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New SXSW Lawn Party Episodes
This Week's Free Song Downloads Free download of "Your Hands (Together)," off the New Pornographers' latest pop masterpiece, Together, out Tuesday, May 4th on Matador. A.C. Newman, Neko Case, Dan Bejar and Co. also welcome indie all-stars like Okkervil River's Will Sheff, Annie Clark (a/k/a St. Vincent), Zach Condon of Beirut and the Dap-Kings' horn section into their extended family, ensuring that this is another instant classic. Speaking of the New Pornographers, Merge Records has just reissued all of the early albums from Dan Bejar's Destroyer. This free download of "The Very Modern Dance" is taken from 2001's Streethawk: A Seduction, a wonderfully ornate, glam-influenced set that's undoubtedly a standout in Bejar's excellent Destroyer discography. This Week's Featured Downloads
Trunk Records issues what is, in my opinion, one of their best releases yet with this set of 1957 recordings by Kenny Graham. Moondog and Suncat Suites sees the UK jazzman arranging and performing ten of infamous NYC composer Moondog's works with a crack team of British musicians, among them Phil Seamen, Danny Moss, and Stan Tracey, among others. And as if that weren't enough, the record was engineered by none other than the mighty Joe Meek! Graham takes Moondog's music and manages to emphasize the otherworldly harmonies and slow-breathing, pulsating rhythms via ethereal vocal arrangements, spacey vibraphone, flutes, and loads of reverberating percussion, with the results coming off sounding similar to what Sun Ra was doing on records like Angels & Demons at Play, The Nubians of Plutonia, or Cosmic Tones for Mental Therapy, not to mention the work of space-age exotica pioneers like Les Baxter, Esquivel, and Martin Denny. Meek's touch is all over this record, and it's fantastic to hear all of these masters of sonic alchemy coming together on such a rock solid, gorgeous album. The record ends with an additional six pieces written by Graham, called the "Suncat Suite;" these pieces move more into an overt jazz sound, but with none of the spacious, rhythmic otherworldliness removed. This is, without question, one of the most stunning reissues of the year in any genre, and Trunk deserve top marks for exposing this music to the wider audience it originally deserved. Moondog, Joe Meek, and the heavyweights of UK jazz!? Records like this really aren't supposed to exist in the mortal world, so don't sleep. -Mikey IQ Jones
Absolutely face-melting digital-only reissue of Senegambian rock group Ifang Bondi (Be Yourself), a band formed from the ashes of the western-pop influenced Super Eagles, who supplied the title track to that fantastic Love's a Real Thing comp on Luaka Bop a few years back. Ifang Bondi is another beast entirely though, much rawer, looser, and darker sounding that Super Eagles ever were. I know for a fact that when Animal Collective was discussing possibly doing some reissues through Paw Tracks a couple of years ago, this particular album was at the head of the list to try to acquire. It's easy to see the appeal, as these guys totally bend rock structures to a complex pan-African style, with a full battery of traditional percussion supplementing a western rock kit. Wicked, almost metallic-sounding electric guitar solos just slide off the interlocking grooves of the drums and fuzzy electric organ. Just a total masterpiece, and to my ears much richer and more musically satisfying than other African-rock oriented albums we've had recently, from Witch to Chrissy Zembo. The only complaint is they used the artwork from the early eighties French reissue instead of the original cover, but that's really neither here nor there. ESSENTIAL!!! -Michael Klausman
Fantastic debut from Free Electric State, a band that refreshingly employs all that was great about '90s indie rock while sidestepping the throwback maneuvering that so many new groups seem to be partaking in these days. Perhaps it's no surprise that the quartet hails from North Carolina's Research Triangle -- long a hub for great indie music -- and features scene veterans like Shirlé Hale and David Koslowski of Gerty! and the Ex-Members. The group wastes no time with introducing their MO in album opener "Matching Scars," storming in with a post-Loveless squall of guitars and a pummeling beat, Koslowki's urgent vocals sitting snug in the middle of the mix between the crunch and grind of power chords and nose-diving string bends. It's Hale, however, that turns out to be the group's not-so-secret weapon, a singer with an expressive, sultry voice equally adept at soaring during powerhouse anthems like "Six Is One" or steering the group through the atmospheric melancholy of "The Black Sea." As with '90s trailblazers like Swervedriver, dynamics are as important as the stereo-panned guitars themselves and the songs often come with interesting detours. During "Marshes," the band unexpectedly veers from restrained Neu!-meets-Velvets-inspired pop into a noisy refrain that leaves it for the listener to decide if what's being sung is "this is the caress" (referring to the album title) or "this is the chorus" over the guitar din. But it's Free Electric State's songcraft that really holds this record together, and at just under 45 minutes, there's not a single second of filler -- simply a solid and highly enjoyable rocking set from start to finish. -Gerald Hammill
With the addition of a "conventional" rhythm section, Australian duo Naked on the Vague manages to sound more dense and dirgeful than ever. For those familiar with their last proper release, this may be hard to believe: 2007's The Blood Pressure Sessions was about as dark and noisy as they come, an infectious yet difficult set of post-rock tunes with a grimy, industrial undercurrent. But less than a minute in to the latest album's opener, "Mysterious Oven," the transformative power of live drums becomes apparent: these guys suddenly sound BIG. The group's paranoid, post-apocalyptic plod has reached newfound heights of no-wave chaos; on cuts like "Wrong Water" and "These Days," a razor-edged snare drum/ bass assault pounds away over fuzzed-out psych riffs and swampy synthscapes, as chanteuse Lucy Phelan's pained, shiver-inducing wail rides just above the din. And while the noisy, ramshackle aesthetic is maintained throughout, NOTV also experiment with an impressive variety of sounds and textures; at no point does "Heaps of Nothing" feel like one trick repeated eight times over. The eerie minor-key mantra of "Sacred Youth" features chilly (yet sticky) synth/guitar leads, and "Treading Water" could be the long-lost lo-fi cousin of one of those obscure dance gems off Stones Throw's Minimal Wave comp. Some will find the group's crackling noise rock reminiscent of the Dead C or, in their more accessible moments, Times New Viking; others will liken their impenetrable, funereal drone to the Goslings; still others might find similarities with dark industrial acts like Throbbing Gristle. In other words, these guys are difficult to pin down, which is a good thing: repeated listens of Heaps of Nothing will yield a variety of experiences and impressions. The album closes with a crushing and garbled outro, an amalgam of whirring, harsh tones, as if in creating something this layered and genre-defying, the group finally folded in on itself, defaulting on pure noise. Recommended. -Jacob Kaplan
Digital reissues of Italian period instrument player Paolo Beschi's take on Bach's solo suites for cello. As you are no doubt well aware, these pieces are simply one of the towering achievements of human art-making, and as such they've been recorded countless times, and by just about every major player of the instrument, and each with his or her own approach. This music is endlessly inventive and fascinating, and for what it's worth I've loved various versions by Janos Starker, Mstislav Rostropovich, and Bruno Cocset the most, but I'd definitely have to put Paolo Beschi's somewhat eccentric take on this material right up there as well. Some people can't abide what he's done here at all, but I personally find it to be quite refreshing. He plays an authentic period violoncello, which has a more stringent tone than the more modern cello, and which gives his performance a somewhat more ragged character than the typically lush versions you're oftener likely to hear. He's also been mic'ed extremely close, allowing you to hear every breath and percussive rattle of his bow, making this a very intimate performance. What really sets Beschi apart, however, are the speeds of his tempos, which tend to be quite swift. You realize this straight out of the gate with the very first prelude, which practically boogies on down the track. I can see how this would piss some people off, as it seems to defy the almost new-age healing properties people attribute to this music, but I think it's genius, and typical of the wonderful forward momentum and lyricism he brings to this beautiful, beautiful music. -Michael Klausman
While doom metal isn't one of France's primary exports, they've sure done one hell of a job with Monarch!, a dark, dark drone quartet (founder/vocalist Emilie Bresson, plus MicHell Bidegain, Guillaume Lestage, and Shiran Kaidin) from Bayonne, in the country's Basque region. These days, doom is an overpopulated genre: slow and heavy are (in terms of metal, at least) the styles of the times, and it can be difficult to differentiate one slew of detuned power chords from another; posers, fakes and burnouts abound. That being said, Monarch! is the real deal. These guys play metal with studied, warlike conviction. Their latest for Crucial Blast, Mer Morte ("Dead Sea" in French) is just under 35 minutes of sluggish fuzz and dark atmospherics. Although originally divided into two separate pieces ("Mer" and "Morte") on a 2008 vinyl pressing, the digital reissue plays smoothly as a single, epic track; of course, this isn't your average "track." Featuring some of the thickest distorted drones on either side of the pond, choruses of eerie, distant wailing, and occasional cymbal-crashing, Mer Morte frequently transcends convention and even reason, sounding at once demonic and blissfully placid; frenzied screams segue into shimmering washes of fuzz, and haunted feedback howls throughout. At the end of the day, Monarch! is a metal band, inviting comparisons to similarly slow 'n' droney groups like Sunn O))), Corrupted, Khanate, and Boris, to name a few. But, unlike your average metal outfit, they're capable of complex and dynamic soundscapes; ethereal beauty, it seems, is just as important to the group as pummeling bass, and Mer Morte is testament to this fact. Like its namesake, the album is vast, thick and mystical: it will take repeated spins to plumb its depth. The recommended listening experience entails headphones, an absence of natural light, and candles aplenty, but Mer Morte is powerfully moving regardless of context. -Jacob Kaplan
I ask you to reconsider Hawkwind's much maligned 1981 synth-excursion Church of, which hardcore Hawkwind fans basically hated upon release, as it bears next to no relation to the heavy space rock they'd been pumping out for the previous ten years. You can't help but compare this to Neil Young's Trans, what with the broad array of vocoders, mini-Moogs, and Korgs chugging away throughout. There's some really nice and limp early eighties new wave mannerisms included amidst the usual esoteric sci-fi pontificating, which happen to sound better than ever in this post-Ariel Pink world we're currently living in! Highlights include "Star Cannibal," "Light Specific Data" and "Some People Never Die." -Michael Klausman
Really sweet two-song single from singer-songwriter Zachary Cale, who has previously released a couple of solo LPs of modern-day loner folk that were somewhat dark and amorphous. There's a new direction here though, with a more expansive sound and tighter focus on the songwriting. I hear a little bit of the greatness of Daniel Johnston, in particular on the first song, and outside of the new Tallest Man on Earth, these have to be two of the best new folky sounding songs I've heard all year. Killer tracks, hope there's an entire album of this stuff coming down the pipeline soon. -Michael Klausman |
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