eMusic’s Holiday Crowd-Pleasers

The year was 1968, and superstar trumpeter Herb Alpert rode higher than ever with his chart-topping rendition of Burt Bacharach and Hal David's devastatingly shy "This Guy's in Love With You." So Alpert, a Jew, donned a fake Santa beard and applied the equally ersatz Latin sparkle of his Tijuana Brass to a campy collection of Christmas classics where nearly every song sounds like his hit "Spanish Flea." This is a good thing! West Coast jazz pioneer Shorty Rogers swings by with a studio choir to hang some vocal tinsel on Alpert's delightfully garish tree: Check how his serene choral interludes in "My Favorite Things" contrast with Alpert's holiday shopper bustle. The very year, the horn man couldn't get a hit, and wouldn't for another decade. Who says ol 'Saint Nick doesn't have a vindictive streak?

New This Week: Sufjan Stevens, Jim Jarmusch & More

Sufjan Stevens, Silver & Gold While Sufjan Stevens will probably never finish his one-album-for-every-state project (only 48 to go!), his holiday-music series seems unstoppable. Silver & Gold: Songs for Christmas Vols. 6-10 collects his last five Christmas EPs, packed with lovingly-rendered standards and cheerful, often baffling originals. Patrick Rapa unwraps the box:

“Christmas Unicorn” is insane. It’s mesmerizing. It’s 13 minutes long and narrated by a mournful (and a bit deranged) mythical creature. Strains of Joy Division’s “Love Will tear Us Apart” are mixed into some lush orchestral maneuvers, piling on the drama… the unicorn has some grievances, man.”

Uncle Acid and the Deadbeats, Blood Lust Last year’s vinyl-only album – which now goes for around £700 – finally gets a digital release courtesy of Rise Above Records, before a new album due in March. Uncle Acid is as close as it’s possible to get to Seventies-era Ozzy Osbourne without actually biting the head off a bat, and this is the greatest Sabbath album you’ve never heard: a psyche/doom behemoth with a mesmerising vibrational pull. Recommended.

Jim Jarmusch, The Mystery of Heaven The indie film-maker teams up with the lutist Juzef Van Wissem and Tilda Swinton for an album that sounds like the very definition of ‘arthouse’. Jayson Green reviews:

“Wissem’s lute playing is extraordinarily sensitive; every perfectly sculpted note lands like a raindrop on your forehead. Jarmusch, meanwhile, defaces the sound’s placid surface with an endless progression of feedback waves… As for  Tilda, consider her appearance a bit of Jarmusch’s master casting.”

Prince Rama, Top Ten Hits of the End of the World Brooklyn duo Prince Rama deliver a concept album about the apocalypse, no less. The idea is that Top Ten Hits of the End of the World are the ten most popular songs on the last day on Earth, written and performed not by band members Taraka and Nimai Larson, but by various musical alter egos. Laura Studarus writes:

“What the complex mission statement ultimately translates to is a headlong dive into the sisters’ hedonistic brand of dance music… A sprawling beast that never once wants for enthusiasm, Top Ten Hits of the End of the World makes the demise of mankind sound not just palatable, but downright danceable.”

Fanga & Maalem Abdullah Guinea, Fangnawa Experience Fanga are a French collective who play hip-hop, Afrobeat and highlife; “gnawa” is a trance-inducing North African spiritual ceremony set to mystical Islamic music and African rhythms.  Fangnawa Experience, then, is a collision of these two worlds, featuring Moroccan music legend Maalem Abdullah Guinea. Ben Beaumont-Thomas reviews:

“The vocals take in elegant chanting alongside brusque declarations. “Kelen” features a hypnotically repeated vocal line that places it somewhere between the mosque and the dancefloor…  With most tracks drifting towards the 10-minute mark, the Fangnawa Experience becomes a truly immersive one.”

Pop Levi, Medicine Liverpool’s future-glam-rocker – who you might remember as Ninja Tune’s Super Numeri – says this sugar-fueled album was “recorded by a different version of me in another dimension, then transmitted to this version of me during prolonged isolation tank sessions.” It’s as fun as it sounds.

Jah Wobble and Keith Levene, Yin & Yang Two of PiL’s founding members follow up their Metal Box in Dub EP with an album that takes in ’70s psychedelia, dub and Southern Baptist-flavoured R&B.

Tiga, Non-Stop Breathless collection of house-driven floor-fillers from the Turbo Records boss, featuring Kindness,  Audion, Auntie Flo, Panda Bear and Factory Floor.

Various Artists, Sadar Bahar presents Soul In The Hole The legendary Chicago soul, funk and disco DJ digs through the crates for this compilation of unearthed gems and rare treasures.

The Weeknd, Trilogy

Sex and drugs have long been both an implicit and explicit topic of R&B even before they euphemistically called it rock ‘n’ roll. But sex and drugs — particularly sex on drugs, and especially sex as a drug — has never before so extensively and exclusively defined a new singer-songwriter’s sonic palate the way it has for Toronto’s Abel Tesfaye aka The Weeknd, the 22-year-old shooting star who co-wrote and sang on parts of Drake’s Take Care. Self-released last year under the name The Weeknd as three separate mix tapes House of Balloons, Thursday and Echoes of Silence and here presented as his major-label debut, remastered with three new tracks, Tesfaye’s Trilogy features 30 songs almost solely devoted to conjuring up the hallucinatory sights, sounds and spirit of psychotropic sport-fucking binges, as well as their ensuing physical and emotional fallout.

Over the course of nearly 160 minutes, Tesfaye consumes enough weed, coke, X, booze and cough medicine cocktails to kill a small army while boning enough strippers, pole dancers, groupies and slumming debutantes to breed a new one. Singing “We don’t need no protection,” in the first few moments of the opening track “High For This,” Tesfaye lets us know upfront that he’ll say anything to help him get erected. Rarely is love mentioned — this is its void, and often it’s nasty. On “The Knowing,” he refuses to wash his junk so his partner can taste where he’s been. In “The Party & the After Party,” he nicknames his new coke-addled consort Rudolph and intimates that if she stops giving him head, “I might get violent.” He freely admits in “Coming Down” that he uses his girlfriend like a drug to pick him back up again from his post-high comedown, but when gold diggers use his home or his fame in “Twenty Eight” and “Next,” he gets judgmental. Tesfaye in real life could be a nice guy, but the persona he projects is most certainly is not.

If he had ordinary lyrical talents or sang with the machoness his control-fixated mentality implies, or set his tales of conquest and vice to generic beats, the Weeknd would be little more than aural porn. But Tesfaye is a finely detailed storyteller with an eerie, ethereal voice that suggests Michael Jackson’s wounded inner child, and his multi-instrumentalist producers Doc McKinney (formerly half of Esthero) and Illangelo create a suitably soporific netherworld soundtrack that mixes rhythm-box R&B with slo-mo indie-rock, muted metal, and blunted EDM. Instead of the usual hip-hop, the Weeknd samples and quotes Siouxsie & the Banshees, Beach House, Cocteau Twins, Thieves Like Us, Martina Topley-Bird, France Gall, Cults and Georgia Ann Muldrow.

Despite those varied sources, the results offer little light or variation, and the sameness suits his dead-end illusions; only rarely does the career success he starts to enjoy toward the trilogy’s conclusion suggest a way out, and even that’s plagued by opportunists. The final song, “Till Dawn (Here Comes the Sun),” one of three newly recorded bonus tracks, is the only one that suggests something greater than despair. Lyrically, he’s all but convinced himself that his down-low affair with a previously committed woman will resolve in disaster, but the music rises to evoke buried hopes; here, at least, it dreams where he cannot.

Brian Eno, LUX

Well it’s about goddamn time. After years of padding his already-ridiculous resume — dude’s down with Bowie, Bono and Byrne, not to mention Robert Fripp, Cluster and Coldplay — with such experimental flourishes as a shambolic poetry slam (Drums Between the Bells) and “film manipulations” for Daníel Bjarnason and Ben Frost (Music For Solaris), Brian Eno has finally given his fans what they’ve wanted all along: Music For Airports! Part Deux. Or LUX for short, a misleading title since there’s nothing luxurious about his first proper solo LP since 2005′s Another Day on Earth. Instead, the album stretches four wide-span tracks over 76 minimal, slow-moving minutes, which makes sense when you consider they were originally written for an Italian art installation where a sound system randomly played sustained chords, phantom voices and the plink, plop and plunk of a disembodied piano depending on where you walked within the gallery space. Being trapped on the moon or inside the glass cage of a snow globe must feel, and sound, a lot like this.

eMusic’s Holiday Essentials

While this may be the only album on this list that doesn't deserve the phrase "masterpiece," it's far from a throwaway. Anytime arranger — conductor Gordon Jenkins wasn't being epically sad (as on Where Are You?, When No One Cares and All Alone) or "serious" (as on September of My Years) he could be downright corny. Not, as they say on Seinfeld, that there's anything wrong with that. This 1957 holiday album (his second actually — he'd released a Christmas collection for Columbia in 1948) brought out the delightfully corny side of Sinatra — never more enjoyably than on the opener, Jenkins's gleefully dopey mock-doo-wop re-do of "Jingle Bells." Sinatra and Jenkins make beautiful music especially on those very touching "sad" Christmas songs, the ones about being separated from your loved ones during the holiday, like "I'll Be Home For Christmas" and "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas." This is what it's like, you imagine, to spend Christmas in a bar, hanging your stockings over a rack of Jack Daniels.

10 of the Best: Daniel Miller’s eMusic Picks

2012 has been a brilliant year for independent label Mute. As well as acclaimed releases from Liars, Can, Cold Specks, Yeasayer, Carter Tutti Void and Beth Jeans Houghton, label boss Daniel Miller was recently awarded the Association of Independent Music’s statuette for Pioneer, recognition for the toweringly influential catalog he has built up over almost 35 years. As home to artists as diverse as Depeche Mode, Erasure and Laibach, Mute has always felt like a true label of love, celebrating the most exciting, forward-thinking music around. We invited Daniel Miller to sit in the editor’s chair at eMusic for a site takeover all this week. We interviewed two of his favorite new artists of 2012: Diamond Version and Land Observations. See his favorite albums on eMusic (below); and read our exclusive interview with Miller here.

Fanga & Maâlem Abdallah Guinéa, Fangnawa Experience

Fanga are a French collective who play a mix of hip-hop, Afrobeat and highlife; “gnawa” is a trance-inducing North African spiritual ceremony set to mystical Islamic music and indigenous African rhythms. Fangnawa Experience, then, is a collision of these two worlds, featuring Moroccan music legend Maâlem Abdallah Guinéa (Maâlem means “master musician”).

Given the dizzying richness of this source material, it’s disappointing that the album opens with “Noble Tree,” a track that sounds like an Afrobeat pastiche, and shows the influence of Fanga’s old collaborators Fela Kuti and Tony Allen. From then on, though, African polyrhythms and horns are folded into a more nuanced hybrid, combining the delicacy of North African desert blues with clattering percussion and funk guitar. Guinéa plays beautiful lines on the gimbri, a three-stringed lute that lends a contemplative hue to even the wild organ and brass workout of “Gnawi.”

The vocals take in elegant chanting alongside brusque declarations. “Kelen” features a hypnotically repeated vocal line that places it somewhere between the mosque and the dancefloor, while rapper Korbo gives “Wouarri” a memorable charisma, before the track slips into a beautifully psychedelic electric guitar solo. The production sounds big enough for a soundsystem, without being too slick; the percussion-heavy “Dounya” could almost be a field recording. With most tracks drifting towards the 10-minute mark, the Fangnawa Experience becomes a truly immersive one.

Interview: Daniel Miller

[2012 has been a brilliant year for independent label Mute. As well as acclaimed releases from Liars, Can, Cold Specks, and Beth Jeans Houghton, label boss Daniel Miller was recently awarded the Association of Independent Music's statuette for Pioneer, recognition for the toweringly influential catalog he has built up over almost 35 years. As home to artists as diverse as Depeche Mode, Erasure and Laibach, Mute has always felt like a true label of love, celebrating the most exciting, forward-thinking music around. We invited Daniel Miller to sit in the editor's chair at eMusic for a site takeover all this week. We interviewed two of his favorite new artists of 2012: Diamond Version and Land Observations. See Miller's favorite albums on eMusic; and read our exclusive interview with Miller below. — Ed.]

Sharon O’Connell spoke with Daniel Miller about his musical awakening via The Normal, his role in nurturing the nascent UK electronic music scene and how his once small, still determinedly individualistic label grew to be a UK heavyweight that also enjoys enormous international clout.

How did you come to record an electronic debut single (“TVOD/Warm Leatherette”) as The Normal when, in 1978, everybody else was into punk?

I was very influenced by punk, but musically it didn’t excite me. The initial burst of energy and laying waste of prog and everything before it was exciting, but it wasn’t going far as a genre. I’d been very interested in electronic music as a fan of people like Kraftwerk and Neu!. I was in bands at school, like everybody else, and I gravitated toward the three other worst musicians in the class, but we enjoyed it. Even though I loved music beyond anything else, I couldn’t see a way of connecting with it on a professional basis.

What was the appeal of the synthesizer over the guitar?

Up until about 1977, synthesizers were really expensive, and way out of the reach of most people, but as cheaper Japanese synthesizers came on the market, they became accessible to people like me. And they were much easier to play than a guitar. You didn’t have to learn chords or anything boring like that — it was more about messing around on it until you created a sound you thought was really good. I bought a second-hand Korg 700-S, so there was no manual with it, but it was pretty clear what the switches and buttons did.

“Warm Leatherette” has been covered by the likes of Grace Jones, Duran Duran and Laibach. What do you make of the latter’s recent version?

I think it’s great. It’s very funny, as you’d expect it to be, and it’s made with great passion. I was very pleased when I heard it.

Are you surprised by that song’s longevity?

In those days, the minimum number of records you could press was 500, and my expectation was that I’d give some to my close friends and family and that nobody else would be interested, so the rest would be sitting under my bed forever. The fact that people are still listening to “Warm Leatherette” and covering it is a great surprise.

What made you decide to move from recording your own music to establishing a label?

My expectations of what my first single would do were very low, so the fact that people seemed to like it and it got really nice reviews in the press I found weird. I couldn’t quite believe what was going on. I never planned to start a record label, but all of a sudden there seemed to be these opportunities to avoid doing any real work. Savage Pencil [nee Edwin Pouncey] was the cartoonist at NME at the time and he introduced me to Frank Tovey [aka Fad Gadget]. I heard his demos and was immediately taken with them. I felt it was something I could really relate to, so I said, “Let’s put a single out and see what happens.” And that was the start of the label.

Why did you focus on electronic music in Mute’s early days?

After punk, the new wave of electronic music was just starting — The Human League and Cabaret Voltaire had released their first singles, Throbbing Gristle had released a single and an album — and people were really suspicious of it. So I was a bit of an evangelist, really. I thought electronic music was the next logical step. A synth was no longer an elitist instrument, and that was an important point. You didn’t have to be a musician; if you had good ideas, you could make music out of electronics.

One of Mute’s distinguishing features now is the stylistic diversity of its roster. How did that develop?

I saw The Birthday Party, and although they were conventional in terms of their line-up, they had nothing to do with being a rock band. I was just completely blown away by them, and I think that helped me stop being so purist. I realized that although I was very interested in electronic music — and still am — what I was really interested in was unique artists, people who were creative and could have an impact on others. I felt that there was a bigger picture that I wanted to engage with.

Have there been artists you were keen to sign to Mute, but failed to?

There are acts we tried to sign but for various reasons weren’t able to. We were very interested in Bon Iver, but at that point we were part of EMI and they had put a 100 percent freeze on signing. I remember fighting very hard for Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Klaxons, but we didn’t succeed with either. Daft Punk, too…but they were all a long time ago. There’s been nothing recently, in fact.

How hands-on are you these days in terms of A&R and studio input?

I’m out a lot, but I’m not out every night. But I have a really good A&R team who, between them, have very broad taste. I do the final A&R sign-off, because of course ultimately I’m going to get involved. We always think long-term with our artists — it’s not just about the next record. I’m engaged to a greater or lesser extent in the studio, depending on how closely involved I am with the artist and what their needs are. I don’t really ever step in unless somebody’s lost their way, but I do usually end up putting my oar in. And yes, I do like being in the studio.

You’re about to receive the 2012 AIM Award for Pioneer. What does this kind of recognition mean to you?

There are a lot of people in that community I respect and know very well, so the award is very flattering. I do avoid looking back as much as possible, because I think if you start doing that, you lose it. As long as pioneer doesn’t mean I’m past it, that’s okay!

Interview: Diamond Version

[2012 has been a brilliant year for independent label Mute. As well as acclaimed releases from Liars, Can, Cold Specks, and Beth Jeans Houghton, label boss Daniel Miller was recently awarded the Association of Independent Music's statuette for Pioneer, recognition for the toweringly influential catalog he has built up over almost 35 years. As home to artists as diverse as Depeche Mode, Erasure and Laibach, Mute has always felt like a true label of love, celebrating the most exciting, forward-thinking music around. We invited Daniel Miller to sit in the editor's chair at eMusic for a site takeover all this week. We interviewed two of his favorite new artists of 2012: Diamond Version (below) and Land Observations. See Miller's favorite albums on eMusic here; and read our exclusive interview with Miller here. — Ed.]

At the Short Circuit Electronic Music Festival in London in May 2012, Mute joined forces with the Berlin-based electronic label Raster-Noton to create a “sound halo” — looped recordings by artists from both labels — that was broadcast night and day in the Roundhouse venue. Mute boss Daniel Miller suggested to Raster-Noto founders Carsten Nikolai and Olaf Bender that they pair up for a proper project that he’d release, and Diamond Version was born.

“It was fantastic to bridge these two labels that are different in age but brothers in mind,” says Nikolai, who records under the name Alva-Noto; Bender records as Byetone. Separately, they are known for their sonic minimalism — Nikolai has made five albums with Ryuichi Sakamoto that explore piano and ambient textures — but together, they’ve made an EP of power electronics that Miller says is one of his favourite releases of 2012.

Diamond Version was launched with a YouTube “manifesto” of de-contextualised corporate slogans such as “I’m lovin’ it” and “How big can you dream?” and song titles include “Empowering Change.”

Luke Turner caught up with Diamond Version to ask about why they’ve harnessed corporate slogans to stern electronics, and about working with their hero Daniel Miller.

Has Mute influenced you as artists?

Olaf Bender: We were big fans of Mute in the ’80s. We met Daniel [Miller] and became friends. I have so much respect for him. He’s a real music fan, and has always been really interested in what we do.

One of the interesting things about the label is how it embraces both pop and avant-garde, releasing Erasure one moment, Einsturzende Neubauten the next. Is Diamond Version also about breaking down perceptions of pop?

Carsten Nikolai: The topic of pop music is always something that flows around us. But when we say pop music we mean something else. For us, pop music bridges people who you would consider underground or experimental but can [also] reach a wider audience. Nick Cave makes pop songs. I consider songs by Laibach or Einstürzende Neubauten pop songs, very serious pop songs. This is music that is not going to go into the pop charts, but it is still influential. It is give and take.

Which of you brings the pop element to Diamond Version?

Nikolai: Olaf is not so afraid of throwing in a rock or pop beat, then you tune it a certain way so it doesn’t sound like it.

Bender: I was a New Romantic for a short time, [and] I want to show this in the music. Popular music is about energy. What you had in old shamanic music is all here today, in new high-level production. Rhythmically and structurally, you are not totally free — it stays in a tradition of rock ‘n’ roll, of blues. I want to follow this. I don’t want to do a pastiche or yesterday’s music, but I feel that I’m in that tradition.

Diamond Version would also sound great in a club…

Bender: I have a bit more of a club background. Techno is physical, a body language. I am always looking for a shamanic energy. Carsten is from a fine-art background, so he thinks more conceptually. I am not very good at concepts and am more connected to emotions. I really like Carsten’s distance. In another way, maybe I’m a bit more connected to the heart, which is not so easy for Carsten. [Laughs.]

What’s the significance of the sloganistic song titles like “Science For A Better Life” and “Empowering Change”? Did you make them up?

Nikolai: When you go anywhere in the world you’re constantly exposed to advertisements. You go online and there’s nothing without advertisements. We’re interested in this idea of building identities. Olaf worked as a graphic designer in the past, and we are very interested in logos, identities and corporate identities. We collected slogans together when we made the Diamond Version mission statement. This was the very first, let us say, birth sign of Diamond Version. We showed it to Daniel and he thought it was brilliant. In this concentration, the slogans produce something really weird, something indescribable, something that is almost hilarious, this brutal world dominated by these ideas.

Is Diamond Version political, then?

Nikolai: I would be very scared of being politically in the foreground. Of course there is a criticism, of course there is a strong meaning, but we’re not pushing this strongly. We want to keep a humorous playfulness. We didn’t want a project where we got trapped. We wanted it to have a meaning but at the same time be communicative, open, fun for both of us and hopefully the audience too.

Interview: Jon Irabagon

Jon Irabagon is a relentlessly original, genre-defying saxophonist and composer. His jazz chops are strong enough to have captured the Thelonious Monk International Jazz Competition in 2008 — the most prestigious award that can be bestowed on a young musician in that field — yet he’s also a member of both the pugnacious deconstructionist jazz group Mostly Other People Do The Killing, and the trad-jazz swing band the Hot Club of Detroit. He plays with jazz luminaries like trumpeter Dave Douglas and has purloined Stan Getz’s old rhythm section for his sidemen, but he’s also has put out two records of unremitting skronk entitled I Don’t Hear Nothing But The Blues, the latter with grindcore and black metal guitarist Mick Barr from Orthrelm and Krallice.

Irabagon kicked off his own Irabbagast Records label with two releases — the collaboration with Barr (and drummer Mike Pride) and the stylistically-sprawling second effort from his band Outright!

eMusic’s Britt Robson caught up with Irabagon at his home in New York in October.

Your taste and activity in music is so broad, I’m wondering what you listened to growing up. Did you have any swoons over bands during your formative years?

It’s funny, my parents would go through different phases of popular music at the time. They’d pick one radio station for a couple months, then switch to another. When I was really young, there was this easy-listening phase, this elevator music. When I was playing video games, I remember they switched over to oldies and then country. I remember listening for some songs that had sax on them — especially on the oldies station. I think it eventually comes down to family and how supportive they are. My parents were very encouraging, and some of my aunts and uncles played music.

And it helps to have friends who like music. I’d go to someone’s house in the early ’90s and listen to Nirvana and Pearl Jam, but another friend was into NWA, and of course everyone heard Michael Jackson. Later I was with people who were organizing jazz ensembles. I didn’t come to jazz until I was in high school. Then I had a great jazz band instructor who told me, “If you play sax, check out Cannonball Adderley.”

Then it became a snowball. Listening to Cannonball took me to Charlie Parker and then in college it took me to Steve Coleman, which took me to Anthony Braxton. I read that Braxton likes the guys in AACM, so I started listening to them, which took me to Evan Parker. It all snowballs. If you’re listening to Coltrane, someone will tell you about Rollins and that leads you to Wayne Shorter. Meanwhile friends listening to a bunch of other music say, “You have to check this out,” and that leads to snowballs in a different direction, and it keeps growing.

What is your attitude toward people making distinctions about the way genres or types of music should be defined?

It is interesting to me, because of this whole discussion about jazz as Black American music, and what is or isn’t jazz. There are very smart and opinionated people who think those kinds of things have implications. I can respect that and see where they’re coming from, and I’m not trying to subvert things — I just get way into different types of music. My love of Cannonball Adderley is just as sincere as my love for the Brazilian music of Caetano Veloso that I discovered when I was in this Brazilian band from South Harlem. They had all these complicated chord changes, not just from Veloso but from [Antonio Carlos] Jobim. The best way for me to learn was to listen and transcribe all these Caetano Veloso tunes the way I listened and transcribed the Cannonball tunes. So for me it is not about genres, it is about putting in the time with the music and discovering that you love it.

What about those wild improvisational records you title I Don’t Hear Nothing But The Blues, which mix metal, punk, jazz, blues and noise?

That’s a different thing. That’s a result of [drummer] Mike [Pride] and I being good friends and getting together every Wednesday night just to play and improvise. At first there were bass guitarists, but they kept bailing and after a while it was just the two of us. Then when he was about to go on tour, we figured we should try to record. We tried a couple of things and finally came up with this long-form improvisation. It wasn’t influenced by Interstellar Space, it was more [us] seeing what would happen if we stuck with one motif for one continuous 40- to 50-minute piece.

For the second volume, Mike had known Mick Barr for a long time but I didn’t. Then Hank Shteamer gave our album a really glowing review in Time Out New York, and said it reminded him of Orthelm. So I got the Orthelm album and I could really see what he was talking about, except there was more power from this metal guitarist. I had to find out who this guy was. It so happens that the next year at the Moers Festival in Germany, I was playing with [drummer] Barry Altschul on the material from our Foxy album and on the schedule it showed that Orthelm was playing right after us on the same day on the same stage. We got to meet Mick and he was a really great guy.

Mike and I had a gig at the Stone down on the Lower East Side and so we invited Mick to play. After the first record came out, the original idea was to add a new person each time to this long-form improvisation thing, and we knew immediately that Mick was the correct person to add.

That is a wild and woolly disc. How much prior planning goes into something that extensive and yet seemingly spontaneous?

There is no [set] material to start. The idea is to play continuously, but not throw any notes away, and hopefully reuse and develop the motifs from the first couple of minutes.

Do you worry about playing over each other?

Ideally you’d be able to hear everybody equally. The thing about improvising with these guys is they are very mobile. We can be really locked in and then, sometimes on purpose, sometimes not, one or the other of us goes our own way. I love the openness, the way we lock in and shift and come together, all the while staying with the same [motifs].

You play so many different kinds of music but are you ever concerned that you become a dilettante that way — “jack of all trades, master of none” — and you’ll miss the reward of really absorbing something?

I’m sure everybody’s answer is different, but I just like playing music. I started playing jazz not to be complicated — it has never been about the intellectual reward — but just as another kind of music I love. Music is very special to me, and any honest outcroppings of that come from just trying to play all of it. I’ve been in some great situations, playing with musicians from different fields and genres who are in the highest degree of what they do.

You won the Thelonious Monk award, a very prestigious honor in straight jazz circles, which led to a recording gig of your choice. You selected the entire three-person rhythm section from Stan Getz’s later band to play with on the record. That’s very mainstream but also pretty deep.

Yeah, I checked out a lot of Stan Getz and had all these records and this was a chance to work with those guys as a unit. I’m really glad I did it.

Music is something I am going to be pursuing my entire life; it is my calling, and I can’t imagine doing anything else. So I have until I’m 80 or 90 to follow whatever I am feeling. It is my blessing or my curse that I am into all these things, but I do think I’m doing deep study with them. I would rather go into something because I am into it, not to make other people happy. Besides, there are different parameters for different groups. Like, in Mostly Other People Do The Killing, pretty much anything goes, but it is not that way at all with the Hot Club of Detroit. I’m not going to try and sabotage a band unless they want to be sabotaged. Mostly Other People Do The Killing has that attitude [of being open to sabotage] and I’ve been with them eight or nine years now. It has changed my playing but more importantly [changed] the way I think about music.

But I am also torn. It is like being a double agent, because to be honest, I like the mobility. I want to do my thing, but right now my thing is being inclusive with all these different kinds of people. I mean, playing with Dave [Douglas] and his band for just a limited time, I’ve already learned new things.

Which brings us to Outright!, the band which seems emblematic of your playing because it is all over the map with different styles and guest stars. Your second Outright! record is the other release you are putting out on your own label this week.

Outright! was my first project as a leader five or six years ago. I wanted to improvise on a lot of different things with different musicians, to mix it up from that mass umbrella.

You dedicated the new Outright! followup to the artist Gerhard Richter, and I’m thinking that his overpainted photographs do visually what you do musically.

That is my favorite period of Richter, these photographs that you can see something right away but you keep looking at it and it is more than you thought.

You even mix up your instruments. On the first Outright! record you played alto saxophone. On the new one, tenor.

They are totally different animals. The alto is kind of my girlfriend — we go out on dates — where my tenor is my buddy and I can be a little rougher with it. They are different voices and ideally I approach them differently. One of the original ideas with Outright! was to make a trilogy with alto, then tenor then soprano.

Why did you start your own record label?

I sent the first Outright! record to about 40 different labels. First, you have to send emails to find those labels, then craft emails [introducing yourself], then wait for a response and respond to their questions, then put together a [demo] CD and send it out in a package with a press release and wait to hear back from them.

It’s like you are already doing the work of having your own label.

Exactly. And with the internet, it is not necessary to go through all of that. Outright! is too scattered for some people, so it doesn’t have mass appeal and that is definitely true of the I Don’t Hear Nothing But The Blues records. But they are honest efforts that need to come out. Plus I’ve learned a lot from doing it from the business side.

Will you keep having your own label then?

Probably, because for me a record is a document. It is important to release a record when you’ve reached a certain point in what you are doing. I don’t know if I’ll ever have that mindset again, and I’ll keep changing my playing. So a record is a document of that period and that growth.

Jozef van Wissem & Jim Jarmusch, The Mystery of Heaven

Stop us if you’ve heard this one before: An avant-garde Dutch lutist, an American indie filmmaker, and Tilda Swinton walk into a studio. It might sound like the set-up from a grad student mixer, but in fact it’s the back story for The Mystery of Heaven, a collaboration in which Jozef Van Wissem (lutist), Jim Jarmusch (filmmaker) and Swinton (playing Herself, in a walk-on cameo) hunker down and produce 47 minutes of majestically free-floating, absorbingly evil and ecstatic drone. Wissem’s lute playing is extraordinarily sensitive; every perfectly sculpted note lands like a rain-drop on your forehead. His clean-lined, sorrowful playing stirs echoes of the lute’s Renaissance roots without running aground in Renaissance-Faire territory; he has toured with James Blackshaw, and his playing here exudes some of the same spare beauty.

Jarmusch, meanwhile, defaces the sound’s placid surface with an endless progression of feedback waves. His whining drones hang gloomily over the entire album, giving it a slightly shell-shocked aura, like a field the morning after a battle. As for Tilda, consider her appearance on the “The More She Burns The More Beautifully She Glows” a bit of Jarmusch’s master casting: As an actor, she emits a frighteningly coiled ferocity, which she exploits to the fullest here by coolly reciting a text borrowed from Mechtchild’s Flowing Light of the Godhead that dances lightly between religious and sexual ecstasy.

Interview: Land Observations

[2012 has been a brilliant year for independent label Mute. As well as acclaimed releases from Liars, Can, Cold Specks, Yeasayer, Carter Tutti Void and Beth Jeans Houghton, label boss Daniel Miller was recently awarded the Association of Independent Music's statuette for Pioneer, recognition for the toweringly influential catalog he has built up over almost 35 years. As home to artists as diverse as Depeche Mode, Erasure and Laibach, Mute has always felt like a true label of love, celebrating the most exciting, forward-thinking music around. We invited Daniel Miller to sit in the editor's chair at eMusic for a site takeover all this week. We interviewed two of his favourite new artists of 2012: Diamond Version and Land Observations (below). Check back daily for his hand-picked Reviews of the Day; see his favourite albums on eMusic here; and read our exclusive interview with Miller here. — Ed.]

There aren’t many labels that would be happy for a successful signing to take a nine-year sabbatical. But Mute is one of them. In 2003, the Devon-born guitarist James Brooks dissolved his acclaimed post-rock trio Appliance in order to go to art school. Since earning an MA in Fine Art, he’s exhibited his work in galleries around the world. But now he’s making music again, under the name Land Observations — and his album is one of Mute founder Daniel Miller’s favorites of 2012.

Roman Roads IV-XI (parts I-III appeared on an EP last year) is a series of pieces inspired by ancient London highways, performed using a guitar and loop pedals in a style Brooks calls “pastoral motorik.” It’s a beautiful, meditative record which, appropriately, suggests forward motion but no hurry.

Dorian Lynskey spoke with Brooks about art, music and finding inspiration in unlikely places.

When Appliance ended, had the appeal of being in an indie-rock band worn off?

I hit saturation point when we were doing a lot of tours and away for weeks on end. You ask yourself some big questions like, “Do I actually want this?” And I think we all decided we’d done what we wanted to do, so we needed to just stop for a bit. But I missed music and I enjoy being back, and getting the chance to play bespoke festivals where people are doing interesting stuff. As you get older the prospect of being mid-bill at Reading Festival seems… awful!

Why did you take so long to start releasing records again?

I think I’ve been searching for a framework for a while. I’ve recorded lots of musical things at home and it was very elegant, but it needed a backbone to it to make sense. Perhaps having the rigor of art school brought something out in me. I didn’t want to be putting an arbitrary bunch of tracks together. I wanted something more. But I have been doing sound pieces.

What sort of sound pieces?

I recently did a piece with the Hancock’s Half Hour radio show where I edited out all the narrative content leaving just the laughter so you had this slightly demonic, haunting sound. I find that quite interesting, taking information away — the idea of loss. I find audio an interesting art medium as well as a musical medium.

What sparked your interest in Roman roads?

I live near the Kingsland Road [in East London], and I suddenly realized there was this autobahn at my doorstep. I was reading lots of Iain Sinclair and books about psycho-geography and it all came together. Kingsland Road is full of kebab shops and has a Tesco and all these modern trappings, but if you allow yourself two minutes to think about it, you realize there’s this amazing history locked in the space. So then I started making road drawings. I was making the drawings in my art studio and then coming home and recording music on the computer. I wanted to ask the question: Can music conjure up a lost highway?

Was it important to restrict yourself to electric guitar and pedals?

I loved the limitation. The guitar is a beautiful instrument but it’s also a dangerous instrument. We all know the clichés and traps. I think of the guitar as a sonic tool rather than playing it in a virtuoso rock way. I play guitar like it’s a drum kit, really: all flicks and clicks.

I like Sonic Youth and My Bloody Valentine and I’m a big fan of Neu!. Those post-war German bands always feel so fresh and exciting to me. When they were around, Germany was having to reform and this new generation was rewriting the rulebook. But this album is not a Neu! wannabe record. It’s harnessing all these bands that I love but it starts from London.

People who move between music and visual art are often seen as dilettantes. Does that bother you?

I was making a lot of artwork when I was in Appliance but I’d be mentioning it under my breath. Look at someone like Brian Eno: People give his visual art a hard time. I don’t know if the world’s changed or if I’ve got my project pointing in the right direction, but it now seems possible.

What music do you listen to when you’re making art?

It’s usually instrumental. I find the human voice far too distracting. I tend to listen to things like Chopin’s Nocturnes or Brian Eno or To Rococo Rot. There’s always a concept or a limitation. I don’t like it when things are too broad. I like the notion of music that can be ignored as much as listened to.

Who’s more annoying: music critics or art critics?

Oh, art critics. Art critics only want to absorb the work; they don’t want to listen to what the artist has to say. They want to call the shots. It’s one-way traffic.

Interview: Diamond Version

[2012 has been a brilliant year for independent label Mute. As well as acclaimed releases from Liars, Can, Cold Specks, Yeasayer, Carter Tutti Void and Beth Jeans Houghton, label boss Daniel Miller was recently awarded the Association of Independent Music's statuette for Pioneer, recognition for the toweringly influential catalog he has built up over almost 35 years. As home to artists as diverse as Depeche Mode, Erasure and Laibach, Mute has always felt like a true label of love, celebrating the most exciting, forward-thinking music around. We invited Daniel Miller to sit in the editor's chair at eMusic for a site takeover all this week. We interviewed two of his favourite new artists of 2012: Diamond Version (below) and Land Observations. Check back daily for his hand-picked Reviews of the Day; see his favourite albums on eMusic here; and read our exclusive interview with Miller here. — Ed.]

At the Short Circuit Electronic Music Festival in London in May 2012, Mute joined forces with the Berlin-based electronic label Raster-Noton to create a “sound halo” — looped recordings by artists from both labels — that was broadcast night and day in the Roundhouse venue. Mute boss Daniel Miller suggested to Raster-Noto founders Carsten Nikolai and Olaf Bender that they pair up for a proper project that he’d release, and Diamond Version was born.

“It was fantastic to bridge these two labels that are different in age but brothers in mind,” says Nikolai, who records under the name Alva-Noto; Bender records as Byetone. Separately, they are known for their sonic minimalism — Nikolai has made five albums with Ryuichi Sakamoto that explore piano and ambient textures — but together, they’ve made an EP of power electronics that Miller says is one of his favourite releases of 2012.

Diamond Version was launched with a YouTube “manifesto” of de-contextualised corporate slogans such as “I’m lovin’ it” and “How big can you dream?” and song titles include “Empowering Change.”

Luke Turner caught up with Diamond Version to ask about why they’ve harnessed corporate slogans to stern electronics, and about working with their hero Daniel Miller.

Has Mute influenced you as artists?

Olaf Bender: We were big fans of Mute in the ’80s. We met Daniel [Miller] and became friends. I have so much respect for him. He’s a real music fan, and has always been really interested in what we do.

One of the interesting things about the label is how it embraces both pop and avant-garde, releasing Erasure one moment, Einsturzende Neubauten the next. Is Diamond Version also about breaking down perceptions of pop?

Carsten Nikolai: The topic of pop music is always something that flows around us. But when we say pop music we mean something else. For us, pop music bridges people who you would consider underground or experimental but can [also] reach a wider audience. Nick Cave makes pop songs. I consider songs by Laibach or Einstürzende Neubauten pop songs, very serious pop songs. This is music that is not going to go into the pop charts, but it is still influential. It is give and take.

Which of you brings the pop element to Diamond Version?

Nikolai: Olaf is not so afraid of throwing in a rock or pop beat, then you tune it a certain way so it doesn’t sound like it.

Bender: I was a New Romantic for a short time, [and] I want to show this in the music. Popular music is about energy. What you had in old shamanic music is all here today, in new high-level production. Rhythmically and structurally, you are not totally free — it stays in a tradition of rock ‘n’ roll, of blues. I want to follow this. I don’t want to do a pastiche or yesterday’s music, but I feel that I’m in that tradition.

Diamond Version would also sound great in a club…

Bender: I have a bit more of a club background. Techno is physical, a body language. I am always looking for a shamanic energy. Carsten is from a fine-art background, so he thinks more conceptually. I am not very good at concepts and am more connected to emotions. I really like Carsten’s distance. In another way, maybe I’m a bit more connected to the heart, which is not so easy for Carsten. [Laughs.]

What’s the significance of the sloganistic song titles like “Science For A Better Life” and “Empowering Change”? Did you make them up?

Nikolai: When you go anywhere in the world you’re constantly exposed to advertisements. You go online and there’s nothing without advertisements. We’re interested in this idea of building identities. Olaf worked as a graphic designer in the past, and we are very interested in logos, identities and corporate identities. We collected slogans together when we made the Diamond Version mission statement. This was the very first, let us say, birth sign of Diamond Version. We showed it to Daniel and he thought it was brilliant. In this concentration, the slogans produce something really weird, something indescribable, something that is almost hilarious, this brutal world dominated by these ideas.

Is Diamond Version political, then?

Nikolai: I would be very scared of being politically in the foreground. Of course there is a criticism, of course there is a strong meaning, but we’re not pushing this strongly. We want to keep a humorous playfulness. We didn’t want a project where we got trapped. We wanted it to have a meaning but at the same time be communicative, open, fun for both of us and hopefully the audience too.

Interview: Daniel Miller

[2012 has been a brilliant year for independent label Mute. As well as acclaimed releases from Liars, Can, Cold Specks, Yeasayer, Carter Tutti Void and Beth Jeans Houghton, label boss Daniel Miller was recently awarded the Association of Independent Music's statuette for Pioneer, recognition for the toweringly influential catalogue he has built up over almost 35 years. As home to artists as diverse as Depeche Mode, Erasure and Laibach, Mute has always felt like a true label of love, celebrating the most exciting, forward-thinking music around. We invited Daniel Miller to sit in the editor's chair at eMusic for a site takeover all this week. We interviewed two of his favourite new artists of 2012: Diamond Version and Land Observations. Check back daily for his hand-picked Reviews of the Day; see his favourite albums on eMusic here; and read our exclusive interview with Miller below — Ed.]

Sharon O’Connell spoke with Daniel Miller about his musical awakening via The Normal, his role in nurturing the nascent UK electronic music scene and how his once small, still determinedly individualistic label grew to be a UK heavyweight that also enjoys enormous international clout.

How did you come to record an electronic debut single (“TVOD/Warm Leatherette”) as The Normal when, in 1978, everybody else was into punk?

I was very influenced by punk, but musically it didn’t excite me. The initial burst of energy and laying waste of prog and everything before it was exciting, but it wasn’t going far as a genre. I’d been very interested in electronic music as a fan of people like Kraftwerk and Neu!. I was in bands at school, like everybody else, and I gravitated toward the three other worst musicians in the class, but we enjoyed it. Even though I loved music beyond anything else, I couldn’t see a way of connecting with it on a professional basis.

What was the appeal of the synthesizer over the guitar?

Up until about 1977, synthesizers were really expensive, and way out of the reach of most people, but as cheaper Japanese synthesizers came on the market, they became accessible to people like me. And they were much easier to play than a guitar. You didn’t have to learn chords or anything boring like that — it was more about messing around on it until you created a sound you thought was really good. I bought a second-hand Korg 700-S, so there was no manual with it, but it was pretty clear what the switches and buttons did.

“Warm Leatherette” has been covered by the likes of Grace Jones, Duran Duran and Laibach. What do you make of the latter’s recent version?

I think it’s great. It’s very funny, as you’d expect it to be, and it’s made with great passion. I was very pleased when I heard it.

Are you surprised by that song’s longevity?

In those days, the minimum number of records you could press was 500, and my expectation was that I’d give some to my close friends and family and that nobody else would be interested, so the rest would be sitting under my bed forever. The fact that people are still listening to “Warm Leatherette” and covering it is a great surprise.

What made you decide to move from recording your own music to establishing a label?

My expectations of what my first single would do were very low, so the fact that people seemed to like it and it got really nice reviews in the press I found weird. I couldn’t quite believe what was going on. I never planned to start a record label, but all of a sudden there seemed to be these opportunities to avoid doing any real work. Savage Pencil [nee Edwin Pouncey] was the cartoonist at NME at the time and he introduced me to Frank Tovey [aka Fad Gadget]. I heard his demos and was immediately taken with them. I felt it was something I could really relate to, so I said, “Let’s put a single out and see what happens.” And that was the start of the label.

Why did you focus on electronic music in Mute’s early days?

After punk, the new wave of electronic music was just starting — The Human League and Cabaret Voltaire had released their first singles, Throbbing Gristle had released a single and an album — and people were really suspicious of it. So I was a bit of an evangelist, really. I thought electronic music was the next logical step. A synth was no longer an elitist instrument, and that was an important point. You didn’t have to be a musician; if you had good ideas, you could make music out of electronics.

One of Mute’s distinguishing features now is the stylistic diversity of its roster. How did that develop?

I saw The Birthday Party, and although they were conventional in terms of their line-up, they had nothing to do with being a rock band. I was just completely blown away by them, and I think that helped me stop being so purist. I realized that although I was very interested in electronic music — and still am — what I was really interested in was unique artists, people who were creative and could have an impact on others. I felt that there was a bigger picture that I wanted to engage with.

Have there been artists you were keen to sign to Mute, but failed to?

There are acts we tried to sign but for various reasons weren’t able to. We were very interested in Bon Iver, but at that point we were part of EMI and they had put a 100 percent freeze on signing. I remember fighting very hard for Yeah Yeah Yeahs and Klaxons, but we didn’t succeed with either. Daft Punk, too…but they were all a long time ago. There’s been nothing recently, in fact.

How hands-on are you these days in terms of A&R and studio input?

I’m out a lot, but I’m not out every night. But I have a really good A&R team who, between them, have very broad taste. I do the final A&R sign-off, because of course ultimately I’m going to get involved. We always think long-term with our artists — it’s not just about the next record. I’m engaged to a greater or lesser extent in the studio, depending on how closely involved I am with the artist and what their needs are. I don’t really ever step in unless somebody’s lost their way, but I do usually end up putting my oar in. And yes, I do like being in the studio.

You’re about to receive the 2012 AIM Award for Pioneer. What does this kind of recognition mean to you?

There are a lot of people in that community I respect and know very well, so the award is very flattering. I do avoid looking back as much as possible, because I think if you start doing that, you lose it. As long as pioneer doesn’t mean I’m past it, that’s okay!

Interview: Land Observations

[2012 has been a brilliant year for independent label Mute. As well as acclaimed releases from Liars, Can, Cold Specks, and Beth Jeans Houghton, label boss Daniel Miller was recently awarded the Association of Independent Music's statuette for Pioneer, recognition for the toweringly influential catalog he has built up over almost 35 years. As home to artists as diverse as Depeche Mode, Erasure and Laibach, Mute has always felt like a true label of love, celebrating the most exciting, forward-thinking music around. We invited Daniel Miller to sit in the editor's chair at eMusic for a site takeover all this week. We interviewed two of his favorite new artists of 2012: Diamond Version and Land Observations (below). See Miller's favorite albums on eMusic here; and read our exclusive interview with Miller here. — Ed.]

There aren’t many labels that would be happy for a successful signing to take a nine-year sabbatical. But Mute is one of them. In 2003, the Devon-born guitarist James Brooks dissolved his acclaimed post-rock trio Appliance in order to go to art school. Since earning an MA in Fine Art, he’s exhibited his work in galleries around the world. But now he’s making music again, under the name Land Observations — and his album is one of Mute founder Daniel Miller’s favorites of 2012.

Roman Roads IV-XI (parts I-III appeared on an EP last year) is a series of pieces inspired by ancient London highways, performed using a guitar and loop pedals in a style Brooks calls “pastoral motorik.” It’s a beautiful, meditative record which, appropriately, suggests forward motion but no hurry.

Dorian Lynskey spoke with Brooks about art, music and finding inspiration in unlikely places.

When Appliance ended, had the appeal of being in an indie-rock band worn off?

I hit saturation point when we were doing a lot of tours and away for weeks on end. You ask yourself some big questions like, “Do I actually want this?” And I think we all decided we’d done what we wanted to do, so we needed to just stop for a bit. But I missed music and I enjoy being back, and getting the chance to play bespoke festivals where people are doing interesting stuff. As you get older the prospect of being mid-bill at Reading Festival seems… awful!

Why did you take so long to start releasing records again?

I think I’ve been searching for a framework for a while. I’ve recorded lots of musical things at home and it was very elegant, but it needed a backbone to it to make sense. Perhaps having the rigor of art school brought something out in me. I didn’t want to be putting an arbitrary bunch of tracks together. I wanted something more. But I have been doing sound pieces.

What sort of sound pieces?

I recently did a piece with the Hancock’s Half Hour radio show where I edited out all the narrative content leaving just the laughter so you had this slightly demonic, haunting sound. I find that quite interesting, taking information away — the idea of loss. I find audio an interesting art medium as well as a musical medium.

What sparked your interest in Roman roads?

I live near the Kingsland Road [in East London], and I suddenly realized there was this autobahn at my doorstep. I was reading lots of Iain Sinclair and books about psycho-geography and it all came together. Kingsland Road is full of kebab shops and has a Tesco and all these modern trappings, but if you allow yourself two minutes to think about it, you realize there’s this amazing history locked in the space. So then I started making road drawings. I was making the drawings in my art studio and then coming home and recording music on the computer. I wanted to ask the question: Can music conjure up a lost highway?

Was it important to restrict yourself to electric guitar and pedals?

I loved the limitation. The guitar is a beautiful instrument but it’s also a dangerous instrument. We all know the clichés and traps. I think of the guitar as a sonic tool rather than playing it in a virtuoso rock way. I play guitar like it’s a drum kit, really: all flicks and clicks.

I like Sonic Youth and My Bloody Valentine and I’m a big fan of Neu!. Those post-war German bands always feel so fresh and exciting to me. When they were around, Germany was having to reform and this new generation was rewriting the rulebook. But this album is not a Neu! wannabe record. It’s harnessing all these bands that I love but it starts from London.

People who move between music and visual art are often seen as dilettantes. Does that bother you?

I was making a lot of artwork when I was in Appliance but I’d be mentioning it under my breath. Look at someone like Brian Eno: People give his visual art a hard time. I don’t know if the world’s changed or if I’ve got my project pointing in the right direction, but it now seems possible.

What music do you listen to when you’re making art?

It’s usually instrumental. I find the human voice far too distracting. I tend to listen to things like Chopin’s Nocturnes or Brian Eno or To Rococo Rot. There’s always a concept or a limitation. I don’t like it when things are too broad. I like the notion of music that can be ignored as much as listened to.

Who’s more annoying: music critics or art critics?

Oh, art critics. Art critics only want to absorb the work; they don’t want to listen to what the artist has to say. They want to call the shots. It’s one-way traffic.

12 of the Best: Daniel Miller’s eMusic Picks

2012 has been a brilliant year for independent label Mute. As well as acclaimed releases from Liars, Can, Cold Specks, Yeasayer, Carter Tutti Void and Beth Jeans Houghton, label boss Daniel Miller was recently awarded the Association of Independent Music’s statuette for Pioneer, recognition for the toweringly influential catalog he has built up over almost 35 years. As home to artists as diverse as Depeche Mode, Erasure and Laibach, Mute has always felt like a true label of love, celebrating the most exciting, forward-thinking music around. We invited Daniel Miller to sit in the editor’s chair at eMusic for a site takeover all this week. We interviewed two of his favourite new artists of 2012: Diamond Version and Land Observations. Check back daily for his hand-picked Reviews of the Day; see his favourite albums on eMusic below; and read our exclusive interview with Miller here. — Ed.

The Barbaras, The Barbaras 2006-2008

Fans of Memphis’s Magic Kids will take well to The Barbaras: A proto-Magic Kids of sorts, featuring a couple of the band’s future members as well as young players from the likes of Boston Chinks and Jay Reatard’s 2006-08 band (including Billy Hayes and Stephen Pope, who now play with Wavves), The Barbaras make catchy, lo-fi fairground pop, and 2006-2008 is a delightful document of mid-aughts Memphis.

“Topsy Turvy Magic” is pure ’50s bubblegum, sparkling with clean guitar riffs and angelic backing vocals. “Breathing Underwater” is a swaying, junior-high-slow-dance lament, while “Devour the Jungle Deer” takes up residence on the other shoulder, overfilling speakers with shouts and synths. Sometimes, like on “Only One” or “Heaven Hangs,” the songs play out like charming little brothers to much of Reatard’s swan song, Watch Me Fall. Fitting, perhaps, that this album was lost — nearly forever — on the late garage rocker’s hard drive, recently rescued by Goner and Alicja Trout. Thanks, you two, for releasing a gem that almost didn’t see the light of day.

The Mystery of Johannes Ockeghem

It’s astonishing how little we know, or can intuit, about the most illustrious musician of the 15th century. With a sonorous bass voice, a succession of prestigious jobs, and a collection of devotees, Johannes Ockeghem dominated elevated musical culture in Europe for nearly half a century, until his death in 1497. But what sort of man he was, what he looked like, or how much music he wrote — these things fall in the blanks between surviving traces. A manuscript illustration from decades after he died shows him (or someone who might be him) as a sage with deep lines and white curls emerging from beneath a clerical hood, singing with a choir of much younger men. His right arm reaches out to touch another open-mouthed singer, probably to keep the pulse by tapping on his colleague’s arm. This intimate scene of nine artists huddled in a gothic chapel, reading from the same manuscript page, nicely evokes the rarefied world in which he lived and worked.

The courts and cathedrals of early Renaissance Europe organized music into three categories that ranged in prestige. All the forms demanded immense sophistication, not just to compose, but to sing and appreciate, too. The lowest of these three high levels was the secular chanson, often an exquisitely crafted love song based on an existing popular tune, with a text in French (rather than Latin). Though Ockeghem’s “Ma bouche rit” (“My mouth laughs, but my thoughts weep”) is often performed by one singer with accompanying instruments, the three lines intertwine, and points of imitation, in which one voice echoes another, glint in the contrapuntal flow. Ockeghem was a master at making complexity sound sprightly and straightforward, a balance that the Orlando Consort strikes, too, in an all-vocal recording that includes a batch of spectacularly intricate chansons. In the sprightly “S’elle m’amera,” Ockeghem stirs together borrowed and original melodies, a little like a hip-hop artist paying tribute to another by sampling a recognizable riff.

One step up the ladder of musical prestige comes the motet. Only a handful of these devotional pieces with Latin texts are reliably attributable to Ockeghem, but what a phenomenal half hour of music that is! (Almost all of it is contained on the Hilliard Ensemble’s luminous collection of his sacred music.) “Ave Maria” is a hymn of praise to the Virgin Mary, yet the bass and upper parts slide down the scale, giving the opening phrases a plaintive, almost lugubrious quality. You can imagine the composer, with his celebrated basso voice, savoring the dark texture and rich low tones. The glory and joy lie in the ceaseless flow of melody, the piling up of vocal sound, and the expressive harmonic subtleties that keep each phrase spilling into the next.

The culmination of musical culture in Ockeghem’s day was the mass, and he was the undisputed master of it. An unvarying set of liturgical texts (Kyrie, Gloria, Credo, Sanctus and Agnus Dei) is set to music of sublime intricacy and powerful unity. In each section, the tenor — literally, the “holder” of a fixed foundation melody — intones a Gregorian chant or chanson tune, while the other voices weave around him. Ockeghem’s 13 surviving masses form the highest mountain range in the landscape of late 15th-century music. Often, as in “Missa l’homme armé”, he based his works not on liturgical melodies but on popular songs — sometimes songs that he himself had written. He composed the earliest known polyphonic requiem mass, and in a frenzy of sublime gamesmanship, composed a mass, the “Missa prolationem,” entirely of intricately worked-out canons.

Today, we hear these masses as monumental multi-movement concert works, the Renaissance counterpart of the 19th-century symphony, but in Ockeghem’s time, the different sections were threaded together with prayers, chants, hymns, and other polyphonic works. Hearing a mass in isolation is like prying a statue from a church’s niche and placing it in a museum. We venerate the artwork by stripping it of context. Fortunately, Ockeghem’s music is sturdy enough to withstand such violent uprooting.

Tokyo String Quartet, Jon Nakamatsu and Jon Manasse, Brahms: Quintets Op.34 & Op.115

This is not the first time the Tokyo String Quartet has encountered these monumental works in its 44-year history; in 1987, they recorded a set for RCA with pianist Barry Douglas. The biggest difference in this set’s Piano Quintet is the sound, a vast improvement. Pianist Jon Nakamatsu, for his part, is perhaps a tad more lyrical than Douglas.

It’s at least their third time in the studio with the Clarinet Quintet, the most famous being with Richard Stoltzman 19 years ago, and though half the TSQ’s membership has turned over since then, the interpretation hasn’t changed much; it’s become a bit more taut, with no loss in warmth of string tone. Clarinetist Jon Manasse has a bigger and darker sound than Stoltzman, which fits the music perfectly.

The standard line on this pairing is that the 1864 Piano Quintet has the fire of youth and the 1891 Clarinet Quintet the autumnal repose of age. It’s an oversimplification, for the differences come much more from the inherent qualities of the titular instruments; the strings have nearly as fiery parts in 1891 as they did in 1864, but also, in the slow movements, as much songful Romanticism both times. The TSQ honors both qualities in rich, loving interpretations.

Andy Stott, Luxury Problems

“Touch, touch, touch…” says the heavily aspirated vocal that opens the second album from electronic producer Andy Stott. The extraordinary, forlorn voice — sounding like a distressed angel — belongs to his former piano teacher Alison Skidmore, and her multi-tracked rhythmic part sets out Stott’s stylistic stall. If the Salford native conjures darkly unsettling and decidedly dystopian urban landscapes, pockmarked with dread and isolation, then he redeems that world via intimacy and the warmth of communication.

Skidmore’s contributions are hardly whistle-along melodies, but they do set Luxury Problems apart from Burial’s Untrue, still very much the benchmark of UK post-dubstep/illbient house, while positioning him in a continuum that stretches from Coil to The xx via Kode9 and Raime. Stott also avoids Burial’s heavy sampling, building these eight charcoal-grey soundscapes with throbbing or ominously clanking beats and scratchy industrio-electronics, (bitter)sweetened with treated vocal drop-ins.

The album works as a bleakly alluring set-piece, but “Lost And Found,” where a malevolent fog swirls around Skidmore’s ecclesiastical vocal and the aptly titled “Sleepless” — a chunk of lurching doom-funk showered in shards of brittle synth — are standouts. The pace shifts for the madly skittering, jazz-’n'-bass glitch of “Up The Box,” but drops down again with “Leaving.” It suggests an update on This Mortal Coil’s “Song To The Siren” and allows the album to end on a hopeful note, appearing like a shaft of unexpectedly bright light through the window of a derelict cathedral.