Scandanavian hip hop sounds pretty, feels empty.
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3484 Hits
Naked Intruder makes game music with a demonic Nintendo Entertainment System.
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DJ/Rupture puts on a master class on how to synthesize influences into something completely new.
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A voice as beautiful, intense and unsettling as Antony's was bound toinspire an equally weird and devoted cult fan base. In the six yearssince the release of his debut album on Durtro, the legions of Antonydevotees have gradually increased, thanks to countless residencies andmonthly performances at NYC art venues such as Joe's Pub and KnittingFactory, expanding to include the patronage of Lou Reed and LaurieAnderson.
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Their debut album, Dap-Dippin' with Sharon Jones and the Dap Kingsturned a lot of heads toward to the rebirth of fiery raw soul/funkmovements coming out of New York, and rightfully so. The retro soulfeel permeated everything from the raw production to the artwork; theband was smokin'; and Jones' voice was raw, forceful, andunwavering—but the problem almost anybody faces when they've found abrilliant formula that works is where to go without making the samerecord again. Surprisingly enough, Sharon Jones didn't know much of theband when the first recording sessions took place.
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With last year's limited concert EPs on Jnana Records and this year's How He Loved the Moon,Current 93 makes the first tentative steps outside the World SerpentDistribution umbrella that Durtro has labored under for so many years. Moon is a double LP containing nearly 80 minutes of music, a reissue and expansion of last year's Anomalous release A Little Menstrual Night Music, containing four sidelong remixes of vintage Current 93 album In Menstrual Nightundertaken by Steven Stapleton, originally commissioned as openingmusic for a pair of Current 93 shows in San Francisco.
4845 Hits
The newest release from micro-indie label Mile 329 is a fun slab ofnostalgic oddity that anyone who's spent time furiously tapping A and Bbuttons is sure to enjoy. This is the first I've heard from NakedIntruder, and The Last Vestigeis his love letter to the musical engine inside the classic 8-BitNintendo Entertainment System.
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Live albums are a tricky lot. Very few are actually representative of the live music experience. If recorded well, they can deliver a very close approximation of a band's live sound, but they ultimately by their very nature fail to deliver any sense of the band's visual performance. With Jason Molina's Magnolia Electric Co., this is perhaps not a huge loss.
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Joined for the second time by Jim O'Rourke, Still Valley is much less chaotic and noisy than Die Spiegelmanufaktur.This album is a beautiful study of slowly shifting drones. As it wasproduced between 2002 and 2004, it is possible that this project wasstarted during the same sessions that produced 2002's Die Spiegelmanufaktur.
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Imagine if Afrocentrist poet and playwright Amiri Baraka was born abouta half century late and instead of a pen he carried a mic.
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This new LP on Beta-Lactam makes an interesting companion piece to Beequeen's recent Important Records album. Where The Bodyshopwas a milestone for the work of Freek Kinkelaar and Frans de Waard withits unexpected emphasis on melody, structure and songcraft, Aughton—The Patient Booksis much more familiar Beequeen territory—organic drones, submergedloops and moody atmospherics.
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Petri Laukka, Jonas D. Aneheim, and Henrik N. Bjorkk claim that theserecordings are the result of live improvisations on various machinesand electronic devices. The result of their work is a 15 track "album"of static, harsh detonations, bubbling soups, and metallic shuffles. Ihesitate to call this a true album because each of the tracks seemsfirmly separated from each other; the only uniting factor being themusicians that made them and the manner in which each track wasconstructed.
5161 Hits
The Statler & Waldorf label wanted to kick things off with asampler based around the concept of European electronic musiciansworking with the theme of hip hop. Were this not an already a redundantassignment given the world-wide cribbing of hip hop mannerisms in allforms of electronica, it might seem like an interesting cross-culturalexperiment.
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Old compositions from when an artist first began recording music aren'talways of musical interest. It may be nice to have a document of acomposer's work from a particular period, but this double CD release ofsome of William Basinski's earliest compositions is hard to justify asa whole. Basinski's music seems to be perpetually painted in thefeeling of melancholy; these eight pieces are, at times, painfully sadand emotive of only the deepest and most excruciating reflections.
6576 Hits
Ben Chasny's debut album for Drag City is the culmination of all of his work as Six Organs of Admittance up to this point. I first saw Chasny perform as Six Organs at 2002's Terrastock festival, and heard his album Dark Noontide soon after. I was struck at that time by his intuitive technique on the acoustic guitar, and the fuzzy blanket of drones that rippled underneath his extended instrumental excursions. Each release since has been stronger than the last, but every one of them seemed oddly transitional, as if Chasny hadn't yet settled on a comfortable repertoire of techniques.
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Franco Battiato is one of the most unfairly underrated and habituallyignored composer/musicians of the last few decades. The strength of hismaterial plus the careful selection of bands on What's Your Functioneasily rank this in my mental 'top list' of all time favorite tributealbums despite being one of the worst cover/packaging/font jobs ever.
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März is part of the legacy nurtured by the likes of Phil Spector, BrianWilson, Brian Eno, and Cornelius; they are bedroom savants and esotericenthusiasts, studio hermits shyly convinced of their place among theranks of pop royalty. But while for Eno the pop format served as theschizophrenic outro to his feather boa phase and the harbinger ofthings ambient and self-contained, März instead chooses the oppositepath.
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This CD is a welcome reissue of one of Mirror's most diverse sets,which was originally issued on vinyl in 2000. The remastering processhas aided this set immensely, as its often quiet atmospheric worlds cannow be heard clearly, without the interference of crackling andpopping.
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Ben Vida is best known for his work in Town & Country, but his newproject is both different from and more alluring than his work in thatband. Without completely removing any sense of song structure oridentifiable melody, Vida has assimilated nine tracks of tumult,clatter, and lamentation built out of edited guitars, toy percussion,jazz influences, and secretive tones.
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For his second disc as a bandleader, Chicago-based guitarist JeffParker (Tortoise, Isotope 217) has expanded his solo project from thestandard jazz trio format, accompanied by upright bass and drums, to aquartet with the addition of Sam Barsheshet on Fender Rhodes andWurlitzer electric keys.
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