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This Week's Free Song Download Free download of "I Can't Feel," off of Matthew Dear's new full-length, Black City, also available on Other Music Digital. The new album from the Ghostly International co-founder (also the man behind Audion, False, Jabberjaw) delves into the dark, seductive spell that the nocturnal city casts upon many of its residents. Hypnotic, slow-funk rhythms, neon-smeared synths, and alien distortions carry Dear's deep croon, creating the perfect, gritty soundworld where feelings of paranoia and hope are often intertwined. This Week's Featured Downloads Not since the Formica '50s have so many wished so hard for a glimpse of The Suburbs, but at long last Arcade Fire's new album is here! Their third album finds the group eschewing some of their epic arrangements for something more subtle and nuanced, but without sacrificing any of the passion. In fact, The Suburbs is arguably Arcade Fire's most personal and emotional outing to date, as Win Butler and Co. channel faded childhood memories into a wonderfully bittersweet, yet often rollicking, hour-plus set. Look for a full feature in Wednesday evening's mail-order Update.
Eric Copeland loves music. This third LP from "the guy in Black Dice with the hat" is a bit like listening to an obsessive friend's mixtape, alive with the infallible dedication to the joy of musical discovery. On Strange Days, Copeland rolls around in crumpled sheets of songs, shearing them at their already frayed corners, and stitching them back together into a crude, irresistibly ugly pastiche. The same way you might cherish a quilt made of all your own old sweaters by a sheltered savant of a next door neighbor, Copeland is found here furiously manipulating tiny loops of snatched sounds from what seems to be his daily listening -- Japanese cartoon soundtracks, Bedouin hymns, '50s cereal box flexi-discs, overblown stadium rock splashback, and Lil Jon. If Black Dice were a truck, this record would be like taking apart the transmission and making a cross-sectioned X-ray of each component, then lining them all up together on a backlit wall. Impossible to dissect and somewhat meaningless in themselves, yet undeniably beguiling in combination, each clipped motif is a sketch from a restless imagination. As if on a game show, it sounds like Copeland is attempting to parse what is patently overwhelming in the impossible face of a ticking clock. In the quick permutations of his mind, there is a spot for each pitch bent, shimmering Casio and garbled department store speaker thud, and on this record, he's unreservedly inviting you to put your own mortar in between each brick of his inspiration. Far and away one of the most dense and imaginative cut-up albums I've heard, this gushing brainstorm extracts a concise and evocative distillation of the unique legacy of Copeland and Black Dice. -Simon Gabriel
Nice curveball out of the Sacred Bones camp here! While this Brooklyn label has become the go-to for all things loosely filed under "new weird synth-punk industrial-crust goth...explosion," this new Amen Dunes peach falls a little farther from the tree. That being said, if you've been on board with the label's aesthetic for a little while, this record will make perfect sense from a "big picture" standpoint. Amen Dunes first surfaced last year with a full-length on Locust that put more of a scuzzed-out, Roky Erikson visits the psychiatrist, foot forward. This EP retains some of the same dark, wandering weirdo vibe while scaling back the blown-out "rock" moments of the full-length in favor of more brooding, skeletal folk insinuations. Copious ground covered, given the format, buzzing towers from Laurel Canyon to Sao Paulo, and nodding to the heads all along the way. In particular, shades of Crosby's haunted hippie opus If I Could Only Remember My Name come to mind, and while there's nothing explicitly Brazilian to speak of, the music embodies the same bold experimental spirit of Caetano Veloso's London exile period, tempering curiously infectious bummer folk numbers with "Night Driver Sunriser," a track that wouldn't sound out of place on one of the Type label's more harrowing releases. All in all, an abundance of ideas thrown at the wall -- and all of which manage to stick. But at the end of the day, when you're kicking off your clogs and turning out the lights, it still comes down to the same old running concern: are there any SONGS, man?! Yes, my friends, there are. Underneath it all, there are in fact, very good songs. So go ahead and turn the "Back in 5 -- gone to see the shaman" sign face out on the door of your "place of business" and spend some time with a record, as they used to say. -Jon Treneff
Italian horror movie maestro Dario Argento has made claims to the press that he assembled the band Goblin. Though they are best known for scoring some of his most memorable works -- Suspiria, Tenebrae, Phenomena and Zombi (Argento's cut of George Romero's Dawn of the Dead) among them -- and that the group made its name in the world of film, few people know of their roots. In 1975, core members Claudio Simonetti (synths) and Massimo Morante (guitar) experienced a spurt of activity that would forever define their careers. In that time, they recorded a ripping progressive rock album as Cherry Five, and as Goblin provided the heart-pounding soundtrack to Argento's Profondo Rosso. To this day, the bulk of their body of work has been in service of the cinema, but there are a few brief moments in which they released original music not beholden to anyone else's art. Roller was one of the group's few albums not tethered to a movie, and though the band was apparently displeased with the results and nearly broke up upon its release, time has been quite favorable. It's textbook Italian prog, cinematic and loaded down with all sorts of Edgar Winter-style analog onomatopoeia, but it's also quite a moody, sinister record, with one foot in the disco and another in the abattoir. Those familiar with their instrumental soundtracks won't be too surprised with the directions taken here -- spooky, yet aggressive passages like the title track and "Aquaman" build up from damp, dark corners into full-on ring-mod clavinet assaults, while balladry the likes of "The Snake Awakens" shows off a gentler side to the group's acknowledgements of Yes and Pink Floyd. But it's tracks like the second half of "Dr. Frankenstein" and especially the funky "Snip Snap" that stick with you. What a great sound they made, with virtually no filler -- my Canadian pressing of this LP rarely leaves my DJ crate, due to the versatility and appealing uniqueness of the music. Rather than go through the expense and trouble of locating an original, we've got the digital copy right here, and that's advice you should take ... because you never know who's creeping up behind you, wearing black leather gloves and brandishing a butcher's knife ... AAAAUGH IT'S TOO LATE ... -Doug Mosurock Kink Gong, a newly available catalogue of stunning tribal music recordings by Sublime Frequencies compatriot Laurent Jeanneau, must be one of the most ripe instant collections of music to become available all at once. Focusing on Southeast Asia for the past ten years, Jeanneau has made ethnic minority music recordings in China, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos. This particular collection, from southern Laos' Attapeu province, contains recordings of the Brao people, whose indigenous territory stretches between the border region of Laos and Cambodia. Focusing on the two distinct musical traditions of the area (ceremonial music and entertainment music), the recordings include performances by polyphonic gong ensembles typically engaged in animist rituals, as well as solo vocal pieces and folk songs performed on bamboo flutes and stringed instruments. The clarity of the recordings and striking nonchalance of the performances are the immediate draws here -- these are not court music ensembles recorded in a large, echoey theater, but are rather intimate and profound documents of the types of daily musics you would hear as a part of a Brao village. The gong ensemble pieces, imbued with otherworldly hypnotic power, are an absolute joy to hear, but ironically it is the entertainment music, so often ignored in "studied" forms of ethnomusicology, that truly captivates on this collection. Simple songs are played on the krapeu (three-stringed floor zither) and tro (bowed fiddle) and accompanied by primitive percussion and vocals. Playing like proverbial folktales, the songs are imbedded with the local moral codes and tribulations of daily life, in its ancient and modern forms. These are the songs that establish a connection to our own traditions, a return to the simplest and most necessary functions of music in the world. Splayed across 36 volumes of this stunning series, these revelations may seem daunting at first, yet they unfold simply and without challenge, are truly some of the most profound and rewarding of all musical enlightenments. -Simon Gabriel
For 15 years the London-based label Far Out has been showcasing Brazilian-influenced electronica, and they have been instrumental in exposing Brazilian legends like Azymuth, Joyce and Marcos Valle to a much larger audience outside of their native country. While Far Out's most popular releases tend to be of the future-jazz variety, over the years the label has also put out some solid, forward-thinking leftfield albums that sadly fell under the radar. Far Out Spaced Oddyssey, however, aims to rectify this by re-introducing us to some great, little heard Brazilian and Brazilian-influenced psychedelia and jazz, both old and new. This ambitious release was first issued on vinyl back in January, complete with some amazing artwork designed by world-psych guru (and Far Out label alum) Andy Votel, and for this download edition we get an expanded two-disc sampling. The compilation kicks off with two stunners, both produced by the underrated Brazilian producer Roberto Quartin. Opener "Apocalipse" is taken from Jose Mauro's sole LP from 1970, with the track being a dark, soft-psych wonder that utilizes a minor-key Turkish-style scale as Mauro's vocals soar above acoustic guitar, dissonant strings and heavy drums, and then the mysterious Piri offers a lovely, moody piece of hippie bossa, most reminiscent of Arthur Verocai. Other highlights include tracks from Binario and Rabotnik (Tortoise fans should dig both of these artists' abstract sounds), as well as "Passarinho" by the underrated Brazilian jazz-fusion vocalist Aleuda, whose incredibly rich but unfortunately little heard album Oferenda from 2000 should appeal to fans of Brigitte Fontaine, Gal Costa's Gal and Joyce -- it's that good. And speaking of Joyce, she's well represented here too. We also get a stone deep house classic courtesy of Mark Pritchard's Troubleman moniker, "Switch" being a monstrous tribal-elecro stomper, with deep-techy Motor City melodies, which in fact Carl Craig and Derrick May have been caning in their DJ sets for quite some time now. Add the remixes from nu-skool UK favorites like Paul White and Kwes, and I can honestly say that this release comes highly recommended. -Duane Harriott
From the moment Matt Mondanile came in to Other Music with five copies of his debut 7", his gentle, dreamy tropical pop has been a sentimental favorite here at the shop. In the past year or so, his psychedelic musings have caught on far and wide -- not only has the Ridgewood, N.J. resident become a major staple of the Brooklyn d.i.y. show circuit with his bands Ducktails, Real Estate and Predator Vision, but last October found Mondanile touring around the West Coast, Australia and New Zealand. There's plenty to love from this prolific artist, whose swirling, hypnotic guitar, synth and drum loops constitute some of the prettiest, most uplifting pop we've heard since City Center, High Places, and even, on tracks like "House of Mirrors," which features Mondanile's heart-melting falsetto vocals, a lo-fi Grizzly Bear. Ducktails's second full-length, Landscapes, treats us to a picnic basket full of sounds; (relatively) straightforward pop ballads a la Little Wings or Animal Collective, chugging 80s-style synth tunes that are equal parts M83 and Blues Control, and more experimental, tinkered-on compositions like "Deck Observatory" that take you a little further from shore, revealing influences from Africa and Asia a la Lucky Dragons, hinting at Mondanile's time spent in western Massachusetts's experimental noise scene. Yet throughout this diverse offering, Ducktails maintains a timeless and coherent pop feel on this sublime, mind-expanding sophomore record. -Karen Soskin
Minimal Wave's Veronica Vasicka has been on a roll lately; it seems like each record she reissues or rescues from unfortunate obscurity is stronger than the one that came before it. The label will forever hold a place in my heart for reissuing in full the music of Moderne, and I'll admit that I was hard-pressed to think she'd be able to reach similar heights of quality with what would follow that stellar reissue. With this most recent batch of releases, she did not disappoint. Hailing from the Channel Islands in Jersey off the Normandy coast, Turquoise Days made rather straightforward but deeply emotive and powerful synth-pop; the tracks on Alternative Strategies are tuneful, highly rhythmic in a post-Krautrock/motorik sensibility, and are overflowing with a deep melancholic undercurrent that made so much of the best new wave/synth music of the '80s so valid upon return -- it's not about the tools, it's about the spark that makes those tools operate. Those of you who have checked out the recent Minimal Wave Tapes compilation on Stones Throw will be familiar with "Blurred," a total jam and one of the most aggressive tunes on the record. The whole album really kills me softly; there's a heavy blend of artiness and classiness that reminds me of much of my favorite artists on the Les Disques Du Crepuscule label, who share a similar sensibility for gorgeous, melancholic, futuristically classicist art pop. This one's heavy dose of heart and soul gets my googolplex thumbs up. Stunning. -Mikey IQ Jones Other Music is pleased to welcome one of New York's most exciting labels, RVNG Intl, to our download store. Here are a few release that we've recently covered when they were issued on vinyl, beginning with this exceedingly lovely collaboration between Alexis Georgopolous of ARP and the Alps, and a man probably old enough to be his father, Brit composer Anthony Moore. Moore has had a storied career, but is probably not known nearly as well as he should be to folks stateside -- member of Slapp Happy, producer of This Heat, collaborator with Henry Cow, Kevin Ayers, Pink Floyd -- who in the early seventies released three remarkable solo LPs of minimal music, of which Georgopolous counts himself a big fan. A mutual friend introduced the two, after which it was discovered they shared a common musical sensibility, resulting in this gorgeous release. Some pieces here are completely brand new, such as Georgopolous' tributes to Arthur Russell and Robert Wyatt, Wild Grass pts 1 & 2, composed for piano, violin and cello, while others use source material dating back to Moore's minimal work in the early seventies, the best of which, "Piano Waves," ends side one with a majestic and repeating sustained piano chord, a simple idea that nevertheless achieves a level of breathtaking grandeur. This record is great throughout, my favorite kind of minimalism actually, that feels both old and modern, intensely lyrical, with wonderful cyclical patterns born of fleet urgency. This will assuredly rest on my top ten of the year as well. -Michael Klausman These three new songs and three remixes find These Are Powers diving head first into some hyper BK funk. Vocalist Anna Barie rides the jagged, broken, tumbling and thumping beats with ease -- well, more like a fevered frenzy really. Heavy influence from world beat bangers like South Rakkas Crew, Hollertronix, Buraka Som Sistema, and M.I.A. comes bubbling up from underneath both the originals and the remixes from Teenage Fantasy and Cosmetics. All in all, a great departure and revision of what These Are Powers is capable of. Third World dance party music from two dudes and a girl from Brooklyn. Who knew? Guess it is time for a new Yeah Yeah Yeahs. With this single, they may just be on the way. -Daniel Givens |
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Next Wednesday, August 11th, the UK's 
