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You might think that Pavement's recent globetrotting reunion tour would have put the Jicks on hiatus for awhile, but Stephen Malkmus is back with what just might be his best album of the current era. Mirror Traffic is out on August 23rd, and we're going to help tide you over with this free download of "Senator." If you're in New York City on Thursday the 25th, Malkmus will be stopping by our store to play a rare acoustic performance at 9 p.m. Line up early, this one is guaranteed to be a madhouse!
This week, Other Music Digital is offering "Ink Jar," the a-side off the first Cloud Seeding single, as a free download. This singles project is the brainchild of Kevin Serra (This Ascension, Lot 49), who is collaborating with a wide range of vocalists, with no set musical boundaries in mind. The first installment is a fantastic introduction to the series, "Ink Jar" featuring Marissa Nadler, whose gorgeous specter melodies hover through a slow, foreboding dream-cloud of guitars, bass and drums. (The mysterious, free-floating b-side, "Unquestioning," also features Nadler and is available on Other Music Digital for $1.11). This Week's Featured Downloads I'm sure I've harrumphed more than once in the OM Update about the tack often taken by reissuers of music from far-flung places and of far-distant times, who peddle their wares by playing up the contents' purported foreignness and inscrutability. The central problem with this, while it might sell some records (exoticization, after all, is a highly effective marketing tool), is that it ultimately serves to create a fetish of the cultural or temporal emplacements of the music that totally obscures the very real lives lived by the people that sung and played it, and the very real solace their music gave them. To What Strange Place, the new 3-disc set of music of the Ottoman-American Diaspora curated by Ian Nagoski, is a deeply effective counterbalance to that approach, beginning with its title; the "strange place" here isn't Thessaloniki, Damascus, or some remote village in rural Anatolia, Armenia, or the Peloponnesus, but America -- primarily New York City -- to which immigrants from the crumbling Ottoman Empire fled in the teens and twenties. There they established Little Armenia on the East Side, Little Syria in what became Tribeca, and a Greek enclave in Hell's Kitchen, before resettling Astoria as Little Athens. And there they made a truly breathtaking corpus of recorded sound. Establishment record companies like Columbia were taking interest in cracking the emerging "ethnic" markets of the day, but a lot of the music made by the new arrivals was cut by upstart vanity labels within the community; they made music of exile, performed by and to be shared with those who knew the experience intimately. Even the most casual fans of this material will recognize the inimitable, heart-wrenching keen of the prolific Greek singer Marika Papagika, who is well represented herein. Especially affecting is "Homeless," a side cut by the popular Armenian singer and genocide-survivor Armenag Chah-Mouradian: "My heart is like a house in ruins / the beams in splinters, the pillars shaken. / Wild birds build their nest where my home once was." Perhaps the most devastating inclusion is of a 23-year-old Armenian named Zabelle Panosian. Although she arrived in the States before the Great Crime began, and performs a take on a popular 19th-century poem, her delivery is positively dripping with anomie and loss: "Where does this long, dark pathway lead? / My God, where does it end, this obsession with fear?" Melancholy abounds, but it's not all unmitigated heartbreak. The first disc opens with two irresistible dance tunes (albeit played in those Eastern Mediterranean modes that strike American ears so mournfully, though to native listeners they'd be the very sound of joy) and included are many oud, violin, and clarinet instrumentals that filled the bustling immigrant cafés and nightclubs. Haunts like these helped make this "strange place" feel slightly less so, just like Detroit's honky-tonks and Chicago's Southside jukes did for exiles from the rural South. Nagoski rounds out the set with three tracks of his own contextualizing narration regarding the American assimilation of Eastern Mediterranean immigrants and the development of the ethnic commercial-recording era. He also places his own work on To What Strange Place in the tradition of other "crazy record fiends" like Dick Spottswood and Chris Strachwitz, who have contributed so much to our understanding of the world's vernacular music simply because they love it deeply. Nagoski's affection for this music is more than apparent; it's his dedication to honoring the musicians' lives, traditions, and communities that makes To What Strange Place the triumph it is. It's one of the most valuable contributions to our understanding and appreciation of American music -- as that's what this is -- to come down the pike in a long time. -Nathan Salsburg
Nublu's dropped three serious A-bombs (the A stands for awesome, folks!) with their excellent triple whammy of vintage Turkish psych-funk and electro-disco edits by one Baris K. Each is filled with gut-busting, tab dropping, trail-following grooves that fall somewhere between the recent Turkish Freakout comps and the quintessential Disco (Not Disco) collections, where traditional folk elements intermingle with synths, machine drums, and au courant dancefloor sounds of the 1970s and '80s. Volume One begins with the trippy electric-folk bounce of Erkin Koray's "Cemalim," and then moves into the cosmic slo-mo chug of Derdiyoklar's "Yaz Gazeteci," complete with odd crowd noises dubbed into the arpeggiating synths and thumping beats. Things really get pumping with Osman Ismen's wicked space-disco jam "Ara Muzigi," where cowbells, congas, and electric handclaps anchor some Turkish stringwork and dubbed-out timbals hits, with the whole thing coming off like the Salsoul Orchestra in an opium den. Edip Akbayram & Dostlar's "Ayrilik" closes the EP with some funky breaks, popping bass grooves, and more echo chamber folk strings, topped with a helping of ample fuzz guitar.
Volume Two ups the disco quotient considerably, opening with the syncopated strut of Cem Karaca's "Nem Alacak Felek Benim," all organ stabs, eerie synth beds, and echo chamber vocals. Kamuran Akkor and Umit Aksu Orkestrasi's "Ikimiz Bir Fidaniz" is a sultry synth-funk number with full-bodied female vocals and a delirious warbling keyboard line buzzing around the mix, with finger cymbals punctuating each of the verses' lines. Urfali Babi's "Disko Kebap" brings up the pulse with tick-tocking drum machines, a creepy synth whistle, and call-and-response vocals, making for the EP's highlight. Things finish off nicely with Senay's "Dalkavuk," sounding like a freaky Eastern version of Isaac Hayes' "Moonlight Lovin'" covered by a bunch of playback singers, punctuated by some funky clavinet and horn interplay.
Volume Three starts with the smooth electro-disco jam "Donme Dolap" by Modern Folk Uclusu & Aysegul Aldinc, all clattering percussion overtop some quiet-storm horns and percolating bass synth, glazed with some slick synth chords and string stabs. Nice. We're then treated to two tracks by Nazan Soray; her "Halhal" brings some airy, Kraut-inspired hypnosis and some jazz-funk keyboard work backing her sultry coos, while "Teselliye Sen Gerek" delivers some Moroder/Donna Summer flavor with its humid synths, electric saz, and slippery slap bass antics. Ersen & Dadaslar's "Derman Bulunmaz" brings last call to the dancefloor, its pumping hi-hat groove offset by some nice jazzy flavors and rollicking piano rolls. These EPs are killer additions to any collection of international dance grooves; the tracks are solid, the edits are tight, and the production on the tunes is often homegrown, eccentric, and innovative. Fans of the sorts of sounds championed by Finders Keepers, Secret Stash, and even DFA will find much to love here; light up that incense and give your body up to the music! -Mikey IQ Jones
Here's a nice new split release from two heavyweights in improvised, electronic, or otherwise experimental musics whose names precede them. Continuing in Amish Records' Required Wreckers series that explores the intersections of "sound art, improvisation, drone, outsider experimentation and modern composition," Keith Fullerton Whitman, he of an impressive solo discography that twists its way through gentle ambience and more prickly synth workouts, brings us "080114." Continuing his recent archive mining, this piece features whole of a solo synth set from a few years back and manages to bound through churning crunches of sound, almost-light rhythms, and keen drone in a matter of minutes. Ben Vida, who's gotten around as a member of Town and Country, Singer, and solo as the Bird Show for the better part of a decade now, matches KFW blow-for-blow with his contribution, the ominous, stuttering "AggregatePulseRipper (Damaged IIII)." Favoring tones that are equally queasy, staggering, and somewhat staccato, his piece breathes a strange, abstract life into his synth sounds. Pretty great stuff overall, and well worth a listen for fans of either artist, or those interested in extended synthesize improvisations in general. -Michael Crumsho
Even if two-thirds of this new Brooklyn trio had not worked at Other Music, and even if they were not on one of our favorite local labels, we would still love Widowspeak. Their music is a natural progression from the simple, sunshine-dappled pop of groups like the Vivian Girls or Best Coast; Widowspeak take the next step forward in that re-evolution of sound, recalling the lighter side of Mazzy Star and the poppier end of Throwing Muses, and are reminiscent of bands who know that three chords and a smile can only get you so far. The thing is, that sort of sad sunshine pop is not the easiest sound to pull off, and we have heard too many bands screw it up with forgettable songs or cheesy production. The heart of this group, no doubt, is Molly Hamilton's warm, sweetly hypnotic voice and earworm melodies, but the band's sound is the perfect foil. Simple and primal, built on pounding tom-toms and Hamilton's spindly guitar leads, and the album's production, from Jarvis Taveniere (of Woods), is perfect for these songs, simple and unadorned, but with a warmth and sonic depth that lets them breathe. The group's music is immediate and winsome without drowning the listener in high fructose corn syrup sounds or stilted lyrics. Not too many modern rock bands can pull off being both relaxing and engaging in the same breath, but Widowspeak are ready to prove to us all that it can be done. -Doug Mosurock
Editions Mego is on a roll and this album certainly adds to that momentum. Life (...It Eats You Up) finds Mika Vainio utilizing the guitar as the record's main sound source, but it's not just an exercise in adding a new instrument to his otherwise familiar process. This is a whole new concept for Vainio and Life proves to be a truly unique entity in his massive catalog. Unlike so many attempts to fuse guitars and electronics, his approach never seems forced or tacky. Album opener "In Silence a Scream Takes a Heart" enters with several minutes of creaking, ominous feedback which gives way to a buzzing hive of low, droning guitars and finally dissipates into an eerie, slow-marching pulse. During noisier tracks like "Throat" and "Napoleon," the album retains the intensity of some of the more abrasive Pan Sonic efforts, while channeling the feeling in a completely different way. "Mining" sounds like a modern take on industrial music, and though it shares some rhythmic textures with Nine Inch Nails, it's more mysterious and never comes across as something consciously looking toward the past. Elsewhere, Vainio's cover of the Stooges' "Open Up and Bleed" is astonishing in its balance of power and atmosphere, and actually sounds futuristic, while tracks like "Crash" are sparse, and focus on creating a tense and cavernous space. Though there are rhythmic elements in Life, they don't sound anything like the beats on Vainio's previous efforts; where his solo albums for Touch were quite abstract and his Sahko output could be considered techno, Vainio's operating with a new stylistic palette here and it makes for one of the more surprising releases of the year. -Ning Nong
Gordon Sharp dusted off the Cindytalk moniker some years back, after setting out to work in rave and techno culture. What he left behind was his band's previous life as a dark rock/post-punk band with sweeping, orchestral deliverance by the time of its shuttering. The laptop-oriented static he produced when coming out of this phase seemed tailor-made for a label like Editions Mego, who'd canonized similar forms of expression for artists like Pita and Fennesz. For his third Mego release, Cindytalk dusts off the tableau, making for a cleaner, less cluttered sound a repository for galvanized drone hulls, austere piano melodies, and field recordings processed with shape and definition instead of diffuse, frustrated anger. Sharp comes closer to Mark Hollis' landmark solo album from the '90s as has anyone since, and though his use of noisier effects might rankle those looking for such quiet, frigid solace, the end result of Hold Everything Dear matches the overall effect in a way that provides hope for the next phase of genre-busting that will come out of this direction. Quite stirring, and the first must-have Cindytalk release since 1994's Wappinschaw. -Doug Mosurock |
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