Richard Wagner’s Radical Aesthetic
Why are so many Wagner lovers indifferent to all operas but his? Why is there a corps of Wagner groupies that shows up in whatever part of the globe his four-opera epic Der Ring des Nibelungen is performed? Why, in this impatient Twitter-addled time, do thousands submit to slow-moving music dramas that last longer than a New York-to-London flight? Why, 200 years after he was born (on May 22, 1813), does Richard Wagner remain so deeply alive? A narcissistic genius with a nasty streak of anti-Semitism, he still inspires reverence and fury, still gets attacked and defended, and his influence as a musician and showbiz guru remains powerful, even for people who know almost nothing about him. Why?
Wagner’s vision of what art could be was so all-encompassing and radical that we are still digesting his influence. We have the auteur movie; he created the Gesamtkunstwerk, the integrated fusion of theater, music, poetry, art and light, all brought into being by a single imagination — his own. He draped music over serialized drama, so deliberate in its pace that characters could afford to brood and rant, even as the plot ground to a halt; we have Mad Men. There is no contemporary theme — infidelity, ambition, ruthlessness, idealism, betrayal, regret, vindictiveness, loyalty — that he could not pack into a few bars of harmony or a catchy leitmotif.
For all Wagner’s multimedia ambitions, it’s his music that supports the whole apparatus. Directors have jettisoned the big-beard-and-breastplate aesthetic of his original stagings. The alliterative thump of his librettos can cause literary inflammation. The scores, though, have remained sturdy enough to carry whole new worlds of theater: bare-stage productions with singers costumed in dowdy brown, high-tech extravaganzas with 3-D video projected on moving sets, surrealistic dreams with long-taloned gods. Whatever else is happening on stage, those impossibly high-powered voices keep cutting like spotlights through narcotic mists of orchestration. The music is so vivid you hardly need to see anything at all, which is why the purest form of experiencing a Wagner opera might be in total darkness.
Enough voltage surges through those quivering chords to power 200 years’ worth of the avant-garde. A century ago, the harmonic daring in Tristan und Isolde spurred Debussy and Schoenberg to imagine a world without major or minor keys. Film composers who sketch characters in melody (Luke Skywalker’s horn call, or Darth Vader’s ominous march, for example) are recycling Wagner’s technique of leitmotif. The vast expanses and slow churn of his music prefigured the even more leisurely pace of minimalism. So did his insistence on repetitive rhythmic units: Steve Reich quotes the hammering motif from Das Rheingold in the “Hindenburg” movement of his own three-act multimedia opera, Three Tales.
Wagner’s can be at once turbulent and slow. Choirs of horns surf on gusts of fast-moving strings, yet he lingers on each scene. Two characters — Siegfried and his adoptive father Mime, for example — keep trading heated phrases for long enough that the sense of symbolism burns off, and what remains is a pair of deeply human figures, bickering, loving, detesting, challenging. Like a documentary filmmaker interviewing a guarded subject, Wagner uses patience as a weapon, letting the characters’ bravado and weakness emerge note by note. His stateliness is merely the pace of human drama. That’s why it hardly matters whether an opera is about panicky gods and hubristic mortals (as in The Ring), about obsessive lovers (Tristan und Isolde), or about competitors in a local singing contest (Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg). Gods, monsters, kings, churls — all get a chance to grumble and bloom.
But it would be wrong to say that Wagner remains modern because deep down his world is so familiar: It’s not. Even as he scattered his influence, seeding aesthetic movements he might well have despised (he did a lot of despising), he also produced a body of work that remains radical, inimitable, unique. The abiding strangeness of his work is its most magnetic aspect. Tristan und Isolde is not just a love story, but a musical ritual, too, liturgy for a religion of desire. What could be more irresistibly weird in our culture of instant gratification than that protracted shudder of anticipation? It’s not the final release that matters, but the hours of aching postponement.
JC Brooks and the Uptown Sound, Howl
Post-punk soul rockers get heavy
For their third record, and their first for Bloodshot Records, the self-described “post-punk soul rockers” JC Brooks and the Uptown Sound get heavy. Much darker thematically than 2011′s rousing Want More, the fittingly titled Howl shows frontman Jayson “JC” Brooks at his most emotionally vulnerable yet, with lyrics detailing the slow progression of broken relationships — from heartbreak to longing to acceptance.
Musically, Howl sounds like a calculated homage to ’70s funk and soul acts. “River” hearkens back to Al Green-style gospel and R&B and closer “These Things” showcases Brooks’s commanding vocal range and dynamics — switching from counter rhythms to falsettos with interjecting grunts in one fierce ballad.
At their weakest, JC Brooks and the Uptown Sound seem like they’re forcing their influences somewhat: The jittery “Before You Die,” which veers closer toward ’70s disco-pop, doesn’t fit musically or lyrically alongside the rest of the more soulful tracks. However, the band’s crackling vitality, as vivid here as in their celebrated live shows, remains consistent through the album. The result is an affecting record, both heartbreaking and invigorating.
Emerson String Quartet, Journeys
Using dramatic harmonic restlessness to vividly portray unrest
It’s surprising that the Emersons haven’t previously recorded any Schoenberg, considering the ensemble has never shied away from 20th century repertoire, and even moreso that their first choice is not a string quartet, but his 1899 string sextet, Verklärte Nacht (Transfigured Night), Op. 4.
It’s paired, in apt — and not quite unprecedented — programming, with Tchaikovsky’s 1890 (revised 1891-92) String Sextet in D minor, Op. 70, Souvenir de Florence. The album title attempts to conceptually link the two works; the Tchaikovsky is a journey because the main theme of the slow movement came during a visit to Florence, while the Schoenberg is a psychological journey.
But what really links the works is inner turmoil. While the Tchaikovsky is prototypically Romantic and the Schoenberg verges on Post-Romanticism, both use dramatic harmonic restlessness to vividly portray unrest. The players (violinist Paul Neubauer and cellist Colin Carr augment the quartet on both works) emphasize this while giving the Schoenberg enough richness of tone to remind us of the composer’s continuing debt to Romanticism’s sound and gestures — even as he began to overthrow its harmonic language. There are, separately, better performances of each, but this combination amplifies the virtues heard here.
Six Degrees of Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories
It used to be easier to pretend that an album was its own perfectly self-contained artifact. The great records certainly feel that way. But albums are more permeable than solid, their motivations, executions and inspirations informed by, and often stolen from, their peers and forbearers. It all sounds awfully formal, but it's not. It's the very nature of music — of art, even. The Six Degrees features examine the relationships between classic records and five other albums we've deemed related in some way. In some cases these connections are obvious, in others they are tenuous. But, most important to you, all of the records are highly, highly recommended.
From the very start, Daft Punk have made music that reflected their influences. At first the results were, as the French duo's name suggests, disarmingly crude: Their 1997 debut Homework track "Teachers" is little more than an extended shout-out to three dozen underground house DJs (plus, tellingly, Brian Wilson, George Clinton and Dr. Dre) over an unchanging beat. From this funky techno minimalism, Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo have swung in... the opposite direction, arriving with Random Access Memories in full disco-prog opulence. Daft Punk are still paying tribute to their heroes, but they do so not with samples, but with astoundingly elaborate pastiches of some of the most exquisitely played, arranged, produced, and engineered records of the '70s and '80s.
Anyone with a basic knowledge of classic rock and pop can spot at least some of them — Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon and The Wall, Michael Jackson's Off the Wall and Thriller, and the smoothest moments of Fleetwood Mac, Toto and the Doobie Brothers. It's as if that Supertramp-esque bit in Discovery's "Digital Love" was expanded into an entire album of like-minded licks. RAM features an appropriately over-the-top cast of guest singers, players, producers and songwriters, including not just current R&B and indie kingpins like Pharrell and Panda Bear, but also a few key behind-the-scenes OGs. It's those old-school icons of disco, jazz-funk, prog-rock, and soft pop we celebrate in this Six Degrees of RAM's exactingly specific recollections.
Chic's Nile Rodgers recently triumphed over cancer, and the fruits of his victory — RAM's "Give Life Back to Music," "Lose Yourself to Dance" and "Get Lucky" — are three of the most profoundly glad-to-be-alive songs you'll hear all year. If there were any justice, he'd be universally hailed among the greatest rhythm guitarists of all time: His syncopations are as tricky as danceable riffs get, but he also lays down equally... complex jazz chords, streamlines them through his funk strum, and then flips them harmonically so that there's constant movement and variation. It would take a boatload of music theory to explain how he does it, but the very fact that absolutely no one plays exactly like him serves testimony to how deep this guy gets. Chic's particular sort of disco grabs upon impact but also gradually reveals infinite layers of pleasure. Rodgers and his primary Chic cohorts — bassist Bernard Edwards and drummer Tony Thomas — spread their songwriting, arranging, producing and instrumental dexterity through subsequent smashes with Diana Ross ("Upside Down"), David Bowie ("Let's Dance"), Madonna ("Like a Virgin"), and many others, but their 1978 album remains the greatest introduction to their simultaneously lofty and populist genius. It's got Chic's biggest, boldest hit ("Le Freak"); the follow-up, their most velvety declaration of desire ("I Want Your Love"); and a ballad so heartbreakingly beautiful even experimental rocker Robert Wyatt covered it ("At Last I Am Free").
more »Romantic longing is the core of what it means to be human — that's Random Access Memories' implicit theme. So to sing of longing while making the voice deliberately robotic is deeply uncanny. Decades before T-Pain, Herbie Hancock mastered this effect on disco jams many of his old jazz fans found deeply distasteful. There's little doubt that Daft Punk dug 'em, though: They've been alluding to Hancock's vocoder work since their earliest... records, and with RAM's "The Game of Love," they absolutely nail the tone and phrasing the keyboardist employed on his 1978 UK hit "I Thought It Was You" while aping bits of its melody. The Hits! collects most of Hancock's dancefloor excursions: Bookended by his mainstream smashes "Chameleon" from '73 and "Rockit" from '83, it showcases the sonic clarity and jazz-funk chops that RAM pays tribute to with every fastidious groove.
more »Like Random Access Memories, I Remember Yesterday looked backward in order to move forward. Much like Daft Punk, Donna Summer and her producer Giorgio Moroder represented the commercial end of dance music's avant-garde. In 1975, this Boston-born singer and her Italian collaborator pioneered from their shared Munich base what was soon known as Eurodisco, an artier, more extreme version of the largely American sound that drew from the LP side-long suites of... progressive rock as well as the string-intensive romance of Philly soul. Their fifth album's A-Side maintained the suite-ness while broadening Summer's stylistic range to encompass big-band swing (the title track), Brill-Building girl-group sounds ("Love's Unkind"), and classic Motown ("Back in Love Again"). Side B took on Blaxploitation funk ("Black Lady"), Summer's own super-sensual disco ("Take Me"), and contemporary R&B balladry ("Can't We Just Sit Down (And Talk It Over)"). As he explains in his RAM monologue "Giorgio by Moroder," these songs were designed to represent the past and present, and the album's final track was designated to suggest the future. So, Moroder turned to, as he says on RAM, his Moog "zinthezizer," synched it to a click track, and with British co-writer/producer Pete Bellotte and Summer herself wrote "I Feel Love," the most influential track in contemporary dance music history. Moroder rightly gets plenty of credit for this milestone, but it's Summer's nearly peerless versatility that inspired and enabled "I Feel Love." She sings as if coital connection with Moroder's machinery was a deeply spiritual act. As decades of dancers will tell you, she absolutely made it so.
more »Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon proved so hot that even its engineer landed a recording contract. Fronting this collaboration with singer-songwriter Eric Woolfson, a fluctuating cast of vocalists, and musicians cribbed from previous productions for Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel, Pilot and other art-poppers, Alan Parsons filled his records with lush filigree sometimes at ends with Woolfson's typically concept-bound lyrics. Here, though, most everything is as smooth as the almond... oil in a well-trained masseur's palms. Although the Project's 1977's I Robot undoubtedly also appeals to the android pair, the gentle chug of this 1982 album's hit title track gets more direct appropriation in RAM's "Instant Crush." Both it and the cosmic disco instrumental "Mammagamma" got deserved turntable time from adventurous club DJs in the early morning hours when tempos decelerate and vibes mellow.
more »L.A.'s laid-back perfectionism exerts a profound influence on RAM, and none of its practitioners got more Hollywood than Paul Williams, a diminutive child actor-turned-songwriter-turned-talk-show-celebrity who became absolutely omnipresent on '70s TV. Recorded just before his hits for Three Dog Night ("Out in the Country," "Just an Old Fashioned Love Song," "The Family of Man"), the Carpenters ("We've Only Just Begun," "Rainy Days and Mondays," "I Won't Last a Day Without You") and... other paragons of early '70s AM radio turned him into a superstar, Williams's 1970 album is a shining example of sunshine pop. Producer and co-writer Roger Nichols surrounds the singer with effusive arrangements and top-drawer session players: If you love Carol Kaye's swooping, virtuoso bass lines on Pet Sounds, a major treat awaits you here. Williams's snarky sense of humor is obvious in his greatest film roles (stop what you're doing right now and put The Loved One and Phantom of the Paradise — the film in which he inspired Daft Punk to don masks — at the top of your Netflix queue), but the singer largely compartmentalized it away from his songs once he became an easy listening icon. It's here though: Check how he deadpans, "I just haven't got what it takes to put up with you."
more »Eyes Without a Face: Our Favorite Anonymous Musicians
In a year when three of the most talked-about releases were made by musicians who are notoriously camera shy, it stands to reason that the easiest path to overexposure is stubborn anonymity. Electronic legends Daft Punk, avant-pop duo the Knife and newcomer metal band Ghost B.C. all have anticipated releases to promote, yet all of them refuse to appear unmasked in public. They each have their reasons — be it shyness, myth-making or deliberate detachment from celebrity-obsessed culture — and around them debate rages over whether the whole maneuver is a cleverly-conceived art piece or just a cheap gimmick. But the truth is that these three are just the latest in a long line of masked and anonymous hitmakers who found great success by staying hidden.
Real names: Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo, Thomas Bangalter
Backstory:: Even though, in retrospect, the futuristic android aesthetic seems inseparable from the Daft Punk identity, it was actually only upon the release of the duo's second album, Discovery, that they became "the Robots." Before that, Homem-Christo and Bangalter wore a variety of analog masks because, as they told reporters, they were shy.
Success level:: The Parisian electro-funksters have achieved the impossible, maintaining relevance so adroitly throughout... their 20-year career that everyone from Kanye to Disney to Saint Lauren wants to be associated with them.
Real names: The frontman identifies as Papa Emeritus II, and his backing band is simply known as a Group of Nameless Ghouls.
Backstory:: Not much is known about the origin of the Swedish metal band, aside from the fact that Emeritus's supporting quintet represents the five elements: water, fire, wind, earth and ether. One Nameless Ghoul, however, admitted during an interview that the decision to maintain anonymity was simply inspired by the desire... to live day-to-day as regular people, and not as "rock stars."
Success level:: So far, no one knows who the Ghouls are or what they look like, but after some Internet sleuthing, Ghost B.C.'s frontman has been identified as Tobias Forge, a Swedish musician who's played in the bands Subvision and Repugnant. On stage, Forge transforms into Papa Emeritus — which is really all that matters.
Real names: Sister and brother Karin Dreijer Andersson and Olof Dreijer
Backstory:: According to the duo's official bio, "We feel like that if we had been there with our plain faces that would destroy the illusion of music. So we tried to dress up as the music. Occult and dark but at the same time, funny." While the Knife was known for wearing black Venetian carnival masks with long bird beaks, recently they... asked young children to represent them in photo shoots wearing masks the duo produced based on portraits of themselves from 2003.
Success level:: The Knife netted considerable critical acclaim with its sophomore release Silent Shout, which landed near the top of multiple 2007 year-end lists. Its current provocation/art piece Shaking the Habitual is already outpacing its predecessor in effusive hosannas.
Real name: Aaron Jerome
Backstory:: The London DJ who has remixed Radiohead and M.I.A. hides behind tribal masks because, as he believes, wearing a mask during a celebration evokes the spirit of an ancestor or animal. Or it could just be, as he told Clash magazine, he just isn't very social.
Success level:: With only one critically-acclaimed album under his belt, and despite a coveted Drake endorsement, it's still too early to tell... if Jerome is conjuring up the kind of ancestors who can shepherd him to a successful career.
Real names: Admirably unknown. The art-rock collective has existed in anonymity for more than 40 years.
Backstory:: With more than 60 albums to their name, the Residents have retained the mystery by performing in giant eyeball helmets and by refusing to participate in interviews (although its management team known as Cryptic Corporation speaks on the Residents' behalf). Why eyeballs? That's just one of the many mysteries surrounding this avant-garde rock collective.
Success level::... Maintaining cult fandom for nearly half a century is no small feat. And, as if to offer proof of its rabid following, the band recently offered an "Ultimate Box Set," which included a first pressing of its complete catalog along with rarities like an eyeball mask all stored in a functioning refrigerator for $100,000. There are only 10 in existence yet — shockingly — it's unknown whether even a single one was sold.
Real name: Joel Zimmerman
Backstory:: Legend has it that after a teenaged Zimmerman opened his broken computer in search of the cause of a minor malfunction, he discovered a dead mouse. And so, with this mythological tale, his DJ name was born. The mask, however, represents nothing more than the Canadian musician's marketing savvy: it's distinctive, instantly recognizable and fans (or Mau5heads) can either buy one or make one to wear... to shows.
Success level:: While many initially laughed at his shtick, Deadmau5 is one of the highest-paid EDM performers in the exploding dance genre, and his artistry has even been recognized by the National Academy of the Arts and Sciences with Grammy nominations five times over.
Real name: Daniel Dumile
Backstory:: According to graffiti artist Blake "KEO" Lethem, in the early days Dumile wore a Darth Maul mask which Lethem painted aluminum, cut out square eyes and made room for a rapper's mouth to flow with ease. Eventually, the pair bought a replica gladiator helmet and removed the faceplate. The influential rapper sought anonymity so he could walk freely, even in a venue he would later that night perform... in, without being recognized. Although, as recent as two years back, the mask inspired controversy, as many suspected that the Doom on stage for some live performances was not Dumile himself, but an imposter lip-syncing to a recording.
Success level:: Nike devoted a pair of Dunks to him, and Kid Robot made an MF Doom vinyl collectible. Both fetch some pretty impressive numbers on the resale market, indicating the fanbase is there, and it is rabid.
Real name: The now-defunct black metal act revolved around core member Scott Conner, who went by the pseudonym Malefic.
Backstory:: Malefic wore black-and-white corpse paint with a hooded Grim Reaper cowl, which he said is intended as "an expression of hatred, death or a transformation into another spirit." The black-metal musician also didn't perform live, nor did he conduct interviews in person, so it's no surprise that demand was so high for rabid... fans to see his true appearance — so much so that a YouTube video which repurposes still photos from a magazine shoot with self-titled magazine currently has 22,000 views.
Success level:: An avant-garde black metal band that has never toured will have a limited audience, but that audience was passionate and devoted.
Real names: Justin Pearson, Gabe Serbian, Bobby Bray, Joey Karam
Backstory:: It's only appropriate that a band attributed with creating the genre known as "powerviolence" wear insect costumes complete with netted eyes, featureless masks and uniforms that aren't distinct from one another.
Success level::In a recent interview, Pearson said, "I tend to not give a shit about where marketable culture is heading. Maybe I should, but I'll leave that to the fools.... Anyone can polish a turd and sell it to the masses if you have the conglomerates backing you." However, it should also be noted that Dave Lombardo of Slayer is a fan — which in most quarters qualifies as a success.
Real names: Johan Agebjörn is the producer behind the Italian disco revivalist duo called Sally Shapiro, yet the woman who also performs vocals as "Sally Shapiro" has yet to reveal her real name.
Backstory:: It's a strange thing to cooperate with the press by doing photo shoots and interviews, and all the while withholding any or all personal information. But, the blonde Swedish vocalist suffers from shyness so crippling it prevents her from... even considering touring. Oh, and in case you think this is just a gimmick: Agebjörn himself is banned from the studio whenever "Shapiro" records her vocals. When asked about this in an interview with Vice magazine, she said, "It's a character. I enhance certain aspects of my personality and leave a lot behind. As Sally Shapiro, I dance all night long in small disco clubs and walk in the moonshine thinking about my love affairs. As myself I'm also free to do other stuff." Such as…?
Success level:: It's an incredible thing — perhaps this is one instance in which I admire the Internet for its restraint — but no matter how many times Shapiro insists on anonymity, no one from a little village in Sweden says, "Oh yeah. That girl. I went to high school with her. Her name is…"
Shannon and the Clams, Dreams in the Rat House
Jumping to the relative big leagues without sacrificing their rickety retro charm
On Dreams In the Rat House, Oakland’s fiercest contemporary purveyors of scuffed-up early-’60s rock ‘n’ roll jump to the relative big leagues of the Sub Pop imprint Hardly Art without sacrificing any of their rickety retro charm. Shannon and the Clams’ third album sticks to the live-sounding, punk-roughed doo-wop, girl group and surf rock throwbacks that made 2011 predecessor Sleep Talk the perfect cheap-beer chaser. It’s a narrow but fertile niche, and this trio goes after it with devilish bravado.
Bass player Shannon Shaw, also of Bay Area kindred spirits Hunx and His Punx, shares lead vocal duties with guitarist Cody Blanchard, and their loose, comfortable rapport — along with the emphatic, conversational drumming of Ian Amberson — helps keep the shag-carpet and wood-paneled consistency from getting too same-y. So does the fact they’re willing to change up styles pretty wildly within their chosen set of inspirations, whether the only-sleeping psych-rock of Blanchard-growled “Bed Rock” or the uptempo rhythm and blues (in its original sense) of Shaw-belted first single “Rip Van Winkle.” If the album title recalls HP Lovecraft’s haunting short story Dreams in the Witch House, well, you expect a bit of eccentricity from any friends of rabbit-costumed garage-rocker extraordinaire Nobunny.
Laurel Halo, Behind the Green Door
A straightforwardly beat-driven release
Electronic album artists often use EPs to sluice out small batches of tightly-knit tracks that might or might not indicate a future direction. Let’s hope that in the case of Laurel Halo’s Behind the Green Door EP, it does — it’s a more straightforwardly beat-driven release than 2012′s Quarantine, something she’s quite good at. Of course, she still bends the framework into all kinds of aural shapes: The stalactite-like keyboards of “Throw,” the opening track, evokes mid-’90s Aphex Twin or µ-Ziq, while “UHFFO” is a phased-dizzy minimalist techno, everything from the beat to the zapping keyboard duel that livens it up midway in, coated with gauze. The heavily dubbed-out “Sex Mission,” meanwhile, contains zero heavy breathing, unless you count the way the rhythm track heaves — not in a cartoon-porn way, but something more meditative while still evoking arousal.
10 Iconic Album Covers and the Imitators They Inspired
Inscrutable and defiant, the cover image of David Bowie’s 12th album “Heroes” is one of the most iconic images in all of rock ‘n’ roll. So you can hardly blame Bowie for thinking it was too good to only be used once. The cover of his latest album, The Next Day, is a direct homage to one of the most cherished albums in his lengthy discography. But while Bowie is an innovator in many fields, in this instance he’s actually part of a long tradition of artists using their album art to nod to the past.
Before the Clash, Ween and the X-Ecutioners became restless, boundary-pushing artists, they were devoted music fans. That spirit never left them, and they used the covers of some of their most beloved albums to pay tribute to those that inspired them to keep pushing forward. In an effort to pay tribute to other people’s tributes, we’ve gathered together 10 of our favorite album cover homages. As these picks prove, everyone gets inspired by someone else, but what matters most is where you take it next.
From Joni Mitchell to David Lynch to TV on the Radio, David Bowie has always been a vocal fan of the artists that excite him, and he’s nearly always shown great taste. So it makes sense that David Bowie would be a big David Bowie fan — because what right-thinking person isn’t? On The Next Day, Bowie and his trusted producer Tony Visconti revisit some of the sounds and lyrical themes from his most classic albums (single “Where Are We Now” even checks back in on Berlin), but always keeps an eye toward the future. As such, the cover of The Next Day makes sense: It acknowledges the past, but makes it clear that Bowie has no interest in staying there.
The Clash famously sang “No Elvis, Beatles or The Rolling Stones” on their single “1977,” but don’t believe a word of it. One listen to their magnum opus London Calling reveals that Joe Strummer and co. had an encyclopedic knowledge of rock ‘n’ roll, rocksteady reggae and R&B. Just to prove these guys knew their roots, the cover of London is a spot-on reference to Elvis Presley’s self-titled debut album. The font and color scheme is the same, with a picture of bassist Paul Simonon wrecking his guitar subbed in for Presley playing his. It’s often read as an announcement that The Clash had officially arrived to tear down the past, but perhaps it was just a way for rock’s then newest vanguards to show sly respect to the king they knew they were replacing.
Austrian downtempo duo Kruder & Dorfmeister released this EP in 1993, well before Francis McDormand’s character in Almost Famous called Simon & Garfunkel “the poetry of drugs and promiscuous sex.” But they had likely already heard the rumors about how the New York folkies stayed so mellow and introspective. Their debut EP G-Stoned paid tribute to a previous generation’s chill-out soundtrack, while demonstrating the perennial ability of the black turtleneck to make anyone look sophisticated and intellectual.
New Jersey jokers The Ergs named their first album Dorkrockcorkrod and never let you forget that they were three obsessed music geeks, as quick to praise (lest you get it twisted, The Ben Kweller EP was truly a labor of love) as they were to condemn (all time greatest Ergs song title: “Johnny Rzeznik Needs His Ass Kicked”). Their 2005 EP Jersey’s Best Prancers paid tribute to Garden State Punk O.G.’s Lifetime’s seminal Jersey’s Best Dancers, an album best known for the scene anthem “Theme Song for a New Brunswick Basement Show.” Sure, The Ergs actually repped nearby South Amboy, but the sentiment crossed county lines.
Atmosphere is best known for MC Slug’s tales of bad love and hard luck, but producer/DJ Anthony “Ant” Davis has always demonstrated a keen ear for 1960′s soul, pop and jazz samples. Though Atmosphere’s debut album has bits of Bee Gees and Stevie Wonder in the mix, the album cover pays tribute to Andrew Hill’s 1964 bop classic Judgment. Perhaps Ant already had it in his collection (the man knows a good horn riff when he hears it), or perhaps Slug could relate to the title.
During their long, glorious existence, Ween were simultaneously the most irreverent and respectful group of music aficionados around. Sure, they might write a Jimmy Buffet pisstake called “Bananas and Blow,” but they still cared enough to totally nail the steel drum. The duo’s second album The Pod is perhaps the “brownest” album in their catalog, so dank and weird that it still gives a contact high two decades later. For reasons known only to The Boognish, these weirdos decided that this was the best possible moment to pay tribute to The Best Of Leonard Cohen, with the cover picture of Canada’s Greatest Poet swapped out for a shot of bassist Mean Ween enjoying some of Home Depot’s Finest. Hey, perhaps the authors of “She Fucks Me” wanted to make sure we knew that they knew that Leonard Cohen is some of the best getting-laid music around.
Sure, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back gets all the attention, but Public Enemy’s debut Yo! Bum Rush the Show introduced the world to the prowess of DJ Terminator X and producer Hank Shocklee. This album finished the argument that Run-D.M.C. started, re: the ability of two turntables relative to the ability to rock a crowd. A nation of DJs owe this album an eternal debt, and New York scratch collective The X-Ecutioners paid tribute with the cover of their 2002 breakthrough Built From Scratch, which shoved turntabilism in to the mainstream for a few minutes via the Linkin Park collaboration “It’s Goin’ Down.”
Michael Jackson is arguably the most popular musician who ever lived, and Thriller is his world-conquering masterpiece. Tech N9ne, for his part, is really, really popular in Kansas City. Killer is another fine entry in a discography devoted to helping Midwestern rap fans blow off some steam and ruin their speakers. As the straitjacket cover and song titles like “Get The F**k Outta Here,” make clear, Tech isn’t really interested in making a four-quadrant audience pleaser in the mold of Thriller, though even MJ could get down with the message of “Hope For A Higher Power.” Though he probably would have preferred it came with less gunshot samples.
Miami booty-bass mob 2 Live Crew were called all kinds of things during the run as lords of the low rider in the late ’80s — usually various synonyms for “juvenile” and “gross.” One thing they were hardly ever called was “inspiring,” but Luke Skywalker’s ass anthems must have touched the – let’s say “hearts” — of young Virginia smart alecks Spank Rock & Benny Blanco. The music often gets as cheeky as the cover, with tracks like “B-O-O-T-A-Y” serving double duty as paeans to both derrieres and sticky nostalgia for misspent youth.
Before King Buzzo and company became the most pitiless riff monsters to ever emerge from the Northeast, The Melvins were just a bunch of teenage arena rock fans. And during the height of 1990′s cred-auditing, the group went out of their way to display their good standing in the Kiss Army by patterning a series of three Eps after Kiss’ infamous four solo album deluge. Gene Simmons recruited guests like Cher, Jeff “Skunk” Baxter and even a pre-fame Katy Segal for his opus, while Buzzo got his friend Dave Grohl, then at the height of Nirvanamania, to take care of the drum skins. Because the early ’90s were unfathomably strange, a year later The Melvins, whom often strived to sound like a black hole swallowing a whale, signed to a major label, toured arenas with Nine Inch Nails and even got Simmons to jam with them onstage.
Interview: Dungeonesse
Jenn Wasner is the Leslie Knope of pop. Not only does the Wye Oak frontwoman’s speaking voice resemble that of Amy Poehler’s beloved Parks and Recreation character, but she also has a similar earnest thoroughness about her: Just about every point in her account of how she made the transformation from indie-rock singer to dance-pop siren in Dungeonesse — her new project with fellow multi-instrumentalist Jon Ehrens of the band White Life — needed to be edited to fit this article.
Like Knope, she’s insanely proud of her town, which in her case is Baltimore, where she and Ehrens live in a tightly knit community. Ehrens’s dad even works with the father of Andy Stack, Wasner’s partner in Wye Oak. The Dungeonesse duo’s friendship began when Ehrens’s band Art Department opened up for Wasner and Stack at their first CD release show when Wye Oak were still calling themselves Monarch. As she explains below, Dungeonesse is an outgrowth of their goal to become a songwriting and production team for other singers. During their conversation with eMusic, Ehrens dropped out from technical difficulties, but Wasner more than compensated.
How did Dungeonesse begin?
Jenn Wasner: Dungeonesse is what I’ve referred to as a pen-pal pop band. I was touring like a crazy person with Wye Oak, and Jon had just moved to Los Angeles, so we were either on opposite coasts or god-knows-where, but we’ve always been mutually interested in each other’s songwriting. At some point Jon sent me tracks that he had been making in L.A. He was trying to find some starlet out in California to do them and I was like, “No, let me do it!” Jon made the tracks on his busted-ass laptop, and I recorded them on mine, and we sent them back and forth. After a while, we realized it wasn’t just a fun little thing, and that we were actually making a record, one that we were excited about. Thus Dungeonesse was born!
Your album may be Secretly Canadian’s most mainstream-accessible release yet. How did Dungeonesse sign to this quintessential indie label?
Wasner: I have this solo project Flock of Dimes, and I was on tour with my good friend Sharon Van Etten last spring. Sharon’s on Jagjaguwar, so all the Secretly Canadian label folk came to our show in Cincinnati. Chris Swanson, one of the main honchos, was there. He was in the green room watching a video of The-Dream. So being the loud, obnoxious person I am, I walked up to him, and was like, “Oh shit, The-Dream, that’s my shit!” So we start taking about our favorite pop music and over the course of the night, we have a few drinks. And by the end of the night, I had enough to say, “You know, I make pop music!” and so I played him some of the songs. The next day, I’m like, “I’m a drunk idiot.” But I got a really nice email from Chris saying how much he liked the songs. So we sent over what we had, which was basically this record, and he wanted to put it out. Even looking back on it now, it seems like a bit of a miracle.
Do you consider this a side project, or is this now the main thing for both of you and your other work is on hiatus?
Wasner: I’m now deep in the writing game for Wye Oak and deep in the mixing game for Flock of Dimes and Jon’s always makin’ some shit. I don’t think we have any desire to limit ourselves or even necessarily focus on one thing above another. One of the problems I had with being on tour so much — traveling all over, feeling really distraught — was that I had been limiting myself to a small window of creative expression. I played the same songs off the same record every single night, and regardless of how strongly you may feel about any material that you have to repeat to that extent — it’s limiting for me, I’ll just say that. Why limit yourself? The best part of [being a musician] is making new things.
How did the songwriting for this album differ from your previous projects?
Wasner: A couple of these songs came to me fully formed. “Drive You Crazy” and “This Could Be Home” were songs that Jon pretty much completed and I just tried to interpret as my own. But for the most part, I would receive tracks from Jon and I would do in the pop universe what’s called the top line. In a lot of ways it freed me up melodically and lyrically to do what I thought was best and most appropriate for the songs and to use my voice to its fullest potential, which is something maybe I’ve shied away from. I love to sing pop music, but I’ve always disguised my voice in other projects.
Jon Ehrens: This is the first time I would write the baking track and make all the chord changes happen before I knew what the melody was.
Several of the songs have a “This is what I am” message to them. In “Drive You Crazy,” you’re serving notice that anyone who hooks up with you may be seeking psychiatric assistance.
Ehrens: At the very least!
Wasner: If they’re lucky!
Have you ever said as much on a date? Like, “I’m gonna mess you up so you better brace yourself?”
Ehrens: I won’t say that upfront but I will say something weird.
People often associate guitars with reality and synthesizers with escape. Is your work with Wye Oak autobiographical, and is this your alter-ego?
Wasner: With a band like Wye Oak, it’s a very heart-on-sleeve style of songwriting and I think sometimes people confuse that with it being “me.” People who’re familiar with what I’ve done in the past may be inclined to assume that Dungeonesse is more of a persona, more of a costume, but if you’re driving around in the car with me, nine times out of 10 I’m playing modern Top 40, rap, and R&B, or the Grown & Sexy radio station that plays Barry White and disco music, and I’m singing along with it at the top of my lungs.
Were there particular new or old songs that acted as models for what you did with this record?
Wasner: On the modern end, Usher’s “Climax” has moved me to tears on more than one occasion. Miguel’s “Adorn,” that’s fucking amazing. Jon and I are really big fans of Robyn; she’s done totally transcendent songs that will stand the test of time. I love Kanye West and “Runaway” in particular. It gives me chills. As far as older stuff, how do I even begin? I’ve been listening to — no, I shouldn’t even say it because I’m planning on covering it! I listen to a lot of Teena Marie and Aaliyah. I think about Arthur Russell a lot actually. He transcended genre and was all over the place; his disco records are some of my favorite things he’s done. Ariel Pink is amazing: “Round and Round” is one of the best pop songs of the last 25 years, easy.
Do you agree that the recession has made DIY more a part of American culture than it’s been in decades?
Wasner: I think that a lot of people are taking the creation of pop music into their own hands, and it’s not as tightly controlled by a small corporate minority of incredibly rich and morally suspect people as it used to be. I’m all for the masses taking this style back and reclaiming it because it ideally should be made by the people that it’s made for — and that’s everybody.
Neither Jon nor I have the desire to be a pop star. Especially not me — that just seems like a nightmare. Performing is something I’ve had to work at to get good at, and I’m still not entirely comfortable with it. I’m not a dancer. I’m not a fashion plate. I don’t mind being on stage but don’t think it’s my true calling. But I could totally see myself, and I think Jon does similarly, as someone working behind the scenes and making the best songs that we can, even if we’re not the ones getting up on stage and singing them.
Your transition from indie rock to pop isn’t unprecedented. Greg Kurstin of the Bird and the Bee started in Geggy Tah, an arty band on David Byrne’s record label, and now he’s producing or songwriting and/or playing on every pop and rock record from Pink to Foster the People.
Wasner: I’m going to be totally honest with you and say that is my absolute 100 percent ideal dream situation. If I can continue making weird records for myself, perform only when I want to, and make pop songs for other people that have huge audiences, I think I’d be the happiest. That’s not to say that I want to give up being an artist, but it would be great if I didn’t have to rely on that. I wouldn’t have to tour myself into the ground to make a living. Like most people, I want to be stable. I want to have a home and have belongings and live in a city and see my friends and my boyfriend.
You sometimes have a slight country twang to your singing voice.
Wasner: I was born in West Baltimore and grew up just over the county line. The creative community is unparalleled and I am a proud and grateful resident of Baltimore and a proud member of this small but really supportive community. I love it here. There’s no other place I’d rather be. I’m just grateful that I don’t sing with a Baltimore accent ’cause that thing is a nightmare.
Divine aside, I can’t imagine the people who populate John Waters movies singing pop songs.
Wasner: Oh, they’re real. That’s not an exaggeration. That’s Baltimore.
eMusic’s Alternate-Universe Eurovision
The Eurovision Song Contest was established as way to bring European countries together after World War II. The first competition was held in the town of Lugano, Switzerland, on May 24, 1956. Since then, it’s become a sprawling behemoth that makes American Idol, The Voice and X-Factor look downright quaint. The first year, seven countries entered. Now in its 58th year, 39 countries are competing for the top prize.
To participate, musicians must submit an original, unpublished song. Since residents of their home country can’t vote for them, the goal is to woo an international audience. As a result, language, content and staging is all up for interpretation. Read: This is a contest of big, bigger biggest.
eMusic’s Laura Studarus complied a fantasy Eurovision Song Contest lineup. How would artists and songs stack up against each other if the laws of time, space, and competition were suspended in favor of good taste and outstanding musicality?
Song submitted: "Zookeeper's Boy"
Odds of winning: 4:1
Mew may be the most likely to catch viewers off-guard with their sneaky combination of ethereal hooks and grinding guitars. "Zookeeper's Boy," from the band's 2005 album And the Glass handed Kites, mixes prog with just the right amount of whimsy, making it perfect for mass consumption. (Sample lyric: "If there's a glitch, you're an ostrich.") Add to that the band's propensity for Edward Gorey-style visuals... and frontman Jonas Bjerre's doe-eyed charisma, and right out of the gate you've got a band to beat.
Song submitted: "Fall 4 U (feat. Glasser)"
Odds of winning: 20:1
For his debut full-length Young Hunger, producer Hugo Manuel (aka Chad Valley) brought quite a collection of friends with him, including Twin Shadow, El Perro Del Mar, Active Child and Glasser. And what does a gathering of pals plus music equal? A party. Which is completely in line with Eurovision's reconciliatory nature. While any song on the album could be a competition-worthy single,... Manuel will bring along Glasser to perform restrained electro love duet, "Fall 4 U." Will top awards to go the ghost of 1980s film soundtracks past? With a coupling this chemistry-heavy, it's not impossible.
Song submitted: "Sweet Synergy"
Odds of winning: 600:1
Estonian sound-collage artist Maria Minerva isn't your standard Eurovision song competitor. But if Belgium can enter Telex — a band whose idea of a chorus is chanting "Eurovision Eurovision Eurovision" — surely there's a room to think outside of the box. Minerva's debut album Will Happiness Find Me? is a series of atonal experiments, woozy minimal disco, and cascades of samples. Underneath it all beats a... spooky, fractured-pop heart. Let's be honest: Minerva's chances of winning are slim. But she won't go down without a fight.
Song submitted: "Get Lucky"
Odds of winning: even
There's a subgenre in music known as "schlager." In German, it means "a hit." But loosely translated in Eurovision Song Contest speak it means, "A pop song with a hint of cheese you gladly overlook because it's so damn catchy." No song in this year's fantasy field comes close to Daft Punk's recently-released single "Get Lucky." The helmeted Frenchmen have combined 1970s disco funk, handclaps, Pharrell... glitter-glam vocals, and just a whiff of vocoder to create the kind of tune you can imagine kids little kids getting down to and adults, er, "getting down" to. You might want to start engraving the winner's trophy now.
Song submitted: "Unless You Speak From Your Heart"
Odds of winning: 100:1
Eurovision is Porcelain Raft's (Mauro Remiddi) chance to show the world that he's about more than hazy pop choruses constructed from drum loops, gently strummed guitars, whispered vocals, and tape hiss. Strange Weekend single "Unless You Speak From Your Heart" combines the dream pop hallmarks with a hip-hop beat, and crisp pace that splits the difference between Beach House atmospherics and Jam-style... posturing. Bedroom recording wimp? Hardly. Here's hoping the one-man-band brings a few friends to help him fill the big stage.
Song submitted: "Two Way Monologue"
Odds of winning: 7:1
A Norwegian scene stalwart, Sondre Lerche's eight albums have covered a lot of ground: from pop to garage rock to film scores to bossa nova. Which pretty much means Lerche can be anything we want him to be — including a Eurovision champion. Single "Two Way Monologue" (taken from the 2004 album of the same name) is his greatest chance to take home the title.... Striking a happy medium between singing and crooning, Lerche isn't just out to perform for the audience, but seduce them. And you know what? It just might work.
Song submitted: "Melt"
Odds of winning: 70:1
Eastern Europe's answer to Friendly Fires, Polish dance trio KAMP! gravitate towards slick production, bouncy Balearic beats, and lush beds of electronics. It might be a hard sell, since generally the competition favors more straight up pop-driven fare. (Just don't tell the 2006 winner, Finnish death metal band Lordi, that.) But if anyone can sweep viewers up in their undeniable wave of ready-for-primetime dance club energy, it's... a band so vibrant they had to include an exclamation point in their name.
Song submitted: "The Mother We Share"
Odds of winning: 16:1
Eurovision favors the over-the-top statement. Backup dancers, feathers, light shows — these are people who are likely to laugh at the suggestion that you merely "put a bird on it." No one's music lends itself to embellishment quite like electro-pop outfit, CHVRCHES. Like The Knife rendered in primary colors, the Scottish trio favor icy electronics and ambitious musical gestures. CHVRCHES lean towards the emotional... though, their tales of love and hate framed by frontwoman Lauren Mayberry's fairytale-worthy vocals. Sure they've been known to stand still when performing, but that just makes it easier to frame them with rings of fire and chorus girls.
Song submitted: "Mi Negrita"
Odds of winning: 150:1
Fun fact: There's no rule that an artist has to actually hail from the country they represent in Eurovision Song Contest. Which is why, in 1988, Céline Dion won on behalf of Switzerland — despite being Canadian. With multi-genre provocateur El Guincho in perpetual hiding, the nation will tap Spanish-influenced Devendra Banhart to fill in. The laid-back folkie may not have the razzle dazzle factor of... other acts, but Tropicália-accented balled "Mi Negrita" won't go completely unappreciated.
Song submitted: "The World Moves On"
Odds of winning: 2:1
In 1974, ABBA won the Eurovision Song Contest with their rendition of "Waterloo," which went on to appear on the band's second album of the same name. Who better to carry on the tradition than Jens Lekman? The closing track of his 2007 album Night Falls Over Kortedala "Friday Night at the Drive in Bingo" contains the same simple syrup-laced pop that saw Benny... Andersson and the gang to victory — right down to a horn-filled chorus and nostalgic location name-checking. Bonus: Lekman squeezes in an offhanded mention of rabbit sex. Let's see the dancing queens try to do that.
Daft Punk, Random Access Memories
Even androids long for life
Imagine you are Daft Punk, perhaps the only musical act in history whose cultural profile actually rose in the wake of their weakest and least-popular studio album, 2005′s Human After All. You wrote and directed your own experimental feature film, 2006′s Electroma; toured the world to great acclaim in 2006 and ’07; got sampled in a smash 2007 Kanye West single “Stronger;” and composed a soundtrack for 2010′s Tron: Legacy. But somehow all this has been dwarfed by years of speculation over what you’ll do next, as if the world had been seduced by your faceless robot image into believing that you are actual super heroes. Rising to the challenge, you then spend years on a magnum opus in which the implicit goal revealed by numerous pre-release interviews with collaborators both big and small is to fulfill the purpose of the album’s first song: Daft Punk’s Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo have aimed to do nothing less than to “Give Life Back to Music.”
Random Access Memories is a concept album in which these would-be androids take it upon themselves to restore humanity to the music scene they themselves helped make more mechanical. Recorded with veteran session musicians whose résumés include Michael Jackson’s Off the Wall and Thriller, an insanely idiosyncratic cross-generational pack of co-writers spanning from Paul Williams (who wrote for the Carpenters and the Muppets) to Animal Collective’s Panda Bear, and absolutely massive symphonic orchestration, the French duo counter the automation of today’s EDM and, indeed, their own back catalog, by filling the album with what collaborator Nile Rodgers terms “one-time-only events.” True to Daft Punk form, there is repetition on this album, but more importantly there is constant subtle variation: Listen closely and you’ll hear all sorts of accents, complications and improvisations impossible to achieve through the pair’s previous methods.
In doing so, Daft Punk get far closer to replicating decidedly non-punk forms of the ’70s and early ’80s — disco, progressive rock, jazz-funk and West Coast studio pop — than most 21st-century musicians have ever dared. Absolutely none of it is what has traditionally been considered cool, and that’s precisely the point: RAM is instead focused on warmth, sunshine, good times, intimacy and sweaty shared body heat. There is solitude and melancholy as well, voiced through vocoders and Williams himself, who in the shamelessly grand “Touch” plays the part of a robot who craves the reality of physical sensation. Segueing from gurgling synths to piano pop to disco to choral and symphonic pomp and back again, this multi-part epic holds the album’s theme: Even androids long for life.
That they’ve rediscovered old-fashioned studio craft in an era when it’s grown cost-prohibitive makes RAM even more quixotic, as if they invested their entire Disney commission and then some on the aesthetic antithesis of Human After All‘s hasty bluntness. Every genre they touch is pushed to the hilt: The club tracks featuring Rodgers shredding on rhythm guitar, “Give Life Back to Music,” “Lose Yourself to Dance” and the single “Get Lucky” are all really, really disco, as if the duo aimed to reanimate the musician’s late cohorts in Chic. The synth riff that runs through “Giorgio by Moroder” — a lavish, ever-shifting number featuring Giorgio Moroder’s spoken autobiography of how he fathered EDM through his pioneering synthetic 1977 production of Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love” — evokes two electronic disco milestones: Moroder’s “Chase” theme for Midnight Express and Cerrone’s similarly futuristic “Supernature.” “Instant Crush” may feature the Strokes’ Julian Casablancas, but its chugging guitars are eerily reminiscent of the Alan Parsons Project’s “Eye in the Sky,” one of prog-rock’s final hits. And Todd Edwards, known for emphatically sampled underground house, helps them nail the Toto-esque pop of “Fragments of Time” with a riff that recalls the Doobie Brothers’ “What a Fool Believes.”
By paraphrasing, recombining, and expanding upon the sophisticated sounds of their childhoods, Bangalter and de Homem-Christo mature their own music exponentially. On every level — songwriting, arrangements, production, engineering and particularly mood — the duo generate infinitely more complex and finessed results precisely because they never regard the music that was typically reviled by the critics of the time and is still today thought of as “cheesy,” the witheringly condescending adjective that’s become omnipresent in an Internet age when everyone’s a critic. Instead, they render disco, prog and soft pop via the wonder with which they originally perceived them, blissfully unaware of their un-hip-ness in much of the adult world they would eventually reign as icons of hip. Through that wide-eyed innocence, they’ve achieved the alchemy of love.
eMusic’s Alternate-Universe Eurovision
The Eurovision Song Contest was established as way to bring European countries together after World War II. The first competition was held in the town of Lugano, Switzerland, on May 24, 1956. Since then, it’s become a sprawling behemoth that makes American Idol, The Voice and X-Factor look downright quaint. The first year, seven countries entered. Now in its 58th year, 39 countries are competing for the top prize.
To participate, musicians must submit an original, unpublished song. Since residents of their home country can’t vote for them, the goal is to woo an international audience. As a result, language, content and staging is all up for interpretation. Read: This is a contest of big, bigger biggest.
eMusic’s Laura Studarus complied a fantasy Eurovision Song Contest lineup. How would artists and songs stack up against each other if the laws of time, space, and competition were suspended in favor of good taste and outstanding musicality?
Song submitted: "Zookeeper's Boy"
Odds of winning: 4:1
Mew may be the most likely to catch viewers off-guard with their sneaky combination of ethereal hooks and grinding guitars. "Zookeeper's Boy," from the band's 2005 album And the Glass handed Kites, mixes prog with just the right amount of whimsy, making it perfect for mass consumption. (Sample lyric: "If there's a glitch, you're an ostrich.") Add to that the band's propensity for Edward Gorey-style visuals... and frontman Jonas Bjerre's doe-eyed charisma, and right out of the gate you've got a band to beat.
Song submitted: "Fall 4 U (feat. Glasser)"
Odds of winning: 20:1
For his debut full-length Young Hunger, producer Hugo Manuel (aka Chad Valley) brought quite a collection of friends with him, including Twin Shadow, El Perro Del Mar, Active Child and Glasser. And what does a gathering of pals plus music equal? A party. Which is completely in line with Eurovision's reconciliatory nature. While any song on the album could be a competition-worthy single,... Manuel will bring along Glasser to perform restrained electro love duet, "Fall 4 U." Will top awards to go the ghost of 1980s film soundtracks past? With a coupling this chemistry-heavy, it's not impossible.
Song submitted: "Sweet Synergy"
Odds of winning: 600:1
Estonian sound-collage artist Maria Minerva isn't your standard Eurovision song competitor. But if Belgium can enter Telex — a band whose idea of a chorus is chanting "Eurovision Eurovision Eurovision" — surely there's a room to think outside of the box. Minerva's debut album Will Happiness Find Me? is a series of atonal experiments, woozy minimal disco, and cascades of samples. Underneath it all beats a... spooky, fractured-pop heart. Let's be honest: Minerva's chances of winning are slim. But she won't go down without a fight.
Song submitted: "Get Lucky"
Odds of winning: even
There's a subgenre in music known as "schlager." In German, it means "a hit." But loosely translated in Eurovision Song Contest speak it means, "A pop song with a hint of cheese you gladly overlook because it's so damn catchy." No song in this year's fantasy field comes close to Daft Punk's recently-released single "Get Lucky." The helmeted Frenchmen have combined 1970s disco funk, handclaps, Pharrell... glitter-glam vocals, and just a whiff of vocoder to create the kind of tune you can imagine kids little kids getting down to and adults, er, "getting down" to. You might want to start engraving the winner's trophy now.
Song submitted: "Unless You Speak From Your Heart"
Odds of winning: 100:1
Eurovision is Porcelain Raft's (Mauro Remiddi) chance to show the world that he's about more than hazy pop choruses constructed from drum loops, gently strummed guitars, whispered vocals, and tape hiss. Strange Weekend single "Unless You Speak From Your Heart" combines the dream pop hallmarks with a hip-hop beat, and crisp pace that splits the difference between Beach House atmospherics and Jam-style... posturing. Bedroom recording wimp? Hardly. Here's hoping the one-man-band brings a few friends to help him fill the big stage.
Song submitted: "Two Way Monologue"
Odds of winning: 7:1
A Norwegian scene stalwart, Sondre Lerche's eight albums have covered a lot of ground: from pop to garage rock to film scores to bossa nova. Which pretty much means Lerche can be anything we want him to be — including a Eurovision champion. Single "Two Way Monologue" (taken from the 2004 album of the same name) is his greatest chance to take home the title.... Striking a happy medium between singing and crooning, Lerche isn't just out to perform for the audience, but seduce them. And you know what? It just might work.
Song submitted: "Melt"
Odds of winning: 70:1
Eastern Europe's answer to Friendly Fires, Polish dance trio KAMP! gravitate towards slick production, bouncy Balearic beats, and lush beds of electronics. It might be a hard sell, since generally the competition favors more straight up pop-driven fare. (Just don't tell the 2006 winner, Finnish death metal band Lordi, that.) But if anyone can sweep viewers up in their undeniable wave of ready-for-primetime dance club energy, it's... a band so vibrant they had to include an exclamation point in their name.
Song submitted: "The Mother We Share"
Odds of winning: 16:1
Eurovision favors the over-the-top statement. Backup dancers, feathers, light shows — these are people who are likely to laugh at the suggestion that you merely "put a bird on it." No one's music lends itself to embellishment quite like electro-pop outfit, CHVRCHES. Like The Knife rendered in primary colors, the Scottish trio favor icy electronics and ambitious musical gestures. CHVRCHES lean towards the emotional... though, their tales of love and hate framed by frontwoman Lauren Mayberry's fairytale-worthy vocals. Sure they've been known to stand still when performing, but that just makes it easier to frame them with rings of fire and chorus girls.
Song submitted: "Mi Negrita"
Odds of winning: 150:1
Fun fact: There's no rule that an artist has to actually hail from the country they represent in Eurovision Song Contest. Which is why, in 1988, Céline Dion won on behalf of Switzerland — despite being Canadian. With multi-genre provocateur El Guincho in perpetual hiding, the nation will tap Spanish-influenced Devendra Banhart to fill in. The laid-back folkie may not have the razzle dazzle factor of... other acts, but Tropicália-accented balled "Mi Negrita" won't go completely unappreciated.
Song submitted: "The World Moves On"
Odds of winning: 2:1
In 1974, ABBA won the Eurovision Song Contest with their rendition of "Waterloo," which went on to appear on the band's second album of the same name. Who better to carry on the tradition than Jens Lekman? The closing track of his 2007 album Night Falls Over Kortedala "Friday Night at the Drive in Bingo" contains the same simple syrup-laced pop that saw Benny... Andersson and the gang to victory — right down to a horn-filled chorus and nostalgic location name-checking. Bonus: Lekman squeezes in an offhanded mention of rabbit sex. Let's see the dancing queens try to do that.
New This Week: Primal Scream, The Fall, Bibio & More
Primal Scream, More Light The Primals’ tenth album is big, wild, valiant, occasionally ridiculous and up there with XTRMNTR – possibly even Screamadelica. Andrew Harrison celebrates the band’s most exhilarating release in more than a decade:
“From the first few moments of opening track ‘2013’ it’s clear this will be no trad-rock Riot City Blues. Holmes instals a circular, buzzing, raga-like motif and when the riff kicks in it’s played not on period Mick Taylor-style guitars but a skronking sax – a sax! – more reminiscent of Roxy Music in the glory of their madness. ‘River Of Pain’ summons up a serpentine, countrified vision of Massive Attack circa Mezzanine and then unfurls into a truly stupefying whirl of woozy free jazz and orchestral samples – some of the most bizarre and electrifying music the Scream have ever created.”
Mark Lanegan & Duke Garwood, Black Pudding Prolific collaborator Mark Lanegan teams up with London instrumentalist Duke Garwood on a wonderfully warm and evocative album of parched American blues. Luke Turner says:
“The finest tracks are the ones where the pair go the furthest into the sun-bleached yonder. “Thank You” is made of a swirling mellotron drone out of which piano notes and scrapes of violin emerge and disappear… Even in these jagged moments, though, there’s a sense of ease and confidence. Here’s hoping Lanegan and Garwood are just at the start of their journey along this road less traveled.”
The Fall, Re-Mit The band’s 30th studio set since 1976 proves there’s no Fall album like a new Fall album. Andrew Harrison says:
“Long-time Fall-watchers will know that the band’s work now oscillates between basic, bloody-minded rockabilly-punk (see 1979’s Dragnet or Fall Heads Roll from 2005) and eccentric electronics (1990’s Extricate). This is chiefly of the first kind, a stabby, back-to-basics thrash with enough bile for a band a quarter their age and few adornments.”
Samba Touré, Albala This shows the protégé of the late, great Ali Farka Touré – the godfather of Mali’s desert blues music – shaping up to be a towering figure in his own right. Chris Nickson writes:
“This is a wonderfully mature album, one where less is often more – a lesson Touré has absorbed from his mentor. On Albala, Samba has really come of age and created something warm, wise and deliciously melodic, his own desert blues.”
Bibio, Silver Wilkinson Stephen Wilkinson’s seventh album is a swoon-filled mix of crepuscular folk, twinkly pop and muscular electronica, featuring the gorgeous “À tout à L’heure” – a sonic summer breeze up there with the Isley Brothers’. Brian Howe says:
“One curious thing about the record is how long it seems to take to get going… It abruptly wakes up halfway through “Mirroring All”, when its reverb-brushed glide lunges into a whorled beat. Afterward, the folk material sounds fuller and richer (“Sycamore Silhouetting”), the pop more vibrant and catchy (“À tout à L’heure”). Juicy sped-up soul makes a fine showing in “You”, and and two muscular electronic tracks bring this slow-starting record to an exhilarating conclusion.”
Maya Jane Coles, Everything The nascent house superstar releases another glimpse of the gems on offer on her debut album, Comfort, out in July.
Dungeonesse, Dungeonesse This synthpop duo craft effervescent fantasy music that’s escapist in the best way. Barry Walters says:
“The duo may draw sonically from Gaga / Beyoncé-world, but they’re clearly outsiders: Wasner’s womanly country twang compliments the pair’s urbanities, suggesting a hypothetical boho big sis to Taylor Swift. In the glistening ballad “Wake Me Up”, she flits from a throaty Annie Lennox-like alto to an airy Joni Mitchell soprano as slo-mo synths sparkle and hum.”
Various Artists, High Voltage! Giant Steps & Flashpoints in 20th-Century Experimental & Electronic Sound Compiled by Kris Needs, this compilation honouring the forbearers of electronic music mixes avant-garde classical music (John Cage, Stockhausen), with musique concrète (Pierres Schaffer), pioneering synthesizer compositions (Herbert Eimert & Robert Beyer) and pop (Joe Meek). An investment worthy of anyone interested in the experiments of the first electronic sound scientists.
Kisses, Kids In L.A. Coolly bumping little synth-pop nugget.
The Handsome Family, Wilderness The long-running duo return with a concept album about animals, overlaying each song with the distinct glum fatalism that they’ve made into a patent.
Pharmakon, Abandon Brutal noise music delivered with performance-art lunatic flair by the 22-year-old NY native Margaret Chardiet. Think Throbbing Gristle, early Swans, ice picks, raw meat.
Standish/Carlyon, Deleted Scenes Former members of Aussie band The Devastations explore new directions. Andy Beta says:
“First single “Nono/Yoyo” finds Tom Carlyon’s guitar in Durutti Column mode, fragmenting and echoing around an 80 bpm snare as Conrad Standish mewls about the vagaries of love in his best Nu-Romantic falsetto. His voice is at its fragile best on “Gucci Mountain,” which mixes a drugged pace with a shimmering synth melody. And while “Industrial Resort” suggests smokestacks and rust belts, it chugs along like a lost Balearic classic. For the album’s sunny moments though, buzzing closer “2 5 1 1″ suggests not a summer jam but the dog days, made lethargic with humidity.”
Primal Scream, More Light
Their best and most exhilarating album in more than a decade
It’s a tough old business, maintaining your credentials at the vanguard of out-there, transgressive, us-against-The-Man rock ‘n’ roll when you’re into your fourth decade as a functioning band. Over the years, Primal Scream have often made their task harder by following the ambitious and the visionary with conservative regressions into rock ‘n’ roll retro. It started when they followed up 1991′s hallucinogenic rave soundtrack Screamadelica with the sluggish Stones impersonations on Give Out But Don’t Give Up in 1994. The spectre of another Great Leap Backwards is never far away.
This 10th outing, however, aims for the far-out — and surpasses its target by heroic margins. Co-produced by Belfast DJ and connoisseur soundtrack man David Holmes, More Light returns the Scream to the cosmic-futurist dance-rock of their Vanishing Point/XTRMNR days but turns up both the aggression and the psychedelia. It’s big, wild, valiant, occasionally ridiculous and possibly better than XTRMNTR — which puts More Light toe-to-toe with big old Screamadelica itself.
From the first few moments of opening track “2013″ it’s clear this will be no trad-rock Riot City Blues. Holmes installs a circular, buzzing, raga-like motif and when the riff kicks in it’s played not on period Mick Taylor-style guitars but a skronking sax — a sax! — more reminiscent of Roxy Music in the glory of their madness. “River Of Pain” summons up a serpentine, countrified vision of Massive Attack circa Mezzanine and then unfurls into a truly stupefying whirl of woozy free jazz and orchestral samples — some of the most bizarre and electrifying music the Scream have ever created. Even the returns to heads-down mötorikhead rock (“Elimination Blues,” “Hit Void”) and the slowies (“Tenement Kid,” “Relativity”) exhibit a questing sonic sensibility.
Some things remain the same, though. Bobby Gillespie is quick to detail the 21st century slaves, manipulated underclass, television propaganda and sundry other tribulations that mark his particular worldview. But there’s no denying the fetid energy and Sun Ra-meets-The Prodigy excitement here. They even round out this triumphant record by revisiting “Movin’ On Up” on the gospel-fuelled “It’s Alright, It’s OK” — a fitting finale for Primal Scream’s best and most exhilarating album in more than a decade.
New This Week: Sam Amidon, The Fall, Bibio & More
Sam Amidon, Bright Sunny South: On his Nonesuch debut, Sam Amidon blends anonymous traditional folk with strategic pop tunes. Brian Howe says:
Compared to 2010′s lushly arranged I Saw the Sign, the arrangements on Bright Sunny South are highly stripped down, blowing over the cores of the songs like spindrift. But the themes are familiar: On the title track, a shimmering Hammond organ and rolling acoustic arpeggios set a Civil War-era lament for lost innocence; “He’s Taken My Feet” is a murmuring religious dirge in the manner of I Saw the Sign‘s “Kedron;” “Short Life” is a becalmed mountain fiddle tune about an unfulfilled promise of marriage, like a downcast counterpart to the jubilant “Pretty Fair Damsel.”
Dungeonesse, Dungeonesse: Wye Oak’s Jenn Wasner makes a synthpop album. Says Barry Walters:
In Jenn Wasner’s other duo, Wye Oak, she creates diaphanous indie-rock that draws from shoegaze, the 4AD catalog and other similarly echoing sonic caverns. Despite their subterranean name, Dungeonesse isn’t like that. Instead, Wasner and fellow multi-instrumentalist Jon Ehrens craft synthpop that’s neon-lit and glaring in the places where Wye Oak is sepia-toned and shadowy. This is effervescent fantasy music that’s escapist in the best way, but still grounded in the realities that inspire the pair’s liberating flights of fancy.
Small Black, Limits of Desire: Members of the chillwave class of ’09-10 finally graduate. Laura Studarus says:
Limits of Desire is a meditation on technology and the elements of modern society that foster emotional separation: Reveling in a newfound crispness in both production and vocals, frontman Josh Kolenik wears his heart on his sleeve across ten tracks of Instagrammed lyrics about love, escaping the big city, and being “reckless as rain.” As a result, the album shimmers with the kind of anthemic wonder usually found in the end credits of coming-of-age films.
The Fall, Re-Mit: Mark E. Smith and co. release their 30th (!) album. Andrew Harrison says:
Long-time Fall watchers will know that the band’s work now oscillates between basic, bloody-minded rockabilly-punk (see 1979′s Dragnet or Fall Heads Roll from 2005) and eccentric electronics (1990′s Extricate). This 30th full album since 1976 — does Smith get some kind of medal? — is chiefly of the first kind, a stabby, back-to-basics thrash with enough bile for a band a quarter their age and few adornments.
Bibio, Silver Wilkinson: English trailblazer Bibio rediscovers his footing on his latest LP. Brian Howe says:
Bibio’s career began with three introverted electro-acoustic albums for Mush Records that sounded like Boards of Canada gone Brit-folk, and his artistic breakthrough came when he moved to Warp for 2009′s Ambivalence Avenue, an unexpectedly bold album of jubilant glitch-soul, clever indie-pop and moody folk that triangulated an undreamt-of sweet spot between J Dilla, Yo La Tengo and Nick Drake. While Silver Wilkinson doesn’t scale the effortless heights of Ambivalence Avenue, it’s a path out of the wilderness that leads back to more generous, agreeable clearings.
MS MR, Secondhand Rapture: Buzzy New York duo offer a mesmerizing debut. Annie Zaleski says:
The theatrical “Salty Sweet” — with its tribal drums and overlapping harmonies — and the seductive, string-plucked murmur “BTSK” stand out, and the glassy piano-pop of “Twenty Seven” isn’t far behind. Max Hershenow’s warm, nuanced production is wistful without becoming consumed by nostalgia, familiar without feeling tired; his inventive appropriation of soul, electro, orchestral and hip-hop feels timeless.
The Dillinger Escape Plan, One of Us is the Killer: The fifth LP from one of the last genuinely dangerous experimental bands going. Jon Wiederhorn says:
The Dillinger Escape Plan’s fifth record, One of Us is the Killer, is a frazzling showcase of technical speed-prog, unrelenting post-hardcore barreling, near-industrial electrocution, swinging rock ‘n’ roll excursions and soulful pop forays. The basic techniques should be familiar to the band’s fans, but the group pushes the limits of its expansive sound further than ever.
Mark Lanegan & Duke Garwood, Black Pudding: Former Screaming Trees frontman and a London-based avant-bluesman combine American blues with more experimental sounds. Luke Turner says:
Black Pudding is an album that’s sparse in structure but immense in presence. “Pentecostal” conjures rich atmosphere with just guitar twangs, a shaker rhythm and Langean’s pitch-dark vocals painting vivid images: an albatross, a train, the eternal struggle between good and evil. “Mescalito,” with its arid drum-machine roll and bar-room backing vocal, would give a Nick Cave and Warren Ellis soundtrack a run for its jukebox dollars and cents. “Last Rung” is full of knackered, jazzy piano, and the eerie “Sphinx” sees Lanegan’s heavily-treated voice wobble as if through a heat haze.
Glenn Jones, My Garden State: The butter-smooth fingerpicker pens a sweet tribute to his family. Richard Gehr says:
New-school American Primitive guitarist Glenn Jones’s fifth solo album is an elegiac jewel. You may even discern the arc of a son’s bittersweet ruminations on his ailing mother and New Jersey motherland from the music alone, before taking in song titles or back-story, which sketch the contours of a sweetly autobiographical journey.
Standish/Carlyon, Deleted Scenes: Former members of Aussie band The Devastations explore new directions. Andy Beta says:
First single “Nono/Yoyo” finds Tom Carlyon’s guitar in Durutti Column mode, fragmenting and echoing around an 80 bpm snare as Conrad Standish mewls about the vagaries of love in his best Nu-Romantic falsetto. His voice is at its fragile best on “Gucci Mountain,” which mixes a drugged pace with a shimmering synth melody. And while “Industrial Resort” suggests smokestacks and rust belts, it chugs along like a lost Balearic classic. For the album’s sunny moments though, buzzing closer “2 5 1 1″ suggests not a summer jam but the dog days, made lethargic with humidity.
Brother JT, The Svelteness of Boogietude: John Terlesky’s craftiest album since breaking up the Original Sins in the early ’90s. Richard Gehr says:
Funky drum machine, squiggly synth lines, distorted vocals and sustained fuzzy guitars provide the bedrock for some pretty witty wordplay. Things begin to get weird with “Muffintop,” a slow-groove paean to fleshy surplus; JT returns to this topic a few tracks later in “Sweatpants,” a Zappa-esque slice of TMI-electrofunk that declares, “Life is hard enough, you need some wiggle room.”
R.E.M., Green (25h Anniversary Reissue) – R.E.M.’s big leap to Warner Bros., 25 years on. The record that brought us the goofy pop hit “Stand” and also the “Losing My Religion”-presaging mandolin lament “You Are The Everything.” Supplemented here with a bonus disc of the band in their live, constantly-touring prime, right before they all decided the road was too grueling and beat a retreat.
Cleaners From Venus, Cleaners From Venus Vol. 2 – Venerated little jangle-pop band, highly influential among current-day indie-pop bands, get their entire catalogue reissued via the ever-essential Captured Tracks.
Classixx, Hanging Gardens – Fun, sunshine-y, disco-pop stuff from hotly tipped L.A. duo. Nancy Whang of The Juan MacLean shows up for a vocal turn.
ADULT., The Way Things Fall – The long-running Detroit duo have perfected their sound a sour, gritty punk recasting of synth pop, complete with blankly pistoning techno drums and empty, arid space. This is a slightly more stream-lined version of this potent sound, which remains as intriguing as ever.
Snowden,No One In Control – The first Snowden record since 2006 (label troubles, not creative ones) finds Jordan Jeffares channeling his frustration into drifting, lovely synth-edged pop tunes, graced with his grey sigh of a singing voice atop it.
Pharmakon, Abandon – Brutal noise music delivered with performance-art lunatic flair by the 22-year-old NY native Margaret Chardiet. RIYL: Prurient, Throbbing Gristle, early Swans, ice picks, raw meat. Dark, dark, dark shit.
Public Service Broadcasting, Inform-Educate-Entertain – Fantastic concept behind this one – this London duo trawl through old film archives to set audio clips from time-forgotten pieces of footage – instructional videos, PSAs, propaganda films – and setting them to lightly propulsive electronic rock. Sad and oddly uplifting all at once.
The Handsome Family, Wilderness – The long-running duo return with a concept album about animals, overlaying each song with the distinct glum fatalism that they’ve made into a patent by now.
Pure X, Crawling Up The Stairs - These Austin guys have cultivated a certain syrup-slow beach music vibe – drawn-out, hallucinatory, slightly sick-sounding. The album title is well-chosen.
Kisses, Kids In L.A. – Coolly bumping little synth-pop nugget.
Pierre Boulez with the Cleveland Orchestra, Stravinsky: The Rite of Spring – In time to celebrate the piece’s 100th birthday, here is a rendition of this incandescent work, led by arguably the smartest and most sensitive conductor to ever shape the work: Pierre Boulez. Performed by the mighty Cleveland Orchestra.
Sage Francis, Personal Journals – The first official album by Sage Francis.
Ben Lee, Ayahuasca: Welcome To The Work – This is hilarious. Ben Lee is all into ayahuasca now, because of course he is, and he recorded an entire album celebrating its effects on his mind. The song titles are pretty indicative here.
The Blank Tapes, Vacation – Nicely chugging, low-stakes garage-pop from some guys who have been at it for awhile and never really gotten much shine.
The Boxcar Lilies, Sugar Shack – Dark and lovely traditional country.
Brian Eno x Nicolas Jaar x Grizzly Bear – Three names to make pretty much any living indie fan go “SQUEEE!” Not a full-length; actually a remix a piece by Jaar of one Eno tune and one Grizzly Bear tune.
New This Week: Primal Scream, The Fall, Bibio & More
Primal Scream, More Light The Primals’ tenth album is big, wild, valiant, occasionally ridiculous and up there with XTRMNTR – possibly even Screamadelica. Andrew Harrison celebrates the band’s most exhilarating release in more than a decade:
“From the first few moments of opening track ‘2013’ it’s clear this will be no trad-rock Riot City Blues. Holmes instals a circular, buzzing, raga-like motif and when the riff kicks in it’s played not on period Mick Taylor-style guitars but a skronking sax – a sax! – more reminiscent of Roxy Music in the glory of their madness. ‘River Of Pain’ summons up a serpentine, countrified vision of Massive Attack circa Mezzanine and then unfurls into a truly stupefying whirl of woozy free jazz and orchestral samples – some of the most bizarre and electrifying music the Scream have ever created.”
Mark Lanegan & Duke Garwood, Black Pudding Profligate collaborator Mark Lanegan teams up with London instrumentalist Duke Garwood on a wonderfully warm and evocative album of parched American blues. Luke Turner says:
“The finest tracks are the ones where the pair go the furthest into the sun-bleached yonder. “Thank You” is made of a swirling mellotron drone out of which piano notes and scrapes of violin emerge and disappear… Even in these jagged moments, though, there’s a sense of ease and confidence. Here’s hoping Lanegan and Garwood are just at the start of their journey along this road less traveled.”
The Fall, Re-Mit The band’s 30th studio set since 1976 proves there’s no Fall album like a new Fall album. Andrew Harrison says:
“Long-time Fall-watchers will know that the band’s work now oscillates between basic, bloody-minded rockabilly-punk (see 1979’s Dragnet or Fall Heads Roll from 2005) and eccentric electronics (1990’s Extricate). This is chiefly of the first kind, a stabby, back-to-basics thrash with enough bile for a band a quarter their age and few adornments.”
Samba Touré, Albala This shows the protégé of the late, great Ali Farka Touré – the godfather of Mali’s desert blues music – shaping up to be a towering figure in his own right. Chris Nickson writes:
“This is a wonderfully mature album, one where less is often more – a lesson Touré has absorbed from his mentor. On Albala, Samba has really come of age and created something warm, wise and deliciously melodic, his own desert blues.”
Bibio, Silver Wilkinson Stephen Wilkinson’s seventh album is a swoon-filled mix of crepuscular folk, twinkly pop and muscular electronica, featuring the gorgeous “À tout à L’heure” – a sonic summer breeze up there with the Isley Brothers’. Brian Howe says:
“One curious thing about the record is how long it seems to take to get going… It abruptly wakes up halfway through “Mirroring All”, when its reverb-brushed glide lunges into a whorled beat. Afterward, the folk material sounds fuller and richer (“Sycamore Silhouetting”), the pop more vibrant and catchy (“À tout à L’heure”). Juicy sped-up soul makes a fine showing in “You”, and and two muscular electronic tracks bring this slow-starting record to an exhilarating conclusion.”
Maya Jane Coles, Everything The nascent house superstar releases another glimpse of the gems on offer on her debut album, Comfort, out in July.
Dungeonesse, Dungeonesse This synthpop duo craft effervescent fantasy music that’s escapist in the best way. Barry Walters says:
“The duo may draw sonically from Gaga / Beyoncé-world, but they’re clearly outsiders: Wasner’s womanly country twang compliments the pair’s urbanities, suggesting a hypothetical boho big sis to Taylor Swift. In the glistening ballad “Wake Me Up”, she flits from a throaty Annie Lennox-like alto to an airy Joni Mitchell soprano as slo-mo synths sparkle and hum.”
Various Artists, High Voltage! Giant Steps & Flashpoints in 20th-Century Experimental & Electronic Sound Compiled by Kris Needs, this compilation honouring the forbearers of electronic music mixes avant-garde classical music (John Cage, Stockhausen), with musique concrète (Pierres Schaffer), pioneering synthesizer compositions (Herbert Eimert & Robert Beyer) and pop (Joe Meek). An investment worthy of anyone interested in the experiments of the first electronic sound scientists.
Primal Scream, More Light
Their best and most exhilarating album in more than a decade
It’s a tough old business, maintaining your credentials at the vanguard of out-there,
transgressive, us-against-The-Man rock ‘n’ roll when you’re into your fourth decade as a functioning band. Over the years, Primal Scream have often made their task harder by following the ambitious and the visionary with conservative regressions into rock ‘n’ roll retro. It started when they followed up 1991′s hallucinogenic rave soundtrack Screamadelica with the sluggish Stones impersonations on Give Out But Don’t Give Up in 1994. The spectre of another Great Leap Backwards is never far away.
This 10th outing, however, aims for the far-out — and surpasses its target by heroic margins. Co-produced by Belfast DJ and connoisseur soundtrack man David Holmes, More Light returns the Scream to the cosmic-futurist dance-rock of their Vanishing Point/XTRMNR days but turns up both the aggression and the psychedelia. It’s big, wild, valiant, occasionally ridiculous and possibly better than XTRMNTR — which puts More Light toe-to-toe with big old Screamadelica itself.
From the first few moments of opening track “2013″ it’s clear this will be no trad-rock Riot City Blues. Holmes installs a circular, buzzing, raga-like motif and when the riff kicks in it’s played not on period Mick Taylor-style guitars but a skronking sax — a sax! — more reminiscent of Roxy Music in the glory of their madness. “River Of Pain” summons up a serpentine, countrified vision of Massive Attack circa Mezzanine and then unfurls into a truly stupefying whirl of woozy free jazz and orchestral samples — some of the most bizarreand electrifying music the Scream have ever created. Even the returns to heads-down mötorikhead rock (“Elimination Blues,” “Hit Void”) and the slowies (“Tenement Kid,” “Relativity”) exhibit a questing sonic sensibility.
Some things remain the same, though. Bobby Gillespie is quick to detail the 21st century slaves, manipulated underclass, television propaganda and sundry other tribulations that mark his particular worldview. But there’s no denying the fetid energy and Sun Ra-meets-The Prodigy excitement here. They even round out this triumphant record by revisiting “Movin’ On Up” on the gospel-fuelled “It’s Alright, It’s OK” — a fitting finale for Primal Scream’s best and most exhilarating album in more than a decade.
Standish/Carlyon, Deleted Scenes
Members of The Devastations explore new directions
A decade ago, Melbourners Conrad Standish and Tom Carlyon comprised the frontline for the Nick Cave-indebted art-rock trio, The Devastations, releasing three noir-ish full-lengths and earning praise from The Birthday Party’s Roland S. Howard along the way. But by the time of their last studio album in 2007, drum machine pulses and dusky electric keyboards pointed toward new directions, which are explored now as the duo Standish/Carlyon. On their debut album, Deleted Scenes, those skittering but subtle beats are foregrounded and deliberate. First single “Nono/Yoyo” finds Carlyon’s guitar in Durutti Column mode, fragmenting and echoing around an 80 bpm snare as Standish mewls about the vagaries of love in his best Nu-Romantic falsetto. His voice is at its fragile best on “Gucci Mountain,” which mixes a drugged pace with a shimmering synth melody. And while “Industrial Resort” suggests smokestacks and rust belts, it chugs along like a lost Balearic classic. For the album’s sunny moments though, buzzing closer “2 5 1 1″ suggests not a summer jam but the dog days, made lethargic with humidity.
The Dillinger Escape Plan, One of Us is the Killer
A frazzling showcase of technical speed-prog and near-industrial electrocution
As a live act, the musically volatile Dillinger Escape Plan are one of the last genuinely dangerous experimental metal bands going. Vocalist Greg Puciato’s forehead-slashing barbarism goes beyond shock rock straight into self-loathing and guitarist Ben Weinman’s onstage collisions with amps and gear often result in severe bodily harm.
But while The Dillinger Escape Plan’s live show is a subversive celebration of chaos in motion, their albums — especially from 2007′s Ire Works onward — are meticulous and almost scientific, inventive explorations of the way various musical styles can alternately mesh and practically demolish one another. The Dillinger Escape Plan’s fifth record, One of Us is the Killer, is a frazzling showcase of technical speed-prog, unrelenting post-hardcore barreling, near-industrial electrocution, swinging rock ‘n’ roll excursions and soulful pop forays. The basic techniques should be familiar to the band’s fans, but the group pushes the limits of its expansive sound further than ever.
Indeed, some will find the Dillinger Escape Plan’s sonic schizophrenia too difficult, but for those with patience and open ears, repeat listens yield hidden rewards — like the syncopated beats that weave expertly through the Faith No More-style euphony of the verses of the title track. The rest of the composition is another story, riddled with blasting, dissonant guitars and a labyrinthine midsection. “Understanding Decay,” meanwhile, starts with a drum-and-bass beat and a barbed, sonically reconfigured riff that barely resembles a guitar. Then it’s full-steam ahead into a psycho-prog passage that mingles with catchy melodic vocals. Even when they employ infectious sing-alongs, they do so with a pernicious smirk, secure in the knowledge that whatever wondrous designs they build — like the jazz-pop section to rival Antonio Jobim in “Paranoia Sheets — they’re soon knock down in yet another torrent of inventive chaos.
Bibio, Silver Wilkinson
Rediscovering his footing
The English musician Stephen Wilkinson, who records as Bibio, has blazed the meandering creative trail of a true muse-chaser, leaving just enough dropped crumbs — detuned pastoral guitars, snippets of nature recordings, tape wobbles — for us to follow along. His career began with three introverted electro-acoustic albums for Mush Records that sounded like Boards of Canada gone Brit-folk, and his artistic breakthrough came when he moved to Warp for 2009′s Ambivalence Avenue, an unexpectedly bold album of jubilant glitch-soul, clever indie-pop and moody folk that triangulated an undreamt-of sweet spot between J Dilla, Yo La Tengo and Nick Drake.
But Bibio backslid on 2011′s frequently incomprehensible Mind Bokeh, which seemed unfocused rather than eclectic, and his reliable taste faltered (“Take Off Your Shirt” showed that while he could ably explore many different musical byways, the one leading from Cheap Trick to Free Energy was not among them). Happily, the producer rediscovers his footing on Silver Wilkinson. While it doesn’t scale the effortless heights of Ambivalence Avenue, it’s a path out of the wilderness that leads back to more generous, agreeable clearings.
One curious thing about the record is how long it seems to take to get going. The first two songs return to the crepuscular folk of Ambivalence Avenue, though neither is as haunting as “The Palm of Your Wave.” The submerged warble of “Wulf” harks back further, to early albums such as Fi. It makes for a long and vague entrance. The album abruptly wakes up halfway through “Mirroring All,” when its reverb-brushed glide lunges into a whorled beat. Afterward, the folk material sounds fuller and richer (“Sycamore Silhouetting”), the pop more vibrant and catchy (“À Tout À L’heure”). Juicy sped-up soul makes a fine showing in “You,” and two muscular electronic tracks bring this slow-starting record to an exhilarating conclusion.