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This Week's Featured Downloads
Last year, extreme noise pioneer Kevin Drumm threw something of a curveball at his baying fan-base. Moving into the Hospital Records stable, he issued Imperial Distortion, an album which spat out the harsh, glassy, overdriven sounds of his past and swallowed a (dare I say it) more ambient mixture. Clearly influenced by Aphex Twin's game-changing Selected Ambient Works II and synthesizer drone maestro Eliane Radigue, this double-disc collection of work showed a new side to the producer and in my opinion was his best work to date. The bleak, harrowing atmospheres were impossible to ignore yet they were restrained, patient compositions and Drumm showed he was not afraid to take his time. Imperial Horizon is the follow-up to this album and, in contrast to its predecessor (which was a collection of varied tracks), is a single, hour-long piece of music. In this hour, Drumm takes the ideas he approached on Distortion even further, using the time to gradually erode the oscillating layers of cloudy synthesized tones. Like current scene-darling Eleh, the magic of Drumm's music is in the small changes, and these shifts are brought to life on headphones, creating an almost disorienting listening experience. Drumm succeeds in transplanting his listeners from the space and time they are currently residing in, thrusting them into an eerily comforting blanket of sound. Beneath those teasingly gorgeous pad sounds, however, is a sinister dark heart which keeps you returning again and again. Unmissable. -John Twells
While Dana Gillespie started her career out as a fine British folk singer, these days she splits her time between performing at blues clubs and making albums of Indian devotional music. There was a period in the mid-seventies though when she was really living the high life, a star in West End rock operas like Tommy and Jesus Christ Superstar, an actress in Ken Russell films and various b-movies, and, most pertinent to our interests, a member of David Bowie's production stable, Mainman. This excellent new comp from Cherry Red culls the best tracks from those years, when she was working hand in hand with Bowie collaborator Mick Ronson and creating glam-influenced studio rock that constantly walks the razor's edge between superficiality and sincerity. A very '70s pro-sounding gloss, combined with Gillespie's strong female vocals, definitely brings to mind her contemporaries Fleetwood Mac in general, but on tracks like "Dizzy Heights" there's a killer junkshop glam vibe that F.M. never really approached. Her take on Bowie's "Andy Warhol" manages to be both soaring and claustrophobic, while she transforms the British proto-punk band Third World War's song "Stardom Road" into a seven-minute long, slow-burning and baroque masterpiece. It's probably the best track on the album, but there's a bunch more to love here as well. -Michael Klausman
Now available on Other Music Digital. I'll be straight-up with you; my listening habits of late have consisted of a hell of a lot of Prince bootlegs and a hefty smattering of Paisley Park side projects. This is nothing but a good thing -- I'm taking the entirety of the Minneapolis sound with me to the desert island when it's time to get marooned. Of course, as many of you fanatics know, you get into a listening zone and you start reaching out for other records that sound similar, or that connect the dots between scenes. Dam-Funk (say it Dame Funk)'s debut long player Toeachizown offers up a hefty two-plus hours of sweaty robot funk that effectively (and rather impressively) connects the dots between Pre-Paisley Minneapolis, California's G-funk, Detroit's P-funk, Ohio's Zapp & Roger, and hell, even New Jersey's Italians Do It Better. Dam takes elements of all of these signature sounds, mixes them up into a bottle of Spanish Fly, and lets the funk do the talking. There's no doubt that a double-album debut is both ambitious and overwhelming, but that's the point here -- this is a fly or cry establishment, and if you can't get with it, get the funk outta here. Toeachizown wonderfully blends sex, wit, and above all else, soul, on an album that manages to be both retro and futuristic, impressive and nonchalant, intricate and direct. Dam's an old pro on the production tip; he got his start during the New Jack Swing era, but had been playing and recording far earlier than that. He's diplomatic enough to list all of the gear used in the making of the record inside the sleeve, and his analog-heavy approach is tailor-made to appeal to all of you kids who go nuts for Glass Candy's post-Blondie bedroom eyes. There isn't an autotuner to be found on this album, because Dam knows how to play the keys while he sings into the vocoder, and seriously, if you dig funky, wonky, modern R&B, whatever, and you don't give this album a listen, you're a dam fool. Good things come in small packages, but the best things are larger than life and too hot to handle. You've got all winter to cozy up to this hot, sweaty beast, so take off that itchy sweater and do the right thing. Highest recommendation. -Mikey IQ Jones
I'm not going to say much about this one apart from the fact that it's easily one of my favorite African records of all time. One listen will probably suffice to convince you I'm right, as it's just relentlessly inventive, hypnotic, and at turns both completely haunting and extremely joyful. It has all the bells, whistles, talking drums, and jaw-dropping guitar pyrotechnics you could possibly ask for, not to mention the vocals of a very young Youssou n'Dour who just absolutely kills. Seriously, you need this. -Michael Klausman
Detroit native/NYC dwelling beat maker supreme Waajeed has been at the forefront of the progressive hip-hop movement for many moons now. He first served time in Slum Village with J-Dilla for a brief period, and he founded Bling 47, which released some of that group's earliest material. He also formed Platinum Pied Pipers with multi-instrumentalist Saadiq -- their landmark debut from 2005 was an album of uplifting, underground electro-soul whose influence is still heard and felt today -- and in the process, exposed the world to the R&B talents of Tiombe Lockhart, Georgia Anne Muldrow and Dwele. Released in 2007, The War was initially planned as a "best of" compilation to showcase Waajeed's previously released Bling 47 cuts. Instead, he opted to record a brand new concept album that directly dealt with the turmoil of the times; Waajeed had lost his mentor and close friend J-Dilla, meanwhile hip-hop was becoming a shell of itself as the landscape of the music industry was shifting in the midst of the unpopular Bush presidency. On this record the glossy yet live-sounding, mellow, organic soul of the Pipers' first album is replaced with raw, crunchy beats and noisy, bomb squad-esque siren collages, and there's an aggressive edge overall that's not found in Waajeed's previous material. But the soul isn't completely eschewed, however, with Tiombe Lockart delivering smoky, abstract jazz vocals, not to mention the low-slung, Dilla-styled swing, which is here in spades. Highlights include the effervescent hum of "Dusk," which utilizes a chopped-up sample of Brian Eno's "Here Come the Warm Jets" to great effect, the crunchy, James Brown-inspired funk of "Proud" and the clipped electro boom-bap brilliance of the instrumental "Tron." There are also strong performances from female MCs Invincible and Ta'Raach, a/k/a Lacks. The War hasn't been the easiest thing to find in the last couple of years so it's nice to see it finally available again, digitally. -Duane Harriott
Pioneering, third-world sounding jazz from multi-instrumentalist and composer Yusef Lateef, recorded live at a handful of locations in 1957, and a super-rare record to boot. Lateef drank deeply of Eastern and South American sounds, and on tracks like "Before Dawn" he is at least as out as his contemporary Sun Ra was at the time. The live recording gives the percussion in particular an awesomely raw sounding quality, while his use of obscure instruments like the rebab and argool in a jazz idiom make the entire proceedings slightly off-kilter and compelling. It's a pretty delightful listen and highly recommended for fans of Moondog, early Sun Ra, or Phil Cohran. -Michael Klausman
Early music maestro and viola de gambist Jordi Savall recently reacquired the rights to most of his rather awe-inspiringly lengthy discography, comprised of many, many gorgeous and hard-to-find albums. His label, Alia Vox, has gone ahead and begun the task of re-releasing them digitally, with sort of skimpy cover art, though I can assure you there is not a bad album in the bunch. I thought we'd focus on this 1993 work today, as it's a very good, if slightly idiosyncratic, place to start delving into his music, being the soundtrack for French auteur Jacques Rivette's stark and naturalistic six-hour retelling of the life of Joan of Arc. Sumptuously recorded in an Abbey that predates even the life of the tragic medieval saint, Savall selected a mostly melancholic array of pieces to match Rivette's minimalistic style, drawing heavily from the extraordinary medieval composer Guillame Dufay, while also personally composing a number of interludes that show just how impressively Savall has managed to subsume a frame of mind many centuries older than himself. Deliberate, majestic, and filled with infinite levels of grandeur, the soundtrack to Jeanne la Pucelle is truly a great place to begin discovering the distant yet familiar world of Savall's exploration of early music. -Michael Klausman |
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As many of you know, our planned in-store performance with the 
