Dianogah: Qhnnnl (Southern Records, 8/12/08)

Dianogah: "A Breaks B"

Essayist and self-proclaimed “dean of American rock critics” Robert Christgau once wrote, “Great bands keep creating from what they know, and figuring it out as they do.”

Chicago’s Dianogah (consisting of bassists Jay Ryan and Jason Harvey and drummer Kip McCabe) has spent the last 12 years crafting unique compositions primarily from its two basses and drums, incorporated minimal guitar, or keyboards when the situation called for it. On its newest album, Qhnnnl, coming six years after its most recent album (the John McEntire-recorded Millions Of Brazilians), Dianogah is branching into new territory, using its bass-centric background in exciting new ways.

“We’ve been a band for a really long time, and I think now we’re trying to shrug off how captive we are to our instrumentation," McCabe says. "We’ve explored a lot of what we can do rhythmically and melodically. I think our next step was breaking away from what seemed easier to do with our instruments and trying to do something different."

Dianogah formed in 1995 and quickly became a staple of the vivacious Chicago independent music scene. “You had all these vibrant labels working here," Ryan says. "You had bands that were operating on a really small level, like ours, all the way to the more popular indie-rock bands, like Shellac, Tortoise, and The Sea And Cake. There was very much a “do-it-yourself” attitude. That was the thing people said about Chicago."

Now, in 2008, Dianogah is operating in largely the same self-sufficient manner, but in a changing scene. Harvey comments, “The whole point of this was to have fun, and the fact that anyone would come to see us play, the fact that anyone would still put out our record, is great because it’s just our fun thing to do. Now every Tom, Dick, and Harry band has a booking agent, a PR guy, a label, a manager. When we started out, we felt lucky that we would have a label to release our record.”
 

“We’ve been a band for a really long time, and I think now we’re trying to shrug off how captive we are to our instrumentation. We’ve explored a lot of what we can do rhythmically and melodically. I think our next step was breaking away from what seemed easier to do with our instruments."

Ryan, who also runs his own screen-printing studio, The Bird Machine, adds, “I think it’s fair to say we’ve always had super-low expectations of the band. We can probably go to any city in America and a dozen people will come out, and maybe four of them will have heard of us, and that’s cool. We don’t expect 300 people to come out, and we don’t get frustrated when 300 people don’t show up.” The rampant careerism of current Chicago bands is somewhat at odds with the community from which Dianogah arose. Still, Dianogah perseveres, and, in 2008, the band is shaping up to be stronger than ever.

Dianogah's first three albums are in-depth explorations of bass guitars, seductive rhythms, and intertwining melodies. By the time Millions of Brazilians was released, the wandering melodies threatened to drift away entirely. “I think we realized after the last couple records," Harvey says, "that the quieter songs don’t end up making it into our live set very often because they seem to be the things that bore people when we’re playing them.”

The new Dianogah is a different beast. “We all bought a distortion pedal,” McCabe explains. Ryan adds, “To name names, we all got into Meshuggah a lot. I finally got around to discovering the Melvins, and listened to them a lot, which is really late in the game. Our musical tastes have continued to develop and have tended towards some heavier stuff.” Which isn’t to say that Dianogah has gone metal. But on several new songs, there is a rock-oriented, often noisy approach that was only vaguely hinted at on previous albums.

On the other hand, several new tracks rank with the most beautiful work it has made. Chicago violinist Andrew Bird appears on four new songs, adding subtle counterpoint to the most direct and intensely melodic songs of Dianogah’s intensely melodic career. “A year or two ago, he came and played a show with us and just played on some older songs,” Harvey says. “He reinterpreted guitar parts or keyboard parts, and did them on the violin in his own way. We were all floored by what he had done, just really excited, and agreed that we have got to get him, if he’ll do it, on the new record. So we gave him a tape of everything, and he picked the ones that he wanted to write stuff for.”

The high point of this collaboration might be “A Breaks B,” which not only features Bird’s poignant string work but also a vocal duet between Jay Ryan and Pawner’s Society singer Stephanie Morris. Millions Of Brazilians was the first Dianogah album to feature no vocals at all, and on prior albums As Seen From Above and Battle Champions, vocals were already scarce. On Qhnnnl, Dianogah has brought singing to more songs than ever before.

McCabe says, “We’re a bit challenged tonally, in that we have two basses and drums, and there’s a lot of room. One of the things that interested me about adding a female vocalist was the tone.” Indeed, Morris adds a distinctive character to several songs in the same way that Bird’s violin enhances others. “Stephanie has just a really genuine, ego-free, unaffected voice that’s quite beautiful and also super subtle. I think that they’re the vocals that a band like [ours] need[s]. They’re very timid, almost like an instrument.”

It all adds up to what may be one of the most exciting, diverse, and satisfying albums of the coming year. “I think collectively we can say that we think that it is our best record," Harvey says. "I know that every band that puts out a new record probably says that. I think that [it applies to us] in terms of having an idea of what you want something to be and then having it turn out the way you hoped." Dianogah has made several worthy albums — now the band is preparing to release a potential Chicago classic.

“On the last couple records, we would end up having songs for the record, and not songs for shows," Harvey says. "So we wanted more songs for shows that were fun for us to play. 'Qhnnnl' and 'You Might Go Off,' which are songs we’ve been playing for years, are some of our favorite songs to play live because they’re fast and loud." “You Might Go Off” might be the key to the new record’s code. It is beautiful in its simplicity, and quintessentially Dianogah in its swirling melodicism, yet it is the most punk-oriented song that the band has written. For the rousing finale, the whole group shouts, “This is how we fight!”

Comic Wow

Comic Wow: "Miami Song Tennis 2"

Comic Wow consists of the Miami-based synth duo Feathers, multi-instrumentalist/producer John McEntire of Tortoise, and other musicians from Chicago's thriving avant-rock scene. The space-pop track above, "Miami Song Tennis 2," is from the album Music for Mysteries of Mind Space and Time – Vol. 10, currently available in the Asthmatic Kitty Library Catalog.

The Library Catalog is a huge collection of instrumental tunes ready for commercial licensing. As explained by author Shelby Blitz in ALARM 37: Rules Were Made to be Broken, the albums are based on a theme (in an attempt to capture every emotion imaginable) and forgo traditional album trappings like press photos and liner notes.

No one captures the essence of Comic Wow better than itself:

"Comic Wow are sonic illustrators, alchemists, designers, dilettantes, poets, teachers, Socialists, and outdoorsmen whose advocacy of affordable colored cod pieces helped influence the look of Thirty-Third Century America. Incidentally, they’ve also released music as Feathers."

Tera Melos: Patagonian Rats (Sargent House)

Due to limited touring, a shuffling lineup, and shorter releases, eccentric math-rock trio Tera Melos has kept an undeservedly low profile.

Nevertheless, the group garnered acclaim for its progressive prowess and unconventionality — first with an untitled full-length debut and then a split EP with By the End of Tonight, a separate 2007 EP, and a 2009 covers EP that deconstructed pop tunes by the Beach Boys, Pixies, Weezer, and The Clash.

Along the journey, guitarist/keyboardist Nick Reinhart experimented with vocals, tucking them in and around his maniacal but hook-tinged riffs.  The cover EP, Idioms Vol. 1, furthered the vocal presence, but Reinhart really perfected his delivery in Bygones, his wild rock collaboration with Hella's Zach Hill.

With Reinhart's newly sharpened vocal chops and a new tech-pop balance, Patagonian Rats marks the true arrival of Tera Melos.  The album lands somewhere between the band's old schizophrenic yet directed mayhem and the mathy yet melodic accessibility of Bygones.  The chaos is carefully controlled, erupting at opportune moments or manifesting itself in layers of outlandishness.

The entire album is rooted in a punk energy, however, powered by spastic drums, guitar noodling, and driving bass distortions.  With the addition of a touring fourth member, Tera Melos should be more accurately reenacting these songs on stage, which should be even more outstanding than listening to Patagonian Rats.

Tera Melos: "Skin Surf"

Tera Melos: "Frozen Zoo"

Kurt Rosenwinkel & OJM: Our Secret World (WOM Music)

Like so many other jazz greats, guitarist and bandleader Kurt Rosenwinkel has a credit sheet as long as his arm, spanning 10 of his own albums and dozens of recordings with others.  And though a decent chunk of his personal catalog is built on standards, his previous releases have offered plenty of material for Our Secret World, a dynamic collection of big-band renditions as interpreted by the Orquestra Jazz de Matosinhos (OJM).

With the ensemble's backing, each selection is capable of being sultry, somber, powerful, or all of the above.  No matter what, however, two constants remain: Rosenwinkel's songwriting skills and his electric jazz-fusion chops.

Hip-hop fans may know Rosenwinkel's name from his work on recent/unreleased Q-Tip albums The Renaissance and Kamaal the Abstract, and Q-Tip, in fact, co-produced Heartcore, Rosenwinkel's eclectic 2003 album that mixed jazz, electronica, soul, and more.  Though Our Secret World isn't as diverse, it again proves how multifaceted and expressive Rosenwinkel's writing is and can be, and it's a great album for those new to jazz.

Sam Prekop: Old Punch Card (Thrill Jockey)

Sam Prekop is best known as the singer/songwriter from The Sea and Cake, a soft, quirky indie-pop group whose members include Archer Prewitt as well as John McEntire of Tortoise.  In his solo career, Prekop hasn't strayed too far from this sound, but he has infused bits of Brazilian and African influence along the way.

Old Punch Card, his third solo album and first since 2005, explores an entirely new direction — one of experimental, formless electronics and melodic loops.  The album is built around different sounds from a modular synthesizer, and it is devoid of vocals, guitars (except for one track), and beats.

Long-standing fans of Prekop may be perplexed, but it's an interesting twist to a career that's been built on pop hooks.  Old Punch Card has little latch-able material for pop enthusiasts (save for a few loops and unorthodox melodies), but it's a strong electronic album, cut in the mold of forebears like Morton Subotnick and Raymond Scott.

Sam Prekop: "Old Punch Card"

Honorable Mentions

The Acorn: No Ghost (Bella Union)

Arp: The Soft Wave (Smalltown Supersound)

Blue Sky Black Death & Alexander Chen: Third Party (Fake Four)

Constants: If Tomorrow the War (Science of Silence)

Helmet: Seeing Eye Dog (Work Song)

Neurosis: Live at Roadburn 2007 (Neurot)

Quest for Fire: Lights from Paradise (Tee Pee)

Sungod: First Matter (Cyclopean)

The Thermals: Personal Life (Kill Rock Stars)

Winter Gloves: All Red (Paper Bag)

For nearly 20 years, the members of Tortoise have exhibited a synergistic effect on each other, enriching their assorted personal contributions to yield an amorphous, anomalous instrumental quintet.

Slapped with cover-all classifications like post-rock, kraut rock, and indie rock, the band’s creations often are indescribable mid-tempo conglomerations of grooves, harmonies, effects, and rhythms.

Swirling synthesizers and haute harpsichords splash against robust bass lines, dueling drum kits, and jazz-inflected guitar melodies, all while rubbing elbows with elements of dub, electronica, and art rock. Overlapped time signatures and percussive passages abound, as a marimba and vibraphone are incorporated with the aid of the band’s shuffling backline of beat makers.

John McEntire

Much of this stylistic diversity is thanks to the members’ backgrounds and outer interests, which branch out to frenetic free jazz, gentle indie rock, beat-based blippery, and unclassifiable weekly improvisational performances.

Using the studio as an incubator, the five pieces of Tortoise have assimilated these ideas and influences, congealing them into something unrecognizable — something exciting and rare. And it’s been there, the studio, where the group has logged long hours, creating, rearranging, editing, and re-editing the vast majority of its material.

“I think that it’s really interesting how the five of us are able to create this world that is sort of the sum of our influences and ideas,” says multi-instrumentalist John McEntire, whose Soma Electronic Music Studios in Chicago hosts the band’s recordings.

“I don’t know exactly how that works, and I can’t even say specifically that we reference anything in particular while working on [our material]. There’s always stuff floating around in the ether that I think either individually or collectively we maybe reference in an obtuse way.”

Dan Bitney

“It’s a good mix if you can’t even describe the music,” adds Dan Bitney, a fellow percussionist with multi-instrumental abilities. “Everything has sort of a mutant quality to it where it’s not really obvious. We’ll do something where the composition takes it out of a genre, hopefully.”

That genre-less mentality has always been at the core of Tortoise’s intentions. In the early 1990s, the band was borne from the ashes of a would-be “freelance rhythm section” between percussionist John Herndon and bassist Doug McCombs. As the group added more percussionists like McEntire and Bitney, Herndon was freer to experiment with electronics, sequencing samples and MIDI, and filtering drumbeats.

McCombs’ penchant for rhythmic tightness and harmonic accentuation became a staple of Tortoise’s sound, rooting the group in low-end grooves. Meanwhile, Bitney’s addition accentuated the band’s taste for polyrhythms, which were especially effective on seminal albums Standards (2001) and It’s All Around You (2004). Similarly, McEntire’s dynamic abilities and engineering prowess have been crucial to the band’s dense recordings.

But for all the above-mentioned abilities, Tortoise didn’t fully mature until joined in the late 1990s by jazz guitarist Jeff Parker, whose early love affair with low end and bass grooves attracted him to the band’s rhythmically rooted sounds. “I always hear music from the bottom up,” Parker says, “which is kind of why I was drawn to Tortoise’s music before I was in the band — like, ‘Man, I could get with these guys.’”

Built around the inspired turntablism of Kid Koala and Dynomite D, The Slew began as a psych-rock score for a documentary based on the influential but obscure work of the 1970s band of the same name.

Though the film never came to fruition, the two were heavily into the project and enlisted the aid of the ex-Wolfmother rhythm section to tour with six turntables and a full band. And if you weren't fortunate enough to catch the modern Slew as a touring outfit this October, fret not — the originally intended "live-only" project has succumbed to demands for a recorded album.

On 100%, circular blues-rock riffs are tweaked and spliced with tactical precision, firmly guiding the grooves, samples, and beats that accompany them. Fans of Kid Koala will recognize large chunks of 100% that appeared on his great 2006 effort, Your Mom's Favourite DJ. Nevertheless, there's plenty of goodness to go around, and fans of both DJ skills and old-school rock and roll will dig this.

Jaga Jazzist: One-Armed Bandit single (Ninja Tune)

Über-melodic chamber-rock ensemble Jaga Jazzist attains a remarkable combination of complexity and accessibility. Yet despite its success and appeal, the group has been devoid of releases for the latter half of this decade.

By the time that we see the release of the group's new album (also titled One-Armed Bandit — so confusing), it will have been five years between full-length albums. Thankfully, in the meantime, we can enjoy this outstanding single from the forthcoming album that was mixed in Chicago this year by Tortoise's John McEntire.

"One-Armed Bandit" is a frantic, scurrying piece that features a dueling harpsichord and horn, a 1970s rock lead, and a fuzz-bass foundation that shifts gears to a rhythmic breakdown and a dreamy electronica interlude. Elements of golden-age Frank Zappa and Norwegian countryman Jono El Grande are apparent, and this should foreshadow a great progressive album.

David Sardy: Zombieland soundtrack (Relativity Music Group)

A diverse producer and former member of quirky 1990s rock outfit Barkmarket, David Sardy has plied an additional craft as a film-score composer and contributor for the past dozen-plus years.

Tabbing Sardy to pen a soundtrack for Zombieland seems like a great fit, and the result is a dark, highly percussive score that oscillates between brooding minimalism, blood-curdling neo-classicalism, and horror-infused rock and roll.

Honorable mentions:

Erik Deutsch: Hush Money (Hammer & String)
Fin Fang Foom: Monomyth (Lovitt)
Sajjanu: Pechiku!! (Tzadik)
V/A: Daptone Gold (Daptone)