The Other Music Update

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	February 9, 2012


	FEATURED NEW RELEASES Oval (Just In!) Sharon Van Etten Prinzhorn Dance School Fulgeance Air Chris Forsyth + Koen Holtkamp Mark Lanegan Band Swell Maps (2 LP Reissues) Machinedrum The Twilight Sad Royal Baths		ALSO AVAILABLE A Place to Bury Strangers Fucked Up 12" Wymond Miles The Unthanks Dr. Dog Of Montreal Jamie Woon (Domestic Pressing) Follow us on Facebook: facebook.com/othermusicnyc Follow us on Twitter: twitter.com/othermusic

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		WIN PASSES TO THE 2012 AVANT MUSIC FESTIVAL Other Music is giving away one pair of passes to the third annual 2012 Avant Music Festival, which runs February 10-18! Featuring five nights of music from the evolving avant-garde and curated by Randy Gibson and Megan Schubert, this year's event celebrates the 100th birthday of John Cage, the centennial of the premiere of Arnold Schoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire, and contemporary experimental works by Randy Gibson, Eve Beglarian, and Jenny Olivia Johnson. It's an excellent roster of performances and events, featuring a wide range of talent -- you can view a full listing here. The winner's pair of passes will be good for all of the nights, so enter right away by emailing tickets@othermusic.com. We'll notify the winner on Friday. FEBRUARY 10-18 THE WILD PROJECT: 195 E. 3rd St. NYC Festival tickets are $12 ($8 student and member) online presale and $15 ($10) at the door. There are no fees for purchasing online.

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		OTHER MUSIC MONDAYS AT ACE HOTEL NYC Other Music returns to the gorgeous lobby of NYC's Ace Hotel for the rest of the month of February, each Monday night featuring an eclectic DJ set from 8 p.m. to midnight by one of our staff members. While you're at the Ace, check out Other Music's new release display by the front desk, where we've stocked Bollywood Bloodbath, the Big Pink, Mighty Sparrow, Porcelain Raft, and several other titles on CD and LP formats. Here's the DJ schedule for February: MONDAY, FEBRUARY 13: MIKEY IQ JONES MONDAY, FEBRUARY 20: SCOTT MOU MONDAY, FEBRUARY 27: AMANDA COLBENSON ACE HOTEL: 20 W. 29th St. NYC


	$19.99 CD+DVD		OVAL OvalDNA (Shitkatapult) "Kasino" "Alpen" Just in! Career-spanning 25-track collection from Oval featuring the glitchy side of Markus Popp that we know and love, culled from rare pieces and previously unreleased material. Also includes a bonus DVD with 10 extra cuts, a music video and documentary, and 2000-plus soundfiles and OvalDNA software for the music producers out there, as well as liner notes by David Toop, Atsushi Sasaki, Minoru Hatanaka and Popp. Full review next week.


	$13.99 CD $16.99 LP+MP3 $9.99 MP3		SHARON VAN ETTEN Tramp (Jagjaguwar) "Warsaw" "Serpents" While these days it seems like most stars fall from the sky and float on gilded wings into earbuds around the globe, Sharon Van Etten has built a career the old-fashioned way: first murmuring her quiet confessions onto tape alone in her room, and slowly building her chops and her confidence over a series of increasingly complex, satisfying, and high-profile releases. With all eyes on the sweet-natured, sad-songed artist, her third album now arrives on Jagjaguwar; produced by the National's Aaron Dessner and featuring a wide array of NYC indie pop elite (like Beirut's Zach Condon, Bryce Dessner, Julianna Barwick, and the Walkmen's Matt Barrick), Van Etten continues to buck the odds and Tramp indeed lives up to its high expectations. Van Etten's songs are so intensely personal, singing of trust betrayed and love unrealized with such a deep well of emotion that she can stop you dead in your tracks; her voice is pure and powerful, but it's her relaxed phrasing and quiet resolve that make these hypnotic folk-pop pieces resonate. Van Etten's songs lodge so deeply in your brain that it can actually be jarring to hear new ones -- fans have had the seven lone tracks from 2010's Epic on repeat for so long, it takes a few plays to slip into this new set -- but Tramp is full of Van Etten's indelible melodies and powerful imagery, and I can't stop listening. Dessner's production touches on the lush palette he draws on for the National, but here it's stripped back to the bare essentials so that Van Etten's voice stays front and center. The first single, "Serpents," builds from a swirl of feedback to a strum, a backbeat snare cuing a long bass note, and the music slowly grows to a howl around Van Etten's most intense vocal on the record: "Serpents in my mind, I am searching for your cries." On "Give Out," an acoustic guitar and Van Etten's bell-clear voice are all you hear, until the quiet cry of a buried electric guitar creeps into your subconscious as she sings, "You're the reason I'll move to the city, you're why I'll need to leave." Sharon Van Etten has succeeded making timeless music that goes against fashion and instead aims straight for the heart, and this is her moment -- a great record that you need to hear. [JM]


	$14.99 CD $9.99 MP3		PRINZHORN DANCE SCHOOL Clay Class (DFA) Preview Songs on Other Music's Download Store Advance word was that the second album from Prinzhorn Dance School, after a long five-year wait since their self-titled debut, was just more of the same. Even if that were actually true it wouldn't be a disappointment; Tobin Prinz and Suzi Horn's first set of tunes was so stark it's hard to envision how they could embellish their sound without losing their identity. Their method on Prinzhorn Dance School was to pull elements from the post-punk diaspora, shave them down to their essentials... and then keep shaving, until only the barest skeleton of a song. Or maybe they work from the other end, putting just enough in to convey the tune: the pulse of a kick drum, a Gang of Four-ish two-note bass line, sing-song vocals, and if you're lucky a smattering of guitar or snare -- every piece set perfectly in place. They're accused of being more art project than band, and their pure economy certainly gives one pause to contemplate how many extraneous ingredients are shoehorned into most pop songs. (The duo even went as far as playing a drum kit with their feet for a spell to avoid having to add a third member.) The debut record itself was and is brilliant; until Clay Class, there has been absolutely nothing like it. Prinzhorn Dance School aren't simply treading water on their follow-up, and in their sparseness even the smallest changes to their style are writ large. They've stated, in both interviews and lyrics, their intention to "let a little bit of the light in," and indeed there are additional touches of color, sort of like the red squares on a Mondrian. Guitar appears up on nearly every track, and not simply to double the bass parts -- check out the proto-jangle on "I Want You" or the interplay on "Turn Up the Light." More notably most tracks replace the debut's sprechgesang with actual singing, however fragmented the melodies. Despite the extra light, the overall tone of Clay Class is bleak and angry if not downright sinister, as if the everyday life in Brighton they depict is starting to grind down on them. "Sing Orderly" reads like a catalog of drudgery, while closer "Shake the Jar" seethes: "Shake the jar/rattle your tin/scratch that scar/let the fight back in." Even songs with titles like "Happy in Bits" and "I Want You" pack a wallop here. Prinzhorn's experiments in austerity are just as compelling but dig in deeper than ever. Don't let this one slide past you. [JB]


	$19.99 CD		FULGEANCE To All of You (Melting Pot) "La Cité des Anges" "Vilnius Bump" New-school beat banger alert! Fulgeance's debut, To All of You, is the kind of record fans of Flying Lotus or Hudson Mohawk dream about. Having wet our whistle with a few singles on Dublin's All City and London's One Handed Music labels, this young French producer's full-length for Melting Pot Music is not just a knee-deep fusion of nouveau boogie, footwork, dubstep, hip-hop, grime and wonky downtempo creations, it's a sparkling reflection from within a dark club atop the Eiffel Tower. In line with much of the purple-synth funk phenomenon that's been spreading since the turn of the decade, this is a killer collection of funky electronic jams riding the line between a few sub-genres. Warping bass lines churn in a cosmic slop of shimmering melodies with an almost prog-like attitude and b-boy swagger. His world is colored by dirty neon, with a grime element to his productions; his synths are scratchy and his drums thick and crunchy. However, he couples it with layers of brighter and more soothing melodies, flourishes and accents that balance things out and keep the instrumental album lively. Unlike some of his contemporaries, Fulgeance sticks to the script by offering one solid jam after another; never going too far out, he keeps the progression tight. The sixteen tracks are split with the latter half being a grouping of remixes from 1000names, Brokenchord and others that gives the last twenty-five minutes a refreshing re-imagining of the first forty. Electronic albums like this are usually as good as the sequence, dependent on how the producer moves you through their sonic world. Part of what I enjoy about this release is not only the selections but the overall pacing, the way he builds the tracks and how the album unfolds, or I should say keeps going. Fans of labels like Brainfeeder, Lucky Me, and Numbers, or producers like Rustie, Dorian Concept, Jimmy Edgar, and Lex Luger, this is very much the sound of now. Recommended to all my fellow nu-electro funk brethren. Dare I say, ooh-la-la! [DG]


	$15.99 CD $19.99 CD+DVD		AIR Le Voyage dans la Lune (Virgin) "Astronomic Club" "Sonic Armada" Air's seventh album, Le Voyage dans la Lune (translated as "A Trip to the Moon"), takes its title and inspiration from George Melies' 1902 film of the same name -- the first ever science fiction movie. Loosely conceived as a soundtrack to this more than century-old cinematic masterpiece, the album is a journey through space fueled by Air's retro-futuristic synths and unmistakable vintage cool. The voyage begins with the drum-heavy opener, "Astronomic Club," and follows with "Seven Stars," a track featuring hauntingly deep vocals from Beach House's Victoria Legrand. Elsewhere, highlights like "Moon Fever" could easily have been an accompaniment to Carl Sagan's Cosmos, while "Sonic Armada" is a nice groovy slice of instrumental space-funk. Au Revoire Simone also make a guest appearance on "Who Am I Now?" offering a bit of French girl-pop to the cosmic soup, and not too long after we're returned safely back to Earth and tucked into bed by a psych jam session entitled "Lava." For an extra few dollars you can pick up the version of the album that includes a bonus DVD featuring the restored film, so why not get your hands on that one -- your ears and eyes will thank you. [ACo]


	$21.99 LP		CHRIS FORSYTH + KOEN HOLTKAMP Early Astral (Blackest Rainbow) Very limited LP-only pressing of two sidelong instrumental slow-burns from six-string virtuoso Chris Forsyth and Mountains' Koen Holtkamp. Side-A is a 17-minute, sun-scorched journey with Forsyth eschewing any of his American primitive leanings for layered electric-guitar riffing that lands somewhere between the bluesy-psych of Achim Reichel & Machines and the hypnotic spell of Ash Ra Tempel-era Manuel Gottsching. Underneath, Holtkamp coaxes a rolling boil of buzz and hiss from his synths and the duo finally takes off into a cosmic dust cloud of squalling guitars, feedback and molten electronics before reaching zero gravity bliss. The 18-minute flipside heads in an even more exploratory direction, Forsyth and Holtkamp conjuring Kosmische textures from their guitars and synths, and building into a long, blistering climax of Fluxus-inspired Velvet Underground/Spacemen 3 drone. As you can imagine, there's a natural symbiosis between these two players that allows both pieces to feel improvisatory while still moving in a deliberate, forward direction. Fans of any of the aforementioned should grab this one quick. Recommended! [GH]


	$12.99 CD $21.99 LPx2+MP3 $9.99 MP3		MARK LANEGAN BAND Blues Funeral (4AD) "The Gravedigger's Song" "Ode to Sad Disco" Despite a few surprises in his more than 20-year "solo" career, like his wonderful duets with Isobel Campbell or his short stint in Queens of the Stone Age, outside of his tenure in the Screaming Trees, Mark Lanegan has a sound and an image that he sticks with. The lurker, the lecher, the grizzled, whiskey-soaked stranger in the night, and as you might have guessed from the title of this new one, Blues Funeral, after nearly eight years, Lanegan is back in full force. The songs (of course) have their genesis in blues or gospel forms, but the production here is thick, dark and somewhat modern, with shards of programmed rhythm and dense swaths of sound making way for reverb guitar riffs and Lanegan's chilly croon, a willful "updating" to a sound that may or may not actually need improvement. There are high points, such as the first single "The Gravedigger's Song," and a few dirges that are slightly underwhelming too, but the record embraces you like a funeral shroud and there is (cold) comfort in its arms. Lanegan's best strength, and perhaps his weakness too, is his relentless focus on the dark side; the ostensible pop of "Gray Goes Black," with its sweet circular hook, is deceptive as the song's catchy opening line of "Don't you turn off my radio, please don't turn off my radio" is followed by "Not with the rope still swinging, while eternity's mouth is singing." No sir -- turn it up! [JM]


	A Trip to Marineville $15.99 LP+7" $9.99 MP3 Jane from Occupied Europe $15.99 LP $9.99 MP3		SWELL MAPS A Trip to Marineville (Secretly Canadian) Preview Songs on Other Music's Download Store SWELL MAPS Jane from Occupied Europe (Secretly Canadian) Preview Songs on Other Music's Download Store The brothers known as Nikki Sudden and Epic Soundtracks had been playing music together in their hometown of Solihull, Birmingham for several years before Jowe Head and Richard Earl joined the fold in 1976. That was on the cusp of the punk and d.i.y. explosion that radically changed the British music scene, and Swell Maps took full form; they released two albums, a handful of singles and then called it quits by the mid-'80s. Like so many other great bands of the era, Swell Maps went largely unnoticed outside of their own little scene, but their music has had a long-lasting impact on the shape of the underground; although the group's debut 7" "Read About Seymour" (released on their own imprint, Rather Records) got them signed to Rough Trade, it seems only in hindsight that Swell Maps' pivotal role in the birth of post-punk has been recognized. An amalgam of labels over the years have endeavored to keep the band's two studio albums, A Trip to Marineville and Jane from Occupied Europe, in circulation, and Secretly Canadian has now issued these top-quality vinyl versions to go along with their CD releases from a few years back. Following a second single, 1979's A Trip to Marineville was made shortly after a live session for John Peel, recorded at WMRS Studios along with new band members David Barrington and John Cockrill. This album debuted Swell Maps' own take on T. Rex-inspired rock crossed with punk and touched by Krautrock's experimentalism, creating something ballistic and innovative. "Do you believe in art?" Nikki Sudden asks atonally in opener "H.S. Art" apace with clattering rhythms, crunchy guitars and ramshackle piano -- this track puts the 'raw' in 'raucous.' My personal highlight, however, is "Spitfire Parade," which delivers a heady rush from feverish guitars and pummeling rhythms anchored by a low rubbery bass, pushing to the edge before plaintively collapsing. Breaking away from the archetypal guitar, drums and bass arrangement, toy saxophones, xylophones and harmonicas are incorporated into the album, and A Trip to Marineville certainly marked a shift in underground music. A no-brainer for anyone with a soft-spot for post-punk, this reissue features the original track listing along with a bonus 7" of "Loin of the Surf" that came with the original LP release. Released a year later, Jane from Occupied Europe was the ambitious second and final album for Swell Maps. Krautrock acts as a connecting thread between both records, but Jane separates itself by delving into noisier industrial sounds. This is best shown on "Big Maz in the Desert," a warped instrumental number with crooked guitars, curious scratching and cawing effects alongside forthright drumming cemented at the core. And sure enough, this album has rockier moments too; "Border Country" and "The Helicopter Spies" feature familiar strident guitars, unmannered vocals and rattled rhythms. Jane from Occupied Europe shows a band not satisfied with just creating a new sound but testing the limits of it, so it's easy to understand why Sonic Youth, Pavement and Dinosaur Jr. have all sung Swell Maps praises. It has been more than two decades since these albums have been available in vinyl format, but with the LPs finally back on the shelves and featuring original artwork, track listings and bonus material, you won't find a better time to pick up this pair of seminal records than right now. Absolutely essential. [KP]


	$12.99 CD		MACHINEDRUM Want to 1 2? (Normrex) "Late Night Operation" "Bermuda Love Triangle" Before Travis Stewart, a/k/a Machinedrum, released his footwork-influenced full-length, Room(s), for Planet Mu or his great singles on the rising Lucky Me label, he recorded a genre-bending album for Normrex. Originally released on vinyl in 2009, Want to 1 2? is finally, finally issued on CD in the same amazing Technicolor-holograph packaging as the LP! Blending IDM, hip-hop, nu-disco and R&B with a hefty dose of glitch sonics, Stewart's keen, often energetic, sometimes wacky, and occasionally heart attack-inducing production skills explore different territory than his other work when coupled with a dozen guest MCs and singers, including Jesse Boykins III and Theophilus London. The voices bring a welcomed soul bent to the album, recalling the Neptunes, Sa-Ra, Onra, Hudson Mohawke, Flying Lotus, or Dam-Funk. This is a journey in urban cosmic soul with an undeniably magnetic pop sheen. With stuttering rhythms and neck-snapping MPC beats, sizzling synth chords, and lots of low-end bizness, Stewart is in top form here working in an urban producer mode (instead of wearing his IDM wiz-kid hat). There are lots of catchy songs throughout that could have easily been overlooked radio jams, and it definitely feels like this is his ode to the sounds of Brooklyn and Harlem. Much like his current production work for new Universal signing Azealia Banks, he really shines when given a voice to play with. The album is not perfect, but it's solid, the mood is consistent, and he keeps you engaged across the 21 tracks, mixing things up with a few instrumentals and re-edit touches. This feels like a special and inspired moment within Machinedrum's discography and as with every release, Stewart's skills and sound keep shifting and expanding; now that he's moved to Berlin, let's see what happens. [DG]


	$13.99 CD $14.99 LP+MP3 $9.99 MP3		THE TWILIGHT SAD No One Can Ever Know (Fat Cat) "Alphabet" "Sick" Fans going into this record with the expectation of hearing the same brooding, epic rock of the Twilight Sad's last three albums are going to be in for a bit of a surprise. While there is no mistaking singer James Graham's thick Scottish accent, the group's new long player does not pick up where 2009's Forget the Night Ahead left off. With Andrew Weatherall sitting in the production seat, the wall-of-shoegaze fuzz and heart-on-the-sleeve crescendos of past Twilight Sad anthems like "I Became a Prostitute" have been reigned in for a less-is-more approach. During songs like "Alphabet," "Dead City" and "Don't Move," guitars are buried beneath icy pads of synthesizer, the tracks propelled by the martial chug of Joy Division. Elsewhere, the group flirts with the proto-industrial rhythm of Sheffield circa 1980 ("Kill It in the Morning"), while the skittering Autechre-inspired beat of "Sick" actually brings to mind Kid A-era Radiohead -- albeit the melancholy in Graham's Highland burr is far more human than Thom Yorke's alien falsetto. While the sonic boundaries may have closed in a little, the band still finds a way to soar, and with Graham pulling back ever so slightly, the foreboding emotions have never been this palpable. [GH]


	$11.99 CD $13.99 LP+MP3		ROYAL BATHS Better Luck Next Life (Kanine) "Darling Divine" "Black Sheep" In 2010, Royal Baths' Litanies mesmerized me; the duo's gloomy blues-psych sound has a tendency to drag you into a deep, dark rabbit hole, fill your head with odd thoughts, and leave you wanting more. Two years later, the group has since moved from the Bay Area to Brooklyn and are back with a sophomore album, Better Luck Next Life. Perhaps a reflection of their new home, there are some strong Velvet Underground influences showing up here, and along with cleaning up the murky production a bit, they've also scrubbed away some of their pop hooks, skewing even darker on this record. Royal Baths have established a technique of combining sprawling guitar solos and lethargic, blues-like call-and-response vocals into something you could call psych-rock garage. Lyrically, they slap you in the face with constant topics of violence and damaged girls, and through their dark sense of humor, they admit that they're bad, bad people -- and Royal Baths are quite good at it. No doubt fans of Thee Oh Sees and Ty Segall will want to check these guys out. [ACo]


	$7.99 CD $12.99 LP+MP3 $4.99 MP3		A PLACE TO BURY STRANGERS Onwards to the Wall (Dead Oceans) "I Lost You" "Onwards to the Wall" It's been a few years since we heard from these New York City noise-rockers but with a new bassist and even newer home on Dead Oceans, the group finally drops this molten five-song slab on us and it's by far their most aggro set yet. With opener "I Lost You," A Place to Bury Strangers come on like a punk band who's just driven off with all of My Bloody Valentine's gear -- in other words, in spite of the wall of needle-in-the-red guitars and trippy sonics, the last thing you'll be doing is gazing at your shoes. Throughout, Oliver Ackermann's detached, laconic vocals still channel the Reid bros, but where the Jesus & Mary Chain's buzz-saw guitar missives traipse between the Velvet Underground and Beach Blanket Bingo, A Place to Bury Strangers' psycho candy of choice is a speedball followed by a game of Russian roulette with a fully loaded revolver. Yeah, this EP is even more mind-blowing than 2009's Exploding Head... so when's the next full-length, guys?


	$9.99 12"+MP3 $9.99 MP3		FUCKED UP Year of the Tiger (Matador) Preview Songs on Other Music's Download Store Fucked Up's fifth annual 12" single timed to commemorate the new Chinese calendar. The epic 15-plus minute A-side, "The Year of the Tiger," finds these Canadian punks welcoming Jim Jarmusch (?!!), Austra and Annie-Claude Deschenes (of Duchess Says) as featured guests and all you need to know is that it rules!


	$12.99 LP+MP3 $3.99 MP3		WYMOND MILES Earth Has Doors (Sacred Bones) Preview Songs on Other Music's Download Store Far from the jangly lo-fi garage-pop of this guitarist's main gig in the Fresh & Onlys, Wymond Miles heads in the polar-opposite direction on his debut solo EP. Four introspective numbers that move from the autumnal, soft plucked guitar and Cale-like strains of viola in the instrumental opener, "As the Orchard Is with Rain," to the unsettling psych-dirge of "Earth Has Doors, Let Them Open" in which Miles' shamanic vocals are answered by the lysergic clarion call of an old synthesizer. Recommended!


	$13.99 CD $9.99 MP3		UNTHANKS The Songs of Robert Wyatt and Antony & the Johnsons: Live at the Union Chapel (Diversions Vol. 1) (Rough Trade) "For Today I Am a Boy" "Free Will and Testament" Great new live album recorded over the course of two nights at London's Union Chapel. Rachel and Becky Unthanks have never shied away from including covers of contemporary songwriters in their chamber-folk repertoire, and here they devote an album to Robert Wyatt and Antony & the Johnsons. Accompanied by pianist/arranger Adrian McNally (Rachel's husband) and a small ensemble of strings, horns, bass and drums, the sisters lead off with six Antony songs -- including delicate, reverent takes on "Bird Gerhl," "You Are My Sister" and "For Today I Am a Boy" -- and then move on to nine numbers from Wyatt's songbook, starting with Anja Garbarek's "Stay Tuned" (which Wyatt covered on 2007's Comicopera) and highlights like smoky renditions of "Free Will and Testament" and "Cuckoo Madame," and an impassioned, string-laden version of "Out of the Blue."


	$15.99 CD		DR. DOG Be the Void (Anti-) Dr. Dog's seventh long-player sees these Philly stalwarts continuing down the same tried and true path of classic rockers before them -- a la Neil Young, Todd Rundgren, late-Beatles, the Band -- with a tad of updating via a little bit of ear candy in the production and perhaps an indie-rock sensibility subtly bubbling underneath the surface of their infectious melodies and harmonies. That is to say not much has changed, and thankfully so. There is, however, a nice looseness to these songs and rawness to the recordings and the band really do sound like they're having a lot of fun here, and they pull you right in with them.


	$13.99 CD $21.99 LP+MP3		OF MONTREAL Paralytic Stalks (Polyvinyl) For casual fans who've only sampled the infectiously funky Technicolor pop side of Kevin Barnes' more recent Of Montreal releases, this psychedelic prankster's latest, Paralytic Stalks, might be a head-scratcher. Barnes and his band deliver an ambitious batch of tomfoolery, incorporating bits of musique concrete and avant-classical into their everything-but-the-kitchen-sink psych-pop with a dark, bitter soul that, depending on the listener, will either be hailed as a scattershot come down or his masterpiece.


	$11.99 CD		JAMIE WOON Mirrorwriting (Polydor) "Lady Luck" "Echoes" Now available domestically, UK singer/songwriter Jamie Woon's debut album delivers (mostly) on the promise of his "Wayfaring Stranger" single from a few years ago, and the buzz of his live sets. A graduate of the BRIT School, a performing arts academy which also gave us Adele and Amy Winehouse, Woon started as your typical open mic troubadour before discovering the sounds of DJ Shadow and Radiohead's Kid A during his formative years, which led him to set his guitar aside for a bit and submerge his songwriting in new textures. That first single, released back in 2007, gained him attention not only because of Woon's sultry blue-eyed soul voice, but also thanks to a great remix from Burial, then still a mysterious figure riding his first wave of curious intrigue and attention on the back of his own self-titled debut album. They continue the collaboration here as Burial contributes production on about a third of Mirrorwriting's tracks, and it's honestly a match made in heaven; Woon's lyrics often deal with themes of introspect amidst desolated urban landscapes, and his words have real impact with his voice backed by ghostly choirs and gently percolating beat clicks. Woon frontloads Mirrorwriting with the Burial productions, and then as the record progresses, brings more of his guitar in while scaling back the already minimal and stark beats. Vocally, Woon elicits obvious comparisons to Michael Jackson, Justin Timberlake, and Craig David (and hell, what's that if not a compliment!), but the one person I keep going back to (and again, BIG compliment here) is early Terence Trent D'Arby, as he ably blends the aesthetics of stripped-down eccentric soulboy weirdo with that of genuine heart-on-my-sleeve troubadour, quite admirably. And it's his vocals that hold everything together; where so many songwriters caught in a balancing act between displaying their sincerity and an ear for innovation tend to smother their assets in too much electronic frippery at times, it's refreshing to hear someone with such a warm, strong, tender voice actually use it for a change. He's working in the same area of heartfelt late-night soul bearing that the xx and James Blake trade in, but Woon's vocals are more assured than either. Where the xx highlight the tender awkwardness between a shared moment and the pleasure and pain it can provide, and Blake seems keen to codify his sentiments into indecipherable sequences of zeroes and ones, Woon seems to be the most sensitive loner in the neighborhood, walking through town by himself, crooning to the heavens. It makes for one of the most promising debuts of recent memory, and fans of any of the aforementioned artists should take note; he's a talented young songwriter and a great singer, with his finger enough on the pulse that this album can appeal to everyone from cynical trainspotters waiting to hate, to bored housewives looking to love, to average-Joe music fans who just want some good tunes that get their heads bobbing. I wish he would have shuffled the running order a bit, mixing up the Burial tracks with the rest for a more even flow, but in the end, it's a truly enjoyable ride from start to finish. [IQ]


	PHONE ORDERS Phone orders are accepted at (212) 477-8150 (ext. #2, mailorder) Mon-Fri, Noon - 7pm EST EMAIL For general inquiries or other information please email sales@othermusic.com. Do not reply to this message. REMOVE This is an automated list. If you would like to be removed for any reason, please visit: digital.othermusic.com/subscribe.php		THIS WEEK'S CONTRIBUTORS [JB] James Bess [ACo] Anastasia Cohen [DG] Daniel Givens [GH] Gerald Hammill [IQ] Mikey IQ Jones [JM] Josh Madell [KP] Kimberly Powenski THANKS FOR READING - all of us at Other Music

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