eMusic’s Guide to the Detroit Jazz Festival

At a time when life feels increasingly unfair for ordinary working folks, the Detroit Jazz Festival is sublime succor, an annual karmic gift of spiritual rejuvenation. A four-day event over Labor Day Weekend in the heart of the old blue-collar Mecca of downtown Detroit, the festival serves up bountiful jazz from world-famous artists totally free of charge.

This year, festival-goers can catch the likes of Sonny Rollins, Wynton Marsalis, Chick Corea and Wayne Shorter (and that’s the tip of the iceberg) on four different stages easily traversed in a three-block area. Three of them are along Hart Plaza, where you can see Canada across the Detroit River as water-skiers cavort, and where the lights from the towering GM headquarters provide a majestic backdrop less than a block away. The other stage, slightly north, is in the urban oasis of Campus Martius square, with its spellbinding water sculptures.

The vibe couldn’t be friendlier or safer — I’ve attended four previous festivals and have yet to witness a single violent incident. On the contrary, the prevailing goodwill, undeniably fostered by the music and lack of expense, leaves you giddy at the end of each day.

Here are 15 especially noteworthy acts. But check out the full schedule and give a listen to the special radio channel we’ve put together for a more comprehensive survey of the cornucopia of musical delights available.

New This Week: Holy Other, Noisettes & More

Holy Other, Held The reclusive producer, who performs with a hood covering his head, has up built up a reputation as a master of mope-tronica on the back of little more than one intriguing EP, released last year, and a remix album. Luckily Held, his debut album, is as sepulchral and absorbing as you’d hope – multi-layered witch house that gracefully mixes ambient warmth and cold electronics. Philip Sherburne writes:

“With every track, it only sinks deeper into its pneumatic gloom. But it’s hardly undifferentiated. Supersaturated colors bloom unexpectedly amidst the ashes, particularly on the lush “In Difference” and “Past Tension,” which display an unlikely debt to 10cc’s buoyant “I’m Not in Love.””

Noisettes, Contact Despite being dropped by their old label, the Noisettes’ first album since 2009’s Wild Young Hearts rings with pop positivity: this is infectious and irresistible.

Chilly Gonzales, Solo Piano II The bathrobe-loving Renaissance man releases his second album of Debussy-inspired ivory-tickling, the ideal accompaniment to the chink of Martini glasses in an expensive hotel.

Matthew Dear, Beams Beams may be the best album yet from the experimental pop producer. If the laser-guided groove of “Earthforms” doesn’t get you going, the sublime future pop of “Her Fantasy” will. Recommended.

Wild Nothing, Nocturne Jack Tatum, aka Wild Nothing, follows up 2010’s bedroom-recorded Gemini with more after-hours gloom-pop. Laura Studarus writes:

“Despite his distinctly Moz-like melancholy and his Robert Smith-style preoccupation with love, longing and loneliness, there’s never a sense that Tatum’s aping his influences – merely using them as a touchstone for his personal explorations.”

Correatown, Pleiades Named after a star cluster, this hauntingly sparse dream-pop album from LA-based songwriter Angela Correa exerts a thrilling gravitational pull.

Dinosaur Jr, Watch The Corners The first single from their new album I Bet On Sky, out in a couple of weeks, sounds like vintage Dinosaur Jr, testament to the new harmony in their camp.

TEEN, In Limbo Kristina “Teeny” Lieberson of Brooklyn indie-rockers Here We Go Magic is the force behind this spellbinding debut. Marc Hogan writes:

“On tracks like free-flowing synth workout “Unable” or crunching, Beta Band-skewed “Why Why Why, TEEN sprawls out to suit the youth-appropriate album title. This is an alluring, sometimes enchanting stroll along the blurry line between hooks and incantations.”

St Germain, From Detroit to St Germain (The Complete Series for Connoisseurs) A selection of early cuts from the deep house producer, available digitally for the first time.

Discovering Dan Deacon’s America

Despite boasting a classical education from the Conservatory of Music at State University of New York at Purchase, Dan Deacon doesn’t buy into the elitist implications of being called a composer. “I think that the least pretentious way you could think about a composer is someone who writes music for someone else,” he muses. “But some composers don’t write music for humans at all. So the definition is flawed.  You could call a taxi driver a composer. Or a performance artist. Or a choreographer.”

Deacon’s new album continues his tradition of stretching the perceived limitations of the term. Over the course of nine caffeine-jacked compositions, Deacon stitches together a crazy quilt of styles, moving from dense electronic passages to lush string interludes and back again. Featuring fuzzed-out dissonance, frenetic chants and moments of stunning serenity, America is a colorful grab bag — much like its namesake.

eMusic’s Laura Studarus went on a musical journey through the 20th century with Deacon, visiting some of the unexpected inspirations for his new album, including a boxcar-riding hobo, a Beatles sidekick, and the one icon that no list would be complete without.

Interview: Wild Nothing

Jack Tatum surmises that people might refer to the music he makes under the moniker Wild Nothing as “reference-pop” or “revisionist-pop.” Those phrases give short shrift to the scope of his music, though: Both 2010′s Gemini and the new Nocturne take cues from the past — the Cure’s gloomy fog, ’80s UK indie rock, whispery twee, Sarah Records’ melancholy jangle — but don’t use nostalgia as an emotional crutch.

Nocturne is much dreamier than past Wild Nothing releases — save, perhaps, for their 2009 cover of Kate Bush’s “Cloudbusting.” But the album also boasts stronger songwriting and a wider palette of inspirations — from the Go-Betweens (the string-laden “Shadow”) to plush soft rock (“Through the Grass”) and even early Tears For Fears (“The Blue Dress”). For a musician who started Wild Nothing in his bedroom while attending Virginia Tech, the rapid progression is impressive.

Tatum — a Williamsburg, Virginia, native who now lives in New York — chatted from his manager’s office about geographic disruption, loosening up his range of influences and Fleetwood Mac.

In the bio for Nocturne, you’re quoted as saying this: “I don’t think it’s going to be a secret to anyone that I care about pop music, but it’s definitely more my sense of what pop music used to be or even what pop music would be in my ideal world.” I think the challenge inherent in this is creating music that touches on the past, but isn’t mired in nostalgia. How much does that play into your process when playing or writing music?

It used to play a whole lot more into it. With the first record, I really was looking directly at older music — and even still, with this record, there’s a lot of references that I think are immediately noticeable, in terms of the sounds of the record and the stylistic choices that remind people of a lot of older music — in particular, ’80s UK indie-pop, that kind of thing. For me, this record definitely was an opportunity for me to loosen up my writing process a little bit and allow myself to let in contemporary stuff — but also worry less about what I’m trying to sound like and more about what comes naturally to me.

Did you feel a need to establish your own voice more?

I always try and do everything as naturally and honestly as I can. I didn’t sit down to start working on this album and say to myself, “You really need to work on your own voice, or establish yourself as your own thing.” But while I was writing, whereas before I maybe would’ve squashed certain ideas in order to keep within the confines of a certain genre or style, I definitely pulled from a lot of other things that I was interested in. If I had any natural inclination to go for a certain melody or chord change, I just did it, as opposed to thinking about what it would sound like in relation to something else. In a way, that’s somewhat of a deliberate choice — but I just tried to do it as naturally as possible.

In a Pitchfork interview, you described Nocturne‘s lyrics like this: “I wouldn’t say they’re all stream of consciousness, but they’re not necessarily overwrought. I didn’t try and say anything terribly meaningful.” However, I thought the record was very meaningful. Maybe even subconsciously, you were working through things; there’s a transitional theme to it.

I think it was pretty representative of a transitional period of life for me. Between the last record and now, a lot of things have changed in my life — geographically, but also in terms of what I’m doing and my goals for myself, and, of course, a lot of relationship stuff as well. It really was true when I said that [to Pitchfork], because lyrics have always been the last thing I put to my music. I practically wrote this entire album musically before I started thinking about what I was going to say.

I do that on purpose, because I never have words and then work on a song to go around [them]. I always have found that I work best if I try and fit words in afterward. [This method] allows me to not think too much about what I’m going to say. It’s very much more about the immediate thought I’m thinking or feeling.

It’s not stream-of-consciousness, because it’s not babble or anything. [Laughs.] It’s thought-out, but I’ll never spend more than an hour on lyrics — I don’t let it sit or revise too much. I don’t know if it’s a subconscious thing, if [Nocturne] ended up being particularly meaningful or representative. It’s just one of those things that kind of happens on its own — it’s referencing experiences and things that were happening.

So, your voice and the words are another instrument. It’s the last thing you layer on top of the music.

Yeah. The melody is there for me — I can hear the way that I’m going to be singing, I can hear how it fits into the rest of the music. I just don’t know what the words are yet.

In the last few years you’ve moved from Virginia to Georgia — and now you live in New York. How has that geographic disruption, along with all the touring, affected your music?

It’s been strange. [At] the very end of last summer, we made the conscious decision to stop touring for a while. I was in [Savannah,] Georgia, until January [2012] and then I moved to New York. I haven’t really been in any one place for terribly long. And even though I lived in Savannah, I didn’t feel that I was my home. I didn’t really feel it was where I wanted to be, necessarily. That’s something I’ve dealt a lot with — just constantly being in a new place, there’s not this sense of groundedness that I used to feel when I was younger. It’s something that troubled me at first, but at the end of the day, it’s like, “Why would I be troubled about this?” If anything, it’s awesome I get to travel. [Laughs.]

What did you miss about living in Georgia or Virginia? The South is such a different animal than New York.

I miss the space. I miss the feeling of not really having constraints. I lived in Blacksburg [Virginia] — it’s a very small town, and there’s so much to do in terms of the outdoors and just being in a really peaceful environment. I miss that a lot. I miss having a lot of living space for cheap. And I miss having a lot of places to go. I’m very happy to be in New York, but there’s always things you miss about where you’re from. For me, that’s the big thing in Virginia. Also, because I lived in such a small town, there really was a sense of community — [and] you don’t get that where I live now. I would walk around and see five people that I knew every time I went out to get a drink. I don’t think you get that as much in other places.

You can feel very alone in a crowd in a big city. I lived in Boston, and it was a similar thing — I’d go out and not see anyone I know. It’s weird.

It is weird. That’s why it took me so long to move to a place like New York — it was a feeling that I wasn’t necessarily ready to let go of. I think I was smart about it — I think if I had moved straight from Blacksburg to New York, I would have felt fairly isolated. But it’s been long enough now that I feel good about it.

You also mentioned Rumours-era Fleetwood Mac as a bit of a touchstone on this record. And they feel like the current band everyone is rediscovering. Is that your favorite era of Fleetwood Mac? I could easily see their ’80s stuff being an influence on Nocturne, too.

My music definitely relates more to Mirage — I think Mirage is my favorite record. And there’s a lot of stuff on Tango In The Night that I like, too. But Tango In The Night can get pretty…well, you know.

Cheesy?

Yeah — but I kind of dig that, so…They’ve had a lot to offer over the years. And production-wise, there’s things I liked about Rumours. It’s a record that feels really organic, as opposed to a record like Mirage, which feels a little bit more mechanical. I love Fleetwood Mac. They’re a huge inspiration for what it means to write a pop song, and the idea of hooks and harmonies — the idea of a refrain — is something that really inspired me on this album.

It’s funny, you generally hear people talking about the lyrics and the drama surrounding the band. But musicians like yourself and others are actually deconstructing the music, which is nice to see.

They’re one of my favorite bands. I don’t know — hopefully, I’m not cashing in on a recent trend, but I don’t really think of it like that. [Laughs.] I actually unironically love Fleetwood Mac.

How did you get into them?

It’s one of those things that’s so pervasive in pop culture. Everybody knows who Fleetwood Mac is, and everyone knows the history of Fleetwood Mac; even if you’re not a fan, it’s one of those stories that’s always floating around. I don’t know when exactly it was that I started listening to their music and realized, a) it’s actually really good and b) I have a lot to learn from it. It was probably just because I had Rumours inherited from my parents’ record collection. You started with that, because everybody has that record. And from there, I started listening to their other records.

Do you have a favorite member or songwriter?

Actually I like Christine McVie…Well, I don’t know. I think some of her songs are my favorite songs — like, if I had to list my favorite songs, hers would definitely be towards the top. But overall, Lindsey Buckingham is obviously the one who kept it all together. I feel like he was the real powerhouse of Fleetwood Mac. He wrote a lot of good songs and a lot of bad songs, but he was the big force in the band — at least in that era. And Stevie Nicks, too — I don’t know. It’s so hard to choose. I’m a little bit more “whatever” about Stevie Nicks than most people.

I mean, I would still say “Dreams” and “Gypsy,” they’re some of the best singles they’ve had. And those are Stevie Nicks, obviously. But I still feel that Lindsey Buckingham played such a large part in putting those songs together, and so that’s what I think is more important to me, how the songs sound as a whole. It doesn’t really matter to me necessarily that Stevie Nicks wrote the lyrics. I don’t know. [Laughs.] I could talk about Fleetwood Mac for a while.

Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

Now a half-century old, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest remains a powerful chunk of American literature. Informed by personal experiences with LSD in the MKUltra program (Google that shit; totally cray) and as an orderly in a mental ward, Ken Kesey spins the riveting, almost-allegorical tale of an Oregon psych ward getting turned upside down by a brazen new patient. A description like that might make you think we’re in life-affirming, Awakenings/Patch Adams/Dead Poets Society territory, but no. There are bigger things at play here, darker things, and not even the movie version of Cuckoo’s Nest  — which deserved all of its Oscars —  could quite grasp the psychological machinations Kesey has constructed.

Know what else?

After spending so much time among these motley mental patients, I’ve developed something Google has informed me is a common delusion: Imagining One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest as a dystopian novel. True, the present-day (well, recent-day) Pacific Northwest bears little resemblance to George Orwell’s industrial ant colony of Oceania but, like 1984, Cuckoo’s Nest is the story of little nobodies pitted against a force that has immense cognitive sway over them; instead of Big Brother we have the all-seeing, all-controlling Nurse Ratched, whom our narrator, Chief Brompton, refers to as “Big Nurse.” As with Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, the subjects are kept in line with drugs and groupthink. Alone time is emphatically discouraged. And, like those murderous kids in The Hunger Games, the mental patients might actually have a shot at taking the whole system down.

Hope, if you can call it that, comes in the form of Randle McMurphy the rambunctious and gregarious new guy on the ward who challenges the status quo daily, often with hilarious and/or dire consequences. He’s sort of like Huxley’s John the Savage, a dude who acts out against the system because he hasn’t had the ego scared out of him (yet). Nurse Ratched, of course, runs rules with an iron fist, and methodically emasculates the men in her care, one way or the other. One patient, Dale Harding — whose only “psychosis” may be his homosexuality — warns McMurphy that Ratched’s not above playing the lobotomy card. “Frontal-lobe castration,” he calls it. “I guess if she can’t cut below the belt she’ll do it above the eyes.” Sorry, Patch, there’s no room for a guy like you in a place like this.

Interview: Chilly Gonzales

Prankster rapper, orchestral hip-hopper, producer, classically trained composer and pianist: With more than a decade of dizzyingly diverse music behind him, Canadian bathrobe enthusiast Chilly Gonzales has remodeled the concept of the Renaissance man for the computer age. “I said I was a musical genius/ I repeated it ’til it became meaningless,” he rapped grimly on “Self Portrait,” a dark night of the soul from last year’s The Unspeakable Chilly Gonzales, “Because you assumed I was joking/ And then you thought about it, like, ‘He’s not joking’.” More proof of deathly serious intent comes with his latest album, Solo Piano II. A collection of elegant nocturnes and black-and-white atmospheres, it shows that 2004′s Solo Piano was more than just a traffic-stopping handbrake turn in one of modern music’s most compellingly curious careers.

Victorial Segal spoke with Gonzales about self-expression, self-improvement and who he’s playing to these days.

You recorded the album in a studio in Paris. As someone who seems to enjoy collaborating with other artists — Feist, Peaches and Drake, for a start — was it a lonely experience?

The title really says it all, you know? The solitude is baked into the cake. It’s conceptually tight so you realize that you’re hearing a photograph, an audio photograph, of what happened during those two-and-a-half minutes. There’s something very pure about that. There’s no Frankenstein element. If I’ve got it and I like it then it tends to be on the album. If I don’t have it, I have to start from scratch, to go back to find a coherent version that works from beginning to end. It’s man versus himself. When I was learning what makes literature interesting when I was teenager, it was man versus nature, man versus society or man versus himself. This is clearly man versus himself.

Do you enjoy that particular battle?

I think people who know me know I’m a pretty competitive musician. I’ve done a couple of piano battles and I’ve even broken a world record [for longest solo concert in 2009, when he played for 27 hours, three minutes and 44 seconds] — so I thought that kind of pressure would bring out the best in me. They used to give medals for music in the Olympics until the ’40s. If you read biographies of great composers you often find they’re extremely competitive: There were rivalries between Liszt and Wagner, Brahms and other composers. You had Brian Wilson and Paul McCartney engaging in a lot of competition. What inspires me these days is rap and that’s really competitive and more of a meritocracy, where who sells the most is the generally the best. Indie rock is very polite. But classical music moved extremely fast because they were always trying to outdo each other. Rap today moves extremely fast.

So while people might think a man at a piano is a genteel prospect, you’re actually saying it’s red in tooth and claw?

If you’re into hardcore self-improvement — and I am — then, yes, you have to take it very seriously. A lot of musicians, I call it the “Oops I’m good” syndrome — they want to make it seem like an accident they even ended up there. If you’re a dentist you go to school to learn how to be a dentist and hopefully be the best dentist you can be.

You’ve worked in several musical genres. Do you have several distinctive audiences?

I do have two or three different groups. I was held aloft by the underground when I first started. I was a piano player by training, but I wanted to be a man of my time. I didn’t want to stay in my ivory tower. I thought, Okay, well first I have to connect with “real people,” as I call them, and I did that mostly through my sense of humor, and that’s what really makes me a man of my time. And then slowly, I brought in the musical element. With that first solo piano album in 2004, suddenly there were some fans from that classical and jazz world which was very encouraging because I thought that was the ivory tower, the museum world of music. The underground people know a lot more about me, so they’re less shocked when I can veer towards the vulgar on stage. Some people who only got into me through the piano music, they’ll come to see my show and all of sudden be a bit shocked when I go to that surreal, Andy Kaufman-type performance. A few people walk out but mostly people are along for the ride. I wouldn’t do any of the clowning around if there wasn’t the piano there. I’d just be a guy with a silly name wearing a bathrobe. Luckily I’m not. Luckily, I’m also there as a musical genius.

Do you feel you’re blurring the lines between high and low culture? Are you fighting against musical snobbery?

I think snobbery is a good thing. When I hear music badly played, I will dismiss it. I think what you’re referring to isn’t actually snobbery, it’s fear. It’s that people who go to the ballet and the symphony and the art gallery are often actually scared they’re not going to understand pop culture. Likewise, people who are into pop culture and have a more disposable attitude to music have a fear that were they ever to delve into more substantial forms, they wouldn’t understand it. In a way, I’m there to assuage their fear. Barriers are there for a reason: stylistic barriers are great. I think it’s great dance music is based on “boom boom boom boom” 4/4 drum beat, I think it’s great hip-hop is based on certain codes in the lyrics. I’m not trying to erase the borders, I’m trying to get people over their fear. When people go to see classical concerts these days, often the artist is scared the audience will reject them and doesn’t make an effort, so the audience feel left out sitting in a cold symphony hall thinking “Wow, I paid 80 bucks for this. I guess this is high culture.” Everybody’s scared, nobody’s enjoying themselves, it’s a disaster.

So you’re saying audiences need to relax?

“No, it’s also the artists aren’t good enough. I take full responsibility for making an audience relax, trying to get rid of that fear and take them somewhere. That’s my responsibility.”

Lee Hazlewood, A House Safe for Tigers

The grizzled Lee Hazlewood loved to play up his beast status by pairing himself with beauties: from his late ’60s hits with bouffanted babe Nancy Sinatra through the accented hotties decorating his final album, 2007′s Cake or Death, he assembled an impressive multi-generational array of breathy sopranos to sweeten his grumbling baritone. But for an interlude in the mid ’70s, Hazlewood got down for some serious bro-time. Decamped to Sweden to keep his son out of the draft, Hazlewood paired with a beefy, bearded, booted-and-flared Scandinavian counterpart, the director Torbjörn Axelrod, for a TV specials, including the plotless, ruminative, lavishly scored A House Safe for Tigers in 1975.

Never before reissued, the soundtrack is as weirdly ambitious and contrarian as anything Hazlewood recorded, a Herzog-like, fractured exploration into time, place and brotherly love. The title track is a soft-rock shuffle that weds harmonica and mariachi horns with tidbits of Buddhist-inspired philosophy. “May warm fires find your flue,” Hazlewood coos. “May all your vines bear sweet wines, and your sons the hearts of doves.” “Our Little Boy Blue” is a half-spoken cowboy lullaby about a grown man’s forgotten toys; bass notes plod like heavy footballs as music-box keyboards plink and trill. The album’s centerpiece is “Souls Island,” a metaphysical ode to the awesomeness of being dudes together. Philharmonic strings swell and cascade; timpani roll. Axelrod chimes in with an untranslated monologue — cross-cultural references like “Alcatraz” and “Wounded Knee” pop out of the spew. He wasn’t as cute as Sinatra or Ann-Margret, but he charmed the lothario just the same.

Interview: Adrian Sherwood

For the past 35 years, Adrian Maxwell Sherwood has been one of British music’s most indefatigable underground producers. Under his On-U Sound label banner, he has doled out a relentless torrent of albums, initially in the field of reggae and dub, but later in genres as diverse as jazz, blues, early-’90s dance (his chart hits with MC Gary Clail), folk, electro-funk and industrial noise. Across literally hundreds of releases, his production credit stands as a uniquely reliable stamp of quality.

Now in his early 50s, Sherwood maintains an exhausting work ethic. When eMusic tracked him down in his recently deployed hometown of Ramsgate, on the North Kent coast, he was on the hoof between sessions, one of which is for a debut album by his daughter, Denise. “She sang on a Gary Clail album when she was five years of age,” he notes, “she’s got a wicked voice.”

As per the title of his latest solo album, Survival & Resistance, Sherwood has upheld a spirit of defiant musical independence. He proudly recalls how he has kept his On-U ship afloat, against the tide of such adverse musical epochs as the MTV-crazed mid ’80s, and the Britpop-addled mid ’90s. In between those lean years, he has been hailed as a seminal influence, the implications of his pioneering exploration of electronic frequencies felt everywhere from The Orb to contemporary dubstep. His vast catalogue is riper than ever for discovery

After three undefeated decades of On-U Sound, how come you’re releasing your latest solo record through Warp?

I’ve known the Warp boys for years. As far as I’m concerned, they’re probably the best independent label around, so it’s the perfect match for me. Ray, my manager, said, “Look, this is what you should do now.” Fingers crossed we can keep working with them, because it’s perfect runnings.

If a man of your experience in the independent sector says Warp are bossing it, they must be doing something right

Yeah, I’ve been running a cottage industry all my life. I kept thinking On-U would become 10 times bigger than it ever did. I kept doing jobs and ploughing money into the label, because I believed that instead of selling 20-odd, I’d sell 200, and all that. But I never really did the right moves, like making videos or promoting properly. I’m not, to be honest, the best businessman on earth, but I was determined to stay running a label, because at least I can go “Bollocks!” to anybody, and do whatever I want.

The title of the album is Survival & Resistance — has that been the name of the game for On-U?

Yeah, it’s been my lot in life. A lot of people did sell out their labels, and their dreams. I’m pretty pleased that I stuck to my guns as much as possible. A lot of good things have sprung out of On-U, and the people who work there. I’m proud of that legacy. It’s not some corny speech — I really am. I certainly know how not to run a label.

Your first years in the game, from 1978-82 — the post-punk years — are now looked back upon as an incredibly fertile and frenetic time for British music. Is that how you remember it?

In 1978 I started a distribution company, and used to drive round to a network of shops, selling my imports myself, because no-one would touch you with a bargepole, selling reggae. Then I got involved with Rough Trade. You’d go in there, and it would be like, OK, if people want to buy tunes, they’ve got to phone us up to buy them. Like, we’re the vendors of good taste! But that period, it wasn’t easy putting tunes out, because there were lots of people doing it, and the big companies just weren’t interested in the underbelly. If you couldn’t sell 300,000, they weren’t interested.

But musically, that made for a wonderful diversity. Everything had been blown wide open by punk

It was uncharted. There was an innocence that’s gone. People thought they could change the world with a record in those days.

You were a key figure in the merging of styles that we now refer to as “post-punk.” At that time, you were exploring the boundaries of dub and roots reggae, but soon touched on other ethnic music

You’d had the North American soul and R&B stuff coming in [to Britain] all throughout the ’40s, ’50s and ’60s, but suddenly you had stuff coming in from Jamaica, and from other parts of the former British Empire, like India and Africa. Then people started getting into bass, then after a while, along came acid house, which kind of took people away from the football violence and stuff. They started taking E and psychedelics and getting into dancing. That was great!

How did you get involved with Jamaican musicians in the late ’70s?

I was just a fan who’d got his hands on the mixing desk, as one journalist once described me. I took that as a compliment! I was living in High Wycombe, and Prince Far-I, Bim Sherman and everybody used to stay at my Mum’s house when they came over. She was a very open-minded lady, my mother. Far-I used to call her Mummy.

One time, I turned up with him to a gig and stood next to this fat white sound man, who obviously wasn’t used to reggae, and I was like, “Turn the hi-hat up, turn the rimshot up — more bass!” until eventually he goes, “OK, you do it.” So I got thrown in the deep end. From there, I started running studio sessions. I wasn’t a musician, so I’d just hum the bassline to get what I wanted.

You never went for a purist sound. Did you set out to use reggae as a launchpad to do your own thing?

I wasn’t trying to emulate Jamaican music. You’ve got to walk an original path, if you can. Because if you get stuck copying everyone else, your time’s gonna be limited, because someone’ll supercede you.

I learned that really early on from the reggae producers. They all prided themselves on having an identifiable sound. That’s still something you should aspire to. You hear the good producers now — someone like Burial — he’s got a sonic, that fella. You listen to Digital Mystikz, or Pinch, you can hear something that identifies them from the bunch. It means you have a longer shelf-life.

In the mid ’80s, you seemed to turn your back on reggae, and get into a much heavier, proto-industrial groove. Why was that?

I’d got my credibility from working with Far-I, and he was murdered in Jamaica, so I got pissed off and disillusioned with all the violence over there. That coincided with me working with Mark Stewart, and then meeting the Tackhead lads the year after. So between ’84 and ’90 I didn’t do that many reggae records. I bounced into funk and industrial, and did loads of remixes. I was really doing all that to prop up the label. That was the plan.

Some of those Tackhead records were brutal!

I just wanted that stuff to leap out of the speakers. We weren’t into making pretty-pretty stuff, it was basically full-on, in-your-face. With Mark Stewart, I was experimenting with distortion overloading, and really vicious EQs, and I just applied that to a lot of my productions, because I was really into it. Even the reggae and dub stuff I did around then was much darker in flavor.

Among your occasional reggae stuff, you cut Time Boom De Devil Dead with Lee “Scratch” Perry’ in ’87, which many people regard as his best album after he left Jamaica. What’s he like?

He’s a great person to work with. He has a really naughty sense of humor. He’s also got really maverick ideas, always. I’ve worked with him now for over 25 years, and I think I’ve got his trust. He knows I’ll keep pushing with whatever little bit of money we’ve got to make it good. Also we’ve done good shows together, and I’ve put out some good compilations via the Pressure Sounds label — all really healthy activities. I learnt so much from him, like try and make everyone in the studio believe you’re doing something magic.

After house music hit in ’88, you were taken to the bosom of the emerging electronic scene, and had unlikely hit records with Tackhead’s MC, Gary Clail. After that, what went wrong?

Well, Tackhead imploded. We made a horrible, cocaine-induced, shit album, I’m ashamed to say. We lost the plot. It’s a horrible thing to admit, but it’s the truth. Also, my marriage ended, and after that, you had to regroup and get on with your life, so I did the first Little Axe album, and Bim Sherman’s Miracle, and a few other good albums, but ended up having to give them to other labels because of the economics.

How did you build up On-U again?

Sheer determination. [long silence] And the movement going on around me [dubstep] kind of suits me at the moment. It’s very bass-heavy, bass-friendly. With that lot, we put out the Nu Sound & Version album of Lee Perry tracks. It was a bit more than a remix album, because I oversaw it. I was trying to get Lee in with a more contemporary crowd. I think the people we got on board were really good: Moody Boyz, Kode 9. I’m doing a proper collaborative album with Pinch — I’m really pleased with how that’s going.

With a title like Survival & Resistance, your own solo record sounds like it could be a crazy, noisy, militant affair. It’s actually very classy!

Yeah, [laughs] it’s quite musical. The record will stand the test of time, I think. Me and my engineer Matt Smyth were experimenting drastically with tuning. All the things on there that sound like synthesizers are made out of massively down-tuned, twisted and edited bits of Turkish and Brazilian rapid percussion, and then were fine-tuned to sound like b-lines and pianos and stuff. Musicians won’t be able to figure out what on earth any of the sounds come from, because they’re not from any known synthesized source.

Having said that, there’s synth on a couple of tracks with Adamski, who’s my mate, who’s done a couple of cool old-school things on there. I see it as a modern dub record, but it’s not copping anything off a new producer or anything. What I had in my head to start with was to make a record you get zonked out and meditate to, late at night.

Do you always think about how your music will be utilized by the listener?

You’ve got to. All the dub albums are very easy — you get stoned and listen to them. Or, get stoned and dance to them. Or, don’t get stoned, but imagine you are. That was the thing with those Dub Syndicate and African Headcharge albums. I could imagine the people who would buy them and how they’d be listening to them, because it was probably how I’d be listening to them. Not that I’m a big stoner. You almost feel high listening to the moving sonic.

But then, the first solo record I made for RealWorld [2003's Never Trust A Hippy], I made that like a sound system album, so I could play it out. This one — “chill-out” is the wrong word, but it’s more meditative, intense dub.

You mentioned earlier that you wanted to establish your own sound, but you’ve made records all over the map — reggae, industrial, African, jazz, folk, blues, funk. Aren’t you actually one of modern production’s great unsung polymaths?

But I apply the same technique to everything I do. I like uncluttered productions. I’ve got to hear the space and movement in sound. What I took from Jamaican music was space — that tonality, particularly when they started shaping the sound with reverbs, delays and everything else.

You learn to apply that to your own production. It might all be very wet with fazers one minute, then suddenly you make it completely dry and empty, and bang into a reverb. I love that, creating a healthy tension. [Pause] I sound like a complete wanker talking about this. You know what I’m talking about, don’t you?

Ry Cooder, Election Special

Has Ry Cooder gone all Woody Guthrie? With his “California trilogy,” begun in 2005, he took on the state’s ugly treatment of immigrant farm laborers, among other thorny subjects; on last year’s Pull Up Some Dust and Sit Down, he called fat-cat bankers on the carpet. And now, with campaign season in full swing, Cooder girds himself to tackle all the hot-button issues of 2012 — and he hits them hard at the knees.

“Mutt Romney Blues” is a scathing portrait of the GOP presidential candidate, set to an acoustic juke-joint stomp and told from the point of view, naturally, of the family dog. On the flip side, “Cold Cold Morning” is a gutbucket down-tempo blues that gets in the head of Barack Obama, set upon by “stray dog Republicans, always snapping at my heels.” To put it mildly, Cooder sounds riled up — his guttural rasp on “Kool-Aid,” a swirling nightmare of distorted slide guitar and big-footed drums (played throughout the album by his son Joachim), seethes with anger and despair. But he can also have fun with the exercise: “Going to Tampa” is an airy, countrified boogie that joyfully lampoons Tea Party delegates, while “Guantanamo” grooves like a late-’60s Rolling Stones studio jam. If Guthrie — or, for that matter, John Lee Hooker, who hovers in spirit over cuts like “Kool-Aid” — were alive today, he might just pick up his guitar and join in.

Interview: Adrian Sherwood

For the past 35 years, Adrian Maxwell Sherwood has been one of British music’s most indefatigable underground producers. Under his On-U Sound label banner, he has doled out a relentless torrent of albums, initially in the field of reggae and dub, but later in genres as diverse as jazz, blues, early-’90s dance (his chart hits with MC Gary Clail), folk, electro-funk and industrial noise. Across literally hundreds of releases, his production credit stands as a uniquely reliable stamp of quality.

Now in his early 50s, Sherwood maintains an exhausting work ethic. When eMusic tracked him down in his recently deployed hometown of Ramsgate, on the North Kent coast, he was on the hoof between sessions, one of which is for a debut album by his daughter, Denise. “She sang on a Gary Clail album when she was five years of age,” he notes, “she’s got a wicked voice.”

As per the title of his latest solo album, Survival & Resistance, Sherwood has upheld a spirit of defiant musical independence. He proudly recalls how he has kept his On-U ship afloat, against the tide of such adverse musical epochs as the MTV-crazed mid ’80s, and the Britpop-addled mid ’90s. In between those lean years, he has been hailed as a seminal influence, the implications of his pioneering exploration of electronic frequencies felt everywhere from The Orb to contemporary dubstep. His vast catalogue is riper than ever for discovery

After three undefeated decades of On-U Sound, how come you’re releasing your latest solo record through Warp?

I’ve known the Warp boys for years. As far as I’m concerned, they’re probably the best independent label around, so it’s the perfect match for me. Ray, my manager, said, “Look, this is what you should do now.” Fingers crossed we can keep working with them, because it’s perfect runnings.

If a man of your experience in the independent sector says Warp are bossing it, they must be doing something right

Yeah, I’ve been running a cottage industry all my life. I kept thinking On-U would become 10 times bigger than it ever did. I kept doing jobs and ploughing money into the label, because I believed that instead of selling 20-odd, I’d sell 200, and all that. But I never really did the right moves, like making videos or promoting properly. I’m not, to be honest, the best businessman on earth, but I was determined to stay running a label, because at least I can go “Bollocks!” to anybody, and do whatever I want.

The title of the album is Survival & Resistance — has that been the name of the game for On-U?

Yeah, it’s been my lot in life. A lot of people did sell out their labels, and their dreams. I’m pretty pleased that I stuck to my guns as much as possible. A lot of good things have sprung out of On-U, and the people who work there. I’m proud of that legacy. It’s not some corny speech — I really am. I certainly know how not to run a label.

Your first years in the game, from 1978-82 — the post-punk years — are now looked back upon as an incredibly fertile and frenetic time for British music. Is that how you remember it?

In 1978 I started a distribution company, and used to drive round to a network of shops, selling my imports myself, because no-one would touch you with a bargepole, selling reggae. Then I got involved with Rough Trade. You’d go in there, and it would be like, OK, if people want to buy tunes, they’ve got to phone us up to buy them. Like, we’re the vendors of good taste! But that period, it wasn’t easy putting tunes out, because there were lots of people doing it, and the big companies just weren’t interested in the underbelly. If you couldn’t sell 300,000, they weren’t interested.

But musically, that made for a wonderful diversity. Everything had been blown wide open by punk

It was uncharted. There was an innocence that’s gone. People thought they could change the world with a record in those days.

You were a key figure in the merging of styles that we now refer to as “post-punk.” At that time, you were exploring the boundaries of dub and roots reggae, but soon touched on other ethnic music

You’d had the North American soul and R&B stuff coming in [to Britain] all throughout the ’40s, ’50s and ’60s, but suddenly you had stuff coming in from Jamaica, and from other parts of the former British Empire, like India and Africa. Then people started getting into bass, then after a while, along came acid house, which kind of took people away from the football violence and stuff. They started taking E and psychedelics and getting into dancing. That was great!

How did you get involved with Jamaican musicians in the late ’70s?

I was just a fan who’d got his hands on the mixing desk, as one journalist once described me. I took that as a compliment! I was living in High Wycombe, and Prince Far-I, Bim Sherman and everybody used to stay at my Mum’s house when they came over. She was a very open-minded lady, my mother. Far-I used to call her Mummy.

One time, I turned up with him to a gig and stood next to this fat white sound man, who obviously wasn’t used to reggae, and I was like, “Turn the hi-hat up, turn the rimshot up — more bass!” until eventually he goes, “OK, you do it.” So I got thrown in the deep end. From there, I started running studio sessions. I wasn’t a musician, so I’d just hum the bassline to get what I wanted.

You never went for a purist sound. Did you set out to use reggae as a launchpad to do your own thing?

I wasn’t trying to emulate Jamaican music. You’ve got to walk an original path, if you can. Because if you get stuck copying everyone else, your time’s gonna be limited, because someone’ll supercede you.

I learned that really early on from the reggae producers. They all prided themselves on having an identifiable sound. That’s still something you should aspire to. You hear the good producers now — someone like Burial — he’s got a sonic, that fella. You listen to Digital Mystikz, or Pinch, you can hear something that identifies them from the bunch. It means you have a longer shelf-life.

In the mid ’80s, you seemed to turn your back on reggae, and get into a much heavier, proto-industrial groove. Why was that?

I’d got my credibility from working with Far-I, and he was murdered in Jamaica, so I got pissed off and disillusioned with all the violence over there. That coincided with me working with Mark Stewart, and then meeting the Tackhead lads the year after. So between ’84 and ’90 I didn’t do that many reggae records. I bounced into funk and industrial, and did loads of remixes. I was really doing all that to prop up the label. That was the plan.

Some of those Tackhead records were brutal!

I just wanted that stuff to leap out of the speakers. We weren’t into making pretty-pretty stuff, it was basically full-on, in-your-face. With Mark Stewart, I was experimenting with distortion overloading, and really vicious EQs, and I just applied that to a lot of my productions, because I was really into it. Even the reggae and dub stuff I did around then was much darker in flavor.

Among your occasional reggae stuff, you cut Time Boom De Devil Dead with Lee “Scratch” Perry’ in ’87, which many people regard as his best album after he left Jamaica. What’s he like?

He’s a great person to work with. He has a really naughty sense of humor. He’s also got really maverick ideas, always. I’ve worked with him now for over 25 years, and I think I’ve got his trust. He knows I’ll keep pushing with whatever little bit of money we’ve got to make it good. Also we’ve done good shows together, and I’ve put out some good compilations via the Pressure Sounds label — all really healthy activities. I learnt so much from him, like try and make everyone in the studio believe you’re doing something magic.

After house music hit in ’88, you were taken to the bosom of the emerging electronic scene, and had unlikely hit records with Tackhead’s MC, Gary Clail. After that, what went wrong?

Well, Tackhead imploded. We made a horrible, cocaine-induced, shit album, I’m ashamed to say. We lost the plot. It’s a horrible thing to admit, but it’s the truth. Also, my marriage ended, and after that, you had to regroup and get on with your life, so I did the first Little Axe album, and Bim Sherman’s Miracle, and a few other good albums, but ended up having to give them to other labels because of the economics.

How did you build up On-U again?

Sheer determination. [long silence] And the movement going on around me [dubstep] kind of suits me at the moment. It’s very bass-heavy, bass-friendly. With that lot, we put out the Nu Sound & Version album of Lee Perry tracks. It was a bit more than a remix album, because I oversaw it. I was trying to get Lee in with a more contemporary crowd. I think the people we got on board were really good: Moody Boyz, Kode 9. I’m doing a proper collaborative album with Pinch — I’m really pleased with how that’s going.

With a title like Survival & Resistance, your own solo record sounds like it could be a crazy, noisy, militant affair. It’s actually very classy!

Yeah, [laughs] it’s quite musical. The record will stand the test of time, I think. Me and my engineer Matt Smyth were experimenting drastically with tuning. All the things on there that sound like synthesizers are made out of massively down-tuned, twisted and edited bits of Turkish and Brazilian rapid percussion, and then were fine-tuned to sound like b-lines and pianos and stuff. Musicians won’t be able to figure out what on earth any of the sounds come from, because they’re not from any known synthesized source.

Having said that, there’s synth on a couple of tracks with Adamski, who’s my mate, who’s done a couple of cool old-school things on there. I see it as a modern dub record, but it’s not copping anything off a new producer or anything. What I had in my head to start with was to make a record you get zonked out and meditate to, late at night.

Do you always think about how your music will be utilized by the listener?

You’ve got to. All the dub albums are very easy — you get stoned and listen to them. Or, get stoned and dance to them. Or, don’t get stoned, but imagine you are. That was the thing with those Dub Syndicate and African Headcharge albums. I could imagine the people who would buy them and how they’d be listening to them, because it was probably how I’d be listening to them. Not that I’m a big stoner. You almost feel high listening to the moving sonic.

But then, the first solo record I made for RealWorld [2003's Never Trust A Hippy], I made that like a sound system album, so I could play it out. This one — “chill-out” is the wrong word, but it’s more meditative, intense dub.

You mentioned earlier that you wanted to establish your own sound, but you’ve made records all over the map — reggae, industrial, African, jazz, folk, blues, funk. Aren’t you actually one of modern production’s great unsung polymaths?

But I apply the same technique to everything I do. I like uncluttered productions. I’ve got to hear the space and movement in sound. What I took from Jamaican music was space — that tonality, particularly when they started shaping the sound with reverbs, delays and everything else.

You learn to apply that to your own production. It might all be very wet with fazers one minute, then suddenly you make it completely dry and empty, and bang into a reverb. I love that, creating a healthy tension. [Pause] I sound like a complete wanker talking about this. You know what I’m talking about, don’t you?

Interview: Ben Fountain

In Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, the clock is ticking for the soldiers of Bravo Company. It’s Thanksgiving Day 2004, and after a long “victory tour” across the U.S. of A. — they’re all heroes, ever since an embedded Fox crew filmed them kicking ass in a firefight — The Bravos are being shipped back to Iraq.

“It is sort of weird,” young Billy observes. “Being honored for the worst day of your life.”

All the meet-and-greets and photo ops that come with being an accidental spokesperson for a war you don’t understand have left the men both jaded and hyper sensitive. They’re jittery. They’re drunk whenever they can be. They’re tired of being thanked.

Their last big public appearance, at a Cowboys game in Dallas Stadium, is a total shitshow: open bar after open bar, followed by a bit part in the loud, flashy, pyro-enhanced Destiny’s Child halftime show. All the while, the Bravos’ agent is working the cell phone, trying to lock up a deal to turn their story a into Hollywood blockbuster that’ll make them all rich. On top of all that, Billy has just fallen hard for a Dallas Cheerleader and suddenly going back to war seems like the worst idea ever.

Ben Fountain’s debut novel is a sometimes humorous, and often heartbreaking look at the disconnect between the young men who fight our wars and the people whose freedom they’re allegedly protecting. It’s also an important book, one that examines the Bush administration’s selling of the war(s) and our eagerness to buy in, tune out or move on.

In her recent book, Drift, Rachel Maddow, wrote about how Americans have found a way to sort of tune out the war. Unlike it was with Vietnam, people seem to be able to go about their daily lives. I was wondering if you agree or disagree with that.

I haven’t read her book but I do very much agree thatVietnam touched everybody in one way or another. I was too young for Vietnam but I have an older sister, she’s six years older than me and so all of her guy friends, they were looking the draft right in the face. And so it becomes, war becomes much more real when it affects you or your family or could potentially affect someone in your family. And I think that’s really, with certain exceptions, that’s the only time it does become real and even with all the technology we have now, all the ways that war and conflicts come to us via computers and TV, there’s still this disconnect or distancing that makes it not real. No matter how graphic and vivid the images, there’s still a gap between our experience and what’s going on out there.

After reading your book, I realized the gap, it goes both ways. Like when the people talk to Billy, he kind of tunes them out because he knows they’re not speaking the same language. Those passages are really striking, almost minimalist. Billy only hears the buzzwords: 9/11, War on Terror, etc.

When people say things to the soldiers like, “Thank you for your service, you’re a hero, thank you for your sacrifice,” they really mean it when they’re saying it. They’re trying to express something genuine that they feel or feel like they should feel but you know, how much can their words mean when they really don’t know what they’re talking about? And the war has beenThe war was sold in this country as this virtuous and just crusade to bring democracy to Iraq, but what Billy knows and what citizens don’t know or won’t even try to acknowledge is that war is necrophilia. War is about who can produce the most death. I mean, that’s the most extreme human situation you can conceive of. Their words of praise and appreciation can only go so far because they don’t know what they’re talking about.

The body count is especially the kind of thing we tend to tune out.

Well and it’s the civilian deathsEven the most conservative estimates at this point, they’re what, 100,000, 200,000? You know, the enormity of that. We just can’t comprehend that.

Did you speak to soldiers when working on this book?

Yeah, I talked to a lot of soldiers.

What were some things that they said that sort of opened your eye to the things that you didn’t know?

Several things. They tended to view civilians with a mixture of pity and condescension. Because the soldiers, when you start talking about war, they are the insiders. And like insiders anywhere, it’s only natural for an insider to feel superior, you know? In everything from jazz musicians to athletes to chess nerds, you’re going to view the outsider with a certain amount of patronizing. And also, they seem to have a profound sensitivity to the disconnect between their experience and most Americans’ conception of the war and what the war involves.

This has not been a collective effort. This has been a very selective effort on the part of the country. World War II was complete mobilization of the country. Vietnam, even though LBJ tried to soft-sell the war, his strategy was, well we’re going to fight an all out war but we’re going to sell it to the public as we aren’t really fighting an all out conflict. And yet there was the draft andtherefore it penetrated the public, the collective consciousness a great deal more. In this war, it’s a relatively small segment of the population that’s fought the war and been directly affected by the war, and so I got the sense that there’s a profound sense of alienation on the part of the soldiers towards mainstream society.

Everything is way more complicated than stand and shoot and follow orders.

My feeling is there’s no such thing as a simple human being. We all have complex inner lives. You know, it depends on the individual, some are more aware of these various levels of interiority than others and some are more able to articulate the complexity of their inner lives than others, but in one way or another I think we’re all registering everything that goes on in human experience. In any one experience there’s going to be levels of past and present and awareness and unconsciousness and drift and motive and desire and fear and so I think these soldiers, they’re as human and alive as anyone, and maybe more so. You know, the experience of combat, especially in Billy’s case, has made himextremely alert and attentive to the world around him. He’s trying to figure things out.

And he’s so young.

Yeah, he’s 19 but his experiences of the past year, they’ve woken him up and he’s actively trying to figure out what’s going on and why things are the way they are.

One thing you think about is how, when Billy was still sort of a young punk, I bet being a war hero and getting with a Dallas Cowboys Cheerleader would have seemed like perfect simple dreams, and all he’d need in the world. But now everything is fraught with complication.

Oh, yeah. And that’s the nature of experience. Romance novels — that’s when everything is pure and uncomplicated. I’m talking about the romance novels for women where, you know, the bodice-rippers. And I’m also talking about the kinds of romance novels that, say, Tom Clancy writes for men where they’re heroes and the bad guys are clear cut and there’s a clear course of action and you know what you’re supposed to do.

So you went on a publicity tour for the book, right, recently?

Yeah.

Did you feel any of what Billy felt on his “victory tour?”

No. Writers bitch and moan about book tours, “they’re so tough.” They aren’t work. I define work as digging ditches or putting in plumbing, but on book tours you get to go around and meet book people and talk about books. And no, the level of attention I got, I’m just a little writer and it nowhere near approached the level that’s depicted with Billy and his comrades.

I guess I was thinking along the lines of everyone who came up to Billy thought they were saying the right thing but readers are bound to have their own interpretations. And you just have to nod and say, “Okay, that’s your opinion,” you know?

Yeah, that cuts both ways. Sometimes people will make a striking insight that reveals the book in a way that I’ve never thought of before. But yeah, people are going to make of it what they will and when you put a book out there, that’s just going to happen. But what really struck me, what’s really struck me through the whole reaction to the book is a lot of people feel like I exaggerated things, and I suppose I can see why they would feel that way. But to me it’s straight realism. All the excess, all the over the top stuff that goes on in the book, all you have to do is turn on the TV and it’s there.

There’s a blurb on the front that compares Billy Lynn to Catch-22 and I get the comparison because putting a war in a very sort of distinct light that makes people really think about all sides of it. But along the same lines, that was a satire and that was cartoonish and while your book’s a lot more subtle

Heller was depicting the uncertainty of war by going at the bureaucracy of it, which I think is an absolutely valid way to approach it. And I was more interested, once I started writing the book, I realized what I was interested in was exploring the marketing of the war. You know, the corporatization of the war and how it becomes part of the media marketing vortex that all the rest of America has been sucked into.

Beyonc makes an appearance in the halftime show, and becomes a symbol of American frivolity excess.

Well, she must have something going on, to do the things those kinds of things people do and to maintain — they must have pretty strong wills and must be pretty smart people. And so it’s not nothing what they do, and when Billy actually encounters her up close, even though it’s fleeting, he thinks well, she’s one of the top human beings on the planet. To do what she’s doing, carry the show in front of 40 million people, it’s not nothing. So I do have respect for those people.

Has Jay-Z had words with you yet?

I’m sure the book is on his bedside table, he just hasn’t gotten to it yet.

You grew up in North Carolina. And now you live in Texas. Are there like sort of 50 shades of red state?

I think in Texas, and especially in Dallas, you get the purist strain of certain aspects of you know, American culture. And here in Dallas, and especially in North Dallas where I live, the free market is, like, that’s the religion. Free market evangelism. That’s the answer to everything and you know, people really do believe in the rhetoric. Democracy, freedom, capitalism, the American way. I believe in all those things too [ he laughs] but I maybe approach those words with a bit more skepticism and wariness. When somebody starts talking about these things I don’t accept them at face value, I always wonder, what is the agenda behind it? I just feel like in some ways Dallas is the most American city in terms of dedication and belief in certain mainstream aspects of American culture.

And how is it different than North Carolina?

Well, it’s a difference of degree, I feel like. I’ve been away from North Carolina for 29 years and it’s gotten more conservative over the years. Butin Dallas you just get a purer strain of it. It’s not so much that people believe in the stereotypical American way, it’s that there’s very little awareness that there could be a different way.

I’ve wondered, especially in recent years, what’s George Bush’s legacy in Texas? Are they defenders of Bush still?

Yeah, his house is less than a mile from mine.

Oh, wow.

And early 2009 when he was finishing up his time in Washington all these yard signs appeared in this part of town. They were like campaign yard signs except they said, “Welcome back, Mr. President and Laura.” And I think you know, he’s a much respected, much beloved figure in this immediate area. My wife was at a restaurant with some of her friends one night and he and Laura came in and people stood up and gave them a standing ovation.

Huh.

So I think he has a lot of good will in this area.

Seems like Dallas is an ideal place to set this book then.

When I first came here I thought it would be very similar to the place where I grew up. You know, kind of Southern, kind of conservative, but with progressive elements. And I started to realize pretty quickly that no, it’s a lot different. One example was when I got here people would ask me, “Who’s the richest man in North Carolina?” And it never occurred to me to wonder, number one, and number two, in those days anyway the richest man in North Carolina made damn sure to keep it a secret, whereas here it’s a point of pride and it’s uppermost in people’s minds, wealth, consumption, material status.

Billy and the rest of the Bravo Company want to get paid, they want their story to become movie deal.

My expectation, even though the book doesn’t go into this, is that that was the furthest thing from their minds when they embarked on their military service. And it wasn’t until it started being dangled in front of them that it even occurred to them that they could get a windfall from this. And who wouldn’t want a free $100,000? But Billy does approach the whole notion with a good deal of skepticism. You know, karmically, he thinks that $100,000 might be bad luck for one thing, and for another thing he is really skeptical about whether it’s going to happen.

And it just keeps changing. One cell phone call and a whole different picture can emerge and that’s just crazy to have like a fortune sort of hanging in the balance.

Yeah, well you know, it’s $100,000 which in one way is a lot of money but in our society in terms of what it takes to be actually rich it’s chump change.

That’s true. Have you had much experience with sort of the Hollywood machine?

A little bit [laughs]. Enough to really wonder about the mentality out there. Although we do have a movie deal for this book, and I have to say I was very lucky. I’ve fallen in with a group of, they seem like very solid, very fine people and they get the book and they’re serious about making the movie. So I always figured there were good people in the movie business and it just took me a while to find them.

When they read your book were they like, “We’re not like that”? Were they offended?

No, they weren’t offended. I think my sense was that they felt like it was an accurate depiction of the movie industry.

What about people from Dallas? What’s the reaction bee like there?

There’s been a thundering silence.

Oh yeah? Interesting.

I mean, the Dallas Morning News gave it a really fine, really positive review and they did a nice feature. And D Magazine, which is the city magazine, they gave it favorable coverage. And Texas Monthly. And Texas Observer. Obviously there’s a segment of Texas that welcomes this kind of examination. [But] the group in Texas or the groups in Texas who wouldn’t welcome or appreciate this kind of examination, they just ignore it.

I would say the book is not mean-spirited towards Texas but it is frank about things.

I appreciate that. I didn’t want it to be a mean book or a cynical book, you know? I was hoping that there would be a soul in there, that it wouldn’t be taking cheap shots. I do take shots, but hopefully they aren’t cheap.

Blackalicious, Melodica

The Bay Area’s DIY Solesides collective aspired to make a movement of their casual, self-reflective rhymes and meticulous, patchwork beats, like a more everyman version of the East Coast’s Native Tongues posse. While this might not sound like a particularly revolutionary gesture now, when Melodica was released in 1994, its emotional transparency and devotion to craft were startling. “Lyric Fathom” established the affably furious Gift of Gab as someone capable of rhyming, mocking and sing-songing rings around foes. There was a playful air — “I’m large as a hippopotamus,” Gab confesses, before coaxing your grandma into doing backflips — that belied his intense commitment to being the most dexterous, technically perfect rapper in the room. “Swan Lake” — co-produced by Solesides comrade DJ Shadow and Gab’s partner Chief Xcel — was Melodica‘s high point, a five-minute manifesto for simple, “inner” pleasures and “peace of mind.” Though it’s an EP, Melodica feels much longer. Part of this is due to the leisurely, samples-galore pace of the songs themselves — Melvin Van Peebles speechifies through the last minute of “Attica Black” while “Swan Lake,” which stitches together five different covers of the Stylistics’ “People Make the World Go Round,” rides out with an extended shout-out to crew and loyal well-wishers. But the boozy confessions of “40 oz. for Breakfast” and the everyday aspirationalism of “Attica Black” give Melodica a rare emotional poignancy. That feeling is underscored in this reissue, which features Blackalicious rarity “Changes,” wherein Gab reflects on what he has learned about self-responsibility over some woozy soft-psych.

Daniel Smith, Monkey Mind: A Memoir of Anxiety

First, a warning to all listeners who themselves suffer from anxiety: Daniel Smiths Monkey Mind so acutely captures the sensation of the anxious escalation, the panicked seize, that, should you be someone who is susceptible to the power of suggestion (as many anxiety sufferers are, at least when it comes to things to be anxious about), you may find your own shoulders beginning to tense, or your heart beginning to race, or your general, apocalyptic concern about your own body and mind and its relationship to both other people and the world at large taking on that particular snowballing aspect that only a run down the good ol anxiety chute can provide. Though Smith shares takes on the affliction from such notable sources as Kirkegaard, Philip Roth, and the DSM-IV, its Smiths own story that resonates and rattles throughout. Smith ponders his anxietys origins (a distressing first sexual experience, a near-drowning), its outbreaks (during his first year at college, after the publication of his first piece of journalism), and its treatments (his mothers urging to breathe, as well as a laundry list of therapeutic interventions). Those searching for a recovery narrative wont find it here (as Smiths recountings of several high-anxiety moments during the writing of this very book attest), but what Smith instead offers is something that may be even more valuable: a testament as to what it looks like not to overcome the painful, debilitating condition of extreme anxietybut to learn how to live with it.

New This Week: Four Tet, Bloc Party, The Darkness & More

Four Tet, Pink Is it 2003 again? This week sees new releases from Four Tet, Bloc Party and The Darkness, suggesting we’re on course for a Libertines reunion sometime next week. Still, the eighth album by Kieran Hebden operating as Four Tet is a reminder of his subtle, sophisticated charms. Ben Machell writes:

“Songs begin with a cheapo keyboard cymbal beat or a sparky, snap-crackle-pop groove, before darting off somewhere very different towards a faerie circle of music box chimes or highly pixilated melodies. Hebden’s roots are in folk music and there is something of the deep forest here.”

Bloc Party, Four Bloc Party’s fourth album, and their first for four years (see, it’s not just a clever title) reharnesses their urgent, anthemic sound. Ryan Reed writes:

“Bloc Party may have returned to a more linear style of indie-rock, but they’re also evolving sonically. “Real Talk” is surprisingly sexy.”

The Darkness, Hot Cakes The Darkness blaze back with an album of new material that’s as brilliant as the old material. Features a hilarious, power-chording cover of Radiohead’s “Street Spirit (Fade Out)” – Thom Yorke must be thrilled.

Yeasayer, Fragrant World Following the arty impulses of 2007′s All Hour Cymbals and the poppier Odd Blood, Yeasayer return with an album of demented R&B. Barry Walters writes:

“It’s by far their most danceable record; you could play this at a party and keep everyone on the floor.”

Colorama, Good Music Produced by Edwyn Collins, the fifth album from Cardiff-based dream-poppers Colorama is a multi-faceted gem. Chris Roberts writes:

“There are plenty of stylist leaps. Some tracks recall the melancholy whimsy of The Clientele, while “Do The Pump” is surely the coolest song ever to subtly parody Kenny’s Seventies hit “The Bump”. Colorama’s palette is broad, but their brush strokes here are vivid and brilliant.”

Minotaur Shock, Orchard Bristol-based composer David Edwards returns with more synapse-tickling sonics. Andrew Mueller writes:

“Orchard is a worthy heir to a noble tradition, of strange, unbound music that sounds as if it was made not in a studio, but a shed, the consequence of determined tinkering by an inquiring and restless imagination.”

JJ Doom, Key To The Kuffs This is a love letter to London from the New York rapper Doom, which explains the song titles “Guv’nor” and “Snatch That Dough”. Mangled electronics come from producer Jneiro Jarel, and there are cameo appearances from Thom Yorke, Damon Albarn and Beth Gibbons of Portishead.

Bill Fay, Life Is People This sublime record is the first in 40 years from the cult singer-songwriter, whose ’70s recordings have been evangelised by everyone from Nick Cave to Wilco’s Jeff Tweedy.

Stealing Sheep, Into The Diamond Sun Sparkly debut from the Liverpool trio who craft three-part harmonies into wonderfully inventive three-minute pop songs.

New This Week: Yeasayer, Bloc Party, & More

There are some big marquee names on this week’s list of releases — Bloc Party, Yeasayer — but the big news is just below the fold, with slow-burning, excellent records from Matthew E. White, Jessie Ware, and British cult legend Bill Fay. Leggo:

Jessie Ware,Devotion- Former backup singer steps out into the spotlight with a quietly confident, lightly Aaliyah-reminiscent record of wispy, jazzy R&B.HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

Bloc Party,Four Kele and the boys are back together again, and they are making a louder, gnarlier, more distorted version of the strident, catchy, fighting-fit post-punk anthems they made their name writing.Ryan Reedwrites:

“Can’t shake the feeling we’re moving backwards,” sings Bloc Party frontman Kele Okereke over de-tuned acoustic strums on “Coliseum,” moments before his band launches into a nasty blues-metal stomp. In a way, his intuition is spot-on: OnFour, Bloc Party’s fourth overall album (and first in four years), these former indie-rock poster boys have re-harnessed the urgent, anthemic sound that catapulted their debut, 2005?sSilent Alarm, into the critical limelight.

Yeasayer,Fragrant World The wide-eyed Brooklyn hippie rockers return with their most accessible and danceable effort thus far. Barry Waltershas this to say:

Following the self-consciously arty impulses of 2007?sAll Hour Cymbalsand the heightened accessibility of 2010?sOdd Blood,Fragrant Worldis Yeasayer’s synthesis move: Pitting the band’s strongest batch of songs against its most jarring sounds, it radiates the tension of its opposing impulses and resolves them with rhythm. Described by the band during its creation as “demented R&B,” it’s by far their most danceable record; you could play at a party and keep everyone on the floor.

Matthew E. White,Big Inner A classic. Hushed, immaculate late-night brandy-snifter music. Like Lambchop if they made baby-making music. White sings in a low, hushed whisper about God and Love and You surrounded by a quiet haze of Hi Records soul strings and muted The Band horns. HIGHLY HIGHLY RECOMMENDED, one of my favorite albums of the year, beautiful and heartbreaking. The kind of record you lean in more closely to listen to, because you want to learn something.Andy Betafiled this review for us:

The biggest man to ever utter a line like “I am a barracuda/ I am a hurricane” and make it into the gentlest of admissions, White emerges onBig Innerfully steeped in the nuanced, vigilant and incisive songcraft of the likes of totemic American tunesmiths like Newman, Allen Toussaint and Lambchop’s Kurt Wagner. And while such debuts are usually tinged by youthful exuberance and metabolism, there’s such patience in White’s delivery and his backing band’s pacing that belie their years.

Bill Fay,Life is People The first new record from the British cult legend Bill Fay since 1972, a British singer-songwriter whose beatific and keenly observed music might remind you of Randy Newman or Wilco, is a small reason to celebrate. The fact that it exists is heartening, but it’s also a worthy addition to a small but hallowed canon of material. Wilco have covered him over the years, and are probably responsible for bringing his name to thousands of people; here he returns the favor with a solemn, still rendition of “Jesus, Etc.”HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

The Darkness,Hot Cakes The yowling, outrageous, are-they-a-joke-or-aren’t-they parody-rock hotshots return. I still rep for Permission to Land.Barry Walterswrites:

Every hard rock and metal band worth its weight pushes the line of good taste until it risks parody, but few do this as deliberately as The Darkness. Their cheekiness with glam-metal clichs suggests they think it all a joke; their undeniable talent argues it’s notonHot Cakes, there’s a renewed emphasis on generating hits. From the swaggering opening “Every Inch of You” to the closing power ballad “Love Is Not the Answer,” brothers Justin and Dan Hawkins bang out textbook rock anthems. Being that this is the Darkness, their note-perfect craft is both heightened and subverted by their shamelessness.

Owl City,The Midsummer Station These guys are back, still sounding like wispy, anonymous, serviceable electro-pop.

Taj Mahal,Hidden Treasures of Taj Mahal The rare “official bootleg” compilation that everyone needs, not just Taj Mahal freaks.Bill Murphywrites:

These early outtakes and live performances reveal a free-wheeling, unpredictable side to Taj Mahal and his music that doesn’t always shine through in the shorter, polished format of his late-’60s studio albums. That’s not to say that his self-titled 1968 debut is anything other than an essential classic of the period bridging the gap, as it does, between the old-school delta blues canon and modern blues-rock but you don’t need to know this to get a rise out of an unreleased gem like “Yan-Nah Mama-Loo,” with its sassy swamp-funk backbeat, or the bawdy 16-minute shuffle “You Ain’t No Streetwalker, Honey But I Do Love the Way You Strut Your Stuff.”The same holds true for the collection’s second disc a live set, in its entirety, from an April 1970 appearance at London’s Royal Albert Hall.

JJ Doom,Keys To the Kuffs New DOOM record! Here he is, spitting grizzled riddles over small, muddied-feet loops of waterlogged-sounding TV-commercial samples and off-kilter soul loops. He sounds like DOOM, in other words, and if there are no longer surprises in DOOM record, there are lots of pleasures.

Ombre,Believe You me Collaborative effort from Helado Negro and Juliana Barwick. Lovely, a mix of her misted, bodiless vocalizations and Helado Negro’s gentle tropicalia lilt.

DJ Khaled,Kiss The Ring The Roly-Poly Shouting Person Who Knows A Lot of Rappers is back. DJ Khaled makes rap music to smash together Transformers toit’s big and very dumb and loud and incoherent, but it also has a lot of famous people you recognize in it, and you can’t really deny that it exists.

DAVE SUMNER’S JAZZ PICKS

While there’s definitely some albums that stretch the definition of Jazz, this week’s drop leaned more toward the center of the Jazz sound.Both my Pick and Find of the Week are large ensemble albums, but the smaller groups appear in greater numbers.ACT Music label had a couple decent albums drop this week; I only mention one of them.And two albums, one by Portico Quartet and the other by Brian Patneaude, hit eMusic after a small delay, but both definitely worth the wait.Also, Portico’s previous album is back on eMusic, under a different label, which I mention in case you either purchased it previously or missed it the first time around.Let’s begin…

Jazz Bigband Graz, Urban Folktales:A dynamic recording by the Jazz Bigband Graz that expertly mixes old and new-school conventions.Plenty of the rich soaring passages one expects from a large ensemble, but also some electronics, effects, and sampling.Guest soloists include Theo Bleckmann’s vocals, Nguyen Le’s guitar, Gianluca Petrella’s trumpet, Verneri Pohjola’s trumpet, and Hadja Kouyate’s vocals.An amazing album that has moments of sheer euphoric bombast and others that skip peacefully like stones across the water.Pick of the Week.

Brian Patneaude, All Around Us:Patneaude returns with a quartet, dropping the guitar from his previous quintet albums, and it makes for a less introspective, far warmer recording.And while the album does have it’s heavier moments, overall it’s an affable personality that drifts from the stereo speakers.Patneaude continues to develop his personal voice on tenor sax, and it’s been fun to be along for the ride.His album Riverview was one of my first purchases on eMusic years ago, and it’s one that still sees a play button with some regularity.Both albums, Highly Recommended.

Bill Anschell, Blueprints:Pianist Anschell has successfully teamed up previously with Brent Jensen’s soprano sax before on 2009′s We Couldn’t Agree More.For this session, they add Chris Symer’s bass for a set of peaceful tunes perfect for the stillness of a Sunday morning.Outstanding.Recommended.

Portico Quartet, Isla:After a lengthy delay, eMusic finally has the latest from Portico Quartet.Their mix of hang drum and modern Nordic Jazz makes for a potent combination.Whippoorwill reeds, ambient drones, and jazz-rock rhythms endow this music with a hypnotic ambiance easy to like.Not as cohesive as their last album Knee Deep In the North Sea, but I think the storybook feel of Isla serves them well by way of presenting another facet of their music.

Sylvain Rifflet, Beaux-Arts:Multi-reedist Rifflet has created an intriguing recording for guitar trio and string quartet.Sort of a modern avant-garde gypsy jazz album, it’s at times frenetic, other times as luxuriant as the fall of night over a calm day.This is something quite different, and very worth checking out.

Joe La Barbera Quintet, Silver Streams:Likable quintet date led by former Bill Evans drummer.Straight-ahead jazz that ain’t gonna offend anybody.Features Clay Jenkins and Bill Cunliffe.More bop than ballad, and democratic on giving time in the spotlight to each member.

Blommor Inomhus, Blommor Inomhus:A Swedish trio of vocals, trombone, and piano that brings an orchestra along for the ride.This is Scandinavian jazz… moody, melancholy, and sudden rays of sunshine.On this self-titled album, the trio adds some Indie-pop sensibilities to their sound, to great effect.Just an EP, this is a dramatically evocative recording.I hate saying I’m addicted to this album after so few listens… but I’m addicted to this album.Find of the Week.

Jeronimo Martin Sexteto, Quinoa:Lyrical modern jazz recording, with pianist Martin in the lead.Piano, trumpet, trombone,tenor sax, bass, and drums.Pleasantly moody without ever getting morose.Album has a nice sway to it.Would be unsurprised to see Brian Blade’s Fellowship listed under Martin’s influences.Good stuff.

Massimorganti Quartet, Musiplano:Trombonist Morganti leads a peaceable quartet in an exploration of the melodic side of trombone.A few covers, a few originals, it’s mostly straight-ahead jazz, though with a modern flair, both in terms of composition and the occasional use of effects.

Paul Dunmall, Thank You To John Coltrane:Free Jazz sax great Paul Dunmall teams with drummer Tony Bianco to run down a set of Coltrane compositions (with one original, the album’s title track).Fiery, yet with that touch of restraint that makes it easy to listen without getting the ears singed.Just solid playing all the way around.If you need a tenor sax fix (or, for that matter, a ferocious drums fix), then just hit the download button.

Sebastian Rochford, Days and Nights at the Takeaway: 7/7/2012:Polar Bear’s Sebastian Rochford has been creating some nifty experimental music in his studio, the Takeaway.The music often veers out of Jazz territory, but it’s no less compelling for that.Electronics and effects are hot and heavy in this music.This two song EP are drum-piano duos he performed with Jason Moran.Other albums in this ongoing series are just as interesting.Worth delving into.

And this week’s Probably-Shouldn’t-Be-In-The-Jazz-Category album is the new one from experimental sound composer and multi-instrumentalist Eli Keszler, Catching Net:Noises that sound like they originate from objects purchased at a hardware store.Weird tonal shifts, waves of dissonance, and sounds that stretch the definition of music.Also, pretty damn interesting.

SINGLES + EPs

The Gaslamp Killer,Flange Face/Seven Years of Bad Luck for Fun Very dark, corroded industrial piece of evil electronic music from the hip-hop producer known as Gaslamp Killer. DOOM would sound good rapping over this, actually.

Hooray For Earth,Never/FigureeMusic Selects alums! The tone of the production is much darker and fuzz-obscured than HFE usually sound to me, but it explodes into the same big hovering-castle chorus they do so well.

Hundred Waters,Thistle EP Remix EP from a band who put out an excellent self-titled debut this year, featuring work from Araabmusik, Starslinger, and others.

Four Tet, Pink

Much of this, the eighth album by Kieran Hebden under his Four Tet guise, will already be familiar to his more committed fans, as six of its eight tracks have been released as vinyl-only singles over the past year or so. For everybody else,Pinkserves as a reminder of the Putney-born DJ/songwriter/producer/arranger’s subtle, sophisticated talents.

There’s something naturalistic about the layers of beat loops and jazz-inspired plays on momentum that run throughout Pink. While familiar dubstep textures inhabit opener “Locked,” so too does a mounting sense of ambivalence and, gradually, sadness. Conversely, “Peace for Earth” opens as a four-note space lullaby before expanding to become an 8-bit console game melody. Other songs begin with a cheapo keyboard cymbal beat or a sparky, snap-crackle-pop groove before darting off somewhere very differenttoward a faerie circle of music box chimes or highly pixelated melodies. Hebden’s roots are in folk music, and there is something of the deep forest here.

It’s a fun record, though ultimately Sphinx-like in aspect. Five-tracks in, the first snippets of garbled vocal samples are introduced on “128 Harps,” and it only reinforces the gnawing sense that there is some kind of hidden knowledge at work here. Repeated listening will yield different results.

New This Week: Yeasayer, Bloc Party, & More

There are some big marquee names on this week’s list of releases — Bloc Party, Yeasayer — but the big news is just below the fold, with slow-burning, excellent records from Matthew E. White, Jessie Ware, and British cult legend Bill Fay. Leggo:

Jessie Ware,Devotion- Former backup singer steps out into the spotlight with a quietly confident, lightly Aaliyah-reminiscent record of wispy, jazzy R&B.HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

Bloc Party,Four Kele and the boys are back together again, and they are making a louder, gnarlier, more distorted version of the strident, catchy, fighting-fit post-punk anthems they made their name writing.Ryan Reedwrites:

“Can’t shake the feeling we’re moving backwards,” sings Bloc Party frontman Kele Okereke over de-tuned acoustic strums on “Coliseum,” moments before his band launches into a nasty blues-metal stomp. In a way, his intuition is spot-on: OnFour, Bloc Party’s fourth overall album (and first in four years), these former indie-rock poster boys have re-harnessed the urgent, anthemic sound that catapulted their debut, 2005?sSilent Alarm, into the critical limelight.

Yeasayer,Fragrant World The wide-eyed Brooklyn hippie rockers return with their most accessible and danceable effort thus far. Barry Waltershas this to say:

Following the self-consciously arty impulses of 2007?sAll Hour Cymbalsand the heightened accessibility of 2010?sOdd Blood,Fragrant Worldis Yeasayer’s synthesis move: Pitting the band’s strongest batch of songs against its most jarring sounds, it radiates the tension of its opposing impulses and resolves them with rhythm. Described by the band during its creation as “demented R&B,” it’s by far their most danceable record; you could play at a party and keep everyone on the floor.

Matthew E. White,Big Inner A classic. Hushed, immaculate late-night brandy-snifter music. Like Lambchop if they made baby-making music. White sings in a low, hushed whisper about God and Love and You surrounded by a quiet haze of Hi Records soul strings and muted The Band horns. HIGHLY HIGHLY RECOMMENDED, one of my favorite albums of the year, beautiful and heartbreaking. The kind of record you lean in more closely to listen to, because you want to learn something.Andy Betafiled this review for us:

The biggest man to ever utter a line like “I am a barracuda/ I am a hurricane” and make it into the gentlest of admissions, White emerges onBig Innerfully steeped in the nuanced, vigilant and incisive songcraft of the likes of totemic American tunesmiths like Newman, Allen Toussaint and Lambchop’s Kurt Wagner. And while such debuts are usually tinged by youthful exuberance and metabolism, there’s such patience in White’s delivery and his backing band’s pacing that belie their years.

Bill Fay,Life is People The first new record from the British cult legend Bill Fay since 1972, a British singer-songwriter whose beatific and keenly observed music might remind you of Randy Newman or Wilco, is a small reason to celebrate. The fact that it exists is heartening, but it’s also a worthy addition to a small but hallowed canon of material. Wilco have covered him over the years, and are probably responsible for bringing his name to thousands of people; here he returns the favor with a solemn, still rendition of “Jesus, Etc.”HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

The Darkness,Hot Cakes The yowling, outrageous, are-they-a-joke-or-aren’t-they parody-rock hotshots return. I still rep for Permission to Land.Barry Walterswrites:

Every hard rock and metal band worth its weight pushes the line of good taste until it risks parody, but few do this as deliberately as The Darkness. Their cheekiness with glam-metal clichs suggests they think it all a joke; their undeniable talent argues it’s notonHot Cakes, there’s a renewed emphasis on generating hits. From the swaggering opening “Every Inch of You” to the closing power ballad “Love Is Not the Answer,” brothers Justin and Dan Hawkins bang out textbook rock anthems. Being that this is the Darkness, their note-perfect craft is both heightened and subverted by their shamelessness.

Owl City,The Midsummer Station These guys are back, still sounding like wispy, anonymous, serviceable electro-pop.

Taj Mahal,Hidden Treasures of Taj Mahal The rare “official bootleg” compilation that everyone needs, not just Taj Mahal freaks.Bill Murphywrites:

These early outtakes and live performances reveal a free-wheeling, unpredictable side to Taj Mahal and his music that doesn’t always shine through in the shorter, polished format of his late-’60s studio albums. That’s not to say that his self-titled 1968 debut is anything other than an essential classic of the period bridging the gap, as it does, between the old-school delta blues canon and modern blues-rock but you don’t need to know this to get a rise out of an unreleased gem like “Yan-Nah Mama-Loo,” with its sassy swamp-funk backbeat, or the bawdy 16-minute shuffle “You Ain’t No Streetwalker, Honey But I Do Love the Way You Strut Your Stuff.”The same holds true for the collection’s second disc a live set, in its entirety, from an April 1970 appearance at London’s Royal Albert Hall.

JJ Doom,Keys To the Kuffs New DOOM record! Here he is, spitting grizzled riddles over small, muddied-feet loops of waterlogged-sounding TV-commercial samples and off-kilter soul loops. He sounds like DOOM, in other words, and if there are no longer surprises in DOOM record, there are lots of pleasures.

Ombre,Believe You me Collaborative effort from Helado Negro and Juliana Barwick. Lovely, a mix of her misted, bodiless vocalizations and Helado Negro’s gentle tropicalia lilt.

DJ Khaled,Kiss The Ring The Roly-Poly Shouting Person Who Knows A Lot of Rappers is back. DJ Khaled makes rap music to smash together Transformers toit’s big and very dumb and loud and incoherent, but it also has a lot of famous people you recognize in it, and you can’t really deny that it exists.

DAVE SUMNER’S JAZZ PICKS

While there’s definitely some albums that stretch the definition of Jazz, this week’s drop leaned more toward the center of the Jazz sound.Both my Pick and Find of the Week are large ensemble albums, but the smaller groups appear in greater numbers.ACT Music label had a couple decent albums drop this week; I only mention one of them.And two albums, one by Portico Quartet and the other by Brian Patneaude, hit eMusic after a small delay, but both definitely worth the wait.Also, Portico’s previous album is back on eMusic, under a different label, which I mention in case you either purchased it previously or missed it the first time around.Let’s begin…

Jazz Bigband Graz, Urban Folktales:A dynamic recording by the Jazz Bigband Graz that expertly mixes old and new-school conventions.Plenty of the rich soaring passages one expects from a large ensemble, but also some electronics, effects, and sampling.Guest soloists include Theo Bleckmann’s vocals, Nguyen Le’s guitar, Gianluca Petrella’s trumpet, Verneri Pohjola’s trumpet, and Hadja Kouyate’s vocals.An amazing album that has moments of sheer euphoric bombast and others that skip peacefully like stones across the water.Pick of the Week.

Brian Patneaude, All Around Us:Patneaude returns with a quartet, dropping the guitar from his previous quintet albums, and it makes for a less introspective, far warmer recording.And while the album does have it’s heavier moments, overall it’s an affable personality that drifts from the stereo speakers.Patneaude continues to develop his personal voice on alto sax, and it’s been fun to be along for the ride.His album Riverview was one of my first purchases on eMusic years ago, and it’s one that still sees a play button with some regularity.Both albums, Highly Recommended.

Bill Anschell, Blueprints:Pianist Anschell has successfully teamed up previously with Brent Jensen’s soprano sax before on 2009′s We Couldn’t Agree More.For this session, they add Chris Symer’s bass for a set of peaceful tunes perfect for the stillness of a Sunday morning.Outstanding.Recommended.

Portico Quartet, Isla:After a lengthy delay, eMusic finally has the latest from Portico Quartet.Their mix of hang drum and modern Nordic Jazz makes for a potent combination.Whippoorwill reeds, ambient drones, and jazz-rock rhythms endow this music with a hypnotic ambiance easy to like.Not as cohesive as their last album Knee Deep In the North Sea, but I think the storybook feel of Isla serves them well by way of presenting another facet of their music.

Sylvain Rifflet, Beaux-Arts:Multi-reedist Rifflet has created an intriguing recording for guitar trio and string quartet.Sort of a modern avant-garde gypsy jazz album, it’s at times frenetic, other times as luxuriant as the fall of night over a calm day.This is something quite different, and very worth checking out.

Joe La Barbera Quintet, Silver Streams:Likable quintet date led by former Bill Evans drummer.Straight-ahead jazz that ain’t gonna offend anybody.Features Clay Jenkins and Bill Cunliffe.More bop than ballad, and democratic on giving time in the spotlight to each member.

Blommor Inomhus, Blommor Inomhus:A Swedish trio of vocals, trombone, and piano that brings an orchestra along for the ride.This is Scandinavian jazz… moody, melancholy, and sudden rays of sunshine.On this self-titled album, the trio adds some Indie-pop sensibilities to their sound, to great effect.Just an EP, this is a dramatically evocative recording.I hate saying I’m addicted to this album after so few listens… but I’m addicted to this album.Find of the Week.

Jeronimo Martin Sexteto, Quinoa:Lyrical modern jazz recording, with pianist Martin in the lead.Piano, trumpet, trombone,tenor sax, bass, and drums.Pleasantly moody without ever getting morose.Album has a nice sway to it.Would be unsurprised to see Brian Blade’s Fellowship listed under Martin’s influences.Good stuff.

Massimorganti Quartet, Musiplano:Trombonist Morganti leads a peaceable quartet in an exploration of the melodic side of trombone.A few covers, a few originals, it’s mostly straight-ahead jazz, though with a modern flair, both in terms of composition and the occasional use of effects.

Paul Dunmall, Thank You To John Coltrane:Free Jazz sax great Paul Dunmall teams with drummer Tony Bianco to run down a set of Coltrane compositions (with one original, the album’s title track).Fiery, yet with that touch of restraint that makes it easy to listen without getting the ears singed.Just solid playing all the way around.If you need a tenor sax fix (or, for that matter, a ferocious drums fix), then just hit the download button.

Sebastian Rochford, Days and Nights at the Takeaway: 7/7/2012:Polar Bear’s Sebastian Rochford has been creating some nifty experimental music in his studio, the Takeaway.The music often veers out of Jazz territory, but it’s no less compelling for that.Electronics and effects are hot and heavy in this music.This two song EP are drum-piano duos he performed with Jason Moran.Other albums in this ongoing series are just as interesting.Worth delving into.

And this week’s Probably-Shouldn’t-Be-In-The-Jazz-Category album is the new one from experimental sound composer and multi-instrumentalist Eli Keszler, Catching Net:Noises that sound like they originate from objects purchased at a hardware store.Weird tonal shifts, waves of dissonance, and sounds that stretch the definition of music.Also, pretty damn interesting.

SINGLES + EPs

The Gaslamp Killer,Flange Face/Seven Years of Bad Luck for Fun Very dark, corroded industrial piece of evil electronic music from the hip-hop producer known as Gaslamp Killer. DOOM would sound good rapping over this, actually.

Hooray For Earth,Never/FigureeMusic Selects alums! The tone of the production is much darker and fuzz-obscured than HFE usually sound to me, but it explodes into the same big hovering-castle chorus they do so well.

Hundred Waters,Thistle EP Remix EP from a band who put out an excellent self-titled debut this year, featuring work from Araabmusik, Starslinger, and others.

The Darkness, Hot Cakes (Deluxe Version)

Every hard-rock and metal band worth its weight pushes the line of good taste until it risks parody, but few do this as deliberately as The Darkness. Their cheekiness with glam-metal clichs suggests they think it all a joke; their undeniable talent argues it’s not. Following the immediate success of their 2003 debut Permission to Land, this small town British quartet was hit with a fusillade of drug, health and compatibility problems: Even while falling apart, these guys mastered the classic-rock script with quasi-satirical panache.

Featuring all four original members, Hot Cakes is the Darkness’s comeback bid, and true to form, it’s everything you’d want and expect from a band that’s chalked up rehab, tell-all autobiography and hip replacements during its time off. Whereas 2005′s One Way Ticket to Helland Back was overproduced by the king of over-production, Queen collaborator Roy Thomas Baker, their third album is their triumphant back-to-basics move. Given that it’s mixed by Bob Ezrin, studio overlord for KISS, Lou Reed and Pink Floyd’s most excessive works, rawness is relative: There are still more multi-tracked guitar orchestrations and overripe vocal overdubs than on the first seven Beatles albums combined.

This time around, though, there’s a renewed emphasis on generating hits. From the swaggering opening “Every Inch of You” to the closing power ballad “Love Is Not the Answer,” brothers Justin and Dan Hawkins bang out textbook rock anthems. Their note-perfect craft is both heightened and subverted by their shamelessness: Hawkins boasts in “Every Inch of You” that “Every man, woman, and child wants to suck my cock,” with those last three words delivered in a falsetto so shrill it instantly defuses the machismo. But nothing better represents the band’s dead-serious/hilarious duality than its cover of “Street Spirit (Fade Out),” where Radiohead’s tortured alt-rock is twisted into a galloping metal extravaganza nearly as paradigmatic in its own way as the original. No wonder Lady Gaga enlisted the Darkness as supporting act on her current European tour; she recognizes a kindred spirit when she sees one.

New This Week: Yeasayer, Bloc Party, & More

There are some big marquee names on this week’s list of releases — Bloc Party, Yeasayer — but the big news is just below the fold, with slow-burning, excellent records from Matthew E. White, Jessie Ware, and British cult legend Bill Fay. Leggo:

Jessie Ware,Devotion- Former backup singer steps out into the spotlight with a quietly confident, lightly Aaliyah-reminiscent record of wispy, jazzy R&B.HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

Bloc Party,Four Kele and the boys are back together again, and they are making a louder, gnarlier, more distorted version of the strident, catchy, fighting-fit post-punk anthems they made their name writing.Ryan Reedwrites:

“Can’t shake the feeling we’re moving backwards,” sings Bloc Party frontman Kele Okereke over de-tuned acoustic strums on “Coliseum,” moments before his band launches into a nasty blues-metal stomp. In a way, his intuition is spot-on: OnFour, Bloc Party’s fourth overall album (and first in four years), these former indie-rock poster boys have re-harnessed the urgent, anthemic sound that catapulted their debut, 2005?sSilent Alarm, into the critical limelight.

Yeasayer,Fragrant World The wide-eyed Brooklyn hippie rockers return with their most accessible and danceable effort thus far. Barry Waltershas this to say:

Following the self-consciously arty impulses of 2007?sAll Hour Cymbalsand the heightened accessibility of 2010?sOdd Blood,Fragrant Worldis Yeasayer’s synthesis move: Pitting the band’s strongest batch of songs against its most jarring sounds, it radiates the tension of its opposing impulses and resolves them with rhythm. Described by the band during its creation as “demented R&B,” it’s by far their most danceable record; you could play at a party and keep everyone on the floor.

Matthew E. White,Big Inner A classic. Hushed, immaculate late-night brandy-snifter music. Like Lambchop if they made baby-making music. White sings in a low, hushed whisper about God and Love and You surrounded by a quiet haze of Hi Records soul strings and muted The Band horns. HIGHLY HIGHLY RECOMMENDED, one of my favorite albums of the year, beautiful and heartbreaking. The kind of record you lean in more closely to listen to, because you want to learn something.Andy Betafiled this review for us:

The biggest man to ever utter a line like “I am a barracuda/ I am a hurricane” and make it into the gentlest of admissions, White emerges onBig Innerfully steeped in the nuanced, vigilant and incisive songcraft of the likes of totemic American tunesmiths like Newman, Allen Toussaint and Lambchop’s Kurt Wagner. And while such debuts are usually tinged by youthful exuberance and metabolism, there’s such patience in White’s delivery and his backing band’s pacing that belie their years.

Bill Fay,Life is People The first new record from the British cult legend Bill Fay since 1972, a British singer-songwriter whose beatific and keenly observed music might remind you of Randy Newman or Wilco, is a small reason to celebrate. The fact that it exists is heartening, but it’s also a worthy addition to a small but hallowed canon of material. Wilco have covered him over the years, and are probably responsible for bringing his name to thousands of people; here he returns the favor with a solemn, still rendition of “Jesus, Etc.”HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

The Darkness,Hot Cakes The yowling, outrageous, are-they-a-joke-or-aren’t-they parody-rock hotshots return. I still rep for Permission to Land.Barry Walterswrites:

Every hard rock and metal band worth its weight pushes the line of good taste until it risks parody, but few do this as deliberately as The Darkness. Their cheekiness with glam-metal clichs suggests they think it all a joke; their undeniable talent argues it’s notonHot Cakes, there’s a renewed emphasis on generating hits. From the swaggering opening “Every Inch of You” to the closing power ballad “Love Is Not the Answer,” brothers Justin and Dan Hawkins bang out textbook rock anthems. Being that this is the Darkness, their note-perfect craft is both heightened and subverted by their shamelessness.

Owl City,The Midsummer Station These guys are back, still sounding like wispy, anonymous, serviceable electro-pop.

Taj Mahal,Hidden Treasures of Taj Mahal The rare “official bootleg” compilation that everyone needs, not just Taj Mahal freaks.Bill Murphywrites:

These early outtakes and live performances reveal a free-wheeling, unpredictable side to Taj Mahal and his music that doesn’t always shine through in the shorter, polished format of his late-’60s studio albums. That’s not to say that his self-titled 1968 debut is anything other than an essential classic of the period bridging the gap, as it does, between the old-school delta blues canon and modern blues-rock but you don’t need to know this to get a rise out of an unreleased gem like “Yan-Nah Mama-Loo,” with its sassy swamp-funk backbeat, or the bawdy 16-minute shuffle “You Ain’t No Streetwalker, Honey But I Do Love the Way You Strut Your Stuff.”The same holds true for the collection’s second disc a live set, in its entirety, from an April 1970 appearance at London’s Royal Albert Hall.

JJ Doom,Keys To the Kuffs New DOOM record! Here he is, spitting grizzled riddles over small, muddied-feet loops of waterlogged-sounding TV-commercial samples and off-kilter soul loops. He sounds like DOOM, in other words, and if there are no longer surprises in DOOM record, there are lots of pleasures.

Ombre,Believe You me Collaborative effort from Helado Negro and Juliana Barwick. Lovely, a mix of her misted, bodiless vocalizations and Helado Negro’s gentle tropicalia lilt.

DJ Khaled,Kiss The Ring The Roly-Poly Shouting Person Who Knows A Lot of Rappers is back. DJ Khaled makes rap music to smash together Transformers toit’s big and very dumb and loud and incoherent, but it also has a lot of famous people you recognize in it, and you can’t really deny that it exists.

SINGLES + EPs

The Gaslamp Killer,Flange Face/Seven Years of Bad Luck for Fun Very dark, corroded industrial piece of evil electronic music from the hip-hop producer known as Gaslamp Killer. DOOM would sound good rapping over this, actually.

Hooray For Earth,Never/FigureeMusic Selects alums! The tone of the production is much darker and fuzz-obscured than HFE usually sound to me, but it explodes into the same big hovering-castle chorus they do so well.

Hundred Waters,Thistle EP Remix EP from a band who put out an excellent self-titled debut this year, featuring work from Araabmusik, Starslinger, and others.

Interview: Yeasayer

Since their 2007 debut All Hour Cymbals, Brooklyn’s Yeasayer have been making some of the most interesting and challenging art-rock of the past few years. Their records fuse hip-hop and Afropop to ambient noise and indie-rock, and their tunes are stuffed with compelling lyrical ideas. 2010′s Odd Blood, for instance, was partially inspired by Ray Kurzweil’s dystopian theory of the Singularity. (Google it.) If there were ever a band more suited to DJ’ing an end-of-days party, it’d be Yeasayer.

That experimental streak continues with their latest album Fragrant World. And while the overall musical vibe is a tad mellowerconsider it the band’s equivalent of a groove record or something, with all tracks flowing somewhat seamlessly togetherthe concept is anything but. In fact, it’s kinda scary. “The ideas we’re talking about on this record are human life turning into a commodity and things like that,” says frontman Chris Keating. “It just seems like there’s a slow, slow descent into this shitty, shitty world. Hopefully that won’t happen, and I try not to think about that every day, but it just seems that things are getting kind of bleak.”

Given their wild all-over-the-map sound, it makes sense that Keating has schooled himself on everything from Angolan kuduro music to Bowie’s Berlin period to DJ Shadow’s groundbreaking experiments in sampling. Here, Keating breaks down the five records that changed his outlook on music.