Archive for June, 2008
Alabama 3
Hits and Exit Wounds
One Little Indian
What do you get when you combine electronica with references to gospel, country music, and old-time blues? UK group Alabama 3, who go under the moniker “A3″ in the US, combines these seemingly incompatible genres on their compilation Hits and Exit Wounds, creating songs that are catchy, if sometimes a bit hard to describe.
A3 is perhaps best known for “Woke up This Morning,” theme song for TV series The Sopranos. It’s a stirring example of their take on beat-centric, hook-heavy, hybridized house music; but it only scratches the surface. “Woody Guthrie” is a defiant response to jingoistic, unthinking, hyper-nationalism. “Too Sick to Pray” is a dark-pop paean to doubt.
The band has a sense of humor too: “Ska’d for Life” and “U Don’t Danse to Tekno Anymore” are witty without pretense and feature eminently danceable grooves to boot. Hits and Exit Wounds is an ideal way to wade into A3′s oeuvre.
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Moby
Last Night
Mute Corporation
Moby’s latest full length CD, Last Night, mines the melodically catchy techno electronica of his previous works while demonstrating a few new, composerly, tricks. Acknowledging that minimal techno concerns itself with somewhat different milieu than minimalist concert music, it is still striking to notice places on Last Night where Moby explores similar techniques to those found in works by Downtown composers such as Philip Glass and Steve Reich. Glass can be heard in the large slices of exact repetition on songs such as “Oo Yeah” and “Live for Tomorrow,” where a melodic snippet or harmony is extended until it achieves an almost hypnotic quality. On the “Reich side” of the equation, Moby employs sophisticated morphing of textures and rhythms on “I Love to Move in Here.” Of course, you may be too busy dancing to the outstanding grooves of “Alice” and “I’m in Love” to worry overly much about such subtleties in the moment, but the arrangements on Last Night are what makes this music transcend its commercial appeal and reward repeated hearings.
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James Choice Orchestra
Live at Musik Triennale Köln
Leo Records CDLR 513
www.leorecords.com
The James Choice Orchestra is a 23-piece ensemble whose membership encompasses practitioners of avant jazz, free improv, and contemporary classical music. Its four leaders – Frank Gratkowski, Carl Ludwig Hübsch, Matthias Schubert, and Norbert Stein – also serve as composers-in-residence. The material they create combines all of the above disciplines and is rendered in a variety of manners: traditionally notated compositions, graphic scores, and directed improvisations, with some pieces created for the group even employing multiple methods of communicating musical information. The prevailing aesthetic is thus one of collaboration rather than compositional rigidity.
The group’s debut recording on Leo features a piece from each of its composers, all performed at the Musik Triennale Köln in 2007. The festival was devoted both to improvisation and the music of the late composer Luciano Berio. Each work ends up in some way dealing with Berio’s oeuvre, either through quotation or as an inspirational starting point. In particular, Berio’s Sequenzas prove to be a significant touchstone in all of the pieces. The music is fascinating both in terms of conception and execution, appealing to fans of Berio and ‘out music’ alike.
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Four Tet
Ringer EP
Domino Records
Kieran Hebden’s Four Tet is only one of his many projects; he’s also active in an avant jazz duo with Steve Reid, the post-rock outfit Fridge, and as a producer and session musician for artists ranging from Jamie Lidell to Sunburned Hand of the Man. His latest Four Tet recording, Ringer, is an EP containing four instrumentals. In pieces such as the ten-minute long title cut and just slightly shorter “Swimmer,” Hebden employs emphatically thumping programmed beats – rich subwoofer territory – to set up a seemingly straightforward template for ambitious club fare. However, over these familiar rhythms he interweaves elaborate synthetic textures and shifting materials, creating IDM (“Intelligent Dance Music”) of the first order. Ringer confounds one’s expectations of what can be done in 4/4 time; Hebden packs plenty of substance into this all too fleeting, tantalizing recording.
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Subrosa
Strega
I Hate Records IHR CD 051 (www.ihate.se)
What do you do if you’re a female quartet hell-bent on playing heavy metal, but live in an unlikely proving ground such as Salt Lake City, Utah? Subrosa’s answer was to sign with Swedish label I Hate Records; Strega, their debut on the imprint, transcends normal heavy music stylistic boundaries.
Their lead singer often prefers chanting to singing; on songs such as “Black Joan” and “Sugar Creek” these incantatory vocals are underpinned by doom metal guitar riffs and explosive drumming, While there’s head-banging aplenty to be found on Strega, songs such as “Christine” hew closer to darkly-textured indie rock than metal, calling to mind bands such as Daughter and Swans. Further afield still is “Go Down Moses,” a beautiful ballad that incorporates chorused vocals of a more melodic character and lush harmonies into a piece of ambient goth pop. The band also employs electric violin in several numbers, allowing it to serve as a solo voice instead of metal’s preferred weapon of choice: the electric guitar. Strega is a satisfying effort that is full of surprises.
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John Harbison: Ulysses – Complete Ballet
Boston Modern Orchestra Project
BMOP Sound (www.bmopsound.org)
It’s hard to believe that Pulitzer prizewinning composer John Harbison, who turns seventy this year, composed a full length ballet nearly a quarter of a century ago and it has yet to be staged. Ulysses (1984/rev, 2003), has been played piecemeal by various orchestras over the years; Andre Previn and the Pittsburgh Symphony recorded its second act, “Ulysses’ Bow,” for Nonesuch; but it wasn’t until 2003 that an orchestra performed the work in its entirety. That ensemble, the Boston Modern Orchestra Project, conducted by Gil Rose, has recently recorded Ulysses for their new imprint BMOP Sound.
Cast in two large sections, “Ulysses’ Raft” and “Ulysses’ Bow,” the ballet was inspired, according to Harbison, by Monteverdi’s Return of Ulysses; in particular, its climactic scene in which the hero strings his bow and vanquishes Penelope’s suitors. Harbison’s fascination with this bold gesture demonstrates itself in the muscularity of his Ulysses. Never has his work sounded more determined or clearly delineated than here.
The score is influenced both by the early ballets of Stravinsky – several passages are evocative of Sacre and Petroushka – as well as Wagnerian music drama. Indeed one can trace several leitmotifs through the work in an evolving series of relationships. This is particularly explicit in the second Act, in which the “Bow motive” plays a prominent role. While the use of leitmotifs, a hallmark of the late Romantic era, and the modern rhythms and ostinati from modern ballet might seem an incongruous pairing at first, Harbison does an excellent job of reconciling these two seemingly disparate elements. The language he employs is thus both richly hued and viscerally exciting; above all, Ulysses is masterfully orchestrated. While this recording whets ones appetite for a staging of the full work, Harbison couldn’t wish for better advocates or interpreters of Ulysses than Rose and the BMOP; an excellent recording.
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Imaginational Anthem Volume Three
Various Artists
Tompkins Square TSQ1905 (www.tompkinssquare.com)
Like its predecessors, the third installment in Tompkins Square’s Imaginational Anthem series is a collection of solo guitar and banjo performances by artists with a wide range of approaches. Producer Josh Rosenthal has culled from present day sources and decades-old archives to find fascinating selections, many of them decidedly experimental in character.
A cut by banjoist George Stavis is an example of one of several “finds.” Stavis recorded “Goblins” in 1969 for his only LP on Vanguard, Labyrinths (Occult Improvisations for Five-string Banjo and Percussion); a byproduct of the times, its cover was replete with trippy wizard imagery. “Goblins” packs bluegrass, psych-folk, and abundant virtuosity into a tightly wrought, substantial musical package. At the other end of the chronological spectrum, a youngster on the scene, 19-year old Cian Nugent, supplies the evocatively titled and stirringly incandescent “When the Snow Melts and Floats Downstream,” a blend of Celtic folk melodies and murmuring arpeggiations.
Richard Crandell, whose 1980 recording In the Flower of Our Youth will be reissued on Tomkins Square this year (on vinyl), is represented here by a 2002 piece entitled “Zocato,” featuring wistful minor-key improvisations and tasteful barre-chord voicings. Greg Davis’s “Sleep Architecture” instead favors resonant open-tuned harmonies, building beguiling progressions over a drone bass.
One of the best acoustic guitarists on the current scene, Stephen Basho-Junghans, contributes a piece that demonstrates his preoccupation with combining Eastern and Western musics in “Blue Mountain Raga II.” It’s a spacious quarter-hour long meditation that wends its way through a plethora of seemingly effortlessly spun strands of lustrous modality. Shawn David McMillen closes the CD with “Texarkana 1971,” a potpourri which goes through several styles, from drone-based improvisations and country-rag solos to a bucolic jig. Like the rest of Imaginational Anthem, it supplies something for nearly everyone.
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Eliot Lipp
The Outside
Mush Records (www.dirtyloop.com)
Why is it that a musician using similar stylistic signatures and basically the same formal structures as colleagues within his own genre makes music that just sounds better? Searching for the ephemeral element that elevates creativity will occupy composers and listeners as long as music is made; but when CD’s like Eliot Lipp’s The Outside come along, they make us consider it anew. After all there’s more ambient electronica out there than you can shake a stick at; what makes this Brooklynite laptop symphonist better than many of his contemporaries?
Part of Lipp’s talent lies in his excellent, yet catholic, tastes, both in musical material and instruments themselves. A self-styled purveyor of “electrofunk,” he employs vintage synths alongside programmed beats and digital technology, thus drawing from a diverse palette. Lipp also knows how to deploy these diverse elements. The Outside features perfect pacing on instrumentals such as the title track, with its bent-note solos and sassy robot grooves, and the beguiling trip hop number “Beyond the City.” “Best Friends”,” with a sepulchral and swinging bass-line and a warm IDM ambience, is so evocative that it seems to cry out for visual accompaniment. Why the movie business hasn’t snatched this guy up yet is beyond me!
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Café Antarsia Ensemble
Songs of the Table
Innova Records (www.innova.mu)
Innova Records primarily releases contemporary classical music, but the imprint also supports crossover recordings that are consonant with the adventurousness of their other programming. An American quartet, the Café Antarsia Ensemble plays Mediterranean-influenced pop that is convincingly faithful to its folk origins while placing them firmly in a new hybridized context.
Featuring instruments such as bouzouki, lute, riq, and tzouras as well as guitar and accordion, Antarsia weaves multi-textured arrangements in tightly-rendered performances. Principal singers Nikos Brisco and Ruth Margraff both have attractive voices and take turns leading the songs; percussionist Rami El-Aasser and guitarist Ron Riley provide strong vocal support, allowing the group to periodically break into four-part harmonies. Striking in its immediacy are songs such as “White Tortoise Lute,” “Jasmin’s Veil” and “Book of Tea,” which mix exotic, evocative lyrics (in English) with vigorous strummed guitars, undulating rhythmic grooves, and catchy vocal choruses. Café Antarsia Ensemble may err a bit on the side of polish over passion – one wishes they’d let loose a bit more occasionally – but they’re a tight unit with compelling material of wide-ranging appeal.
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Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra & Tra-La-La Band
13 Blues for Thirteen Moons
Constellation Records
There’s been a lot of anger and fear on the news, even more so than usual, in the first six months of 2008. Economic and environmental woes, wars that continue to wreak havoc, more catastrophic weather compounded by bureaucratic intrigues, and a particularly rancorous primary season here in the United States: bad news and ill will bombards one seemingly everywhere you turn, irrespective of the media outlet. The collective frustration so prevalent during this twilight of the Bush Administration is nowhere more manifestly channeled into music than on the latest Thee Silver Mt. Zion Memorial Orchestra & Tra-La-La Band CD, 13 Blues for Thirteen Moons.
Many of the musicians on the Canada-based Constellation roster have been raising a clarion call to action since the mid-nineties, attacking the policies of big business and corrupt government officials. This reached a fever pitch right at the beginning of George W. Bush’s presidency, with outfits like Godspeed You! Black Emperor and, later, its offshoot Thee Silver Mt. Zion serving as a bracing musical rebuttal to the right. That said, their latest full length reinvents some of the band’s previous rules of engagement.
After a quixotic introduction – high-pitched tones split into twelve tracks (allowing the album proper to begin on track 13) – Silver Mt. Zion comes out swinging on “1,000,000 Died to Make this Sound.” The usual post-rock formula, often followed by the band on their previous works, involves a slow crescendo over a long span of time. It’s become a cliché, really, in the past decade, and so it was time that the group abandoned it. But what replaces the slow crescendo is music that, after a relatively docile introduction, leaps out of nowhere, crushing in intensity; the dynamics shift from piano to fortissimo and the listener is buffeted by walls of amplification. In the past, Silver Mt. Zion was often considered the “chamber music” foil to Godspeed’s more rocking demeanor; here the guitars play an integral role amidst keyboards, strings, and chorused voices. This is set against leader Efrim’s enraged singing and a vocal chorus similarly fired up.
The title track is even more explicit in its message. A funeral march, complete with tolling drum, is pitted against a drone-laden heavy rock guitar ostinato. Over this is a vocal right on the edge of screaming that articulates an excoriating indictment of today’s political, social, and even cultural climate. The music builds to match the intensity of the lyric’s content, periodically subsiding into a restless, animus-filled calm, only to once again pick up its dirge-like, two-chord, dance of the Furies.
A mournful cast is adopted on “Black Waters Blowed/Engine Broke Blues;” keening vocals are interspersed with feedback-laden guitar passages that squall in the post-tonal language of avant improvisation. “BlindBlindBlind,” conversely, features much melodic beauty. Achingly dolorous singing is accompanied by a chaconne (harmonic ostinato) in the guitar and organ. Strings make their presence felt in a wonderful pizzicato version of the chaconne. More and more voices are added to the chorus, taking up a final, hopeful refrain as the music swells: “May the Light of Our Striving Still Shine…’Cause Some Hearts are True.” This thrilling climax gradually subsides into a fragile, a cappella coda.
With 13 Blues for Thirteen Moons, Silver Mt. Zion has successfully cultivated a kind of chamber punk, integrating the rock aesthetic of Godspeed, their own concert music-inspired instrumentation, and a heretofore unseen intensity. It’s hard to think of a CD that better captures a culture’s disaffected ambience in early 2008, and its concomitant hopes for change in the future.
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