Indo-Canadian artist Kiran AhluwaliaÕs fifth album, Aam Zameen : Common Ground, is just out on
Avokado Artists Recordings. While AhluwaliaÕs previous albums mixed sounds of her native
India with Portuguese fado, Celtic fiddle and Afghani rhubab, her new one finds her jamming with the hard-hitting Malian Tuareg band Tinariwen in a seriously intoxicating swirl of Indian rhythms and Saharan desert blues. Ahluwalia and Tinariwen are joined on the record by fellow Tuareg tribesmen Terakaft and Gambian ritti player Juldeh Camara. By the way, did all these supposedly disparate cultures find "common ground" in the music they created together? They did ÐÐ but wouldn't it be interesting if they didn't? Just a thought.
Once upon a time there was a rather badass rock woman in tattered jeans, shades and feather boas named Jennifer Herrema, and she had an arty punky
garage-metal band called Royal Trux, who became the even gnarlier garagey-er bar band RTX, who've now changed their name to...Black Bananas, who...Well,
change is good, mostly. Royal Trux was one thing, RTX another, Black Bananas is all of 'em, somehow tighter, smarter, heavier, sloppier yet more focused and
vicious and funny, even. Believe it, they do everything you need to hear on this new album on Drag City called Rad Times Xpress IV, a kind of revisionist
future-metal riding rough shod over all worthy trash culture from the last five or six decades, and while if it just sounds so anti-everything, how come it's so very,
very liberating?
Avos is an album of quite choice and unusually harmonized guitar duets by James Elkington and Nathan Salsburg.
The title of the album comes from the Russian word for confidence in the face of the unknown, and in theory there is
here some kind of potential frisson between the styles and histories of each player's respective countries of origin
(Elkington's English, Salsburg's American) ÐÐ though really it's all about a more resonant rubbing between the duo's
somewhat different but sympathetic personalities. The pair together come up with new pieces, don't attempt to
rehash the trad stuff in well-intentioned covers, and their source materials of Euro baroque and pastoral classical,
American country-blues and ragtime and arcane points in-between serve as richly fertile soil for a new kind of acoustic
string music that feels and sounds respectful but not overly reverent about (chained to) the great music of the past.
Future folk, you might call it. Typically beautiful Tompkins Square packaging job on this release, too, you'll want to
hold it in your hands as you listen; also available as limited-edition vinyl LP.
Seek out the re-release of the first of Vas Deferens Organization's two collabs with Medicine/Steaming Coils/Electric Company kingpin Brad Laner. Transcontinental Conspiracy
(Niklas Records / Monotype Records) really was/is one of your avant-rock biggies of the '90s, an audio verite explosion of electronics, breakbeats and quarky sonic laffs minutely edited into extended suites;
it's The Faust Tapes redux, maybe, with loads of Can wafting in and about. The album has been remastered, with a bonus track, along with beautiful new packaging design. FYI: Eric Lumbleau of Vas Deferens Organization is a co-author of the fantastic Mutant Sounds blog. That might give you a better idea of the wide-ranging aesthetic we're talking about here.
BOOTS ELECTRIC
Boots Electric / Honkey Kong (Dangerbird)
Hollywood homeboy Jesse Hughes fronts garage-art champs the Eagles of Death Metal, where Hughes makes ludicrous refs. to all things dumbo rock & roll. A primo hook man and pop-trash dumpster diver, Hughes gives his glammy dance-rock solo debut as Boots Electric a hectic stomp strewn with a Ô50s-rock & roll melodicity: ELO and T Rex hump Funkadelic, Ultravox and The Big Bopper. ÒBoots Electric ThemeÓ and ÒLove You All the ThymeÓÕs new wavey synth sleaze, buzz-guitars and big fat beats bump bells, steam organs, violin solos and warped special FX, and JesseÕs lyrical purview? ThatÕd be baby-take-me-back, sexy trannies and running with the devil; thar be no saving of baby harp seals here.
ALEJANDRO SANTOYO
Serene, relaxing and cleansing are not words we generally like to employ in our super-erudite observations on the heady art of music.
But this album called Elevation by Alejandro Santoyo is nothing if not serene, relaxing and cleansing, and it's just plain undeniable. And that makes us think...If we say we're not exactly wild about New Age music ÐÐ and it's not because we're snobsÉtell a lie, we are terrible snobs ÐÐ that's because you just don't go there, you being all you similarly erudite and intellectual music experts. Yet this is nothing but another prejudice, of course, and an example of how music critics and musicians who claim to stand for the highest ideals in the musical arts seldom fail to fall prey to their own self-imposed orthodoxies. The truth is, music is music, and it's the composer's purity of intent, really, by which it oughtta be judged. To wit, Santoyo's music, which is indeed the essence of New Age in thought, word and deed, with no apologies about it. Airy electronic orchestral and choral textures grace his delicate piano and guitar melodies, which are simple and quite effective, and very, very pretty, without veering too much into the saccarhine. A Bach-like elegance of form, arrangement and execution is Santoyo's forte; the title track is especially entrancing, as is a radically reharmonized "Air on a G String."
The Fiery Furnaces, as you know, comprise siblings Matthew Friedberger and his little sister Eleanor.
The FF make an extremely varied brand of sort of power-eclectica that, one might argue, is in fact the smartest
pop on the planet. I mean, you could make a good case for that, since it sounds better than most anything else...Well,
the pair are taking time out from FF to do solo things currently, and we'll get to Matthew's next week. But Eleanor,
now, she is a singer, and an excellent one, and she plays guitar, and in FF she's required to spew out like glossolalia a
tidal wave of complicated and usually piquant and funny lyrical spew that ÐÐ how does she memorize it, and how
does she make her mouth move so fast and keep hitting all the right notes?
The hugely charismatic and seemingly fearless Eleanor is it said likes Led Zeppelin and Jorge Ben, and Carole King
and Todd Rundgren, and she sings in that pleasingly alto-ish register not unlike the great MPB star Simone from
Brazil (though the comparisons should end right there) and she's now got a bunch of her own self-penned songs
grouped together in a solo album called Last Summer, just out on Merge Records.
Swedish/Danish artist Christine Owman has this new album out called Throwing Knives (Revolving Records/River
Jones Music) The music is a combination of fever-dream folk, anguished distortion and out and out noise. So you will hear:
very rude guitar sounds, yes, but also ukulele, cello, violin, banjo, keyboards, saw, harmonium and lots of other old-tymy
things. The effect is unsettling, usually, even quite chilling, sometimes because she seems so fiercely determined to do things
her own way whether you might like it or not. Again, what could possibly be better than that? Musically, that is...?
Inspired by the visual arts, film and documentaries, Owman makes movie projections of all her songs. See for yourself:
Rare vintage psychedelia from all corners of the world has been creeping out over the years through the
yeoman efforts of fanatical collectors. WeÕve seen them dig up a lot of from-the-vaults type obscurities in the
rock, soul, funk and cosmic folk-type genres from various European, African and South American countries, but
not so much from the Middle East. This compilation of IranÕs 1970s rock star Kourosh Yaghmaei fills that gap in
supreme style. Singer-composer Yaghmaei was and is the big daddy of Persian rock and psychedelia who along
with his brother, guitarist Kamran, created sounds that, while bearing resemblance to some of the more well-known
Middle Eastern rock artists of that era (in particular Turkish fuzz-guitarist Erkin Koray and SyriaÕs Omar Souleyman),
brought a uniquely Persian perspective and sound to their moody and meditative songs. The set focuses on YaghmaeiÕs
very rare 7-inch singles, recorded in the mid- to late Õ70s but never officially released and, post-Revolution, having
been largely forgotten about outside of Iran and its diaspora. These tracks are intriguing stews of cultural
hybridizing/meltdown, bearing traces of the rock and funk and studio freakout influences that found their way to
1970s Iranian ears, laced throughout with a distinctively Persian melancholy, played out in twanging minor-key
electric guitars (clean and distorted) often couched in tuff-funk drums and bass and KouroshÕs own infinitely
soulful vocal warbles through indelible melodies ÐÐ the loneliest sound ever heard. The double-CD compilation is a
beautifully packaged thing as well, with loads of pics of the artist, band and original record sleeves circa Ô70s, lyrics and
informative comment by Now-AgainÕs Eothan Alapatt.
1980 in Soho was a richly soiled place of perveridly passionate young no-wave punks putting serious geometry into their awkwardly inventive stabs at fusing some kinda "funk" with a lotta pointyheaded arty pop and rock, etc., etc. You know about DNA, Teenage Jesus, Contortions, Suicide and that crowd, but then too there was a downtown band called Social Climbers. They didn't go nowhere, and fast, and that's too bad, 'cause they took the post-punk-funk format of big-butt bass, guitar, drum machine, squarking vocals and chintzy organ into beautifully idiosyncratic realms, like the mirror's smashed and they're piecing the shards together in an all-wrong way. Which is exactly the right thing to do. The esteemed Drag City label has just reissued the band's one and only album, Social Climbers, and one really ought to seek it out asap.
Avos is an album of quite choice and unusually harmonized guitar duets by James Elkington and Nathan Salsburg.
The title of the album comes from the Russian word for confidence in the face of the unknown, and in theory there is
here some kind of potential frisson between the styles and histories of each player's respective countries of origin
(Elkington's English, Salsburg's American) ÐÐ though really it's all about a more resonant rubbing between the duo's
somewhat different but sympathetic personalities. The pair together come up with new pieces, don't attempt to
rehash the trad stuff in well-intentioned covers, and their source materials of Euro baroque and pastoral classical,
American country-blues and ragtime and arcane points in-between serve as richly fertile soil for a new kind of acoustic
string music that feels and sounds respectful but not overly reverent about (chained to) the great music of the past.
Future folk, you might call it. Typically beautiful Tompkins Square packaging job on this release, too, you'll want to
hold it in your hands as you listen; also available as limited-edition vinyl LP.
