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G&D, The Lighthouse

Maintaining their futuristic-vintage outlook on music and philosophy

Georgia Anne Muldrow and Dudley Perkins have been making their spaced-out, meditative brand of astral soul so steadily — individually, together, in guest spots and as compilation curators — that they’re worth recognizing as important fixtures in the current Los Angeles beat scene. Like Erykah Badu with the cadence and resonance of Alice Coltrane’s harp, Muldrow’s got a voice that you can soak in — at which point it starts soaking in to you — and Perkins raps like a chilled-out, off-kilter West Coast version of Redman, connecting the dots between the screaming heads on the covers of Dare Iz a Darkside and Maggot Brain. Layer them over a sound that seems calibrated for rollerskate jams in the shadow of the pyramids, and it’s manna for abstract hip-hop heads and R&B fiends alike.

The Lighthouse, the latest in a fruitful series of collaborations by Muldrow and Perkins, maintains their futurist-vintage outlook on music and philosophy and the places where they intersect. With a title track that pairs righteous-anger calls-to-arms with a breathless, almost blissed-out excitement, The Lighthouse kills its own stress in real time. While the messaging is pretty straightforward — “Power” is your archetypal inner-strength-through-love anthem; “No More War” is self-explanatory — that directness is meant to give an evocative, empathetic clarity, not serve as a crutch propping up a lack of ideas. Even the simplest material has an up-front, get-down musicality that gives a next-level jolt of stargazing eccentricity to boogie funk and skyscraper soul.

May 21, 2013

eMusic.com Inc.

Six Degrees of Daft Punk’s Random Access Memories

It used to be easier to pretend that an album was its own perfectly self-contained artifact. The great records certainly feel that way. But albums are more permeable than solid, their motivations, executions and inspirations informed by, and often stolen from, their peers and forbearers. It all sounds awfully formal, but it's not. It's the very nature of music — of art, even. The Six Degrees features examine the relationships between classic records and five other albums we've deemed related in some way. In some cases these connections are obvious, in others they are tenuous. But, most important to you, all of the records are highly, highly recommended.

The Album

Random Access Memories
Daft Punk
2013 | Columbia

From the very start, Daft Punk have made music that reflected their influences. At first the results were, as the French duo's name suggests, disarmingly crude: Their 1997 debut Homework track "Teachers" is little more than an extended shout-out to three dozen underground house DJs (plus, tellingly, Brian Wilson, George Clinton and Dr. Dre) over an unchanging beat. From this funky techno minimalism, Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo have swung in... the opposite direction, arriving with Random Access Memories in full disco-prog opulence. Daft Punk are still paying tribute to their heroes, but they do so not with samples, but with astoundingly elaborate pastiches of some of the most exquisitely played, arranged, produced, and engineered records of the '70s and '80s.

Anyone with a basic knowledge of classic rock and pop can spot at least some of them — Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon and The Wall, Michael Jackson's Off the Wall and Thriller, and the smoothest moments of Fleetwood Mac, Toto and the Doobie Brothers. It's as if that Supertramp-esque bit in Discovery's "Digital Love" was expanded into an entire album of like-minded licks. RAM features an appropriately over-the-top cast of guest singers, players, producers and songwriters, including not just current R&B and indie kingpins like Pharrell and Panda Bear, but also a few key behind-the-scenes OGs. It's those old-school icons of disco, jazz-funk, prog-rock, and soft pop we celebrate in this Six Degrees of RAM's exactingly specific recollections.
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The Disco Sophisticates

C'est Chic
Chic
1992 | Atlantic Records

Chic's Nile Rodgers recently triumphed over cancer, and the fruits of his victory — RAM's "Give Life Back to Music," "Lose Yourself to Dance" and "Get Lucky" — are three of the most profoundly glad-to-be-alive songs you'll hear all year. If there were any justice, he'd be universally hailed among the greatest rhythm guitarists of all time: His syncopations are as tricky as danceable riffs get, but he also lays down equally... complex jazz chords, streamlines them through his funk strum, and then flips them harmonically so that there's constant movement and variation. It would take a boatload of music theory to explain how he does it, but the very fact that absolutely no one plays exactly like him serves testimony to how deep this guy gets. Chic's particular sort of disco grabs upon impact but also gradually reveals infinite layers of pleasure. Rodgers and his primary Chic cohorts — bassist Bernard Edwards and drummer Tony Thomas — spread their songwriting, arranging, producing and instrumental dexterity through subsequent smashes with Diana Ross ("Upside Down"), David Bowie ("Let's Dance"), Madonna ("Like a Virgin"), and many others, but their 1978 album remains the greatest introduction to their simultaneously lofty and populist genius. It's got Chic's biggest, boldest hit ("Le Freak"); the follow-up, their most velvety declaration of desire ("I Want Your Love"); and a ballad so heartbreakingly beautiful even experimental rocker Robert Wyatt covered it ("At Last I Am Free").
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The Darth Vader of the Jazz-Funk Vocoder

The Best Of Herbie Hancock - The Hits!
Herbie Hancock
2000 | Columbia/Legacy

Romantic longing is the core of what it means to be human — that's Random Access Memories' implicit theme. So to sing of longing while making the voice deliberately robotic is deeply uncanny. Decades before T-Pain, Herbie Hancock mastered this effect on disco jams many of his old jazz fans found deeply distasteful. There's little doubt that Daft Punk dug 'em, though: They've been alluding to Hancock's vocoder work since their earliest... records, and with RAM's "The Game of Love," they absolutely nail the tone and phrasing the keyboardist employed on his 1978 UK hit "I Thought It Was You" while aping bits of its melody. The Hits! collects most of Hancock's dancefloor excursions: Bookended by his mainstream smashes "Chameleon" from '73 and "Rockit" from '83, it showcases the sonic clarity and jazz-funk chops that RAM pays tribute to with every fastidious groove.
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The Mom and Dad of EDM

I Remember Yesterday
Donna Summer
1994 | Island Def Jam

Like Random Access Memories, I Remember Yesterday looked backward in order to move forward. Much like Daft Punk, Donna Summer and her producer Giorgio Moroder represented the commercial end of dance music's avant-garde. In 1975, this Boston-born singer and her Italian collaborator pioneered from their shared Munich base what was soon known as Eurodisco, an artier, more extreme version of the largely American sound that drew from the LP side-long suites of... progressive rock as well as the string-intensive romance of Philly soul. Their fifth album's A-Side maintained the suite-ness while broadening Summer's stylistic range to encompass big-band swing (the title track), Brill-Building girl-group sounds ("Love's Unkind"), and classic Motown ("Back in Love Again"). Side B took on Blaxploitation funk ("Black Lady"), Summer's own super-sensual disco ("Take Me"), and contemporary R&B balladry ("Can't We Just Sit Down (And Talk It Over)"). As he explains in his RAM monologue "Giorgio by Moroder," these songs were designed to represent the past and present, and the album's final track was designated to suggest the future. So, Moroder turned to, as he says on RAM, his Moog "zinthezizer," synched it to a click track, and with British co-writer/producer Pete Bellotte and Summer herself wrote "I Feel Love," the most influential track in contemporary dance music history. Moroder rightly gets plenty of credit for this milestone, but it's Summer's nearly peerless versatility that inspired and enabled "I Feel Love." She sings as if coital connection with Moroder's machinery was a deeply spiritual act. As decades of dancers will tell you, she absolutely made it so.
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The Light Side of the Moon

Eye In The Sky
Alan Parsons Project
2009 | Arista/Legacy

Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon proved so hot that even its engineer landed a recording contract. Fronting this collaboration with singer-songwriter Eric Woolfson, a fluctuating cast of vocalists, and musicians cribbed from previous productions for Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel, Pilot and other art-poppers, Alan Parsons filled his records with lush filigree sometimes at ends with Woolfson's typically concept-bound lyrics. Here, though, most everything is as smooth as the almond... oil in a well-trained masseur's palms. Although the Project's 1977's I Robot undoubtedly also appeals to the android pair, the gentle chug of this 1982 album's hit title track gets more direct appropriation in RAM's "Instant Crush." Both it and the cosmic disco instrumental "Mammagamma" got deserved turntable time from adventurous club DJs in the early morning hours when tempos decelerate and vibes mellow.
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The Rainbow Connection

Someday Man
Paul Williams
2012 | Rhino/Warner Bros.

L.A.'s laid-back perfectionism exerts a profound influence on RAM, and none of its practitioners got more Hollywood than Paul Williams, a diminutive child actor-turned-songwriter-turned-talk-show-celebrity who became absolutely omnipresent on '70s TV. Recorded just before his hits for Three Dog Night ("Out in the Country," "Just an Old Fashioned Love Song," "The Family of Man"), the Carpenters ("We've Only Just Begun," "Rainy Days and Mondays," "I Won't Last a Day Without You") and... other paragons of early '70s AM radio turned him into a superstar, Williams's 1970 album is a shining example of sunshine pop. Producer and co-writer Roger Nichols surrounds the singer with effusive arrangements and top-drawer session players: If you love Carol Kaye's swooping, virtuoso bass lines on Pet Sounds, a major treat awaits you here. Williams's snarky sense of humor is obvious in his greatest film roles (stop what you're doing right now and put The Loved One and Phantom of the Paradise — the film in which he inspired Daft Punk to don masks — at the top of your Netflix queue), but the singer largely compartmentalized it away from his songs once he became an easy listening icon. It's here though: Check how he deadpans, "I just haven't got what it takes to put up with you."
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May 21, 2013

eMusic.com Inc.

15 Essential Box Sets

Sometimes a simple sampling won’t do — you want to dive in deep and explore every last corner of an artist’s discography, or every forgotten single in a major musical movement. That’s what the box set is made for: It’s a mini-musical history lesson in one compact package. We asked Douglas Wolk to comb through our digital crates, and he emerged with 15 of the best. — eMusic Editorial Staff

The Chess Box
Etta James
2000 | Geffen

When Etta James came to Chess Records in 1960, she'd already had a couple of hit singles, but the music she recorded over the next decade and a half makes up the core of her legacy: torchy, sexy rhythm and blues with elegant arrangements that counterpoint the grit and burn of her voice. James was a fixture on black radio for most of the '60s, although her hits scarcely crossed over to... a pop audience until decades later. The '70s material surveyed on the third disc finds her reaching out to a rock and country repertoire — a trio of Randy Newman songs are exactly dark and bitter enough for her — and showing off a vocal mastery that had only deepened with time.
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What It Is! Funky Soul And Rare Grooves [1967-1977]
Various Artists
2006 | Rhino

Besides their artist-based compilations, Rhino Records has released a series of boxes that neatly define musical moments, and this is a thrilling one. What It Is! isn't a collection of R&B hits, as such, although it includes a handful of very big hits. It's a collection of grooves that still sound amazing 35-45 years after they were recorded — the sort of thing DJs spend their lives digging through bins to find.... Some of them are familiar from hip-hop samples; some are local bands' covers of national hits; some are major artists' minor marvels. And all of them are hard not to dance to.
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Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band Live 1975-85 (Display Box)
Bruce Springsteen
2002 | Columbia

At a moment when live albums had become the province of bands trying to fill out their contracts in a hurry, Springsteen set a high-water mark for them with this five-LP set. It's an epic retrospective of one of the great American rock bands in its element, scattered with original songs and covers that the Boss had never recorded before. If Springsteen's specialty as a songwriter is turning working-class experience into mythology,... his specialty as a performer is projecting intimate storytelling to a stadium, and Live/1975-85 tells a story too: the rise of the E Street Band's presence over the course of a decade, from a 500-seat club to the L.A. Coliseum.
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Biograph
Bob Dylan
1997 | Columbia

As brilliant and perverse as Dylan's best records, Biograph ditches every pre-existing judgment about the first 20 years of his recorded career, reaches into his songbag to grab fistfuls of hits and album tracks and bootleg classics and then-unknown oddities, and re-assembles them according to their lyrical themes. Even the most familiar songs sound fresh again in the context of their neighbors; the slightest throwaways suddenly reveal their aspects of grace. It's... an argument for understanding Dylan's whole body of work as a unit, and a riveting assessment of his obsessions and ingenious, mercurial songwriting.
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Fire In My Bones : Raw + Rare + Otherworldly African-American Gospel, 1944-2007
Various Artists
Tompkins Square

Assembled by gospel expert (and eMusic contributor) Mike McGonigal, Fire In My Bones documents an entire world of music that had become lost to time: the post-war black gospel records that mostly came out on tiny independent labels and were sold strictly to the faithful. The sound of African American sacred music, it turns out, intersects with secular pop of many kinds, from blues to funk to country and beyond; even... more than that, though, it's got its own immensely powerful traditions of singing and playing, and a lot of these songs sound like nothing else, even the canonical gospel classics of the '50s and '60s. The box's subtitle is right on about how raw these recordings are, but there's something extraordinary about every one of them.
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Star Time
James Brown
2009 | Polydor

The greatest rhythmic innovator of the 20th century had a career that's almost impossible to summarize — there wouldn't be enough room to include all his hits if this box were twice as long — but Star Time is the definitive portrait of his best work, from his scalding 1956 debut "Please, Please, Please" to his 1984 salute to the hip-hop world that idolized him, "Unity." It traces the evolution of Brown's... genius, pulling together the strands that went into his invention of funk, displaying the creative process behind a few of his biggest hits, and letting his deepest late '60s and early '70s jams stretch out to their full length.
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Hot Fives And Sevens
Louis Armstrong
2001 | JSP Records / The Orchard

Jazz as we know it starts here, not with a history lesson but with a celebration. Louis Armstrong's Hot Five and Hot Seven were studio bands with shifting membership; between 1925 and 1928, they recorded a pile of tracks that were built around Armstrong's improvisational genius, refining New Orleans-style jazz into thrilling three-minute inventions. Armstrong plays trumpet and cornet, and occasionally unleashes his candy-gravel voice — "Heebie Jeebies" might be the first... recorded example of scat singing. This box is filled out by 1928-30 recordings that built on the success of the Hot Fives and Sevens and are just about as much fun.
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With The Lights Out - Box Set
Nirvana
2011 | Geffen

For most bands who only recorded three studio albums, a three-disc retrospective of demos, covers and outtakes would be excessive. For this one, it's revelatory. With the Lights Out traces Nirvana's blazing path from ravenous punks covering Led Zep at their first show to really loud Leadbelly fans boggling at their sudden success to their final months as tense, jittery rock heroes grappling with more raw power than they knew what to... do with. All that power, as it turns out, meant that even their throwaways and unfinished sketches pretty much blow the walls down. If this set were the only recorded evidence that Nirvana had existed, they'd still be an important band — although maybe just the cult act they kind of wanted to be.
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Honky Tonk Girl: The Loretta Lynn Collection
Loretta Lynn
1994 | Geffen

She's not kidding about the title: The First Lady of Country Music has stuck so closely to the honky-tonk musical template that 62 of these 70 tracks, spanning 1960-88, are under three minutes long. (The first time she crosses the 180-second barrier is halfway through the box: 1970's epochal, autobiographical "Coal Miner's Daughter.") Even so, she's also one of country's great innovators, on the strength of the sharp, funny, overtly feminist lyrics... in her own songs and the songs she's covered. Pretty much all of Lynn's substantial solo hits are here, as well as a handful of her duets with Ernest Tubb and Conway Twitty.
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To Be Free: The Nina Simone Story
Nina Simone
2008 | RCA/Legacy

To Dr. Nina Simone, "freedom" meant — among other things — that she could never be pinned down as a particular kind of musician. Trained in both the gospel and classical traditions, she was capable of performing with extraordinary tenderness (as in her biggest American hit, George Gershwin's "I Loves You, Porgy") or blistering fury (she launched her reputation as a civil-rights activist with 1964's "Mississippi Goddam"). You can't get even a... roughly complete handle on her from any three of her individual albums, but this set — covering 1957-93 recordings made for half a dozen labels — is the most thoughtfully selected survey of her work available.
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Def Jam Music Group Tenth Year Anniversary Box Set
Various Artists
1995 | Def Jam/RAL

Def Jam was to the late '80s what Motown was to the mid '60s: the label that turned the cutting edge of black pop into the sound of young America. This box came out when Def Jam was 12 years old or so, its sequencing's not quite chronological, and the Anthrax/Public Enemy remake of "Bring the Noise" is the only sign that Rick Rubin and Russell Simmons's label ever reached out beyond... hip-hop and R&B. And so what? For hip-hop heads, this stuff is holy writ, the document of an era when every rapper had a chance to reinvent the music with every single. For everyone else, it's a four-hour party.
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The Complete 1961 Village Vanguard Recordings
John Coltrane
1997 | Impulse! Records

This four-disc monument might be the most narrowly focused of great boxed sets — recorded over the course of four nights in early November, 1961, just as Coltrane entered a period of incredible creative fertility. He was experimenting with the sound of his group (the core quartet is supplemented with appearances by wild-card Eric Dolphy and a handful of other musicians); "Chasin' the Trane" has only the hint of a theme, and... the exquisite ballad "Naima" gets its melody turned inside out. Producer Bob Thiele's recordings of these shows were excerpted for an album and a half in the '60s, but every track here displays Coltrane and company pushing at the boundaries of what jazz could be.
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Artist Of The Century
Elvis Presley
1999 | RCA Records Label

Of the dozen-plus Elvis box sets out there, this one is the best introduction to the central work of a performer whose legend tends to get in the way of his music. His biggest hits are represented, of course, as he evolves from the feral hillbilly cat of the mid '50s to the easy-listening king of the '70s. The rest of this set, though, is made up of knockout performances that weren't... singles — the moments when his gifts slashed through the stifling Elvis Machine around him. Disc 3, in particular, is a first-rate reclamation job on the final decade of his career, unearthing performances in which that smooth, masterful baritone transmutes kitsch into genuine emotional power.
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Hitsville USA, The Motown Collection 1972-1992
Various Artists
2013 | Motown

Motown's '60s hits may be the Boomer classics, but after Berry Gordy relocated the great Detroit pop-soul label to Los Angeles, it stayed as musically adventurous as ever, and rode the next few decades' R&B waves with aplomb. Artists like Stevie Wonder and the Temptations stayed with Motown for decades and got the latitude to branch out and take risks; Marvin Gaye, the Commodores and Diana Ross recast disco in their own... personal forms. And the label had a particular gift for identifying gifted artists at a very young age, from Michael Jackson to DeBarge and Teena Marie. The '90s hits by Shanice and Boyz II Men that close this set are just a newer version of Motown doing what it had always done: figuring out how to frame the sound of the urban underground to give it a much wider audience.
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The Legend
Johnny Cash
2005 | Columbia/Legacy

Spanning nearly 50 years, this overview of a singer who was more or less a one-man genre gets the hits out of the way in a hurry: the first disc is a boom-chicka-boom stampede through pretty much all of his best-remembered songs through the '70s. Disc 2 is more of the Cash cognoscenti's favorites, going from his early rockabilly wonders to later songs that were written for him (or might as well... have been) by songwriters like Bruce Springsteen and Elvis Costello, who looked to him as an ancestor. The final two discs are the really clever reframings of Cash's immense canon: a set of the traditional songs and country standards that were the spine of his repertoire, and a collection of the playful duets and collaborations that were this solitary man in black's hidden specialty.
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May 21, 2013

eMusic.com Inc.

New This Week: Laurel Halo, Carter Tutti, Nancy Elizabeth & More

Laurel Halo, Behind the Green Door A more straightforward, beat-driven release than 2012′s Quarantine, this EP still bends Halo’s freeform electronica into all kind of thrilling shapes. Michaelangelo Matos writes:

“The opening track evokes mid-’90s Aphex Twin, while “UHFFO” is phased-dizzy minimalist techno, with everything from the beat to the zapping keyboard duel that livens it up midway in, coated with gauze. The heavily dubbed-out “Sex Mission”, meanwhile, contains zero heavy breathing, unless you count the way the rhythm track heaves – not in a cartoon-porn way, but something more meditative while still evoking arousal.”

Nancy Elizabeth, Dancing Nancy Elizabeth’s third album taps into an age-old folk current, and is both eerie and heartfelt. Victoria Segal says:

“It might have taken shape in her icy Manchester flat, but it feels like the work of somebody wandering wet-haired and wild-eyed around the village perimeter, uncertain whether to throw herself into the pond or curdle the milk with a curse. For all the meticulous layering of vocals, piano, synthesisers and percussion, tracks like “Shimmering Song” or ”Simon Says Dance” suggest something untrammeled and unpredictable.”

Shannon and the Clams, Dreams in the Rat House Oakland’s fiercest contemporary purveyors of scuffed-up early-’60s rock’n'roll jump to the relative big league of the Sub Pop imprint Hardly Art without sacrificing any of their rickety retro charm. Marc Hogan reviews the band’s third album:

“It sticks to the live-sounding, punk-roughed doo-wop, girl group and surf rock throwbacks that made 2011 predecessor Sleep Talk the perfect cheap-beer chaser. It’s a narrow but fertile niche, and this trio goes after it with gusto.”

The Dillinger Escape Plan, One of Us is the Killer The experimental metal band’s fifth album is a frazzled showcase of technical speed-prog, unrelenting post-hardcore and soulful pop. Jon Wiederhorn writes:

“Some will find the Dillinger Escape Plan’s sonic schizophrenia too difficult, but for those with patience and open ears, repeat listens yield hidden rewards, like the syncopated beats that weave expertly through the Faith No More-style euphony of the verses of the title track.”

This is the Kit, Wriggle Out the Restless Sharon Van Etten and The National’s Aaron Dessner are both fans, and Kate Stables’ breathtaking, banjo-plucked folk is certainly deserving of a wider audience. This album is gorgeous, its stripped-back songs of love and longing full of unaffected beauty.

Various Artists, Lennon Bermuda What do you mean, you didn’t know John Lennon was inspired by Bermuda? The book that accompanies this double CD says that Lennon’s trip to Bermuda was one of the most significant moments in his life, and it has the backing of Yoko Ono, so who are we to argue? Thankfully this doesn’t feature steelpan versions of “I Am The Walrus” or “Imagine”; instead famous names including Bryan Ferry, Heather Nova and, er Maxi Priest, cover Lennon songs alongside contributions from local artists with names like Biggie Irie and Tim “The Dealer” Deal. We’re Ber-mused too.

Carter Tutti, Coolicon More propulsive weirdness from Chris Carter and Cosi Fanni Tutti, this single takes its name from the enamel factory lights used by Delia Derbyshire in her music-making.

Baltic Fleet, The Wilds Paul Fleming, touring keyboardist with Echo and the Bunnymen, has just won the prestigious Liverpool GIT Award, which means he’ll open Yoko Ono’s Meltdown Festival in June. This single, from the album Towers, showcases his motorik metal-machine music that conjures cinematic images of the industrial North West.

Visage, Hearts and Knives The band’s first album in 29 years is a pristine polish of their early ’80s sound.

Grim Tower, Anarchic Breezes An album of “detuned acoustic death folk” from Black Mountain’s Stephen McBean and Immad Wasif, who has played with Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Rich and strange, with more than a whiff of patchouli oil about it.

May 21, 2013

eMusic.com Inc.

Eyes Without a Face: Our Favorite Anonymous Musicians

In a year when three of the most talked-about releases were made by musicians who are notoriously camera shy, it stands to reason that the easiest path to overexposure is stubborn anonymity. Electronic legends Daft Punk, avant-pop duo the Knife and newcomer metal band Ghost B.C. all have anticipated releases to promote, yet all of them refuse to appear unmasked in public. They each have their reasons — be it shyness, myth-making or deliberate detachment from celebrity-obsessed culture — and around them debate rages over whether the whole maneuver is a cleverly-conceived art piece or just a cheap gimmick. But the truth is that these three are just the latest in a long line of masked and anonymous hitmakers who found great success by staying hidden.

Daft Punk

Random Access Memories
Daft Punk
2013 | Columbia

Real names: Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo, Thomas Bangalter
Backstory:: Even though, in retrospect, the futuristic android aesthetic seems inseparable from the Daft Punk identity, it was actually only upon the release of the duo's second album, Discovery, that they became "the Robots." Before that, Homem-Christo and Bangalter wore a variety of analog masks because, as they told reporters, they were shy.
Success level:: The Parisian electro-funksters have achieved the impossible, maintaining relevance so adroitly throughout... their 20-year career that everyone from Kanye to Disney to Saint Lauren wants to be associated with them.
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Ghost B.C.

Infestissumam
Ghost B.C.
2013 | Seven Four Entertainment / Republic

Real names: The frontman identifies as Papa Emeritus II, and his backing band is simply known as a Group of Nameless Ghouls.
Backstory:: Not much is known about the origin of the Swedish metal band, aside from the fact that Emeritus's supporting quintet represents the five elements: water, fire, wind, earth and ether. One Nameless Ghoul, however, admitted during an interview that the decision to maintain anonymity was simply inspired by the desire... to live day-to-day as regular people, and not as "rock stars."
Success level:: So far, no one knows who the Ghouls are or what they look like, but after some Internet sleuthing, Ghost B.C.'s frontman has been identified as Tobias Forge, a Swedish musician who's played in the bands Subvision and Repugnant. On stage, Forge transforms into Papa Emeritus — which is really all that matters.
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The Knife

Shaking the Habitual
The Knife
2013 | Mute US Corporation

Real names: Sister and brother Karin Dreijer Andersson and Olof Dreijer
Backstory:: According to the duo's official bio, "We feel like that if we had been there with our plain faces that would destroy the illusion of music. So we tried to dress up as the music. Occult and dark but at the same time, funny." While the Knife was known for wearing black Venetian carnival masks with long bird beaks, recently they... asked young children to represent them in photo shoots wearing masks the duo produced based on portraits of themselves from 2003.
Success level:: The Knife netted considerable critical acclaim with its sophomore release Silent Shout, which landed near the top of multiple 2007 year-end lists. Its current provocation/art piece Shaking the Habitual is already outpacing its predecessor in effusive hosannas.
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SBTRKT

Step In Shadows - EP
SBTRKT
2010 | Young Turks / AWAL

Real name: Aaron Jerome
Backstory:: The London DJ who has remixed Radiohead and M.I.A. hides behind tribal masks because, as he believes, wearing a mask during a celebration evokes the spirit of an ancestor or animal. Or it could just be, as he told Clash magazine, he just isn't very social.
Success level:: With only one critically-acclaimed album under his belt, and despite a coveted Drake endorsement, it's still too early to tell... if Jerome is conjuring up the kind of ancestors who can shepherd him to a successful career.
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The Residents

The Residents - Fingerprince (Tourniquet Of Roses)
The Residents
2012 | CRYPTIC CORP / MVD Entertainment Group

Real names: Admirably unknown. The art-rock collective has existed in anonymity for more than 40 years.
Backstory:: With more than 60 albums to their name, the Residents have retained the mystery by performing in giant eyeball helmets and by refusing to participate in interviews (although its management team known as Cryptic Corporation speaks on the Residents' behalf). Why eyeballs? That's just one of the many mysteries surrounding this avant-garde rock collective.
Success level::... Maintaining cult fandom for nearly half a century is no small feat. And, as if to offer proof of its rabid following, the band recently offered an "Ultimate Box Set," which included a first pressing of its complete catalog along with rarities like an eyeball mask all stored in a functioning refrigerator for $100,000. There are only 10 in existence yet — shockingly — it's unknown whether even a single one was sold.
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Deadmau5

> album title goes here
Deadmau5
2012 | Ultra Records

Real name: Joel Zimmerman
Backstory:: Legend has it that after a teenaged Zimmerman opened his broken computer in search of the cause of a minor malfunction, he discovered a dead mouse. And so, with this mythological tale, his DJ name was born. The mask, however, represents nothing more than the Canadian musician's marketing savvy: it's distinctive, instantly recognizable and fans (or Mau5heads) can either buy one or make one to wear... to shows.
Success level:: While many initially laughed at his shtick, Deadmau5 is one of the highest-paid EDM performers in the exploding dance genre, and his artistry has even been recognized by the National Academy of the Arts and Sciences with Grammy nominations five times over.
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MF Doom

OPERATION: DOOMSDAY (Complete)
MF DOOM
2011 | Metalface Records / Now Again Records

Real name: Daniel Dumile
Backstory:: According to graffiti artist Blake "KEO" Lethem, in the early days Dumile wore a Darth Maul mask which Lethem painted aluminum, cut out square eyes and made room for a rapper's mouth to flow with ease. Eventually, the pair bought a replica gladiator helmet and removed the faceplate. The influential rapper sought anonymity so he could walk freely, even in a venue he would later that night perform... in, without being recognized. Although, as recent as two years back, the mask inspired controversy, as many suspected that the Doom on stage for some live performances was not Dumile himself, but an imposter lip-syncing to a recording.
Success level:: Nike devoted a pair of Dunks to him, and Kid Robot made an MF Doom vinyl collectible. Both fetch some pretty impressive numbers on the resale market, indicating the fanbase is there, and it is rabid.
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Xasthur

Nightmares At Dawn
Xasthur
2012 | Metalhit.com / The Orchard

Real name: The now-defunct black metal act revolved around core member Scott Conner, who went by the pseudonym Malefic.
Backstory:: Malefic wore black-and-white corpse paint with a hooded Grim Reaper cowl, which he said is intended as "an expression of hatred, death or a transformation into another spirit." The black-metal musician also didn't perform live, nor did he conduct interviews in person, so it's no surprise that demand was so high for rabid... fans to see his true appearance — so much so that a YouTube video which repurposes still photos from a magazine shoot with self-titled magazine currently has 22,000 views.
Success level:: An avant-garde black metal band that has never toured will have a limited audience, but that audience was passionate and devoted.
more »

The Locust

You'll Be Safe Forever
The Locust
2013 | Editions Mego / Kudos Records Limited

Real names: Justin Pearson, Gabe Serbian, Bobby Bray, Joey Karam
Backstory:: It's only appropriate that a band attributed with creating the genre known as "powerviolence" wear insect costumes complete with netted eyes, featureless masks and uniforms that aren't distinct from one another.
Success level::In a recent interview, Pearson said, "I tend to not give a shit about where marketable culture is heading. Maybe I should, but I'll leave that to the fools.... Anyone can polish a turd and sell it to the masses if you have the conglomerates backing you." However, it should also be noted that Dave Lombardo of Slayer is a fan — which in most quarters qualifies as a success.
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Sally Shapiro

Somewhere Else
Sally Shapiro
2013 | Paper Bag Records / The Orchard

Real names: Johan Agebjörn is the producer behind the Italian disco revivalist duo called Sally Shapiro, yet the woman who also performs vocals as "Sally Shapiro" has yet to reveal her real name.
Backstory:: It's a strange thing to cooperate with the press by doing photo shoots and interviews, and all the while withholding any or all personal information. But, the blonde Swedish vocalist suffers from shyness so crippling it prevents her from... even considering touring. Oh, and in case you think this is just a gimmick: Agebjörn himself is banned from the studio whenever "Shapiro" records her vocals. When asked about this in an interview with Vice magazine, she said, "It's a character. I enhance certain aspects of my personality and leave a lot behind. As Sally Shapiro, I dance all night long in small disco clubs and walk in the moonshine thinking about my love affairs. As myself I'm also free to do other stuff." Such as…?
Success level:: It's an incredible thing — perhaps this is one instance in which I admire the Internet for its restraint — but no matter how many times Shapiro insists on anonymity, no one from a little village in Sweden says, "Oh yeah. That girl. I went to high school with her. Her name is…"
more »

May 21, 2013

eMusic.com Inc.

Laurel Halo, Behind the Green Door

A straightforwardly beat-driven release

Electronic album artists often use EPs to sluice out small batches of tightly-knit tracks that might or might not indicate a future direction. Let’s hope that in the case of Laurel Halo’s Behind the Green Door EP, it does — it’s a more straightforwardly beat-driven release than 2012′s Quarantine, something she’s quite good at. Of course, she still bends the framework into all kinds of aural shapes: The stalactite-like keyboards of “Throw,” the opening track, evokes mid-’90s Aphex Twin or µ-Ziq, while “UHFFO” is a phased-dizzy minimalist techno, everything from the beat to the zapping keyboard duel that livens it up midway in, coated with gauze. The heavily dubbed-out “Sex Mission,” meanwhile, contains zero heavy breathing, unless you count the way the rhythm track heaves — not in a cartoon-porn way, but something more meditative while still evoking arousal.

May 20, 2013

eMusic.com Inc.

Shannon and the Clams, Dreams in the Rat House

Jumping to the relative big leagues without sacrificing their rickety retro charm

On Dreams In the Rat House, Oakland’s fiercest contemporary purveyors of scuffed-up early-’60s rock ‘n’ roll jump to the relative big leagues of the Sub Pop imprint Hardly Art without sacrificing any of their rickety retro charm. Shannon and the Clams’ third album sticks to the live-sounding, punk-roughed doo-wop, girl group and surf rock throwbacks that made 2011 predecessor Sleep Talk the perfect cheap-beer chaser. It’s a narrow but fertile niche, and this trio goes after it with devilish bravado.

Bass player Shannon Shaw, also of Bay Area kindred spirits Hunx and His Punx, shares lead vocal duties with guitarist Cody Blanchard, and their loose, comfortable rapport — along with the emphatic, conversational drumming of Ian Amberson — helps keep the shag-carpet and wood-paneled consistency from getting too same-y. So does the fact they’re willing to change up styles pretty wildly within their chosen set of inspirations, whether the only-sleeping psych-rock of Blanchard-growled “Bed Rock” or the uptempo rhythm and blues (in its original sense) of Shaw-belted first single “Rip Van Winkle.” If the album title recalls HP Lovecraft’s haunting short story Dreams in the Witch House, well, you expect a bit of eccentricity from any friends of rabbit-costumed garage-rocker extraordinaire Nobunny.

May 20, 2013

eMusic.com Inc.

Interview: Dungeonesse

Jenn Wasner is the Leslie Knope of pop. Not only does the Wye Oak frontwoman’s speaking voice resemble that of Amy Poehler’s beloved Parks and Recreation character, but she also has a similar earnest thoroughness about her: Just about every point in her account of how she made the transformation from indie-rock singer to dance-pop siren in Dungeonesse — her new project with fellow multi-instrumentalist Jon Ehrens of the band White Life — needed to be edited to fit this article.

Like Knope, she’s insanely proud of her town, which in her case is Baltimore, where she and Ehrens live in a tightly knit community. Ehrens’s dad even works with the father of Andy Stack, Wasner’s partner in Wye Oak. The Dungeonesse duo’s friendship began when Ehrens’s band Art Department opened up for Wasner and Stack at their first CD release show when Wye Oak were still calling themselves Monarch. As she explains below, Dungeonesse is an outgrowth of their goal to become a songwriting and production team for other singers. During their conversation with eMusic, Ehrens dropped out from technical difficulties, but Wasner more than compensated.

How did Dungeonesse begin?

Jenn Wasner: Dungeonesse is what I’ve referred to as a pen-pal pop band. I was touring like a crazy person with Wye Oak, and Jon had just moved to Los Angeles, so we were either on opposite coasts or god-knows-where, but we’ve always been mutually interested in each other’s songwriting. At some point Jon sent me tracks that he had been making in L.A. He was trying to find some starlet out in California to do them and I was like, “No, let me do it!” Jon made the tracks on his busted-ass laptop, and I recorded them on mine, and we sent them back and forth. After a while, we realized it wasn’t just a fun little thing, and that we were actually making a record, one that we were excited about. Thus Dungeonesse was born!

Your album may be Secretly Canadian’s most mainstream-accessible release yet. How did Dungeonesse sign to this quintessential indie label?

Wasner: I have this solo project Flock of Dimes, and I was on tour with my good friend Sharon Van Etten last spring. Sharon’s on Jagjaguwar, so all the Secretly Canadian label folk came to our show in Cincinnati. Chris Swanson, one of the main honchos, was there. He was in the green room watching a video of The-Dream. So being the loud, obnoxious person I am, I walked up to him, and was like, “Oh shit, The-Dream, that’s my shit!” So we start taking about our favorite pop music and over the course of the night, we have a few drinks. And by the end of the night, I had enough to say, “You know, I make pop music!” and so I played him some of the songs. The next day, I’m like, “I’m a drunk idiot.” But I got a really nice email from Chris saying how much he liked the songs. So we sent over what we had, which was basically this record, and he wanted to put it out. Even looking back on it now, it seems like a bit of a miracle.

Do you consider this a side project, or is this now the main thing for both of you and your other work is on hiatus?

Wasner: I’m now deep in the writing game for Wye Oak and deep in the mixing game for Flock of Dimes and Jon’s always makin’ some shit. I don’t think we have any desire to limit ourselves or even necessarily focus on one thing above another. One of the problems I had with being on tour so much — traveling all over, feeling really distraught — was that I had been limiting myself to a small window of creative expression. I played the same songs off the same record every single night, and regardless of how strongly you may feel about any material that you have to repeat to that extent — it’s limiting for me, I’ll just say that. Why limit yourself? The best part of [being a musician] is making new things.

How did the songwriting for this album differ from your previous projects?

Wasner: A couple of these songs came to me fully formed. “Drive You Crazy” and “This Could Be Home” were songs that Jon pretty much completed and I just tried to interpret as my own. But for the most part, I would receive tracks from Jon and I would do in the pop universe what’s called the top line. In a lot of ways it freed me up melodically and lyrically to do what I thought was best and most appropriate for the songs and to use my voice to its fullest potential, which is something maybe I’ve shied away from. I love to sing pop music, but I’ve always disguised my voice in other projects.

Jon Ehrens: This is the first time I would write the baking track and make all the chord changes happen before I knew what the melody was.

Several of the songs have a “This is what I am” message to them. In “Drive You Crazy,” you’re serving notice that anyone who hooks up with you may be seeking psychiatric assistance.

Ehrens: At the very least!

Wasner: If they’re lucky!

Have you ever said as much on a date? Like, “I’m gonna mess you up so you better brace yourself?”

Ehrens: I won’t say that upfront but I will say something weird.

People often associate guitars with reality and synthesizers with escape. Is your work with Wye Oak autobiographical, and is this your alter-ego?

Wasner: With a band like Wye Oak, it’s a very heart-on-sleeve style of songwriting and I think sometimes people confuse that with it being “me.” People who’re familiar with what I’ve done in the past may be inclined to assume that Dungeonesse is more of a persona, more of a costume, but if you’re driving around in the car with me, nine times out of 10 I’m playing modern Top 40, rap, and R&B, or the Grown & Sexy radio station that plays Barry White and disco music, and I’m singing along with it at the top of my lungs.

Were there particular new or old songs that acted as models for what you did with this record?

Wasner: On the modern end, Usher’s “Climax” has moved me to tears on more than one occasion. Miguel’s “Adorn,” that’s fucking amazing. Jon and I are really big fans of Robyn; she’s done totally transcendent songs that will stand the test of time. I love Kanye West and “Runaway” in particular. It gives me chills. As far as older stuff, how do I even begin? I’ve been listening to — no, I shouldn’t even say it because I’m planning on covering it! I listen to a lot of Teena Marie and Aaliyah. I think about Arthur Russell a lot actually. He transcended genre and was all over the place; his disco records are some of my favorite things he’s done. Ariel Pink is amazing: “Round and Round” is one of the best pop songs of the last 25 years, easy.

Do you agree that the recession has made DIY more a part of American culture than it’s been in decades?

Wasner: I think that a lot of people are taking the creation of pop music into their own hands, and it’s not as tightly controlled by a small corporate minority of incredibly rich and morally suspect people as it used to be. I’m all for the masses taking this style back and reclaiming it because it ideally should be made by the people that it’s made for — and that’s everybody.

Neither Jon nor I have the desire to be a pop star. Especially not me — that just seems like a nightmare. Performing is something I’ve had to work at to get good at, and I’m still not entirely comfortable with it. I’m not a dancer. I’m not a fashion plate. I don’t mind being on stage but don’t think it’s my true calling. But I could totally see myself, and I think Jon does similarly, as someone working behind the scenes and making the best songs that we can, even if we’re not the ones getting up on stage and singing them.

Your transition from indie rock to pop isn’t unprecedented. Greg Kurstin of the Bird and the Bee started in Geggy Tah, an arty band on David Byrne’s record label, and now he’s producing or songwriting and/or playing on every pop and rock record from Pink to Foster the People.

Wasner: I’m going to be totally honest with you and say that is my absolute 100 percent ideal dream situation. If I can continue making weird records for myself, perform only when I want to, and make pop songs for other people that have huge audiences, I think I’d be the happiest. That’s not to say that I want to give up being an artist, but it would be great if I didn’t have to rely on that. I wouldn’t have to tour myself into the ground to make a living. Like most people, I want to be stable. I want to have a home and have belongings and live in a city and see my friends and my boyfriend.

You sometimes have a slight country twang to your singing voice.

Wasner: I was born in West Baltimore and grew up just over the county line. The creative community is unparalleled and I am a proud and grateful resident of Baltimore and a proud member of this small but really supportive community. I love it here. There’s no other place I’d rather be. I’m just grateful that I don’t sing with a Baltimore accent ’cause that thing is a nightmare.

Divine aside, I can’t imagine the people who populate John Waters movies singing pop songs.

Wasner: Oh, they’re real. That’s not an exaggeration. That’s Baltimore.

May 17, 2013

eMusic.com Inc.

10 Iconic Album Covers and the Imitators They Inspired

Inscrutable and defiant, the cover image of David Bowie’s 12th album “Heroes” is one of the most iconic images in all of rock ‘n’ roll. So you can hardly blame Bowie for thinking it was too good to only be used once. The cover of his latest album, The Next Day, is a direct homage to one of the most cherished albums in his lengthy discography. But while Bowie is an innovator in many fields, in this instance he’s actually part of a long tradition of artists using their album art to nod to the past.

Before the Clash, Ween and the X-Ecutioners became restless, boundary-pushing artists, they were devoted music fans. That spirit never left them, and they used the covers of some of their most beloved albums to pay tribute to those that inspired them to keep pushing forward. In an effort to pay tribute to other people’s tributes, we’ve gathered together 10 of our favorite album cover homages. As these picks prove, everyone gets inspired by someone else, but what matters most is where you take it next.

David Bowie and David Bowie

From Joni Mitchell to David Lynch to TV on the Radio, David Bowie has always been a vocal fan of the artists that excite him, and he’s nearly always shown great taste. So it makes sense that David Bowie would be a big David Bowie fan — because what right-thinking person isn’t? On The Next Day, Bowie and his trusted producer Tony Visconti revisit some of the sounds and lyrical themes from his most classic albums (single “Where Are We Now” even checks back in on Berlin), but always keeps an eye toward the future. As such, the cover of The Next Day makes sense: It acknowledges the past, but makes it clear that Bowie has no interest in staying there.

"Heroes"
David Bowie
1999 | VIRGIN
The Next Day
David Bowie
2013 | Iso/Columbia

Elvis Presley and The Clash

The Clash famously sang “No Elvis, Beatles or The Rolling Stones” on their single “1977,” but don’t believe a word of it. One listen to their magnum opus London Calling reveals that Joe Strummer and co. had an encyclopedic knowledge of rock ‘n’ roll, rocksteady reggae and R&B. Just to prove these guys knew their roots, the cover of London is a spot-on reference to Elvis Presley’s self-titled debut album. The font and color scheme is the same, with a picture of bassist Paul Simonon wrecking his guitar subbed in for Presley playing his. It’s often read as an announcement that The Clash had officially arrived to tear down the past, but perhaps it was just a way for rock’s then newest vanguards to show sly respect to the king they knew they were replacing.

Elvis Presley - Legacy Edition
Elvis Presley
2011 | RCA/Legacy
London Calling
The Clash
2000 | Epic

Simon & Garfunkel and Kruder & Dorfmeister

Austrian downtempo duo Kruder & Dorfmeister released this EP in 1993, well before Francis McDormand’s character in Almost Famous called Simon & Garfunkel “the poetry of drugs and promiscuous sex.” But they had likely already heard the rumors about how the New York folkies stayed so mellow and introspective. Their debut EP G-Stoned paid tribute to a previous generation’s chill-out soundtrack, while demonstrating the perennial ability of the black turtleneck to make anyone look sophisticated and intellectual.

Bookends
Simon & Garfunkel
1986 | Columbia
G-Stoned
Kruder & Dorfmeister
1994 | EP/SINGLE

Lifetime and The Ergs

New Jersey jokers The Ergs named their first album Dorkrockcorkrod and never let you forget that they were three obsessed music geeks, as quick to praise (lest you get it twisted, The Ben Kweller EP was truly a labor of love) as they were to condemn (all time greatest Ergs song title: “Johnny Rzeznik Needs His Ass Kicked”). Their 2005 EP Jersey’s Best Prancers paid tribute to Garden State Punk O.G.’s Lifetime’s seminal Jersey’s Best Dancers, an album best known for the scene anthem “Theme Song for a New Brunswick Basement Show.” Sure, The Ergs actually repped nearby South Amboy, but the sentiment crossed county lines.

Andrew Hill and Atmosphere

Atmosphere is best known for MC Slug’s tales of bad love and hard luck, but producer/DJ Anthony “Ant” Davis has always demonstrated a keen ear for 1960′s soul, pop and jazz samples. Though Atmosphere’s debut album has bits of Bee Gees and Stevie Wonder in the mix, the album cover pays tribute to Andrew Hill’s 1964 bop classic Judgment. Perhaps Ant already had it in his collection (the man knows a good horn riff when he hears it), or perhaps Slug could relate to the title.

Judgment (Rudy Van Gelder Edition)
Andrew Hill
2005 | BLUE NOTE
Overcast!
Atmosphere
2007 | Rhymesayers

Leonard Cohen and Ween

During their long, glorious existence, Ween were simultaneously the most irreverent and respectful group of music aficionados around. Sure, they might write a Jimmy Buffet pisstake called “Bananas and Blow,” but they still cared enough to totally nail the steel drum. The duo’s second album The Pod is perhaps the “brownest” album in their catalog, so dank and weird that it still gives a contact high two decades later. For reasons known only to The Boognish, these weirdos decided that this was the best possible moment to pay tribute to The Best Of Leonard Cohen, with the cover picture of Canada’s Greatest Poet swapped out for a shot of bassist Mean Ween enjoying some of Home Depot’s Finest. Hey, perhaps the authors of “She Fucks Me” wanted to make sure we knew that they knew that Leonard Cohen is some of the best getting-laid music around.

The Best Of Leonard Cohen
Leonard Cohen
1988 | Columbia
The Pod
Ween
2010 | New Rounder

Public Enemy and The X-Ecutioners

Sure, It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back gets all the attention, but Public Enemy’s debut Yo! Bum Rush the Show introduced the world to the prowess of DJ Terminator X and producer Hank Shocklee. This album finished the argument that Run-D.M.C. started, re: the ability of two turntables relative to the ability to rock a crowd. A nation of DJs owe this album an eternal debt, and New York scratch collective The X-Ecutioners paid tribute with the cover of their 2002 breakthrough Built From Scratch, which shoved turntabilism in to the mainstream for a few minutes via the Linkin Park collaboration “It’s Goin’ Down.”

Yo! Bum Rush The Show
Public Enemy
1995 | Def Jam/RAL
Built From Scratch
The X-ecutioners
2002 | LOUD Records

Michael Jackson and Tech N9ne

Michael Jackson is arguably the most popular musician who ever lived, and Thriller is his world-conquering masterpiece. Tech N9ne, for his part, is really, really popular in Kansas City. Killer is another fine entry in a discography devoted to helping Midwestern rap fans blow off some steam and ruin their speakers. As the straitjacket cover and song titles like “Get The F**k Outta Here,” make clear, Tech isn’t really interested in making a four-quadrant audience pleaser in the mold of Thriller, though even MJ could get down with the message of “Hope For A Higher Power.” Though he probably would have preferred it came with less gunshot samples.

Thriller
Michael Jackson
2007 | Epic
Killer
Tech N9ne
Strange Music

2 Live Crew and Spank Rock & Benny Blanco

Miami booty-bass mob 2 Live Crew were called all kinds of things during the run as lords of the low rider in the late ’80s — usually various synonyms for “juvenile” and “gross.” One thing they were hardly ever called was “inspiring,” but Luke Skywalker’s ass anthems must have touched the – let’s say “hearts” — of young Virginia smart alecks Spank Rock & Benny Blanco. The music often gets as cheeky as the cover, with tracks like “B-O-O-T-A-Y” serving double duty as paeans to both derrieres and sticky nostalgia for misspent youth.

Kiss and The Melvins

Before King Buzzo and company became the most pitiless riff monsters to ever emerge from the Northeast, The Melvins were just a bunch of teenage arena rock fans. And during the height of 1990′s cred-auditing, the group went out of their way to display their good standing in the Kiss Army by patterning a series of three Eps after Kiss’ infamous four solo album deluge. Gene Simmons recruited guests like Cher, Jeff “Skunk” Baxter and even a pre-fame Katy Segal for his opus, while Buzzo got his friend Dave Grohl, then at the height of Nirvanamania, to take care of the drum skins. Because the early ’90s were unfathomably strange, a year later The Melvins, whom often strived to sound like a black hole swallowing a whale, signed to a major label, toured arenas with Nine Inch Nails and even got Simmons to jam with them onstage.

Gene Simmons
Gene Simmons
1997 | Island Def Jam
King Buzzo
Melvins
EP/SINGLE

May 17, 2013

eMusic.com Inc.

eMusic’s Alternate-Universe Eurovision

The Eurovision Song Contest was established as way to bring European countries together after World War II. The first competition was held in the town of Lugano, Switzerland, on May 24, 1956. Since then, it’s become a sprawling behemoth that makes American Idol, The Voice and X-Factor look downright quaint. The first year, seven countries entered. Now in its 58th year, 39 countries are competing for the top prize.

To participate, musicians must submit an original, unpublished song. Since residents of their home country can’t vote for them, the goal is to woo an international audience. As a result, language, content and staging is all up for interpretation. Read: This is a contest of big, bigger biggest.

eMusic’s Laura Studarus complied a fantasy Eurovision Song Contest lineup. How would artists and songs stack up against each other if the laws of time, space, and competition were suspended in favor of good taste and outstanding musicality?

Denmark: Mew

Mew And The Glass Handed Kites
Mew
2012 | Columbia

Song submitted: "Zookeeper's Boy"
Odds of winning: 4:1

Mew may be the most likely to catch viewers off-guard with their sneaky combination of ethereal hooks and grinding guitars. "Zookeeper's Boy," from the band's 2005 album And the Glass handed Kites, mixes prog with just the right amount of whimsy, making it perfect for mass consumption. (Sample lyric: "If there's a glitch, you're an ostrich.") Add to that the band's propensity for Edward Gorey-style visuals... and frontman Jonas Bjerre's doe-eyed charisma, and right out of the gate you've got a band to beat.
more »

England: Chad Valley

Young Hunger
Chad Valley
2012 | Cascine / Redeye

Song submitted: "Fall 4 U (feat. Glasser)"
Odds of winning: 20:1

For his debut full-length Young Hunger, producer Hugo Manuel (aka Chad Valley) brought quite a collection of friends with him, including Twin Shadow, El Perro Del Mar, Active Child and Glasser. And what does a gathering of pals plus music equal? A party. Which is completely in line with Eurovision's reconciliatory nature. While any song on the album could be a competition-worthy single,... Manuel will bring along Glasser to perform restrained electro love duet, "Fall 4 U." Will top awards to go the ghost of 1980s film soundtracks past? With a coupling this chemistry-heavy, it's not impossible.
more »

Estonia: Maria Minerva

Will Happiness Find Me?
Maria Minerva
2012 | Not Not Fun / Revolver

Song submitted: "Sweet Synergy"
Odds of winning: 600:1

Estonian sound-collage artist Maria Minerva isn't your standard Eurovision song competitor. But if Belgium can enter Telex — a band whose idea of a chorus is chanting "Eurovision Eurovision Eurovision" — surely there's a room to think outside of the box. Minerva's debut album Will Happiness Find Me? is a series of atonal experiments, woozy minimal disco, and cascades of samples. Underneath it all beats a... spooky, fractured-pop heart. Let's be honest: Minerva's chances of winning are slim. But she won't go down without a fight.
more »

France: Daft Punk

Get Lucky
Daft Punk
2013 | EP/SINGLE

Song submitted: "Get Lucky"
Odds of winning: even

There's a subgenre in music known as "schlager." In German, it means "a hit." But loosely translated in Eurovision Song Contest speak it means, "A pop song with a hint of cheese you gladly overlook because it's so damn catchy." No song in this year's fantasy field comes close to Daft Punk's recently-released single "Get Lucky." The helmeted Frenchmen have combined 1970s disco funk, handclaps, Pharrell... glitter-glam vocals, and just a whiff of vocoder to create the kind of tune you can imagine kids little kids getting down to and adults, er, "getting down" to. You might want to start engraving the winner's trophy now.
more »

Italy: Porcelain Raft

Strange Weekend
Porcelain Raft
2012 | Secretly Canadian / SC Dist.

Song submitted: "Unless You Speak From Your Heart"
Odds of winning: 100:1

Eurovision is Porcelain Raft's (Mauro Remiddi) chance to show the world that he's about more than hazy pop choruses constructed from drum loops, gently strummed guitars, whispered vocals, and tape hiss. Strange Weekend single "Unless You Speak From Your Heart" combines the dream pop hallmarks with a hip-hop beat, and crisp pace that splits the difference between Beach House atmospherics and Jam-style... posturing. Bedroom recording wimp? Hardly. Here's hoping the one-man-band brings a few friends to help him fill the big stage.
more »

Norway: Sondre Lerche

Two Way Monologue
Sondre Lerche
2004 | CAROLINE ASTRALWERKS - CAT

Song submitted: "Two Way Monologue"
Odds of winning: 7:1

A Norwegian scene stalwart, Sondre Lerche's eight albums have covered a lot of ground: from pop to garage rock to film scores to bossa nova. Which pretty much means Lerche can be anything we want him to be — including a Eurovision champion. Single "Two Way Monologue" (taken from the 2004 album of the same name) is his greatest chance to take home the title.... Striking a happy medium between singing and crooning, Lerche isn't just out to perform for the audience, but seduce them. And you know what? It just might work.
more »

Poland: KAMP!

Melt
Kamp
2013 | Discotexas / GoodToGo

Song submitted: "Melt"
Odds of winning: 70:1

Eastern Europe's answer to Friendly Fires, Polish dance trio KAMP! gravitate towards slick production, bouncy Balearic beats, and lush beds of electronics. It might be a hard sell, since generally the competition favors more straight up pop-driven fare. (Just don't tell the 2006 winner, Finnish death metal band Lordi, that.) But if anyone can sweep viewers up in their undeniable wave of ready-for-primetime dance club energy, it's... a band so vibrant they had to include an exclamation point in their name.
more »

Scotland: CHVRCHES

The Mother We Share
CHVRCHES
2012 | Create Control / Musicadium

Song submitted: "The Mother We Share"
Odds of winning: 16:1

Eurovision favors the over-the-top statement. Backup dancers, feathers, light shows — these are people who are likely to laugh at the suggestion that you merely "put a bird on it." No one's music lends itself to embellishment quite like electro-pop outfit, CHVRCHES. Like The Knife rendered in primary colors, the Scottish trio favor icy electronics and ambitious musical gestures. CHVRCHES lean towards the emotional... though, their tales of love and hate framed by frontwoman Lauren Mayberry's fairytale-worthy vocals. Sure they've been known to stand still when performing, but that just makes it easier to frame them with rings of fire and chorus girls.
more »

Spain: Devendra Banhart

Mala
Devendra Banhart
2013 | Nonesuch

Song submitted: "Mi Negrita"
Odds of winning: 150:1

Fun fact: There's no rule that an artist has to actually hail from the country they represent in Eurovision Song Contest. Which is why, in 1988, Céline Dion won on behalf of Switzerland — despite being Canadian. With multi-genre provocateur El Guincho in perpetual hiding, the nation will tap Spanish-influenced Devendra Banhart to fill in. The laid-back folkie may not have the razzle dazzle factor of... other acts, but Tropicália-accented balled "Mi Negrita" won't go completely unappreciated.
more »

Sweden: Jens Lekman

Night Falls Over Kortedala
Jens Lekman
Secretly Canadian / SC Dist.

Song submitted: "The World Moves On"
Odds of winning: 2:1

In 1974, ABBA won the Eurovision Song Contest with their rendition of "Waterloo," which went on to appear on the band's second album of the same name. Who better to carry on the tradition than Jens Lekman? The closing track of his 2007 album Night Falls Over Kortedala "Friday Night at the Drive in Bingo" contains the same simple syrup-laced pop that saw Benny... Andersson and the gang to victory — right down to a horn-filled chorus and nostalgic location name-checking. Bonus: Lekman squeezes in an offhanded mention of rabbit sex. Let's see the dancing queens try to do that.
more »

May 16, 2013

eMusic.com Inc.

Daft Punk, Random Access Memories

Even androids long for life

Imagine you are Daft Punk, perhaps the only musical act in history whose cultural profile actually rose in the wake of their weakest and least-popular studio album, 2005′s Human After All. You wrote and directed your own experimental feature film, 2006′s Electroma; toured the world to great acclaim in 2006 and ’07; got sampled in a smash 2007 Kanye West single “Stronger;” and composed a soundtrack for 2010′s Tron: Legacy. But somehow all this has been dwarfed by years of speculation over what you’ll do next, as if the world had been seduced by your faceless robot image into believing that you are actual super heroes. Rising to the challenge, you then spend years on a magnum opus in which the implicit goal revealed by numerous pre-release interviews with collaborators both big and small is to fulfill the purpose of the album’s first song: Daft Punk’s Thomas Bangalter and Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo have aimed to do nothing less than to “Give Life Back to Music.”

Random Access Memories is a concept album in which these would-be androids take it upon themselves to restore humanity to the music scene they themselves helped make more mechanical. Recorded with veteran session musicians whose résumés include Michael Jackson’s Off the Wall and Thriller, an insanely idiosyncratic cross-generational pack of co-writers spanning from Paul Williams (who wrote for the Carpenters and the Muppets) to Animal Collective’s Panda Bear, and absolutely massive symphonic orchestration, the French duo counter the automation of today’s EDM and, indeed, their own back catalog, by filling the album with what collaborator Nile Rodgers terms “one-time-only events.” True to Daft Punk form, there is repetition on this album, but more importantly there is constant subtle variation: Listen closely and you’ll hear all sorts of accents, complications and improvisations impossible to achieve through the pair’s previous methods.

In doing so, Daft Punk get far closer to replicating decidedly non-punk forms of the ’70s and early ’80s — disco, progressive rock, jazz-funk and West Coast studio pop — than most 21st-century musicians have ever dared. Absolutely none of it is what has traditionally been considered cool, and that’s precisely the point: RAM is instead focused on warmth, sunshine, good times, intimacy and sweaty shared body heat. There is solitude and melancholy as well, voiced through vocoders and Williams himself, who in the shamelessly grand “Touch” plays the part of a robot who craves the reality of physical sensation. Segueing from gurgling synths to piano pop to disco to choral and symphonic pomp and back again, this multi-part epic holds the album’s theme: Even androids long for life.

That they’ve rediscovered old-fashioned studio craft in an era when it’s grown cost-prohibitive makes RAM even more quixotic, as if they invested their entire Disney commission and then some on the aesthetic antithesis of Human After All‘s hasty bluntness. Every genre they touch is pushed to the hilt: The club tracks featuring Rodgers shredding on rhythm guitar, “Give Life Back to Music,” “Lose Yourself to Dance” and the single “Get Lucky” are all really, really disco, as if the duo aimed to reanimate the musician’s late cohorts in Chic. The synth riff that runs through “Giorgio by Moroder” — a lavish, ever-shifting number featuring Giorgio Moroder’s spoken autobiography of how he fathered EDM through his pioneering synthetic 1977 production of Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love” — evokes two electronic disco milestones: Moroder’s “Chase” theme for Midnight Express and Cerrone’s similarly futuristic “Supernature.” “Instant Crush” may feature the Strokes’ Julian Casablancas, but its chugging guitars are eerily reminiscent of the Alan Parsons Project’s “Eye in the Sky,” one of prog-rock’s final hits. And Todd Edwards, known for emphatically sampled underground house, helps them nail the Toto-esque pop of “Fragments of Time” with a riff that recalls the Doobie Brothers’ “What a Fool Believes.”

By paraphrasing, recombining, and expanding upon the sophisticated sounds of their childhoods, Bangalter and de Homem-Christo mature their own music exponentially. On every level — songwriting, arrangements, production, engineering and particularly mood — the duo generate infinitely more complex and finessed results precisely because they never regard the music that was typically reviled by the critics of the time and is still today thought of as “cheesy,” the witheringly condescending adjective that’s become omnipresent in an Internet age when everyone’s a critic. Instead, they render disco, prog and soft pop via the wonder with which they originally perceived them, blissfully unaware of their un-hip-ness in much of the adult world they would eventually reign as icons of hip. Through that wide-eyed innocence, they’ve achieved the alchemy of love.

May 16, 2013

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