At first glance, Kagan McLeod’s Infinite Kung Fu would seem to have limited appeal. Despite inspiring near-religious devotion in its fans, martial-arts movies have been marginalized, commercialized, and derided in popular culture as a sort of kitschy guilty pleasure. Attempts have been made to revive the genre, most notably in anime, but Infinite Kung Fu may be the first graphic novel to stand a decent chance of creating new interest in a niche genre.

Innovative and smart, Infinite Kung Fu pays homage to classic elements of martial-arts films, from wise masters to wise-ass students, but it manages to do away with the clunky dialogue and feel of Asian exploitation that have come to dominate many viewers’ perspectives on kung fu. Instead, McLeod returns to the kung-fu story as a quasi-mystical battle between good and evil. As with the Kill Bill films, whose own master, Gordon Liu, provides a foreword, Infinite Kung Fu is a loving tribute and a partial reinvention.

McLeod, a longtime fan of kung-fu films, populates his story with familiar archetypes that nonetheless remain stylish and cool. The story begins with the eight Immortals, grand kung-fu masters who have gained superpowers, and their fight against the rapidly increasing legions of zombies on Earth. Each of the Immortals’ students has turned to dark magic, with the exception of Moog Joogular, a sort of Isaac Hayes/Jimi Hendrix mash-up with a sword.

With the help of Moog and his assistant, Thursday Thoroughgood, the leader of the Immortals trains a young army deserter in the ways of kung fu. Along the way, he must learn fighting techniques from animals, defeat a ghostly emperor, and figure out the secret of the undead’s resurgence.

Magic, an “infinite” number of fighting styles, and a proliferation of quirky characters allow McLeod room to play, and he does not disappoint. Spirits jump between bodies, masters attack with centipedes and burst open opponents’ chests (literally), and the Buddha even puts in an appearance. At over 400 pages, Infinite Kung Fu may seem daunting to some readers, but variety keeps the story moving.

Using an Asian-inspired brushwork style, McLeod’s art feels well suited for the story and refreshingly simple. Strangely enough, it’s also a good fit for his extended fight scenes. The fights (which admittedly take up a large portion of the book) mix the pows and cracks of comic-book violence with the fanciful technique terms of kung-fu movies, and McLeod’s brushwork ties them together wonderfully. Repetitive fights could easily kill the narrative momentum that McLeod sets up, but the masterful artwork manages to keep the moves fresh. Though initially very boxy in layout and formulaic in design, McLeod’s story and art evolve into something looser and far more interesting as the novel progresses.

Perhaps McLeod’s biggest asset is the timeliness of this book. Although he began work on Infinite Kung Fu years ago, zombies have never been bigger than in 2011. Even as we head toward exhaustion in the face of constantly proliferating “zombies vs. what-have-you” media, "kung fu vs. the undead" feels stripped down and special. At its heart, we know that Infinite Kung Fu is a natural progression from those childhood “who would win” contests; kick-ass kung fu, zombie mayhem, and happy readers are the result.

Dosh: "Subtractions"

Percussionist and multi-instrumentalist Martin Dosh, better known as simply Dosh, is known both for his electronic-based solo venture as well as his work with Andrew Bird, with whom he's toured and recorded. The instrumental track is Dosh's specialty; "Simple Exercises," which first appeared on Dosh's 2004 release, Pure Trash, reappeared on Bird's Armchair Apocrypha in 2007 as "Simple X" with an addition of lyrics. In the piece below, Dosh explains what drew him to instrumental music and how a few classic, lyric-less tracks continue to inspire his own music.

The Alchemy of Instrumental Music
by Dosh

I think my interest in music and sound really began when i was around nine or 10 years old; that is to say, that is when I really began LISTENING to music, to the ways instruments and voices worked together, trying to separate the sounds in my mind, trying to understand which sounds were being made by which instruments, and even what the people that played the music may have looked like. I can't recall what the first song that really captured my imagination was, but it was likely by Devo or The Cars, maybe Billy Squier. I've always listened to the music first and digested the vocals and lyrics later. When I first discovered Jimi Hendrix and Led Zeppelin, I found the vocals to be distracting. I couldn't understand why they were there; they seemed like an afterthought.

Once I started playing drums, when i was 15, that was all I really heard when I would listen to a song: the drums. And I played a little bit with some friends, but I didn't truly discover the joy of volume until I went to college two years later.  I spent more time listening to music in my first two years than I spent doing anything else — usually as loud as possible.  I was lucky enough to have a few friends who had massive record collections, and I listened to everything.

There is a certain alchemy in a song that doesn't have words. A good song with no words commands your attention in a different way than a song with words does. It can mean whatever you want it to mean. There aren't words to sing along with or to tell you what the song is about or to tell you how to feel.

In compiling this list of songs and listening back to it, I've been trying to find the common denominator; some of these songs would be classified as jazz, some would be classified as funk, some would be classified as post-rock, some would be classified as electronic, and some would be classified as fusion. To me, all these labels don't help the listener. Each classification has baggage: fusion is uncool, funk is passé, post-rock is pretentious. But what they have in common (with two exceptions) is probably the presence of the electric guitar, often distorted, and varying degrees of studio trickery.

Anyway, these 10 songs are not meant to be a "best instrumental-rock songs of all time" list, just 10 songs that mean a lot to me and have greatly influenced the music that I make.  This music is joyful and thrilling, and it speaks for itself. These songs never get old, and they continue to inspire me.

I realize there are a few vocals on here — Jimi's strange story on "Third Stone From the Sun" and all the crazy baby shrieks on Funkadelic's "Wars of Armageddon" — but that wasn't enough to knock them off the list.

Jeff Beck: "You Know What I Mean" (1975)

Herbie Hancock: "Steppin' in It" (1975)

Sonny Sharrock: "Promises Kept" (1991)

Tortoise:  "TNT" (1998)

Jimi Hendrix: "Third Stone from the Sun" (1966)

Miles Davis: "Spanish Key" (1968)

Frank Zappa: "Big Swifty" (1972)

Funkadelic: "Wars of Armageddon" (1970)

Boards of Canada: "Sixtyniner" (1995)

Squarepusher: "A Journey to Reedham (7AM Mix)" (1997)

Earth: "Father Midnight"

Most God-fearing people would probably characterize Earth’s cinematic drone-rock music as dark, and the assumption is not without merit. Since 1989, Earth’s founder and guitarist, Dylan Carlson, has specialized in a kind of down-tempo, almost lethargic style of slow rock that easily allows listeners to conjure thoughts of an emotional purgatory.

Carlson describes Earth’s musical destinations in a conversely different light. For him, the band’s resonant, slow-forming instrumentation represents a musically cerebral path to some sort of middle ground, but it’s not so much as a waiting room to hell as it is a medieval common area, where people are free to simply be, free to do as much or as little as they’d like. Earth’s womb-like melodic cocoon is in many ways an external and extremely personal catharsis — an intimate attempt to make sense of an ever-present melancholy that pervades Carlson’s vision of humanity.

What do you think has allowed Earth to maintain the same musical continuity for so long, while so many other bands from your time period have faded from the radar, sold out, died, or come back playing something completely different than what they started?

I think it’s still pretty similar. I think the main difference is more seen by working with [drummer] Adrienne [Davies] and working with the other members of the band more; it’s more of a collective experience than before. There were times when there were very few members of the band — no members of the band — [laughs] except me, so it was definitely more of a solitary pursuit at points, where now I have the luxury of being able to attract musicians to play with me and are able to play with me for at least a couple years at a time, instead of album by album.

That’s different, and I like that. I’ve always viewed Earth as a band, and wanted it to be a band, but it’s not always the easiest thing to find musicians to work with and keep them. I’m more cognizant of what I’m doing than before.

Do you think your sobriety has played a role in that?

Yeah, I definitely think so. I’m definitely more focused on doing music now and not wasting my time running around chasing [pauses] other things [laughs], so that’s good. And I’ve obviously been more productive in this second go-around than I was in the first, in terms of output and performing live.

Has your creative process changed at all over the years?

Yeah, I mean, for the most part, I guess. To me, there are certain things that need to be there for it to be Earth, otherwise I’d do something different. Within that, it should be slow, it should be simple, and hopefully be on the longer end of letting things develop — the longer end of the scale. There’s some wiggle room to do some other things, but if those three things aren’t there, then I should do a different project.

And if I were going to do something different, I’d do something completely different and wouldn’t try to sell that off as Earth. I think Earth has an identity of its own. I don’t think that would be fair to people to make something really fast and new-wave-y and call it Earth [laughs]; that wouldn’t be Earth. That would be my really fast new-wave-y project.

So are you saying you’ve got a really fast new-wave-y project in the works?

I’m hoping to do a solo record maybe later this year, and we’d like to start recording that as soon as possible, depending on our touring schedule, and that’s something that I hope would be different than Earth.

Is it going to be like ska or something?

No, no, no — but like acoustic guitar and some other stuff.

Will there be vocals in that, or will it be instrumental?

I haven’t decided yet. There’s certain things [that] I have in my head [that] I’m sort of keeping secret. I think it’ll definitely be something different, but hopefully people will be interested enough in it.

Speaking of that Earth sound, do you feel any sort of ownership to the sound that Earth has been said to have “pioneered”?

To me, the ownership of music is like this fiction that we’ve all agreed on. Unfortunately, we live in what they call a free-market capitalist economy, and there’s an exchange of goods required for people to survive. We’ve all sort of agreed that there’s this fiction that "Oh, I wrote this," and "Oh, I own this," and "I’m selling it to you." To me, music is as old as time itself, and there’s nothing that invented it.

Right — it’s like give a penny, take a penny?

Yeah, exactly, but because of the society we live in…we have to have the object to sell people, which is the object of the CD.

Do you think that certain catch-22 of music has made it harder for less-established acts to earn a living? Bands with a massively established audience like Radiohead can count on their fans to continue supporting them. Do you think that new bands have to rely more on touring as a means to stay financially solvent?

Yeah, and that’s my hope. My hope is that live music will become more important, like it used to be, but the economics of that don’t always work out. Back when music was big live, there was no TV, no radio; we didn’t have 24 hours of Internet porn [laughs], so we’ve got competition now.

I definitely think people seem more excited about live music than they used to be, and they want to see bands that can actually play their instruments as opposed to backing tracks and dance routines, and that kind of spectacle. I think [that] the only people in trouble are the major labels, and their whole factory thing. Justin Beiber in front of a bunch of teenagers at a mall is not a live show; most people realize that.

As much as I hate to talk about Justin Beiber, he brings to mind something that I hear you mention in a lot of your interviews. Authenticity is a really hot commodity right now in music, and I think that’s largely because of what you were just talking about — people aren’t just looking for something to tap their feet to, but they want something they can connect with — but is that authenticity something that you can feasibly and consciously strive for or knowingly attain?

We have all these myths and representations of music and art, like it’s something for other people to do rather than for everybody. Like the Amadeus myth that there are just born these phenomenal musicians, and the rest of us can only mash our teeth and plot to murder them because they’ve been given this gift that we don’t have. I absolutely abhor that whole myth.

The reason Mozart was Mozart was because his dad started training him when he was four. The reason Jimi Hendrix was a great guitarist was because he played guitar 18 hours a day. They put in the work; that’s why they were good. Everyone wants to go out and be on American Idol and be a star and believe there are people that are somehow just naturally gifted, but that’s bullshit. Ultimately, if you want to do music, and you put in the work, you’ll do something worthwhile.

Have you ever thought about your music as a sort of guided meditation?

Not specifically that sense. My favorite analogy that I heard was someone saying that Earth reminded them of a busy city, like the world as this busy city and Earth as this park where people can go to just be for a while, whether they want to meditate [pause] or alter their consciousness somehow. I remember a brief time when I was homeless, and the most frustrating thing of that whole experience was that there was just no place that you were allowed to be, where you didn’t have to be buying something, or paying for something.

There are no more places in the world for people to just be; you have to be doing something or spending money or being involved in an exchange. It’s really frustrating. In the old days in England, before the Enclosure Act, there used to be a thing called “the commons,” which no one was allowed to own, and anyone could use it, or they could just leave it alone [laughs]. That whole concept is gone. Now it’s all about "What can we do with this?" and "What can we make it pay?" and that’s happened to people. No one’s allowed to just be; you always have to be in motion, and playing the game, and you know, burning [laughs].

It’s like an acid trip; it’s all about what you make of it…

Yeah, you could have a great time or you could lose your marbles [laughs]. Life is fraught with risk. I’m sure there are theological arguments for why that is, but that’s life: there’s no free ride. It’s like doing drugs; as good as you feel at that one moment, that’s as shitty as you’re going to feel later. There’s a trade-off. So, yes, I think there’s a melancholy to Earth, or darkness, but I also think there’s another side as well.

V/A: Those Shocking, Shaking Days: Indonesian Hard, Psychedelic, Progressive Rock and Funk, 1970-1978 (Now-Again, 3/8/11)

Shark Move: "Evil War"

Giving service to the music and the musicophiles who go in search for it, Now-Again Records has released a stunning overview of 1970s Indonesian funk, rock, and psychedelia recordings in an anthology titled Those Shocking, Shaking Days.  The title is a perfect summation of the sounds coming from the compilation; deep funk gems and gritty rock riffs are captured in the lowest of lo-fi senses, driven to the head by relentless fuzz guitars, psychedelic howls, and all kinds of general weirdness.

Helmed by Now-Again’s head honcho Egon, with research and crate digging from producer Jason “Moss” Connoy (and the not-to-be overlooked assistance from Indonesian rock legend Benny Soebardja, who secured all the necessary rights), the compilation is what happens when the record-collector gods align everything just right. Add in a thick booklet with groovy album art, eccentric band photos that could only belong to the '70s, and extensive track-by-track notes from Holland-based Indonesian ex-pat Chandra Drews, Those Shocking, Shaking Days does an incredible job of giving listeners the whole package.

The story of the underground music scene in 1970s Indonesia is quite complicated, given a country of 200 million people comprised of 300 ethnic groups, speaking more than 250 languages and inhabiting 6,000 of the 17,500 islands that make up one of the world’s largest archipelagos.  Though Southeast Asia, particularly the Indochina peninsula, has recently been a hot bed for this retrospective discovery of the psych-funk sound, the music found on this record is the first to survey the rebellious music that stood as a response to the brutal and corrupt regime of Indonesian dictator Suharto.

The caution against an alleged communist threat became the hallmark of Suharto’s three-decade long “New Order” presidency that began in 1967, played out by paranoia-driven political conservatism and censorship of any songs that expressed distaste for his government.

So the music presented here is as much hard psychedelic as it is politically charged in every sense of cultural liberation.  Though artists such as The Doors, Jimi Hendrix, and Black Sabbath came to dominate Indonesia’s radio airwaves in the early '70s, that was the West – and for an Indonesian band to play anything overtly styled like Western rock music, it would be harassed or put in jail.

The Panbers opens up the compilation in defining fashion with its 1972 track “Haai,” a far-out mix of prog-rock and trippy oriental flute and sitar breakdowns, sung with a hook that professes love for The Beatles, Rolling Stones, and Led Zeppelin.  If there was a clear musical thesis of the anthology, listeners get it from this opening track with its wild agglomeration of styles in music and lyric.

Other tracks show the willpower of the Western sound to travel thousands of miles: The Rollies’ “Bad News” is a rough riff off the James Brown deep-funk sound, more notably from the guitar and rhythm structure of “Mother Popcorn.”  One of the more stand-out tracks is the funky ode “Pemain Bola” from Rasela, in part from the memorable call-and-response intro that has the band screaming “No!” to drugs and “Yes!” to sex, followed by one of the smoothest funk guitar riffs on the compilation.

One of the more politically courageous, Shark Move’s “Evil War,” includes the guitar and vocals of a young Soebardja, filled with leftist political lyrics that are almost over the top, yet it was able to slip by the censors because it was sung in English.   “Don’t Talk About Freedom” by The Gang of Harry Roesli is perhaps a bit more poignant due to it being largely instrumental; ultimately, it's a track that demonstrates disdain for Suharto’s government.

And as expected from a Now-Again compilation, there are some real gems to be heard.  The obscure Ivo’s Group owns the compilation’s title track “That Shocking, Shaking Day,” a mellow folk-rock tune where its payoff is at the end, as the band locks into a funky folk-mélange harmony and sings the lyrics immortalized on the inside booklet cover.  Other notable tracks include Soebardja and Lizard’s “Candle Light,” for its chill-out deep bass groove and Golden Wing’s “Hear Me” for its heady organ line and rebellious dub-like spirit.

Taking one listen to Those Shocking, Shaking Days explains why this music is a well that's been explored by some of hip hop’s esteemed crate diggers.  From a straight musical standpoint, the anthology is a spectacularly curated project that will strike a chord with funk, psychedelic, garage, and break-beat fans.  The anthology is best at uncovering rare perspectives from a culture known for its coffee more than its music — and known for its large Muslim population more than its wild past in the psychedelic underground scene.  A necessary requirement for all global groove fans, Those Shocking, Shaking Days is yet another impressive offering from Now-Again.

Colin Stetson: "Judges"

Powerful, otherworldly, and beautiful, wind player Colin Stetson's upcoming record, New History Warfare Vol. 2: Judges, commands attention from start to finish. Largely recorded live without overdubs, Stetson exploits techniques that yield dense layers of multiphonic sound that seem impossible to have come from a single instrument. Here sounding deep and sonorous as a foghorn, there alternating between percussive popping and plaintive moans, while elsewhere emitting swirling, cyclical lines that could nearly pass for strings, Stetson pushes his horns through every timbral possibility.

With such formidable instrumental prowess, one might expect a display of flashy improvisations, yet Stetson uses his command of his instruments in service of intricate compositions, rich in atmosphere and mood, and unmoored from any genre. Moreover, the pieces function together to create a coherent whole, emotionally resonant and deeply affecting.  A record that will sound arresting and fresh to even the most adventurous listeners, New History Warfare Vol. 2 (out on Feb. 22) is an early bright light among this new year's releases and likely to resurface on many year-end lists.

Adept at bass sax, clarinet, bass clarinet, french horn, and cornet, Stetson studied music at the University of Michigan. From there, stints on both coasts resulted in work with a wide range of music luminaries, including Tom Waits, Anthony Braxton, Fred Frith, and Antibalas Afrobeat Orchestra. More recently, Stetson has startled unsuspecting rock audiences as an opener for stadium indie acts such as Arcade Fire and The National.  Here he explains how this integration of influences creates his own musical worlds.

When I've played your music for people, the unanimous reaction has been "that's a sax?", which is all the more impressive given that much of it was recorded without overdubbing. Can you explain how you're able to create such a rich and diverse range of sounds, both in terms of technique and production?

Technically, regarding the instrument, I'm just employing a lot of extended techniques that improvisers have been using for decades. The basis for most of my pieces is in circular breathing; by breathing in through the nose and continuing to breath out of the mouth, you can create these longer, uninterrupted pieces of music. After that, it's a lot of "voicing," or using mouth and throat placement to form chords instead of single notes, specific arpeggiated lines to move those chords into individual and distinct melodies/harmonies, and also quite a bit of actual singing through the instrument.

Having been working this out for many years, when it came time to start recording this music, I knew that a straight-up stereo recording would only take a snapshot of what was happening, and would ultimately flatten the experience. There's no way to capture the essence of live performance in this manner, not if the idea is to recreate the same image through recording. So what I try to do is to capture every distinct and separate element I can, individually with separate and different microphones, so that this information can then be reorganized in the mixing process, and, rather than an attempt at recreating the live experience, we create an alternate version of that experience, something that is specific to the process of recording. In simpler terms, I wanted to make a record like a Haruki Murakami novel or a Terrence Malick film.

The use of extended techniques on reed instruments has become prevalent in modern improvised music, and your background includes studies with  avant-garde jazz players like Roscoe Mitchell and Henry Threadgill. But your work sounds very compositional in nature and some of the repeated patterns call to mind minimalism. How did you develop this sound?

As I stated before, all of the techniques I employ are pretty much found throughout the history of avant-garde improvisation and the free-jazz scene, of which I've been a part musically for most of my career. I was also raised on a glut of classic rock, mostly Hendrix, the Beatles, and Queen, then later got more into metal, studied classically in university, and have played everything from folk to noise over the past many years. My inclination towards song form and thematics comes from this arc, and the technique which I must use to make it happen is based on the extended history of the instruments I play.

You've also done a lot of work as a sideman for rock musicians, including folks like Tom Waits and Arcade Fire. Has your playing in these contexts had any influence on your solo work?

Most definitely. Working with Tom, for example, I learned, maybe more than anything else, the importance of character and scenery within songs. You have to leave the ego out of it, and only bring those things essential to creating that scene and bringing your characters to life. This has helped me to see different musics, and my roles in them, much clearer over the years. Also, it's caused me to think much more cinematically when composing albums. Recent work with Laurie Anderson has done much the same for me, but in different ways, and [it has] allowed me to see another example of someone creating a whole and distinct reality all of their own. It's really remarkable and inspiring.

The record is titled New History Warfare Vol. 2: Judges. Underneath the dense fields of sound, it is generally somber and even mournful in tone, and includes meditations on the nature of war read by Laurie Anderson and a cover of a gospel blues lament by Blind Willie Johnson. What inspired the choice of thematic material?

The title New History Warfare refers to the hardship of finding and creating meaning in one's life, or to the process of consciously taking action toward impacting one's present place and time on a tangible level. "Judges" specifically speaks to the themes of this record — those being isolation and the pendulum swing between fear and transcendence. I find early American gospel music to embody the essence of the human condition. Through suffering, finding some path towards salvation. Joy from fear.

I suppose that all of the music in this series is my attempt at creating a personal gospel canon, not out of dogma, but rather from the human experience alone. The notion of alone-ness is amplified by the fact that this is music created solely out of one person's efforts and experience, and as I'm learning as I write, record, and perform this music more, I become more and more isolated physically, and so do I experience these themes cyclically, it seems.

Can you describe how the compositional process works for you? How do you get ideas that form the germ of a piece and how are those developed into what we hear on the record?

My songs are mostly born of focused improvisations. I'll normally find my way quickly to some stable pattern that will form the basis for the piece, and then I continue improvising in directions which feel right. Eventually, the thing takes shape, and I play it over and over and over until I become it to a certain degree. This process can take anywhere from a few minutes to a few weeks depending on how close I am to it in the beginning. Then, gradually, while I "wear" it, the song gets tweaked and maybe new sounds are revealed here and there, and it more or less evolves into something I consider finished. That being said, sometimes I just have an idea, and pick up the instrument, and a song comes out all shiny, new, and finished. When this happens, it is awesome.

Tuva is a Siberian republic surrounded by two majestic mountain ranges and peppered with tiny deserts, lush valleys, and more than 9,000 rivers. Population-wise, it’s about the size of Iceland and shares a similar history of being isolated from much of the world for thousands of years due to its location and chilly temperatures. Music-wise, it’s one of the most amazing places you’re likely to discover.

Much like the home of Björk and Sigur Rós, Tuva is immersed in a musical tradition that’s deeper than its permafrost. This tradition revolves around throat singing, an art form in which multiple voices seem to spring from one vocalist thanks to the magic of harmonics and overtones.

Scientifically speaking, a singer can amplify different parts of a sound wave by changing the shape of various cavities of the mouth, voice box, and throat, allowing sounds that are subdued in most vocal performances to take center-stage. The result is a sound that’s been described as a “one-man quartet” and even a “bullfrog swallowing a whistle,” as the 1999 documentary film Genghis Blues puts it.

The Alash ensemble, a quartet composed of Bady-Dorzhu Ondar, Ayan-ool Sam, Ayan Shirizhik, and Nachyn Choodu — four twenty-somethings trained in this ancient art by their parents, grandparents, and a healthy dose of intuition — serves as Tuva’s musical ambassador to the United States.

“Things like Jimi Hendrix and the [Sun Ra] Arkestra are slowly but surely having an effect on our music; it’s not so much about directly mixing these artists’ sounds with throat singing but how it affects the way their music feels.”

Over the past three years, the group has performed with the Sun Ra Arkestra, recorded a Christmas album (Jingle All The Way) with Béla Fleck and the Flecktones, and introduced numerous students to a style of music that sounds like a mix between Tom Waits and a flock of swallows.

The band’s flagship song, “Alash,” with its bouncy melody, could be a tune from the Appalachian Mountains or the hills of Ireland. At other times, the group’s sound is more abstract, reminiscent of distant trains, or the yip-yipping martians from Sesame Street.

The music inspires comparisons to nature and the great beyond. Alash is named after one of the most majestic rivers in Tuva, symbolizing the band’s connection to the water from which its ancestors drank thousands of years ago. And just like the movement of water from clouds to streams to lips and back again, Tuvan songs pass from the spirits of nature to the souls of humans, released back into nature via the lips of throat singers.

Though many of Alash’s melodies have cycled through Tuva for centuries, the way the group presents them to the cosmos is very new.

“Things like Jimi Hendrix and the [Sun Ra] Arkestra are slowly but surely having an effect on our music; it’s not so much about directly mixing these artists’ sounds with throat singing, but how it affects the way their music feels,” the band says, via manager and translator Sean Quirk. “We have a new song about reindeer herding. Even though the piece focuses on this practice that’s very much about Tuva, you can sense these other influences if you’re listening closely.”

This is a huge breakthrough for a musical tradition that still considers stringed and woodwind instruments new additions. These instruments include the igil, a two-stringed instrument that’s played like a cello; the doshpuluur, a three-stringed instrument that’s plucked or strummed like a banjo; the byzaanchy, which has four strings that represent the udders of a cow and are “milked” to create a sound; the chadagan, which resembles a zither or a koto; a jaw harp known as a xomus; the murgu and limpi, two types of flutes; and a large drum called a kengirge, which often comes with a set of reindeer bells.

Alash uses all of these instruments and a few others to create a sound that’s lush and layered, with rhythms that duel one moment and collaborate the next. And unlike most bands, Alash will even teach you how to play the instruments — as well as how to build a yurt and cook up some Tuvan snacks — at its concerts, if you have the time and the money. It’s all part of an effort to welcome people from other cultures — especially Americans — into the fold.

“The touring is all about creating a good impression of Tuva and conveying something about the lives of people who live there,” Quirk says, “and maybe attracting a few visitors. Tuva loves guests.”

It’s also a way of bringing bits of the West back to Tuva, which still shows relatively few signs of capitalism. Though many Tuvans descended from nomadic tribes, they are not immune to pangs of homesickness.

When traveling the roads of Texas and Oklahoma, the lonesome cowboy is one American figure Alash can relate to, but not for his cigarettes. It’s because he also feels incomplete without his trusty steed. To keep spirits high, the band adopted a wrangler look — ten-gallon hats and all — when traveling through Texas, stopping in Fort Worth to ride a mechanical bull and visit some friends with a horse ranch.

“Like many people from Tuva, they feel most at home when riding their horses,” Quirk says.

Rikki Ililonga & Music-O-Tunya: Dark Sunrise (Now-Again, 11/23/10)

Musi-O-Tunya: "Dark Sunrise"

Gritty garage-rock grooves from mid-'70s Zambia comprise Now-Again Records' latest release, Dark Sunrise, the double-disc (or three-LP box set), 31-track chronicle of Zambian “Zam Rock” godfather Rizketo Makyua “Rikki” Ililonga and his groundbreaking band Musi-O-Tunya.

The anthology fits Now-Again’s current obsession with Zambia’s 1970s music scene, whose landmark bands WITCH and Amanaz have seen record reissues from the specialized global funk label. But after one listen to the killer rock grooves from Dark Sunrise, with its furious fusion of US/UK/African rhythmic dynamics, fuzzed-out electric guitars, and hypnotic brass sections, audiences will come to understand why the obsession is exceptionally reasonable, if not completely necessary.

The anthology spans three crucial years chronicling Musi-O-Tunya’s debut album, Wings of Africa, which is known to be Zambia’s first-ever psychedelic rock release. Also containing rare 7” singles (only available on the CD package) from the band, the comp goes on to follow Ililonga’s prolific solo career in its beginning stages, with a focus on two albums:  Zambia and Sunshine Love.

By the mid-1970s, the Republic of Zambia was much like its neighbors; liberation was met with new challenges concerning one-party rule, and the economy was largely dependent on foreign skill sets. The country fell on hard times as an already high poverty rate was made worse after the price of copper, Zambia’s principal export, suffered a worldwide decline. The dire backdrop set the scene for Zambia to develop a kind of music that gravitated towards the harder and darker side of funk and rock.

The genre of “Zam Rock” takes influence from the some 70,000 Europeans who called Zambia home at the time of independence in 1964. In addition, Zambia’s national radio station proved to be highly influential on Zambian musicians; most of its content was Western records that were most likely American and British imports.

Musi-O-Tunya’s combined aesthetic of rock and traditional African rhythms led to the coinage of the “Zam Rock” label. Wings of Africa marked the first pop music independently released in Zambia.  It was also quite an experimental time in Ililonga’s career, making the band’s early recordings run a wide range of rhythms and moods.

The anthology actually works somewhat retroactively, beginning with the last recording that Ililonga did with the band, “Tsegulani,” followed by Wings of Africa in its entirety, and ending with some raw, rare singles from the band's first recording sessions in Kenya in 1973. In these early stages, Musi-O-Tunya’s musical vision sought to take rock and soul’s signature 4/4 backdrop and replace it with African rhythmic flourishes. Tracks like “Mpondolo” borrow Congolese rhythms — with their fusion of Afro-Cuban congas and bongos — and overlay everything with fuzzy electric guitar. In many ways, "Mpondolo" is a track that is more African than anything else: it has a sweet, driving melody, it’s extremely repetitive, and it contains an intrinsic Afrobeat feel.

Especially from those early recordings, we see Ililonga’s experimental solo career in the making. “Jekete Yamankowa Pt. 1” sounds extremely adventurous for the time period — a defiant garage-rock offering with a Zambian call-and-response twist. Early recordings like “Mpulua” and “Smoke” are filled with beautiful moments of inventive fusions, anthemic in scope, and inspirational in melodic delivery and vocal dynamics.

“Dark Sunrise,” however, best foreshadows the music that Ililonga would go on to make during his solo career. It’s easily the heaviest Musi-O-Tunya track on the anthology, with a growling guitar riff that transforms into an extended, psychedelic Jimi Hendrix-esque blues solo. Even the alto saxophone sounds smoky.

For his solo material, Ililonga unleashes melancholic, brooding, and introspective versions of Western genres. “Sheebeen Queen” and “The Queen Blues” take an American-style folk stance in the vein of Bob Dylan. The dark, brooding personality of “Stop Dreaming, Mr. D” can be heard as the African equivalent to Dylan’s “Ballad of a Thin Man.” Mr. D and Mr. Jones are essentially the same protagonist, dealing with conventions of identity and reality.  “Lovely Woman” and the highly sexualized track “The Hole” take on driving bass lines and fuzzy guitar rhythms, channeling the funky, raw energy of James Brown.

There are also songs that are so surprising in influence that they make you wonder how a sound could not only reach Zambia but also catch Ililonga’s ear.  “Sunshine Love” sounds like Lou Reed had a hand in its creation. With its folk-inflected guitar riff and nonchalant vocal performance, it might as well be a  lost Velvet Underground single. Then there are tracks like “The Nature of Man” and “Se Keel Me Queek” that recall quirky, progressive pop, much like David Bowie.

From the Ililonga perspective, Dark Sunrise is a fascinating snapshot of Zambia’s 1970s music scene. A project overseen by Stones Throw general manager Eothen Alapatt in conjunction with Ililonga himself, the anthology is one of the most accomplished undertakings from Now-Again. Not only is this a much-deserved testament to the level of musicianship in Zambia, but Dark Sunrise gives listeners a first glimpse of the global sound in Africa.  Ililonga was a musician way ahead of his time, and it’s almost unbelievable to think how long it took his music to reach the masses.

Raga Bop Trio: s/t (Abstract Logix, 7/20/10)

Raga Bop Trio: "Tug of War"

Carnatic and Hindustani music, the classical music forms of North and South India, provide the base for the Raga Bop Trio. Saxophonist George Brooks is an established fixture in the Indian fusion scene as a devout student and purveyor of Hindustani music. He has collaborated with India’s most respected artists and his deep understanding of raga is a vital element to the trio’s melodic force. Guitarist Prasanna brings an avant-garde approach to the table by taking the ornamentations and tones found in South Indian Carnatic music and transferring them to the electric guitar. While he is able to mimic the subtle microtones of the sitar, he is also able to incorporate within them modern shape-shifting technology, demonstrated by his 2006 Carnatic/rock tribute to Jimi Hendrix, Electric Ganesha Land.

The rhythmic component of the trio is found in drummer Steve Smith, best known for his work with Journey. The virtuosic drummer, however, is a jack-of-all-trades type of player, providing the rhythmic foundation for jazz greats such Ahmad Jamal and Victor Wooten. While working with these two in 2002, Smith became fluent in the rhythmic underpinnings of Southern India.

Together, these three musicians put many different influences into play. Elements of rock, funk, and calypso find their way into a few tracks on the album. But ultimately, Raga Bop Trio is a thoroughly composed record that shows the effects of Indian music on jazz in full breadth.

John Coltrane was the first jazzman to truly fuse Indian music and jazz in dramatic fashion. Starting from Giant Steps and encompassing albums such as Impressions, Om, and Ascension, Coltrane’s stylistic transition is marked by the total abandonment of traditional harmonic structures. As he broke the Western harmonic boundary, his compositions integrated the elements of Indian music: rhythmic and metric variations, the sustain of the drone, and the use of one key which allowed movement between major and minor modes (much in the same way as raga).

The Raga Bop Trio is a descendent of this brand of jazz, finding new ways to push the East-meets-West dichotomy first made by Coltrane in the late 1950s. At the core of Indian classical music are two essential, interrelated basics: the raga, or melodic structure, and tala, or rhythmic cycle. Though the exclusion of the bass may be unusual in the Western jazz trio sense, the drums and saxophone/guitar duo adequately comprises a full sound.

Brooks and Prasanna strike a delicate balance in the melodic makeup of the music. On tracks like “Tug of War” and “Dubai Dance,” the saxophone and guitar meet in assaulting fashion, as the instruments are butted together, playing the same ascending and descending raga simultaneously. Prasanna is able to hit notes with a ferocity that only can be accomplished on guitar, but somehow has found the right configuration and technique to imitate a sitar. Surprisingly, with two high octave melodic echoes, Smith is able to give the tracks a full sound by accentuating the tom-toms, only using the snare to emphasize certain melodic phrases.

“Love and Hunger” proves the trio’s versatility, a track that begins in the East and slowly incorporates Western sounds to become a hybrid composition. Brooks lays down some rich alto saxophone lines over an Indian drone which takes form in Prasanna’s arpeggiated chords. But by the middle of the song it all begins to break down as Prasanna switches gears to play bass riffs on guitar and Brooks’ saxophone becomes attracted to the same modal phrase but with varied notes.

The album’s boldest track is “The Geometry of Rap,” a tune where Smith shows his Indian scat singing skills. Known as konnakol, it is the South Indian art form of performing percussion syllables vocally. Smith extends the track’s funk-induced drum beat by vocally soloing over it. Although the word “rap,” in the Western sense, gives the vocal performance all kinds of wrong connotations, it does add an unexpected dimension to the track.

The beauty of the Raga Bop Trio is that they are not exclusively North Indian or South Indian. Each musician’s passion for Indian music has played a huge role in creating a well-defined and controlled vision. By taking new approaches to an established musical structure, they have found a certain groove that is deeply rooted in classical Indian music while remaining within the Western harmonic.

It’s a chilly Sunday afternoon in December, and the members of Cougar are just waking up — in different parts of the country. “It’s 1:00 [p.m.] over here,” says David Henzie-Skogen, the group’s drummer/percussionist and self-appointed ringleader, conference phoning from Madison. “Is it 1:00 [p.m.] down there?” “Yeah, it’s 1:00 [p.m.] down here,” guitarist /synth player Aaron Sleator replies from Austin, where he is a student at the University of Texas School of Architecture. Bassist Todd Hill also is on the call from his home in Chicago.

Formed in 2003 when all five members lived in Madison, the band members now live in cities spanning thousands of miles; in addition to Henzie-Skogen, Sleator, and Hill, Cougar also includes guitarists Dan Venne, who lives in Brooklyn, and Trent Johnson, now in Milwaukee.

Cougar released its debut album, Law, in 2006 on Layered Music, Henzie-Skogen’s own imprint, and quickly caught the attention of American and European critics, who noted the band’s complex, instrumental melodies. Just don’t try calling them the “P word.” “The long and short of it is that we really don’t listen to many post-rock bands at all,” Henzie-Skogen says while laughing.

“People are like, ‘Yeah, [Cougar sounds like] late-period Mogwai and Explosions in the Sky,’ which we’ve all heard, and I think that’s all we can say about them — we’ve heard them. All of us personally enjoy stuff that’s really different, which I’m sure is why the band sounds like it does. Trent is really a through-and-through pop-music guy — music where the hook is the reason for the music, like Hall & Oates and Hendrix.

"I grew up playing a lot of Brazilian music, New Orleans music…Todd studied jazz and classical, and everybody else has played in all kinds of bands from reggae to whatever else, so it’s hard to say that there are specific influences. But it is easy to say that those influences don’t include the post-rock bands that people associate us with, [just] because our music happens to be instrumental music that features guitars.”

With Law, Cougar cultivated a small but enthusiastic audience across the Midwest and Europe. Three years later, the band members found themselves scattered across the country for work, school, or both. Cougar soon attracted the attention of esteemed London label Ninja Tune, which released its sophomore album, Patriot, in September of 2009.

“It’s kind of funny that we’re doing interviews over a conference call, because it feels like a band meeting,” Henzie-Skogen laughs. “For the first record,” Hill says, “we were around each other and basically would just meet in the morning. Everyone had pretty easy schedules at that point. But [Patriot] basically was almost entirely done as an Internet collaboration, as far as basic ideas of songs. We all have simple recording equipment and can record stuff, and Dave acted as the collector. Sometimes the guitar player would fly out to New York to record a guitar part there; it was very piecemeal.”

“It’s probably one of the things that contributed to making it a different record from the first record,” Henzie-Skogen adds. “We started banging our heads together in a room, with the best idea winning out, and we all got to sit there and listen to all these ideas, make all these edits, and argue over thousands of E-mails or occasionally conference calls about what a song should sound like.”

Though the entirety of the album was recorded before the band switched labels, the new Ninja Tune pedigree has already had a galvanizing effect on the band. “For me, it’s just really exciting to see the Ninja logo on the record,” Henzie-Skogen says.

“The most refreshing thing about Ninja is that they’re really honest. They’re not telling us, ‘We’re gonna make you stars’ or whatever. We trust their PR people, we trust what they do, and we like their artists.”

"We keep the music feeling naked as far as production is concerned — you hear all the notes that everybody plays. It makes it really fun and challenging to perform every night, because it’s almost like classical music."

In the summer of 2009, Cougar launched a 21-city European tour, providing the rare (albeit temporary) chance for all five band members to live, travel, jam, rehearse, and perform together. “It was the best, most successful tour yet,” Henzie-Skogen says.

“The band was playing better than we ever played. It was a nice surprise that people would show up at shows and kind of clap and hoot and holler at the beginning of the song that they liked. It was really refreshing that people had heard a little bit of the music before. We were getting used to playing to blank faces supporting larger bands that are nothing like us, like going out with a pop band like Maximo Park and hoping to win over the pop crowd.”

In addition to providing Cougar with insight into its growing fan base, the European tour also gave the band a chance to reflect on its image and fashion savvy (or lack thereof).

“The first gig of the European tour was in this place in London called the Hoxton right in the heart of this notoriously hip neighborhood,” Henzie-Skogen recalls with amusement. “And Todd had one of the best tour quotes ever while talking about all the kids with cool haircuts: ‘Their haircuts appear to be backwards.’ We’ve had a number of interesting fan encounters posted on the website. ‘If you guys just dressed better or had a singer…’

"But we’ve never been a kind of band that focused more on how we present ourselves, or [try to] look like [we] ought to be famous. We’re the kind of band that books a gig and gets on stage in the clothes that we wore when we got up at 3:00 a.m. in the morning. Maybe that’s a Midwest thing, you know? Why would you change clothes to play music?

“Especially because we’re instrumental, we try to do everything that we can to make sure that the full emphasis is on the aesthetic of the music and not that of us personally. We keep the music feeling naked as far as production is concerned — you hear all the notes that everybody plays, and it’s one of the things that makes it a little different from some other things out there, but it also makes it really fun and challenging to perform every night, because it’s almost like classical music. When you fuck up, everybody knows you’ve fucked up. It keeps it exciting for us.”

The show opened on July 2 with a kick-off rock-and-blues concert by Derek Miller and will run through January 2, 2011 on the National Mall in the second-level Sealaska Gallery. Designed to share with visitors the histories of successful Native musicians, the exhibit features hand-held MP3 players with a playlist including Johnny Cash, Robbie Robertson, Rita Coolidge, and Mildred Bailey.

Also highlighted in the show are personal objects of the musicians, such as Jimi Hendrix’s multicolored full-length patchwork leather coat, Link Wray’s 1958 Danelectro Longhorn guitar, Randy Castillo’s double-platinum album, and Stevie Salas’ hooked green electric guitar.

The museum has compiled a video discussing the musicians’ stories to go along with the themes of the exhibition, “In the Spotlight,” “Encore,” and “Keeping the Beat.” These topics examine Native performers who represent the diversity in musical genre within American music, as well as the variety in achievement and recognition in mainstream music that they have received within the past half-century.

Continue your music-appreciation lesson with a live experience after your visit to the museum, with exhibit-featured artists Testament, touring through early September.

Remaining dates for Testament's 2010 American Carnage Tour with Slayer and Megadeth:

8/25 – Denver, CO @ Magness Arena
8/26 – Albuquerque, NM @ Tingley Coliseum
8/27 – Phoenix, AZ @ Dodge Theatre
8/29 – San Diego, CA @ Cricket Wireless Amphitheater
8/30 – Long Beach, CA @ Long Beach Arena
8/31 – San Francisco, CA @ Cow Palace
9/1 – Sacramento, CA @ Arco Arena
9/3 – Seattle, WA @ Wamu Theatre
9/4 – Portland, OR @ Washington County Fairgrounds