FAT32: s/t (Web of Mimicry)

FAT32: "Ziiion-Ponk (part one)" (preview)

Something akin to Lightning Bolt with keyboards instead of distorted bass (and without the extraneous vocals), FAT32 is a wild and noisy French "rock" duo — comprised of drummer Anthiny Capelli and keyboardist John Kaced — that currently is on its third tour with East/West genre annihilators Secret Chiefs 3.

With Kaced's impossibly fast fingers and arsenal of tones and effects, the two achieve the balance, diversity, and technicality that are necessary for any duo to succeed. And between the frenzied moments of spastic synthesizers, 8-bit sounds, and pounding percussion, FAT32 provides a few respites of mood and melody.

Make no mistake, however: this self-titled debut is chock full of riffs. They're just chopped and delivered piecemeal. The album's 17-minute, montage-style closer, "Puzzloïd," is great proof, traversing math rock, circus music, minimalism, and even a well-placed Phil Anselmo sample.

Asche & Spencer (and Chris Cornell): Machine Gun Preacher soundtrack (Relativity)

Chris Cornell: "The Keeper"

Asche & Spencer: "Opening Title"

In 1998, reformed drug dealer and born-again christian Sam Childers went on a mission to South Sudan, which was stuck in the middle of the nation's horrific second civil war and genocide. Once there, he made a pledge to himself that few others have: to dedicate (and risk) his life for the countless children whose lives have been destroyed by the violence.

Published in 2009, Another Man's War is the autobiography that tells the story of Childers, who later established (and guarded) an orphanage to rescue and rehabilitate the children. He also fought with rebels in South Sudan and Uganda against the Sudanese government and against the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA), a ruthless, roaming group led by Joseph Kony that has murdered thousands, sexually enslaved women, and forced children to become soldiers.

This remarkable tale of dedication is now being shown on the big screen, as Another Man's War has been told as the major motion picture Machine Gun Preacher, starring Gerard Butler and showing in select cities. The film's soundtrack is garnering special attention as well, as its stirring and resonant sounds — crafted by the composers collective / licensing group Asche & Spencer and aided by the 60-piece Slovak National Symphony Orchestra — have been accompanied by a brand-new track by Chris Cornell.

The music, of course, is secondary to the story here. Nevertheless, it stands on its own merits, changing moods from dark to bright and pensive to hopeful with a range of instrumentation. Portions of the proceeds from Cornell's single go to Childers' Angels of East Africa charity, so make sure to download that from iTunes if you don't pick up the whole score.

Nurses: Dracula (Dead Oceans)

Nurses: "Fever Dreams"

After assimilating to Portland, Oregon’s ever-flourishing music scene, psych-pop trio Nurses hopped on board with Dead Oceans in 2009 to release its self-recorded album Apple’s Acre. Nurses’ members subsequently went rogue, Justin Vernon style, and embraced the isolation of cabin living during Oregon’s coastal winter to fully invest in its follow-up, Dracula.

The ethereal, California pop undertones on Dracula, however, are quite the opposite of those blistering surroundings, sometimes recalling the sun-kissed, multi-layered content of Animal Collective and Panda Bear. Interwoven harmonies lay a catchy groundwork for Aaron Chapman’s vocals, which cut through each track with their reverb-drenched, high-pitched intonations. There's a greater emphasis on texture, energy, and groove, and as a result, Dracula is the sound of Nurses coming into its own.

- Text by Lauren Zens.

The Nice Guy Trio: Sidewalks and Alleys / Waking Music (Porto Franco)

The Nice Guy Trio: "Caught in Thought"

Canadian-born, San Francisco-based trumpeter Darren Johnston has built quite a résumé over the past 15 years, working as a band leader, collaborator, and sideman. One of his most recent projects, The Nice Guy Trio, channels jazz in an oft-underused manner: with a heavy dose of chamber music and touches of worldly folk styles.

Sidewalks and Alleys / Waking Music is a new two-suite work by the trio — which includes accordion player Rob Reich and bassist Daniel Fabricant — and was commissioned by the Yerba Buena Garden Festival. Unlike its predecessor, Here Comes the Nice Guy Trio, it doesn't come with pedal-steel and tabla cameos or wander into Balkan and Hindustani styles. There also are no reworked jazz standards, which allows the "split" release to further focus on the songwriting talents of the group.

Written by Reich, Sidewalks and Alleys is a little less jazzy and more reminiscent of strolling through a centuries-old European plaza. Waking Music, Johnston's half, leans more toward the trumpeter's talents, but each side makes a balanced and tasteful use of string quartets, as made possible by guests Mads Tolling (violin), Anthony Blea (violin), Dina Macabee (viola), and Mark Summers (cello). Taken as a whole, the album leaves room for the players' individual talents and improvisations while maintaining very structured and beautiful compositions.

Chris Letcher: Spectroscope (Sheer Sound / 2 Feet)

Chris Letcher: "The Sun! The Sun!"

It’s been about four years since South African singer-songwriter Chris Letcher emerged with his debut album Frieze, and after an EP and film score, he returns with a dynamic second full-length, Spectroscope.

The most notable characteristic of the album is its variety. Significant changes in tempo, instrumentation, vocals, mood, and influence could make an album lose cohesiveness, but on Spectroscope, the variety only adds to the excitement for what’s coming. A piano and drum machine on one song may move to brass and strings on the next, typically guided by Letcher's rangy vocals (which hold a hint of Jeremy Enigk).

At times sounding like a string-backed indie-rock quartet and other times sounding like a solo multi-instrumentalist, Letcher demonstrates his multifaceted talents throughout Spectroscope.

- Text by Lauren Zens.

Honorable Mentions

Cave: Neverendless (Drag City)

Darren Johnston’s Gone to Chicago: The Big Lift (Porto Franco)

Dangerous!: Teenage Rampage (Epitaph)

Evangelista: In Animal Tongue (Constellation)

The Jim Jones Revue: s/t reissue (Punk Rock Blues)

Megafaun: s/t (Hometapes)

Opeth: Heritage (Roadrunner)

Tammar: Visits (Suicide Squeeze)

Waters: Out in the Light (TBD)

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

In San Francisco’s Mission District, the small but bustling Tiny Telephone is booked four months in advance. John Vanderslice is there everyday. Things are smooth. When he first opened the studio almost 15 years ago, this wasn’t the case. There were problems. Floods. Power outages. He would get calls while on tour. “At the beginning, it wasn’t a celebration,” he says. “It was just a grind.” But about three years ago, between albums, Vanderslice returned from the road and decided to take a break from touring. He was recently married, and he had the itch to explore not the world but the life that he had in San Francisco.

“When I came back, I was happier,” he says. “I was with my wife everyday. She’s a teacher, so I would [go to the studio] every day and just help bands. I would figure out stuff. And I started to make the studio a lot better. I got in this feedback loop where everything I was doing was helping the studio.” He admits that life could’ve taken him somewhere else — the studio might’ve not been a success. Even now, success is relative. Not long ago, Vanderslice got an E-mail from his bank. “Available balance: $0.22.” It was Christmas Eve. So though he’s not getting rich, measured other ways, things are better than ever. As he says of rough times in the past, “Everything kept pointing to all music, all studio, all the time.” They still are.

Vanderslice’s latest offering, White Wilderness, is a collaboration with Minna Choi’s Magik*Magik Orchestra (M*MO). Despite its size — nine tracks that fill only 31 minutes — the record has the power to engulf: like a controversy, the more one digs, the more complex it seems to get. What at first sounds like a thin, quirky rock album becomes instead a contained magnum opus. Portentously, White Wilderness was released exactly a week before a monstrous snow storm blanketed two-thirds of the United States, transforming the Midwest into a white wilderness of its own and bringing Chicago to a standstill; 20 inches whipped into eight-foot drifts proved too much, even for the city of broad shoulders.

Initial inklings for the project came two years ago, when Vanderslice played a show with M*MO at the Great American Music Hall. “Within the first 10 minutes of being in the center of 20 string players, I was like, ‘This has to be the next record.’” He and Choi had just begun a new partnership. Her collection of classical musicians would serve as a modular, in-house orchestra for Tiny Telephone, a solution to a problem that Choi had noticed for a while: it was always difficult to find classically trained musicians to record her arrangements, so why not create a group with that as its primary aim?

It was the perfect opportunity for a studio owner who owns every Gustav Mahler and W.A. Mozart symphony on vinyl. “The color — the use of oboe, French horn, and clarinet on Mahler symphonies — I just wanted to taste that,” he says of his passion for classical music. “I wanted, like, 0.1 percent of what I heard there to show up in my music.” Fueled also by artists like Sufjan Stevens and Joanna Newsom, who’ve skillfully woven orchestral music into other genres, Vanderslice wanted to get away from the typical, rock-music-with-string-overdubs sound: “I wanted to…just flip it around, where the orchestra is driving everything.” This meant that Vanderslice had to take himself out of the equation. After penning the original demos, he passed the material to Choi and didn’t hear the music again until three days before recording.

“It was as far as I could get from my usual process,” says Vanderslice, who normally does everything himself in his basement before even heading to the studio. “I told Minna, ‘Listen, I have a very high tolerance for dissonance, and I would love to include as many woodwinds as possible.’ End of sentence. I didn’t say another word to Minna about music. Ever. I never changed a note. I never made a suggestion about orchestration — after a 30-second conversation.”

In her bedroom, surrounded by piles of paper, Choi had a significant amount of work ahead of her, but with Vanderslice encouraging dissonance, one of her main hurdles had been leapt. “As an arranger, dissonance is the thing that I have to worry about most,” she says. “I compare it to a caterer being hired to cater a wedding — that’s kind of what I’m doing. I have to get inside their head and create something that’s to their taste. Dissonance is like spiciness; everybody has a different idea of what’s spicy, just like everyone has a different idea of what’s dissonant. It’s totally subjective, it’s totally personal, and there’s no right or wrong.”

“When I think of wilderness, I think of something unknown — there’s a little bit of anxiety, a little bit of unsettledness to me. But then the whole idea of a white wilderness is different. It’s very peaceful and very beautiful.”

For Choi, “White Wilderness” set the tone for the record. It was the first song that Vanderslice played for her, and as they listened, he said that he loved the dissonance in a recurring chord — “some version of an augmented fourth,” Choi recalls. So she paired that sound with the visceral imagery of the title. “When I think of wilderness, I think of something unknown — there’s a little bit of anxiety, a little bit of unsettledness to me,” she says. “But then the whole idea of a white wilderness is different. It’s very peaceful and very beautiful.” The tension there — itself a sort of thematic dissonance — became the fulcrum on which the rest of the album balanced.

* * *

Vanderslice and Choi click. On the album, much like in real life, they respect each other enough to not talk over the other, or step on toes, or do those things that could poison promising collaborations. And so, at times, the orchestra will disappear completely; other times it’s Vanderslice’s voice that vanishes. These absences enhance the record’s topography and keep it from becoming pallid. “After It Ends,” for example, might not withstand critique on its own. It’s not a single. If untethered, it would fade into the background and be lost. But within the record, it serves as respite between two of the record’s more overgrown tracks.

Without M*MO, the same might have happened to White Wilderness. Distilled down to micro-vignettes and a few instruments, the album might’ve faded into the background, barely registering, the equivalent of a nine-page book of poems sandwiched between John Ashberry and Charles Bukowski on the shelf of a crowded bookstore. This allusion is not unfitting. Actual Air, a collection of poems by David Berman (of Silver Jews fame) is such a book, agonizingly difficult to find, often buried among more formidable names. But there’s a hint of it in the way that Vanderslice constructs his vignettes, and when his songs are compared to Berman’s poetry, it becomes clear as to why. “Aw man, that guy’s my hero,” he says. “I’m a huge fan of his. David Berman has actually given me a lot of titles for a lot of my songs. He sends me lists of titles for me to use. I mean, that’s fucking incredible, right? It makes me feel like a really lucky person.”

Such informal, casual collaborations are not anomalies in Vanderslice’s world. Even the title, White Wilderness — the lyrical, musical, and conceptual anchor of the entire project — was suggested by John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats. And by the time that Vanderslice came to Choi with the name, he was already under its spell. “I’m making an album called White Wilderness,” he told her, “and it’s going to be all magic.” Whether he meant “all magic” or “all Magik” is unknown. Both would be accurate.

Darnielle also influenced Vanderslice’s lyrics, which are more personal here than in the past. “He’d really been encouraging me to write about my family, my father, and my childhood,” Vanderslice says. “I’d told him stories about my life and growing up, and he’s like, ‘Man, you have to write about some of this stuff.’ So I just started writing. ‘Convict Lake’ is as true as I can tell it. It’s basically an experience I had taking acid and getting altitude poisoning. And it was in some ways beyond surreal; and in other ways, it was the most horrific experience of my life.”

This gives the following “White Wilderness” — already a sort of dream sequence — an even heightened ethereality. As tough as autobiographical writing can be, Vanderslice is an adept storyteller, deft with the details of childhood. In “The Piano Lesson,” an anonymous teacher is in charge (“Place your thumb on the middle C”), and so M*MO’s musical roughhousing, led by a great bari-sax riff, becomes the rebelliousness of a kid stuck at a piano. “There are rules when you strike the drum,” the young Vanderslice is told. He doesn’t like that notion.

The songs are made stronger by Vanderslice’s plain, unadorned vocals, sometimes almost spoken, and by bits of well-fitting fantastical language, the vernacular of a young boy’s imagination. “20K” is the exaggerated deep-sea adventure of a Florida tour boat, the name a reference to Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. “English Vines,” a gentle folk song replete with pedal steel, becomes a Poe-like tale: “By night, our neighbors’ invading vines / rooted into my dreams from underground / twined their nooses ’round our lives / branching out maniacally / they choked our sycamore / and grew thicker and thicker / and when I finally scaled their fence / to kill the source of this malevolence / were my neighbors watching me / from their house?”

Choi’s style here is modern, relying heavily on strings, brass, and simple, warm percussion to give muscle to the skeletal compositions of piano or acoustic guitar. Her orchestral arrangements feed off Vanderslice’s imagery as well as his brevity, respecting his selectivity even as they flesh out his stories. Some of the album’s most triumphant moments are in her graceful but compelling interludes: the pregnant phrasing between sung lines of “20K”; the seemingly endless rising and falling action at the end of “White Wilderness”; the end of “Sea Salt,” where a gorgeously layered orchestral volley becomes the air currents on which Vanderslice escapes, singing, “For the first time I could take to air / I was free now / I could go anywhere.”

In a way, this record is that same escape. No longer slave to savage condemnations of far-off political affairs, Vanderslice offers an honest, eager reflection of his past. So though it opens with a foreboding reference to the Gaza Strip, the album veers away from the political track and into new territory. “Sun shines on the Gaza Strip / smiles on the back alleys of Madrid / comes off the stone like a burning whip.”

* * *

As Choi arranged White Wilderness, Vanderslice planned his next project: a new studio, right next to Tiny Telephone. Vanderslice sits in his car, commenting on the progress. “They’re putting up mirrors and windows and doors today,” he says. “It’s incredible. It’s the most exhilarating feeling I’ve had in years. We’re sick of turning down work. We had Islands call us, we had Philadelphia Grand Jury — we always have these really great records that we can’t do.”

Bands love Tiny Telephone. Thao, Spoon, Ra Ra Riot, Mark Kozelek (Sun Kil Moon, Red House Painters), Death Cab for Cutie, Sleepytime Gorilla Museum — all these and more have spent time at Tiny Telephone, partly because of Vanderslice’s belief in the sanctity of a more traditional recording process, which favors analog tape, live takes, and a host of other once-again-popular techniques. (He was recently interviewed by Wired magazine for a story on the growing use of ribbon mics.) “We always encourage bands to be confident in what they’re doing,” he says. “We’re here documenting and recording what a band does, and there’s a lot of power in what four people do in a room together.”

Or consider the power of 19 people — 20 if you count Choi, whose siren-like vocals appear on “Overcoat.” Produced by seasoned engineer John Congleton (who’s worked with St. Vincent and the Walkmen, among others), White Wilderness’ strings, horns, winds, piano, and drums were all recorded live. M*MO came in, set up, and for two days straight, it made music. “We said three days in the press release because we honestly didn’t think anyone would really believe us,” Vanderslice notes.

Vanderslice is adamant that recording together, on analog tape and in full takes, is exactly what gives an album energy and life. Comparing the world of infinite overdubs to a mirror that magnifies things 100 times, he says that it’s ridiculous to obsess over such a distorted image. “That’s not what life is, and that’s not how people listen to music,” he says. “People listen to music in the totality and for the commitment to the performance. So yeah, we’ve done everything we can to fight this micro-management of performance.” One way is by giving bands free tape, which means that they’re on a linear format. “It encourages performances, it encourages whole takes, and it encourages not cut-and-pasting and correcting minor imperfections,” he says. “It endorses the music as it is. And it’s a strong endorsement because it sounds really good — it sounds better than digital.”

Another strong endorsement is the one that Vanderslice gives M*MO. He gives it all the credit for White Wilderness, and he encourages every band that comes through Tiny Telephone’s door to work with it. This isn’t surprising. After all, his approach to music isn’t really about the profession. It’s about life. The musical community that he’s a part of and has helped create is how he interacts with the world — professionally, yes, but also socially, civically, and politically. And the same goes for Choi, in a very tangible way. In March, Choi will finally abandon her bedroom office for a real office space between Tiny Telephone and the new studio, which opens its doors June 1. Vanderslice is no doubt happy to weave her more tightly into his daily collaborations, but it might be Choi who’s most thrilled with the move. Because of its solitary nature, arranging can be a lonely task, and Choi will be happy to inhabit a space where she’s not alone in her creative efforts.

“I’m really excited about how I’ll change, socially,” she says. “Because I spend so much time arranging, that meant before [that] I was spending a lot of time alone. Like on a Friday night, writing a string arrangement isn’t the most social activity, but now, I can come here and write here, and I’ll hear bands on both sides of me also doing something creative. We can, like, take breaks together, and go out for coffee, and it’s so much more fun-sounding.”

John Darnielle. David Berman. And now Minna Choi. Vanderslice seems to collect talented people. With a brilliant new partner in crime and an already solid community of collaborators, increasingly, Vanderslice has more reasons to stay put than to go on tour. “I love touring; I love that,” he says. “But man, this can compete toe-to-toe with being on tour any day. It’s that exciting and that fun.” 

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

Stream the podcast for This Week's Best Albums: January 25, 2011.
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)

John Vanderslice & the Magik*Magik Orchestra: "Sea Salt"  (White Wilderness, Dead Oceans, 1/25/11)

One morning, in early 2008, Califone front man Tim Rutili woke up to find a piece of paper on his bedside table with a story written in his own handwriting. It was a movie he had dreamt.

Months before, Rutili thought that a good place to start writing for the next Califone record would be to collect some superstitions — his own and others. He went to friends in Los Angeles and family members in Chicago and videotaped tellings of things, such as throwing salt at the backs of suspicious witch-like old women and restrictions on taking anything from a funeral home.

One night, Rutili fell asleep, and the images and words from the videos, the thoughts of his own tendency to knock on wood or touch the roof of his car while driving under bridges, and the melodies inspired by such obsessive compulsions had all mixed together and manifested into a dream. He woke up at three in the morning and wrote it down.

“This is going to sound lame, but I had this dream, and it was this story about a fortune teller, but I kind of dreamt it as a kids’ movie,” Rutili says. “It was like watching a bad kids’ film. It was ridiculous. I got up and wrote it down. I woke up the next day and thought [that] it was a good place to start for writing a movie.”

A year later, Califone is set to release All My Friends Are Funeral Singers on Dead Oceans, a follow-up to the critically acclaimed Roots & Crowns. Rutili also wrote and directed his first feature film under the same name.

All My Friends Are Funeral Singers Trailer from Califone on Vimeo.

Shot in 11 days in Charleston, Indiana, the film All My Friends Are Funeral Singers stars Angela Bettis (Girl, Interrupted and May) as a medium/fortune teller whose only friends, ghosts living in her house, realize they are trapped and try to escape. In the fall of 2009, Califone toured in support of the new record by playing a live, partially improvised soundtrack along with the film.

“I like giving the audience something to see, actually; I love what visuals trigger in us musically,” Rutili says. “But I see it as three different parts of the same project that each stand on their own. The album is definitely not a soundtrack. The film eventually is going to stand on its own without us. The album works as a album, and the show is going to work as a show.”

The members of Califone have a rich history of performing live along with video accompaniment — a style of performance they unanimously enjoy. The first time was in 2001 when the band played along to a film by experimental director Harry Smith, which Rutili says he remembers being immediately artistically satisfying. Later, Rutili and fellow bandmate Jim Becker toured with a film with the band Box Set Ensemble.

“It’s a completely different thing — the feel of what we do when we play to a film,” drummer Ben Massarella says. “It’s similar — it sounds like it us; it feels like us — but when we are playing alone, we are just going for it and playing for the moment, us being the stimulus. With the film, you are able to be improvisational about it but also have real specific things like timing — things need to start right here or end right here. Sometimes it’s songs, [and] sometimes it’s a little more open, and that could be different every night.”

As the album All My Friends Are Funeral Singers is on its own a soulful, cinematic, story-driven follow- up to the much-praised Roots & Crowns, it’s easy to imagine a visual accompaniment. At its core, the record is a collection of emotionally driven, catchy folk-rock tunes, helmed by Rutili’s low, slight twang and given depth by a soundscape strongly infused by electronica, world music, and psychedelic rock.

The opening track, “Giving Away the Bride,” is one of the more unique intersections of styles you’ll hear in 2009. Rutili playfully snakes out a soft and dark melody as a dirty, fuzzed-out bass drives along to an array of percussive instrumentation. Songs like “Buñnel” and “Funeral Singers” are on the one hand more conventional, acoustic-guitar-driven folk rock, but also a testament to Rutili’s ability to convey a sad story through catchy melodies.

Recorded at Clava, the band’s South Side Chicago recording studio, the band agreed that the recording of this record flowed easier than ones in the past. Produced by Brian Deck (Iron and Wine, Modest Mouse), this record features the band’s signature use of multi-instrumentation and found arrangements.

Though Rutili expressed great pleasure in the process, filming All My Friends Are Funeral Singers was a far more challenging process. After Bettis signed on, he pulled as many checks and favors as he could find to get the movie made. Rutili and friends moved out to Chesterfield, Indiana, where a friend said they could film in a house he owned but no longer lived in.

With bags of knickknacks and trucks full of grandparents’ furniture, production designer Joe Bristol led a transformation of the old house into the weird lair of a medium/fortune teller trying to keep her ghosts from fleeing. From there, Rutili shot the film in 11 consecutive 14-hour days.

“It was probably the hardest thing any of us had ever done, but I loved it,” he says. “I like telling stories and exploring characters. I really like working with actors, which was the part I was most afraid of. I was worried that I wouldn’t know how to explain what I wanted, that I would confuse people or explain too much or explain too little. But working with good actors is amazing.”

After the tour is over, Rutili will submit his film to film festivals and hopes to have more experiences in filmmaking in the future. But, for now, the focus is on the show, creating an experience where album and film collide through musical and thematic interaction.

“There is some thematic overlapping, but a lot of it is some of these peripheral characters’ inner dialogue,” Rutili says. “A lot of it is imagery or memories someone who is no longer living would have — little strands of life that they are holding onto that would prevent them from leaving this planet. I see all this sounds kind of crazy.”

BK-One is best known as the DJ for Brother Ali and as a mainstay of the Rhymesayers roster. But with the help of beat-making buddy Benzilla, he has further established a name for himself through Rádio do Canibal.

An A-list collaboration with top-tier MCs, Rádio do Canibal is built on a foundation of grooving bass lines and horns. This sets a funky foundation for the crux of the album, BK-One’s playful commingling of samba and bossa nova samples with hip-hop beats (which is directly influenced by his frequent travels through Central and South America).

The MCs, notably P.O.S, Haiku D’Etat, Slug, and Blue Oriny, provide plenty of highlights, although Murs provides a particularly crass lowlight in “Eighteen to Twenty.” Regardless, it’s an all-star lineup, and with additional cameos from Ali, Black Thought, Raekwon, and The Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, one would do well to pick this up.

Air: Love 2 (Astralwerks)

Despite variances in style from album to album, Air’s sound is easily discernible to most anyone who is familiar. It’s spacey, synthesized yet organic, and holds a reverence for the squiggly electronic sounds of the late 1970s.

Love 2 is no different in this regard, but it may be the French duo’s most realized creation. A combination of delicate instrumentals and pseudo-sultry ballads comprise the album, which calls upon the duo’s usual armaments in addition to spots of saxophone, marimba, and glockenspiel.

Air won’t be mistaken for holding prog-rock virtuosity, but Love 2 displays some of the best “chops” of any Air album, as best evidenced by the deft piano play and swirling guitar solo of “Tropical Disease.” If you enjoy Air, the duo’s latest album won’t let you down.

A Place to Bury Strangers: Exploding Head (Mute)

After a much-hyped self-titled debut, A Place to Bury Strangers continues to perfect its sound on Exploding Head, its first release for Mute.

The album holds a hard-hitting post-punk /new-wave sound that combines the atmospherics and fuzziness of My Bloody Valentine with the rawness of Sonic Youth and the moodiness of Joy Division. Echoed, whammied chords wash over feedback, speed-picked single-note riffs, and über-reverberated, ride-heavy rock beats.

The result is a sound that is much denser than one would imagine from a rock trio. Undoubtedly, the stars of the album are Oliver Ackermann’s customized guitar pedals, which he manufactures for his own company, Death by Audio.

Honorable mentions:

Bellini: Precious Prize of Gravity (Temporary Residence)
The Black Heart Procession: Six (Temporary Residence)
Califone: All My Friends are Funeral Singers (Dead Oceans)
Betty Davis: Nasty Gal and Is It Love or Desire (reissues — Light in the Attic)
Horse the Band: Desperate Living (Vagrant)
Jason Stein’s Locksmith Isidore: Three Less Than Between (Clean Feed)

You can get a free download of an Aesop Rock / Jeremy Fish audio/video collaboration of "Tomorrow Morning" from Definitive Jux.

Trent Reznor has strongly reprimanded the US military's use of Nine Inch Nails' music during the torture of overseas detainees.  According to Reznor, any realistic legal options will be "aggressively pursued, with any potential monetary gains donated to human-rights charities."

Experimental and occasionally psychedelic folk group Akron/Family will release a new album, its fourth overall, for Dead Oceans / Secretly Canadian in April. It will mark the group's first effort for Dead Oceans and first as a three-piece.

Stoner-metal bad-asses High on Fire have signed a deal with Koch Records, which will release a new studio album sometime in 2009.  Before that happens, Relapse will release Live from the Relapse Contamination Festival on January 6.

The transition of Conan O'Brien to Jay Leno's old job has created an opening for a new house band on Conan's old show, which was deftly soundtracked by the Max Weinberg 7. Good news for hip-hop and funk fans: The Roots will handle the duties on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.

In an interview with Billboard, guitarist Tom Morello states that there may never be another Rage Against the Machine album.

Idiosyncratic rapper Busdriver recently compiled a list of his top ten albums (not limited to 2008) for LAist.com. Portishead's long-awaited third album tops his rankings.

The RZA releases a new selection of tunes for Afro Samurai, an animated series for Spike TV, on January 27.  The soundtrack marks the first release from Wu Music Group, a new label co-run by RZA.

Bad Brains: Build a Nation

With the Beastie Boys’ Adam Yauch on board as producer, these DC hardcore legends returned to the studio, for the first time in over a decade, to recapture their successful punk and reggae blend.

Reminiscent of their seminal early ‘80s records, Build A Nation opens with “Give Thanks and Praises,” which moves back and forth between head-banging and frantic hardcore riffs. “Jah People Make the World Go Round” keeps true to the original hardcore format (which they helped create) with fast verses — made more intimidating with Yauch’s bass-line production — and breakdown choruses. Several relaxed reggae tracks give the album a unique pacing.
Megaforce: www.megaforcerecords.com

Big Business: Here Come the Waterworks

After completing (A) Senile Animal with their other band, the Melvins, and finishing an exhaustive touring schedule including double sets every night, this Los Angeles duo released one of the year’s earliest masterpieces.

Taking cues from Queen, singer/bassist Jared Warren and drummer Coady Willis created a hard-rock epic. The journey begins with the tremendous “Just as the Day Was Dawning,” ends with the sludgey instrumental “Another Beautiful Day in the Pacific Northwest,” and pummels listeners with swampy, energetic bass riffs and explosive drum beats every step of the way.

Produced by Phil Ek (Band of Horses, Built to Spill), Here Come the Waterworks is a heavy hitter.
Hydra Head: www.hydrahead.com

Brother Ali: The Undisputed Truth

A powerfully crafted album, The Undisputed Truth is the year’s best hip-hop release. There were other solid efforts (I’ll Sleep When You’re Dead by El-P) and a plethora of great singles, but The Undisputed Truth deals with, in great balance, the three elements of angst-fueled music: righteous and rebellious lyrics, the inducement of fist pumping, hand throwing, and head banging, and enormous egos that carefully bob from insecure to forcefully inflated.

The album opens with a thumping beat on “Watcha Got,” and the opening lyrics “I came in the door, 1984” are likely to become this generation’s “bring the motherfucking ruckus” as rapped on Wu-Tang Clan’s “Bring Da Ruckus.”
Rhymesayers: www.rhymesayers.com

Exploding Star Orchestra: We Are All from Somewhere Else

The inaugural Exploding Star Orchestra album is the brainchild of Rob Mazurek, a tireless composer/cornetist/collaborator and the man behind Thrill Jockey’s Chicago Underground collective. With a stellar ensemble, his work on We Are All from Somewhere Else is a dense, serpentine concoction of cross-metered jazz.

Looping rhythms, typically played by upright bass, vibraphone, and brass or woodwind instruments, set the foundation for runs and improvisations by Mazurek and the other players on trombone, saxophone, flute, clarinet, and piano. At times, the album is evocative of composer Leonard Bernstein’s work. Its compounded melodies and droning roots make We Are All from Somewhere Else one of the year’s finest albums.
Thrill Jockey: www.thrilljockey.com

Grinderman: s/t

A side project for Nick Cave and Bad Seeds members Warren Ellis, Martyn Casey, and Jim Sclavunos found the foursome embracing rock ’n’ roll at its rawest, resulting in an album akin to The Stooges or Cave’s The Birthday Party without being merely a revival act.

Whether crooning or screaming, even at age fifty, the sound of Cave’s voice is enough to inspire listeners to do naughty things with the one they love, or at least the one they lust. The snarling “No Pussy Blues,” with Ellis’ wild psychedelic guitar fills, is infectious and unforgettable.

Fun and intelligent rockers such as “Honey Bee (Let’s Fly to Mars)” and “Depth Charge Ethel” are balanced by the more subdued “Man in the Moon” and silky “Electric Alice.” Hopefully, the success of Grinderman’s debut will lead to a follow-up in the not-so-distant future.
Anti: www.anti.com