November 7, 2007

		OTHER MUSIC DIGITAL NEW AND IMPROVED If you haven't been visited Other Music Digital in a few days, then click on right over. Our programmers have been hard at work making lots of changes which include a much improved search engine, a new mp3 preview player, curated category pages, a blog-style News Section, and cool new features like a Wishlist and Tell-A-Friend, just to name a few things. We'll send out more details in Friday's Download of the Week email, but in the meantime, take a look at new site. We think you'll like what you see!

		FEATURED NEW RELEASES White Williams Richard Youngs Henry Flynt Gescom Grizzly Bear Loren Connors Proibidao C.V (Various)   Latinamericarpet (Various) Bobb Trimble Battles Goldmund Mike Bones COMPLETE LIST OF THIS WEEK'S NEW ARRIVALS

		NOV Sun 11 Mon 12 Tues 13 Wed 14 Thurs 15 Fri 16 Sat 17   WIN TICKETS TO JUAN ATKINS The Deep Space party at Cielo has earned quite a reputation as one of New York City's finest DJ nights, and next Monday's installment promises to be one of the best ones yet when Detroit techno innovator Juan Atkins is the special guest, joining DJ resident Francois K. behind the decks. The duo will be going back-to-back, no doubt getting dubby and spaced-out with their electronic vibes. Other Music has two pairs of tickets to give away to this night! To enter, just email giveaway@othermusic.com, along with your daytime telephone number. We'll be choosing the two winners on Friday, November 9th. MONDAY, NOVEMBER 12 CIELO: 18 Little W. 12th Street NYC

		NOV Sun 11 Mon 12 Tues 13 Wed 14 Thurs 15 Fri 16 Sat 17   Sun 18 Mon 19 Tues 20 Wed 07 Thurs 08 Fri 09 Sat 10 Enon   KNITTING FACTORY TICKET GIVE-AWAY Enter to win a pair of tickets to one of these upcoming concerts at the Knitting Factory. Just send an email to contest@othermusic.com, and please include the show you would like to see in the subject line, along with a daytime phone number. The winners will be notified on Friday, November 9th. Good Luck!! OM: FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 16 ENON: SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 17 THE LOCUST: TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 20 KNITTING FACTORY: 74 Leonard Street NYC

		NOV Sun 11 Mon 12 Tues 13 Wed 14 Thurs 15 Fri 16 Sat 17   TICKET GIVE-AWAY TO LOREN CONNORS Continuing the new Underground at the Abrons series of experimental new music and performance art, Chris Forsyth, of the Brooklyn based recording label Evolving Ear, curates this unique evening of ground-breaking work. Featuring the band the Peeesseye, Koen Holtkamp and the duo of Loren Connors and Alan Licht, the evening will offer three special performances from three seldom seen projects. To enter to win a pair of tickets, send an email to tickets@othermusic.com, along with your daytime phone number. We'll notify the two winners on Thursday, November 8th. SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 17 ABRONS ART CENTER: 466 Grand Street NYC

		$14.99 CD $9.99 mp3   WHITE WILLIAMS Smoke (Tigerbeat6) "Headlines" "The Shadow" There has been some heat on the street surrounding Brooklyn's own (via Cleveland) Joe "White" Williams lately, and his debut full-length on Tigerbeat6 fully justifies the excitement. As his label of choice and recent tour-mates (Dan Deacon, Girl Talk) may suggest, Williams plays oddball, wriggling white-boy electro pop; but without any slight to those other talented entities, his music has a level of sophistication and songwriting acumen that should make Smoke a crossover success well beyond the crowded, sweaty freakout parties at which he has been toasted lately. The first impression, beyond that hookah-licious album cover of course, is of a modern take on the restrained '70s glam of Eno/Roxy Music/T. Rex/Bowie. Williams seems to effortlessly achieve that razor-thin intersection of joyful abandon and soulful melancholy that can make for seriously good times, with lazy, hypnotic grooves, weirdly sputtering, detuned analog synths and Casio bleeps, and a lovely, laidback vocal delivery that is all shimmery and vacant on the surface, but hints at something deeper than the parties, sex and violence that the lyrics dance around. In the best possible way, White Williams acts cool while burning hot, playing lightweight, oddball dance-pop while delivering enduring songs as well as excellent production. A truly great debut that has earned its name for sure...Smoke smokes. [JM]

		$14.99 CD $9.99 mp3   RICHARD YOUNGS Autumn Response (Jagjaguwar) "I Need the Light" "Tinsel Matrix" From his earliest days as a member of England's seminal A-Band, avant-musician Richard Youngs has been a true sonic chameleon. As comfortable in freeform, improvisational settings as he is pursuing noise skronk and minimal guitar explorations, his lengthy discography has enough twists and turns to make it impossible to gauge his next move. Back with his first full-length for the Jagjgauwar label since 2005's thoroughly excellent The Naïve Shaman, Youngs uses the whole of his latest album Autumn Response to explore his penchant for delicate strains of folk. A marked departure from the synth-heavy explorations of Shaman, the nine tracks collected here explore simple song-forms with basic, double tracked guitar and vocals. Sounding almost like a series of self-duets, songs like "Low Bay of Sky" and "One Hundred Stranded Horses" find Youngs working basic motifs into rich studies in overtones, as his guitars and voices play against each other to create harmonically rich, deceptively easy pieces. Other pieces, like the effuse "Tinsel Matrix," cascade from speaker to speaker, providing the listener with subtle acoustic volleys that sounds sublimely effortless. Cresting neatly with the epic "Something Like Air," Richard Youngs quietly closes out his latest exploration of his folk side, one that gets deeper and richer each and every time he chooses to expose it. [MC]

		$14.99 CD   HENRY FLYNT Nova'billy (Locust) "Conga" "Good Morning" We should know by now to expect each new release from maverick composer-philosopher Henry Flynt to be curve ball, but unless you caught the mailorder-only 45 that Locust offered last year, there's probably little that will prepare you for this stunning and outright jammin' full-length from Flynt's short-lived boogie-rock band, Nova'billy. Originally recorded between 1974 and '75 but never released, H.F. and Nova'billy, while surprising, is not by any means unprecedented in the Flynt catalogue. While most ostensibly an extension of Flynt's radical reconfiguration of Southern music, one can also sense a smart and seamless synthesis of many of his ideas and experiments with rock, free jazz, North Indian, and ecstatic musics. Guitar, saxophone, keyboards and, of course, Flynt's unmistakable violin playing -- here in particularly fiery form -- wail, blast and even trade hot licks over a rhythm section that varies from the "Wipeout" style intro of the opening "Conga" to firmly in-the-pocket back beats to unhinged percussive battery. Despite being ripe with memorable moments of collective improvisation, trance-like drones, minimal repetition and at least one passage of cathartic vocal howl, Nova'billy is a decidedly "populist" record (or at least, yearns to be). It was, it would seem, born to boogie. The tracks are full of hooks and Flynt's vocals are odd and affecting, imparting both idealistic pleas for collective change and everyman internal monologues (see "I Was a Creep"). Then of course, there are the politics: staunch leftist ideology that Flynt has since rescinded but which obsessed him at the time -- the second song is none other than the International Communist Party theme song. In many ways, Flynt's Vietnam-era protest band, the Insurrections, is the most direct precedent in the Flynt catalogue to this record; but if the Insurrections were all agit-prop, proto-no wave garage rock, then Nova'Billy is pure utopian Communist party music. Though best known for his long-form country and raga-inspired drone pieces, there is still, as this album attests, much that remains to be seen about Flynt's musical output, a truly underground (and apparently endless) body of work which seems to gain in complexity and intrigue with each new release. What is almost as amazing as the sheer number and variety of ideas Henry Flynt has had is the uniformity with which those ideas were rejected when they first appeared. Granted, Soho in the 1970's -- a scene that would soon burst at the seams and become the bloated money-bubble of the 80's New York art world -- may have not been the ideal time and place to start a country-boogie band with a leftist agenda, but if there is one thing that Flynt has done consistently, it is traffic in beautifully impossible visions. Highest Recommendation. [CC]

		$14.99 CD   GESCOM Gescom (Skam) "A1" "C2" The latest from the purposefully mysterious Gescom (which we do know features the two members of Autechre) is an exercise in breakbeat deconstruction and reformation. From the reverse drums, odd vocal samples and tumbling bass, you don't know what you should focus your attention on, or if your CD player is simply broken. Fear not, Gescom are in the driver's seat, carefully making all the micro-edits work to their advantage -- a funky sound collage that envelopes all things stuttering, bouncing, staggering and loopy. From acid house to disco, to glitch funk and hip-hop constructions, they bring the funky noise like few others can pull off. One of the many highlights, track two comes across as a re-edit of the acid house classic "No Way Back" by Adonis, all cut-up synth lines and steady yet jagged beats. If you like Pan Sonic's grind, Luke Vibert's love of acid, Jamie Lidell and Christian Vogel's use of micro-edit funk, or Prefuse 73's slice-and-dice techniques, then you'll find plenty to turn your head around. Tired of the wimpy rave revivalists of late? Then this will definitely push you further into the funky outer limits. [DG]

		$6.99 CD-EP   GRIZZLY BEAR Friend (Warp) "He Hit Me" "Knife" Atlas Sound Countless music aficionados and critics alike hailed Grizzly Bear's Yellow House as a musical revelation of sorts. The band spent the better part of 2006 and 2007 touring on said album, building their fan-base, doing interviews, shaking hands, making friends and generally bringing it to the people: in short, enough to make four guys nearly lose their minds. Apparently, the band will deservedly be taking some time off from the road war to write/record their proper follow-up to Yellow House, but beforehand they wanted to leave a little something new to remember them by -- the Friend EP. One might ask: "10 songs, EP?" Well, the release is best thought of as a handful of re-workings of old GB material by GB, a couple of new numbers, and a handful of covers of GB songs by their friends (Friend EP, duh). There is a long tradition in recorded music history of re-recording old material after touring on it, "perfecting" it, and acquiring the means to better capture the songs -- kinda OCD, but the hungry fans certainly appreciate it. GB's re-dos give teeth to their "Alligator," add mischief to their "Little Brother," and drastically shift to madrigal proportions the harmonies on "Shift." A fantastic take on the already perverse Carole King-penned "He Hit Me" brings a new perspective to the abuse carried out in the song. The pleasantly Orbison-esque "Deep Blue Sea" trails off into a minute of silence only to return as a jacked-up Dick Dale south-of-the-border jam to end the record. Nice. Though there is doubtless much crossover between those who follow GB and the friends featured on the EP (Beirut, Dirty Projectors, CSS, Band of Horses, and Atlas Sound), this record is well worth the modest price whether or not you're into them "getting by with a little help from their friends." [KC]

		$17.99 CD $9.99 mp3   LOREN CONNORS As Roses Bow: Collected Airs 1992-2000 (Family Vineyard) "Sorrow in the House" "Air for Bobby Sands and the Hunger Strikers" Totally mesmerizing new collection from one of our favorite guitar heroes, Loren Connors, culled from a decades worth of miniatures. Family Vineyard released a superb collection of his work last year called Night Through, and I wrote at the time that I thought it was the best introduction to his body of work to be found thus far. But I dare say they've possibly gone one better with As Roses Bow, and in fact I believe it might be the most immediately satisfying release I've heard of Connors since his early collaborations with folk singer Kath Bloom back in the late seventies. The pieces gathered here, originally strewn across numerous hard to find albums recorded between 1992-2002, all take their inspiration from traditional Irish Airs, though if you go look up "Irish Airs" on YouTube you'll find that the relationship of Connors' airs to the ones to be found there is tenuous at best. The most famous composer of Irish Airs, blind harpist Turlough O'Carolan (1670-1738), was much lauded for his ability to bridge the divide between art and folk musics, and indeed one could say that has been the defining characteristic of Connors' career as well. It's essentially the same approach as he's always applied to the blues, a stripped down, emphatic, note-by-note investigation that seems hell bent on discovering the truth in a kernel of melody. This is a music that manages to be both fleeting and timeless, and I fail to see how a person could possibly remain unmoved by it. [MK]

		$15.99 CD   VARIOUS ARTISTS Proibidao C.V: Rio Gang Funk (Sublime Frequencies) "Untitled Proibidao C.V #02" "Untitled Proibidao C.V #011" With all the current interest in all things Funk de Carioca, and artists like CSS, M.I.A. and Bonde de Role making the rhythms hip and palatable, it's easy to forget that this music gained notoriety through gang-sponsored parties in the slums of Rio. In the early days, Proibidao, which is a darker, rawer and violent strain of Funk de Carioca, was probably what you would hear pumpin' from the sound systems at these large parties. Much of the music consisted of an emcee rhyming live over a sparse beat, shouting out gang affiliations and death threats to rivals. Most of this music was recorded anonymously and mixed live to mini-disc and then passed to other DJs as is. As a result, these tracks sound raw and are reminiscent of the early recordings of emcee battles in the Bronx during the late '70s and early '80s. A majority of this music was banned by the government and the only way to get it was to record the parties live or to obtain it from a DJ. Since most of the artists were also soldiers in gangs, many of them are either dead or serving long prison terms. This CD serves as an intriguing document of Brazilian hip-hop history and the roots of the rhythms currently in vogue. [DH]

		$15.99 CD   VARIOUS ARTISTS Latinamericarpet (Sublime Frequencies) "Ronda Tropical" Los Destellos "Cuando Sea Grande" Los Traviesos Although all of the cuts on this compilation were recorded in the psychedelic '60s and '70s, this is not strictly a collection of fuzzed-out garage bands from our neighbors to the South. While psychedelic groups like Argentina's Los Renos, the Chilean Sergio del Rio y su Conjunto and others do make a strong showing, equally represented are some truly oddball recordings that appear to be taken from television and radio shows, children's music LPs, folkloric and spoken-word albums and even a Yoga relaxation album. Playful, campy and truly bizarre, Latinamericarpet, unearths some delightful and overlooked oddities that are sure to be a hit with fans of our Decadanse section. [CC]

		Iron Curtain Innocence $14.99 CD $9.99 mp3 Harvest of Dreams $14.99 CD $9.99 mp3   BOBB TRIMBLE Iron Curtain Innocence w/ Bonus Tracks (Secretly Canadian) "Glass Menagerie Fantasies" BOBB TRIMBLE Harvest of Dreams w/ Bonus Tracks (Secretly Canadian) "Premonitions - The Fantasy" Born and raised in and around Western Massachusetts, singer-songwriter Bobb Trimble began writing and recording his own peculiar brand of psychedelic pop towards the end of the 1970s. Unmistakably colored by simplistic, Beatles-esque hooks, Pink Floyd's flair for the dramatically experimental, and Marc Bolan's otherworldly folk whinny, Trimble managed to cut a few records around that time before fading off, only intermittently resuming activity as the decades passed. But like a lot of records now regarded as latter day psych classics, Trimble's albums fell into collector's hands and started trading for three figure sums while earning a rabid group of followers. Now, Secretly Canadian has seen fit to reissue two of Trimble's more impossibly rare albums, giving the larger public a chance to hear a guy whose tunes should have been easy classics. Recorded mostly in 1978 and 1980, Trimble's debut Iron Curtain Innocence split the difference between paranoid rockers and more contemplative, folk-laced numbers. Songs like "Glass Menagerie Fantasies" and "When the Raven Calls" both mix skyward solos with occasional static bursts and bizarrely effected vocals, with searing leads driving these tracks to scorching climaxes. Elsewhere, "One Mile from Heaven" and "Killed by the Hands of an Unknown Rock Starr" take a more pensive approach, with laconically chiming guitars and laidback rhythms that casually sway, giving Trimble's ethereal voice room to haunt and roam. Viewed by many as an outsider classic, Bobb Trimble's Harvest of Dreams dropped in 1982. Far more cohesive than his debut, this album saw Trimble's ruminations sketched out in part by a crew of junior high kids who he taught the niceties of psychedelic folk. Songs like the kid-addled "Take Me Home Vienna" and the earnest pluck of "Premonitions Boy - The Reality" are among the man's finest tracks, each granting him free reign to explore his waifish sensibilities amidst some of the era's most beautifully composed pop. Elsewhere, "Selling me Short While Stringing Me Long" assumes a gorgeously dour air, while the cascade of "Paralyzed" supplies one of the record's more bizarrely beatific moments. Though far from a household name when these two albums were cut, these new reissues (complete with a couple extra bonus tracks each) are undoubtedly poised to break Bobb Trimble to an audience more likely to appreciate his sincere, oddball talents. [MC]

		$9.99 CD-EP w/DVD   BATTLES Tonto+ (Warp) "Tonto" "Leyendecker" Live at FRF '07 I wondered if eight months after the unveiling of Mirrored, with Battles' popularity constantly inflating, whether the record really needed a supplemental release. Turns out there's plenty of new kicks to be had on the Tonto+ EP, which features a slew of remixes (most notably by the Field and Four Tet), a few live cuts, and a bonus DVD. The striking thing about the original version of the title track is the addition of Tyondai Braxton's nonsensical vocals, which concentrate on voice working synonymously with instruments to communicate not with language but sound. In contrast, the Field structures the song in a repetitive manner, looping a beat to conjure a hypnotic, trance version. The video for "Tonto" is stunning and transports you to a place that is like being a prisoner in Plato's cave, questioning the shapes, lights and silhouettes in the piece. The DVD also features the video for "Atlas" and a making-of feature of said video. [KP] JUST IN! We've got two pairs of tickets to give away to Battles' upcoming upcoming show at Webster Hall, next Tuesday, November 13! To enter, send an email to enter@othermusic.com and please include a daytime telephone number. The two winners will be notified this Friday.

		$10.99 CD $8.99 mp3   GOLDMUND Two Point Discrimination (Western Vinyl) "To" "Will" Finally, here's the anticipated follow-up to Goldmund's (a/k/a Keith Kenniff a/k/a Helios) much-lauded and wildly successful (here at OM, at least) Corduroy Road on Type. Two Point Discrimination, on Western Vinyl, features 11 shorter solo piano pieces, all with the same restrained, minimal approach, not totally unlike works by Morton Feldman and Howard Skempton. Kenniff uses a similar mic'ing technique, placing the microphones really close to the hammers and thus creating some of the most intimate music being made today, as you can literally hear his fingers hitting the keys. [BC]

		$14.99 CD $9.99 mp3   MIKE BONES The Sky Behind the Sea (The Social Registry) "Do You Wish I Left?" A permanent fixture on the NY scene for years now, Mike Bones has, up until the release of The Sky Behind the Sea, remained somewhat in the background. Bones proves he is an immensely talented guitar player and lyricist -- Cass McCombs, Richard Hell, and Richard Thompson all come to mind -- and manages to combine deeply personal subject matter with rather abstract poetry to great effect. Backed by Parker Kindred (Antony and the Johnsons), Samara Lubelski and others, The Sky Behind the Sea is one of the best singer/songwriter albums of '07. [BC]

		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 [BC] Baxter Cardona [CC] Che Chen [KC] Kevin Coultas [MC] Michael Crumsho [DG] Daniel Givens [DH] Duane Harriott [MK] Michael Klausman [JM] Josh Madell [KP] Kimberly Powenski THANKS FOR READING - all of us at Other Music

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