A Species Out of Control

One of my favorite electronic duos from England is back with Unpatterns. Producers/remixers James Ford and James Shaw formed Simian Mobile Disco in 2005, following their departure from the experimental electronic rock band Simian. The 35-year-olds are known worldwide for “Attack Decay Sustain Release” in 2007 and “Temporary Pleasure” in 2009. In between regular DJ gigs, the gents created “Unpatterns” over two years in their home studio, jamming on 1970s analog gear. “We took much longer on this one and we were more selfish,” says Shaw. “We knew we wanted to do something more psychedelic and maybe a bit warmer.” Layering simple sequences atop one another, the two sought the audio equivalent of a “moire pattern” — a visual effect that can be seen on textiles like silk, bird feathers, or simply by walking past two parallel chain-link fences. “You’re waiting for that effect to happen and when you get it you’re like, ‘Sweet, thank you very much.’ You’d have to be much smarter than either of us to plan it from the outset,” Shaw says. “We just do loads and loads of tunes and come back to them. It doesn’t really make any sense to do proper documentation.” Going along with the Moire Pattern, there is also a mobile App that was created as a collaboration with Kate Moross and Boreal Kiss. It allows you to listen to the entirety of the album while playing with a host of the aforementioned patterns. The patterns are manipulated on a touch screen, allowing you to create shifting and evolving interference patterns. Thanks, Bjork, for setting the pace for other electronic acts to start making app-friendly music. I know I will be pretty tempted to purchase said app, as my iphone has become a vital, yet completely frivolous tool within my existence. Overall, the sound of Unpatterns is a step back to a sound SMD have been cultivating since 2005. Less cold, minimal techno than Delicacies, it has some vocals and a warmer sound, still being a danceable album or great for the car. I predict this album will be a necessary addition to your summer soundtrack. Feast your ears to "A Species Out of Control" here: To purchase your copy of Simian Mobile Disco's Unpatterns, email marta@alternativemusic.com

Stay Down

Cancer For Cure is a triumph of imagination and intelligence in service of personal and political unease. Rapper-producer El-P imagines himself as a dot on a radar screen, tracked by unknown hunters, working his way across some surreal bureaucratic hellscape. On “Tougher Colder Killer,” a soldier kills a man for reasons he can’t quite explain. The victim’s last words—that there’s always someone bigger and better above him who can wipe him out—reverberate long after he’s left the battlefield. On “The Jig Is Up,” he asks a woman who for some bizarre reason wants to spend her free time with him, “Tell me who sent you here? What agency?” Yet just because El-P is paranoid doesn’t mean he shouldn’t be followed. Like the best works of science fiction, Cancer For Cure is compelling because its unsettling narratives aren’t purely fantasy. El-P is in peak form here, madder than ever, slickly weaving dense, cerebral verses packed with internal rhymes through a machine-tooled version of classic New York boom-bap with a gnarly sound combining part KRS-One, part Cabaret Voltaire. There’s always a muffled cacophony of nasty voices just on the outside of a sealed subway car, through the ceiling of his poorly constructed apartment, or at the other end of a deep chemical stupor. “I’ve got memories to lose, man,” he admits on “Works Every Time.” But this isn’t pity-seeking, it’s pure pragmatism. El-P lost his good friend and collaborator Camu Tao to lung cancer in 2008, and the sense that the loss has tainted everything in his life pervades the record. The album ends with El-P’s laser-focused assertion that the memory of his friend keeps him locked in, pushing through the muck. It’s cold comfort, but it’ll work for now. Preview Stay Down here: Buy a copy of El-P's Cancer4Cure here.

Back From Mystery City

Guess who's baaaack? It's Blakula, my favorite Italian, creepazoid, film score music-maker for non-existent films! Maccari and Bellentani are an Italian duo (in case you couldn't tell) who started making cosmic disco together a few years ago as The Diaphanoids. They first appeared as Blakula in summer of 2010 with Permanent Midnight, an album that delivered left-field disco with campy horror film flair. Back From Mystery City follows a similar blueprint, with the core duo employing a cast of live musicians (including string ensembles, brass ensembles and the Prague Symphony Orchestra) to perform their organic disco compositions. All of the tracks were composed, arranged and produced by Maccari and Bellentani and recorded in Rome in 2010 and 2011. This sophomore effort is consistent with the first as it's a strong album from start to finish. I fully enjoy putting this on at work and letting the afternoon take a cinematic turn! Listen to the title track, Back From Mystery City, here. email marta@alternativemusic.com for your copy of Blakula's Back From Mystery City.

Inhale

By now, you might know that Geoff Barrow is of Portishead fame, but he has stayed busy outside of his Portishead duties. Not only did he produce albums by the Horrors and Anika, but early 2012 saw the release of another album from his band Beak> and of two other very different but equally successful projects: Quakers, an underground hip-hop collective that made his fondness for crate-digging more explicit than it had been since Portishead's early trip-hop trailblazing days, and Drokk, a collaboration with composer Ben Salisbury. As the title Drokk: Music Inspired by Mega-City One suggests, this is an imaginary soundtrack (or "outsider's perspective," as the duo described it) to the long-running cult comic strip Judge Dredd, which spawned the Sylvester Stallone movie of the same name and began appearing in the British sci-fi anthology 2000 A.D. in 1977. As a celebration of the strip's 35th anniversary, the album couldn't be more affectionately geeky: Salisbury and Barrow recorded most of the soundtrack with a vintage 1975 Oberheim 2 Voice Synthesizer, which gives the soundtrack an authentic late-'70s feel that channels John Carpenter's spare, creepy synth-based scores, especially Escape from New York. Drokk's mix of dead air, dark, viscous analog synth tones, and thrumming arpeggios is hypnotic and intense but never too claustrophobic -- like any good soundtrack, this album is more about creating a mood than calling attention to itself. Drokk: Music Inspired by Mega-City One is a recommended listen for anyone who appreciates Goblin, Zombi, and dark soundtrack albums. Selecting a singular track from this concept album is kind of absurd, but hey, here's Inhale. Buy your copy of Geoff Barrow & Ben Salisbury's Drokk here.

Santigold is back with Master of My Make-Believe, with its bad-ass album cover, featuring herself as four characters. On a casual listening level, she seems like a less cracked-out M.I.A. But if one gives her a deeper listen, there is a more varied song structure and greater bag of tricks. Frontwoman Santi White and John Hill continues to co-write, but with White gaining pop star status, he takes the back seat, as they enlist the help of A-list producers Diplo, Switch, Boyz Noise, Buraka Som Sistema, TV on the Radio's Dave Sitek, Ricky Blaze, and Q-Tip. Multi-instrumentalist Greg Kurstin (Beck, Flaming Lips) and the Yeah Yeah Yeahs also make a huge impact on the sound of the record, with Karen O contributing vocals on the leadoff "Go!" and Nick Zinner scattering delicious guitar texture across the tracks. MOMMB is a thickly crafted album that took four years to complete. At surface value, it isn't drastically different than the debut, but it's never predictable. Instead of delivering an album's worth of bangers, Santigold expands on downtempo dub and pop ballads like "Shove It" and the commercial crossover hit "Lights Out." Fans of those songs will enjoy the synth reggae fusion of "Pirate in the Water" and the severely catchy hooks of "Disparate Youth." When not dabbling in reggae (like on the Beastie Boys album cameo "Don't Play No Game That I Can't Win"), White -- whose favorite band is appropriately the Smiths -- continues to be masterful at appropriating sparkling '80s arrangements. This is the kind of album that can fully define her sound, but is still multifaceted and well crafted enough to be exciting. Listen and watch this pop ditty, "Disparate Youth" Buy your copy of My Make-Believe here.

Weep Themselves to Sleep

Surprise!!I am recommending Jack White's heavily hyped solo effort, Blunderbuss. I wasn't crazy for the White Stripes and what turned me around was Dead Weather. Thanks to that side project, I am giving this a chance. It could be that I was primed for this sound growing up with Classic Rock and being a HUUUGE Guns N'Roses fan as a kid. Yes, GN'R. Why do I mention them? The piano stylings on this album are straight up Axl Rose circa the Use Your Illusion Tours, when he would dedicate a portion of the live show to sitting at the baby grand and noodlin' away and pouring his twisted heart out. Like Axl, White is putting out something from the heart here. I haven't deeply studied the lyrics, but ya can because a lovely lyric book is part of the album packaging. There is something very familiar sounding on this album, very Nashville with the slide guitar and keys, mixing with a warm guitar sounds from AM radio circa the mid nineteen seventies. I didn't expect to like this album, but after a few listens, it still holds up. I think one might have to be in a particular mood for this, if this style of music isn't your daily thing, but all in all, an album that stands out amongst this month's releases. Try "Weep Themselves to Sleep" on for size. Buy your copy of Blunderbuss on CD & LP here.

Vava Voom!

Sometimes you just gotta say, "what the bleep" and choose something kinda surfacey, indulgent, and mainstream for a listen. Last we I had Madonna, this week I have selected Bassnectar's Vava Voom. Perhaps I am fixated on my upcoming mini-vacation, but I want to hear some tunes that evoke fun, feeling carefree, and evocative of warmer weather. I found nothing terribly gripping this week to review, but the new Bassnectar is out and I say, "Hail to Bassheads!!"

Bassnectar is the stage name used by DJ, producer, and remixer Lorin Ashton, one of the more popular and influential figures in California's electronic music community. Bassnectar's music is known for its eclecticism, embracing elements of extreme bass, dubstep, breakbeat, and other IDM styles, as well as shifting tempos, contrasting moods, and dynamics that go from gentle to bruising and back during the course of a set. A significant amount of Bassnectar's music also has a strong activist streak, and Ashton uses his work to promote social and political causes and to foster a sense of community.

In 1996, Ashton started learning how to DJ, and coupled with his earlier experience in percussion, he recorded four-track demos with his band and studied electronic music at the University of California in Santa Cruz, soon mastering the basics of spinning and producing dance music. He started producing recordings for other acts in his spare time, and in 2001 he was invited to remix a track by Michael Franti & Spearhead for a single. Later that same year, the first Bassnectar album was released, Freakbeat for the Beatfreaks, which Ashton produced and released on his own label, Amorphous Music. While his first few albums earned him a buzz on the indie electronic scene, the fourth Bassnectar album, 2004's Diverse Systems of Throb, expanded his audience and influence, and since then, Bassnectar has issued a steady stream of albums, singles, and podcasts on which he has collaborated with artists including KRS-One, Ellie Goulding, Perry Farrell, Buckethead, and Gogol Bordello, as well as producers Diplo, BT, DJ Vadim, and Rjd2. Bassnectar also became a popular live attraction, with Ashton spinning up to 150 nights at year at venues ranging from clubs and warehouses to festivals such as Coachella, Bonnaroo, and Lollapalooza. In 2010, he got into the festival game himself, staging his first Bass Center Festival in Broomfield, Colorado, featuring sets by Dan Deacon, That 1 Guy, Brother Ali, and many more, as well as Bassnectar.

Compared to his other albums, Vava Voom seems like the most thrown together just for the fun of it--not a clear directional flow, many guest spots, and offering the producer at his most commercial (the club hit, title track with Lupe Fiasco), his most headphone-oriented (the otherworldly "Laughter Crescendo" sounds like a '70s sci-fi soundtrack outtake), and surprisingly, his most sexy (thousands of little dubstep babies are going to their own "drop" to "Nothing Has Been Broken" and Tina Malia's breathy vocals). Sometimes you just gotta fuggedabouttit. Besides, this is the music that's right on the pulse of the most popular electronic dance festivals and the cross-genre guest spots assure the greatest possible audience and I like that.

Ya might as well watch the video while listening to the first single, with Lupe Fiasco.
Kinda ridiculous, but it even had moms bopping in the shop yesterday! Cheers!



Buy your copy of Vava Voom here.

PS--he is coming to Rochester's Armory on Record Store Day, April 21!!

PPS--We will be opening on 9am on Record Store Day! Come early, get the first picks!!