March 6th, 2007
< author: g booker >
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RJD2
The Third Hand
Label: XL
Release Date:08/22/2006 |
How do we continue to be surprised when the worlds of rock and hip-hop clash? It is increasingly more apparent that it happens all the time. The artists that surprise us the most should surprise us the least. With DJ Shadow’s penchant for atmospherics and wistful vocal lines, it shouldn’t have been surpring that there were straight up mild rock songs on his last albums. What should have been surprising in Shadow’s case was how mediocre those songs turned out to be. RJD2 is an artist who has suffered in his esteem through unavoidable comparisons to Shadow. He’s also a white hip-hop guy who makes great instrumentals, and he made two great albums on Definitive Jux, the thinking paranoiac’s hip-hop label, the second more rock inflected than the first. Perhaps it should not surprise that he has now changed labels and put out an album in which he sings and writes songs. It is very un-DJ-like, but it ends up playing to his strengths (one of which turns out to be his voice) and pushing them into a new realm. Read the rest of this entry »
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March 5th, 2007
< author: james >
Today has been an incredibly conflicted day for me. Major confessions have been made and then retracted; I’ve fallen in love with my city and hours later discovered its bitter edge; I froze in the winds of early morning and then basked in the warmth of the afternoon. The minutes have waxed and waned and fought with themselves. And now, nearing this day’s end, I sit and listen for the fifth or sixth time to an album to which I have still not sorted out my reaction.
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March 3rd, 2007
< author: g booker >
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Amon Tobin
Foley Room
Label: Ninja Tune
Release Date:03/06/2007 |
The sometimes idolized, and sometimes taken for granted Amon Tobin’s new album, “The Foley Room,” creates the odd impression of reminding me to have missed him. Tobin, who hasn’t released a proper album in 4 years or so, is the kind of electronic artist who, despite the obsessive terminology developed, it was always difficult to put a finger on. Even if you bothered to calculate what polysyllabic idiosyncratic variation of a subgenre he was working in, it would be more or less irrelevant in actually evoking the feel of his music. Tobin legitimately has the open mind and discipline to create a sonic universe capable of accomodating a nearly infinite range of sounds, structures and feels, and somehow synthesizing and twisting them according to his own muse. Read the rest of this entry »
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March 1st, 2007
< author: The Franze >
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Eluvium
Copia
Label: Temporary Residence
Release Date:02/20/07 |
The best soundtrack possible for the most beautiful movie that will never be made. Read the rest of this entry »
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February 28th, 2007
< author: The Franze >
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Dr. Dog
We All Belong
Label: Park The Van Records
Release Date:02/27/07 |
We All Belong opens with the track Old News, a song that sounds as if it fell from the liner notes of The Beatles Help! album. It is only around 2 minutes long, but sets the mood for this magnificent album perfectly vowing that “It’s So Easy To Dream… But So Hard, To Say Goodnight.” Dr. Dog hails from Philadelphia PA and is determined to put that city on the map for (good) alternative rock. Read the rest of this entry »
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February 28th, 2007
< author: g booker >
The British label that has made its name over the years as the best distributor of classic Jamaican music, Trojan, has released a new single disc compilation. It is called “Jonny Greenwood Is The Controller.” Jonny Greenwood is a guitarist in Radiohead, and may seem an odd choice to arrange a reggae mix. Greenwood, however, does such a fine job as selector that it does not feel forced or unnatural at all. One of the mightiest Jamaican anthems of the last year or two, Turbulence’s “Notorious,” seems to have broken out within indieish communities from its inclusion in the mix played at Radiohead shows. There is a nervous, paranoid undercurrent of dread within this sampler that suggests that Radiohead and dub may share more than it initially sounds like. Read the rest of this entry »
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February 27th, 2007
< author: g booker >
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Erasure
On the Road to Nashville
Label: Mute
Release Date: 02/20/07
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It is easy to put a finger on many of MTV’s ultimately negative contributions to pop culture. Understanding that it has brought a great deal of incredible art to mass audiences who would never be exposed to it otherwise (or at least it used to do this when it highly emphasized music videos and programming), it now seems clear that the lasting legacy of the network seems to be vacuous reality programming, pervasive celebrity culture, catering to miniscule attention spans, and the prioritization of the tastes of middle school audiences. Read the rest of this entry »
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February 27th, 2007
< author: g booker >
Calla gets more out of space and quietness than many bands get out of noise overload. This is not the pretentious, “this is tasteful and meaningful” silence some artists use to create an artificial sense of gravitas for undeveloped compositions. For one thing, Calla’s songs are certainly developed. There is a deliberateness in the sparse arrangements, where every element is carefully placed and ideally compliments the sound or lack thereof that surrounds it. Read the rest of this entry »
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February 27th, 2007
< author: g booker >
When I first saw this album, I thought it was a trick. Daptone Records has a habit of disguising their stellar new releases, by artists like Sharon Jones, the Sugarman 3, and Lee Fields, as unearthed treasures from a distant golden age of funk and soul. The label’s latest release, “If This World Were Mine…” by Bob & Gene, turns out to be a legitimate rediscovered treasure, coming from late 60s Buffalo, originally recorded on the obscure Mo Do label. Read the rest of this entry »
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February 21st, 2007
< author: g booker >
“Sex Change,” the latest from Trans Am, is a truly invigorating, exhilarating album. The band, originally hailing from Washington, DC, and now about as internationally dispersed as 3 guys can be, have always been occasionally awesome and at least interesting. Where previous releases sometimes seemed entangled in dominant concepts that sometimes seemed like jokes, “Sex Change” is the sound of friends reconvening with pent up creativity, creating an immensely satisfying album with a diverse palate. Read the rest of this entry »
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