Hey there readers/world - I hope you didn't think this blog was necessarily dead forever! With great pleasure I'd like to unveil a new album that has been in the works since late 2009. Granules is my open-ended music project with Sepehr Nabi and Niv Bavarsky. Sepehr lives in Oslo, Norway, and Niv and I are based in California (though Niv was attending MICA in Baltimore when his parts for this album were recorded), so this music was all made from material sent back-and-forth over the Internet.
Granules is an experimental workshop - Sepehr, Niv and I have unique musical backgrounds, artistic interests and tastes, and we never once sat down to discuss specifically what our "sound" or aesthetic should be like, though we did discuss tracks in the works. The music developed naturally out of the constraints of our recording capabilities and what we were interested in playing and hearing. Many influences have made deep impressions on all three of us in different ways, including experimental electronic music, jazz, 20th century composition, ambient music, and even hip-hop. We want to abandon genre idioms and explore new expressions through experiments in texture, color and form. We also want to evoke unusual images. Unfolding began as somewhat of a jumble of ideas, but as we worked together for over a year, scrapping and revising tracks, a sense of movement and unification started to come together. I don't want to make any comment as to the emotional qualities of the music, save for that I've honestly never heard anything quite like it.
We present Unfolding on Bandcamp for download in most any file format, free of charge. Note that the album was designed as a continuous musical trip, and several of the track transitions are seamless, so make sure to hear it on a gapless playback device!
Teebs' debut LP for Brainfeeder was one of my most anticipated releases of 2010, and it delivered on my every expectation and hope, and then some. Around the fall of 2009 I heard about Teebs from Nosaj Thing's excellent mix of music for the XLR8R Podcast series. Apparently Teebs got into making music when he sustained an injury from skateboarding and found a lot of time on his hands; somehow, he connected to Flying Lotus and became his roommate in LA. Teebs handed out a CD-R compilation in 2009 which completely sold me the first time I heard it. My readers probably know about me that I put a high priority on beauty, and Teebs makes futuristic instrumental hip hop that possesses utopian levels of beauty.
Ardour takes the best handful of tracks from the Teebs '09 compilation and distributes them among more than a dozen newer tracks to form a very tightly focused album. All but one of the tracks (the dreamy "Long Distance" featuring Gaby Hernandez on vocals) are instrumental, and many of them use a similar combination of chimes, bells, sparkling clean electric guitars, bass, Rhodes, ambient synth patches and traditional hip hop percussion. Lush and warm nearly to the point of humidity, the album effortlessly breezes by with some of the most consistently excellent production, melodic hooks and rhythmic flair around. Not a single track is weak, and a handful of them are as good as anything out there. Why, then, did the album end up at my #5 spot when I initially thought it was Top 3 material?
For being so consistent in instrumentation and so constantly gorgeous, combined with the length, Ardour ends up suffering a little bit from samey-ness and Ear Candy Syndrome. Basically we get a little too much of a really good thing. If the album were shorter or changed up its mood a little more, I would probably call it perfect. It works well as a musical trip to paradise, but I'd like to hear Teebs explore some colors other than glowing pastels. One darker track, and a standout on the album, "Why Like This", suggests he could very well work more with grittier sounds if he wanted.
Despite this selfish criticism I still think Teebs is making some of the most interesting new music, truly evolving beyond hip hop to probe sci-fi realms nobody else is exploring. His live sets go full-on psychedelic at times, and anybody in the vicinity of Eagle Rock should check out the new monthly live event "Futura" at the Center for the Arts, curated by Teebs and Asura. I should also mention that Teebs is a talented visual artist and the painter of his own album cover. With a craft as tight as anybody's in the game, Teebs could become the new most exciting beat pioneer by taking his sound just a little bit deeper.
4. Charles Lloyd Quartet - Mirror
No saxophonist I can think of has released more high quality albums throughout the 2000s than Charles Lloyd. His latest for ECM, Mirror, is not just the best jazz album of 2010 but one of the finest albums Charles Lloyd has ever recorded in his 45+ years as a respected improviser, interpreter and composer. His current band, with Jason Moran on piano, Reuben Rogers on bass, and Eric Harland on drums, is one of the strongest active jazz quartets. Their last album was the 2008 live concert recording Rabo de Nube, highlighting their passionately energetic interplay and daring solos. Things are relatively more toned down and introspective on Mirror, which features the group at their most sensitive and elegant.
The track selection includes several Charles Lloyd originals including the beaming, lovely "Desolation Sound", asymmetrical "Mirror" and exotic "Being and Becoming", as well as fresh interpretations of standards and spirituals like "I Fall in Love Too Easily", "Go Down, Moses", and "The Water is Wide". The band plays two Thelonious Monk tunes, "Monk's Mood" and "Ruby, My Dear", giving both of them an indescribably pretty, closer to celestial treatment; at one point of Jason Moran's supremely lyrical solo on "Ruby, My Dear" he lands on a note in the upper register and repeats it over and over while echoing it an octave below - this is one of the most heart-stoppingly-lovely brief moments in music recorded in 2010. "Lift Every Voice and Sing" has its anthemic melody stretched and contracted over rapidly skittering drums in more or less controlled free-time, and after a rollicking, Jaki Byard-esque solo from Moran, Lloyd releases uninhibited streams of melody worthy of John Coltrane.
The meditative, spiritual and deeply inspired mood throughout the album is encapsulated in the final track, "Tagi", which features Charles Lloyd reciting verse from the Bhagavad Gita before launching into joyous sax improvisation. "Become angry, you confuse your mind. Confuse your mind, you forget the lesson of experience. Forget experience, you lose discrimination. Lose discrimination, you miss life's only purpose." This is contemporary jazz as moving and essential as anything recorded in its golden era.
3. Celer - Dwell in Possibility / Dying Star / Honey Moon
Dwell in Possibility
Dying Star
Honey Moon
Three of Celer's many 2010 releases impressed me so much on the first listen, and continued to deepen with further listens, that I couldn't pick just one to make my Top 3. All three are of quite different breeds, and all are top tier entries to the Celer catalog and good starting points for new listeners to the group.
Dwell in Possibility was the very first full-length Celer album to be released on vinyl alone. Its name is loosely suggestive of its content - a large number of musical possibilities contrasting in timbre, texture, color and mood rapidly float by like a sequence of (day)dreams. The instrumentation includes processed voice, cello, violin, piano, ocarina, field recordings, rocks, whistles, a toy organ, and cassette tapes; none of these are clearly recognizable for what they are, though their diversity comes through in the subtle movement from one combination of timbres to the next. Side 1 is titled
"I've Thought Only of Empty Shadows / Embark, Hollow Heart / Adhered Irreverence / Empty Streets of Accurate Reasons / The Street Rain & Pain of the City Rests Under My Toenails / One Long Blast / Fine-Tuned Treetop / Functioning Voluptuary"
revealing that its 18-minute form is subdivided into 8 distinct movements. Though there are no gaps between movements and the dividing points are pretty fuzzy, the changes are much easier to perceive than on other of their albums that follow a similar plan, e.g. Poulaine in 13 Parts and Fountain Glider in 22 Parts. Nevertheless, the structure takes many close listens to carve out. From a spooky beginning comprised of muffled and detuned strings, Side 1 meanders amorphously until more sustained drones emerge, first in the high and then low registers, the feel becoming increasingly uneasy. Tension mounts as a filter passes over the thick stream of drones, only letting through a few in the middle register, becoming more concentrated and anxious. The filter breaks and a huge and ominously resonant tone cluster bursts onto the sound stage, only to gently subside into a lacuna long enough to reset the listener's bearings until another monumental mass of pulsing bass tones comes rolling along. This dark wave leaves a limpid field of bright drones in its wake, washing away the earlier atmosphere of dread and warmly closing Side 1 with the solace of fragile, shifting beauty.
Side 2, only slightly shorter than Side 1 and divided into seven parts, is titled
"A Mislaying of the Out-and-Out / Trespassing In Love's Furrows / Umbrella Terms Protecting Puddles / Bony Hands and Hips Drawn / The Satisfied Disorder / Say A Prayer For Me Tonight / The Veins of My Days".
The first portion of this side is distinctly sadder in tone than anything on Side 1, making its transition to the blissfully enchanting middle section all the more sublime. The record then enters a region more stable, focused, reserved and pure than any heard leading up to it, ultimately closing on a note of melancholy. 'Deep' hardly begins to describe it all; be sure to try spinning it at 30 RPM to go even deeper.
Dying Star is a very different affair. The instrumentation on this 50 minute album reads "Analog Synthesizer, Mixing Board". That's it. The entire album was free-improvised in one shot on a keyboard, without post-processing applied, which gives us a unique document of Will & Danielle Long working purely on instinct, in the moment. The control, restraint and taste they maintain in this most demanding of formats is downright incredible; this dying star is not a violent supernova, but a white dwarf billions of years old, finally puffing away its last layers. Activity is kept at a relatively low level for the most part, and the album is mixed very quietly; amping up the volume isn't encouraged, as this music was meant to capture a sense of seclusion. Despite how low-key and relatively static the tracks are, close attentive listening is greatly rewarded every time a subtle shift or accentuation occurs. In particular, there's a magical moment that another reviewer described right on the money:
"Yet despite the seeming placidity of the Dying Star's trajectory, the album's most poignant moment comes at the beginning of the final track. Flickers (Goodnight) is the only track that doesn't begin in silence, but instead is crossfaded directly from its predecessor. Even more significant, its continuing drone is overlaid with the only two even mildly percussive events, aptly characterized by the flickers in the track title, coming at the very beginning of the track and echoed about forty seconds in. These two events, so quiet as to be barely suggested, and appearing only after forty minutes of quiet undulating drones, are Dying Star's hidden treasure. Is it the dying star finally imploding, creating a brief flash all too easily overlooked? Has the listener drifted into an oblivious somnolence and heard it only in his or her dreams? Celer makes a call to the listener's attention and imagination and thereby elevates this release to one of their best." - Classical Drone
Well said, Caleb Deupree.
Neither as reserved & ascetic as Dying Star nor as diverse & kaleidoscopic as Dwell in Possibility, the cassette release Honey Moon occupies a somewhat more standard place in the Celer discography. The album was recorded "at home on the Autumnal Equinox, 2008" and is nocturnal through and through. Each side of the cassette has three tracks separated by silence, adding up to nearly an hour of Celer's trademark hypnotic immersion. Though the title suggests brightness and the joy of new matrimony, the work is eerily moody, balancing the murky feelings of the night with the ethereal glow of the moon.
Celer continue to stun with their ever-growing pool of releases. Thankfully, the rate of new material coming out seems to have curbed a bit, giving us some time to digest all that they've given us so far. I'm nowhere near exhausting all the beautiful and subtle details on the three albums in this review, let alone the dozens of other of their albums available. 2010 removed all doubt that Celer have the most impressive discography of any ambient group.
2. AFTA-1 - F O R M
I think I will take the lazy way out with this one and link to my past review of the album. Nothing has changed with respect to how strongly I feel about this jewel of instrumental hip hop. This is one of not too many albums I'm happy calling "perfect". How AFTA-1 remains an under-the-radar, unsigned artist, I have no idea. Easily one of the most talented and individual voices working in this new wave of beat based music.
1. Flying Lotus - Comosgramma
Cosmogramma is not a perfect album. It's not the best thing I've ever heard or even necessarily the most moving thing I heard in 2010. That said, I can't deny that it's the most unprecedented, important, on-another-level album released last year, promising more great and exciting things to come in bigger ways than any other 2010 release.
My quibbles with Flying Lotus' masterpiece are few in number and nitpicky. First, I think he could have and should have employed his cousin Ravi Coltrane to more substantial ends. The two tracks Ravi is afforded, "Arkestry" and "German Haircut", both sound like amorphous interludes - frankly, filler - compared to the rest of the album. For how indebted to jazz Cosmogramma is, I wish it had taken what was a ripe opportunity to include some actual trailblazing future-jazz with these tracks. Second, the album's structural arc is very hard to get a grip on, and I'm still not totally sold on it, particularly with how it opens, immediately throwing the listener into a fray of hectic confusion before shifting gears; you know something funny is going on when the fourth track is titled "Intro". I've heard the argument that Cosmogramma is divided roughly into three sections which represent the old Flying Lotus style (loop-heavy electronic arcade Los Angeles era), the new style (more organic and jazz influenced), and the transition between the two. Fair enough, but that kind of meta-ness distracts me a little bit, and overall I wish I simply got the new Flying Lotus. "Intro" would have made a really sweet first track.
Okay, this hasn't been the most glowing review so far for what I'm calling the album of the year. The truth is, what I perceive as flaws are the result of an excess of brilliance, not a lack of it. On the positive tip, there are about fourteen or so tracks here that are some of the most mind blowing things you can hear right at the moment. Many, many words have already been written about how great this stuff is, and in the interest of finally being done with this Fifty Great Releases list, I won't add too many more. Flying Lotus is a genius and charging the way to a future of sound I can't really imagine. His influence on other musicians is profound, and with his Brainfeeder label promoting artists like piano prodigy Austin Peralta, he may just be able to make jazz cool again with the young kids. Conclusion: if you live under a rock and haven't heard Cosmogramma yet, I wholeheartedly recommend you get on that ASAP.
Wow! It feels good to finally have this project behind me. I think 2010 was one of the most amazing years for music in recent memory, and so far 2011 has been delivering equally amazing goods. At this point I'm going to take a little break from reviewing to focus on composing and recording some new music. I hope you enjoyed my (way past its due-date) Top 50!
A quick glance at this deceptively simple album cover may lead many to see nothing more than a couple intersecting plane figures. Look a little longer however and you notice that the design is more naturally interpreted as the result of one continuous line motion - it actually cannot be broken down into two complete, overlapping rectangles. I smell an analogy. The music on this album, too, is deceptively simple. Keith Jarrett and Charlie Haden play so straight-ahead throughout Jasmine that it could have been recorded in the early '60s (except that a few of their song choices hadn't been written yet). However, there is a depth of communication and sensitivity of musicianship present that is rarely heard in jazz of any period, except from total masters of the art. This music cannot be effectively broken down into two complete, overlapping piano and bass parts.
Eschewing all pyrotechnics and showboating, Jarrett and Haden offer a revitalization of one of my favorite jazz formats: the stripped-down deep ballad. It had been three decades since the two played music together before Jasmine, but each is such a consummate musician individually, and each is so concerned with subtlety and refinement in particular, that their long time apart did nothing to affect their compatibility. They sound like old friends playing from the heart. If Jarrett takes somewhat more time in a leading position throughout, Haden makes the deliberateness of his understatement clear in his solos, which never once call special attention to technique or speed. All the delicacy is called for, as Jarrett explicitly writes that this is nighttime music for lovers - but it's also anytime music for the self-reflective. Anybody who appreciates the 1960s recordings of Bill Evans (Portrait in Jazz, Waltz for Debby, Moon Beams, Undercurrent and a lot more) should make it a priority to hear Jasmine, especially Jarrett & Haden's contrapuntal cover of Evan's jaunty and cool "No Moon At All". Without any uninspired moments, this is the most intimate and straightforwardly beautiful recording Keith Jarrett and Charlie Haden have released in a long time, together or apart.
9. Kayo Dot - Coyote
It's becoming increasingly hard to describe what kind of music Kayo Dot make. From the metal roots of their progenitors maudlin of the Well, through four LP releases and several changes in personnel, the band has evolved past the point of genre classification. I like the non-descriptive umbrella "new chamber music" for their third album Blue Lambency Downward and their latest, Coyote. The instrumentation includes bass, drums, vocals, violin, trumpet, saxophones, and synths - and almost no guitar, a significant choice for a group that's been moving further away from their aforementioned metal roots.
What unites all of their albums is the presence of (melo)drama: concept-driven narrative arcs, references to the occult, dark and often dissonant instrumentation, and an air of total seriousness. Actually, moments of Blue Lambency Downward reveal the band's unique sense of humor, but there's nothing funny about Coyote, except maybe its name. The story behind the album was developed by Yuko Sueta, artist and close personal friend of group-mastermind Toby Driver, during the last stage of her life; sadly, she lost a battle with breast cancer. Musically it's the band's most unrelentingly heavy and pitch-black album to date, heavily influenced by '80s goth rock bands like Bauhaus and Faith and the Muse. Driver also acknowledged another interesting influence on the album, Herbie Hancock's Sextant. At no point would I really call Coyote "jazzy" but there are definitely places where the trumpet and sax arrangements recall Eddie Henderson's colorful solos, and this is also the most rhythmically charged, at times almost groovy Kayo Dot album.
Coyote is the band's shortest LP at a little under 40 minutes, and given its intensity and complexity that's not a bad thing. "Calonyction Girl" opens very strongly with menacing gestures from the violin, bass and drums; rarely have I heard bass harmonics sound so sinister. Driver quickly brings his voice to the forefront with pained, elongated phrases in fluid rhythm. After three minutes the song picks up momentum and becomes more rhythmically defined, ultimately building to a crushing odd-meter vamp that could be Kayo Dot's spin on "Hidden Shadows" (Herbie Hancock, Sextant). The song also features one of the band's most surprising and lovely moments as it deceptively closes on a totally unexpected note of joy, with an extended major chord.
Continuing with a song-by-song analysis would result in an overly long review (not to mention spoil all the album's nice surprises), so suffice to say that the rest of the material maintains the standard of excellence set by "Calonyction Girl", though there are no further respites to happiness. The brilliant compositional arrangements throughout deliver fear, anger, sadness, beauty and wonder with an intensity few bands can match, and really, no other bands I know of are even trying to meld popular heavy music with 20th century avant-garde techniques in a remotely similar way. Kayo Dot are certainly a one of a kind group and they keep churning out masterpieces without repeating themselves.
8. Supersilent - 10 Supersilent's tenth album marks a very different direction for Deathprod, Arve Henriksen and Stale Storlokken. Lacking a drummer, the band has turned to increased harmonic sophistication and textural diversity to hold the listener's attention as they explore the infinite possibilities of free improvisation. The brief 10.1 begins with a piercing sustained trumpet note from Henriksen, over which Storlokken scatters some clear high piano notes. Storlokken harnesses chromaticism beautifully without giving a sense of total atonality, and the stark opener gives the impression of a dirge or elegy as Henriksen's tone takes on greater inflections of pain. Quite suddenly this melodic start completely gives way to texture, as the creeping fog of 10.2 fades in and Deathprod weaves a noxious mist with his one of a kind "Audiovirus", an amalgamation of signal processors. No band communication is apparent on this track, but it is effective ambient music. 10.3 and 10.4 return to the instrumentation of the opener plus electronics, with Storlokken on piano playing his most harmonically daring material to date. Apparently he was influenced by the compositions of Gyorgy Ligeti for these sessions, and one can definitely hear the impact of the 20th century avant-garde in general on his playing. Whereas previous Supersilent albums tended to be on the harmonically static side, generating interest mainly through dynamic variation, 10 features frequent distant modulations, chromaticism, artificial scales, and overall a much more impressionistic and unpredictable sound. When Storlokken untimidly lands on a surprising chord, the other players react and adjust immediately so nothing sounds like a mistake.
On 10.5 Supersilent work with bowel-rumblingly heavy drones and harsh noises reminiscent of their earlier material from 1-3, evoking the slow plod of some kind of megalithic golem bent on breaking stuff. It's an unexpected turn on this album, but a welcome switch to a sound many have come to expect from the band: thick, with a directly gutsy and aggressive attitude. This doesn't develop for long though, as 10.6 bends back in the opposite direction to textural sparsity and lovely diatonic melodies from the trumpet and a Brian Eno-esque wobbly keyboard sound. Beautiful melodic phrasing continues with the next two tracks; 10.7 is a dreamlike interlude for piano and trumpet with crystalline, pointillistic piano lines that are chromatic yet strangely consonant, and 10.8 - the longest track and functional centerpiece of the album - is arguably the most earnest and lovely piece the band has ever recorded, like a hymn on the sadness of existence, with Henriksen displaying the heights of his lyricism.
Things take another sharp turn with 10.9, another standout track and a return to Deathprod's thick ambient textures, this time more in the hazy extraterrestrial vein previously explored on 6 (probably Supersilent's most consistent, best album, and for me one of the absolute greatest records of the 2000s). Geologic bass tones mix with subtly shifting drone pads and bleeping alien signal transmissions to give a sonic picture of lonely beings marooned on an uncharted planet. Contrasting greatly with this is 10.10, the humble jewel of the album, less than 90 seconds of exquisite guitar, trumpet and piano interplay around a major triad. Yet another curve ball is tossed at the listener with 10.11, the fifth track on 10 under two minutes long. Here (and only here) percussion and repetition are the dominant elements, with a glitchy percussive sound repeating at unsteady intervals against computerized blips. Machine-like in timbre yet organic in development, the zen-like track reminds me of some of the more abstract material on the classic ambient glitch album Frame by Shuttle358.
10.12 closes the album on a foreboding note. Again Storlokken's piano playing displays sophisticated harmonic awareness, with dark polytonalities echoing Ligeti and Bartok. He mainly stays in the low registers of the piano, building tension while Deathprod and Henriksen provide additional dark colors. In the final quarter of the piece the trademark Supersilent UFO synth sound enters in the upper register, offering a climactic melody supported by the trumpet. Finally out of the dissonance the piano reveals a tonic note, and the piece ends with a firmly resolved cadence.
Supersilent have evolved in range with each release, but 10 displays them in a particularly sharp period of stylistic transition. Never before have their improvisations sounded so deliberate and planned out, almost mistakable for fully composed contemporary chamber music. Losing their drummer forced them to either quit or else drastically change their language and scope, and happily in choosing the latter they've recorded one of their most fascinating and moving albums.
7. Madlib - Medicine Shows
Medicine Show #4: 420 Chalice All Stars
Medicine Show #5: The History of the Loop Digga
Medicine Show #7: High Jazz
Medicine Show #8: Advanced Jazz
The award for hardest working and most diverse producer in the game today goes to Madlib. At the beginning of 2010 it was announced that Stones Throw would be releasing a new Madlib full-length every month through the whole year, alternatively in the form of albums and mixtapes. Dubbed the Medicine Show series, ten of the twelve releases have seen the light of day; numbers 9 and 12 remain mysteriously unavailable. As it stands the collection is as follows:
#1: Before the Verdict #2: Flight to Brazil* #3: Beat Konducta in Africa #4: 420 Chalice All Stars* #5: History of the Loop Digga #6: The Brain Wreck Show* #7: High Jazz #8: Advanced Jazz* #10: Black Soul* #11: Low Budget High Fi Music
*mixtape
All of the installments I've heard range from very good to outstanding, and there are several I'd like to draw particular attention to. I've been hoping for a new Quasimoto album for a long time - The Unseen (2000) is one of my favorite hip hop albums ever, and The Further Adventures of Lord Quas (2005) is a great companion to it, if not a classic in itself. Episode five of the Medicine Show isn't a new Lord Quas album, but it's about as good instrumentally as The Unseen, and resides in a similar realm as that masterpiece. All of the material on the archival History of the Loop Digga was created prior to 2000, and it almost comes across like a collection of mostly-instrumental B-sides to The Unseen, making it a jazzy-hip-hop treasure trove. Alongside Beat Konducta Vol. 5-6 (Madlib's tribute to J Dilla) and the aforementioned Quasimoto albums, Medicine Show #5 has joined the ranks of my absolute favorite Madlib releases. The last five tracks feature Madlib freestyling with his Oxnard crew, and a number of Lord Quas motifs appear, like the sample "Warning...the Surgeon General...has determined...that the sounds you are about to hear...could be devastating...to your ears..."
Medicine Show #8: Advanced Jazz is a mixtape of trail-blazing jazz artists with some vocal skits interspersed throughout (it wouldn't be a Madlib release without some kind of vocal element). Happily, the skits don't detract from the great jazz selections at all, as they're either hilarious or interesting throwbacks to 60's and 70's culture. The tracks are named after jazz masters, like "Miles", "Ornette", "Pharoah", etc. I don't recognize any but one of the selections, namely Grant Green's terrific solo on "Back From The Gig" from Horace Parlan's album Happy Frame of Mind, which I reviewed a while back. This appears at the start of track 2, "Ornette", and none of the other various selections on this track sound like Ornette Coleman to my ears; there seems to be no connection between the titles and the artists present on each track. The material stays on the uptempo, fiery and exploratory side, and overall the mixtape gives the listener the impression of listening to one of the coolest jazz radio programs ever, without any DJ commentary but featuring a wide range of engaging supportive vocal performances. It sure would be nice if a full track list surfaced.
Other great entries in the series include: #6: The Brain Wreck Show, a collection of psychedelic 70s Kraut rock - turns out Madlib is a fan of Brainticket; #4: 420 Chalice All Stars, a crucial compilation of classic dub and roots reggae; #3: Beat Konducta in Africa, yet another deep, ambitious and banging entry in the Beat Konducta series; and #7: High Jazz, which features Madlib playing different live instruments under many aliases like Yesterday's New Quintet, the Jahari Massamba Unit and others, showing Madlib to be not just one of the greatest beat composers but also an adept and sensitive live player. I can't wait to find out what the last remaining album and mixtape will be like. Maybe, just maybe, the long awaited third Quasimoto LP is close at hand. Until the day that certain-to-be-crazy album emerges, though, I'm more than satisfied with the torrent of releases Madlib has been churning out; not all of them are top tier relative to his entire discography, but all of them are top tier relative to new music in general.
6. Gonjasufi - A Sufi and A Killer
One of the most diverse, unique and memorable albums of 2010, A Sufi and A Killer was released to just about unanimous acclaim, and I won't be going against the grain. Gonjasufi came on my radar via his contribution to Flying Lotus' Los Angeles in the form of those hauntingly cracked vocals on "Testament". Shortly before the release of Gonjasufi's debut LP, the single "Ancestors" made waves on the Internet; produced by Flying Lotus, the brilliant track combines ocean-deep bass lines, harmonium drones and introspective sitar melodies with Gonjasufi's anguished vocals on the brink of breaking. This track had me looking forward to an album midway between Los Angeles and India, but A Sufi and A Killer is much more multidimensional than that. Most of the production is handled by The Gaslamp Killer, well known for his encyclopedic knowledge of obscure world psychedelia, and Gonjasufi's debut LP has not just Indian flavors but Turkish, Middle Eastern, blues, rock, soul, folk, funk, hip-hop and even doo-wop. All of these influences are filtered through a lens of decay and grime - as Flying Lotus put it, "timeless, incredible filth" - resulting in a one-of-a-kind sound that's simultaneously ancient and futuristic. The opening prelude "(Bharatanatyam)" with a steady pounding drum and tribal vocal chant sets the scene with what sounds like centuries' worth of sonic distortion and patina.
Standouts are many on this almost hour-long album. Preceding "Ancestors" (the only Flying Lotus-produced track on the album, and one of the best cuts) is the excellent "Kobwebz", soaked in reverbed, overdriven guitars and vocals, spacey synth swoops and Turkish scales. Later there's the golden shimmering 70's psych of "Stardustin'", immediately followed by "Kowboyz and Indians", the most swagged out Bollywood-ish track I've heard. Several gems are contributed by producer Mainframe, including "Candylane" with its fatally-funky bassline, and the retro-electronic, almost Radiohead-esque "Holidays". On "Ageing", produced by The Gaslamp Killer, Gonjasufi imitates the wispy, frail vocals of a wizened old man, over a twisted Delta blues. Throughout the album Gonjasufi demonstrates amazing vocal range, and the producers treat his timbre in a variety of effective ways, usually towards the end of making it sound dirtier.
A Sufi and A Killer is an ambitious and somewhat sprawling album that requires multiple listens to really unlock, but it should be clear from the first that it's like nothing else out there. Gonjasufi came on the scene a fully matured artist with a compelling vision, and I eagerly await his next release.
William Basinski is one of the most adept composers to work with a writing process that in less skillful hands leads only to tedium: the tape loop piece. His best known works, the Disintegration Loops, explore the phenomenon of slow decay, as elegant orchestral passages on antiquated magnetic tape repeat over and over, each time losing sonic data as bits of the tape flake off. This newest work, Vivian & Ondine, is at the same time more subtle and more directly engaging than those prior masterpieces, making it one of his very best recordings.
At low volume or on speakers that can't provide much detail, Vivian & Ondine plays out much like Basinski's El Camino Real (2007). A neo-Classical theme of magisterial, sublime beauty is repeated again and again. The loop is short, only a handful of seconds, but it possesses timelessness - as one might experience from the iteration of a mantra, hearing the loop indefinitely causes moments just prior to or beyond the present one to take on an identical quality. Unlike El Camino Real, which is beautiful in a coldly austere and uninhabitable sense, the repeating theme of Vivian & Ondine is warmly reassuring and comfortable, like an infinite series of slow rolling waves in a tropical sea. If there really is anything to the healing power of music (which anecdotal evidence has suggested for centuries), this music has that to the fullest.
But beneath the surface of the aqueous main theme is a world of activity, as any pair of headphones will reveal when you listen to Vivian & Ondine in a very quiet room. Basinski compiled a collection of additional short loops, including gently percussive crackles and pops, delicate scrapes against guitar strings, siren-like chimes, and melodic and textural embellishments of the main theme. All the while the main theme repeats, Basinski adjusts which of these auxiliary loops is playing and how loudly (they are always kept low in the mix). Therefore Vivian & Ondine is much more than a simple tape loop composition, in fact having a generous live performance element; this recording was made live in one take in Basinski's studio in Los Angeles. Monumentally beautiful and full of details to discover for many, many listens.
14. Taylor Deupree - Shoals
I've had relatively less time to digest this album than the other ones this high on my list, but I could tell from the first 30 seconds of my first listen to it that it's special. Taylor Deupree - ambient artist, photographer, software designer and head of the consistently great label 12k Records - was given a pretty much ideal situation to make this album. He was afforded the full resources of the University of York Music Research Center, which presumably means he was allowed to use top equipment to make anything at all he could reasonably envision. When presented with such a multiplicity of options, an artist is often wise to set up some strict creative limitations to work within, which is what Deupree did: all of the sounds comprising Shoals are digitally enhanced recordings of Balinese and Javanese gamelan instruments.
With this stringent compositional decision in place, it's wondrous how much the album sounds like somebody placed a very tiny microphone in a natural setting, admist dripping branches, chattering insects, snapping twigs, distant bird cries, clattering rocks and rotting tree trunks. The lovely cover photograph and titles such as "Shoals", "Rusted Oak", and "Falls Touching Grasses" enforce this overall naturalistic aesthetic, and like habitats, the songs evolve, slowly, continuously, and organically. However, now and again sounds intrude that are clearly electronic and processed (especially on the more ambiguously titled "A Fading Found"), thwarting any attempt to categorize this as one of those sounds-of-nature ambient albums. In reality Shoals is a complex electroacoustic work, beautifully juggling sounds of polar opposite qualities - wood/metal, transient/stable, warm/cool, natural/fabricated - and contemplating the sole source of all those sounds richly deepens the experience.
In terms of Brian Eno's criteria for effective ambient music (that it should be as ignorable as it is engaging), Shoals strikes an almost perfect middle ground, but more often than not ends up being too engaging to ignore (certainly not a strike against it). Although there are not really any discernible melodies or harmonic progressions to hold on to, its diverse array of lush timbres and textures makes Shoals one compelling listen.
13. Chubby Wolf - Ornitheology
Here we go - another lengthy excursion into finely honed yet totally unabashed beauty. Chubby Wolf was the moniker of the late Danielle Baquet-Long for her solo releases, and this long two-sided cassette was only her third such work to see the light of day, after L'Histoire and the EP Meandering Pupa. I recommend all of my readers check out this detailed, heartfelt and difficult to follow up review over at 5 Against 4, which blog declared Ornitheology to be the best album of 2010. It's a big claim that I have no intention of trying to refute, as the album is indubitably flawless. Why it only landed at #13 on my list, well, quite a lot of music came out last year that to my ears is in a neighborhood of as 'good as it gets'; I've had some real hair splitting to do in numbering these Best 15, and basically I regard them all as essential.
Back to the actual reviewing. The two album-long tracks here are "On Burnt, Gauzed Wings" and "Phantasmagoria Of Nothingness (Prey To Our Emotions)". These are accompanied by the following poem, written by Danielle and printed in the cassette case insert: "You glue wings to / my ideas about love; / Though, / There is something in / the way they take flight, / spin and begird, / returning again / in the manner of flocks / that suggests / they sprouted manifestly." Combined with the dedication "To my Will", the message couldn't be more clear: this music is a direct distillation of love to sound waves. If it all sounds a little sentimental, it should. This is Romanticism with a capital R at its very finest, stripping away the intellect, the ego, and leaving only feeling. That pure feeling is presented with a raw intensity that has been matched only on albums by Celer (I'm thinking especially of Engaged Touches, Mane Blooms and I Love You So Much I Can't Even Title This).
Superficially speaking Ornitheology operates in the classic long-form Celer style, and many of the remarks I made about their albums Cursory Asperses and In Escaping Lakes, particularly about their use of through-composition and very slow change, apply equally well to this album. There are notable differences, however. Both tracks on Ornitheology use fairly restricted palettes, so they really sound like single long pieces, rather than ten or more short pieces with inaudible boundaries. The variations they undergo are intensional rather than extensional - different arrangements of consonance, dissonance, and dynamics are ceaselessly juxtaposed without conventional development or a sense of direction. The effect is somewhat like wandering through a very small and confining labyrinth in which the walls shift their configuration, constantly giving you slightly different views of the same central abstract object, namely, unwavering devotion. Immersing oneself in this feeling for fully 80 minutes is challenging, bracing, and ultimately affirming as it requires mustering quite a bit of devotion in itself.
It's a happy fact indeed that most Chubby Wolf albums have yet to be released, as we almost surely have additional gems to look forward to. Ornitheology is the brightest thus far.
12. Brother Raven - Diving into the Pineapple Portal
It's a bit difficult for me to explain why I like this short, quirkily-titled album quite so much, but a starting point is that my first listen to the opening track gave me a similar feeling as when I first heard the original recording of Terry Riley's "A Rainbow In Curved Air". What these pieces have in common includes a reliance on overlapping textures of short synth pitches, energetically and buoyantly repeating, with certain melodic lines using different echo periods, so that a thick, polyrhythmic construction results. Both of these pieces also work within a certain dreamy, laid back and positive vibe I associate with the 70s and psychedelics. Influences on Brother Raven, a synth-based duo from Seattle, WA, seem to include Kraut rock and/or so-called "kosmische" groups of the late 60s to 70s, more modern dream pop bands, and to somewhat less of an extent, contemporary electronica/glitch.
For all their experimenting with strange noises, the accessible melodic element to their music is always foremost, and there is also a strong rhythmic component to all of the tracks. "Diving Into The Pineapple Portal", the opening, longest and best track, settles into a joyful groove based on quintuple-time while duplets and triplets bubble about and compete for your attention. "Speaking Whale From My Sea Canoe" emphasizes sustained drone tones, appropriately enough, but it also features a background ostinato in a quick seven-time. Odd metric divisions like this are unusual for this kind of music, effectively anchoring the somewhat noodly melodies without giving the pieces a rhythmically boxed in and constrained feel. The closer "Happy Astronaut" utilizes this component best - I just can't count out how that track works for the life of me, yet it clearly has 'bars' and could be given a definite (if completely artificial) time signature. Brother Raven are doing very fresh things on various technical levels, but most of all their sound exudes playfulness, naiveté and a lack of pretense. Diving Into The Pineapple Portal is the album on my list which most sounds like it was created by benevolent aliens.
11. Chihei Hatakeyama - A Long Journey
This album snuck up on me and blew me away. Chihei Hatakeyama is a prolific musician with about ten albums out since 2006, most of which appeared in the last two years. He is a true musical Impressionist, with highly visually descriptive titles such as "The Moon Reflecting on the Surface of the Ocean" bestowed upon nearly every track he records. A Long Journey probably refers to Chihei's own artistic path, which always seems concerned with recreating lost places, moments or feelings. The album is fairly brief at 34 minutes and passes by as a series of ten vignettes, all nostalgic in character and seamlessly blending recognizable instrumentation (guitar, piano, bell tones) with abstract drone material derived from thereof with a laptop. The majority of the tracks feature direct melodies and chord changes to follow, and very earnest ones at that, giving them the feeling of something closer to 'songs' than 'ambient compositions' (though the distinction is only one of vague connotation). Many though not all of the tracks also feature anecdotal field recordings, always to illustrate, as on "Within New Trees" which includes families chatting in Japanese, leaves in the wind, gentle wooden knocks, and a squeaking swing, among other events. The most impressive of the field recording heavy tracks is "The Distant Sound of a Bustle", which effectively summarizes in four and a half minutes what Celer's Generic City is all about (not at all to say Generic City is any less valuable), and which finally forced me to find myself a new direction/format to work in for my own music, because this guy is just too good at this stuff. Hats off! If the late Luc Ferrari's then-unprecedented Presque Rien ou le lever du Jour au Bord de la Mer was musical photography, Chihei Hatakeyama is a master musical videographer.* The closing track "The Dance of The Sea" features field recordings alone, of light rain on the ocean, a boom of thunder, heavier rain, a chiming bell calling in children at play, more thunder, and a sudden crescendo of excited bugs. This ending is somewhat abrupt, though it does successfully get across a sense that ordinary, day to day events often regarded as mundane are in fact precious and beautiful from another angle, and that these qualities are encoded in their associated sounds. Although I haven't yet heard the definitive Chihei Hatakeyama album, A Long Journey stands out in maturity and variety, and has some of his individually strongest tracks to date.
*I don't seriously intend to compare the quality of these two great artists with this metaphor.
So, I have this bi-weekly college radio program on which I play whatever happens to be in my ears at the moment. Sometimes I do genre themed playlists, and the other night I put together a beat mix I'm particularly pleased with. Thought I would share it with the world...here's the tracklist:
Gemmy - "Rainbow Rd" Jackhigh - "Aviation" 1000names - "Ice is the Silent Language" Nosaj Thing - "3rd Complex" Flying Lotus - "Tea Leaf Dancers" Nujabes - "Sea of Cloud" Ras G - "Yea..." Pete Rock - "Play Dis Only At Night" Depakote - "Quarter Milk" Samiyam - "It's Important" Onra - "War" Dr. Who Dat? - "Stop Calling Me" Teebs - "Untitled" (9th track from Teebs 09) AFTA-1 - "The Facts" MF Doom - "Secret Herbs and Spices Beat 5" Mike Slott featuring Muhsinah - "Deux Three" Tranquil - "Payroll (Paul White's Clean Dub)" Gold Panda - "Fifth Ave" J Dilla - "Oh Oh" The Gaslamp Killer - "Track 1" from Akuma no Chi Ga Odoru ~ 60 minutes
Fades and arrangements were done in Live 8. No DJ speak on this, just the music. A couple of the tracks are really brief, too brief for how dope they are, so I extended them a bit for the mix. Hope you enjoy! (I just love hearing about it when you do).
Samiyam is Sam Baker, lifelong resident of Ann Arbor, Michigan (not Detroit!) until the City of Angels claimed him in 2008 in a coup that solidified LA's status as the world's nexus for contorted future-funk mutations. We have MySpace to thank for this - it was through that site that Flying Lotus found Samiyam and took him under his proverbial wing. Now the two are close as kin, with FlyLo even referring to Sam as his little brother in a video online. Somewhere in an unseen zone of Los Angeles, they make unbelievably crazy beats as FLYamSAM and ignite a lot of resinous plant material - mostly the latter.
Unfortunately FLYamSAM's debut, the Precious Cargo EP, hasn't seen the light of day yet. Look out for it on Brainfeeder in the near future. Meanwhile, Samiyam has three great solo releases under his belt. Rap Beats Vol. 1 is his full length debut from 2008, an instrumental beat collection with 23 tracks, all under 2 minutes.
The album was self-released, and each copy has a personal message or doodle scribbled on it. If you're a fan of Madlib, J Dilla, and video games circa 1990, and if you happen to have a short attention span, you will probably love this. On the other hand, some listeners might find it too ADD. They should check out the EPs Return (2008) and Man vs. Machine (2009), released more recently and featuring more developed tunes.
Among the numerous groundbreaking beat makers on the scene in LA at the moment, Samiyam delivers a sound with distinctly more nostalgia and humor built into it, which makes him one of the most enjoyable to listen to.
For my first (and extremely long overdue) post on hip hop I bring you some rare mixtapes from my number 1 favorite producer/DJ, Madlib, aka the Beat Konducta and a thousand other aliases. Actually, there's so little official information out there about these tapes that their authenticity has been disputed. They sound like the real deal to me though - the left-field loops, crackling jazz samples, smoked out interludes and obscure vocal recordings all scream Beat Konducta.
All the information you need to know about these, including partial (sometimes complete) tracklists and some really cool photos, can be found on this website. Here are some brief descriptions of mine of each installation.
Vol. 1 is mostly a Stones Throw sampler, featuring remixes of tracks by Madvillain, Quasimoto, Oh No, MED, Wildchild, and others, but also including material by Method Man, Common, and Bobby Hutcherson.
Vol. 2, one of the best in the series, is a jazz mix featuring some scorching 70's fusion, Brazilian jazz, impassioned spoken word and trips to outer space.
Vol. 3 is an eclectic selection of dub, jazz, comedy recordings, psychedelic soul, and much more - another standout.
Vol. 4 focuses on hip hop, and includes a set of Nas vs. Jay Z remixes.
The first long track on Vol. 5 is called "Dirty Crates from Around the World". The second is a live set with some great chopped up Dilla tracks, and closing with Madvillain's "Closer" given jazz horn treatment.
Now that I've (finally!) opened the hip hop floodgates, prepare to see a lot more of this incredibly dynamic and progressive genre on Giraffe Kingdom.
Here's an album I've been meaning to blog about for some time, Oorutaichi's Drifting My Folklore from 2007. I don't know much about Oorutaichi, other than that he's a Japanese solo artist/DJ who cooks up some seriously zany acid cartoon music. If you thought that was Cornelius's shtick, prepare to experience new levels of zany acidity - Drifting My Folklore comes bursting at the seams with mutated disco, freak funk, twisted pop hooks, synths and turntables galore, hypnotic grooves, and utterly bizarre vocal melodies that shouldn't work but somehow do. Rarely are albums simultaneously as strange and catchy as this one. Given the overwhelming number of different musical ideas that transpire throughout it, one must really admire Oorutaichi's flawless sense of craft in arranging so many instruments and studio effects into something cohesive, without a moment sounding out of place. (Then again, what could sound out of place on an album like this?) The studio tricks in particular are frequently mindbending and worthy of Nobukazu Takemura at his best. In the end there's probably no describing this album, so let's just say I can comfortably imagine alien robots doing their morning workout routine to it, and leave it at that.
Aside, Oorutaichi contributed one of the best tracks on Shugo Tokumaru's 2009 release Rum Hee, a remix of Shugo's song of the same name.
Like his contemporaries Christian Fennesz and Tim Hecker, San Francisco based Christopher Willits digitally processes his live guitar improvisations to create compelling electronic music. In contrast to the former artists, however, on Surf Boundaries Willits combines his abstract digital textures, unsteady glitch rhythms, and alien noises with a huge pop component - live drumming, gorgeous dreamy singing, short songs with verse/chorus structures, and a general sense of boundless joy and energy. It would be an understatement to say many influences went into the making of this album, and it is truly staggering how well they all came together to form something so coherent, unique and accessible.
Let's start with a brief biography of Li Jianhong I aped off of last.fm: Li Jianhong (Li-Jianhong - 李剣鴻-李剑鸿) is one of the most active chinese sound artists in Mainland China. Born in Fenghua, Zhejiang Province in 1975 and now residing in Hangzhou, Li is the founder of the avant-rock group “Second Skin” and the manager of 2pi Records (“2pi” being the chinese equivalent to 2nd Skin), an independent experimental label based in Hangzhou, China.
Now, San Sheng Si: This album consists of a 51 minute processed guitar solo - throughout these 51 minutes Li Jianhong creates a dense textural noise work which manages to earn it's long time-frame. There are very interesting dynamics here - nice contrasts between moments of ethereal beauty hidden underneath a heavy, heavy blanket of noise. There are melodies lurking out in moments out from the background, never quite revealing themselves. There's plenty of heaviness throughout this piece, but at moments I feel this odd tenderness I can't quite put my finger on. Highly recommended.
Artists, send any requests for the removal of album download links to TheSoftWatch@gmail.com and I will do so immediately. Note that no albums are hosted on Giraffe Kingdom, and the links are only shortcuts that anybody could find elsewhere with a little work. We believe from the heart that online media sharing ultimately benefits artists.
Artwork by Sepehr Nabi
