Secret Machines - Now Here is Nowhere
Well, given that the buzz-band of the moment changes . . . well . . . every moment, Secret Machines are no
longer the hottest property on the block. In fact, they were the "It" band at least two dozen shifts ago:
a fleeting couple of weeks some time in the middle of July 2004. But they still have a solid following,
have managed to brush off the fickle spot-light, and continue to create neo-anachronistic pop-prog-rock.
The "secret" of these machines - or at least their success with the hipster set - is that they manage to
fuse lush Pink Floydesque excess with post-T-Rex style glam vocals. A winning combination, since few
bands have achieved such a delicate balance. Founded on quality musicianship and hi-tech FX pedals
courtesy of (who else?) Pink Floyd's old roadie, this talented three-piece take the title of their
album as a stoned launch-pad to make one of the best concept-lite albums for a long time, tailored
for skinny girls with asymmetrical haircuts and big hairy guys in tie-dyed shirts and scabbed knees.
Quite a miracle really.
Amon Tobin - Chaos Three: Splinter Cell 3 Soundtrack
First thing's first. This album was commissioned for a video game. So Brazil's finest beat-mutant could
easily have phoned it in, and then used the cash to buy another state-of-the-art studio somewhere in a
giant phosphorescent underground cave. But not this perfectionist. In fact, Maestro Tobin has taken a
step, if not forward, at least side-ways, into a particularly dark and intense alley. Stripping away the
more jazz-inflected instruments, such as horns, double-bass and acoustic-loops, this album focuses itself
on layer upon layer of muffled beats to the level of mania, but somehow sounding more liberating than
claustrophobic. It has a cinematic quality, which makes sense, considering that it was made to accompany
visuals (and, let's face it, video-games will probably be the movies of the near future). And speaking
personally, listening to Amon Tobin has always been like breathing to me. It just seems completely natural.
Second nature. Autochthonous. These are the soundscapes I was born to inhabit, since he has barely
made one off-note in five or six albums. And with Chaos Three, the DJ who has invented his own technorganic sub-genre boils it down to one hell of a sticky black substance.
If the Death Star had its own symphony orchestra, it would probably sound something like this.
RJD2 - Since We Last Spoke
Not as immediately appealing as his first album, Deadringer, Since We Last Spoke is your classic "grower." After the first couple of listens, I was like "yeah . . . quite nice." But soon enough it was under my skin, and the default choice when I couldn't decide what mood I was in; since it jumps from laid-back 1970's horror soundtracks to electro-ecstasy overload, all stitched together with white-boy hip-hop reverence. I've heard people complain that it isn't beat-oriented enough, but who really buys a DJ Shadow or RJD2 album to dance to? They are both super-talented recomposers, and come up with tracks that - once woven out of a multitude of sources - seem destined to have been reassembled that way. I saw him tour on this album at the Bowery Ballroom, and he was hubristic enough to use four-turntables, which was like watching an old-fashioned plate-spinning act: everyone transfixed, waiting for the whole thing to collapse into pieces. But it didn't, and RJD2 has now convinced me that he isn't just a B-grade Josh Davis.
Trans Am - Liberation
Geez I love this album! It got panned by the hipper-than-thou types, probably because it shamelessly employs an unreconstructed, non-ironic groove to complement its Devoesque song-structures and sensibility. And while I admit that there are a couple of aesthetic missteps - mostly those taking aim at the current US administration (they are from DC after all) - their hearts, minds, and analogue-thrash mojo are in the right place. I saw Trans Am play live last summer, and I'll never forget the drummer's silver-haired father going completely nuts up on the balcony: as if he was poised to execute a frenetic swan-dive into the moshing audience, if only his new hip wasn't acting up.
Awesome!
Joanna Newsom - Milk-Eyed Mender
My vote for album of 2004 (tied with Lhasa's). The first time I heard Newsom's unique vocals bleating out of my earphones, I had to laugh, but within seconds I could tell that I was in the presence of exceptional genius. Occasionally channeling floating elements of Bjork and Catpower, this winsome 21-year-old from Nevada City can also sound like a lamb having a tantrum. But this only adds to the other-worldly aura, along with her classically-trained harp-playing and flat-out brilliant lyrics.
I killed my dinner with karate
kick 'em in the face, taste the body;
shallow work is the work that I do.
or
This is an old song, these are old blues.
This is not my tune, but it's mine to use.
or
The signifieds butt heads with the signifiers,
and we all fall down slack-jawed to marvel at words,
While across the sky sheet the impossible birds,
in a steady, illiterate movement homewards.
(Did I mention she is 21?!)
Ms. Newsom has plenty of haters, who think she is playing the cutesy-card far too hard, but to me she is an aural drug, which I crave almost everyday. Practically every song on the Milk-Eyed Mender is a perfect little universe of its own miraculous making. And I can only pray she continues to come up with these warped, intense and beautiful gifts for a world full of schmos like me.
Lhasa de Sela - The Living Road + La Llorona
When I first heard the thirty second sample of Lhasa on the Aquarius Records new releases page, I couldn't believe it. I hit replay about ten times, before immediately ordering it, and figuratively chewing my nails until the precious disc arrived. This velvet-throated husky angel has been described as the "ultimate global chanteuse," since she sings in equal fluency in Spanish, French and English, having grown up in Mexico, then Montreal, and most recently France. Capturing the spirit of a sepia-toned world of yore, and incorporating shades of Susanna Barca, Nina Simone and P.J. Harvey, Lhasa takes my breath away with every note. I was lucky enough to see her play recently in a small cabaret-style venue in New York, and I suffered from salt-and-water dehydration for days afterwards, watching the entire concert through a blurry film of tears. (Apologies to those unfortunate enough to be sitting at my table, next to such a quivering foppish aesthete.)
Sublime and then some.
The Books - Lost and Safe + Lemon of Pink + Thought For Food
The Books sound like no other composers out there, creating gentle-yet-compelling sound-poems out of
instruments like the banjo, cello, and - most strikingly - sliced samples of the human voice, taken
from old radio plays, lectures and in-flight announcements. I've been searching all my music-listening
life for such a perfect earphone experience, uncolonized by detectable grammatical structures, and
breathing as if they fell from the sky that way - as if the contents were sloshed around in a ceramic
urn, and poured into the ear. In less florid terms, The Lemon of Pink and Thought for Food are perfect
experiments in tracks which are too well-structured to be considered ambient or musique concrète, and
yet far too loose to be considered "songs." Very few artists can sustain this perfect balance for even
one track, let alone a whole album, never pushing you away by its monotony or obscurity, but neither
drawing you too close in a suffocating effort to "make sense." The samples are at once evocative and
elliptical, so that the listener can never confidently say - thank god! - what it's about, or what it
means. These amazing pieces surround and inhabit, without generating images which then over-determine
the tone of their presence. . . . Which is why their newest album, Lost and Safe, has divided fans,
since vocals have now been added, albeit in a rather tentative manner, conscious of the need to move
on, having mastered a new genre, but not wishing to alienate unnecessarily. While this newest work has
less space, and seems more linear somehow, than their previous two albums, Nick Zammuto and Paul de Jong
are so confident with their craft that they manage to twist the potentially, even patently, pretentious
into something which bypasses the intellect and releases inky emotions within. (Much like a good book,
appropriately enough.)
Wonderful, flowing, unfamiliar music for the bespectacled English major in all of us.
Roy Harper - Stormcock
There seems to be a massive folk revival going on; at least in the US, with artists like Devendra Banhart,
Sufjan Stevens and many others realizing that the softer you whisper your songs in a Nick Drake kind of
way, the harder the girls try to get you into bed. And thanks to this rekindling of interest in all
things acoustic, the output of gifted artists like Tim Buckley, Richard Thompson and Vashti Bunyan are
enjoying a second or third wind. But no props yet for Roy Harper, who was perhaps too inconsistent,
too English, and just too plain stoned to reassemble a cult around in 2005. However, his 1971 album
Stormcock still stands as one of the great contributions of one of the greatest years in musical history. Comprised of only four lengthy songs - two on each side of the vinyl original - layers and layers of delayed steel string guitar are overdubbed with layers and layers of Roy Harper's unfathomable lyrics. I still remember how my jaw literally dropped the first time I saw him play "One Man Rock-and-Roll Band" on a TV show called "Rock Arena" around 1986. I had heard of this peripheral figure from cameos with the big boys of English rock, such as the vocals on Pink Floyd's "Have a Cigar" and Led Zeppelin's throw-away song "Hats Off To Roy Harper," but had no idea what he could do when in "the zone" - as he clearly was when recording this timeless classic.
Beg, borrow or steal a copy, since Amazon has only one left, for a mere 44 bucks.