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This Week\'s Best Albums: January 18, 2011

Steven Drozd: The Heart Is A Drum Machine (The Score) (Twinkle Cash Co.)

Steven Drozd: "Born"

Steven Drozd is a multi-instrumentalist and the third-most-tenured member of The Flaming Lips; live, he usually plays guitar and keyboards and sings a bit, but he began his stint as the band’s drummer. Now he’s releasing the nearly instrumental accompaniment to the documentary The Heart is a Drum Machine, a film by the producers of the Moog documentary that attempts to explain what music “is” and how it affects human beings.

The music shares a lot of characteristics with the Flaming Lips of the past dozen years – synthesized grooves, big rock beats, fuzz bass, airy keyboards, and different instrumental flourishes weaving in and out. Listeners are unlikely to confuse the two, however, and the score succeeds as a standalone album as well as a film accompaniment. Maynard James Keenan of Tool and A Perfect Circle provides guest vocals on a cover of Elton John's "Rocket Man," which feels a bit out of place when listening straight through, but it’s a unique rendition of a classic-rock hit.

Beep: City of the Future (Third Culture)

Beep: "Robo Pup"

A genre-bending electro-rock-meets-experimental-jazz trio, Beep is a Bay Area band that began as a more traditional jazz outfit.  But with its third album, City of the Future, it has moved into a category all its own. Accessible beats and upright-bass grooves build into keyboard leads and polyrhythmic breakdowns, and though a few passages become harder to follow, it doesn’t take long for Beep’s powerful melodies and rhythms to come back to the fore.

The best contemporary comparison here might be a group like Kneebody, which expertly combines some of the best elements of rock and jazz. Beep, however, adds more disparate elements in the way of wordless vocal harmonies, an electrified mbira, woodblocks, and electronic squiggles, and City of the Future pulls all of that together for a swirling jazz-rock odyssey. Ultimately, beyond the style shifting, it showcases a real knack for melody as evidenced by the final track, "Robo Pup," which premiered last week on AlarmPress.com.

Ghost: Opus Eponymous (Metal Blade / Rise Above)

Ghost: "Con Clavi Con Dio"

With its debut full-length, Swedish metal band Ghost — not to be confused with the Japanese psych-rock band of the same name — has quickly built buzz thanks to its infectious mix of classic metal riffs, sing-along vocals, and abundant melodies. The overarching satanic themes and high-priest visual aesthetic don’t hurt either in appealing to the band’s target market.

Opus Eponymous, out now in the USA on Metal Blade, is being billed as a black-metal album.  There’s a bit of that in the darker moments, but truthfully, it falls much closer to classic rock with its organs and vocal harmonies. The press materials recommend it for fans of Judas Priest, Mercyful Fate, and Blue Öyster Cult, but there are just enough left-field elements – Benedictine-style chants, church bells, spaced-out keyboards – to separate these guys from the pack.

Braids: Native Speaker (Kanine)

Braids: "Lemonade"

Another promising debut this week comes via the highly orchestrated indie-rock creations of Braids – not to be confused with indie-rock favorites Braid from Champaign, Illinois. The pluralized version is actually a group of kids, still just a few years removed from high school, who skipped college, moved to Montreal, and began making a record. The result is an album that’s mature beyond its years, with musical dynamics that many bands never achieve — and chops that aren't too shabby either, perhaps best shown by rapid, looping guitar work.

The durations of Braids’ songs are another indie-rock anomaly, often eclipsing seven and eight minutes. Thanks to that and the band’s other elongated, reverberated guitar parts, it has a fair share in common with post-rock and bands such as Mono, even if the music is topped with sugary pop vocals. But even those elements are turned on their heads at times, and vocalist/guitarist Raphaelle Standell-Preston, who’s also capable of Björk-style power, borders on manic shrieking in the song “Glass Dears.”

Joel Harrison String Choir: The Music of Paul Motian (Sunnyside)

Joel Harrison String Choir: "Misterioso"

Guitarist/composer Joel Harrison has a head-spinning discography, spanning world music, ethnic folk songs, country and Appalachian tunes, avant-classical music, experimental jazz, blues, hymns, and more. Now the boundary-defying songwriter has undertaken another ambitious project: translating the music of legendary jazz drummer Paul Motian to fixed and improvised chamber renditions.

Having played with Bill Evans and Thelonious Monk in addition to recording dozens of albums as a bandleader, Motian has a wealth of material from which to choose. Harrison, in these new versions, does an exemplary job of balancing classical orchestration with improvisation. And he accomplishes this (for the most part) with two guitars plus a string quartet – omitting bass and drums, which usually are crucial jazz elements.

Honorable Mentions

Amina Alaoui: Gharnati, En Concert (Music & Words / Saphrane)

The Decemberists: The King is Dead (Capitol)

Electric Wizard: Black Masses (Rise Above)

Eulogies: Tear the Fences Down (Dangerbird)

Fergus & Geronimo: Unlearn (Hardly Art)

Ion: Immaculada (Restricted Release)

Daniel Martin Moore: In the Cool of the Day (Sub Pop)

Aaron Novik: Floating World Vol. 1 (Porto Franco)

Smith Westerns: Dye it Blonde (Fat Possum)

Social Distortion: Hard Times & Nursery Rhymes (Epitaph)

The newest solo album of Nile linchpin Karl Sanders is another beautiful acoustic release of Arabic flavors mixed with Western structures.

Following Saurian Meditation from 2004, Saurian Exorcisms is full of gorgeous, dark motifs that run a wider gamut of styles than Sanders' last solo effort.  On Exorcisms, Sanders handles all instrumentation — baglama saz, glissentar, acoustic guitars, guitar synth, keyboards, drums, and percussion.  He even contributes vocals, which complement the haunting vocals and chants of Mike Breazeale.

The music contains some of Sanders' blistering fretwork, but it never strays from its overlying melody and accessibility.  Covering Turkish, Egyptian, Indian, and Arabic styles, Saurian Exorcisms is a must-own album.

Karl Sanders: "Rapture of the Empty Spaces"
Karl Sanders: \"Rapture of the Empty Spaces\"

Crippled Black Phoenix: 200 Tons of Bad Luck (Invada)

Penning epic "endtime ballads," the United Kingdom's Crippled Black Phoenix plays dark folk with dirty guitars, ominous effects, diversified vocals, and countless guest electro/acoustic contributions.

The group's style is predicated on the multi-instrumental prowess of Justin Greaves (former drummer of Electric Wizard), whose lengthy tunes are augmented with a massive cast.  Nine of the songs on this disc clock in at or over five minutes, including the 18-minute musical triptych "Time of Ye Life / Born for Nothing / Paranoid Arm of Narcoleptic Empire."

Crippled Black Phoenix: "Rise Up and Fight"
Crippled Black Phoenix: \"Rise Up and Fight\"

Mulatu Astatke / The Heliocentrics: Inspiration Information 3 (Strut)

Known as the father of Ethio-jazz, Ethiopian bandleader Mulatu Astatke is an internationally lauded musician whose works may be best known in America through the soundtrack to Broken Flowers or the Ethiopiques series.

Now, for Strut's Inspiration Information studio pair-up series, Astatke creates an outstanding disc of worldly jazz-hop fusion with the help of UK hip-hop/funk/psychedelic all-stars The Heliocentrics.

The collaboration has already received vast amounts of praise, and it comes strongly recommended for anyone into the aforementioned genres.

Mulatu Astatke / The Heliocentrics: "Masenqo" (radio edit)
Mulatu Astatke / The Heliocentrics: \"Masenqo\" (radio edit)

Prefuse 73: Everything She Touched Turned Ampexian (Warp)

Guillermo Scott Herren's newest album as his glitchy alter-ego is meant to be a linear work — one that Herren describes as both straight ahead and obscure.

That description is on point, but it could also apply to most other Prefuse releases.  Still, this effort finds Herren's chopped sound collages about as accessible as they come, layered over hip-hop beats that don't stutter like on previous efforts.

Agoraphobic Nosebleed: Agorapocalypse (Relapse)

Specializing in über-fast thrash/grind, ANB presents just its second full-length album in 10 years with Agorapocalypse.

The brutal quartet features three vocalists — two of the stand-alone variety — aiding the semi-diversity of sound on the new disc.  Everything is extra heavy, but breakdowns, breakneck solos, and sludge bass combine to make this the band's most realized release to date.

Agoraphobic Nosebleed: "Agorapocalypse Now"
Agoraphobic Nosebleed: \"Agorapocalypse Now\"

Two Fingers: s/t (Paper Bag)

DJs/producers Amon Tobin and Doubleclick comprise Two Fingers, an experimental mix of hip hop and drum & bass that features Ghanaian UK rapper Sway and a pair of additional guest rappers.

Nothing lacks in the production, which is a mix of factory-sound dance numbers that boast Tobin's trademark pastiche/found-sound style.  Sway's rapid-fire delivery fits, but it also gets a bit tiresome, particularly with the frequency of certain passages.

Dengue Fever: Sleepwalking Through the Mekong (M80)

Following Los Angeles Cambodian/American pop-rock group Dengue Fever through Cambodia, the film for which this soundtrack was created explores the homecoming of singer Chhom Nimol and the journey of the band that she fronts.

Full of the band's psych-tinged tunes as well as great Cambodian rock tunes of the 1960s and '70s, the soundtrack honors a musical culture that was put in peril during the Khmer Rouge's atrocious reign.

Crippled Black Phoenix @ Beat Kitchen (Chicago)

Counting Portishead's Geoff Barrow among its many past and present contributors, the United Kingdom's Crippled Black Phoenix creates what have been dubbed "endtime ballads."

The sound is one of dark folk with dirty guitars, ominous effects, diversified vocals, and countless guest electro/acoustic contributions, leaning on the multi-instrumental prowess of Justin Greaves (former drummer of Electric Wizard).  Imagine Mono, the Black Heart Procession, Rachel's, Godspeed! You Black Emperor, and a tiny touch of Isis being swirled together.

Saturday, April 4

Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey @ House of Blues Back Porch Stage (Chicago)

Combining elements of jazz, groove, rock, classical, and electronic music, Tulsa’s Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey presents a style of nü-jazz often associated with groups like Norway’s Jaga Jazzist. Yet the group's sound remains highly unique, and now JFJO tours in support of Winterwood, its great new album that can be downloaded for free and that marked the final recording with long-time member Reed Mathis.

Sunday, April 5

Pelican, Tombs @ The Empty Bottle (Chicago)

A month and a half removed from the release of Winter Hours, its brutal new album, Tombs finishes a tour with some dates through the Midwest.  The Brooklyn trio continues touring with Pelican, dirge metallists who hail from Chicago.  Expect a lot of pummeling mid-tempo riffs and half-time breakdowns.