|
CD: $13.98
|
Asobi Seksu
At the Echo 10/06/06
The first live release from Asobi Seksu. This Brooklyn, NY based indie electo rock band has created quite a buzz with their recent CMJ performances and national touring. This multi-tracked live recording captures the band in front of a screaming crowrd that inspires the band performance to reach greatness. -CP
Release Date: 12/26/06
Label:Kufala
Genre/Style: Shoesgaze / Pop
MP3 Myspace
|
CD: $18.98
CD/DVD: $24.98
|
Gang Starr
Mass Appeal: The Best of...
The first single-disc hits collection from one of the most influential groups in hip hop is fully maxed with 20 tracks and bonus tracks not on the 2 disc set. CD/DVD combo includes their well known and iconic videos including the aforementioned titles. -CP
Release Date: 12/26/06
Label:Virgin
Genre/Style:Hip Hop
MP3 Myspace
|
CD:$14.98
|
Ill Bill
Is the Future Vol. 2
You already know who he is, and you probably know Non Phixion split up. The cult leader, Ill Bill rizes from the wreckage with a brand new solo mixtape, featuring 3 songs with La Coka Nostra and 4 songs with Raekwon?! Hell yeah, he'll be alright. -CP
Release Date: 12/26/06
Label:Uncle Howie
Genre/Style: Hip Hop
MP3 Myspace
|
DVD: $16.98
|
Japanther
Dump the Body in Rikki Lake
dump the body in rikki lake - a rock puppet opera DVD october 31, 2006 this double sided dvd is slated for an early october release and was recorded one year ago in nyc. japanther, wrote and performed a special show where they transformed a back room into the cover of rikki lake (the room was painted to look like the cover with wall murals by devin flynn) Two 11 foot puppets were created and battled while japanther raged on stage. the inside of the room was decorated by ufo 907, elisabeth arkhipoff made a music video, dan luce made the puppets, and eugene tsai did the lighting...it was so much fun! they performed the show each friday for one month, 2 shows each night. t'was a legendary month, and we've got it shot on 5 cameras thanks to chad who co-produced the dvd release....and now you can pretend you were there too!. this 2 sided dvd has hi-lites from all the shows, as well as several full uncut performances, videos, a documentary made my matt, and other fun treats. it's also menlo park's first dvd which means something i'm sure. feel free to let me know what.... and watch out, i'm gonna release a vingle next. it's rumored the first 500 of these dvd's will have a bonus cd, but it's just a rumor...... -CP
Release Date: 12/26/06
Label: Menlo Park
Genre/Style: Experimental / Rock
MP3 Unavailable
|
CD/DVD: $14.98
|
Matisyahu
No Place To Be
Matisyahu No Place To Be CD + bonus DVD package CD contains 7 new tracks, including "Jerusalem (Out Of Darkness Comes Light)" and "Message In A Bottle" recorded with Sly & Robbie. The bonus 'Live in Israel' DVD contains a live show shot in Tel Aviv, intercut with interviews and street performances from Jerusalem. -CP
Release Date: 12/26/06
Label: Sony
Genre/Style: Reggae / Dub
MP3 Matisyahu
|
CD: $9.98
|
Mos Def
Airing
Def returns with his third album and uses his artistry to speak about the subject of hip hop, the feeding frenzy it generates and questions what its success has created. -CP
Release Date:12/26/06
Label:MCA
Genre/Style: Hip Hop
MP3 Myspace
|
| |
 |
|
CD:$13.98
LP:$12.98
|
Converge
No Heroes
Damn Converge. Damn them for signing to Epitaph. Damn them for getting so big and popular that they’ve moved beyond the need to play Norfolk anymore. It used to be you could count on them to come at least once a year to leave you with a ringing in your ears and a smile on your face. They’re one of those bands that never lets you down live; they give it their all every time.
For their entire career Converge have been releasing records just as intense as their live shows. Their brand of envelope-pushing, metallic hardcore fueled by singer Jacob Bannon’s venomous screams and guitarist/producer Kurt Ballou’s marvelously heavy guitar riffs has carved the band a place in hardcore history and influenced countless young shredders. Despite the fact Converge continue to push the boundaries of hardcore and metal with each record, fans can always count on Jacob’s incredible vocals, innovative and brutal riffs, a tight rhythm section, and lyrics that read like a suicide note. Sure, they’ve changed a bit since Petitioning the Empty Sky, but most fans have welcomed the heavier sound and experimentation.
With the first five songs averaging under a minute and a half, one would think Converge has abandoned the epic, slow-paced and more emotional sound of their last album, You Fail Me . Like a accidental kick in the face at a hardcore show, the songs hit surprisingly hard and pummel you in a way that many had thought Converge left behind. There’s definitely more of a nod to Jane Doe or Forever Comes Crashing than You Fail Me and it’s an excellent and exciting jump start into the band’s latest record. However, the band hasn’t completely lost their love for slow-tempo, churning songs. Starting with “Plagues,” a track that could have been pulled from You Fail Me’s outtakes, the boys trade their speed, and off-the-wall guitars for more a more concentrated heaviness that only crushingly slow riffs can create.
The record takes an interesting turn with the 9 and a half minute “Grim Heart/Black Rose,” where the guitar turns somber, poignant, and almost post-rock-esque while Jacob actually sings(!) intelligible lyrics in a way that might surprise some longtime fans. I know that last sentence might freak some people out, but if I had to compare it to something I’d say the chorus of the song actually comes out sounding more influenced by Maynard James Keenan’s vocals than that guy from Staind, so don’t feel scared. Converge are not selling out. Though, I think most people saw this coming anyway and it’s only for one song.
After feeling confused, but intrigued by “Grim Heart/Black Rose,” the record picks up again with more classic and chaotic Converge. Before I heard this record I tried to imagine where the band would go next, this last third of No Heroes is almost exactly what I had in mind: a combination of intensity, riffs that beat you down, and a little bit of the poignancy displayed on You Fail Me or the slower songs of Jane Doe. This is a funny record in that it almost seems to have three different parts to it: the lighting fast ragers in the beginning, the introduction of some very uncharacteristic vocal work, and finishing off with the songs you’d expected all along. I have to wonder if the songs were arranged in the order the band wrote them or if they felt they had to sandwich “Grim Heart/Black Rose” in between more typical Converge in order to make it more palatable for their more staunch fans.
Maybe you’re confused by the terrible sentence structures and questionable grammar in this review and you just want to know, “Should I buy No Heroes?” Yes. Yes you should. In fact, you should buy it the day it’s released. Even if you’ve just discovered Converge, this is a great introduction to one of the greatest hardcore bands around right now. With seven full-lengths and a slew of eps and other stuff floating around it’s amazing that this band continues to release records that aren’t stale and perhaps most importantly, don’t suck. -KM
Release Date:10/24/06
Label: Epitaph
Genre/Style: Metal / Hardcore
MP3 Album Overview
|
CD:$13.98
LP:$12.98
|
Swan Lake
Beast Moans
Wolf Parade: makers of one of James’ favorite albums of 2005. Destroyer: maker of one of James’ favorite albums of 2006. Frog Eyes: a band James thinks is okay, maybe good, but not as good as the other two, who are awesome. So make an internet press release saying that Dan Bejar (Destroyer, New Pornographers), Spencer Krug (Wolf Parade, Sunset Rubdown), and Carey Mercer (Frog Eyes) are making a band and an album together, and you’ve got one excited James on your hands. I had some bloody high expectations of Beast Moans, maybe even unfair ones, but I have to hand it to these gentleman: they’ve cut one hell of a crazy record. This is indie-pop in its more interesting, less accessible, highly creative form; the form that made us love the genre in the first place.
The songs each display a distinct style, it’s very easy to identify the main songwriter of each track. The gentlemen did not meld their differences into a solid colloidal mass, they’ve actively held onto their individuality, and this sets them apart from (and above) most supergroups. But coinciding with this individuality is the wonderful backgrounds added by the other two men, often just as brash in their contrast as they are tremendous in their harmony. The self-produced record has so many un-separated layers, it begins to feel like a great house show with all your best friends, sometimes scattered, often obstreperous, more often interesting, and always wonderful.
With Dan and Spencer having just recently released two extremely catchy albums (Rubies and Apologies to Queen Mary), it’ll be interesting to see how their fans react to an album that, though poppy, often rejects the dancey sing-along nature of indie-pop. Wolf Parade fans will probably be surprised by Swan Lake’s mellowness, Destroyer fans by its upbeatness, and me by its greatness. After my very high expectations, the biggest disappointment I have is the fact that I’ll probably never get the opportunity to see Swan Lake live and quite possibly won’t ever see a follow-up album. Listen to track 3 “City Calls,” the perfect melding of the three disparate styles, and you’ll probably know very quickly if this is your thing. Just remember, this is indie-pop that takes work, something the genre hasn’t required, in my opinion, since The Moon and Antarctica. And once again, it’s worth the effort. -JM
Release Date: 11/21/06
Label: Jagjaguwar
Genre/Style: Pop / Rock
MP3 All Fires
|
CD:$10.98
|
Future Sound of London
Teachings From the Electronic Brain
The first time I remember finding out about the Future Sound Of London(FSOL) was in 1992 while working in a shitty corporate music store. I was very much into elctronic dance music already at this time and remember getting in the Soundtrack for the Cool World (an animated movie with the voices of Kim Basinger, Gabriel Byrne, Brad Pitt). The soundtrack aslo had artists Moby, Electronic, David Bowie, My Life With The Thrill Kill Cult, Brian Eno, and Ministry. Not ever hearing of FSOL before I wanted to know more since they were featured on this very first of its time electronic/eclectic soundtrack. Their song on the soundtrack “Paupa New Guinea.” The song became a popular rave and club track almost immediately upon its release. The original mix notably samples the bassline from Meat Beat Manifesto’s proto-jungle track “Radio Babylon”. A sample of Lisa Gerrard’s voice is also lifted from the Dead Can Dance song “Dawn Of The Iconoclast”, from their 1987 album Within the Realm of a Dying Sun. “Papua New Guinea” was perhaps FSOL’s most club-oriented track; most of the remixes on the single are very dancefloor-friendly. After Accelerator’s release, however, they moved in increasingly ambient and experimental directions. Taken from Wikipedia.
Its now over fifteen yeas since this duo of Brian Dougans & Garry Cobain came together. After producing several albums and being together for such a period of time its not suprising to see a “Greatest Hits” These guys have paved the way for so many of todays electronic superstars like Daft Punk, The Crystal Method, and Chemical Brothers. They have also been responsible for making music that has created new generes like Ambient-techno. Their very unique sound is very organic in nature yet its completly been re-worked and tripped out using modern technology. This “Best Of” contains tracks that are not much more than just soundscapes as well as tracks that sound as if they are the soundtracks to voyages between heaven and hell. There are songs that can take you back to a time when raving was something you did to escape everyday lifeand there are songs that can scare the living shit out of you. This music takes you on a trip without ever having to leave your home. There are beats that just make you feel the funk. This is music so raw, so there but at the same time you can feel a million mles from home. So many influences involed between the middle east to the psychedellic west. Does it matter where you are? This music is so original, simple, natural, yet it gives me a feeling of being in a place where tomorrow may never come so I should just live, breath, and exisit while I can. At times there are feelings of confusion and uncertainty but at the same time it feels that I am just realizing I am just a pawn of evolution. This is the music that if you have never done drugs might scare and intice you to do them. Music is just that. music. Be scarred of what you don’t know but relize if you dont explore what scares you your at square one. What is a square? Why not question reality? Why not just give this a listen? Why do we have to make sense? -JP
Release Date: 10/03/06
Label: Astralwerks
Genre/Style: Electronic
MP3 Myspace
|
CD:$19.98
|
John Fahey
Sea Changes & Coelacanths: A Young Persons Guide to John Fahey
Subtitled: A Young Person's Guide to John Fahey. This compiles Fahey's earlier releases for TOE: 1997's Womblife and the live followup Georgia Stomps, Atlanta Struts; plus the Hard Time Empty Bottle Blues 12" (all o/p as individiual releases at this point). "In the 43 years between his first recordings and his death in 2001, John Fahey stomped across the American soundscape, leaving behind footprints of influence so breathtakingly vast that entire genres now huddle within them. Fahey's mesmeric guitar compositions fused the blues' syncopated rhythms with contemporary dissonance; Eastern influences with musique-concrete. He was the first to demonstrate that traditional steel-string finger-picking techniques could be used to express a universe of non-traditional ideas, and his contribution to American music is immense. Sea Changes & Coelacanths compiles all of Fahey's mid-'90s recordings for the Table of the Elements label and embodies an artistic essence, with sounds that are undiluted, uncompromised, starkly honest, pure of vision, and in every way innovative -- just like the man himself. -CP
Release Date: 11/21/06
Label: Table of the Elements
Genre/Style: Folk
MP3 Myspace
|
CD: $13.98
|
Bonobo
Days To Come
Simon Green aka Bonobo returns with his third album and the kind of quantum leap in quality that very few artists make. “Days To Come” has the feeling of a classic all over – a big, brooding, emotional and uplifting record that you can dance to, do the dishes to, or sit and really study.
Green has always been expert at welding together music dripping with atmosphere, combining his own musical and technical talents in such a way as to make utterly organic-sounding machine music. This is not just a knob-twiddling producer but a multi-instrumentalist at work, who writes, plays and then manipulates almost every note of music he releases. And “Days To Come” shows a new structural awareness growing from this, a feeling for the song form and the gradual build which raises it way above the work of many of his contemporaries and cries out for him to achieve the kind of mainstream success that has talent has long hinted at.
Bonobo’s debut album, “Animal Magic,” was released by Brighton label TruThoughts just as the journalistic vogue for “chill out” music began to peak, the Observer said “anyone in search of the ultimate summer chill-out album should buy this debut.” Having rejected the advances of more than one major label, Green decided to sign with Ninja Tune and for them he produced “Dial M For Monkey,” a brooding and intricate record which not only continued his move away from traditional sampling techniques, but broadsided the idea that he only made music for people to listen to in transcendental bubble bath yurts. The Independent labelled him a “name to watch”. Now, with “Days To Come,” the processes and techniques he developed on the transitional “Dial M…” have reached fruition, mainly (though not solely) because “Days…” could be seen as a collection of songs.
Rather than turning himself into a producer-for-hire on his own record and delivering a compilation album, Green found one main singer to work with, and her voice certainly adds that crucial edge to proceedings. Bajka (pronounced ‘Biker’) grew up as part of Embryo, a travelling music commune, whose journies took them through Afghanistan, Nepal and Pakistan. Now based in Germany she has released records on labels such as Ubiquity and Compost. A smokey, soulful singer, she sounds as at home on the big band soul-jazz of “Between The Lines” as on the more melancholic “Nightlite”, which Zane Lowe has already started playing on his Radio 1 show as a sunsetter anthem. Green is also joined by labelmate and fellow Brightonian Fink on the beautiful come-on “If You Stayed Over,” a gem of emotional pop that sees both of them at the top of their game.
Green hasn’t abandoned the instrumentals, though. “Ketto” arrives with a dreamlike intensity, “On Your Marks” hits with the all the force of early-era Shadow, while Part 2 of “Transmissions94” is amongst the most beautiful and transcendent music that this quiet and self-effacing producer has yet crafted.
With his fantastic band (in which he plays bass and with whom he has headlined the Big Chill and the Glade at Glastonbury) set to transform these studio pieces into living, breathing music, the stage is set for Simon Green to step up. The days to come look bright indeed, but sad and beautiful and lovely, too. Don’t miss them. -CP
Release Date: 10/31/06
Label: Ninja Tune
Genre/Style: Lounge
MP3 Myspace
|
| |
 |
|
|
|
