If Love is the Drug Then I Want to OD

Such campy titles can come from none other than Brian Jonestown Massacre's Anton Newcombe. Anyone who has followed the band knows that they have been no stranger to dischord. They have broken up several times and gone through members frequently over the past twenty one years. Despite a continued lack of major distribution, the Brian Jonestown Massacre earned the largest profile of their career in 2004, when the band became the unlikely focus of an award-winning documentary, DIG!, which charted the trials of Newcombe and those of his rival, Courtney Taylor, leader of the Dandy Warhols. In 2008, the band reinvented itself with My Bloody Underground, featuring yet another lineup and a hint of shoegaze and noise pop. Who Killed Sgt Pepper? followed shortly after, being made available in streaming format at the end of 2009 and receiving an official release on January 1st, 2010. Currently, Anton is distributing their music himself through his label, The Committee to Keep Music Evil. For vinyl fanatics like myself, this makes buying their records challenging because the price point is through the roof!!

While The Singles Collection (1992-2011) is not as essential as Tepid Peppermint Wonderland, it is a nice alternative that delivers a wide spread of Brian Jonestown Massacre material. The band’s music will always be overshadowed by Anton Newcombe’s debauchery and tantrums, and there are so many albums that it’s not easy to dive right in (although, the five albums from 1996-1998 are all excellent), but this compilation provides a nice starting point. The 22 remastered tracks are taken straight from vinyl 45s and cover a range of styles, from ‘60s influenced psych to gnarled garage rock, and in later work, shoegaze -- including two drone-based songs that Newcombe released under the name Acid. Fourteen of the tracks were previously unavailable on CD, and some suffer from fidelity issues, but that doesn’t make them any less appealing.

Get yer ya ya's off to "If Love is the Drug then I want to OD" here.


Buy your copy of The Singles Collection here.

Brush the Heat

You may have heard Little Dragon before, making a guest appearance on Gorillaz's Plastic Beach. One could say that Damon Albarn was out to showcase their best qualities; the serene voice of Yukimi Nagano adding serene touches while Håkan Wirenstrand's keyboards give the album super-saturated textures. Little Dragon originate from Sweden, debuting in 2007 with their self-titled album.

Ritual Union, the band's third album, does not stray from the sexy, futuristic sound of their previous record, Machine Dreams, or their team-up with Albarn. They are crafting moody synths, nearly subliminal bass lines, and impossibly crisp snare hits. A few of the songs, like the sleek title track and the brisk, funky "Nightlight", rank among the group's finest work. All through the record, Little Dragon are extremely effective in delivering the most attractive elements of their style, resulting in a set of songs that come across like the ideal soundtrack to a night on the town in some exotic sci-fi city.

I think this is a pretty good album from start to finish and picking just one track was a challenge. Take a listen to "Brush the Heat", with its haunting harmonies.


Buy your copy of Ritual Union here.

Moving Further Away

My favorite new shoegazing, black-clad British gentlemen, with teased out hairdo's are back with Skying, their third full-length album. The Horrors were fortunate enough to burst onto the scene in 2006 as critic's darlings thanks to NME. Their debut single, Sheena is a Parasite/Jack the Ripper generated a ton of buzz that summer. They DJ'ed at the Troubled Minds club night, had to reschedule in-store appearances because of crowd concerns, and released their second single, Death at the Chapel. They also reissued Sheena Is a Parasite as a limited-edition DVD single. The song's startling video was directed by Chris Cunningham and featured actress Samantha Morton as Sheena. Late that summer, the band signed to Stolen Transmission in the U.S. and released a self-titled EP that fall.

Flash forward to 2009, with their mixed shoegaze, post-punk, and goth album, Primary Colours, which was released by XL that spring and earned several critical raves, including NME's Album of the Year. I happen to think of that album as the offspring of the Cure mixed with the Chameleons and My Bloody Valentine. That The Horrors' sound can be heard as a catalogue of influences is nothing new for this band. They've routinely been tagged as "record collector rock" for their unabashed aping of influences from the Cramps to Can-- and indeed their well-selected covers indicate a group that has spent some time in record shops. I think these kids are quoting responsibly and taking their influences and working in their own sounds.

In Skying, I think they are blending the sounds of Psychedelic Furs with Simple Minds, if I had to make comparisons. I enjoy them so it is not a problem for me. The album is a bit lighter, more atmospheric, slightly less melancholic. It's more melodic and more pop. Yet somehow the Horrors' chameleon act seems more cohesive and convincing -- or perhaps it’s just less shocking to hear them give their music another complete makeover. The main remnant of Primary Colours is that album’s production, which the Horrors embellish further with dense layers of synth, guitars, and vocals. Skying's centerpiece and lead single, “Still Life,” defines its approach, with sparkly mid-‘80s keyboards and brass that only strengthen the feeling that Jim Kerr sang this song over the credits of some long-lost John Hughes movie. Though “Still Life” isn’t as striking a salvo as Primary Colours' “Sea Within a Sea,” it’s just as striking in its own way, and even if nothing here quite matches their previous flashes of brilliance, Skying reflects the Horrors' growing abilities. Not only do the bandmembers stretch the muscles they developed on Primary Colours with workouts like “Moving Further Away” and “Oceans Burning”, they also turn in some downright poppy moments like the towering “I Can See Through You” and “Endless Blue.” While the Horrors' main skill still seems to be embodying whatever styles catch their fancies as completely as they can, they put more of their own stamp on these sounds. Regardless of where they end up next, the Horrors have already traveled much further than most listeners would have imagined.

Listen to my track pick, Moving Further Away here.


Buy your copy of Skying at the shop or here.

Plumb line

Tis the season of reissues and deluxe editions of pre-existing albums. Everybody's cashing in, both new and old bands alike. Despite this, I am pleased to see the Archers of Loaf getting attention again with the reissue of their first album, Icky Mettle, originally released in 1993 (gasp!). In the heyday of indie rock, the early to mid-nineties, they were critic's darlings and most people I knew were cranking their CDs in their cars during roadtrips and while cruising around town. The Archers hailed from Chapel Hill, North Carolina, a scene also boasting of Polvo and Superchunk. They met while attending UNC.

Their music was frequently likened to a more intense, raucous version of Pavement's postmodern pop, and indeed they shared key elements: fractured song constructions, abstractly witty lyrics, clangy guitars, and lo-fi production. More rooted in punk and noise rock, however, the Archers took the dissonance, white noise, and angularity to greater extremes, and played with more enthusiasm in concert. Icky Mettle was a well received then several more accomplished albums followed before the group called it quits in 1998.

Perhaps I am a bit nostalgic for the original days of indie rock, or it's just a quirky connection I have to their lyrics, but "Plumb Line" had to be my track of the week, despite other good releases. "She's an indie rocker, nothing's gonna stop her, her fashion fits...": these are words I have sung under my breath in relation to myself over the years many, many times.

Wax nostalgic yerself, with "Plumb line" here.


Buy your own copy of Icky Mettle here.

Panutup

Hailing from the small town of Svelvik, located just southwest of Oslo, Norway -- an unlikely but proven city to breed and export influential electro artists -- Joachim Dyrdahl, otherwise known as diskJokke, makes acid house beats perfect for moving dancefloors and lays down chilled cinematic pop ideal for lounging. After going to school to study mathematics in a Trondheim university, he relocated to Oslo and started combining his classical and electro-disco backgrounds as a producer. He met up with Prins Thomas, who released two of diskJokke's tracks as 12" singles on his Full Pupp label.

Sagara was commissioned by Norway's Øya festival, which provided Dyrdahl the resources to travel to a place of his choosing and study music. After sampling musicians in Bali and Java, Dyrdahl abandoned the idea of a dance album and instead focused on incorporating the tones and modalities of Gamelan music into pillow-soft mood pieces.
The album travels in a slow build towards my favorite track, Panutup, the most transcendent song which lifts the tonal haze, meandering into Vangelis-esque synthesizer pop and then, unexpectedly, into a few blissful minutes of full-on 4/4 beat that feels, on arrival, like the aural equivalent of a tropical sunrise. Dyrdahl spins this sudden percussion into an uplifting Balearic anthem before fading it out again. Which is not to suggest that the rest of the album feels like it's missing anything, or is in any way inferior to Diskjokke's dance-oriented output.

Treat your ears to Panutup here!


Buy a copy of DiskJokke Sagura here.

Mozaik

Zomby’s Dedication is not your garden variety dub-step. It’s not the sound that’s peppered into the latest Britney Spears album, nor a Katy Perry remix. Yet, it is not a carbon copy of Burial, and it’s not wobbly or dirty like an album by Distance. What we have here ladies and gentleman is stripped down dub. While the overtones on the album are somewhat melancholic, and hey, that’s kind of what the pioneers of the genre were going for, after slowing down U.K. styles of Two-Step and Garage (not your father’s garage rock), they’re not enough to be outright depressing.

Zomby as a producer has extracted from many electronic music styles—synthy 80’s sounds, electro, video game soundtracks, and ambient music. Prior to Dedication, he had released a number of EPs in which one could say served as sketches for his experiments. If you visit his Myspace page, for instance, the varied songs you will hear are pretty different from his current output. That is exactly what lured me into Zomby—seeing that he has roots in mixing classic raver kid club cuts, all the way to synthy gems that signaled to me that Zomby was interested more in craft and not trend; beyond someone trying to make a name for himself in the latest hip subgenre in techno, which by the way, has been around for nearly a decade.
Since Dedication isn’t as wobbly or grimey as other albums within the genre, it might seem subcategorized as comfy ambient music. However, it’s too jittery and restless and rhythmic to work. Yet it’s not quite the album one might buy if one is a hardcore dubstep fan. This is precisely the quality I like about Zomby—not tightly fixated to the expected parameters of the genre, bringing instead crunchy beat experiments with ethereal sound-washes, the kind made by a studio loner stringing together little oddities. It’s definitely headphone music—so many nuances that you want to be able to hear every last snippet.

I believe that the songs on Dedication build up to a moment of dark euphoria, as oxymoronic as that may seem. He alternates between average length songs and some which are under a minute long. It’s definitely a journey, with the denouement being “Mozaik”, the sixteenth and final song. While this appears on other blogs as the single, it makes the most sense after hearing the fifteen tracks before it. Enjoy and shake your booty a little!

Take a listen:



Get your copy of Zomby Dedication here.

Take My Soul

Thievery Corporation's Rob Garza and Eric Hilton are back with Culture of Fear, their sixth studio album. By now, most people are familiar with their sophisticated, impeccably crafted musical soundscapes that reflect not only their broad appreciation for diverse styles of music (everything from Brazilian bossa nova and Jamaican dub reggae to vintage film soundtracks and psychedelic space rock), but also their take on the complicated times in which we live.

Despite its pointed title, Culture of Fear is not quite as politically minded as Thievery Corporation's previous studio album. While dubwise tracks such as “Overstand” and “False Flag Dub,” along with the Mr. Lif feature “Culture of Fear,” continue the themes of 2008’s Radio Retaliation, a higher number of cuts -- including “Take My Soul,” “Where It All Starts,” “Is It Over?,” and “Safar (The Journey)” -- feature the duo’s heavy-lidded grooves with seductive female vocals, particularly Rochester's own ex-pat, LouLou. “We’re probably more radical in our political beliefs than most of the hardcore punk bands,” Hilton says, “but at the same time, we’re realistic about what we can actually do. We feel like our role is to be commentators.” Adds Garza: “The best thing we can do is try to open people’s minds.” For both Hilton and Garza, the seeds for their shared philosophy were sown while growing up near the nation’s capitol, which has spawned an abundance of progressive punk bands over the years, such as Bad Brains, Minor Threat, and Fugazi. “We’re influenced by that mentality, but the music doesn’t need to be about super aggressive guitars or hard-charging beats to convey that feeling,” Hilton says. Their musical palatability serves as a means of more subtly purveying their ideologies without turning a potential audience off to them.

Thievery Corporation is my brand of "easy listening". It does not make them weak, nor unimportant or a duo to write off. Rather, it's what I put on when I want a consistent, mature, and intriguing journey as I am working.

Take a listen to Take My Soul, featuring LouLou here.



Buy your copy of Culture of Fear here.