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R.I.P. Jack Rose
This Week's Free Song Download
This week's free download comes from Face a Frowning World, a beautiful and moving tribute album to the great country gospel and folk singer-songwriter/guitarist, E.C. Ball (also available on Other Music Digital). Asheville, NC's Rayna Gellert, formerly of the all-female string band Uncle Earl and an extremely talented fiddler, delivers a wonderfully affecting version of "Lord I Want More Religion," originally an unreleased recording that Ball made in 1970. Curated by musician, writer and Lomax archivist Nathan Salsburg (who is also a frequent contributor to our weekly Updates), the compilation features an amazing cast of artists including Jolie Holland, Dave Bird, Handsome Family, Michael Hurley, Jon Langford and Pokey LaFarge (to name a few) who, with the help of the all-star Health & Happiness Family Gospel Band, wonderfully rekindle the spirit of some of the most stirring music to come from the Southern Appalachian mountains. CD format also available at Other Music's mail order site, which includes a cover of "John the Baptist" by Bonnie "Prince" Billy, not available on the download version. This Week's Featured Downloads
Lo Recordings and its younger sibling LOAF (Lo Alternative Frequencies) bring you this sprawling (an hour and a half plus!), deliciously diverse compilation, featuring artists such as Hatchback, Europa 51 (including members of Stereolab), Fourtet, and the Chap. The tracks herein range from Neu!-like freeway pulses to thunderous electronica freakouts to glitchy dance breakdowns, essentially gathering all of the Lo/LOAF sounds under one roof. And what a price!
A Dublin native and current resident of Harlem, Mike Slott is one of my favorite nu-school electronic producers. Slott (short for Slottkavic) creates a wonderful, bubbling, hip-hop- and R&B-inspired blend of beats and sonic, melodic textures. Like the king of nu-electronica, Flying Lotus, Slott's production seems purposely sloppy, like paint being splattered on a neon sign, yet all the bleeps, pops, thumps, squiggles, burping bass, and synth washes meld together to form a dazzling sonic atmosphere that's beat-driven but still has many layers and detours that tickle your ears and induce unconscious head-nodding. Tracks like "Gardening," "Sun Tan" and "Snow Birds" are bright and shiny moments of beauty not heard since mid-career Prefuse 73. Fans of Hudson Mohawke, Fourtet, Madlib and the like will find themselves absorbed in this 25-minute atmospheric journey. Though he's already been around for a minute or two, Mike Slott is definitely a name you'll be seeing a lot more of in the coming years. -Daniel Givens
There are pockets of America where the indie-rock soil is so unbelievably fertile and rich that some acolytes will, without hesitation, gather every worldly possession and relocate their lives to be closer to where the action is. Think Minneapolis in the late eighties, with the Replacements, Husker Du, and Twin Tone Records chugging like a snowplow for the horizon, or Seattle in the early nineties where flannel kids smeared punk and metal together to great success. At the moment, there's almost no place in America more resplendent with UV rays and awesome indie rock than Austin, Texas, and this native son is quickly making his way to the top of that town's long list of superb homegrown talent. On his fourth full-length, Gold Dissolves to Gray, Bill Baird concocts a concise album of pop pastiches that almost always win you over with their earnest, full arrangements and melancholy-tinged touches of sunshine. One of the best cuts is "Our Dreams Did Weave a Shade," a bloozy barroom shuffle that starts humble and builds to glorious with the addition of a trebly electric guitar, accordion, understated trumpets, and a harmonica that rolls in like smoke through a bottle. The druggy Americana flows well into the slide guitar-driven, seasick country of the title track, but Baird is careful not to overplay the alt-country card, preferring a sandy Wurlitzer on most tunes. It feels like the influence of the Austin scene has touched Baird deeply, with tiny quotations from Spoon, Okkervil River, and Bill Callahan creeping through the mix, but he manages to synthesize his neighbors into a unique brand of ballroom bedroom pop that courts you honestly, with a bundle of hand-picked flowers and an invitation to "have a good time, dancing all night long." -Michael Stasiak
Long before your stoniest of friends could hole up for half-a-day with a set of Planet Earth DVDs and get slack-jawed at, like, the total awesome-ness of this world in which we live, a whole other generation of green-friendly folks had the BBC's Life on Earth. Groundbreaking in its own right, the program mixed beautiful, innovative camera work with the first of what would be many David Attenborough narrations to yield a surprising international success (which was reportedly seen by over 500 million people). Though its role in the series has been overshadowed by the footage and the voice accompanying it, Edward Williams' unique score played an important part of each episode, providing an oft-playful, oft-pensive and brooding backdrop for the visuals. A large part of the soundtrack's relative obscurity stems from the fact that it was never really released, save for a hundred LPs that Williams pressed up for those who performed on it. Thankfully, one of those copies happened to fall into the hands of record collector and rescuer extraordinaire Johnny Trunk, who now, some three decades after the fact, presents the first official release of Life on Earth. Composed for string, brass, and very subtle electronics, Williams' pieces are marvels of tonal intensity, each one using judiciously employed tones not only to brilliantly create an immense sense of wonder, but also an aural mirror image of the flora and fauna at hand. So it goes, then, that the sheer beauty of "Coral Larvae" and its duet for violin and harp along with the sunken, aquatic tones of the reverb-soaked "Fish of the Sea" drop the listener a few hundred feet below the surface of the ocean. Elsewhere, skittering electronic flourishes dance against lonely, echoing horn lines on "Eusthenopteron," while waves of brass, strings, and percussion announce the majestic arrival of "The Big Mammals." All told, Edward Williams' Life on Earth soundtrack is an excellent and unexpected curio that sounds untouched by time, sure to inspire flights of fancy in library music and composition fans alike. -Michael Crumsho
In the 1960s and early 70s, John Baker worked for the legendary BBC Radiophonic Workshop, an outfit that recorded sound effects and new music for the station's incidental interludes between programs, as well as the themes for their regular programming. He was hired by the station the same year that Delia Derbyshire created the incredible electronic theme music for Doctor Who, and was seminal in combining the loosey-goosey fluctuations of jazz composition with manipulated tape reels and electronic oscillators. This superb 61-track compilation from Trunk culls from Baker's eerie, hypnotic catalogue, from short intro pieces composed for radio programs like Radio Sheffield (a flurry of squiggles and typewriter noises that evoke a chaotic newsroom) to full theme songs for popular television shows like Dial M for Murder. The "Murder" theme in particular is a masterpiece of dissonant echoes and field recordings; opening with the clatter of a closing telephone booth door, Baker rhythmically incorporates the "shick-whirr" of a rotary phone dial before launching off of the pulse of a dial tone into a jagged and tense chase between electronic oscillators and high-pitched rings. The "Good Morning Wales" theme humorously lets a chirpy flute lead a melody that would become the touchstone of all morning news and conversation shows for decades to come. For a program on submarines, Baker builds the music from the logical starting point of a sonar ping, then plunges a plucked melody under the ocean with waves of drones and shimmering whines, pulling inspiration from the creaking of steel plates as the subs descend deeper. And "Locusts" is the piece that will likely raise the most goosebumps, with skittering, percussive clicks that feel like thousands of tiny legs hitting a tin roof while the drone of a million locusts draws over you like a thunderhead. The Radiophonic Workshop is probably the closest approximation to electronic music's Big Bang and no doubt Baker played a big role. If you want to get a real kick, listen to his "Vendetta: The Sugar Man" and then spin "What Would I Want? Sky" from Animal Collective's Fall Be Kind EP to hear just how heavy an influence Baker's work continues to be. -Michael Stasiak Other Music MP3 Gift Cards Other Music Digital Affiliate Program Sign up for our Affiliate Program and earn money by sending your web traffic to Other Music Digital for downloads. Click here for more details.
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We were all deeply saddened when we learned of the passing of Jack Rose, who died this past weekend from a heart attack at the all-too-young age of 38. He was one of this generation's most gifted guitarists with a great body of work, from his drone-rock days in Pelt right up to his impressive, virtuosic solo guitar albums of recent years. He was also a good friend of the shop, always stopping by Other Music to say hello whenever he was in town, often hand-delivering his latest LP or CD. You'll be sorely missed here Jack, but we're sure that you're up there somewhere bending strings with Fahey and Basho right now, and the heavens must be smiling. 
