" introduce a welcome note of warmth and reassurance, before the murmurs and heartbeats of "Voices" usher in "Lords"' climactic, doom-laden choral fantasia. It's quite a stunning sequence, and evidence of the breadth of Nosaj Thing's compositional prowess, which extends from a fine ear for minute detail to a rare sense of album-length sweep.

Hess is More: bio and Hits review

An impish musical humorist -- though by no means a novelty artist -- Mikkel Hess makes his U.S. bow with this career retrospective, drawn from his three albums and a couple of singles, whose very title, though seemingly straightforward, comes off as somewhat smirking: he may have reached number 11 in his native Denmark with the perky instrumental "Ssshhhh," but he's still hardly anyone's idea of a hitmaker. The most striking and memorable thing here is probably the occasionally anthologized "Yes Boss," a provocative curiosity that manages to be at once droll, seductive, and unsettling: over a sultry, percolating electronic groove, punctuated with torpid, dub-inflected brass outbursts, a deadpan Hess conducts an enigmatic but sordid-seeming "job interview" with vocalist Bang Chau, who responds in lush and suggestively breathy harmonies. It's a fantastic and fascinating track, equally effective as a work of conceptual comedy and an alluring piece of music. Though it takes an entirely different approach, the goofy, hooky electro-pop jingle "The Magic Invention from the Divine Business Research Center" similarly satisfies on multiple levels. Most of the collection's other vocally based inclusions fall somewhat short of these highlights, either because their humor is a bit too one-note (as on the cabaret-style waltz "In the Fridge," which grows a bit stale despite a delightfully hammy R&B turn from the incomparable Dean Bowman) or simply because the music overshadows the lyrical content. But Hess' considerable compositional and production abilities are on display throughout, from the jokey, meandering house pastiche "Would Would You Like to Disco" to the beguiling "Piano Waltz" (not actually a waltz, but rather an oddly fluid conglomeration of a haunting, lopsided piano figure with a reggae-ish bass groove, assorted percussion fragments, and other unexpected sounds). Oddly enough, the instrumental and near-instrumental selections tend to be just as humorous, and certainly just as quirky, as the tracks with lyrics, employing a skewed, lightheartedly kitschy sensibility (making prominent use of whistling, for instance) that calls to mind the work of Arling & Cameron and child-minded musical cartoonists like Plone, Komeda, isan, and Norway's Toy. That said, Hess is very much a distinct individual, and Hits offers a highly enjoyable glimpse into his idiosyncratic world.

Meanderthals: bio and Desire Lines review

Desire lines are undesignated paths created by foot-traffic erosion simply because they're where people want to go. Desire Lines walks -- strolls, ambles, struts (occasionally), and yes, meanders -- down well-trodden and welcoming musical trailways, toward no destination in particular, just for the simple pleasures of the journey. The routes are familiar and instinctually inviting, even if the signage is vague and imprecise: dub, psychedelic, downtempo, ambient, post-rock, folk, with occasional spur trails pointed toward the Tropics, or the discotheque, or into outer space. (Because Meanderthals are a triumvirate of dance producers, the road map reads "electronica," even if most of the sounds come from instruments being played in a room -- an Oslo studio to be specific -- during a handful of loosely convened live recording sessions.) The clearest, newest-looking signpost is marked "Balearic Disco," and indeed, mirrored shards of diasporic disco fallout are littered liberally along the way, though rarely are they spiky enough to spur feet into action. Mostly we glide by, basking in the sun-drenched acoustic strums and steel-pan patters of "Kunst or Ars," wallowing in the murky bass and intoxicating haze of "1-800-288-Slam," lingering amid the languid pulse and pianistic ruminations of "Bugges of Room." Fussless and fluid, loose but never lazy, Desire Lines is another fine feather in the caps of Rune Lindbaek and Idjut Boys, who now take their place alongside fellow travelers Studio, Hatchback, and Quiet Village as creators of some of the finest, hippest, and coolest chillout music of the late 2000s.

Nite Jewel: bio and Good Evening review

The home recording project of an L.A.-based multimedia artist/philosophy student who wields an eight-track cassette recorder and cites freestyle divas Lisa Lisa and Debbie Deb as among her primary influences, Nite Jewel's effectively self-released debut album holds the potential to be many things, few of them particularly promising: dryly intellectual, artily indulgent, self-consciously ironic, vapidly modish, unlistenably amateurish. Indeed, it can be a bit off-puttingly stuffy, with an occasionally discernible whiff of pretension that may incline some more critical-minded and discriminating listeners to dismiss it out of hand, and its production values are undeniably negligible, but taken on its own terms Good Evening is a good deal more singular, intriguing, and difficult to characterize than one might initially suspect. A perplexing conflation of rudimentary electronic dance-pop with wobbly lo-fi experimentalism, it lacks the energy and melodic distinctiveness to be effective as either pop or dance, but it works quite nicely as mood music, maintaining a similarly beguiling, woozy atmosphere across its ten tracks. Ramona Gonzalez's analog synthesizers and high, swooning vocals, swathed in tape hiss and bleary-eyed reverb, offer a warmth and tenderness that are largely absent from her darker, moodier cohorts in the Italians Do It Better camp, and though she may have all the right '80s signifiers in place to evoke that label's achingly stylish post-disco mode, there's something guilelessly genuine and personable about her approach, knowing as it may be. (The inimitable, idiosyncratic Arthur Russell has been tossed around as a reference point, and while she can't measure up to his uncanny appeal, it's a surprisingly relevant comparison in terms of both sonics and overall effect.) Good Evening's weakest point, aside from the non-issue of its non-danceability, is its songs: as an undifferentiated half-hour mass they're perfectly fine, but apart from the meekly melodic "Artificial Intelligence " and a wormy synth line or two on "What Did He Say," nary a hook pokes out from the haze, and not simply because Gonzalez keeps her vocals smothered and distant. So it's a welcome change of pace when the album concludes with a cover of Roxy Music's "Lover," which might qualify as the album's best track simply by dint of having a perceptible tune and structure.

Infantjoy: With review

Infantjoy's With is part appendix, part follow-up to the duo's well-praised debut, Where the Night Goes, featuring several remixes of that album's tracks (variably referred to as "revisions," "reflections," and "adjustments") and several new original pieces that were apparently inspired by these reworked versions. In any case, it's a companion piece that also stands well enough on its own, a fluid whole ably inhabiting an elegant, cinematically ambient space, with only one truly jarring disruption. The new tracks are largely effective mood pieces, taking up the first album's Erik Satie fixation in their gently musing piano lines but introducing a darker undercurrent of anxiety and urgency in their rhythms and intermittent electronic bleeps. The subtle but pervasive eeriness fits into the album's vague preoccupation with ghosts and spirits, as evidenced by Paul Morley's spoken ruminations on the supernatural in "A Haunted Space" and "Absence" and the Sarah Nixey-sung cover of Japan's "Ghosts" (reprised here in a hovering, skeletal remix by Populous). While generally in keeping with the prevailing mood, the reworkings (which are interspersed throughout the running order) tend to stand somewhat more apart from the pack, both for better -- isan's typically glistening take on "Composure," which they've liberally sprinkled with flittering shards of crystal, and Tunng's application of folksy pluckings and queerly muttered interjections to the closing "Arrival" -- and for worse -- Handshake's mix of "Someone," which sounds haunted all right, but in a violent, glitchified way (at least relative to its surroundings). It's not an unmitigated assault, but it definitely feels disconcerting and somewhat baffling in this context, and (perhaps along with the nifty but decidedly beat-driven Lodge remix "Exposure") prevents With from functioning as a fully cohesive ambient work. Program out that track and you've got a smooth, intriguing, and decidedly pleasurable journey.

Dntel: Early Works For Me If It Works For You, Something Always Goes Wrong,
Early Works For Me If It Works For You II, and This Is The Dream of Evan and Chan EP reviews

From the glitchy, careening beats and hauntingly melodic synth flutters of Early Works for Me If It Works for You's striking opener "Loneliness Is Having No One to Miss," it's clear that Jimmy Tamborello, in this early phase of his electronica career, was taking his cues from the towering British figures at the forefront of 1990s IDM: Autechre, Aphex Twin, µ-ziq, and so on. At the same time, perhaps ascribable to his Californian context or his emo bass-playing background, his tracks lack the distancing austerity and arty abrasiveness that mark much of those artists' work, instead embodying, in embryonic form, the elements that would become hallmarks of later Dntel releases: an understated melodic sweetness, hazy, dreamlike textures, and above all an undeniably human, organic warmth. These qualities tend to be somewhat overshadowed here by playfully fidgety beat programming, which doesn't necessarily play at cross-purposes so much as it forms a striking counterpoint to the underlying moodiness, with results that aren't nearly as meandering and restless as they may seem at first. A superb aural research project from a student of the abstract electronic greats, and a fine start to an enjoyably inventive career.

Susumu Yokota: Mother review [plus others here]

The 2000s were a staggeringly productive period for Susumu Yokota. Starting off the decade by releasing one of his most gorgeous and enduring works, the majestically serene Sakura, he continued issuing albums at a rate of more than one per year, the majority of them forming a loose series of kindred but conceptually distinct explorations of similarly organic, generally hushed musical territory. As the decade drew to a close, the ever-industrious producer came up with yet another way to traverse that same terrain with Mother, his fifth release on Lo. It's not too much of a shakeup from his recent ways of doing things: for one thing, much of it continues his subtle preoccupation with triple-meter time signatures; for another, like much of his late-2000s output, it's an album of collaborations with vocalists, among them his Lo/Leaf labelmates Nancy Elizabeth, Casper Clausen of Efterklang, and Claire Hope and Panos Ghikas of the Chap, as well as Japanese singer Kaori and Yokota's frequent partner Caroline Ross. But despite being perhaps his most vocal-based and song-oriented record to date, it's also perhaps his calmest, most fully ambient outing since Sakura. Some tracks feel more than others like proper fully formed songs: the loungy bossa-like opener "Love Tendrilises," the Chap's subdued but typically curious "Tree Surgeon," and Nancy Elizabeth's "A Flower White," whose reliance on a looped acoustic guitar figure makes it one of the more pedestrian things here. But even on these more vocally overt pieces, Yokota's focus on texture and utterly relaxed pacing tends to eclipse the centrality of melody or compositional structure, making for a masterful sympathetic fusion of song and ambience. And without taking anything away from the fine contributions of his collaborators, Mother's most satisfying moments are those where the vocals are most fully subsumed into Yokota's hazy, limpid sonic meanderings, becoming just one textural strand among many. The album closes with its only fully instrumental piece, a Harold Budd-like solo piano meditation that resonates marvelously in its simplicity, in the way that even a fully enjoyable evening of socializing can make a later moment of solitude feel infinitely precious.

King of Woolworths: Rediffusion review

Jon Brooks' third album as King of Woolworths finds him continuing to explore his fascinations with vintage film soundtracks and library music, analog synths, and 1960s lounge exotica. The lovingly crafted and unfailingly pleasant results are reminiscent of similarly inspired acts like Air and Stereolab, and of fellow downtempo electronica artists like Lemon Jelly and Boards of Canada. That may make Brooks seem like an imitator of already derivative artists, but he clearly has a flair for the material and his own remarkably authentic approach to it, as well as a knack for sweet if forgettable melodies. Although whooshes and burbles and all manner of grainy synth textures abound, he tends to downplay any electronic elements that sound more recent than the mid-'70s. Only a few tracks ("Big Sur" and the mildly menacing "Yellow World") have beats big enough to overtly reference dance-based electronic forms (most notably trip-hop), while much of the album, starting with the lovely two-part clarinet-led opener "Coccolo," is almost wholly organic in feel, if not in substance, hitting many of the primary reference points (vibraphones, harpsichords, wordless vocals, lush string orchestration, Latin percussion) of his target styles without seeming especially corny or gimmicky. In all, an enjoyably chilled-out and cohesive effort. "The Loner" is a cover of the theme to the 1970s British TV series Budgie.

various artists: Teaism review

A compilation album celebrating the "art and culture" of tea? Leave it to the quaint, whimsical Brits at Static Caravan records to come up with such a quaint, whimsical, British idea. And why not, indeed? The collection opens, fittingly, with the click of a stove burner and the wail of a tea kettle, accompanied by Max de Wardener's meditative autoharp. Beyond that, most of these tracks have relatively little overt, audible connection to the subject at hand -- somewhat disappointing, but not overly surprising since this is a primarily instrumental affair. However, as several of the song titles suggest, many of the artists involved claim to have prepared their contributions while sipping a particular tea, or to have attempted evoking the feeling of drinking a certain variety. The result, especially in the album's first half, is a whole lot of calm, soothing, slow-moving pastoral electronica, from the grayscale drones and flutters of the Break-Ups' "Assam" to project coordinator Inch-Time's chiming, ISAN-esque "Snow Jewel" and AM/PM's expansive, vaguely Asian-tinged "Shennong," named for a Chinese emperor. The always-intriguing Tunng shake things up with the album's first proper song, a cut-and-paste shanty about the Boston Tea Party, complete with a computer voice reciting the names of the participants, entitled "Shove It." Also of especial interest are the sax-and-trombone-led microtonal jazz of Root70's "Immaculate Conception" and the peppy, playful glitch-IDM of Qua's "Lapsang Souchong (Iced Tea Mix)," whilst "Dollboy" sing restfully of the proper way to brew and Cibelle and Josh Weller reimagine Earl and Lady Grey as a disillusioned, fortune-seeking couple in their jaunty, folky closing duet. Nothing here is terribly riveting or dynamic, but it does make for an exceedingly pleasant, relaxing listen -- a perfect accompaniment, no doubt, to drinking a nice warm cup of tea -- as well as an appealing way to explore a loosely connected group of mostly British and Australian artists (only a handful of whom have previously recorded for Static Caravan) who are engaged in gently exploring the intersection of folk, electronic, and avant-garde composition. A nice bonus are the droll line drawings by Roy Ananda, which notes the similarity of a teaspoon to a catapult and a tea bag to a yoyo, and imagines a teapot as the hybrid of a watering can and a piggy bank.

Yuichiro Fujimoto: Komorebi review

Yuichiro Fujimoto's debut album is a quiet marvel, an intriguing, peculiar, and ultimately delightful work of minimalist construction. These home-recorded pieces, most of them two to three minutes in length, feel more like tentative exploratory sketches than compositions per se. Suffused with a simplicity and ephemerality that recall the elegant spirit of Japanese ink-brush painting, they find an equally resonant visual counterpart in Fujimoto's own crude, childlike drawings and curiously arbitrary, hazily graceful photographs that adorn the booklet. Pieces typically consist of one or sometimes two instruments (piano, acoustic guitar, thumb piano, toy piano, glockenspiel) played in an improvisatory and sometimes strikingly rudimentary (but generally consonant) fashion, occasionally with a slight amount of electronic sound processing, and sometimes accompanied by a backdrop of found sound (children's voices, birdsong, ambient rustling). The audible evidence of the recording process seems to be as significant and at least as deliberate as the strictly musical content, ranging from the relative cleanliness of the bell-and-shaker duet "See Water" (the only piece with any real discernible structure, in the form of a gradual accretion of sonic density and digital delay) to a slight, soothing analog hiss beneath the spare guitar meditation of "Slow Boat" to the heavy, churning tape hum and almost painfully distorted piano meanderings of "Kujira." While Komorebi is, on the whole, a calming and delicate album comparable to the gentle likes of Fujimoto's countrymen Motohiro Nakashima and Lullatone (all of whom share a penchant for bell-like tones), its primary motivating concern seems to be not tranquility in itself but rather a patient, deliberate attunement to momentary experience and the detritus of the everyday, with results that can be contemplative, innocent, whimsical, unsettling, or simply indeterminate.

Johan Agebjörn: bio and Mossebo review

The material on Johan Agebjörn's debut album, much of which predates his work with Sally Shapiro, is a good distance from the melodic dance-pop of that project, which was overtly influenced by early-'80s Italo-disco -- although Shapiro's instrumental album closer "Sleep in My Arms" suggested something of what was in store. In a sense this is another sort of throwback, to the even earlier ambient explorations of Brian Eno and Tangerine Dream, but this kind of music arguably has little use for concepts like progress and timeliness, and Mossebo's lush, limpid soundscapes are equally redolent of contemporary artists like Susumu Yokota. Agebjörn himself cites the celebrated early-'90s work of Autechre, Aphex Twin, and Future Sound of London, as well as his fellow Swede Krister Linder (Yeti) and the Norwegian Biosphere, as primary influences, which gives a good idea of what to expect here, though Mossebo definitely rests on the more placid and soothing end of things. As suggested by song titles like "The Sound of Snowflakes Touching the Ground" and "Putting More Wood in the Fire," there is something palpably Scandinavian and wintry about the album's tone, less due to icy twinkling synths (as in his work with Shapiro) than a gentle, glacial sweep that suggests the quiet grandeur of the Northern lights. Sonically, there's an even blend between electronic sounds (hazy synthesizer washes, gently pulsing clicks and hums) and organic ones (most notably Lisa Barra's entrancing wordless vocalizing, but also occasional pianos and field-recorded sound effects.) A handful of the pieces are entirely beatless, while only the vaguely electro "Ambient Computer Dance" has anything approaching a danceable groove. Mossebo functions well as a fluid but slightly varied whole, although the two-part "Siberian Train" offers something of a respite from the unmitigated new age serenity -- the first half, which Agebjörn record in 1996, has a darker, foreboding cast that sets it apart from the rest of the album. It's accomplished, if not entirely distinctive mood music, and well worth experiencing, though clearly a different animal from the Agebjörn of Disco Romance.

Eluvium: Similes review

For an artist whose primary emotional touchstones are stillness and serenity, Matthew Cooper refuses to stay in one place for very long. Starting from the leap between the hazy textural washes of his first album and the unvarnished solo piano meditations of his second, the ambient composer/producer has taken a departure, slight or striking, with each new release, seemingly making an exercise of finding continually new and different sonic and compositional approaches to similar spiritual terrain. Similes, Cooper's fifth full-length as Eluvium, and first since 2007's sumptuous, symphonic Copia (discounting the like-minded, limited-release “solo album” he issued under his birth name in 2008), is no exception, as his first foray into working with two elements whose heretofore conspicuous absence has largely defined his output: percussion and vocals. If the arrival of that news prompted any consternation among the Eluvium faithful, the results ought to lay any fears to rest: Cooper's unerring instincts have always been among his greatest assets (along with the genuineness and utter conviction that mark everything he’s done), and he’s hardly made his first false move here. Neither, by any means, has he made a beat-driven pop record. The “percussion” takes the form of soft, gentle clicks and pops (and a few distant, barely-there thuds) which turn up on half of these tracks and bear, for the most part, only a casual resemblance to anything that might be called a “beat” (the primary exception being “The Motion Makes Me Last,” whose soft but insistently galloping pulse does indeed create a stirring, quietly exuberant sense of motion beneath the prevailing calm.) The vocals, though nearly as unobtrusive (and relatively sparse), are a striking, almost magical development – long-time listeners may find the emergence of Cooper’s voice after so many years of silence to be particularly affecting and even revelatory, even though it’s as understated an instrument as we might have expected all along: he sings in a sober, pensive near-monotone, with slight Ian Curtis echoes tempered by the baritone richness and introspective, bruised-heart resonance of Lou Barlow and Bill Callahan. Cooper’s cerebral, abstractly insightful way with language has long been evident in his well-turned if rather fussy song and album titles; those qualities are certainly present in his lyrics as well, but hearing him intone his own words renders them somehow less ponderous, more yearning and introspective, as well as gently, wittily self-aware, especially since many of the lyrics here feel like glosses (similes, perhaps?) for the ineffable, absorbingly ruminative experience of listening to Eluvium’s music (“overanalyzing how the leaves eclipse the light/constantly find meaning and naivete inside”) and the perhaps not dissimilar sensation of creating it (“I'm a vessel between two places I've never been.”) And that experience has never been more absorbing, ineffable, or rewarding than it is here. Despite its innovations, Similes is entirely grounded in the ambient compositional techniques that Cooper has spent his career mastering – not just on the three shorter instrumental cuts but also the vocal pieces, which even at their “poppiest” (the stately, baroque “Weird Creatures”) feel more like laconic meditations than proper songs. Copia’s lush, variegated organic textures, Accidental Memory’s tenderly tinkling pianos (albeit more heavily processed and ring-modulated than ever before), and even the softly whirring guitars of Lambent Material all turn up here, but the closest reference point is invitingly warm, expansively droning Talk Amongst The Trees (whose title is referenced in one of this album’s first lyrics) which up until now was arguably Cooper’s zenith. With Similes, he’s made his most touching, certainly his most engaging work yet, and against the odds, somehow the most quintessentially Eluvium release to date.

signs of livestock: feb '10

my show-going's been slow-going for a minute – been doing a fair amount of preview coverage for cp, but, until last week, hadn't really managed to see much live music at all this year.

[though that's discounting the obvious live musical highlight of the year so far, the 69 love songs cover party (that link leads to PW, the sworn enemy, but there are some pretty nice pix there - check the skeptical stair-sitters in #16) masterminded by sam and adam, which was a righteous blast. i got to sing three of my faves too: "i think i need a new heart," "long-forgotten fairy tale," and "busby berkeley dreams," plus impromptu group vox on "i'm sorry i love you." it only took us around four hours to get through, by my count, 57 out of the 69 – no "two kinds of people," alas – pretty damn freaking awesome.]

otherwise, i was foiled in attempts to see nneka and tape because of the snow (the former i just couldn't convince myself or anyone else to brave the blizz for; the latter was canceled but i didn't realize that until i'd trudged all the way there, listening to the utterly lovely new eluvium flutter all over me with the flakes), and to see la roux (about whom i wrote a "one track mind" that didn't even make it to the web, or not yet at least) due to crazy incomprehensible booking/cancellation/rebooking shenanigans (ok, technically i could have gone to see her/them/whatevs at the roxxy nightclub "shred your ex" party on valentine's friday, but $20 cover + 1:00am set time + dubious delaware ave setting are a pretty rough sell, even for me.) and i missed pink skull and memory tapes too, though i particularly enjoyed blurbing the latter.

ok, but: did see the shy, pseudonymous swedish mope sisters (kinda like the musical moron twins), taken by trees and el perro del mar (not actual sisters, but sisters from another mister), on a valen'sdate. not sure why it took me so long to realize (and it wasn't necessarily extra great shakes live), but that taken album (east of eden – should have taken a hint from it being named after my quasi-favorite book) is really pretty lovely stuff, and quite upfront and accessible too (as opposed to the somewhat floaty and indistinct love is not pop, which i do also like quite a bit, but is difficult to even grasp onto enough to really love.) sarah a. is, however, a more interesting presence than victoria b. she's kinda weird in fact. looks like this:

better: saw british retro-pop goofball v.v. brown, who has been making significant inroads on my heart, at the somewhat unpromising (but potentially up-and-coming as a half-decent west-of-the-schuylkil venue? hm...) marbar.

she didn't have a parasol, or lighting that was at all decent; she was wearing what she describes as "geisha hat" that hid her hair and to some extent her face, and lit from below by a frantic color-flashing light (once they rigged it up, about halfway into the set) that did cool and disorienting things to her plaid pants. this felt like a very silly show – there were only maybe twenty people in the crowd, for one thing – but she was loving it, bubbly, alternately endearing for her giddy showmanship and her enthusiastically genuine personability – anyway completely lovable. she seemed just tickled to be here, her first time in philly, asked us what she should do (i wish i knew how to answer that question... somebody shouted out "standard tap" and then explained that they had "pub food," which made her just light up, and ask if she could get a good cup of english tea anywhere) and seemed almost as surprised that we didn't respond with unbridled enthusiasm when she asked about drake (before turning in a kick-ass cover of "best i ever had" – "i thought you loved hip-hop in philadelphia!?") as she was that we had come there to see her and actually knew her songs (she was going to skip "crying blood," but made the mistake of mentioning it and then the crowd wouldn't let her not do it – complete with a reggae "remix" recap.) she opened with my current fave "everybody" (sung thru a megaphone) and closed with "shark in the water," what an undeniable feel-good hit, don't know how i was so tentative about it at first...

and, last night, i faced the rains and trains to see nosaj thing and daedelus (and jogger too, but i only ended up catching the last two numbers of their unwieldy drill'n'bass/screamo/psych/folk/glitch-pop/whatever weirdness....guess i'll puzzle that out later.) it was the "magical properties tour (check out this v. awesome poster), a celebration of daedelus' new label, which doesn't seem to be very well organized as far as having any sort of web presence, or any actual releases, current or future, apart from the jogger debut and even that only barely seems to exist (if it makes it into the amg database, it'll only be thanks to my persistent nagging), but good on them putting the tour together, good idea, good work.

nosaj (whose name seems to be pronounced somewhat differently by his various friends/tourmates) was unbelievably sick. and slick. he played mostly his own music, including the bulk of drift, but with copious amounts of live tweaking and twiddling, amping it up with a brilliant sense of dancefloor pacing, and moving fluidly and almost imperceptibly from one track to the next, occasionally slipping in some other nuggets by the likes of busta rhymes, portishead ("wandering star"), wu tang, flying lotus (i think?), and what must have been zapp (or possibly dâm-funk...need to get my ears on that.) all pretty excellent to move to (better if i hadn't been clutching my coat under my arm) but the best part might have been just watching young mr. thing, aka jason chung (who was wearing a similar if not the same plaid button-down as in this picture, and snazzy-looking watch), as he tended to his knobs and sampler pads with a nonchalant precision, making understated but palpably pleasurable effect-twisting wrist-flicks with off-hand grace. sweet sweet.

alfred daedelus darlington weisberg-roberts was up next and last. strange sort of feeling to be seeing him in the flesh, this funny little fellow who's done so much to charm me over the past decade, through his distinctly unique presentation (visual and verbal as well as musical) as much as anything – with his records too, for sure (invention and, particularly, of snowdonia), though somewhat troublingly less so starting around 2006's denies the days demise. i can't quite put my finger on what's changed in my appreciation for his music (even as my amg compatriots continue to rave over it) – sure, his style has developed in some identifiable ways, but i'm not quite sure why it doesn't do it for me as much now.

it is nice that he seems to have more friends to play with now. for a long time it felt like he seemed sort of off in his own world; occasionally setting-up slightly incongruous rendezvous with the cali undie rap world, anticon and ilk (q.v. the weather), but mostly content (and at his best) as a lone operator. but these days he's (apparently) something of a linchpin of a bona-fide scene, even an elder-statesmen of sorts, perhaps, and now with his own label to boot. (again, apparently.) well. his introductory statement to the crowd, made some flusteredly, was rather touching: "i just want to let you know, if you don't already, that everybody who's up here really means it...terribly so."

he announced that he'd play "some fun stuff and then some dirty stuff and then back to fun stuff." "what's the difference" someone shouted, and he smiled meek assent, but in fact i couldn't really figure out what he meant, as his set felt relatively consistent in tone throughout, building fairly quickly to a level of activity that, while fun for a while and intermittently, mostly felt closer to dirty – in the messy sense, and not the fun one. he was using the monome...his monome – actually, two of them, one smaller one (which he only picked up occasionally and rotated around to make the LEDs all slide to one side and the sound go all squelchy) and the big 256-button one, which he had angled toward us (like in the picture, though he wasn't quite so snazzily dressed last night.) it was certainly mesmerizing to watch him dance his fingers around the grid, and try to figure out all the sequences he was setting in motion.

frankly, though, the music coming out of the speakers just got to be too much to handle. it felt sort of like an especially unhinged girl talk set, except that only a small fraction of the samples were recognizable. stylistically it was all over the place, though heavily electronic, but ranging from dubstep to disco to hip-hop to synth-cheese to doo-wop to soul. i'm pretty sure there was a beirut song in there, one of the few instances of the polyrhythmic juxtapositions (a 6/8 strum pattern against the steady 4/4) that make some of his early productions so tantalizing. i only recognized a handful of his own tracks (i haven't spent all that much time with his latest, love to make music to, but i would have expected to know more from that if nothing else), though he did drop in one of my very favorites, "something bells," butting it up against some early stevie wonder (was it "uptight"? can't remember now), but it left before the real climax.

eh, it was at least interesting, for a while, and maybe it would have been more fun if i'd been dancing more (though, i did try and couldn't really get into it), but on the whole it felt like the (admittedly very cool) technical aspects of using the monome as a performance tool were getting in the way of the musicality that's been so pivotal in his past work. oh well...

it's blizz!

playlist for a snowday. snowlist for a playday. it snew many
many inches yesterday, and west philly was blanketed (28.5?)
and transformed into a fairyplaygroundland, snow day play for
everybody, yay! i left home at 11 for yoga and ended up out and
about all day long, which was the best the best, but it would have
been lovely to be at home and listen to some snowy sounds too...
this is some of the music that was snowing in my head all day:

sally shapiro, disco romance, cuz, 'course, just look at it.
mmmm snowy eyelash stars. i did however listen to the
very excellent permanent vacation selected label works
volume 1, or at least disc one, which has two s.s. remixes.

pantha du prince, black noise. just reviewed this for amg.
not quite as magical as this bliss, perhaps, but still super
lovely and wintry, even tho the cover looks autumnal. hm.

lemon jelly, '64-'95. not sure why, maybe because i always
think the song "the slow train" sounds like "the snow day"

the roots, phrenology, but mostly "sacrifice," which i think
i heard in my head coming out of the guitars of a different
lemon jelly song. also, i haven't listened to it in a long time.

i was reading the resident advisor best-of-decade jawns,
which has me v. excited about electronica at the moment
(& will probably make me buy some soon) but especially
their top 50 mixes list, which i was pleasantly surprised
to see this included on, and even more surprised to see
the dixon body language mix at #5, so i listened to that
the other day. nice to remember how good dj mixes are...

i was walking down the snowy street and got "hoe-down"
horns in my head. bip-bop (bip-bop)! bip-bop (bip-bop)!

because when do i not want to listen to walking wounded?
especially "before today." oh my god. sweet god of music.
i bet if i were going to do a revised favorite-'90s-albums list
(don't tempt me) this would rank shockingly high. oh my.

cuz you want some gentle warm cuddly quiet guitar sounds
too. i was bored by this one at first but have been listening
again and it is pretty sweet after all, at least in the middle
ground. maybe see them play a secret set next week? in the
evening we didn't hear this but we did sing and then listen
to a bunch of simon and garfunkel, which is kinda similar.

four tet, just generally. i think "hands," maybe, in partic?
(but i forgot it got so beaty.) this is the new one, which at
first didn't quite grab me, but i had in my ears while i was
walking thru the snowstreets, just past dusk, two beers in
me, and those angel voices chiming chiming chiming that
"there's love in you" just made me melt melt melt.
oh kieran...

also, not to forget:

ye olde wintry mix... not that it was in my head per se,
but certainly would have been the day for it... also, this
mix which i haven't thought about in ages (and i guess
you can't actually listen to it there anymore, but now it's
reuploaded here, so check it out y'all: wintry jangles from
the '60s and the faux-'60s, got me psyched for a sock hop.
sometime? soontime? springtime?