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Free Song Download of These Are Powers' "Life of Birds," taken from their forthcoming album All Aboard Future, out February 17th on Dead Oceans. The Chicago/Brooklyn trio's new full-length finds them honing in on their songcraft, not forsaking the dissonance of their earlier records, but rather using these abstract sounds and beats in more purposeful ways. An experimental, noise-tronic album that you can shake your butt to, and one that will place These Are Powers in the good company of luminaries like Gang Gang Dance, Excepter and Throbbing Gristle. Don't miss the band's Other Music In-Store Performance on February 16th, at 8PM. Free admission, limited capacity. This Week's Featured Downloads
Sadly in light of recent events it's impossible to write about Immolate Yourself without mentioning the tragic circumstances surrounding its release. The duo made up of Joshua Eustis and Charlie Cooper was broken in two when only recently Cooper was found dead in his hometown of Chicago. This shattering loss puts the album into a different context, humanizing their often glacial electronics in a way we might never have wanted, nevertheless it's important to comment soberly on the music itself. The band have been alt-media darlings since their Hefty debut, Fahrenheit Fair Enough, as it seemed to do what many electronica acts had struggled with -- come up with a genuinely listenable album which fused IDM and pop. While their debut concentrated mostly on post-Aphex instrumentals and Air-like progressive textures, their follow-up, Map of What Is Effortless, dragged listeners kicking and screaming into fully-fledged songs. Through a crowd of collaborators and a chatter of high profile fans (hello Trent Reznor), they split audiences down the middle before taking a hiatus to write what became Immolate Yourself. It should be no surprise that in the five years between the records, their style has been modified to fit the changing times -- gone is the glitchy abstraction that became their signature, replaced by an almost Factory-records tinted attempt at electro. Like Apparat, the duo have taken a deep knowledge of nerdish electronic production and re-framed it as dancefloor friendly electronic pop music destined to cross those difficult genre boundaries. Sure there's nothing new here, but as with their previous records, Eustis and Cooper prove that their engineering skill sets them apart from the competition. Stuttering drum sequences and squelching analogue synthesizers drown dense, cavernous vocal lines giving the suggestion of genuine hooks -- there are even a few tracks you might end up humming on the way to work in these ten songs. Immolate Yourself is another step in the path being forged lovingly by the BPitch label and is sure to appeal to fans of Apparat, Ellen Allien and possibly even Modeselektor. Let's hope it gets the band the success posthumously that they were batting for all along. -John Twells
In a word: Wow. Kenyan ensemble Kenge Kenge come forth with an electrifying disc of benga roots music, and what's most astonishing is that such electrifying music is made by entirely acoustic means. They take the benga dance sound, pioneered by D.O. Misiani and Shirati Jazz via pulsating electric guitar grooves, and dirty it up, stripping it to its rootsiest, most raw (and guitar-free) essentials. Performing entirely on drums, one string fiddles, ox horns, flute, and handmade "sound boxes", with infectious vocal chants swirling around the pulse, they mine territory similar to the fuzzed-out grooves of Congo's Konono No. 1, but with a more stomping, incessant low end. Kenge Kenge create grooves that could easily own the dancefloor in more experimentally-minded clubs; those who have been hypnotized by the likes of tropical songsmiths like El Guincho, the new Animal Collective album, or Konono and the Crammed Congotronics series would be wise to check this -- Kenge Kenge are as real as you could get. Hands down, one of my all time favorite world music records. -Mikey IQ Jones
This is a truly special record. In 1983, French composer and sound experimentalist Hector Zazou joined forces with Zairean vocalist Bony Bikaye, combining Bikaye's stunning voice with minimal, pulsating analogue electronic beatscapes for an album that picks up on the territory left behind by Byrne & Eno on My Life in the Bush of Ghosts and Remain in Light, and creating in the process a record that has never been equaled or replicated. It sounds preposterous, but this is as close as one could probably come to an African Minimal Wave album, and it most definitely served as a foreshadowing (by nearly 20 years, natch) of Crammed Discs' now-ubiquitous "Congotronics" concept. As if that weren't great enough already, the album also features appearances by Henry Cow's Fred Frith on guitar and violin, as well as contributions by members of infamous French new/no wave group the Honeymoon Killers (another astonishing Crammed fave of this reviewer) for a record that sounds as fresh and surprising today as it did upon first release. This is one of those records that, whenever I play it for others in public or private, always elicits an enthusiastic, curious response from whomever is in earshot. Top marks all around, this is damn near essential listening for anyone into the Afro-conscious post-punk scene, the Byrne/Eno albums mentioned above, as well as minimal wave heads and Congotronicists. It's also one of my desert island discs. Get the hint? -Mikey IQ Jones
Eleventh century female Christian mystic/visionary Hildegard von Bingen has seen a veritable cottage industry develop around her writings and compositions in the last few decades. Viewed by many as a kind of original earth-mama or proto-feminist, her works have become staples in metaphysical bookshops, and there have been countless albums devoted to the 70 or 80 pieces of music she composed in her lifetime, a couple of which have even been best sellers. A number of those records owe their success, no doubt, to the fact that the music is presented as an enormously soothing balm for the soul, comparable in effect to the way Gregorian chant was marketed to popular appeal back in the early nineties. She was without doubt an incredibly complex individual, artistically gifted with a gigantic intellect and given to hallucinations and communications with god, as well as an outspoken female at a time when that was more than a risky move. For Antiphona, Katharina Leinhart and Christoph Moosmann take a somewhat opposite track from the standard presentation of Hildegard's music, giving us six of her compositions in a manner that could perhaps more closely mirror the tumultuousness of a visionary's soul. There is a tremendous spiritual heaviness at work here, with Moosmann's and Leinhart just using organ and voice to create a dense and nearly frightening wall of sound. It's almost the opposite of heavenly; where previous recordings of Hildegard's find the music searching ever upward, here the droney notes and scales of Moosmann's organ brings the music down, down, down, as if you can feel yourself swallowing your heart into your stomach at being confronted with the totality of god. All in all a very powerful release that truly seems to capture something of the mystery surrounding a fascinating figure who lived more than 900 years ago. -Michael Klausman
In January 25th's Digital Update, we featured the little known Memphis soul label, Goldwax, and highlighted a few stellar collections of their late-'60s output. In that review I mentioned one of the label's greatest discoveries, James Carr, who has been dubbed "the greatest soul singer who ever lived" by many aficionados around the world. These two albums contain his first and biggest hits. Though I already wrote about "The Dark End of the Street" (off of a A Man Needs a Woman) in my Goldwax review, it's worth mentioning again because, simply put, it's one of the best southern soul singles ever made. Recorded in the midst of one of the singer's spells of depression, "The Dark End..." is the very definition of "cheatin' soul." Carr gives a performance of a lifetime; his delivery leaves you hanging on every note, as he offers a sorrowful, first person account of an ongoing illicit affair. Within his voice you hear the guilt, self-loathing and dignified resignation of finding one's self in such a situation, in a pathos that Otis and Wilson were never able to convey on wax. His recording of "You Got My Mind Messed Up," from the album of the same name, is another heartbreaking blues ballad that Carr rips into, and it's all the more devastating considering the bipolar disorder that would plague him throughout his troubled life. The only two full-lengths in Goldwax's catalog, A Man Needs a Woman and You Got My Mind Messed Up are both filled with emotional, jaw dropping ballads, my faves being a dynamite cover of the Bee Gees "To Love Somebody" and the bluesy "Pouring Water on a Drowning Man." There are also some great upbeat Memphis soul steppers that'll get you movin', but it's the ballads that gave the man his moniker. In late '67, Carr was poised to break big; managed by the same team that handled Otis Redding he was hyped as the "next big thing." Unfortunately his erratic behavior and drinking problem cut short any chance at stardom. His life, though long, was a checkered one, filled with flashes of brilliant performances and recordings in between dark periods of depression, reclusiveness and addiction. Carr kept performing and releasing material sporadically until his death from lung cancer in 2001, but these two albums contain the best material from this soul singer's soul singer. Outstanding! -Duane Harriott
Debut solo release from Charles Burst, formerly of the much-loved Brooklyn band the Occasion. For all of that group's psychedelic exploration, they always had a knack for hovering around the more sun-burnt and desert wind-swept margins of Americana, and as Burst steps out front on his own we find him bringing that whole area of interest way more into focus, combined with a much tighter song writing effort than his previous associates ever evinced. There's a real satisfyingly forlorn country vibe throughout the album, but he also somehow manages to evoke a bit of the sound and desolation of John Lennon's first solo LP. It's a great and rich combination, and a compelling exploration of some of the more dusty margins of American music. -Michael Klausman
After a great album from Pan Sonic (with Ilpo Vaisanen) and all the other Ohm reissues on Sahko, Mika Vainio releases another record of absolutely distinctive humming, granular, analogue ambience to be immersed in. This one is, however, is not as retro-analogue ambient as his previous post-millennium solo release on Sahko, and Oleva has more of the icy cold highs/immensely warm bass dynamics that we know and love from Vainio. Again, analogue ambience is the focus, even with a cover of Pink Floyd's "Set the Controls to the Heart of the Sun." Other tracks, like "S-Bahn," exist in that strange space between parallel dimension hip-hop and slow techno that Pan Sonic/Mika Vainio does so well. Piercing, high-definition highs, solid analogue chirps, buzzes and sub-bass crawl and chop their way through space with a more few degrees of warmth than his collaborations with Ilpo. -Scott Mou
Rockfort Rock, a classic rhythm whose origins actually go back to some old Mexican 78rpm from the 1940s, shows up on this single with an unlikely and heavily atmospheric flute treatment. And it works really well, almost as if Roland Kirk were vamping on it, with the minute tweaking that Bullwackie subjects the flute's breathiness being particularly synapse scrambling. The flip is one of those satisfyingly mystifying deejay tracks where I have no idea what the hell is going on but love it anyway. -Michael Klausman
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