2012 in Review: State of Independents

At the turn of the millennium, independent music in Britain appeared to be in a parlous state. Iconic labels such as Factory and Rough Trade had gone to the wall: Even idealistic indie stalwarts such as Mute and Creation were selling up to the majors. For a while, it looked as if the game was up.

But a little more than a decade on, and the music industry has been turned upside-down. There are more than 850 independent labels in Britain, and the Association of Independent Music (AIM) estimates their market share at 25 per cent and rising. And it’s not just a question of size: A raft of innovative, risk-taking imprints — like Stolen, Black Butter and Hospital Records — are releasing some of the most exciting and original music to come out of the sector since the heyday of post-punk and new wave.

“The indies are very vibrant, forward-looking and exciting right now,” says Alison Wenham, chief executive officer of AIM. “They are having a wonderful, wonderful time.”

As the majors continued to struggle in 2012, with the break-up of EMI symbolizing their malaise, independent music’s most commercial successes in 2012 were highly visible. Alt-J’s debut album, An Awesome Wave, on Infectious, scooped the Mercury Music Prize, and even Noel Gallagher re-embraced independence, releasing Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds on his own Sour Mash label.

Even more significant developments occurred at a cutting-edge level. As labels such as Domino, Bella Union and Mute — now proudly independent once more — went from strength to strength, specialist imprints such as Hyperdub, Black Butter and Brainfeeder continued to mine thrilling new talent, such as Laurel Halo, Actress and Rudimental.

So why has 2012 proved such a resurgent year for independent music? One reason is that unlike the monolithic majors, riddled by existential doubt, independents are agile, adaptable and, thanks to the options offered by Soundcloud and social media, no longer reliant on traditional media like Radio 1.

“We spend lots of time updating Facebook and Twitter,” says Olly Wood, founder of Black Butter, who won Best Small Label at AIM’s Independent Music Awards in October. “It’s good to really strongly brand the label online, and it helps our artists and fans feel like part of a family.”

Independents also benefit from being smaller, more efficient operations than the majors. The days of indie amateurism are very firmly over.

“Independent labels are more professional than ever,” says Tim Ingham, editor of UK trade magazine Music Week. “”They have fewer overheads so they can look after the pennies, which get reinvested in their music. They can set lower sales targets and still make money, taking the pressure off everyone.”

These lower expectations, together with the absence of any need to cram third-quarter release schedules, give independents far greater scope to take risks on challenging music. It is difficult to imagine Flying Lotus or Godspeed You! Black Emperor plying their trade on a major.

“The majors have always been short-term but they are now so near-term that everything feels force-fed,” says Wenham. “They have to get everything out so quickly and it’s not kind to artists and their creativity. The independents are far more creatively aligned with the sensibilities of artists.”

Black Butter’s Olly Wood agrees. “We haven’t got to rush records out to support a huge office full of staff in Kensington High Street. We put them out when they are ready.”

But breaking cutting-edge new talent — crucial as it is — is only one element of the independent sector’s success story in 2012. They have also successfully nurtured existing musical icons, says Wenham.

“There are independent companies who have been around 20 or 30 years and who have worked with certain artists for all of that time,” she says. “Artists like Tindersticks or The Blue Nile may not trouble the top end of the charts but they can still sell out venues and make fantastic new records. As can Björk, who virtually defines the principle of independence.”

It was unthinkable ten years ago, but in 2012 the independent music world is irrepressibly vibrant. Recognising that, the struggling majors are getting into the spirit of “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.”

“The majors are on the back foot,” says Wood. “They are starting to do funding deals with indies, so you can retain your independence while taking their cash to help to develop artists — which we are happy to do. I view Black Butter as a sandpit for artists to play in — and a lot of majors today want in to our sandpits.”

2012′s Overlooked Albums

The way we assemble our annual best-of list is this: Our editorial team creates a spreadsheet every January and then, over the course of the year, each of us adds to it albums that we love from month to month. And then, in November, we go through the list, album by album, argue it out and settle on an order each of us can live with. But even with a best-of list as long as ours, it’s inevitable that some albums are going to fall through the cracks. Here are some of our personal favorites of 2012 that just missed making the final cut.

2012′s Overlooked Albums

The way we assemble our annual best-of list is this: Our editorial team creates a spreadsheet every January and then, over the course of the year, each of us adds to it albums that we love from month to month. And then, in November, we go through the list, album by album, argue it out and settle on an order each of us can live with. But even with a best-of list as long as ours, it’s inevitable that some albums are going to fall through the cracks. Here are some of our personal favorites of 2012 that just missed making the final cut.

The Invisible, Rispah

It’s dangerous to draw simple connections between the life of an artist and the art that they make. But Rispah is named after The Invisible singer/guitarist Dave Okumu’s mother, who passed away early into sessions for the group’s second album, and this loss – and the pain, self-doubt and readjustment that followed – explain the bleak-to-the-bone mood that saturates the album.

“Generational”, the first song, opens with the words “This is serious,” Okumu’s voice sounding desolate, as though he’s caught in some past-midnight moment of self-examination. “I can’t sleep tonight,” he sings on “Lifeline”, over a hypnotic syncopated pulse, “because I’m so lonely.” It sounds less like a moment of self-pity than some chilling, existential realisation.

Even as instrumentals, Rispah’s tracks would resonate. The Mercury-nominated trio occupy a sweet spot between live performance and studio boffinry recalling Talk Talk in their imaginative blend of acoustic and electronic elements. The serrated samples and guitar jags of “Protection” are mesmerising, as is the tense interplay between syncopated, reverb-fogged guitar picking and programmed drums on “Generational”. The wintery melodies evoke a mood of turbulence and uncertainty, and are beautiful but – as on the dark twists and turns of “Surrender” – also possess dramatic muscle.

Okumu’s lyrics invest The Invisible’s burnished soundscapes with a deft emotional weight. The soulful ache of his vocals mine both his gloom and the hope that followed it – “What Happened” is a Jesu-esque hymnal, scored for humming synthesizers – to create a moving, haunting, and powerful set.

2012′s Weirdest New Genres

Remember when music could be neatly divided into genre bins? Those days are long gone. Nowadays, artists mix and match styles so indiscriminately you’d be forgiven for thinking traditional categories have become almost completely meaningless, and you’re no one until you’ve coined your own neologism. Just ask Meshuggah (djent) or Dave Nada (moombhaton).

2012 was the year that doomstep moved out of the shadows and K-pop became a global concern. Sharon O’Connell celebrates our favorite micro-genres to have emerged the past 12 months.

Astral House & Future-Funky

As post-house and dubstep continued to splinter and mutate, myriad micro-genres emerged in less time than it takes to make a new tumblr tag. Astral house blasted into the stratosphere, using the fractured and trippy styles of Hudson Mohawke and Rustie as its launch pad. London’s Becoming Real unleashed his Technicolor Solar Dreams/Neon Decay album, Manchester’s Lone his Galaxy Garden and the USA’s Oneohtrix Point Never his Playin’ Me, while erstwhile grime producer DVA ranged across techno, dubstep and nu-jazz with his cool melodic misfit, Pretty Ugly.

Brostep

Bass music for meatheads? Maybe, but there’s no denying that 2012 was the year the US take on dubstep became a low-end force to be reckoned with, thanks largely to five-times Grammy-nominated fan of the shaved undercut, Skrillex. Characterised by an almost comically over-the-top wobble, lethally slamming breakdowns and pitch-shifted vocals, brostep mostly resembles a monstrously excessive Justice, although Canadian producer Datsik combined grimy bass and twitchy beats with Euro-trance synths on his Vitamin D album. Leeds producer Rusko — one of the UK’s main brostep players — delivered his Songs LP, which shifted his head-banging bass sideways, to align it with dub’s Jamaican roots. Rusko’s collaborator Caspa also had the UK scene’s Croydon roots more in mind with his Not For The Playlist EP, while seeming to shrug his shoulders with “It Is What It Is”. Indeed it is.

Djent

Not, as the name might suggest, a small town in Belgium, but a metal micro-genre — heavy and progressive/industrial and onomatopoeically suggestive of the digitally processed power chords favoured by its practitioners. Djent dudes — and the bands are all (very) male – tend to sound like Swedish tech-metallers Meshuggah (who actually coined the term and dropped their Koloss this year) — playing dubstep. Djent began very much as an online, guitar-geek concern but began leaving boys’ bedrooms via the likes of Engel, Swedish djent/hip-hop hybridists, and Denmark’s Mnemic, who added Mnemisis to their thoroughly modern metal canon. Scandinavia doesn’t have the monopoly on djent, by any means: As Surfaces Align and Exotype are from Australia and Florida respectively, while TesseracT, Red Seas Fire and Hacktivist represent the UK.

Doomstep / Dubtronica

Taking Burial and Kode9′s muffled and grimy illbient soundscapes as their blueprint, a new generation of moody post-house producers tweaked it and made it their own. Manchester’s Andy Stott dropped his acclaimed Luxury Problems, which featured some unsettlingly scratchy electronica and the haunting vocals of his former piano teacher. Mixing deep dubstep with ambient drone and techno, Stott’s label mates Demdike Stare released the dank Elemental, while self-confessed Earth fanatics Raime released their Raime EP that fused industrial dubstep, minimal techno and electronic hauntology. Vessel’s Order Of Noise followed an equally compelling clank-and-wobble path, along with Italian producer Madteo’s seductively sullen three-track release, Recast. Actress stuck another compelling spoke in the genre wheel with his R.I.P, a more four-to-the-floor affair than previous records, but more richly textured and deeply introspective, too.

Drum ‘n’ Boogie

A broad church, running the gamut from Blawan to Untold, whose worshippers generally favored a twitchier, more minimalist techno interpretation of dubstep that showed its garage roots. In the case of Hessle Audio co-founder Pangaea, that didn’t exclude the odd (synthesized) orchestral interlude, either, as on his Release album. Pangaea’s compadre Pearson Sound typified the strand’s fondness for stressed-out, tachycardiac beats with his three-tracker Clutch / Underdog / Piston. Representing outside the UK were Milwaukee producer Lorn, with the oppressively corroded bass of his Ask The Dust LP and Holland’s Martyn who, after chasing serious club tunes with his second album, got back on his techno-informed dubstep horse with the Hello Darkness EP.

Hypnotronica

A noticeably more housed-up development of the ubiquitous chillwave of recent years, with the focus as much on the old-school, build-and-release pattern as on woozy, sun-kissed atmosphere. Top of the list of 2012′s hypnotronica high achievers was Barcelona’s fêted John Talabot, who released his euphoric and neo-Balearic Fin, while the Montreal-based Doldrums took off on a psychedelic glitch-pop tack with his Egypt EP, and young London-based producer Slime dropped his beatific, markedly s-l-o-w-e-r second EP, Increases II. Slime associates Vondelpark shifted well away from the witch-house tag with their textured and in-fact-not-at-all gothy “Dracula” track, an online taster of debut album Seabed, set for release in February 2013.

Intellipop

Indie pop with structural and lyrical smarts — shock! — reared its head well above the guitar parapet this year. Sunderland veterans Field Music saw their Plumb album nominated for the 2012 Mercury prize, although the gong was scooped up by young intellipop pretenders Alt-J, with their debut An Awesome Wave. The self-titled debut from London Can fans Django Django suggested a clattery and minimal update on The Beta Band, while Manchester’s Dutch Uncles made kook-pop waves by opting for piano, analogue synths and marimba over guitar on the clever and dead groovy “Fester,” the first single from their upcoming second album, due in January.

K-Pop

Tangentially, we have Justin Bieber to blame for the globe-ravaging virus that was “Gangnam Style,” the ersatz rap smash sung and danced by South Korean artist Psy — signed by Bieber’s manager, Scooter Braun to his own record label. Of course, Korea has been manufacturing its own slick and hyper-bright hybrid of electro/hip hop/R&B/pop for years, but it made serious inroads into Western consciousness in 2012, abetted by the peppy likes of Wonder Girls and their 2 Different Tears, the nine-strong Girls’ Generation and the first world tour by all-boy quintet BigBang.

Static House

A strand of deconstructed house and super-minimal techno that crackles and buzzes like a TV on the blink, but which may feature some or all of the following — astral jazz, illbient glitch, concrete noise and psychedelia, sometimes within the same confounding track. Chicago’s electronic iconoclast and Mathematics Recordings boss Jamal Moss is static house’s standard-bearer, Hieroglyphic Being representing the more out-there of his countless aliases. He drops a new album, Imaginary Landscapes in February 2013, sure to slay appreciators of HB’s So Much Noise To Be Heard. Along similar, if less extreme lines are fellow Chicagoan SvengalisGhost, whose Mind Control EP was a collage of ethereal/jagged, light/dark, upbeat/brooding and Berlin-based sonic shapeshifter Steven Warwick, who works as Heatsick and this year released his Déviation four-tracker.

Moreno and L’Orch First Moja-One, Sister Pili + 2

Husky-throated baritone singer Moreno (born Batambo Wendo Morris in 1955) was among the wave of Congolese musicians who relocated to Kenya during the 1970s to take advantage of Nairobi’s relatively modern recording studios and thriving club scene. Sister Pili + 2 consists of his wonderful 1983 album with the ever-changing (and redundantly-named, since “moja” means one in Swahili) group First Moja-One, augmented by a pair of tracks from a 1977 session with the group Bana Nzadi.

Jubilant lost gems of sizzling Congolese harmonies, guitar wizardry and snazzy four-on-the-floor, 140 bpm drumming (courtesy of the wonderfully named Lava Machine), Pili‘s four nine-minute tracks are exceptionally effective mood elevators. Each consists of a loping introductory section that eventually drops into a fast three-guitar seben section full of intricate patterns and witty musical asides. Moreno may lead the band, but it’s high-spirited lead guitarist Mokili Sesti (later part of the terrific Orchestre Virunga) who steals the show throughout. Moreno and his two backing singers croon mostly about women, presumably, in French, English, Lingala and Swahili. The title track specifically praises his Tanzanian model girlfriend Pili Mikendo Kassim with such terms of endearment as “You are my sunshine, Pili, let’s get it on.”

Moreno’s voice rumbles to the forefront of Sister Pili‘s “bonus” tracks, “Rehema-Piri” and a six-minute edit of “Teresia.” Rougher-edged than Moja-One, Bana Nzadi was another the many groups to which Moreno lent his distinctively soulful pipes throughout a career that ended with the 38-year-old’s death in 1993, not long after the release of his chart-topping “Vidonge Sitaki.”

Winterfylleth, The Threnody of Triumph

Manchester black metal quartet Winterfylleth combines folk and post-metal leanings with a streak of romantic nationalism and a fixation on early Anglo-Saxon history and poetry. The lyrics on their third album The Threnody of Triumph delve into Medieval traditions related to death and the afterlife. It’s probably just as well that they’re unintelligible though. All the real poetry is in their lovely, harsh music. Sometimes it sounds like sort of netherborn melodic hardcore. At other times a wisp of Celtic fiddle or some deep, droning vocals underscores the folk and experimental inspirations. Wolves in the Throne Room comparisons are appropriate, but Winterfylleth deserves credit for following their own woodsy muse.

Sale: ATO Records

Rodrigo y Gabriela have become unlikely stars, a pair of Mexican metal guitarists who reinvented themselves as wild flamenco players after moving to Ireland. They’ve carved an admirable niche for themselves, with fiery playing and adventurous ideas that draw heavily on their rock past. Area 52 takes that basic formula one step further, teaming the duo with a 13-piece Cuban orchestra for a fresh look at some of their older material that offers a vibrant, unusual union of Latin cultures, an imagined place where Mexico, Cuba and the sense of old Spanish culture swirl effortlessly together.

Opener “Santa Domingo” sets the tone for much of the album; beginning with a heart-pounding riff, the duo crank up the tension until there’s an explosion of brass, all of the elements powered by the punch of the wah-wah pedal – almost a trademark of the couple these days – before sprinting to a breathless finish. The album is deliberately brash, laced with incendiary guitar work (listen to the electric playing on “Hanuman,” for example), and Cuban rhythms making a loud, colourful wrapper around the songs.

But it’s not all relentless; the group injects plenty of light and shade, as on “Diablo Rojo,” where flute and guitar breathe softly together before spiralling through some intense, slick picking to a satisfying climax. Or “Logos,” with its delicate interplay between guitars and piano, the calm before the whirlwind of the two final cuts. Area 52 roars with Latin fire throughout, full of passion and sweat, a workout for all the senses. Yet at the same time, this re-imagination of old material, not matter how adventurously it’s done, feels like the end of a chapter. It’s as if Rodrigo and Gabriela had one final statement to make with these pieces before moving on to something fresh and different, a new phase in their career. And they’ve done it in spectacular fashion.

Brom, Krampus: The Yule Lord

Giving “Christmas spirit” a new meaning, Brom’s bold fantasy novel just might make you think differently about that familiar figure in red. Krampus opens on a desolate Christmas morning in a West Virginia trailer community. Struggling songwriter Jesse Walker is outside his home, drunk and depressed over losing his wife and young daughter to Dillard Deaton, the local police chief. He’s pointed a .38 down his throat, ready to make this his last Christmas, when he spots a bunch of small, devilish men chasing a man in a Santa suit. Moments later, a velvet sack drops from the sky and crashes through the roof of his trailer. Turns out, not only does the sack contain the dolls his daughter wants this year, but it will restore order to the dark Yule Lord, Krampus. As the story goes — and feel free to muffle the kids’ ears — Santa Claus imprisoned the Krampus, and this year, he and his men are back with a vengeance. If Jesse makes a deal with the Krampus, he might get his family back.

Brom has a talent for drawing dark shadows underneath beloved stories. With The Child Thief, the writer and illustrator added a touch of the macabre to J.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan. And while this tale of evil retribution appeals to horror fans, it’s grounded in a domestic drama that wouldn’t be out of place on the five o’clock news. Kirby Heyborne adds robust narration that recalls your favorite holiday stories, but with plenty of new twists.

Hundred Waters, Hundred Waters

Gainesville, Florida-based avant-folk outfit Hundred Waters defy easy definitions on their beguiling, absorbing and richly detailed debut album. They’ve toured with Skrillex and recorded for his OWSLA label, and Hundred Waters has an expensive-sounding attention to production value. But it’s cheap to sound expensive these days, and singer-percussionist Samantha Moss’s fleetly wandering vocals here, swathed in sinuous electronics, have more in common with those of Björk, Bat for Lashes or another recent tourmate, Julia Holter. Or a smokier-voiced Joanna Newsom: The twinkling synth tones and winding harmonies of “Boreal” belie a heroic narrative that lets its freak-folk flag. Hundred Waters run deep.

Pilgrim, Misery Wizard

The debut full-length by Rhode Island’s Pilgrim may be one of the most heralded doom-metal albums of the year (along with Pallbearer’s Sorrow and Extinction), but the members of Pilgrim are completely uninterested in the recent rise of hipster doom, which is probably why Misery Wizard sounds so authentically effective. Pilgrim’s apocalyptic tones are generated from piles of Lovecraft, some powerful weed and intensive study of the giants of the first two generations of sludge, Black Sabbath, Pentagram, Trouble Saint Vitus, Sleep and Electric Wizard. By never breaking above a bloody-kneed crawl (with the exception of the mid-paced “Adventurer”), Pilgrim’s lengthy, down-tuned songs maintain a genuine sense of despair and enough rhythmic variation to keep them captivating and transcend the artificial bleakness of many of their peers. When vocalist The Wizard emotes the melodic lines, “In solitude I lie alone/ In the void, a sweet release/ In darkness I can feel at peace” he sounds like he’s not play acting, he’s crying for catharsis, or at least some good SSRIs. But as the title implies, The Wizard’s misery is our gain. Just don’t let him near any sharp objects.

Bowerbirds, The Clearing

In “Overcome with Light,” Bowerbirds’ Phil Moore and Beth Tacular sing, “Yes, we had some hard work, but now it’s right.” Their lush third LP, The Clearing, is about unexpected challenges: Tacular’s near-death experience; the ending and rekindling of the couple’s relationship; building a home by hand. And despite all of that, they pulled through with their best work yet: clear, full instrumentation and a celebration of new beginnings.

Chris Cohen, Overgrown Path

While being in any band seems incredibly difficult, Chris Cohen likes a challenge: He’s played with Deerhoof, Haunted Grafitti and Cass McCombs, artists too chaotic, daunting or insular to really occupy indie rock’s center. It’s not surprising that his solo effort Overgrown Path sought retreat in rural Vermont. What is surprising is how it stands up to anything his prior gigs have done, a survey of the past four decades of jangle-pop unified by his Ray Davies-esque voice and the comfort of finding yourself through escape.

Maria Minerva, Will Happiness Find Me?

“I hate the idea of ‘gigs,’” Maria Minerva told eMusic earlier this year. “It’s boring…When I go out, I just want somebody to DJ from about 10 to 6.” Maybe that’s why Minerva’s second proper LP unfolds like a break-of-dawn set from one of her crate-digging 100% Silk compatriots. Caught in a K-hole where disco balls spin in time to handclaps, rubberized bass lines and glitter-dusted beats, it’s woozy and weightless — dance music meant for actual moon walking.

Actress, R.I.P.

With a sound that’s nearly as heady as its concept — “a conceptual arc taking in death, life, sleep and religion” — Actress’s third album burrows its way into your brain and stays there long after you hit stop. If 2012 was the Year of EDM, R.I.P. signals a return to Intelligent Dance Music. And not the bloodless kind that’s more concerned with plugins than an actual pulse. More like an elegantly designed surrogate for the album Aphex Twin’s been threatening to drop for more than a decade.

Lotus Plaza, Spooky Action at a Distance

That Lockett Pundt, he’ll sneak up on you. In Deerhunter, frontman Bradford Cox’s outsize personality makes him an easy lightning rod, but Pundt has played a hardly less electrifying role as the band’s guitarist. His first solo album as Lotus Plaza, 2009′s The Floodlight Collective, was woozy, winsome dream-pop that confirmed Pundt’s familiar gifts for ethereal sonic textures but only hinted at his growing strength as a songwriter. This follow-up is strikingly the work of the man who wrote “Desire Lines,” the rousing centerpiece of Deerhunter’s peak so far, 2010′s Halcyon Digest. Crystalline guitar arpeggios meet precise krautrock pulses, time-bending codas — and ear-catching ’60s pop melodies. Wistful stoners’ anthem “Monoliths” distills the album’s shoegaze-informed style most concisely, but equally essential non-album single “Come Back” best previews the mesmerizing yet propulsive live show. Proof soft-spoken daydreamers can pump their fists, too.

Aaron Embry, Tiny Prayers

The brother of actor Ethan Embry (Can’t Hardly Wait), Aaron Embry took his sweet time making his solo debut. The 36-year-old musician paid his dues as a sideman for an impressively diverse range of clients, including Daniel Lanois, Elliott Smith and Emmylou Harris. He toured as keyboard player with Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeroes and opened for Mumford & Sons earlier this year. Now he takes center stage on Tiny Prayers, which is showy in the least showy way possible. Striking a tone of folksy melancholy, Embry does a lot with just a few warmly familiar elements: gently plaintive vocals, keening harmonica wheezes, precisely plucked guitar and mandolin and flourishes of piano. On each song, he finds new ways to combine these instruments, constantly assigning them new roles in the production. Punctuated by distant piano chords, “No Go” possesses a stately ambience that recalls countrypolitan producer Owen Bradley, while a zig-zagging zither lends “When All Is Gone” its barely contained nervous energy. Graduating from side- to frontman, Embry has created an album that inventive yet intimate, bold yet eloquently soft-spoken.

Paloma Faith, Fall to Grace

Across the Atlantic, Paloma Faith is huge. Her debut, Do You Want the Truth or Something Beautiful?, established her as a formidable neo-soul singer, and she countered the inevitable comparisons to Adele and Amy Winehouse with a quick wit, a wry humor, and outrageously elaborate stage attire.

Fall to Grace, her second album but only her first to get a U.S. release, is best when those qualities come through. It’s a pretty straightforward break-up album, sad-hearted and self-possessed. However, songs like “Just Be” and “Beauty of the End” knowingly subvert the standard mope narrative, while “Agony” implies — well, states outright — that the pain is just as precious as the pleasure.

Fall to Grace fluidly and irreverently toggles between sturdy neo-soul and flamboyant neo-disco. The production sounds purposefully excessive, as though Faith and producer Nellee Hooper understand that bombast is a completely natural and sympathetic reaction to romantic despair. Fortunately, Faith possesses a voice much too big to get swallowed up by all the bluster; she’s expressive and emotive, eagerly amplifying every mannerism and tic as though matching her performance to the vivid colors and elaborate flourishes of her wardrobe. Her pipes will grab U.S. listeners’ attention, but Faith’s eccentricities truly distinguish her.

Missy Mazzoli, Song from the Uproar (The Lives and Deaths of Isabelle Eberhardt)

Young Brooklyn composer Missy Mazzoli’s exhilarating and ultimately heartbreaking Song from the Uproar contains traditional operatic elements — among them, romance, tragedy and cross-dressing. However, the story of the real-life Isabelle Eberhardt (1877-1904), who traveled nomadically through the mountains and deserts of North Africa dressed as a man, converted to Islam, and joined a secret Sufi brotherhood to struggle against French colonialism before perishing in a flash flood, strains against the bounds of belief. Does this tale demand three tidily arcing acts or a thousand and one nights?

Mazzoli’s solution is to concentrate on the heaviest emotional moments of Eberhardt’s journey in 15 songs linked by electronic sounds. Performed by the five-member Now Ensemble (clarinet, bass, electric guitar, piano, flute), four singers and the splendid mezzo-soprano Abigail Fischer as Eberhardt, Uproar splits the difference between opera and alt-rock. (Mazzoli’s all-female modern classical ensemble Victoire was a 2008 eMusic Selects pick.) Melodic and other epiphanies bubble up unexpectedly and dramatically from Mazzoli’s personal minimalist palette. These include the birdlike flute song of delight in “I Have Arrived,” the heady instrumental color wheel of “Oblivion Seekers,” and perhaps the opera’s real tragic climax, the two-part “Mektoub (It Is Written),” a lacerating threnody in which Eberhardt mourns the betrayal of her Algerian lover, singing “How quickly love evaporates / Leaving me a desert.” Not so much opera as distillation, Mazzoli’s version of Eberhardt’s short, memorable life is a marvel of compact complexity itself.

New This Week: Ke$ha, Memory Tapes & More

As 2012 winds down, so too do the number of weekly new releases. Here’s the few this week that are worth checking out.

Ke$ha, Warrior: Here are a few important facts: 1. I love Ke$ha and 2. I am apparently not alone. There has been a noticeable uptick in the number of Ke$ha-friendly pieces appearing in places like The Atlantic and the New York Times, and with good reason. Ke$ha is genuinely cannier and funnier than most pop stars and is fully, 400% in-on-the-joke (she cites Jay Reatard, the Pixies and Sonic Youth among favorite artists and speaks about them enough to prove she’s not bluffing). That said, despite the fact that it features cameos from Iggy Pop and Julian and Fab from the Strokes, Warrior is not the rock record the mighty K had been promising. Instead, to quote Barry Walters:

“I’m sorry but I am just not sorry” is but one of many Ke$ha-isms on parade in Warrior, her second and against-all-odds excellent album. If you’re not favorably disposed to stadium-sized Europop synth riffs and beats, you might not immediately come to the same conclusion: An acoustic guitar opening on “Crazy Kids” and some patches where the drums drop out for a few dubstep diversions only partially disguise the fact that the first six tracks have more or less the same BPMs, same party-like-it’s-the-last-night-of-our-lives desperation, same Auto-tuned choruses alternating with suburban sass-rapped verses, and same swag of her Animal debut and Cannibal EP ramped up one woo-hoo notch higher. As her 100 percent-OTT-in-an-almost-John-Waters-kinda-way video for “Die Young” proves — complete with upside down crosses and Illuminati semiotics — Sebert takes dance-pop cacophony to a new level of blatancy. Complaining that she’s crass is like suggesting that the Ramones should’ve used a fourth chord.

Memory Tapes, Grace/Confusion: For those not as interested in taking a ride in Ke$ha’s Gold Trans Am, there’s the beautiful new record from Memory Tapes. Annie Zaleski says:

Grace/Confusion distinguishes itself in Memory Tapes’ catalog because of its sophisticated arrangements, which deftly merge dense musical ideas and wild mood swings. “Thru The Field,” on which Hawk sounds uncannily like Of Montreal’s Kevin Barnes, boasts humming keyboards and abstract crowd noise before adding layers of Depeche Mode-style accents, a flurry of strident guitars and a mournful instrumental coda. And “Sheila” stitches together brief swatches of sound — Fleetwood Mac-esque pastoral folk, debauched disco, lonely solo piano and zippered funk, among others — to create a surprisingly cohesive narrative tinged with increasing amounts of regret and loneliness.

Wiz Khalifa, O.N.I.C.F: Second album from last year’s breakout rapper is full hazy, woozy synths, stuttering tempos and laid-back rhymes about weed and ladies. In other words, it is a Wiz Khalifa record.

Smashing Pumpkins, Mellon Collie & the Infinite Sadness Reissue: The record on which Billy Corgan fully realized all of his grandiose impulses in a way that was actually enjoyable to listen to. “Tonight, Tonight” and “1979″ are unstoppable. No bonus material here, just the album, all cleaned up for the digital age.

Blissed Out Fatalists, s/t: This album came out in 1987 to little fanfare, but if you didn’t know any better, you’d think it was recorded last week. Doomy little record featuring members of Blue Daisies. Grizzled guitar and real stern, imposing vocals make this perfect lights-out listening. This one is on Body Double, a new imprint of Captured Tracks focused on reissuing albums like this. To that point…

Half Church, 1980 – 1986: Another one from Body Double, this international band (they ping-ponged from the UK to California and back again) captures the same dour, doomy mood of other pre-New Order Factory Records bands like Stockholm Monsters and (early) Section 25.

The Jayhawks, Music from the North Country: Another anthology, but this one from a more familiar source. This one came out in 2009 and gathers up some of the band’s best moments.

Dungeonesse, “Drive You Crazy”: Dungeonesse is Jenn from Wye Oak getting her pop groove on. Her smoky voice sounds fantastic bouncing between these limber dance beats.