November 1, 2007

		FEATURED NEW RELEASES Chromatics Joy Division (Collectors Editions) Biber: The Rosary Sonatas Scott Walker Dino Milky Disco (Various Artists) Luke Vibert & Jean Jacques Perrey Tabu Ley Rochereau   Old Time Relijun He and She (Various) Alter Ego Terje, Jesper & Joachim Jamaica Funk (Soul Jazz compilation) COMPLETE LIST OF THIS WEEK'S NEW ARRIVALS

		NOV Sun 28 Mon 29 Tues 30 Wed 31 Thurs 01 Fri 02 Sat 03   TICKET GIVE AWAY TO KOOP We are pleased to offer two pairs of tickets to see the great Stockholm electronic jazz duo Koop in a rare New York performance this Friday, November 2nd at the Hiro Ballroom. The band is taking a quick spin around the States supporting their excellent new album Koop Islands, whose "swingtronica" take on big band jazz meets dance floor electronica will come to life, as the core twosome transforms into a full-scale orchestra, complete with multiple singers and up to nine live instruments. Just email contest@othermusic.com. FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 2 HIRO BALLROOM: 363 W. 16th Street NYC

		NOV Sun 28 Mon 29 Tues 30 Wed 31 Thurs 01 Fri 02 Sat 03   WIN TICKETS TO TAKEOVER AT BAM! Between their innovative film series, theater and dance performances, and diverse music programming at the BAM Cafe, there may be no place in all of New York with more interesting arts programming in better venues than at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in Fort Greene. This weekend they have pulled out all the stops, and you're invited to party all night at BAM during TAKEOVER, a jam-packed event featuring the bands Antibalas, Dirty on Purpose, Be Your Own Pet, The Exit, and Heartless Bastards; four simultaneous movie marathons (including a Lindsay Lohan Mid-Career Retrospective and Burning Down the House, with rock documentaries like Gimme Shelter and Stop Making Sense); dancing and DJ sets from the Ladies of Ubiquita NYC; art installations throughout the building; burlesque; and more! Plus, $3 beers all night long! We are offering one pair of tickets to this blowout event, just email giveaway@othermusic.com. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 3 BAM: 30 Lafayette Avenue Brooklyn, NY Tickets are $15 in advance and $20 at the door. Order online at TAKEOVERBAM.org.

		NOV Sun 04 Mon 05 Tues 06 Wed 07 Thurs 08 Fri 09 Sat 10   WIN TICKETS TO SEE MUM AT THE WORDLESS CONCERT SERIES Next week, Iceland's Mum will be performing two nights at the Wordless Concert Series, an excellent event in which indie rock and electronic artists are billed with classical and chamber music performers in order to introduce each other's audiences to composers they might not have otherwise encountered. Other Music has a pair of tickets to give away to each night. To enter, email tickets@othermusic.com and please list the performance you would like to see. Go to www.wordlessmusic.org to learn more about the Wordless Concert Series and view the schedule. Advance tickets are available at Other Music for these two Mum shows, as well as Grizzly Bear and Jonny Greenwood's upcoming performances for this series. FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 9 THE CHURCH OF ST. PAUL THE APOSTLE: Columbus Avenue & West 60th Street Mum, Torngat, Jihyun Kim (Cello) Performing music for solo cello by Bach and Gyorgy Ligeti SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 10 NEW YORK SOCIETY FOR ETHICAL CULTURE: Central Park West & 64th Street Mum, Hauschka, Bing and Ruth/David Moore Performing original compositions and selections from Bach's Goldberg Variations

		$12.99 CD   CHROMATICS Night Drive (Italians Do It Better) "Night Drive" "Healer" Troubleman's seedy, seditious Italians Do It Better imprint keeps churning, following up their well-regarded compilation with this imaginary soundtrack by Chromatics. It seems like an odd idea, until you realize that the gods of that Italo-disco sound, Giorgio Moroder and Goblin's Claudio Simonetti, did plenty of scores themselves. The duo's new sound is no doubt helped out by Glass Candy's mastermind Johnny Jewel, contributing a battery of bleak but glimmering keyboard melodies and eerie drones to their already prickly take on Italo-disco. While the album is strong as a whole, the band's icy version of Kate Bush's "Running Up That Hill" really pushes this effort over the top. [AB]

		Unknown Pleasures $23.99 CDx2 Closer $23.99 CDx2 Still $23.99 CDx2   JOY DIVISION Unknown Pleasures - Collectors Edition (Rhino / Warner) "Candidate" (Live at the Factory 1979) JOY DIVISION Closer - Collectors Edition (Rhino / Warner) "Glass" (Live at University of London 1980) JOY DIVISION Still - Collectors Edition (Rhino / Warner) "Ice Age" (Live at Town Hall Soundcheck 1980) The big question: What does the remastering job sound like on these classic albums? Basically they projected Ian Curtis' voice farther upfront, pumped up the drum and bass sounds and toned the urgent/punky grind of the guitars way down. Some of the dramatic dub of Martin Hannett's production is thinned to make the songs sound more punchy overall. The cold Stooges vibe is transformed to resemble something more like what we're used to hearing today -- clearer but a bit less threatening. It reminds me a lot of the recent Can remasters that trade the vintage sound for a newer, more modern clarity. Other than that, the bonus discs included with each classic album capture really good live performances. Closer comes with a 1980 University of London show, Still with a 1980 show from High Wycombe plus six songs from the soundcheck, and Unknown Pleasures has a Manchester show from 1979 tacked on, the highlight of the live discs. The punked-out guitar grind is totally intact on the live sets, and all of them sound more intimate than the live tracks on Still. Act fast and we'll throw in a limited bonus 7-inch vinyl single! [SM]

		$29.99 CDx2 $14.99 mp3   VARIOUS ARTISTS Biber: The Rosary Sonatas (Harmonia Mundi) One of the most unusual and powerful collections of violin music ever written, The Rosary Sonatas is a masterpiece of baroque invention and, though apparently not well known in its own time, the work upon which much of Biber's present day fame rests. Biber wrote a sonata for each of the 15 Sacred Mysteries -- key moments in the life of the Virgin Mary and Christ, including Christ's birth, crucifixion and eventual resurrection. This symbolism manifests in various ways throughout the sonatas, but nowhere can it be more pronounced than it is to the player and the actual violin used to perform these pieces. Written in what is called scordatura (Italian for "mistuning"), Biber requires that each sonata is to be played in a different tuning. These tunings alter the tension of the violin's strings and the natural resonances of the instrument's body. It's a physical and sometimes-painful effort for the player, and one can imagine that this violin-transformation is a powerful and apt metaphor for Christ's own physical and spiritual transformation. "The Resurrection Sonata" even requires the violin's two middle strings to be crossed behind the bridge, an esoteric tuning that can perhaps be interpreted to symbolize the profound metamorphosis at the heart of this sonata's theme. Andrew Manze's exquisite violin playing is accompanied here by harpsichord, organ, and on one sonata, cello, and he tackles the unusual physical demands of the altered tunings with a calm sense of mastery. By turns serene, brooding, and otherworldly, The Rosary Sonatas is a sublimely played and perfectly produced document of one of the great works of early music. Highly recommended. (Preview soundclips off of Other Music Digital.) [CC]

		$8.99 CD $3.99 mp3   SCOTT WALKER And Who Shall Go to the Ball? And Who Shall Go to the Ball? (4AD) "2nd Movement" "4th Movement" Last year's The Drift by Scott Walker was not just a horror soundtrack, it was a horror film in itself, full of vivid images of beaten carcasses and unleashed horsemen of the apocalypse. The commissioned score And Who Shall Go to the Ball... is a four-part, instrumental soundtrack designed for a dance piece of the same name choreographed by Raphael Bonachela for the CandoCo Dance Company. Parts one through three slowly build the tension, starting with incidental, violent stirrings of restless spirits as rats in the wall. Part four plays out something like the a distilled climax of a horror film (the hair-raising shower scene in Hitchcock's Psycho comes to mind), which is then repeated, cut and re-cut up to create prolonged moments of terror that refuse to subside and only grow in intensity, building tension even in the spaces between the sounds. May sound unpleasant in description, but it's actually quite lovable. Excellent record. [SM]

		$15.99 CD   DINO Montevideo Blues (Lion Productions) "Milonga de pelo largo" "19 de Octobre" Lion Productions lay another killer slice of the early '70s Uruguayan underground on us, following the brilliant reissues of Limonada, El Kinto, and Eduardo Mateo. This one's been on near constant rotation around here, I think it might be even more popular with the staff than Eduardo Mateo was, and that's saying a lot! It seems the two kings of the scene in Montevideo were Mateo and Gaston "Dino" Ciarlo. Both were blessed with a superb pop sense and a keen desire to wed it with their national folkloric heritage. Candombe rhythms abound, the grooves are loose, and the guitars chime resplendently. The eccentricities of Mateo's personality always seem creep into his songs, but with Dino's tunes you can feel a real purposefulness, a poetic seriousness even, that reinforces his scathing political wit. The lyrics are brilliant and timely, with a bit of fashionable anti-Americanism that I could imagine being popular with many present day Chavistas. Compulsively listenable, Montevideo Blues easily ranks up there with the best of all the South American reissues we've been fortunate to discover in the last few years and won't fail to make a few top tens of the year. [MK]

		$14.99 CD   VARIOUS ARTISTS Milky Disco (Lo) "All Flowers Must Fade" Daniel Wang "Child 13" Jersey Devil Social Club Thirty years ago both punk and disco music broke out to the mainstream, yet rare is the instance where we would throw on a compilation of new punk rock jams. For whatever reason though, killer compilations of both old disco curios and shiny, slinky new disco cuts keep streaming forth. A few weeks back, we were taken with Dirty Space Disco and now we have Milky Disco (what's with these descriptors?). Noticeably smooth, this compilation features a slew of the finest producers both here and abroad: Daniel Wang, Black Devil, Quiet Village, Idjut Boys, Quiet Village, Sweden's Studio, and Norway's Lindstrom & Prins Thomas. Need we mention that all present do an exquisite job milking disco's heritage in the 21st century? [AB]

		$14.99 CD   LUKE VIBERT & JEAN JACQUES PERREY Moog Acid (Lo) "Frere Jacques" "Analog Generique" At first, the collaboration between French electronic composer Jean Jacques Perrey and British, um, electronic composer Luke Vibert seemed a gimmick, destined to be too clever of an idea. But Perrey & Vibert, credited with manipulating all the instruments and electronics (every form of Moog, basically), with additional musicians on percussion, sitar, trumpet, and bass guitar, have created a melodically textured and sonically engaging record. The diverse layers of sounds, along with the knowledge and skill -- new school and classic -- find a nice ground to coexist. You're never 100% sure who is doing what, yet it doesn't matter, as no one seems to be pushing the other in any certain direction. Vibert pulls from an array of rhythms from downtempo acid to uprocking disco, breakbeat to jazzy hip-hop and chunky house grooves, all with trademark funky quirkiness. Perrey adds some poetry, jazz-not-jazz arrangements and some solid keyboard tones, melodies, and accents -- check their bells, handclaps, bass and warping acid lead version of "Frere Jacques." This is for Vibert fans, sure, but also for anyone who can appreciate the early electronic grooves of the Orb, the sonic caretaker approach of Kraftwerk, or simply the layers of melodic possibilities of the Moog. And for those looking a for a tight, interesting, beat driven, non-minimal techno record, with a sense of humor (smart not stupid), then this is for you. This is a refreshing good listen all the way through, and as it turns out, JJ and Luke are not such a odd couple after all! [DG]

		$21.99 CDx2   TABU LEY ROCHEREAU The Voice of Lightness 1961-1977 (Sterns Music) "Mokolo Nakokufa" "Aon Aon" While familiar with Tabu Ley's track on the sublime Golden Afrique set of a few years back, it was an effervescent cover of the Beatles' "Let It Be" that brought the Congolese singer into sharp focus. It's almost a no-brainer that each successive Sterns Africa compilation holds myriad delights (The Authenticite sampler, the Bembeya Jazz National comp, to name but two from this year) but this compilation of Rochereau's work from 1961-1977 may very well be the most crucial. Starting with him contributing backing vocals, soon Tabu Ley struck out on his own, forming African Fiesta and giving Francos OK Jazz group a run for its money. His range as revealed here is astounding and confounding: sweet, poppy, celebratory, or else melancholic, pensive for one track, then peddling laundry soap the next. What better way to sum up Tabu Ley Rochereau's earthly gifts than as "The Voice of Lightness"? [AB]

		$14.99 CD $9.99 mp3   OLD TIME RELIJUN Catharsis in Crisis (K Records) "Demon Meeting" "In the Crown of Lost Light" Since 1995, Old Time Relijun has relentlessly pounded out loping, tribal grooves inspired by good and evil, creation and destruction, and man and mythology. The brainchild of accomplished throatsinger Arrington de Dionyso, Old Time Relijun delivers Catharsis in Crisis, their seventh full-length for K Records, just in time for the changing of the seasons; their discordant, primal hippie-rock jams imply a restlessness with modernity and defer to talk of miracles, visions, nature, and the wild inner beast. On this, the final installment of de Dionyso's "Lost Light Trilogy," the outfit known for lapsing into dark, hypnotic improvisation also produces a handful of tight, sparse arrangements featuring the schizophrenic post-punk meanderings of Aaron Hartman's upright contrabass, by now as distinct a part of Old Time Relijun's sound as the gruff, urgent shrieks which bubble from de Dionyso as though he were still a youth performing on downtown street corners in Spokane. The other half of the line-up is refreshingly new but hardly shy -- the unrepentant, possessed wail of classically-trained gone psychedelically-wrong saxophonist Benjamin Hartman, together with the minimal, emotive drumming of Germaine Baca heavily contributes to making Catharsis in Crisis the band's most accessible album in recent years -- proving that after twelve years and many spirited incarnations, Old Time Relijun can still shake the ground with their mischievous brand of Pacific Northwest noise. [KS]

		$14.99 CD   VARIOUS ARTISTS He and She (Pet Records) "Get Out of My Life" The Gas Company "Up Here" Tony and Siegrid Only couples can discover the softer, if not magical, side of life. Dreams and rainbows, circuses and carousels -- all these precious things are cherished when there is someone by your side. Pet Records' 22-track compilation proves that this is no different in music, especially concerning the duets of the mid-late '60s. With the perfect matching of voices, anything is possible, and more often than not these pairings reveal a capricious and jovial side to these songwriters and singers. Including primarily west coast sunshine pop, as well as a few east coast coffee house couples, and one UK quartet, Petticoat & Vine, this album is all about the harmonies created between man and woman: He and She. Many of these songs, obscure and delightful, have not been heard in forty years. Except for Smokey and His Sister and Bunky & Jake, which were both recently reissued on Sundazed and Fallout respectively, most of these tracks are long gone. Pet Records has included liner notes for each song, and in a paragraph or so, all the known info on each recording is revealed, including the producer, songwriter, and what happened to the artists after the songs were released, which sadly, more often than not, is very little. As Pet often admits, many of these performers are a mystery even to them. Nevertheless, this is an excellent hand-picked collection of psychedelic pop minuets (most tracks do not break the three-minute mark), and a must have for fans of Mamas and the Papas, Sonny and Cher, Jack and Misty, and all the other perfect couples that only the sixties could have matched up. [AC]

		$15.99 CD $9.99 mp3   ALTER EGO Why Not?! (Klang) "Queen Anne's Revenge" "Why Not?!" In the beginning, Alter Ego quietly released varied 12-inch singles, some slamming, others wildly experimental -- everything from pristine, minimal tracks to raw bangers. Around the time of their Transphormer LP, Alter Ego had become some kind of club-hit thoroughbred. The new full-length Why Not?!, however, is full of fun and slightly crazy, acid-inspired jams, rather than a "club-rocker after club-rocker" collection, a la Transphormer. Basically, it's more of an "album," but still 100% full of DJ-able stuff. "Fuckingham Palace" sounds like My My doing the soundtrack to Pole Position (the video game). The image of an acid house smiley face clad in a spiked leather policeman's cap comes to mind, as it's super bleepy and fun but grinding and dirty at the same time. The title track, and single, is huge and a bit rowdy, but the midsection of the album (from track four through nine) is full of raw, and a bit deeper, in-the-pocket grooves. Nice touch worth mentioning: the digital "Traveling with Berlitz"-style queasy/quasi, accordion-polka outro. [SM]

		$14.99 CD   TERJE, JESPER & JOACHIM Terje, Jesper & Joachim (Shadoks) "Like My Sister" "All Through the Day" Like most bands of its era, Terje, Jesper & Joachim started out playing Stones and Kinks covers before moving into heavier Hendrix/Pink Floyd territory. A hint of what was to come lies is the story of how they made it to the final of a Battle of the Bands in 1968, and while all the other groups did nice and polite pop covers, T, J & J cranked out 15 minutes of improvised acid rock. Sadly, they didn't win. The stoned and reckless attack on the their self-titled and only album from 1970 (one of the rarest Danish psych records) is relentless. Heavy riffing and killer leads galore, with a definite stoned/psych vibe that prevents the album from going into complete Neanderthal hard rock territory, and it rocks like only Blue Cheer and Sir Lord Baltimore could. Monster alert! [AK]

		$18.99 CD   VARIOUS ARTISTS Jamaica Funk (Soul Jazz) "I Love the Way You Love" The Chosen Few "Rhodesia" The Rebels Soul Jazz follow neatly in the funky footsteps of their Studio One Soul and Funk comps. Jamaica Funk is, of course, what it is...a nice selection showcasing the influence of American soul and groove music on Jamaica beyond the Studio One imprint. All the tracks were culled from 7" singles (the preferred format in both Jamaica and the US at the time), and lesser knowns sit next to more familiar names like Derrick Harriott, Cedric Brooks, the Heptones, Big Youth, and Augustus Pablo. A mix of rather obscure reinterpretations and fairly obvious cover choices, including "People Make the World Go Round" and "Papa Was a Rolling Stone," with the additional helping of original material. Nice one. [DG]

		PHONE ORDERS Phone orders are accepted at (212) 477-8150 (ext. #2, mailorder) Mon-Fri, Noon - 7pm EST EMAIL For general inquiries or other information please email sales@othermusic.com. Do not reply to this message. REMOVE This is an automated list. If you would like to be removed from it for any reason, please send an email from the address you wish to delete to list@othermusic.com and make sure the word "Remove" is included in the subject line.   THIS WEEK'S CONTRIBUTORS [AB] Adrian Burkholder [CC] Che Chen [AC] Amanda Colbenson [DG] Daniel Givens [MK] Michael Klausman [AK] Andreas Knutsen [SM] Scott Mou [KS] Karen Soskin THANKS FOR READING - all of us at Other Music

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