You can purchase tickets for this special event here.

Check out the video below to see a teaser for Frisell's John Lennon tribute album, All We Are Saying.

Mastodon: The Hunter (Warner Bros. / Reprise)

Mastodon: "Curl of the Burl"

Since forming in 1999, Mastodon has grown from cult sensation to preeminent poster-child of metal’s next generation. Along the way, its crushing, complex brand of melodic sludge has absorbed elements of thrash, prog, and Southern rock, all complemented by earthen mythology, literary ambition, and serious chops.

On The Hunter, an album that breaks the band's concept-album streak, vocal melodies are at an all-time high, imbuing tracks such as "Curl of the Burl," "All the Heavy Lifting," and "Creature Lives" with genuine pop catchy-ness that, at times, approaches the intonations of Alice in Chains. But grizzly screams and up-tempo sludge riffs have not gone the way of the band's namesake; "Blasteroid" and "Black Tongue" have plenty of head-bashing fury.

A few spacey and horror-esque elements, musically and lyrically, give the album an interesting wrinkle here and there, such as on "Stargasm" and "Creature Lives," the latter of which uses pitch-shifting synths to set an alien mood. "The Sparrow" then closes the album with touches of lap-steel guitar, setting the tone for some of the airiest Mastodon vocals yet.

In all, The Hunter is a fun, riff-filled album, but it's destined to alienate more Mastodon "purists." The bottom line, however, is that the band continues to crank out killer riffs and turn on a new generation to metal — even if it has a softer edge.

Boom Bip: Zig Zaj (Lex)

Boom Bip: "All Hands"

Ever since his loop-based beginnings, Bryan Charles Hollan — known better as experimental hip-hop artist Boom Bip — has been on the search for his optimal live-band incarnation. With his latest, Zig Zaj, he seems to have found it.

In 2002, Seed to Sun demonstrated Hollan's ability to make compelling organic and instrumental hip hop. On his recordings since that time, nearly everything has been performed by hand, and the results have been admirable — but nothing has clicked quite like this.

Now Hollan is armed with a permanent live band, consisting of Josh Klinghoffer (Red Hot Chili Peppers), Eric Gardner (Gnarls Barkley, Charlotte Gainsbourg), and Josiah Steinbrick. Their chemistry is immediately evident on Zig Zaj, which also sports standout guest spots from Alex Kapranos of Franz Ferdinand (for one very Depeche Mode track), Money Mark, Luke Steele (Empire of the Sun), Cate Le Bon, and Mikey Noyce (Bon Iver).

Partly because of the guests, the new material takes a poppier and more rock-driven direction. But there's still plenty of the old Bip underneath, as synths and electronics commingle with the bass grooves and delicate acoustic riffs. It's a catchy, beautiful, and well-balanced blend, perfect for first-time Bip listeners. Pick this up now.

Welder: Florescence (Ancestor)

Welder: "Run"

Brendan Angelides is a San Francisco-based electronic producer best known as Eskmo, an IDM/electronica project that has come to focus more on atmospherics and on writing songs than on its early roots of making dance tracks. He has found a like-minded collaborator in the incomparable Amon Tobin, with whom he operated as Eskamon for a 2010 single, but for his latest release, Angelides has retraced his roots as Welder for another self-released gem.

Welder began as one of Angelides' first and most introspective projects. Living alone in a lakeside house in Connecticut for two years, he created soft, internal music, a more “chilled” version of electronica, under the alias . But it wasn’t only the remote locale that inspired the quiet sounds, as Angelides pored over documents and papers about the dark underside of American society and government and conspiracy theories surrounding 9/11.

Florescence is almost a rebirth for Welder. The IDM elements remain, but the music is more organic than ever. Gone are the bass-heavy dubstep rumblings of his self-titled Eskmo release, and the worldly elements of the earlier Welder material have been replaced by interwoven grooves, stirring melodies, and diverse timbres.

The emphasis here is on Angelides' musicianship, including his talents on the piano and bass. From the start, Florescence is highly active, intertwining feisty and bubbly melodies of faux cello and glockenspiel. Piano, guitars, synths, and strings surround those other elements, and whether they're real or library samples, they create a sound that's simultaneously lifelike and dreamy.

- Text by Marla Seidell and Scott Morrow. Read the feature story on Eskmo here.

Zechs Marquise: Getting Paid (Sargent House / Rodriguez Lopez Productions)

Zechs Marquise: "Static Lovers"

El Paso-based psych-prog five-piece Zechs Marquise is three-fifths Rodriguez Lopez — brothers Marcel, Rikardo, and Marfred — a surname that gained music-industry notoriety from Omar, the prolific Mars Volta guitarist (and head of Zechs Marquise's label). Together, the siblings have followed in the progressive footsteps of their older brother, but Zechs Marquise has blazed its own trail over its eight years as a band.

Its official debut album, the 2009 effort Our Delicate Stranded Nightmare, was a much more experimental and atmospheric work, patching together songs with eerie intros, funky keys, and jazz-tinged ambience. Getting Paid, however, fully focuses on the groove. Each of the album's nine tracks moves at its own pace, venturing into an alternate sonic universe at a moment's notice. Abrupt tempo shifts, an inexhaustible junk drawer of textures, and a healthy obsession with '70s prog fusion culminate in a truly shape-shifting record, albeit one that consistently rocks. Zechs Marquise knows when to give into its sweaty, twisted vision-quest dalliances and when to let a groove ride.

- Text by Kyle Gilkeson.

Evidence: Cats & Dogs (Rhymesayers)

Evidence: "You"

Los Angeles MC Michael Perretta (better known as Evidence) is one third of the hip-hop trio Dilated Peoples. Over the past four years, with Dilated on hiatus, Evidence has focused on his solo career, and Cats & Dogs marks his move to Rhymesayers Entertainment.

Here Perretta delivers a crisp flow that is complemented by guest vocalists such as Slug (Atmosphere), Aesop Rock, Raekwon, and Aloe Blacc. With samples anchored in soul and pop, the album lays a pliable backdrop for topics that range from the recession to distorted concepts of love. Skits between tracks bear an early-’90s influence, and with shout-outs to KRS-One and De La Soul, it’s clear that the time period remains a strong influence on Cats & Dogs.

- Text by Portia Medina.

Plaid: Scintilli (Warp)

Plaid: "35 Summers"

Despite an eight-year layoff between "official" full-lengths, London electronic/film-scoring duo Plaid certainly has not lost its touch. Initially announcing the news of their sixth studio album back in 2008 and taking as long as an entire day to produce a single beat, Andrew Turner and Ed Handley have used their tedious perfectionism to make Scintilli worth the wait.

Plaid's first non-film-related release since 2003, Scintilli is a dreamy, hyper-melodic mélange from the get-go, as ethereal female vocals glide over the first track’s delicate chimes and synths. Each of the album’s 13 tracks, however, adds an entirely new rhythmical sequence and mood to the mix. With a vast array of layered sound effects, Scintilli has a captivating range. Its infectious loops and spliced styles – hazy pop, acid house, dubstep, glitch – fade in and out in a confused muddle. Yet the mingling of these divergent electronic sounds creates a pleasant disconnect, perfect for eclectic IDM fans.

- Text by Lauren Zens.

Honorable Mentions

Apparat: The Devil’s Walk (Mute)

Bonnie "Prince" Billy / Phantom Family Halo: Mindeater (Knitting Factory)

Brutal Truth: End Time (Relapse)

Extreme Noise Terror: Holocaust In My Head (Candlelight)

Bill Frisell: All We Are Saying (Savoy Jazz)

Itsnotyouitsme: Everybody’s Pain is Magnificent (New Amsterdam)

The Janks: Hands of Time (Sprouted Records)

Junius / Rosetta: Split (Translation Loss)

Rudresh Mahanthappa: Samdhi (ACT Music & Vision)

Jono McCleery: There Is (Counter)

Rwake: Rest (Relapse)

Matt Stevens: Relic

Tom Vek: Leisure Seizure (Downtown / CO-OP USA / Island)

Craig Wedren: Wand (Nerveland)

Wilco: The Whole Love (dBpm Records)

yMusic: Beautiful Mechanical (New Amsterdam)

Son Lux: We Are Rising (Anticon)

Son Lux: "Rising"

Composer / pianist / electronic artist Ryan Lott writes music for a post-production company, for dance productions and the arts, and, when he finds the time, as Son Lux, where he joins the worlds of classical orchestration and hip-hop pastiche.

For his second full-length album, We Are Rising, that spare time was in especially short supply, as the eclectic musician took a challenge from NPR (inspired by The Wire) to write and record the entire thing over the course of the shortest month of the year.

Given the album's level of craftsmanship and production, listeners would never guess the impulsive dare that set it in motion.  Its nine songs are even more meticulously arranged than the Son Lux debut album, At War With Walls and Mazes, and they achieve a remarkable range of sounds, from traditional (woodwinds, brass, strings) to modern (synthesizers, guitar effects, collected sounds).

The combination of styles makes Lott something of a Sufjan Stevens for the beat crowd (Anticon releases his albums, after all).  We Are Rising finds him moving further in Stevens' direction — fewer beats and more neoclassical orchestrations behind the indie balladry.  But these songs still bear a distinct Son Lux stamp, and they're a down payment on an ever-promising future.

Graviton: Massless (Translation Loss)

Graviton: "Mu Lepton"

Featuring guitarist and multi-instrumentalist Sacha Dunable of progressive-metal outfit Intronaut, psych/space/post-metal trio Graviton makes its recorded debut with a husky 10-track full-length.

Moments of elongated singing and slow, deep riffs draw comparisons to Isis and its ilk, but the band as a whole sounds very different. With intermittent piano melodies, synthesizers, 12-string acoustic guitar, and programmed beats — not to mention sonic accessories such as lap-steel guitar, field recordings, and "Celloblaster" — Massless is a new brand of spacey post-metal.

Throughout the album's 45 minutes, Graviton strikes a healthy balance between melody and dissonance, accessibility and complexity, and past and future.  Three-part vocal harmonies coast over plummeting canyons of riffage, only to segue to extended acoustic interludes or spoken-word samples about particle physics.  Post-metal lovers may have a new favorite band, and everyone else has something exciting to discover.

NOW Ensemble: Awake (New Amsterdam)

NOW Ensemble: "Burst"

In 2008, New Amsterdam Records opened shop to release and promote music by boundary-breaking classical musicians. The NOW Ensemble, a melodically inclined chamber quintet, launched the label with its previous album, and Awake ever so slightly expands the group's timbres for another dynamic collection of melodic and rhythmic interplay.

Featuring compositions by NOW guitarist Mark Dancigers, New Amsterdam co-founder / NOW composer Judd Greenstein, and New Amsterdam label-mate Missy Mazzoli, the album finds the ensemble's arsenal of flute, clarinet, electric guitar, upright bass, and piano dancing together in an arresting display of harmony and counterpoint.

Throughout Awake, simple and complex repetitions are deftly woven together, forming patterns that engage listeners while urging their ears to dig deeper, layer by layer.  Even a distant touch of dark, distorted guitar and ominous accents complement "Velvet Hammer" and "Magic with Everyday Objects," and perhaps future albums by NOW Ensemble will share traits with more of the New Amsterdam roster.

Agoraphobic Nosebleed / Despise You: And On and On… (Relapse)

Agoraphobic Nosebleed: "As Bad As It Is"

Despise You: "Bereft"

Short, fast, and to the point. That's the MO of Despise You, a no-nonsense hardcore outfit from California whose first material in 10 years comprises half of this split release with grindcore masters Agoraphobic Nosebleed.

With 18 tracks that average just a minute each, Despise You packs as much into its half as possible, offering terse exclamations over basic riffs, distorted low end, and push beats.  ANb introduces itself with a sludgy down-tempo track — a style that swerves from Agorapocalypse, its last album of assailing tempos, squealing guitar leads, and lightning-quick fret work. Its second track, however, returns those familiar sounds, and the following two "songs" challenge Despise You for the album's shortest durations (25 and 27 seconds).

Bill Frisell: Sign of Life (Music for 858 Quartet) (Savoy Jazz)

Bill Frisell: "It's a Long Story (1)"

Over the span of his 30-year career, guitarist Bill Frisell has shifted further away from jazz and experimental styles and further toward country, western, and folk instrumentals.  Sign of Life, his latest with the string-based 858 Quartet, is another in the instrumental folk vein, albeit one whose group was borne of improvisation.

The 858 Quartet is Frisell plus three esteemed string players — violist Eyvind Kang (Secret Chiefs 3, Sunn O))), John Zorn), violinist Jenny Scheinman (Vinicius Cantuaria, Marc Ribot), and cellist Hank Roberts (Tim Berne).  In 2005, they created an improvised take on works by German artist Gerhard Richter, but they've since grown into a regular unit, and Sign of Life marks a decided shift to composition.

Written during a composing retreat, the album has soloing and apparent moments of improv, but it's markedly closer in style and spirit to Frisell's Disfarmer project or Beautiful Dreamers trio (which also features Kang).  The Richter 858 album, which is much more dissonant and whose beauty is more subjective, might be best considered a musical caterpillar — eventually morphing into something more striking and graceful.

Honorable Mentions

Blue Sky Black Death: Noir (Fake Four)

Boxcutter: The Dissolve (Planet Mu)

Daedelus: Bespoke (Ninja Tune)

Deafheaven: Roads to Judah (Deathwish)

Steve Earle: I’ll Never Get Out of This World Alive (New West)

Explosions in the Sky: Take Care, Take Care, Take Care (Temporary Residence)

Jefferson Friedman (w/ Chiara String Quartet & Matmos): Quartets (New Amsterdam)

Jookabox: The Eyes of the Fly (Joyful Noise)

Kambar Kalendarov & Kutman Sultanbekov: Jaw (Cantaloupe)

Klang: Other Doors (Music of Benny Goodman) (Allos Documents)

Daniele Luppi: Malos Hábitos soundtrack (Ipecac)

Nine 11 Thesaurus: Ground Zero Generals (The Social Registry)

Primordial: Redemption at the Puritan's Hand (Metal Blade)

Small Brown Bike: Fell & Found (No Idea Records)

Tindersticks: Claire Denis Film Scores, 1996-2009 (Constellation)

Colin Stetson: New History Warfare Vol. 2: Judges (Constellation)

Colin Stetson: "Judges"

Everyday music connoisseurs may not automatically recognize Colin Stetson's name, but they're likely to have heard his bellowing and diverse reed work — whether from his efforts with musical luminaries such as Tom Waits, Anthony Braxton, and Fred Frith or, more recently, his opening slots for stadium indie acts such as Arcade Fire and The National.

Armed with a baritone sax and other horns, Stetson uses his solo releases to present looped, layered, and transcendental compositions that may leave listeners puzzled at how they're created.  Most sound only vaguely borne from horns, as Stetson utilizes circular breathing, chordal mouth/throat techniques, and singing through his instruments to achieve sounds that are uncommon to most.

New History Warfare Vol. 2: Judges is his latest, and it's full of swirling, cyclical pieces that can be both meditative and powerful.  Laurie Anderson and Shara Worden (My Brightest Diamond) provide a few spots of guest vocals, but no amount of star power — including Stetson's famous tour-mates — could steal the spotlight from this one.

Julianna Barwick: The Magic Place (Asthmatic Kitty)

Julianna Barwick: "The Magic Place"

Creating her music almost entirely out of overdubbed and looped vocals, singer/songwriter Julianna Barwick is able to achieve a profound and resonant style. Her ascendant voice, particularly when presented en masse, takes a celestial quality and at times resembles high-pitched woodwinds, organs, or keyboards.

With distant wails and chants that swell and retreat, the music sounds like an experimental composer’s take on church choirs, and for good reason: Barwick refined her talents while singing in church and school choirs as a youth. There are a few complementary piano notes and a buried bass line here and there, but largely, it’s Barwick’s shining voice and compositional skills that are center stage.

Earth: Angels Of Darkness, Demons Of Light I (Southern Lord)

Earth: "Father Midnight"

Since restarting his cult-favorite band Earth in the mid-2000s, guitarist Dylan Carlson has offered a much less foreboding take on "drone doom" — using pedal steel, banjo, baritone guitar, and more to inflect a dark "Americana" vibe into what had focused on heavily distorted and slowed-down blues-rock riffs.

Angels of Darkness, Demons of Light I is another return to form — and another new lineup.  Gone are the guest guitars from Bill Frisell; in his place, bassist Karl Blau and cellist Lori Goldston offer resonant low-end riffs that complement and harmonize with Carlson's melodies.

The songs, like usual, are long-form pieces that build around a few lengthy repetitions.  However, they're even a little longer than usual, with two that top 10 minutes and a closer that eclipses 20 — totaling 60 minutes over just five tracks.  All together, the material is another victory for down-tempo music, proving that slow songs don't have to be boring.

Pitom: Blasphemy and Other Serious Crimes (Tzadik)

Pitom: "Head in the Ground"

Combining heavy, fuzzy rock jams with Jewish melodies, Pitom is one of many projects from guitarist, bassist, and composer Yoshie Fruchter.  Blasphemy and Other Serious Crimes, the quartet's second release on Tzadik, follows the same path as its predecessor, but it does so with a bit more cohesion and restraint.

Built from the ground up with distorted bass and violin, the band's music carries similarities to that of Skeletonbreath, an alt-rock trio that embraces worldly motifs, and Miasma & The Carousel of Headless Horses, another eclectic ensemble that combines doomy riffs and string work.  Pitom's lineup, however, has a key difference: Fruchter's pliable skills.

Whether driving a song with an infectious melody, commingling with the violin in the high end, or simply taking over a track with raw ability, Fruchter knows when to go full throttle (the punk power of "An Epic Encounter") or pull back (the dark slow jam of "A Resentful Repentance").

Honorable Mentions

Darkest Hour: The Human Romance (E1)

Gil Scott-Heron & Jamie XX: We're New Here [remix album] (XL)

Rachel Goodrich: s/t

Gutbucket: Flock (Cuneiform)

Peña: Vol. II (Secret Stash)

Six Organs of Admittance: Asleep On The Floodplain (Drag City)

Tera Melos: Zoo Weather EP (Sargent House)

Teeel: Amulet (Moongadget)

Earth: "Father Midnight"

Dylan Carlson's best work as Earth often creates a crushing sense of inevitability. Between the long-form guitar griddlings of Earth 2: Special Low Frequency Version in 1993 and the panoramic beauty of The Bees Made Honey In The Lion's Skull in 2008, Earth has erratically transitioned from smothering to sparkling.

One thing that remains, though, is how Carlson and his assorted bandmates move through their instrumentals: with slow but ever-emphatic steps. Since Hex: Or Printing In The Infernal Method in 2005, people have often said that Earth is creating something more like "Americana" than its earlier doom metal. That isn't wrong at all, but more fundamentally, Earth's recent music revels in the basics of melody. It often uses blues-like scales — though rarely as grindingly dissonant as those on Earth 2 — but always explores them with an almost mad patience. It has the frank sureness of a force that knows it will catch up with you eventually.

The new Angels Of Darkness, Demons Of Light, Vol. 1, might be roughly part of the Hex phase, and might sound just as good as Bees, but with the addition of cello and greater willingness to vary Earth's format from song to song.

Carlson has said that he likes to find his melodies "within the drone." It's clear on the new Angels that he's as ready as he's ever been to let his collaborators seek alongside him within the expanses of sound they create. Where Bees relied largely on layers of guitar from Carlson, and, on three tracks, Bill Frisell, Angels finds bassist Karl Blau and cellist Lori Goldston — both new members — pushing right alongside him, and sometimes ahead of him, rather than simply thickening up the core melodies.

The other players on Bees never seemed to loosen up quite as much as Blau and Goldston do here, except maybe the piano on "Hung From The Moon." Throughout the album, Blau's bass fills and Goldston's dynamically varied melodic complement fill more of the space between Carlson's orbit through sparing guitar phrases. The new lineup makes the music slightly busier, but never breaks the pace. Earth's new group dynamic gets its best showing on "Father Midnight," on which Carlson, Blau, and Goldston set the rhythm by pinching themselves down to a collective mid-range hum, then releasing themselves into lower registers.

Of course, a cello is a no-brainer fit for Earth's sound, dominated by a guitarist who likes to let each note ring out nice and long, and Goldston ends up supplying just as much variety as the guitar. On "Hell's Winter," the cello gently arcs up in between those guitar notes, almost as if setting a path for Carlson to follow. Goldston carefully alternates between handsome, long-held notes and rougher, squeaking sounds, like the ones that violin / viola player Warren Ellis often pours into Dirty Three records.

The crushing inevitability is still there, in the iron-fisted discipline of drummer Adrienne Davies. She mostly uses just kick, snare, and cymbal, with a perfect timing that makes you feel the vast pockets of open space within the songs, especially album opener "Old Black." When she throws in stuff that the liner notes call "sea hooves" and "Satan's knuckles," the effect isn't to add to the low end of the kit, but to suggest a shaker played in slow-motion. (It is hard avoid using the word "slow" a lot with Earth, and this is the kind of slow music that demands real concentration from its players.) You might not expect much rhythmic variety from a band that insists on such low tempos, but "Descent To The Zenith" shows how it can be stirringly graceful. The rhythm sways like a leaf drifting toward the ground. It brings even more hallucinatory, inspiring calm to this album than "Miami Morning Coming Down II: Shine" did to Bees.

It's the title track that challenges and pries apart the Earth sound the most, though. Bass and cello dominate it for the first minute and a half or so, and even after that, Carlson's guitar comes in only gradually, a couple notes at a time. The song is a reasonable, 20-minute-long argument that the line between harmony and disharmony isn't so thin. Carlson's guitar melodies come to hold down the overall structure as always, yet they're launching off of the singeing, grumbling low end.

As much as Bees, Angels invites the listener to savor and re-discover the pleasures of un-flinching, healthy, sustained notes, it compels you not to tap your foot along, but to slow your breathing to its pace and get engulfed. Angels may even be the better of the two, and you can take it from someone who put Bees at the top of his 2008 best-of list. Earth's approach varies quite a lot here, yet it's in no rush for the sake of change. Earth's Special All-Frequency Version is opening up before us, in a slow process that's anything but monotonous.

Download the podcast for This Week’s Best Albums: January 25, 2011 and subscribe to This Week’s Best Albums for free with iTunes.

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This Week\'s Best Albums: January 25, 2011

John Vanderslice with The Magik*Magik Orchestra: White Wilderness (Dead Oceans)

John Vanderslice with The Magik*Magik Orchestra: "Sea Salt"

White Wilderness, the newest full-length from John Vanderslice, is a first for the indie singer/songwriter, recorded in collaboration with Minna Choi and The Magik*Magik Orchestra.  A malleable ensemble that bills itself as a “modular orchestra” of 18-35 people, the MMO performed live with Vanderslice a few years ago, and it has a résumé that includes collaborations with lots of other great rock and neoclassical musicians, including Jonny Greenwood, Tin Hat Trio, Hauschka, and Ben Johnston.

The group's addition here has really elevated Vanderslice’s material, which now breathes with a cinematic quality while backed by string, horn, and percussion sections. The material is replete with spare, delicate moments of respite — the result of Choi’s adaptable arrangements.   From its stirring and delicate opener, "Sea Salt," White Wilderness is an incredibly layered album that shows the depth of Vanderslice’s writing.

Phil Manley: Life Coach (Thrill Jockey)

Phil Manley: "Make Good Choices"

As a founding member of post-rock/dance-punk trio Trans Am – and as a recording engineer and member of The Fucking Champs and Oneida – guitarist Phil Manley has become endeared to fans and fellow musicians alike.  Now, after two decades of work, he has released his first solo album, Life Coach, and it’s unlike anything that he’s done prior.

The music, by and large, is a group of long-form instrumentals that build and swell with loops, effects, and overdubs.  Both electric and steel-string acoustic guitars are at the fore, with a handful of synthesizers and a touch of drum machine in the background.  Life Coach showcases both technical talent and melodic musicianship, and in the process, it reveals a side of Manley not frequently seen in his other projects.

Andre Afram Asmar: Harmonic Emergency (Mush)

Andre Afram Asmar: “Onward Farword”

Back in 2003 and 2004, Palestinian-American dub musician Andre Afram Asmar made waves for his unorthodox blend of hip hop, reggae, and Middle Eastern music. His debut for Mush Records and his subsequent full-length collaboration with MC Circus garnered critical acclaim, and Asmar made other notable associations, including work with rappers Busdriver and AWOL One and reggae singer Majek Fashek.

But as he was preparing for a big tour in late 2004, Asmar suffered a serious brain aneurysm, and his recovery since that time has been a slow and arduous process.  As a result of the aneurysm, Asmar lost ability in the left side of his body and lost vision in his left eye.  But he remained undeterred in his musical journey, and he has since had some help to complete Harmonic Emergency, the follow-up to Racetothebottom.

Originally begun being tracked in 2001, Harmonic Emergency is a strange and trippy dub creation, with sung, half-sung, and spoken-word vocals bouncing off rubbery thuds and beats.  Electronics and breakbeats get things moving, and plenty of Middle Eastern melodies and timbres maintain that “world fusion” vibe.

Bruce Lamont: Feral Songs for the Epic Decline (At A Loss)

Bruce Lamont: "2 Then the 3"

From the psych- and jazz-tinged metal band Yakuza, to the industrial homage Circle of Animals, to local improv jams, and even to fronting a touring Led Zeppelin cover band — saxophonist/singer Bruce Lamont has lent his assorted skills to a boatload of notable projects.  Now the multitalented frontman has unveiled his long-stewing solo debut, Feral Songs for the Epic Decline, on At a Loss Recordings.

Composed of seven free-flowing tracks, the album features more acoustic guitar, synthesizer, and unearthly vocals than some might expect.  The album’s foreboding atmospherics are its most consistent attribute, as it unfolds almost as a long-form singer/songwriter experiment.  Dark folk refrains give way to distorted tribal percussion, wailing sax lines, and noise-filled passages, but they’re all united by Lamont’s elongated – and surprisingly potent – chants and croons.

Monotonix: Not Yet (Drag City)

Monotonix: "Give Me More"

Hailing from Tel Aviv, Israel, the garage-rock trio Monotonix has attained surprising amounts of exposure in the Western hemisphere.  Much of that is due to the group’s wild live shows, which have caused consternation at venues in Israel.  As a result, the band hit the road and played hundreds of shows in Europe and America before it even had an EP out in the States.  But clearly, the band has connected with audiences thanks to its loud, raw, and unpolished sound, and now it has released Not Yet, its second full-length album for Drag City Records.

Previously, Monotonix has recorded with American musicians/engineers such as The Fucking Champs’ Tim Green and Shellac’s Steve Albini, and the latter was again tapped for work on Not Yet.  With extra fuzz and low end, it’s another disc of aggressive, straightforward, three-minute rock tunes with wailing, off-pitch vocals and errant solos.  To say that the base riffs are minimalist might be assigning too much complexity to it; some of them are built around just two chords.  But regardless, Not Yet is another musical fireball, achieving its appeal with rock energy rather than expertise.

Talib Kweli: Gutter Rainbows (Javotti Media / Duck Down)

Talib Kweli: "Cold Rain"

Following a handful of underground releases in the mid-‘90s, Talib Kweli burst on the national stage a few years later as part of Black Star, his highly successful hip-hop duo with Mos Def.  The two parted ways after one album, but Kweli went on to countless other collaborations and a series of acclaimed solo efforts. Gutter Rainbows is his fifth and newest solo release – his first since 2007 and first in a long time to be released without the aid of a major label.  It’s out now but only digitally in North America; it’s available elsewhere on CD thanks to Duck Down Records.

Compared to his last album, Eardrum, the music has a much fuller sound while striking a nice balance between soulful, funky, and bassy styles and a harder edge. It doesn’t have the big-name producers of Eardrum – which included Kanye West, Will.I.Am, Pete Rock, and Madlib – but it sounds like a more realized album.  Whether it’s with a diversity of instruments and samples, great backing performances, or just Kweli’s relentless flow, Gutter Rainbows is an exciting addition to his catalog.

Honorable Mentions

Banquet of the Spirits / Cyro Baptista / John Zorn: Caym: The Book of Angels, Vol. 17 (Tzadik)

Bill Frisell and Vinicius Cantuária: Lagrimas Mexicanas (E1)

Charles Bradley: No Time For Dreaming (Daptone)

Caroline: Verdugo Hills (Temporary Residence)

Deerhoof: Deerhoof vs. Evil (Polyvinyl)

Destroyer: Kaputt (Merge)

Ensemble: Excerpts (Fat Cat)

Lia Ices: Grown Unknown (Jagjaguwar)

Iron and Wine: Kiss Each Other Clean (Warner Bros.)

Kodo: Akatsuki (Otodaiku)

Georgia Anne Muldrow: Vweto

Thank You: Golden Worry (Thrill Jockey)

Sidi Touré: Sahel Folk (Thrill Jockey)

Zs: New Slaves Part II: Essence Implosion! (The Social Registry)

Bill Frisell & Vinicius Cantuária: Lagrimas Mexicanas (E1, 1/25/11)

Bill Frisell & Vinicius Cantuária: "Aquela Miller"

The fretwork abilities of guitar luminaries Bill Frisell and Brazilian singer/songwriter Vinicius Cantuária meet on a fantastic Latin jazz record titled Lagrimas Mexicanas ("Mexican Tears" in English).  An expert collaboration that shows itself in every detailed note, Lagrimas Mexicanas has the harmonic twists and turns of a bossa-nova record sliced up by the experimental sounds you’d expect from Frisell. Whether sung in Spanish or Portuguese, Cantuária anchors much of the album with a voice as timeless as Gilberto Gil’s, capturing a worldly romanticism that comes off as seductive as the music that accompanies it.

Though it’s the first exclusive partnership between the two, the musicians have kept good company with each other in the past, playing together in a variety of settings — most notably Frisell’s guest spot on Cantuária’s second international release, Tucumã, in 1999. Cantuária, in return, was a part of the impressive global roster that made up Frisell’s Intercontinentals group.

Growing up in Manaus and Rio De Janiero, Cantuária’s Tropicália sound is informed by the places and people of Brazil. Taking Brazil’s rich musical tradition and relocating to New York in the mid-'90s, he has made a career in pushing the bossa-nova sound forward into the 21st Century.

From album opener “Mi Declaration,” Frisell and Cantuária’s forward-thinking approach to the genre can be heard. All of the classic moods are present: the compact rhythmic variations, the vocal smoothness, the overall gentleness. But as the song progresses, extra percussive instruments, guitar effects, and loops make it gradually more nuanced. As it becomes melodically layered, the musicians subtly launch into sections, giving only faint resemblances to the original, and making hybrid arrangements that could only belong to them.

Frisell’s whole method of operation involves thriving on collaboration. Not only does he bring the finest out of his collaborators, the guitar visionary seems to be at his best on other artists’ projects. Frisell fills “Calle 7” with stunning guitar tones, working through and around Cantuária’s vocals with ease. Instrumental track “La Curva” demonstrates the full breadth of the artists' chemistry and also highlights Cantuária’s ability to make harmonious arrangements.

Cantuária’s arrangements are inviting, lending Frisell airy melodic spaces to experiment with electronic distortion and his other signature effects, such as using his guitar as a percussive instrument, strumming and plucking rhythms. The upbeat samba-influenced title track is a testament to that. “Aquela Miller” follows suit: the gently plucked guitars supply their own rhythm while the actual percussion sounds like a faint accompaniment.

Though Lagrimas Mexicanas is essentially a bossa-nova record, it is more of an amalgamation of the musicians’ distinct musical aesthetics. It’s a perfect balance — a dynamic that puts Cantuária at the helm, leaving Frisell to give the music’s overall tonal and textural balance an experimental face-lift. Coming together for this special project, they’ve found a groove that enables them to fulfill their avant-modernist agendas without ignoring the important role that popular music has in their respective countries.

Vic Chesnutt: At The Cut (Constellation, 9/21/09)

Vic Chesnutt: "Flirted With You All My Life"

"I make films.  I'm no record producer, but I needed to bring these particular people together in this particular place.  I thought they might hit it off.  They hit it hard.  I thought it might get heavy.  It did."

So says filmmaker Jem Cohen in the liner notes for Vic Chesnutt’s dusty 2007 masterpiece North Star Deserter. More than 20 years into Chesnutt’s recorded career, and with an impressive discography already 10 albums deep, North Star was a surprising, furtive burst of energy, bringing together some of the brightest lights that the underground music community had to offer.

At first, the idea might seem too crazy to work and too good to be true: combining the unearthly, slow-building machinations of Godspeed You! Black Emperor’s avant-orchestral spin-off A Silver Mt. Zion with the precise, metallic guitar squall of Guy Picciotto — the oft-shirtless, wailing, and writhing co-frontman of Fugazi — to play the quirky, personal, and often darkly humorous songs of lauded Athens, Georgia-based singer/songwriter Vic Chesnutt. Yes, it would take some kind of otherworldly cosmic force to get these people together at the same time.

In this case, that otherworldly cosmic force was Cohen, whose long-time friendships with and intense love and respect for the musicians involved led him to begin building what would become North Star Deserter.

“It was all Jem’s idea,” Chesnutt says. “I guess he didn’t like my last two records so much (Silver Lake and Ghetto Bells, both for New West). He told me he wanted me to make a good record again, so he set the whole thing up.”

Chesnutt has never been one to shy away from collaboration. He’s released records with groups as diverse as Athens-based jam band Widespread Panic, Nashville country-politan favorites Lambchop, jazz innovator Bill Frisell, and most recently, indie-folk collective Elf Power. As it turns out, the connections that were required to make Cohen’s vision coalesce were only separated by one or two degrees. And everybody already knew and had the utmost respect for Cohen, his whole-hearted approach, and the indelible thumbprint that he’s left on any project he’s touched.
 

“Collaborating is very fulfilling for me, just hearing what everyone comes up with. I realize I’m probably the only guy on Earth who’s worked with Widespread Panic and Guy from Fugazi. I feel very lucky that way.”

In his 1998 documentary Instrument, Cohen carefully and obsessively follows the trajectory of punk pioneers Fugazi from local DC hardcore punks to groundbreaking indie virtuosos of international acclaim. Cohen had formed a close bond with Fugazi frontman Ian MacKaye, a friend since their high-school days, thus allowing him a unique perspective on the band and the ability to closely watch its members grow from sapling to oak.

Just a few years later, Cohen would become enamored with the musical/visual dichotomy of Montréal post-rock collective Godspeed You! Black Emperor, even traveling with the band as a projectionist for some time. These connections, coupled with a resounding and long-standing respect for Vic Chesnutt and his music, led Cohen to begin mulling over the idea of getting everyone together to record an album together.

“North Star was Jem’s brainchild,” says Ian Illavsky, founding member of A Silver Mt. Zion and co-owner of Montréal’s Constellation Records. “He’d been rabidly collecting and cataloguing Vic’s live bootleg recordings and going to his shows for years. He might know Vic’s songs better than Vic does.”

Fortunately for Cohen, his would-be cohorts had a long history together as well.

“Every time Fugazi was in Athens, we’d hang out with Vic,” Picciotto says. “He first opened for Fugazi at the 40 Watt Club in Athens back in 1988. I feel a real kinship with him. He has such a wide musical heart, and loves and appreciates so much stuff.”

“Vic Chesnutt was one of the first musicians that [Constellation co-owner] Don Wilkie and I bonded over in college,” Illavsky says. “It was like a dream come true seeing that whole project come together.”

Chesnutt says that he sent Cohen 30 or more new songs to choose from for the project. From those, he picked which songs he wanted and snuck in a few old favorites that had yet to be officially recorded. “He decided what order they should go in and already had all the players in mind,” Chesnutt says. “It was like he was directing a movie.”

“Jem had a real 1950s-producer type of role,” Picciotto says. “He was coming from an aesthetic perspective rather than a musical one and structured everything very specifically.”

The culmination of that meeting of minds in Montréal resulted in an album both surreal in its subject matter and epically cinematic in its scope and execution. North Star Deserter gave Chesnutt’s songs a cohesive mood and essence that had never before been fully realized on record.

The ominous and dark mood always just below the surface in Chesnutt’s songwriting was here explosively brought to the fray and cast in a sharply focused light, and the sonic peaks and valleys and cohesive narrative flow of the album were more properly used to the advantage of his songs than ever before. With the North Star sessions, mutual fans became mutual friends, and open appreciation of craft morphed itself into something deeper.

“It became a big mutual love-fest in studio,” Illavsky says. “It was refreshing to graft onto a musician we all have such intense respect for. Vic is a charming and enthusiastic guy, and it’s hard to imagine an easier person to work with.”

Fortunately, Chesnutt has always been utterly flexible in his approach to songwriting as well. This, coupled with his ongoing interest in collaborative projects, led to an open interpretation of the songs in studio.

“Vic is an incredible, hardworking motherfucker in the studio,” Picciotto says. “He’s incredibly generous about letting people come forward and hearing what they come up with. His songs are extremely versatile; you can play them as slow, sad ballads or fast, epic punk songs — and they sound great no matter what.”
 

"His songs are extremely versatile; you can play them as slow, sad ballads or fast, epic punk songs — and they sound great no matter what.”

Chesnutt says, ever humble, “Collaborating is very fulfilling for me, just hearing what everyone comes up with. I realize I’m probably the only guy on Earth who’s worked with Widespread Panic and Guy from Fugazi. I feel very lucky that way.”

The band toured Europe together twice in support of the record, beginning at the 2007 Vienna Film Festival, where the band scored Jem Cohen’s short film Empires of Tin live, an event that came together after their in-studio successes. A US tour never fully materialized, but throughout the band’s travels in Europe, a strengthened compatibility and friendship amongst the musicians developed, along with a heightened ability to read each other in a specific, symbiotic way that can only come from weeks spent playing shows on the road.

Upon returning stateside, Chesnutt set out on a lengthy tour with the Modern Lovers’ Jonathan Richman (their own collaboration, Skitter On Takeoff, was released in October of 2009 on Vapor Records) as well as a tour with Elf Power, his co-conspirators on the 2008 album Dark Developments.

But with the rare magic captured on North Star Deserter, it was a no-brainer that those involved — now fully comfortable with each other after their time spent touring France and Europe — would head back into the studio at some point. To Chesnutt, it seemed that now was a great time to see those familiar faces again.

“Vic was writing new material right up until the session,” Picciotto says. “He came in, played a ton of songs, and we all listened and hand-picked which ones we thought would be the best to focus on. Vic is like a faucet; you turn him on and all this amazing shit comes out. The variety of kinds of songs and sounds he comes up with is incredible.”

Initially, Chesnutt had intended to make a track-for-track recreation of North Star Deserter. But when he showed up at the studio, his collaborators had other ideas. “Everybody told me I was insane,” he says. “So I let it go and we just started playing.”

The renewed camaraderie from the road resulted in a much freer, more open discourse in the studio, giving their new record, At the Cut, a distinctive feeling all its own, only vaguely reminiscent of its predecessor. The mood is intense but looser, more comfortable and lived in, and more varied stylistically. “The new record is different in that Jem wasn’t in charge; it was a real collective, group process,” Chesnutt says. “After being out on tour, we knew what each other did. We’d all found our spot in the army and knew what our jobs were. It felt like a real team.”

At its core, the initial, strong mutual admiration that made North Star Deserter such a surprise treat is palpable, if even stronger, around every turned phrase and tempo shift on At the Cut. But Cohen’s influence is not entirely absent. During the sessions, he was on hand as a producer, and he helped create the artwork for the album. Picciotto says, “This time around, the engineers, producers, and really whoever was in the room at the time had a hand in what we came up with. Jem was very much involved this time around, and his presence is strong, but this is a band-produced album at heart.”

The relaxed atmosphere and open discussion in the studio led to numerous happy accidents along the way. Case in point: the track “Concord Country Jubilee” is a song that Chesnutt wrote in 1985 but never recorded. It randomly came back to him in the studio and ended up on the album.

“Everybody was doing experimental things,” he says. “Every song was a shocker. We’d go back and listen to what we’d just recorded and come out saying, ‘Whoa! How did that happen?’ Everybody was very vocal and participated a great deal in arrangements and ideas on how to approach each song. Even things like tempo, beat, who plays what, overdubs, and all that was up for discussion.”

With the joyous reunion of At the Cut recorded, pressed, and in stores, that ol’ road bug has begun to itch yet again. “This is a crazy band; there are all kinds of wild dynamics live,” Chesnutt says. “I can’t wait to get back out on the road with these guys and gals. The live show is like riding on a rocket.”

Picciotto hasn’t toured the US since his swansong run with Fugazi back in 2002. “We’ve all learned each other by playing together live,” he says. “That’s the same way we did it with Fugazi. I was used to touring six months out of the year for many years, and when it stopped, it was like getting the bends. I found myself wondering, ‘Hey, shouldn’t I be jumping up and down for two hours on the other side of the Earth right now?’ I’m chomping at the bit to get out there and play again. I feel like that’s what I was meant to do, and I’m very happy we’re doing this again.”

If the exceptional growth among these players captured on At the Cut was the result of their last bout of touring together, one can’t help but wonder what the future holds for this evolving band of musician’s musicians.

“I don’t really feel yet like this is my band,” Chesnutt says. “But sometimes, on accident, I catch myself saying out loud, ‘Holy crap! I’m in a band with Guy Picciotto from Fugazi!’ Collaborating with other musicians is very fulfilling, and each project is a brand new experience. It keeps things interesting. But I’ve been on tour with these people, and we’ve become like a real family band. Considering everything that’s happened since the last time we were all on the road together, this tour will be like the World Series of tours.”

The first time that Ben Goldberg heard a clarinet being played, he was struck by an unfathomable quality that he still hears to this day, even after spending decades playing the instrument. “I don’t know if other people hear it this way,” he says, “but to me, a clarinet has no end. It’s like it just disappears into…”

Goldberg trails off as he attempts to find words to describe the sensation that the sound of a clarinet gives him.

“It’s very deep,” he continues. “It has no bottom to it. And it always strikes me this way, no matter who’s playing it: that there’s something down in there that you just can’t reach. When you find something like that, you just start wandering towards it.”

"I realized that I had come up in a world where there was an axe to grind. That was an essential part of New Klezmer Trio: ‘God damn it, we can do this in an avant-garde way; watch this!’"

One of the principal forerunners of a musical movement that John Zorn dubbed “radical Jewish culture,” Goldberg blazed a new trail in the late ’80s by blending traditional Jewish folk music with avant-garde jazz, and he also has found new shades of expression for the clarinet in a jazz and experimental context. When he founded the New Klezmer Trio in Berkeley, California in 1987, Goldberg experienced what he refers to as the “musical big bang” of his career.

Ben Goldberg Quartet / John Zorn: Baal

At that time, Goldberg had already studied klezmer music for years in college and was heavily steeped in its tradition thanks to a rigorous itinerary of bar mitzvahs, weddings, and various social events. “I honed my style,” he laughs, “playing a thousand bar mitzvahs.”

Those types of gigs, Goldberg soon discovered, came with a hefty reward of instant social approval. “My choice to study it definitely had something to do with identity,” he explains. “Plus, you get a lot of praise. If you’re Jewish and you start playing klezmer at weddings, it’s like you’re an automatically esteemed member of the Jewish cognoscenti or something! They really treat you that way, like, ‘You’re doing such a good thing for the Jewish people.’ And that pleased me.”

But, despite the cultural affinity, Goldberg started to feel an acute sense of disconnection — a kind of generation gap, if you will — between klezmer’s old-world underpinnings and his own life experience. “Sounding authentic was beginning to feel pretty inauthentic to me,” he writes in his essay "New Klezmer Trio and the Origins of 'Radical Jewish Culture.' "

A lifelong jazz aficionado, Goldberg wondered why klezmer hadn’t evolved and branched out into a variety of modern permutations along the same lines as jazz had — and he wondered how it still could. Simultaneously, Goldberg wanted to use the clarinet as a vehicle for jazz. (If it’s a mystery as to why klezmer, itself a vibrant polyglot fusion of music from several different parts of the world, hadn’t continued to develop once it was transplanted into an American setting, it is perhaps an even more compelling mystery that the clarinet still hasn’t achieved the same visibility in jazz as, say, the saxophone or trumpet.)

So, after reaching a high degree of fluency brought on by year after year of intensive practice and analysis, he set about looking for ways to reinterpret Jewish folk music so that it might sound truer to himself and speak to contemporary sensibilities. One of his solutions was to apply the improvisation of jazz to klezmer’s heavily codified rules and parameters. Another was to, in a sense, crack the music open by attempting to dig deeper into the rich bedrock of Eastern European rhythms and uncover an essence that could be used as a living musical style.

Tin Hat: Foreign Legion

Revisiting how he felt back then, Goldberg wonders aloud: “Why is it that very few musical traditions are consciously involved with the idea of evolution?” It’s a rhetorical question, but Goldberg is less concerned with finding the answer these days, and he no longer feels as pressed to invent new languages as he once did. In a poetic twist to a career that spans work with individualist visionaries like John Zorn, Nels Cline, Bill Frisell, and Trevor Dunn as well as several of his own groups, Goldberg became a full-fledged member of Tin Hat in 2005.

The brainchild of violinist Carla Kihlstedt (Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, 2 Foot Yard) and guitarist Mark Orton, Tin Hat (originally named Tin Hat Trio before the group reconfigured with the inclusion of Goldberg) weaves together chamber music, jazz, Gypsy folk, experimentalism, and pop into a sound that gives Goldberg room to feel at ease, at least in terms of the ethical considerations of his creative decisions. In a sense, Tin Hat, which released its live album, Foreign Legion, this spring on Goldberg’s own label (BAG Production), represents the fruit of all the time that Goldberg spent questioning the integrity of his innovations.

“In some ways,” Goldberg muses, “Tin Hat fits like an old glove. But when I first started playing with them as a guest in 1997, there’s something that really impressed me about them and, at first, even confused me a little bit: they didn’t have an axe to grind. I’m a little bit older than those guys, and when I first started playing with them, they really showed me something. I realized that I had come up in a world where there was an axe to grind. That was an essential part of New Klezmer Trio: ‘God damn it, we can do this in an avant-garde way; watch this!’ There was a sense of ‘look out, everybody, we’re really going to fuck with this song.’

"Mark and Carla were another generation. They just found the beauty in all this different music — whether it was avant garde, traditional, this style or that style. If you listen to ‘Waltz of the Skyscraper’ on the live record, it starts off as a waltz. And then all kinds of strange things start happening and it turns into — I don’t know what you’d describe it as — new music or free improvisation or a free-for-all, but it sounds like all those things are what belong there. It doesn’t at all sound polemical. In a way, it’s taking the next step. It’s saying, ‘Look, these musical ingredients that seemed antithetical to each other can live together happily!’ But it’s no less a concerted and well-considered and brave musical statement to make that step. Different generations have to take different steps.”

Ben Goldberg: Go Home

Goldberg stresses, however, that Tin Hat’s uncanny ability to craft accessible music out of what are often presented as highbrow forms belies the group’s musical sophistication and depth.

“It totally kicked my ass joining that band,” he says. “They have a very high standard of composition. In their world, it’s not just the idea of writing a tune. Partly because of the instrumentation — there’s no drummer or bass player — the emphasis is on compositional thoroughness. And I feel like my own ability to write had to be stepped up a notch or two. That had a huge effect on me — the way that I think about what a song is, and also orchestration, form, what’s required, and what a piece of music can be.”

In addition to the new Tin Hat live album (which consists of performances from 2005 and 2008), Goldberg also recently released an album as a leader, Go Home, again on his BAG Production imprint. Go Home features guitarist Charlie Hunter and showcases Goldberg in a decidedly more groove-oriented setting. Despite the fact that it has the word “home” in the title, the album represents anything but a final destination or resting place for Goldberg’s art.

Go Home follows 2009 release Speech Communication, a new album on Zorn’s Tzadik label from a reactivated New Klezmer Trio. Yet having let go of the “mission” that New Klezmer Trio once represented for him, Goldberg feels free to venture well outside the very paradigm that he helped create. And as he continues to cover more disparate territory, Goldberg is proving himself to be a rare musician — one who hits a comfort zone while simultaneously stoking his inspiration.

The Tango Saloon: Transylvania

Some artists seek pleasure, some seek fame, and a rare few fall in love with the very process of creation. "My grand plan is just to keep making music," muses multi-instrumentalist Julian Curwin, and his plan seems to be working. A veteran of the Sydney jazz and experimental scenes, he divides his time between Monsieur Camembert, Darth Vegas, Gauche, The Fantastic Terrific Munkle, and his personal project, The Tango Saloon.

Dancing its way through an expert blend of styles, The Tango Saloon creates a contemporary tango fit for barrooms and brothels, lounging comfortably in any international port of call. Gypsy jazz runs smoothly into tenacious Latin rhythms; soulful accordions add an old-world touch, while elegant electronic atmospherics anchor the sound firmly in the 21st Century.

Achieving this rare synthesis requires musical manpower, and the group's first album featured 15 musicians culled from Australia's jazz-drenched underground, including double-bassist Mark Harris and accordionista Svetlana Bunic, both from Monsieur Camembert, as well as Danny Heifetz, former drummer for Mr. Bungle and Secret Chiefs 3.

Successful execution of such a take on traditional music stems from a diverse diet of influences. Curwin's compositions find inspiration in the revolutionary style of Ástor Piazzolla, the Argentine provocateur who revolutionized traditional tango in the 1950s despite the outcry of purists, and the wide-ranging and colorful soundtracks of Ennio Morricone.

Piazzolla and Morricone both created music that sounds fresh 50 years on, and The Tango Saloon teases out the nuances of these masters, adding a visionary holism where most musicians would stumble into pastiche. Taking some cues from the experimental traditionalism of downtown New York jazzists such as John Zorn, Marc Ribot, and Bill Frisell, Curwin composes pieces that are complex conversations between instruments and expressionist themes.

His works have been compared to film scores "by everyone but those in charge of scoring films," he says with a smile. The visual elements in The Tango Saloon's music are undeniable, but the composition is based on pure aural exploration. "A lot of bands do the ‘pop’ album first; we took a different approach and experimented wildly on the first album. I guess we were able to do so because we weren’t really trying to prove anything to anyone."

The band’s self-titled debut — released in the USA in 2006 through Mike Patton's Ipecac label­ — presented an experiment in twisted traditional forms that remains authentic despite reaching far into the fringes.

Dancing its way through an expert blend of styles, The Tango Saloon creates a contemporary tango fit for barrooms and brothels, lounging comfortably in any international port of call.

More recently, songs such as "Into the Castle" — from Transylvania, the band’s 2008 sophomore album — have dragged the experiment into a dungeon laboratory. With droning chords, picaresque guitar accentuated by sparse snare rolls, and the sounds of birds in the distance, the track captures a full cinematic scene and while standing as a solid musical expression.

As the fog lifts, the listener is sent running on "The Chase," with Heifetz's military percussion leading the way for tremolo guitar and pensive piano that pull the song into anxious violins. "I might start writing," Curwin explains, "and then go, 'You know what? This sounds like Dracula creeping around his house,' and follow that instinct. Though often the process is purely musical, and images and titles come later.”

Curwin's compositions are adept at setting individual parts against the whole and manipulating tension through effortless thematic shifts. Each song could develop into an entire album. Nothing is safe from surprises; the changes are painless and unexpected, with vibrant experimentation sitting next to songs like "The Dance of the Dead," which captures a more traditional style while shifting the listener's expectation with Bunic's accordion flourishes.

Now The Tango Saloon is preparing to release two new explorations, a chamber set and a full-length, continuing its deep dive into the hidden side of traditional sounds. The chamber set, affectionately titled The Mango Balloon, provides a glimpse into the band’s quieter moments, bringing out the intimate side existing on the edges of its last two works. "I must admit, sometimes I'll take on a project partly to educate myself about a particular type of music," Curwin says. "It’s always important to keep a sense of humor about it. The Tango Saloon can be seen as a tango project, but we're definitely not treating it academically. We try not to take anything too seriously."

The title track of the chamber release turns the sexual intricacies of klezmer into terse melodic movements with accordion and guitar engaging in a close-knit dance. "Dog Day Night" floats over Spanish guitar rhythms on a melancholic trumpet touched by accordion counter melodies.

Whereas the thematic color of the first two albums relied on a close blending of each band member into a full-bodied atmosphere, the chamber set highlights the individual players, creating intricate interplays of solo virtuosity. The songs give the listener an opportunity to meet each musician directly, approaching their unique voices in arrangements centering on more isolated compositional elements.

That's not to say, however, that The Tango Saloon has lost its edge; the chamber album is a side step prior to the release of its third full-length. "The other album we've been working on for the past year or so continues the darker themes we had in Transylvania, possibly even a bit darker, focusing on more of a crime/noir theme," Curwin says. If its predecessor's wide-ranging exploration of vampirism is any indication, there's no one more qualified to tackle this angular expressionism of noir.

Curwin already is devising ideas for a fourth album, which he imagines will be a complete change of pace from the group's recent dark descent (likely a “bright, cheery affair," he says). He remains active with his other groups — including Darth Vegas’ live accompaniment to F.W. Murnau’s classic film Nosferatu at the Sydney Opera House earlier this year. But The Tango Saloon, now hitting its stride, reflects Curwin's personal passion.

"With the Tango Saloon, we've become a tight-knit unit," he says. "The first album was a real labor of love, where the band comprised 15 musicians that I connected with playing in various groups. Now the core nine or so players have become like a family.  Five years in, now we're getting into the groove of it — really playing music, not just reading off a page."