Antibalas, Antibalas

In 1998, when baritone saxophonist Martin Perna assembled a clutch of musicians to play at a poetry night staged in a Harlem pub under the name of “Conjunto Antibalas,” expectations were fairly low. The group drew on then-obscure musical touchstones: Latin composer Eddie Palmieri and Afrobeat icon Fela Kuti, the latter of whom had passed away from AIDS the year before with little notice by the western media. It was an unlikely foundation for 11-piece New York band to try and parlay into any sort of success. Yet just over a decade on, the Antibalas Afrobeat Orchestra found themselves 100 blocks south, playing on Broadway as the live band for the smash hit musical Fela!

For all the international accolades, their fifth studio album (and first in five years) avoids any trace of hubris for what might be their most workmanlike set to date. Tough polyrhythms, always the group’s stock in trade, remain steely on “Ari Degbe” and “Ibeji.” Lyrically, the band eschews the trappings of capitalism (and their newfound fame): See the drowning man having money thrown at him on “Dirty Money.” And on “The Ratcatcher,” there’s a parable of a man stuck in a Sisyphean whorl of work, always needing to catch more and more rats, lest he have “no security.” Needless to say, he winds up in his own cage.

New This Week: Eraserhead Soundtrack, Antony & the Johnsons and More

Antony & the Johnsons, Cut the World: Live album from Antony featuring symphonic takes on his best-loved songs. Barry Walters says:

Unlike most musicians making strikingly contemporary art, Hegarty isnt beholden to technology; his voice-and-piano-based, largely acoustic studio arrangements only occasionally draw on electronic effects. The orchestral renditions heard here open the music up with heightened dynamics that compliment the fragile nuances of his expression. Cripple and the Starfish, for example, is far more romantic than the 1998 album version, and the change heightens the contrast between the brutality described in the lyric and the gentleness with which the singer regards his abusive lover: This discrepancy is devastating.

Eraserhead (Original Soundtrack Recording): If you’ve seen Eraserhead, you can guess what the deal is here: lots of ambient wooshing, clanging, some extracts of the film’s bizarro dialogue and the bewitching “In Heaven” make this a Highly Recommended offering for those with more avant-garde tastes. Andy Beta says:

Though Variety originally panned the film as sickening, they did praise Lynchs sound design, which returns in this reissue from the similarly crepuscular Sacred Bones label. Across the two epic suites, industrial throb turns to rust-belt ambience, which turns to cryptic dialogue and banal family-meal chatter and then back to alien drone and radiator shriek. An oasis in such oddness and clamor, the eerie incant by the Lady in the Radiator that in heaven, everything is fine (actually sung by cult figure Peter Ivers) still beguiles; everyone from Devo to the Pixies to Bauhaus and Modest Mouse have referenced it.

Janka Nabay & the Bubu Gang, En Yay Sah: I was lucky enough to see Janka Nabay in Brooklyn last Friday night and the show was spectacular — full of boiling energy and boundless charm. His Recommended new record is much the same. Ben Beaumont-Thomas says:

The Bubu Gang is a band whose members have previously played in Brooklyn mainstays like Gang Gang Dance, Skeletons and Zs; Nabay is a Sierra Leonean ex-pat who escaped the civil war there in 2003. Their resulting album is a faithful African pop record, with little in the way of American influence, although the warm, clear production is a satisfying step up from the tinny cassette-tape sound that you get with much of the continents homegrown music. The Bubu Gang are no slouches when it comes to the polyrhythmic roll of the bubu sound, nailing its taut cadences with rapid-fire organ chords and almost surf-style guitar.

Opossom, Electric Hawaii: Jubilant, soaring indiepop music that shoves the yearning vocals of Kody Nielson way out front. Parts of this sound like a more mystic take on the Shins, but it’s also weirder and more percussive than that. One other thing it is is Highly Recommended. Matthew Perpetua says:

Opossom dresses up its stoner pop in crisp, clean tones that evoke sky-blue swimming pools and impeccably stylish lounges. Nearly every track on Electric Hawaii calls back to the clattering rhythm of the Beatles Tomorrow Never Knows, but Nielsons skill with hooks and shifting dynamics keep the record from feeling too repetitive.

Nu Sensae, Sundowning: Alrighty! Rip-roaring bloody-throated punk rock music where larynx-ruining screams sit side-by-side with eerie, dead-eyed cooing. A much more furious version of X-Ray Spex comes to mind. Recommended

Fergus & Geronimo, Funky Was the State of Affairs: I have a soft spot for these jokesters. No matter what the title says (and the fact that the name of the first song is a vague reference to Maggot Brain), there is very little funky about this record. Instead, this is the same batch of galloping indie F&G have always excelled at. Evan Minsker says:

Paranoia and the idea of being watched are pervasive. Theres an early monologue and a spoken-word track about phone tapping and a handclapping R&B track called Spies (who, the chorus informs us, are outside in a van). Those conspiracy theories are paired with catchy melodies. Drones features an earworm guitar hook and a near-motorik beat, and No Parties has a fairly buoyant synth for its Orwellian lyrics.

Ape School, Junior Violence: The album and artist name here are deceiving! There’s nothing apelike or violent about this. This is sparkling, hook-heavy indie pop. Layered vocals, leftfield melodies and oddball synth squelches should make this one appeal to fans of odder indie like Dr. Dog.

The Liminanas, Crystal Anis: I’m real into this band. Eerie outer-space psych stuff with occasional nods to French pop (see track 2). There’s kind of a pervasive mood of dread here that’s both bewitching and hard to shake. And, of course, it’s on the excellent HoZac label. Recommended

Puffy Areolas, 1982: Dishonorable Discharge: Speaking of HoZac! Here’s another one from the stables. Mean, nasty and gnarly, this is box-of-nails punk at its gritty and grimiest. The lowest of lo-fi noise-punk. In a good way.

Apache Dropout, Bubblegum Graveyard: Pouty garage rock from eMusic faves Apache Dropout on the always-excellent Trouble in Mind label. This is a little bit monster mash, a little bit greaser stomp. Austin L. Ray says:

From the opening of the organ-dappled Archies Army, a song seemingly about zombie comic-strip characters (!), the production is slicker and the songwriting more approachable. Apache Dropout has located a pleasing middle ground between skuzzy and sensible, a nice safe place for melodies and marauders alike.

Various Artists, we Walk the Line: A Celebration of the Music of Johnny Cash: The title says it all: Everyone from Willie Nelson to Kris Kristofferson to Iron & Wine to Sheryl Crow gather to pay tribute tothe Man in Black. Rhett Miller covers “The Wreck of the Old 97.” We see what you did there.

Erik Blood, Touch Screens: Roiling, turbulent guitars bury soft, tentative vocals; some of this has a distinct shoegaze feel, other moments are cleaner and spookier. Swirling, UK-style late ’80s dreampop is the operative here.

Niki & the Dove, Instinct: Like Swedish pop? Here’s a batch of sugary, fizzy Swedish goodness. Big dance beats, wooshing purple synths and squeaky/pouty vocals flying over top. This is a little more aggro than Robyn, a little less mysterious than The Knife. It exists at some strange fjord in between.

Spider Bags, Shake My Head: Rowdy, worked-up rock and roll from North Carolina’s Spider Bags; this is a punk rock take on Americana; you can hear shards of country music and bar rock and pickup-truck hootenannies, but it’s all a bit busted and scuffed-up, in the best possible way.

Jazz Picks, by Dave Sumner

The trombone players win the week.Several albums with trombonist as the lead, others where they are integral part of the ensemble.Also, this weeks releases breaks the recent trend of fringes of jazz albums dominating the Jazz Picks.Most of todays recs have both feet in Jazz territory.Lets begin…

Avery Sharpe, Sojourner Truth:Aint I A Woman?:Bassist Sharpe offers this concept album built around the societal contributions of abolitionist and womans rights activist Sojourner Truth.Sharpe rounds out a sextet with Yoron Israel (drums), Duane Eubanks (trumpet), Jeri Brown (vocals), Craig Handy (sax), and Onaje Allan Gumbs (piano).This is music that recalls the Soul Jazz-African music fusion of Archie Shepps classic Impulse albums Attica Blues and The Cry of My People.Music that swings, even when its heavy with the blues.Thoughtful music that isnt afraid to put its heart on its sleeve and show it to the world.Pick of the Week.

Chris Stover, Circle By Night:The debut album from the Seattle trombonist, who has made a nice name for himself on the albums of others.Rounding out a quartet with piano, bass, and drums, Stover lets his instrument show its delicate side, and creates an album of mostly rainy day music.While the album has plenty of life, its mostly a warm embrace for a lazy afternoon, a lullaby of late night jazz.Highly Recommended.

Bobby Sanabria Big Band, Multiverse:Big Band leader Sanabria deftly blends Cuban and Puerto Rican musics with the music of his New York environment… rock, funk, jazz, hip hop, and whatever other ingredients catch his interest.The result is a very dynamic and richly textured album that features a groove front-and-center.And though the influences are many, theres no mistaking this as anything but a Latin jazz Big Band recording.Very likable album.

Branford Marsalis Quartet, Four MFs Playin Tunes:Marsalis leads a quartet with Joey Calderazzo on piano, Eric Revis on bass, and Justin Faulkner on drums.No surprises here, just solid, straight-ahead jazz.And as with many Branford Marsalis albums, there is brilliance to be found in the nuances and wrinkles of the performance.Recommended.

Charles Loos, Andre Donni, and Aissawas de Rabat, Chouour Moutabadila:An older album, this one released in 1997, but had to give it a mention.Woodwind player Donni and pianist Loos teamed up the Moroccan group Aissawas for a very cool mix of jazz, folk, liturgical chant, and Arabic music.Terribly beautiful at times, simply fascinating at others.Find of the Week.

David Ullmann Quintet, Falling:A set of modern jazz pieces by guitarist Ullmann.Quintet features vibe man Chris Dingman, who I wouldve liked to hear featured a bit more, both because hes a talented musician, but also because I think the pairing of guitar and vibes is something special on a jazz albums.Saxophonist Karel Ruzicka Jr. is most often in the spotlight, and his opaque sound blends with Ullmanns similar sound on guitar for a dreamy lyrical set of tunes.

Mark Masters Ensemble, Ellington Saxophone Encounters:Band leader and arranger Mark Masters has created an Ellington tribute album that focuses on the compositions by well-known Ellington sidemen like Johnny Hodges, Jimmy Hamilton, Harry Carney, Ben Webster, and Paul Gonsalves.Featuring Gary Smulyan on bari sax and Bill Cunliffe on piano, Masters leads the group through a pleasant set of classic jazz tunes.

Fire! with Oren Ambarchi, In the Mouth – a Hand:Guitarist Ambarchi joins the trio of Mats Gustafsson, Johan Berthling and Andreas Werliin for a set of tunes more psych-rock than jazz.Driving tempos and long ponderous notes.Not your everyday type of music.Released on Rune Grammofone, which will give some of you a sense of where this music sits on the fringes of Jazz.

Bill Cantrall and Axiom, Live at the Kitano:Nice lively set of tunes from trombonist Cantrall.Leading a quintet (plus, a few guests) in a live performance for this recording, its a nice fix of music for the hard bop fans.Plus, decent sound for a live recording.

Sara Gazarek, Blossom and Bee:Whether a ballad or up-tempo piece, vocalist Gazarek has a breezy delivery that, really, should lend well to all types of music styles.Some tunes that are straight jazz, some tunes that might be just as home on a Bloodshot Records release, this is an album that might not knock anybody out of their seat, but over time, may grow into one of those go-to recordings when nothing but a jazz vocals album will do.Larry Goldings and Josh Nelson share duties on piano and keys.Bonus points for Gazarek also playing a glockenspiel, an instrument that has been making an appearance on several solid jazz albums in 2012.

Ed Byrnes Latin Jazz Evolution, Conquistador:Jazz veteran Ed Byrne has been the trombonist for many of the jazz greats, from Mingus to Mulligan to Hampton.One of his current projects is the Latin Jazz Evolution septet, whose goal is to take experimental and technical approaches to Latin music, while still making it something thats easy to dance to.A fun listen, and worth exploring.

Arte Quartett, Different Worlds:This album actually came out back in 2009, but seeing it in Freshly Ripped, I just wanted to get in a quick mention of it.Its a nifty sax quartet album that has some very cool atmospheric moments, like a Nils Petter Molvaer world jazz sound, in addition to the more traditional jab-right cross series of punches typical of sax-only recordings.

Keith Jarrett, Sleeper:Fans of Jarretts European Quartet have reason to celebrate.ECM has just released this archived recording of a complete performance from the quartets 1979 Japanese tour.Jarrett on piano, Jan Garbarek on sax, Palle Danielsson on bass, and Jon Christensen on percussion.Personally, I always preferred the American Quartet, but this does sound pretty good.

David Lynch and Alan R. Splet, Eraserhead (Original Soundtrack Recording)

Thirty-five years after it first flummoxed undergrads, weirdoes, film scholars and midnight-movie buffs alike, David Lynch’s debut film Eraserhead continues to defy explanation or elucidation. No matter how often one regards the Man in the Planet, the befuddled high-haired Henry, the Lady in the Radiator, or that monstrous, screaming, foaming “baby,” the film places its viewers wholly within the realm of nightmare. Though Variety originally panned the film as “sickening,” they did praise Lynch’s sound design, which returns in this reissue from the similarly crepuscular Sacred Bones label. Across the two epic suites, industrial throb turns to rust-belt ambience, which turns to cryptic dialogue and banal family-meal chatter and then back to alien drone and radiator shriek. An oasis in such oddness and clamor, the eerie incant by the Lady in the Radiator that “in heaven, everything is fine” (actually sung by cult figure Peter Ivers) still beguiles; everyone from Devo to the Pixies to Bauhaus and Modest Mouse have referenced it.

Fergus & Geronimo, Funky Was the State of Affairs

Ever since their first singles in 2009, Fergus & Geronimo have been a scattershot affair. One minute they were offering a pitch-perfect, soulful love song; the next they’d deliver a jokey number with a prominent recorder solo. But Funky Was the State of Affairs changes things — it’s a statement. The duo are still tourists in different musical styles (post-punk, punk, Krautrock, astral jazz, funk), but their travels are in service to an album with direction, unifying themes and its own universe.

Paranoia and the idea of “being watched” are pervasive. There’s an early monologue and a spoken-word track about phone tapping and a handclapping R&B track called “Spies” (who, the chorus informs us, are outside in a van). Those conspiracy theories are paired with catchy melodies. “Drones” features an earworm guitar hook and a near-motorik beat, and “No Parties” has a fairly buoyant synth for its Orwellian lyrics. Regardless of the genre the duo invoke from moment to moment, “funky” is an apt descriptor; Fergus & Geronimo are covering the same manifesto-laden, sci-fi,  interplanetary, “the man is watching” territory funk music covered around four decades ago. And as a bonus, the album’s funkiest two songs, “Off the Map” (about going off the grid to avoid Big Brother) and the album’s mostly instrumental title track, legitimately compete on the same level as early Funkadelic.

Antony and the Johnsons, Cut the World

As a live album, Cut the World, is, like most things by or about Antony and the Johnsons, quite singular. It leads with a studio recording of Antony Hegarty’s delicately elliptical yet piercing new song, this album’s title track, from The Life and Death of Marina Abramović, a biography of the Serbian-American performance artist staged by experimental theatre pioneer Robert Wilson. The next cut is Hegarty’s speech, “Future Feminism,” in which he discusses his theory about the ways patriarchal religions postulate humanity’s destiny on another paradise beyond the one in which we live, how this belief contributes to the Earth’s demise, and how a feminist way of regarding our planet and our spirituality on it can help to rectify mankind’s ecological destruction. The rest is devoted to symphonic renditions of songs from his albums and EPs recorded last September in Copenhagen with the Danish National Chamber Orchestra. Applause is heard only during his speech and after the final track.

Unlike most musicians making strikingly contemporary art, Hegarty isn’t beholden to technology; his voice-and-piano-based, largely acoustic studio arrangements only occasionally draw on electronic effects. The orchestral renditions heard here open the music up with heightened dynamics that compliment the fragile nuances of his expression. “Cripple and the Starfish,” for example, is far more romantic than the 1998 album version, and the change heightens the contrast between the brutality described in the lyric and the gentleness with which the singer regards his abusive lover: This discrepancy is devastating, and the rest of the album is nearly as exquisitely powerful. Already one of his most succinct songs, “Another World” now floats in sustained symphonic chords that imply the vastness of the galaxy, the sincerity of Hegarty’s love for nature, and the intensity of his sorrow over the Earth’s continuing destruction. The result feels like weeping, and soaring, at once.

Janka Nabay & the Bubu Gang, En Yay Sah

In the wake of Yeasayer, Fool’s Gold and Vampire Weekend, it has become almost a cliché for Brooklyn bands to fold in African influences. But while those bands were generally accessing music such as Ghanaian highlife and Nigerian psych via blogs and YouTube, The Bubu Gang has, in frontman Janka Nabay, a deeper link to the continent.

The Bubu Gang is a band whose members have previously played inBrooklynmainstays like Gang Gang Dance, Skeletons and Zs; Nabay is a Sierra Leonean ex-pat who escaped the civil war there in 2003. He had found fame in his home country by electrifying and recording the folk music of Sierra Leone’s Temne people, called bubu, but he came toAmericawith nothing.  After a stint working in a Philadelphian outlet of Crown Fried Chicken, his music reached a Brooklyn radio producer, and he was connected up to the borough’s underground scene.

Their resulting album is a faithful African pop record, with little in the way of American influence, although the warm, clear production is a satisfying step up from the tinny cassette-tape sound that you get with much of the continent’s homegrown music. The Bubu Gang are no slouches when it comes to the polyrhythmic roll of the bubu sound, nailing its taut cadences with rapid-fire organ chords and almost surf-style guitar. The bewildering pace of tracks such as “Ro Lungi” and “Rotin” is like an organic version of South Africa’s digital Shangaan electro sound. And Nabay himself is a charismatic vocalist, singing in four languages, including English, with an earnest delivery that intertwines with the sweeter backing vocals of Boshra AlSaadi. The effect is similar to the dynamic between Fela Kuti and the singers in his band The Africa 70.

But the finest thing about this record is the tension between the propulsiveness of the tempo and the melancholy of the music. Opening track “Feba” shimmies sadly and determinedly with an unforgettable returning melody, while the guitar effects on “Somebody” echo mysteriously above its two note bassline. This is party music, certainly, but with every human emotion churning through it.

Opossom, Electric Hawaii

Opossom mastermind Kody Nielson is the brother of Unknown Mortal Orchestra leader Ruben Nielson, and there’s a clear family resemblance in their music — they share a taste for loose bass grooves, blissful psychedelia and a sort of cryptic whimsy. But where UMO sounds like three dudes jamming in a chilly basement, Opossom dresses up its stoner pop in crisp, clean tones that evoke sky-blue swimming pools and impeccably stylish lounges. Nearly every track on Electric Hawaii calls back to the clattering rhythm of the Beatles’ “Tomorrow Never Knows,” but Nielson’s skill with hooks and shifting dynamics keep the record from feeling too repetitive. The sunny opener “Girl” thrives on the tension of a melodic turn that threatens to shift into the Velvet Underground’s “Femme Fatale,” while “Inhaler Song” climaxes with a sudden jolt of digital distortion that sounds more like a sickly game-show buzzer than a band rocking out. These moments are outliers, though: Electric Hawaii is mostly appealing for how effortlessly its light funk, breezy beats and supremely relaxed vibe can nudge you into a carefree vacation mindset.

New This Week: Eraserhead Soundtrack, Antony & the Johnsons and More

Antony & the Johnsons, Cut the World: Live album from Antony featuring symphonic takes on his best-loved songs. Barry Walters says:

Unlike most musicians making strikingly contemporary art, Hegarty isn’t beholden to technology; his voice-and-piano-based, largely acoustic studio arrangements only occasionally draw on electronic effects. The orchestral renditions heard here open the music up with heightened dynamics that compliment the fragile nuances of his expression. “Cripple and the Starfish,” for example, is far more romantic than the 1998 album version, and the change heightens the contrast between the brutality described in the lyric and the gentleness with which the singer regards his abusive lover: This discrepancy is devastating.

Eraserhead (Original Soundtrack Recording): If you’ve seen Eraserhead, you can guess what the deal is here: lots of ambient wooshing, clanging, some extracts of the film’s bizarro dialogue and the bewitching “In Heaven” make this a Highly Recommended offering for those with more avant-garde tastes. Andy Beta says:

Though Variety originally panned the film as “sickening,” they did praise Lynch’s sound design, which returns in this reissue from the similarly crepuscular Sacred Bones label. Across the two epic suites, industrial throb turns to rust-belt ambience, which turns to cryptic dialogue and banal family-meal chatter and then back to alien drone and radiator shriek. An oasis in such oddness and clamor, the eerie incant by the Lady in the Radiator that “in heaven, everything is fine” (actually sung by cult figure Peter Ivers) still beguiles; everyone from Devo to the Pixies to Bauhaus and Modest Mouse have referenced it.

Janka Nabay & the Bubu Gang, En Yay Sah: I was lucky enough to see Janka Nabay in Brooklyn last Friday night and the show was spectacular — full of boiling energy and boundless charm. His Recommended new record is much the same. Ben Beaumont-Thomas says:

The Bubu Gang is a band whose members have previously played in Brooklyn mainstays like Gang Gang Dance, Skeletons and Zs; Nabay is a Sierra Leonean ex-pat who escaped the civil war there in 2003. Their resulting album is a faithful African pop record, with little in the way of American influence, although the warm, clear production is a satisfying step up from the tinny cassette-tape sound that you get with much of the continent’s homegrown music. The Bubu Gang are no slouches when it comes to the polyrhythmic roll of the bubu sound, nailing its taut cadences with rapid-fire organ chords and almost surf-style guitar.

Opossom, Electric Hawaii: Jubilant, soaring indiepop music that shoves the yearning vocals of Kody Nielson way out front. Parts of this sound like a more mystic take on the Shins, but it’s also weirder and more percussive than that. One other thing it is is Highly Recommended. Matthew Perpetua says:

Opossom dresses up its stoner pop in crisp, clean tones that evoke sky-blue swimming pools and impeccably stylish lounges. Nearly every track on Electric Hawaii calls back to the clattering rhythm of the Beatles’ “Tomorrow Never Knows,” but Nielson’s skill with hooks and shifting dynamics keep the record from feeling too repetitive.

Nu Sensae, Sundowning: Alrighty! Rip-roaring bloody-throated punk rock music where larynx-ruining screams sit side-by-side with eerie, dead-eyed cooing. A much more furious version of X-Ray Spex comes to mind. Recommended

Fergus & Geronimo, Funky Was the State of Affairs: I have a soft spot for these jokesters. No matter what the title says (and the fact that the name of the first song is a vague reference to Maggot Brain), there is very little funky about this record. Instead, this is the same batch of galloping indie F&G have always excelled at. Evan Minsker says:

Paranoia and the idea of “being watched” are pervasive. There’s an early monologue and a spoken-word track about phone tapping and a handclapping R&B track called “Spies” (who, the chorus informs us, are outside in a van). Those conspiracy theories are paired with catchy melodies. “Drones” features an earworm guitar hook and a near-motorik beat, and “No Parties” has a fairly buoyant synth for its Orwellian lyrics.

Ape School, Junior Violence: The album and artist name here are deceiving! There’s nothing apelike or violent about this. This is sparkling, hook-heavy indie pop. Layered vocals, leftfield melodies and oddball synth squelches should make this one appeal to fans of odder indie like Dr. Dog.

The Liminanas, Crystal Anis: I’m real into this band. Eerie outer-space psych stuff with occasional nods to French pop (see track 2). There’s kind of a pervasive mood of dread here that’s both bewitching and hard to shake. And, of course, it’s on the excellent HoZac label. Recommended

Puffy Areolas, 1982: Dishonorable Discharge: Speaking of HoZac! Here’s another one from the stables. Mean, nasty and gnarly, this is box-of-nails punk at its gritty and grimiest. The lowest of lo-fi noise-punk. In a good way.

Apache Dropout, Bubblegum Graveyard: Pouty garage rock from eMusic faves Apache Dropout on the always-excellent Trouble in Mind label. This is a little bit monster mash, a little bit greaser stomp. Austin L. Ray says:

From the opening of the organ-dappled “Archie’s Army,” a song seemingly about zombie comic-strip characters (!), the production is slicker and the songwriting more approachable. Apache Dropout has located a pleasing middle ground between skuzzy and sensible, a nice safe place for melodies and marauders alike.

Various Artists, we Walk the Line: A Celebration of the Music of Johnny Cash: The title says it all: Everyone from Willie Nelson to Kris Kristofferson to Iron & Wine to Sheryl Crow gather to pay tribute tothe Man in Black. Rhett Miller covers “The Wreck of the Old 97.” We see what you did there.

Erik Blood, Touch Screens: Roiling, turbulent guitars bury soft, tentative vocals; some of this has a distinct shoegaze feel, other moments are cleaner and spookier. Swirling, UK-style late ’80s dreampop is the operative here.

Niki & the Dove, Instinct: Like Swedish pop? Here’s a batch of sugary, fizzy Swedish goodness. Big dance beats, wooshing purple synths and squeaky/pouty vocals flying over top. This is a little more aggro than Robyn, a little less mysterious than The Knife. It exists at some strange fjord in between.

Spider Bags, Shake My Head: Rowdy, worked-up rock and roll from North Carolina’s Spider Bags; this is a punk rock take on Americana; you can hear shards of country music and bar rock and pickup-truck hootenannies, but it’s all a bit busted and scuffed-up, in the best possible way.

Jazz Picks, by Dave Sumner

The trombone players win the week.Several albums with trombonist as the lead, others where they are integral part of the ensemble.Also, this week’s releases breaks the recent trend of fringes of jazz albums dominating the Jazz Picks.Most of today’s recs have both feet in Jazz territory.Let’s begin…

Avery Sharpe, Sojourner Truth:Ain’t I A Woman?:Bassist Sharpe offers this concept album built around the societal contributions of abolitionist and woman’s rights activist Sojourner Truth.Sharpe rounds out a sextet with Yoron Israel (drums), Duane Eubanks (trumpet), Jeri Brown (vocals), Craig Handy (sax), and Onaje Allan Gumbs (piano).This is music that recalls the Soul Jazz-African music fusion of Archie Shepp’s classic Impulse albums Attica Blues and The Cry of My People.Music that swings, even when it’s heavy with the blues.Thoughtful music that isn’t afraid to put its heart on its sleeve and show it to the world.Pick of the Week.

Chris Stover, Circle By Night:The debut album from the Seattle trombonist, who has made a nice name for himself on the albums of others.Rounding out a quartet with piano, bass, and drums, Stover lets his instrument show its delicate side, and creates an album of mostly rainy day music.While the album has plenty of life, it’s mostly a warm embrace for a lazy afternoon, a lullaby of late night jazz.Highly Recommended.

Bobby Sanabria Big Band, Multiverse:Big Band leader Sanabria deftly blends Cuban and Puerto Rican musics with the music of his New York environment… rock, funk, jazz, hip hop, and whatever other ingredients catch his interest.The result is a very dynamic and richly textured album that features a groove front-and-center.And though the influences are many, there’s no mistaking this as anything but a Latin jazz Big Band recording.Very likable album.

Branford Marsalis Quartet, Four MFs Playin’ Tunes:Marsalis leads a quartet with Joey Calderazzo on piano, Eric Revis on bass, and Justin Faulkner on drums.No surprises here, just solid, straight-ahead jazz.And as with many Branford Marsalis albums, there is brilliance to be found in the nuances and wrinkles of the performance.Recommended.

Charles Loos, Andre Donni, and Aissawas de Rabat, Chou’our Moutabadila:An older album, this one released in 1997, but had to give it a mention.Woodwind player Donni and pianist Loos teamed up the Moroccan group Aissawas for a very cool mix of jazz, folk, liturgical chant, and Arabic music.Terribly beautiful at times, simply fascinating at others.Find of the Week.

David Ullmann Quintet, Falling:A set of modern jazz pieces by guitarist Ullmann.Quintet features vibe man Chris Dingman, who I would’ve liked to hear featured a bit more, both because he’s a talented musician, but also because I think the pairing of guitar and vibes is something special on a jazz albums.Saxophonist Karel Ruzicka Jr. is most often in the spotlight, and his opaque sound blends with Ullmann’s similar sound on guitar for a dreamy lyrical set of tunes.

Mark Masters Ensemble, Ellington Saxophone Encounters:Band leader and arranger Mark Masters has created an Ellington tribute album that focuses on the compositions by well-known Ellington sidemen like Johnny Hodges, Jimmy Hamilton, Harry Carney, Ben Webster, and Paul Gonsalves.Featuring Gary Smulyan on bari sax and Bill Cunliffe on piano, Masters leads the group through a pleasant set of classic jazz tunes.

Fire! with Oren Ambarchi, In the Mouth – a Hand:Guitarist Ambarchi joins the trio of Mats Gustafsson, Johan Berthling and Andreas Werliin for a set of tunes more psych-rock than jazz.Driving tempos and long ponderous notes.Not your everyday type of music.Released on Rune Grammofone, which will give some of you a sense of where this music sits on the fringes of Jazz.

Bill Cantrall and Axiom, Live at the Kitano:Nice lively set of tunes from trombonist Cantrall.Leading a quintet (plus, a few guests) in a live performance for this recording, it’s a nice fix of music for the hard bop fans.Plus, decent sound for a live recording.

Sara Gazarek, Blossom and Bee:Whether a ballad or up-tempo piece, vocalist Gazarek has a breezy delivery that, really, should lend well to all types of music styles.Some tunes that are straight jazz, some tunes that might be just as home on a Bloodshot Records release, this is an album that might not knock anybody out of their seat, but over time, may grow into one of those go-to recordings when nothing but a jazz vocals album will do.Larry Goldings and Josh Nelson share duties on piano and keys.Bonus points for Gazarek also playing a glockenspiel, an instrument that has been making an appearance on several solid jazz albums in 2012.

Ed Byrne’s Latin Jazz Evolution, Conquistador:Jazz veteran Ed Byrne has been the trombonist for many of the jazz greats, from Mingus to Mulligan to Hampton.One of his current projects is the Latin Jazz Evolution septet, whose goal is to take experimental and technical approaches to Latin music, while still making it something that’s easy to dance to.A fun listen, and worth exploring.

Arte Quartett, Different Worlds:This album actually came out back in 2009, but seeing it in Freshly Ripped, I just wanted to get in a quick mention of it.It’s a nifty sax quartet album that has some very cool atmospheric moments, like a Nils Petter Molvaer world jazz sound, in addition to the more traditional jab-right cross series of punches typical of sax-only recordings.

Keith Jarrett, Sleeper:Fans of Jarrett’s European Quartet have reason to celebrate.ECM has just released this archived recording of a complete performance from the quartet’s 1979 Japanese tour.Jarrett on piano, Jan Garbarek on sax, Palle Danielsson on bass, and Jon Christensen on percussion.Personally, I always preferred the American Quartet, but this does sound pretty good.

John Abercrombie Quartet, Within A Song

Within A Song is a testimonial to guitarist John Abercrombie’s longstanding appreciation for beauty. All but two of its nine tracks are covers of songs taken from jazz albums first released in a period from 1959-64, when Abercrombie was between the ages of 14 and 19 and just formulating his aesthetic. Some, such as John Coltrane’s “Wise One” and “Flamenco Sketches” from the Miles Davis disc, Kind of Blue, are justly renowned for their delicacy. But Abercrombie also ferrets out the pleasantly voluptuous contours of Ornette Coleman’s “Blues Connotation” in a manner that contrasts with the antic Coleman original from 1961, and he has a band of top-shelf talents — saxophonist Joe Lovano with him on the front line, and bassist Drew Gress and his longtime cohort, drummer Joey Baron, in the rhythm section — capable of the subtlety and sophistication that spells the difference between what is merely pretty and what is luminescent.

Four of the songs done here previously featured guitarist Jim Hall, whose warm tone and rigorous craftsmanship clearly made an impression on Abercrombie’s style. On the opening “Where Are You,” Abercrombie and Lovano reprise the tender affinity deployed by Hall and Sonny Rollins on The Bridge in 1962, the notes and passages forthright but careful, like moving down a hillside on a winding footpath, occasionally pivoting for new leverage. (The Bridge is also showcased on a meld of that album’s “Without A Song” with Abercrombie’s like-minded title track.) Abercrombie typically includes more originals than covers on a record. But the personal nature and formative impact of these cover tunes makes Within a Song an apt title. It is as intimate and as revelatory of his artistic personality as if he had composed every note.

Idjut Boys, Cellar Door

British DJs Dan Tyler and Conrad McDonnell work under a number of goofy aliases — Pastrami Man, Mad Imbecile, Phantom Slasher, Head Arse Fusion Band, Meanderthals. Still, it’s surprising it’s taken so long (the duo has worked together for some two decades) to make a second album under their best-known moniker, Idjut Boys — the first was in 1998. But for something so long-aborning, Cellar Door is decidedly modest. The Idjut Boys’ core style is what clubbers dub “Balaeric” — essentially, slow-to-moderate-tempo soft-rock grooves that wash over you like ambient music even when the pulse is direct and driving, or, as on “Le Wasuk,” scratchy rhythm guitar and organ washes duel one another over a reggae lope. The same relaxed feel pervades all eight tracks here, not always flatteringly — the anonymous siren singing “Shine” and “The Way I Like It” makes them seem more tepid, not less. But Tyler and McDonnell can space out without going adrift: “Song for Kenny” is an irresistibly creamy piano-led confection, done with a light touch that’s playful, not silly.

Apache Dropout, Bubblegum Graveyard

Bubblegum Graveyard may come as a slight surprise to fans of Apache Dropout’s fuzztastic, self-titled debut or its frenetic, blink-and-you’ll-miss-them live shows. This half-hour set of garage pop, the Indiana trio’s first for Chicago’s Trouble in Mind imprint, is practically polished by comparison. From the opening of the organ-dappled “Archie’s Army,” a song seemingly about zombie comic-strip characters (!), the production is slicker and the songwriting more approachable. Apache Dropout has located a pleasing middle ground between skuzzy and sensible, a nice safe place for melodies and marauders alike. The band takes listeners for a bluesy shuffle (“1-2-3 Red Light”), a mischievous, Black Lipsian rollick (“Robbin’ the Bank”), and a head-through-the-sunroof road trip (“I-80″). Where you might have once found a squalling blast feedback, the band often opts for a rib-sticking hook. Sometimes, like in the case of closer “Hey Valentine,” they even throw some psych-influenced acoustic strumming in to get the job done. They’re marrying pop to mayhem, melodies to chaos, and the whole enjoyable mess has come here to die. Bubblegum Graveyard, indeed.

The Endlessly Shape-Shifting Emerson String Quartet

The Emerson Quartet has spent decades as a nimble monument. For nearly 30 years, these four friends — violinists Philip Setzer and Eugene Drucker, violist Lawrence Dutton and cellist David Finckel — have fused their musical identities into the world’s longest-lived and, really, only A-list string quartet. Now, the quartet is losing Finckel, the hardest-working man in the classical music business, who has decided to focus on four or five other full-time jobs. And for the first time in virtually their entire career, the three remaining members will have to make room for a new man in their lives: Paul Watkins. It’s a good moment to review an astonishingly encyclopedic discography, which includes an armful of fat, multivolume sets and a boundless pool of miniscule details.

You need only listen to the explosive opening seconds of Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 8, Op. 59. No. 2 to sense the group’s devotion to specificity. The piece begins in shock. Two violent chords and then a series of frantic attempts to find a rhythmic footing amid gushes, silence, and a roiling current of 16th notes. The score is a touchstone of western music, but the Emerson plays it as a perilous improvisation. Mad staccato flights, sudden bouts of melancholy, bursts of uproarious joy — all these brutal extremes coexist with playing of matchless elegance.

A few long-running criticisms of the group are illuminating: They are pampered Americans and so have no access to the distinctive torment of, say, Shostakovich. They are mechanical virtuosos and slick generalists, indiscriminately slathering vastly different kinds of music in the same warm homogeneous tone. None of this is true. If the Emerson Quartet has overshadowed or outlasted its peers — the Juilliard, Tokyo, Cleveland, Takacs and many others — it’s because they play so much, and plunge so deeply in each composer’s stylistic world. They came to Haydn relatively late, but quickly became comfortable with his impish warmth and vinegary wit. They are equally at home with the searing austerity of Webern, with Bach fugues, and with the heated effusions of Dvorak.

Their enthusiasm for the immersive approach led them to perform all six mountainous Bartk quartets in a single marathon day, and to make a recording that is exquisitely attuned to the scores’ concentrated intensity. You could enter Bartk’s world almost anywhere — the all-plucked “allegretto pizzicato” fourth movement of the fourth quartet sizzles with fierce precision, for instance — but this is one collection that’s worth experiencing the way you would read a book, complete and in order, because it traces the brilliant arc of a difficult life.

The Emerson Quartet can play with breathtaking unity, every directional change of the bow miraculously synchronized, every accent weighted just so. Just how tight the ensemble is can be heard in an ebullient version of Mendelssohn’s Octet for strings that the composer wrote when he was still a teenager In concert, the Emerson has performed it with the excellent St. Lawrence String Quartet, but in the studio, the group teamed up with itself, to thrilling effect.

But as the players like to say, “Blending is easy.” The greater challenge is for four personalities to play together and yet remain distinct. “You wouldn’t want to see a play with four of the same character,” the violinist, Philip Setzer once told me.

That sense of the string quartet as chamber drama permeates the recordings of Shostakovich’s complete quartets, which were made in front of rapt audiences at the Aspen Music Festival in Colorado. Forget about consistency of tone or continuity. In these quartets, even the most gleeful passages contain a streak of horror, and even the gloomiest are shot through with laughter. Many Shostakovich mavens prefer the authentically Russian recordings that the Borodin Quartet made during the composer’s lifetime — dark, gnashing performances steeped in the terrors of life in the Soviet Union. The Emerson Americanizes this music — or universalizes it, perhaps — by showing that Shostakovich’s mixtures of banality and depth, of exaltation and numbness, travel very well. These performances are less desperate but subtler than the Borodin’s, and equally searching. The Emerson players need every ounce of their legendary flexibility in the Seventh Quartet, a one-movement memorial to the composer’s wife Nina that packs every conceivable stage of grief into twelve bristling minutes.

EL, Something Else

After producing hits for many of Ghana’s pop and rap stars and releasing a string of his own blazing singles, EL has made a potentially groundbreaking debut with Something Else, two discs of Afropop and Afro hip-hop informed by, and aimed at, the world.

It’s a lengthy album, but while it isn’t neatly arranged, it offers plenty of rewards and surprises. The singing, rhyming musical polymath’s work bears the influence of all the styles he’s produced: Spanning 25 tracks of dancehall-flavored hiplife hooks, driving Afrobeats and assorted azonto fodder, Something Else feels less like a proper album than a suitcase bursting with inventive sounds and cool ideas. The project boasts a dazzling variety of flows, supplied with help from top Ghanaian emcees like Sarkodie and M.anifest. The energy never sags and there are plenty of non-single treats like the lovelorn ballad “Takoradi.” Leavened by international club, hip-hop and R&B references, and, specifically, a bit of current Nigerian pop’s fireworks, it adds up to an unpredictable all-night Ghana dance party.

The Endlessly Shape-Shifting Emerson String Quartet

The Emerson Quartet has spent decades as a nimble monument. For nearly 30 years, these four friends — violinists Philip Setzer and Eugene Drucker, violist Lawrence Dutton and cellist David Finckel — have fused their musical identities into the world’s longest-lived and, really, only A-list string quartet. Now, the quartet is losing Finckel, the hardest-working man in the classical music business, who has decided to focus on four or five other full-time jobs. And for the first time in virtually their entire career, the three remaining members will have to make room for a new man in their lives: Paul Watkins. It’s a good moment to review an astonishingly encyclopedic discography, which includes an armful of fat, multivolume sets and a boundless pool of miniscule details.

You need only listen to the explosive opening seconds of Beethoven’s String Quartet No. 8, Op. 59. No. 2 to sense the group’s devotion to specificity. The piece begins in shock. Two violent chords and then a series of frantic attempts to find a rhythmic footing amid gushes, silence, and a roiling current of 16th notes. The score is a touchstone of western music, but the Emerson plays it as a perilous improvisation. Mad staccato flights, sudden bouts of melancholy, bursts of uproarious joy — all these brutal extremes coexist with playing of matchless elegance.

A few long-running criticisms of the group are illuminating: They are pampered Americans and so have no access to the distinctive torment of, say, Shostakovich. They are mechanical virtuosos and slick generalists, indiscriminately slathering vastly different kinds of music in the same warm homogeneous tone. None of this is true. If the Emerson Quartet has overshadowed or outlasted its peers — the Juilliard, Tokyo, Cleveland, Takacs and many others — it’s because they play so much, and plunge so deeply in each composer’s stylistic world. They came to Haydn relatively late, but quickly became comfortable with his impish warmth and vinegary wit. They are equally at home with the searing austerity of Webern, with Bach fugues, and with the heated effusions of Dvorak.

Their enthusiasm for the immersive approach led them to perform all six mountainous Bartók quartets in a single marathon day, and to make a recording that is exquisitely attuned to the scores’ concentrated intensity. You could enter Bartók’s world almost anywhere — the all-plucked “allegretto pizzicato” fourth movement of the fourth quartet sizzles with fierce precision, for instance — but this is one collection that’s worth experiencing the way you would read a book, complete and in order, because it traces the brilliant arc of a difficult life.

The Emerson Quartet can play with breathtaking unity, every directional change of the bow miraculously synchronized, every accent weighted just so. Just how tight the ensemble is can be heard in an ebullient version of Mendelssohn’s Octet for strings that the composer wrote when he was still a teenager  In concert, the Emerson has performed it with the excellent St. Lawrence String Quartet, but in the studio, the group teamed up with itself, to thrilling effect.

But as the players like to say, “Blending is easy.” The greater challenge is for four personalities to play together and yet remain distinct. “You wouldn’t want to see a play with four of the same character,” the violinist, Philip Setzer once told me.

That sense of the string quartet as chamber drama permeates the recordings of Shostakovich’s complete quartets, which were made in front of rapt audiences at the Aspen Music Festival in Colorado. Forget about consistency of tone or continuity. In these quartets, even the most gleeful passages contain a streak of horror, and even the gloomiest are shot through with laughter. Many Shostakovich mavens prefer the authentically Russian recordings that the Borodin Quartet made during the composer’s lifetime — dark, gnashing performances steeped in the terrors of life in the Soviet Union. The Emerson Americanizes this music — or universalizes it, perhaps — by showing that Shostakovich’s mixtures of banality and depth, of exaltation and numbness, travel very well. These performances are less desperate but subtler than the Borodin’s, and equally searching. The Emerson players need every ounce of their legendary flexibility in the Seventh Quartet, a one-movement memorial to the composer’s wife Nina that packs every conceivable stage of grief into twelve bristling minutes.

Apache Dropout, Bubblegum Graveyard

Bubblegum Graveyard may come as a slight surprise to fans of Apache Dropout’s fuzztastic, self-titled debut or its frenetic, blink-and-you’ll-miss-them live shows. This half-hour set of garage pop, the Indiana trio’s first for Chicago’s Trouble in Mind imprint, is practically polished by comparison. From the opening of the organ-dappled “Archie’s Army,” a song seemingly about zombie comic-strip characters (!), the production is slicker and the songwriting more approachable. Apache Dropout has located a pleasing middle ground between skuzzy and sensible, a nice safe place for melodies and marauders alike. The band takes listeners for a bluesy shuffle (“1-2-3 Red Light”), a mischievous, Black Lipsian rollick (“Robbin’ the Bank”), and a head-through-the-sunroof road trip (“I-80″). Where you might have once found a squalling blast feedback, the band often opts for a rib-sticking hook. Sometimes, like in the case of closer “Hey Valentine,” they even throw some psych-influenced acoustic strumming in to get the job done. They’re marrying pop to mayhem, melodies to chaos, and the whole enjoyable mess has come here to die. Bubblegum Graveyard, indeed.

Idjut Boys, Cellar Door

British DJs Dan Tyler and Conrad McDonnell work under a number of goofy aliases — Pastrami Man, Mad Imbecile, Phantom Slasher, Head Arse Fusion Band, Meanderthals. Still, it’s surprising it’s taken so long (the duo has worked together for some two decades) to make a second album under their best-known moniker, Idjut Boys — the first was in 1998. But for something so long-aborning, Cellar Door is decidedly modest. The Idjut Boys’ core style is what clubbers dub “Balaeric” — essentially, slow-to-moderate-tempo soft-rock grooves that wash over you like ambient music even when the pulse is direct and driving, or, as on “Le Wasuk,” scratchy rhythm guitar and organ washes duel one another over a reggae lope. The same relaxed feel pervades all eight tracks here, not always flatteringly — the anonymous siren singing “Shine” and “The Way I Like It” makes them seem more tepid, not less. But Tyler and McDonnell can space out without going adrift: “Song for Kenny” is an irresistibly creamy piano-led confection, done with a light touch that’s playful, not silly.

EL, Something Else

After producing hits for many of Ghana’s pop and rap stars and releasing a string of his own blazing singles, EL has made a potentially groundbreaking debut with Something Else, two discs of Afropop and Afro hip-hop informed by, and aimed at, the world.

It’s a lengthy album, but while it isn’t neatly arranged, it offers plenty of rewards and surprises. The singing, rhyming musical polymath’s work bears the influence of all the styles he’s produced: Spanning 25 tracks of dancehall-flavored hiplife hooks, driving Afrobeats and assorted azonto fodder, Something Else feels less like a proper album than a suitcase bursting with inventive sounds and cool ideas. The project boasts a dazzling variety of flows, supplied with help from top Ghanaian emcees like Sarkodie and M.anifest. The energy never sags and there are plenty of non-single treats like the lovelorn ballad “Takoradi.” Leavened by international club, hip-hop and R&B references, and, specifically, a bit of current Nigerian pop’s fireworks, it adds up to an unpredictable all-night Ghana dance party.

John Abercrombie Quartet, Within A Song

Within A Song is a testimonial to guitarist John Abercrombie’s longstanding appreciation for beauty. All but two of its nine tracks are covers of songs taken from jazz albums first released in a period from 1959-64, when Abercrombie was between the ages of 14 and 19 and just formulating his aesthetic. Some, such as John Coltrane’s “Wise One” and “Flamenco Sketches” from the Miles Davis disc, Kind of Blue, are justly renowned for their delicacy. But Abercrombie also ferrets out the pleasantly voluptuous contours of Ornette Coleman’s “Blues Connotation” in a manner that contrasts with the antic Coleman original from 1961, and he has a band of top-shelf talents — saxophonist Joe Lovano with him on the front line, and bassist Drew Gress and his longtime cohort, drummer Joey Baron, in the rhythm section — capable of the subtlety and sophistication that spells the difference between what is merely pretty and what is luminescent.

Four of the songs done here previously featured guitarist Jim Hall, whose warm tone and rigorous craftsmanship clearly made an impression on Abercrombie’s style. On the opening “Where Are You,” Abercrombie and Lovano reprise the tender affinity deployed by Hall and Sonny Rollins on The Bridge in 1962, the notes and passages forthright but careful, like moving down a hillside on a winding footpath, occasionally pivoting for new leverage. (The Bridge is also showcased on a meld of that album’s “Without A Song” with Abercrombie’s like-minded title track.) Abercrombie typically includes more originals than covers on a record. But the personal nature and formative impact of these cover tunes makes Within a Song an apt title. It is as intimate and as revelatory of his artistic personality as if he had composed every note.

Land of the Loops, Bundle of Joy

Up’s roster was mostly artists from the Pacific Northwest, but not entirely: Alan Sutherland’s one-man sample-and-loop project first recorded in Seattle, but by the time Up released its records, Land of the Loops was (and still is) based on the East Coast, and this album’s only direct connection to the I-5 corridor is vocals on a few tracks by Beat Happening’s Heather Lewis. There were a lot of cut-and-paste acts operating in the mid ’90s, but most of the ones who were willing to create recordings with a not-perfectly-squared-off, DIY vibe were more interested in laughs than in beats. Sutherland can be funny when he feels like it (“Multi-Family Garage Sale,” which appeared in a beer commercial, has some nutty vintage movie samples), but his prime gift is figuring out how to get to the intersection of “awkward” and “funky.”

Built to Spill, There’s Nothing Wrong With Love

The second album by Doug Martsch’s long-running band is a declaration of his awesome powers as a songwriter and guitarist. Martsch makes it clear how ambitious he ishis declaration in “Car” that “I wanna see movies of my dreams” is hardly an exaggerationbut there’s also a bracing emotional vulnerability and specificity to his lyrics, especially coming from his high, weedy voice. (“Big Dipper” includes the devastating line “He thought an Albertson’s stir-fry dinner would make his apartment a home.”) The brief hidden track at the end, a string of deliberately awful variations on Built to Spill’s sound, is pretty hilarious, but it also illustrates how carefully Martsch has shaped the rest of the album. There’s Nothing Wrong With Love is the work of an artist who gets to treat Boise, Idaho, as a rock capital because he can outplay anyone: The sheer variety of instrumental textures Martsch crams into these songs’ riffs and fills and raw solos is amazing on its own.