New This Week: The Unthanks, Opossom & More

The Unthanks, Diversions Vol 2: The Unthanks with Brighouse And Rastrick Brass Band The Mercury-nominated vocal duo of Becky and Rachel Unthank teamed up with a brass band for this sonically adventurous album that embraces all the best traditions of English folk, in a Yorkshire accent. It includes a song about a mining disaster, naturally (adapted from “The Trimdon Grange Explosion” by 19^th century pitman poet Tommy Armstrong) alongside brass arrangements of Unthanks favourites by Rachel’s husband Adrian McNally. Far from the curio it sounds.

Opossum, Blue Meanies This summer’s “Young Folks” from hyped New Zealanders’ Opossum.

Chris Coco, Freedom Street A summery love letter to South London – Freedom Street is round the back of Battersea Park, A-Z fans – this is a beautifully chilled offering from Chris Coco that, conversely, makes you wish you were in Ibiza.

Broadcaster featuring Peggy Seeger, Folksploitation Broadcaster recontextualises old performances by folk legend Peggy Seeger in this absorbing experiment. There’s a lilting reggae flavour – “Bad Bad Girl” gets a vibe-heavy dub treatment – but the stand-out track is “The First Time I Ever Saw Your Face”, a gorgeous love song that was written for Peggy by her late husband Ewan McColl, reimagined in the style of Gary Numan.

Moscow Youth Cult, Happiness Machines Nottingham’s technotronica duo named this album after an Adam Curtis documentary about “the rise of the all-consuming self”. Will appeal to fans of Fuck Buttons – which, after the Olympics Opening Ceremony, is probably everyone.

Terror Danjah, Night Crawler EP One of grime’s most innovative voices, Terror Danjah delivers the blistering first track from his highly anticipated Dark Crawler album, out next month.

Don Cherry, Organic Music Society The first official digital release of the 1972 free-jazz classic by head-music pioneer Don Cherry (Neneh’s dad!). Steve Holtje writes:

“Best is the beautiful modal song “Hope”, one of Cherry’s most memorable melodies, which reappears a few tracks later on “Utopia & Visions. Highly recommended to fans of multi-cultural music.”

Joshua Radin, Underwater Singer-songwriter Joshua Radin has soundtracked everything from Grey’s Anatomy to Scrubs, but don’t let the TV drama association put you off. Inspired by swimming underwater, this gentle record features string arrangements by Jimmie Haskell, who worked with Simon & Garfunkel.

Lawrence Arabia, The Sparrow Get past the terrible name Lawrence Arabia, and the worse cover, and this are beautifully written pop songs, lushly arranged by the critically-acclaimed New Zealander, who comes across as part Scott Walker, part John Lennon.

Gaza, No Absolutes In Human Suffering For six years, Salt Lake City noisecore band Gaza have aimed their cacophonous blastbeats and angular death metal riffs at one target – organised religion – and there’s no let-up on their third album. Jon Weiderhorn writes:

“While it’s not the most inviting listen, for the volume junkies who share Gaza’s aesthetic, it’s a masterfully rendered depiction a society gone to hell and the dusty, bone-strewn aftermath that awaits us all.”

Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, 50 Greatest Hits … or a beginners’ guide to Sufi music, from the Palestinian master.

Pig & Dan, Decades After a spell in rehab for Pig (perhaps he was overdoing it on truffles), Pig & Dan are back together for a minimal techno album that’s bursting with positivity.

Gaza, No Absolutes in Human Suffering

For six years now, Salt Lake City abrasive noisecore band Gaza have combined cacophonous blastbeats, angular death metal riffs and trudging rhythms into an unrelenting barrage of hostility aimed at squarely organized religion. The band’s third album, No Absolutes in Human Suffering, shows no end to the biting animosity. “It sure was nice of Jesus to take time away from ignoring ethnic cleansing genocide and famine-bloated children,” roars vocalist Jon Parkins over a bed of pummeling drums and buzzsaw guitars on “The Truth Weighs Nothing.”

Gone is the sarcasm and black humor of songs like “Slutmaker” and “Carnivore,” replaced with the lyrics that crucify zealots while echoing futility of the human condition. No Absolutes in Human Suffering isn’t Gaza’s fastest album, but it’s their heaviest and bleakest. Blunt and brutal, the band locks into a variety of menacing grooves with the help of accomplished producer Kurt Ballou, who plays guitar in Converge and has twiddled knobs for Torche, High on Fire and countless others. Gaza have always experimented with dynamics, but never as effectively as on No Absolutes. Halfway through the album closer, “Routine and Then Death,” the screaming abruptly stops, as if Parkins doesn’t have the strength to continue, and all that’s left is a melancholy arpeggio backed with spare beats and pulsing waves of feedback reminiscent of Jesu. While it’s not the most inviting listen, for the volume junkies who share Gaza’s aesthetic, it’s a masterfully rendered depiction a society gone to hell and the dusty, bone-strewn aftermath that awaits us all.

Who Are…Ice Choir

Kurt Feldman is one of the busiest musicians in New York. Although his chiptune-flecked dreampop project the Depreciation Guild broke up in 2010, he currently drums for the Pains of Being Pure at Heart and produces bands in his apartment-based studio.

Feldman is also a rabid fan of obscure new-wave (favorites include Danish electropop act Gangway and noted cult figure Bill Nelson), Japanese synthpop and shoegaze bands — all of which inspire and inform his new project, Ice Choir. The group’s debut, Afar, could have fit on ’80s commercial radio next to Johnny Hates Jazz, ABC and the Blow Monkeys. Mixed by Jorge Elbrecht of Violens — another band that’s no stranger to plush synthpop — the album boasts breathy, pristine keyboards and ice-glazed hooks. Feldman’s smooth falsetto vocals (which most often bring to mind Tears For Fears’ Curt Smith) are heavenly, especially on the standout “A Vision Of Hell, 1996″ — a song which feels appropriate for an ’80s rom-com’s pivotal moment.

On a recent night, the multi-talented Feldman took a break from some studio work to chat about Ice Choir and his influences.

On how Ice Choir started:

The first song was toward the end of 2010. It was called “The Ice Choir.” I didn’t really know what I was going to do with it. I had another band before Ice Choir called the Depreciation Guild. It was much more guitar-pop, and I was writing all the music for that. There were certain limitations and aspects of that music that I didn’t really want to incorporate into my writing anymore, so I decided to do something new. That’s when I started Ice Choir — literally, the name.

On the unique way he constructed Afar:

I did want to do something that was primarily synthesizer-based. The funny thing is, I don’t really play synths, so 90 percent of this album isMIDIprogramming, which I did. It was a really interesting experience making this record, because before doing this one, I had only ever written stuff for guitar — I had some experience with this very obscure form of electronic music production which is known as trackers. It’s closer to programming than it is actually interacting with a keyboard instrument.

It’s pretty far removed from actually composing, which I guess helped me get over the learning curve of MIDI. It was kind of easy for me to do it, but it was definitely a weird approach. I think most people don’t understand that I didn’t write these songs on a piano. They’re always like, “What do you mean, you ‘typed in the notes in’?”  I’m like, “That’s kind of what I did — I heard an idea in my head and put the chords on the screen.”

On working with Violens member Jorge Elbrecht:

It’s interesting for me to talk about working with Jorge now, because we’re such good friends. We’re close to each other now; we hang out all the time. I would have considered [working with him] a dream come true a couple years ago. It’s not less of a dream come true [now], but he’s also my good friend. He’s got a great ear for situating all the parts into the right places and cutting away all the holes that needs to happen for everything to fit in the right place. He was definitely a good guy to collaborate with on this record. I’ve been filling in on bass in Violens recently; I just went on tour with them. I’m even less removed from them now.

On how he got into obscure synthpop:

The gateway band for me going down that route is this band Gangway. They’re a Danish band, and they produced records from ’82-’97; they put out seven or eight records. They’re one of my all-time favorite bands. They’re a huge influence on me for this project. They were a gateway band for me for other sophisticated pop stuff, like Scritti Politti and Prefab Sprout.

Gangway made this really well-orchestrated and almost classically-influenced, lush pop music. It was also really dreamy. I’m always into things like shoegaze, but they had elements of dreampop, and it was also really quirky and funny, and the lyrics were really brilliant. They were everything I really wanted to hear out of that type of music.

On what his heroes taught him:

I’m mainly a guitar player, that’s my main instrument. When I spoke to Henrik Balling of Gangway, it was really inspiring when he told me, “Oh yeah, I wrote all that stuff on the piano and on a computer. I’m a guitar player.” [It made me] wonder if I could try to do something similar.

On how his dad inadvertently inspired his career direction:

I actually got into Bill Nelson through my dad, who had a bunch of his older records. When I was first getting into pop and new wave stuff, maybe seven to 10 years ago, he gave me some music — and it was like, Ultravox and Bill Nelson. [The latter's] stuff really stuck with me, and I’ve been collecting all his stuff since then. [Nelson is] another big source of inspiration for me. Similar to Henrik, he’s a guitar player. And he’s a brilliant guitar player — he played in Be-Bop Deluxe and is a total shredder. He started this other band [Bill Nelson's Red Noise] which went in a totally different direction, for sort of the same reasons I did.

On what’s fed his fascination for Japanese synthpop:

I’ve been to Japan a bunch of times. I always go over there looking for music, and I buy tons of records while I’m there. I’m at the point where our liaisons can recommend stuff, because they have history with Japanese AOR; they’re older guys that remember that stuff. They know the offshoots, like YMO [Yellow Magic Orchestra] projects and all the things Ryuichi Sakamoto produced. That’s the stuff I’m really, really passionate about now.

And also Patrick [South] — he plays on this record — he’s my roommate and we’ve been really good friends for a while. And he’s an absolute enthusiast about this stuff. He has an insanely completist, historical knowledge of all the techno-pop stuff fromJapanfrom the ’80s. He has an insane collection. He’s recommended some stuff to me, which I’ve ingested over time and it’s definitely seeped its way into our music, too. I have a pretty good collection of Japanese synthpop stuff now.

On how producing other people has affected his own work:

Doing the production work hasn’t influenced me so much as it’s been a way of leaving my footprint on other people’s stuff, which is kind of cool. That’s always what I’ve admired about some of this ’80s synthpop stuff. One of the biggest aspects of it I’ve been drawn to are the sounds and the methods of production. A lot of that stuff…if you research it, you can do it yourself in a small studio. I just work out of my apartment; I’ve got a computer here. It’s nowhere near some of the studios that this music would have been recorded on in the mid-’80s. It approximates that sound in a more modernized way. That’s the sound I’m going for.

The people that have been interested in working with me have all heard Ice Choir and been like, “Whoa — would you be interested in producing my stuff?” It’s been a challenge to see if I can somehow leave my sphere of influence on their record.

New This Week: Rick Ross, Blur, & More

This wasn’t supposed to be a big release week, but somehow, when I start sorting through what came to the site, I end up overwhelmed with new things anyway. Let’s start with the big obvious new ones, and then drill down to the weird/cool little things I found like change in the couch.

Rick Ross – God Forgives, I Don’t - The big, inescapable summer victory lap from the man who has come to dominate commercial rap. Ian Cohen has this to say about the outsized kingpin’s long-delayed fifth studio effort:

If you judge a hip-hop record’s impact simply by its ubiquity in radio playlists, YouTube rotations and passing cars, Rick Ross’s fifth LP God Forgives, I Don’t will be an unqualified success, 2012′s Blueprint 3, Recovery or Tha Carter IV. For everyone else, it will also be 2012′s Blueprint 3, Recovery or Tha Carter IV, an overlong and oversafe victory lap that proves its creator is far more interesting when he’s got something to prove. Which isn’t to say God Forgives doesn’t get the job done in a lot of ways. It’s every bit as much of a rap-as-videogame diversion as his previous work — while the boasts are increasingly absurd and outlandish, Ross continues to grow as an actual technician on the mic. Likewise, the beats are every bit as expensive and domineering and they will dominate hip-hop radio because they’re defining its sound in real time.

Blur, Reissues:  Leisure, Modern Life Is Rubbish, Parklife, Blur The Great Escape, - The greatest Brit-pop band of all time (you can argue Oasis, but come on) gets the deluxe-reissue treatment. Instead of rambling on, I will instead point you to two places: 1) Hua Hsu’s excellent, comprehensive Damon Albarn and Blur Icon piece, and 2) Lindsay Zoladz’s must-read piece on Blur over at Pitchfork today.

Christian Scott, Christian Atunde Adjuah- Bold, convention-busting new record from jazz-trumpet phenom Christian Scott. Ken Micallef writes:

New Orleans native Christian Scott has often shown a penchant for pushing the envelope. Though reliably anchored by his warm, typically muted trumpet work, his previous albums have incorporated influences from fusion to funk to world music. But with ChristianaTundeAdjuah, the 29-year old takes a bold leap: A two-CD release comprised of 23 tracks, ChristianaTundeAdjuah draws on New Orleans second-line rhythms, the African Diaspora and the electronic loop programming of Squarepusher and Aphex Twin. These influences aren’t always literal, but they dance around the edges of Scott’s charged compositions like ghosts haunting a dream.

Ice Choir, Afar -Gentle, prismatic, heavily-80s synth-pop heart-bleed from Kurt, the drummer from Pains. Lovely.

R. Stevie Moore, Lo-Fi High Fives (A Kind of Best Of) - Before there was Ariel Pink, before there was Bob Pollard, there was this guy: R. Stevie Moore, a maker of homemade tapes of warbly, heartsick pop music that caught the attention of just enough music fanatics to stoke a low-level cult. He sounds startlingly current at this indie moment: It’s time he was given his due as a true godfather of the Lo-Fi movement.  This is an excellently curated “Best of” of sorts, as the title indicates.

Shoes, Ignition – Long-lost, quietly legendary power-pop group (from the first wave, the one that really went broke) reform and return with more winsome heartache, “woos,” and “sha-la-las.” This stuff never goes out of style, because it was never in. But this is a welcome return.

Apache Dropout, Bubblegum Graveyard – Comic-books-and-gore garage-pop, shot through with goofy spazz-swagger and sweetened withBrillBuilding chord changes.

Jesse Harris, Sub Rosa - Agreeably bopping rock-pop with a jaunty jazz angle from Jesse Harris, who employs guest turns from Norah Jones and Conor Oberst.

Conan, Monnos - Powerfully sludgy stoner-metal, La Brea tar-pit drop-D guitars, cleanly wailed vocals, the whole nine.

Nachmystium, Silencing Machine – The sixth album from theChicago black-metal stalwarts re-embraces the frosty Norwegian root of their sound, burn off some of the more experimental touches of recent efforts and bear down.

Blackalicious, Melodica – Indie-rap stalwarts return with more of the playfully verbose, gently thoughtful hip-hop with which they made their name.

La Coka Nostra, Masters of the Dark - Glowering, textbook roughneck rap, full of tough guys, twisted syllables, and broken-bottle-on-concrete beats.

Serengeti, C.A.R. – Dazed impressionist spoken-word-poet-and-rapper Serengeti takes us on another abstracted stroll through his consciousness. On Anticon.

Berlin Symphony Orchestra, Le Sacre Du Printemps - Great recording of a classic, still-modern work. The jazz combo Bad Plus, who have made their name tearing into rock touchstones by Nirvana and Black Sabbath, are currently applying their talents to The Rite of Spring.

Gaza, No Absolutes In Human Suffering - Pummeling, remorseless noisecore fromSalt Lake City. These guys remain no fans of organized religion, and are not at all shy about telling you so. Jon Wiederhornon the 1s and 2s:

For six years now, Salt Lake City abrasive noisecore band Gaza have combined cacophonous blastbeats, angular death metal riffs and trudging rhythms into an unrelenting barrage of hostility aimed at squarely organized religion. The band’s third album, No Absolutes in Human Suffering, shows no end to the biting animosity. “It sure was nice of Jesus to take time away from ignoring ethnic cleansing genocide and famine-bloated children,” roars vocalist Jon Parkins over a bed of pummeling drums and buzzsaw guitars on “The Truth Weighs Nothing.”

Johann Johansson, Copenhagen Dreams - Minimalist composer Johann Johannsson wrote the forlorn, murmuring, subdued score for the dreamy documentary Copenhagen Dreams.

David Greilsammer, Baroque Conversations - Wonderful collection by one of the most incisive Mozart interpreters around.

Osvaldo Golijov,  La Pasion Segun San Marcos - Composer Osvaldo Golijov’s red-blooded, incendiary Arrival Work, recorded by the group of musician that made it famous. If you haven’t experienced this culture-melting work yet, this is your time.

SINGLES

2 Chainz, “Birthday Song”- All I want for my BIRTDAYYYYY is a bigbootyGUHL.” This is the hook to 2 Chainz’s big new single, “Birthday.” It’s not-very-novel sentiment delivered in a very novel, catchy way. Kanye is on this too, and he is hilarious. The beat sounds like three or four beats that all equally want your attention.

Dum Dum Girls, “Lord Knows” - Beautiful, early-Pretenders seductive gloom from Dee Dee, who just keeps improving.

Kendrick Lamar, “Swimming Pools (Drank)” - Kendrick Lamar, the melancholy poet prince of West Coast rap, releases his new tongue-twisted, gently blunted single, a crooned ode to the numbing immersion of cough syrup.

Mastodon/Feist, Record Store Day 7″ - Record Store Day split from unlikely bedfellows Mastodon and Feist (although the guitar tones in Feist’s Pitchfork set were getting pretty dark and witchy. It would be awesome if she released her version of a Heart record next.)

Rick Ross, God Forgives, I Don’t [Deluxe Edition] (Edited)

If you judge a hip-hop record’s impact simply by its ubiquity in radio playlists, YouTube rotations and passing cars, Rick Ross’s fifth LP God Forgives, I Don’t will be an unqualified success, 2012′s Blueprint 3, Recovery or Tha Carter IV. For everyone else, it will also be 2012′s Blueprint 3, Recovery or Tha Carter IV, an overlong and oversafe victory lap that proves its creator is far more interesting when he’s got something to prove. This was true even in the alternate reality Ross has created since the career turning point of Deeper Than Rap — the very real intrusion of rap bazillionaires L.A. Reid, Dr. Dre and Jay-Z effusively praising Ross and God Forgives itself actually make the record seem less like a capital-e Event. It makes Ross feel mortal.

Which isn’t to say God Forgives doesn’t get the job done in a lot of ways. It’s every bit as much of a rap-as-videogame diversion as his previous work — while the boasts are increasingly absurd and outlandish, Ross continues to grow as an actual technician on the mic. Likewise, the beats are every bit as expensive and domineering and they will dominate hip-hop radio because they’re defining its sound in real time. But it’s ultimately Ross in literal Boss Mode, having beaten every level and acquired every cheat code — God Forgives, I Don’t shows the crucial difference between sounding Too Big To Fail and actually being it.

Christian Scott, Christian aTunde Adjuah

New Orleans native Christian Scott has often shown a penchant for pushing the envelope. Though reliably anchored by his warm, typically muted trumpet work, his previous albums have incorporated influences from fusion to funk to world music. But with Christian aTunde Adjuah, the 29-year old takes a bold leap: A two-CD release comprised of 23 tracks, Christian aTunde Adjuah draws on New Orleans second-line rhythms, the African Diaspora and the electronic loop programming of Squarepusher and Aphex Twin. These influences aren’t always literal, but they dance around the edges of Scott’s charged compositions like ghosts haunting a dream.

Scott and his explosive, adventurous band — guitarist Matthew Stevens, drummer Jamire Williams, bassist Kris Funn, pianist Lawrence Fields, tenor saxophonist Kenneth Whalum III, alto saxophonist Louis Fouche IIII and trombonist Corey King — tackle some pretty serious themes, including, as the liner notes mention, “ethnic cleansing, kidnapping and…the rape of 400 indigenous African Sudanese.” And that’s only in the first track, “Fatima Aisha Rokero 400.” Instrumentally, the group’s common language, beyond their serious improvisation skills, is based on manually cycled loops, with each musician performing repetitive figures that recall electronic dance music, or, some might say, Live Evil-era Miles Davis. Scott’s band imbues the music with a playful and fragmented nature, and his muted, Miles-inspired trumpet lends the music an eerie, forlorn quality.

Disc two takes a similar approach, though with backbeats suggesting a contemporary, if still dark, pop-funk approach. “Jihad Joe” spirals and dances over a trancelike 7/4 pulse, Scott spewing trumpet scrawl, drummer Jamire Williams soloing like a spongy Tony Williams roving over the kit. “Liar Liar” could be Miles Davis’s “Decoy” sampled and spliced for contemporary ears. The album closes with “Cara,” a surprisingly gentle, piano based ballad that has the feel of sunrise to it, not the catharsis that came before.

Though his band’s cyclical rhythms sometimes sound static instead of propulsive and Scott’s trumpet has a sameness in tonality and mood, there’s no denying that Christian aTunde Adjuah is one hell of a growth spurt. The only moment in the set’s two-disc sprawl where Scott acknowledges straight-ahead jazz bears a telling, sardonic title: “Who They Wish I Was,” The message is clear: Scott will not be categorized.

Blur, The Great Escape (Special Edition)

By 1995, Blur had become bona fide stars — the kind who would be profiled on the nightly news or featured on schoolgirls' folders and binders. But rivals had emerged from a different corner of the British experience, and they would make for tougher opponents than Suede. From Manchester came Oasis, the uncouth, hard-working, laborer-toughs to Blur's clever, middle class students. In the run-up to The Great Escape and Oasis's bafflingly titled (What's the Story) Morning Glory?, the two bands were pitted in a battle for singles chart supremacy. Both singles were fairly unmemorable: Blur's "Country House" — the single that thwarted Oasis, if momentarily — was a wobbly, self-caricature of a single, lacking the verve of their older material. The rivalry weakened Blur significantly — their tussle with Oasis had stained them as elitists, and stresses within the band began surfacing as well. This context helps explain why The Great Escape is an absorbing but patchy work. Despite their triumphant run, Blur continued to mine their well-worn fascination with modern alienation: "Mr. Robinson's Quango," "He Dreamed of Cars" and "Ernold Same" reprised familiar Blur themes, the latter featuring a Daniels-esque guest turn from MP Ken Livingston. But such a critical vantage seemed less thoughtful when lobbed from atop the charts. It's still rich with enthralling moments: "Yuko and Hiro" is one of their most gorgeous tunes, an exhausted, cosmic dispatch from a Japanese factory, while "The Universal" is quite possibly the most captivating ballad ever composed about the new docility that await us in the next century.

Lisa Moore, Stainless Staining

Stainless Staining completes Lisa Moore’s three-EP series of piano music by contemporary Irish minimalist composer Donnacha Dennehy. The title track pairs Moore with a “soundtrack” that, as Dennehy puts it, “is made up of samples of a piano (played both normally and ‘inside’) retuned to provide a massive harmonic spectrum of 100 overtones.” This technique vastly increases the amount of timbres available toMoore. The piece’s rhythmic urgency over its mix of gentle tinkling and occasional pound gives its 15 minutes an attractive tension.

The other track, “Reservoir,” is in two sections. The first always seems to be rising in pitch, with repetitive, bell-like chords slowly morphing over its running time, staking out widely disparate low and high registers. The second half contrasts by sticking to lower and middle registers, with much less separation. The compositional techniques sound dryly academic, but they create a suspenseful yet poetic mood, like water slowly but inexorably lapping over you.

Can, Inner Space / Out of Reach

Combining Can’s 1978 disc Out of Reach, with its 1979 album Can aka Inner Space, this twofer release captures the German band at its least Can-ish.

Out of Reach (tracks 9 through 15) isn’t even included in the band’s own official discography. Both latter-day ex-Traffic members, Saw Delight additions Rebop Kwaku Baah and Rosko Gee do all the singing here, and founding member Holger Czukay isn’t involved at all; he quit the band in ’77. Rebop is a dexterous player, but his percussion often overwhelms Jaki Liebezeit’s drums rather than augmenting them. Bassist Gee is similarly aggressive and technique-intensive, a sharp contrast to Czukay’s minimal yet empathetic previous basslines. Out of Reach is far more akin to the virtuoso flash of American jazz-rock groups like Mahavishnu Orchestra than to the intellectual, intrinsically Germanic Krautrock of yore.

The third and final album Can album recorded with Gee and Rebop, Inner Space (tracks 1 through 8) improves upon 1978′s Out of Reach by dropping much of that album’s frantic jazz-rock excess, restoring guitarist Michael Karoli as vocalist, and employing Holger Czukay’s editing skills. 1979′s Can (issued here as Inner Space) nevertheless comes cluttered with filler: A goofy fuzz-tone cover of the melody from Jacques Offenbach’s opera Orpheus in the Underworld most associated with the can-can illustrates how far the band had ventured from its avant-garde beginnings. But the strongest material — particularly “Aspectacle,” a menacing quasi-disco track akin to contemporaneous cuts by James White and the Blacks — restores that essential mystery in Can’s core.

Various Artists, Country Funk 1969-1975

“Country Funk” — a genre named specifically for this choice compilation — seems on first glance as the musical equivalent of a black and white cookie. Or suggests that until the late 1960s, African-American thump had yet to intermix with Southern Baptist twang. Not true of course (see Stax, Booker T. and the MGs, Allman Brothers, etc.) but this compilation maps out a parallel universe, one where Levon Helms’ Big Pink beat is on equal footing with Clyde Stubblefield’s good foot. Or where the wood-chipping break on Tony Joe White’s “Stud Spider” can also get chopped up by Kanye West and Common in the next century.

Country Funk suggests second acts for these American singers, be they black or white. So gritty gospel singer Johnny Adams can get low with pedal steel on “Georgia Morning Dew”; ’50s crooner Bobby Darin can drop out and back in with the slinky protest stomp of “Light Blue”; former Naw’leans R&B bullfrogger Bobby Charles can grow his beard and hair long and jam with the Band on “Street People.” Best of all is when garage rocker Link Wray holes up in a chicken shack on his Kentucky property to howl about “Fire & Brimstone.” They weren’t fiscally successful reinventions perhaps, but in hindsight these country boys — regardless of color — sure were funky.

What’s in a Name?

We’ve all been there. A friend is going on and on about their favorite new band and you, having just come across that very same band, echo their enthusiasm. And then, about halfway through the conversation, they make a passing reference to “How much like Erasure they sound,” and you realize, to your horror: “We are talking about completely different bands.” That mistake is getting easier and easier to make these days, thanks to the fact that the ratio of New Bands to Good Band Names is preposterously lopsided. So before you  express your love of Bear in Heaven, only to discover the band in discussion is actually Bear Hands, consult our handy list of bands whose names are a little too easy to confuse.

China Mieville, Railsea

Moby Dick has retained a particular hold on the global literary imagination in the century-and-a-half since its publishing. Some writers have been seized enough by Melville’s epic to spin off new stories based on its characters, while others have taken on the theme of Ahab’s suicidal single-mindedness to frame new tales of obsession. China Mieville’s Railsea is a new literary heir on the scene: fantastical, post-apocalyptic and, like its predecessor, packed with equal parts exhilarating chase and incisive reflection on the nature of the chase itself. In this case, the one doing the reflecting is Sham ap Soorap, a bumbling young introvert who finds himself taken on as a doctor’s assistant aboard the Medes, a mole-hunting train on the railsea. In this never-stated, probably-future time, the earth (if it is the earth) is covered with mile after mile of snared and tangled rails, and, like the seamen of yore, those who ride the rails form a culture unto themselves. And, oh yes, I said “mole-hunting” — out of the ground on which rails are laid come all manner of vicious, burrowing creatures, from pesky carnivorous rabbits to vicious ferrets to the bounty of the Medes: the moldywarpe, a bad-tempered giant mole. One particular moldywarpe, an ivory-colored one, no less, has taken the arm of the Medes captain, and it has become the life’s aim — the “philosophy,” as Mieville puts it — of Captain Naphi to track down said moldywarpe and harpoon it to kingdom come. At heart not a hunter but a dreamer, a would-be salvor (salvager of ancient junk), Sham gains a quest of his own when he learns of a place that’s unsullied by the endless snarl and clatter of the rails. Railsea enchants by its language alone, and reader Jonathan Cowley proves expert with Mieville’s invented vocabulary and his rollicking, alliterative sentences. Intended for readers of all ages, Railsea will enchant any reader who understands what it’s like to want something and to burn with the dream to discover it.

Laura Moriarty, The Chaperone

At the beginning of The Chaperone, Cora Carlisle lives in a small world. Though she spent some time in a New York City orphanage, Carlisle’s lived most of her 36 years in Kansas, bound both by her corset and her outdated morals. Her perspective changes when she accompanies a teenaged Louise Brooks, based on the real-life film star, on a trip toNew York in the summer of 1922. Brooks’s arresting beauty and arrogance define her in equal measure, and the more Carlisle insists on propriety, the more Brooks flouts it.

Moriarty’s prose sparkles with detail, and she often revisits minor characters or ephemeral objects, rendering a style that’s satisfyingly tidy. Carlisle’s stodgy Midwestern morality would be easy to mock, but Moriarty resists the temptation. Instead, she shows the ubiquity of conservative and prejudicial attitudes, never reducing them to a matter of individual meanness. Though Moriarty shows little love for Louise’s mother, Myra Brooks, she generally renders her characters with compassion, showing each one in context.

The writing may even have too much detail, creating some problems with pacing. The beginning of the book zooms in on meals and quotidian exchanges, while the end speeds through decades. Still, it’s an enjoyable story, one that illuminates individual perspectives while providing a panoramic view of the Roaring ’20s.

Stephen Baxter and Terry Pratchett, The Long Earth

Fans of the 1990s disaster that was the Jerry O’Connell-vehicle Sliders will be pleased to know that The Long Earth incorporates all of the cool parts of that show without any of the “What would happen if nerds were the star athletes?” sidebar. A collaboration between noted science fiction writers Stephen Baxter and Terry Pratchett, The Long Earth focuses on one Joshua Valienté — the archetypal ordinary man with extraordinary powers.

One of the rare humans with the ability to step between universes, Valienté is at first a savior of children who inadvertently cross that invisible threshold, and later a corporate-sponsored explorer of the multiverse, traveling hundreds of thousands of earths beyond ours. Offering glimpses into our world as mass emigration sets in, Earth works best when it’s in travelogue mode. With Baxter’s hard sci-fi tendencies evening out Pratchett’s tendencies toward camp, Valienté is an everyman guide to unpeopled variations on Earth, like those on which dinosaurs rule.

The Long Earth traffics in more than the occasional SF cliché, but it’s a product of two of the genre’s masters, and they’re master weavers of this kind of tale.

Mark Haddon, The Red House

For a novel with such serious aspirations, The Red House has a lot in common with MTV’s The Real World. Eight near-strangers gather for an extended vacation, and they pass the time by fighting and keeping secrets. After the death of their alcoholic mother, middle-aged Richard invites his estranged sister Angela to stay in an English country house. They both bring their respective families — Angela takes her husband and three children, while Richard brings his second wife and stepdaughter. What promises to be a tense, claustrophobic setup is exactly that: a veritable petri dish for conflict and reflection.

Through a series of interlocking vignettes, none of which lasts for very long, the book shows each character’s point of view. At times, the flighty narrative voice becomes aggravating; some characters’ perspectives are much more compelling than others. Richard, for example, seems to serve his purpose by contrasting with Dominic, Angela’s cowardly husband. Angela, on the other hand, has more pathos and depth. She miscarried 18 years in the story’s past, and still stews in her unhealthy fantasies. Her failure to adjust is heartbreaking and true.

Though the novel is broad in scope, its characters have recognizable problems and realistic reactions to them. By the end of the story, some seize the opportunity for transformation, while others sink deeper into their own dysfunction.

Black Plastic’s Guide to DFA 12-Inches

When we think of DFA, we think immediately of founder and former LCD Soundystem frontman James Murphy, along with the label’s big-ticket acts like the Juan Maclean and The Rapture. But behind these indie titans are a number of fantastic 12″ releases that often slip out with little attention. DFA and James Murphy have been a massive influence on me and my blog since ‘Losing My Edge’ first came out. Here I select five of the best songs from the various 12″ releases DFA have put out over the years.

Adam Russell runs the blog Black Plastic. 

Various Artists, Personal Space: Electronic Soul 1974-1984

This thoroughly bizarre compilation proves you don’t need to get metaphysical, mystical or deep into quantum physics to get the feeling you’re being given a glimpse into another world. Listening to Personal Space is like witnessing a crack opening up in an alternate pop-culture universe in real time. It is, essentially, a collection of home recordings by “artists” never heard of before or since, making use of the most very basic drum machines and keyboards to record skewed and sometimes-deranged takes on soul music.

It suggests a world in which the more outré electronic experiments of Stevie Wonder and Sly Stone became the template for a whole new style, where instead of growing slicker in the hands of big producers and labels in the late-’70s, soul went DIY, growing rawer and weirder and turning into some way-out-there counterpart to punk. Every track on Personal Space uses chords, riffs and rhythms you’re accustomed to hearing couched in big, glossy production, but completely confounds your expectations with wonky playing, off-kilter lyrics and lower-than-lo-fi mixes. They’re sometimes jarring, but the sense of individual visions laid down in isolation with none of the ironing-out of kinks that comes with professional recording makes them compelling.

Some show quite a degree of musical skill behind the distortion and tape hiss. U.S. Aries’s shamelessly smutty “Are You Ready to Come,” for example, boasts a powerful low-slung boogie, with tidy piano licks, stacked vocal harmonies and ingenious production effects. The Makers’ reggae-influenced “Don’t Challenge Me” has some brilliantly funky bleeps rattling around its central rhythm and a sultry, androgynous vocal. The gloriously named Starship Commander Woo Woo creates something that sounds like Kraftwerk teaming up with John Williams on the epic “Master Ship (Excerpt)” (the mind boggles at what its six minutes could be an excerpt from).

A good half of the collection, though, is far freakier — outsider art in the truest sense. Deborah Elliot’s “Shortest Lady” is warped no-wave funk, working along its own internal logic. “My Bleeding Wound” by The New Year is frankly not a million miles from Throbbing Gristle, and I’m really not sure I want to know its story. This is not a freak show, though:  Every track here is a testament to desire to create for its own sake, and Personal Space is a glorious document of a hypothetical musical era.

Editors’ Picks: The Books We’re Listening To Right Now

If there’s one thing we’ve always loved about stepping into our friendly neighborhood bookstore, it’s perusing the staff picks that line the walls and end caps. That’s what we hope to replicate with our audiobook editors’ picks  — a feeling of genuine discovery as you glance through our personal favorites.

Have a look down below, and feel free to take advantage of our new comments system to share some recent must-listens of your own…

Mutilation Rites, Empyrean

Like the cornerstones of the modern American black metal scene (Nachtmystium, Liturgy, Wolves in the Throne Room, Xasthur), Mutilation Rites bow at the blasphemous altars of their distant Norwegian forefathers (Darkthrone, Immortal, Mayhem and Burzum), then inject the music with their own elements — in MR’s case, math metal, thrash and doom — to create a new style of sonic demolition. As prolific as they are creative, these New Yorkers (composed of current and ex-members of Tombs, Heuristic and Today is the Day) have already released two EPs and full album in the first half of 2012.

Clearly, the members write like a band possessed, yet Empyrean feels neither rushed, nor half-assed. Riding the incendiary wave they’ve created, Mutilation Rites have crafted a six-song, 35-minute epic that’s bleak, but not morose and multi-faceted, but never perplexing. “Realms of Dementia” pulses on a crushing Pantera-esque guitar groove before segueing into a nausea-inducing volley of rapidly picked melodic notes and angular, ripping rhythms, “Ancient Bloodoath” is pure fucking Armageddon — a white-knuckle journey of frantic blastbeats, beehive guitars and agonized screams that doesn’t stray from its original, obliterating tempo until nearly the three minute mark; then, the song veers off into sections that are alternately proggy and brooding. And “Broken Axis” gradually evolves from a full-throttle assault of speed and complexity into a trudging showcase of atmospheric, feedback-saturated guitars. At the rate they’re going, Mutilation Rites could have doubled their output by this time next year and be one of the leaders of U.S. black metal. Praise be theirs.

New Music Seminar: Artists on the Verge

New Music Seminar‘s ‘Artists on the Verge’ run the stylistic spectrum — from bubbly pop to gritty hip-hop, grueling hard rock to sonorous indie. With NMS fast approaching, why not take a few minutes to familiarize yourself with their picks for the Next Big Thing.