Colin Stetson: "Those Who Didn't Run" (excerpt)

Saxophonist Colin Stetson's distinctive reed work can be found in the music of Tom Waits, TV on the Radio, and Arcade Fire, among many others. His latest full-length solo album, New History Warfare Vol. 2: Judges, was released in February of this year, and now he's back with a 10-inch EP, Those Who Didn't Run. Armed with bass and alto saxes and some advanced breathing techniques, Stetson creates heavy, droning horn sounds that are as post-rock as they are avant-garde jazz.

The two tracks on Those Who Didn't Run were recorded in a single take and run just over 10 minutes apiece. Whereas the title track (excerpted above) is drawn in pulsating minimalist strokes, "The End of Your Suffering" rides an off-kilter, high-pitched riff throughout, with occasional aberrant flourishes. With such breadth of texture and pitch, it's hard to believe that you're hearing horns.

Following this release, Stetson will embark on a year-long tour as part of Bon Iver's live band.

Son Lux: "Rising"

Chances are that you’ve heard compositions by the classically trained Ryan Lott more often than you think. His day job at Butter Music and Sound finds him writing 30- to 50-second tracks to be used for television ads, often cranking out two in a day. He composes original pieces for dance and theater troupes, his work has been featured at New York's Guggenheim Museum, and he has participated in multimedia installations.

But despite the percolating buzz around his name in the art scene, his talent remains unknown on a greater scale until 2008, when Lott made his debut as Son Lux, his first major foray into releasing music for himself. His first album, At War With Walls and Mazes, introduced the world to a nigh-uncategorizable work, a blend of hip-hop beats, electronica, delicate vocals, neoclassical flavor, and both melodic and chaotic instrumentation.

It was an arresting and unique debut, released by the indie-rap Anticon collective, but his newly released sophomore album, We Are Rising, is as notable for its quality and diversity as it is for its method of creation. Essentially on a dare from National Public Radio, Lott wrote, recorded, and arranged the album entirely in the 28 days of February 2011.

To most, a task like that would be unfathomable. Especially considering Lott’s usual method of composing, it seems unthinkable that he would be able to complete this challenge.

“What I normally do is come up with an idea and drill it into the ground for a few days," Lott says. "Then I leave it and let it sit for sometimes months. By the time I come back to back to it, if I still think it’s magic, I’ll keep it and I’ll keep going — I’ll keep experimenting, pull it apart, try it from all different angles.”

But Lott knew that despite the restrictions that such a time limit would put on his primary method of creating music, the opportunity — and the publicity — were once-in-a-lifetime chances. Luckily, he has experience in composing under short notice due to his professional work as composer (and if a musician has to have a day job, hey, you could do a lot worse). And though he has received commissions for longer pieces, the time constraints were never nearly as tight — an hour of music would be expected in five months, a breeze compared to completing an LP in four weeks. In the end, it was the project’s seeming impossibility that made it so enticing.

“I really had to do it,” Lott says. “It’s not going to happen again — this imposition of force that could really bring out something wonderful.”

The resultant album, much heavier on orchestral flair, is nine tracks of otherworldly musical mosaics bursting with fragility and introspection. “Chase” finds percussion alternately rumbling and pattering, with swelling trumpets and strings coexisting with haunting synth lines, and eponymous “Rising” mixes stuttering flute lines and gently played strings with crashing percussion and distorted harpsichord-sounding synthesizer, with a catchy vocal performance above it all. The languid “Leave the Riches” features a steadily ticking beat overlaid with chiming and droning synthesizers (and also features vocal assistance from Jace Everett, of True Blood theme fame, organized and recorded on the same day). The songs sound fully formed, as if they were swimming in Lott’s mind for weeks before he let them flow out in the studio. The truth, however, is far different and exemplifies the mind-bending composing, arranging, and performing that goes into creating a piece of Son Lux music.
 

“I’m a samplist. I’m a collagist. Yes, I’m a composer in a classical sense, but I’m also a hip-hop producer. And those two, in Son Lux, they get along. They get along great.”

“I decided ahead of time that no matter what, I was going to do all my tracking in the first two weeks,” Lott says. Rather than write songs completely, he came up with 10 kernel ideas for songs (one of which was left off for sounding like “a bad Philip Glass film score”) and recorded instrumental tracks with the intention of creating a palette of samples. Never mind, of course, that Lott had not completed composing the songs at the time of recording.

“I essentially plan to sample myself, and in the process of sampling myself, create my arrangements,” Lott explains. So though each instrument played a composed part, the part itself was never intended to be used in a track as recorded. After the first half of the month was spent gathering raw sonic material, Lott chopped up his recorded passages and mashed up the sounds — some intentionally off-key, some recorded with three mics that were each manipulated separately — until Son Lux songs emerged. With only parts of the songs being conceived during recording, it’s easy to think Lott would get lost in uncertainty and confusion, but to him, this new way of making music opened new creative doors.

“It’s another limitation that helps me come up with more creative things I wouldn’t normally," he says. "If I wrote out every note in advance, it probably wouldn’t have been as good as the results of experimenting with the audio after the fact.”

A first-time listener likely won’t hear Son Lux’s self-described hip-hop influences, despite the act’s inclusion in the venerable underground rap label Anticon, and understandably so. Lott sports a vocal style that's more in line with the indie rock of Sufjan Stevens and others, and his percussion is far from the 4/4 boom-bap beats that are virtually synonymous with the genre. But though Son Lux may not seem born of hip hop to the ear, ideologically, Son Lux can fit comfortably next to Pete Rock and Prince Paul as a producer. Lott refuses to let his music be stagnant, changing his sounds and sampling himself relentlessly to construct his songs. Discovering new avenues of creativity and beauty by sampling and juxtaposing existing sounds is one of the cornerstones of the philosophy of hip-hop production, and We Are Rising does that splendidly, creating cohesive, beguiling melodies out of the sound fragments he arranged on the track.

“I hated piano lessons all the way through college," Lott says. "The moment that I realized that I could sort of change what was on the page and maybe come up with my own ideas — that’s when music happened for me. I’m a samplist. I’m a collagist. Yes, I’m a composer in a classical sense, but I’m also a hip-hop producer. And those two, in Son Lux, they get along. They get along great.” The unique mixture of a lifelong student of music and an unabashed sampler also brings an emphasis on percussion and rhythm to Son Lux. Theoretically, it might be easy for a Son Lux song to drift away from listen-ability into a formless morass of sounds, but Lott’s rhythms keep them anchored.

“Rhythm is, from theoretical perspective, the most important thing about my music," he says. "I think in rhythm before I think in anything else, and I will winnow out texture and melody through experimentation and hard work, but I hear rhythm and feel it in my body.” The aforementioned “Chase,” for example, was built on its percussion track — in fact, an unused improvisation by Mutemath’s Darren King and Midlake’s McKenzie Smith from two years ago. Lott’s favorite track on We Are Rising, the closer “Rebuild,” is so cited due to its rhythm, which opens the track with skittering, clanging percussion before being replaced with staccato bursts of synthesizer and trumpet. None of the beats are overtly propulsive, but they create an essential structure — in Lott’s words, to keep the songs so that “you can, for the most part, bob your head to it.”

Lott was already in the midst of an album, one he had been working on for years, when the challenge came to record We Are Rising. After this album’s inability to support open-ended compositional processes, Lott is curious about where his songwriting and composing will go. Though he seemed convinced that the time limit precluded experimentation, it instead opened a new avenue, one where split-second decisions colored entire songs and the pressure of obligation forced out ideas. Turning his eye back to his “paused” album, Lott recognizes that some of the things he wanted to do for that record were already accomplished in We Are Rising. However, he is currently back to work on the record, reassessing where he will take it and what self-imposed limitations will bring out the best results.

Meanwhile, the cult of Son Lux is growing. Choreographers continue to commission Lott to write original music for dance performances, but some are beginning to ask for Son Lux material. (The Atlanta Ballet just premiered 20 minutes of new Son Lux music for the "Flux" portion of Ignition, its newest performance.) The NPR challenge has led to press from the public-broadcasting stalwart as well as from major newspapers and independent-music publications, and the blogosphere is buzzing. Though Ryan Lott doesn't have trouble in getting his music heard, Son Lux is well on its way to sharing the same luxury.

Other Lives:

Other Lives: "For 12"

Within the relaxed confines of Stillwater, Oklahoma, indie/chamber quintet Other Lives worked tirelessly for 14 months to craft and perfect its sophomore album. The finished product, Tamer Animals, is a delicate blend that balances orchestrated compositions with indie-folk arrangements. Interpretive vocals carry each track to the next, and minor-key melodies provide a peaceful backdrop throughout. Below, frontman Jesse Tabish elaborates on crafting Tamer Animals, its underlying theme of human relationships with nature, and his classical influences.

You used a more personal/private approach in producing Tamer Animals. How did this process alter the making of the album and, more importantly, the outcome?

The time constraint is the biggest thing that comes to my mind. Laying down a guitar track or vocal or whatever it may be in the studio, you have a limited amount of time to get it right. At home, we really tailored everything to the exact sound that we wanted, and if we didn't know a sound, we had the luxury to search for it. So we spent a lot of time searching out not only new tones and sounds, but we also needed the time to find new approaches to songwriting. So it was a combination of those two that I felt we needed to take it in this direction.  The fact that we worked on it until we were happy with it…I can relax. And I had my hands in all aspects of it, so I very much enjoyed it.

Can you expound on the specifics of recording the album?

The initial idea for a lot of these songs came really quickly to me, sometimes in a day or a matter of hours, and I would do my own demo of it. Then the actual, proper recording came about, which took loads of time. It was a real process for every song; it was literally piece by piece, track by track. It was a lot of building, rather than a band going into a room and hashing out a tune. So it was building from the ground up.

Unlike the rest of the tracks, “Dark Horse” is devoid of guitar and bass, and it barely features piano. Why open the record this way?

I felt like ["Dark Horse"] was the first song where we were able to really get away from those core instruments, and in some way, it's my ideal song off the record because it is free from the path. It was one of the earlier songs, and it was the first song that we did. After that, we realized that we could do the record on our own.

How does Tamer Animals reflect your physical surroundings during the writing and recording process?

I think what we wanted was kind of an observational perspective, rather than having a personal narrative. I wanted my voice, in particular, to be an outside source, rather than a storytelling kind of narrative. So our Oklahoma landscape definitely plays a part in that. There are some themes about the Dust Bowl that we use in our imagery to get closer to that idea. It's something personal to us, but I didn't want to get personal in a way that is unique to myself.

You worked with producer and composer Joey Waronker on your debut, and he mixed and co-produced Tamer Animals. What are some benefits to this relationship? Will you continue to work with him in the future?

He came in during the latter half of Tamer Animals, and it was a lot more than just bass up or down or just levels. He really took individual sounds and made them unique in his own right, which added a whole new color to the record. So he's fantastic, and I definitely want to work with him again. He really put the finishing touches on [Tamer Animals], which, if we hadn't used him, could have possibly come off a little duller sounding.

Philip Glass and Igor Stravinsky are very different composers, yet you take inspiration from both. What about each would you say influences you?

I feel like they, especially for their time, went to extreme measures in their music. When they first came out, they were heavily criticized for breaking new ground. But I think they're real pioneers in their own fields: minimalism for Glass and late romanticism with Stravinsky. They really set their own path. They're very different composers, so obviously it would be hard to compare their music, but they're both kind of punk rockers of their day.

How do you think that the changes you've experienced recently are going to translate in a live setting during your summer tour?

We changed up a couple tunes, but most of it is pretty close to the record. We try to reproduce everything as closely as possible. It's been four months of really intense rehearsals. We've played a handful of shows, and they seem to go well. I feel positive about it, but there's definitely room for improvement. Obviously, we're really busy on stage, trying to pull off all that is going on in the record, so it's definitely a handful.  But at this point, it's starting to get where we are actually having fun, so that's kind of a good sign.

Download Elk's "Let's Get Married"

Elk, a.k.a. Justin Stein, premieres the title track from his new album, Let’s Get Married, today on ALARM. The new record is a follow-up to Elk's 2009 debut EP, Honey Range, which you can listen to on his Bandcamp page.

Making Let's Get Married was not without its difficulties; after spending most of his money to replace a broken computer, Stein was forced to move in with his parents and finish the record in his sister's old bedroom. Drawing inspiration from old tapes and CDs (Janet Jackson, Redman) and films (Empire Records, School Daze, and Fright Night), Elk's new record is a bedroom recording in the truest sense of the term.

As "Let's Get Married" indicates, Elk samples generously — yes, that's Philip Glass — and transforms the familiar tracks with his own unique shoegaze and baroque-pop sensibilities.

Cory Allen: Hearing Is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Hears

It’s rare to think of tranquil music as “unlistenable,” but Austin, Texas ambient musician Cory Allen’s latest album, Hearing Is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Hears, arguably challenges the listener’s concentration because it is so easy to listen to. If you were to try mapping out this music, it would require intense concentration — way more, perhaps, than the hypnotic, brain-twisting work of minimalist icons like Steve Reich and Philip Glass — but it would most likely subdue you first!

“Probably,” laughs Allen, who also is co-owner/curator of Austin-based independent label Quiet Design (along with founder and fellow ambient artist Mike Vernusky). Most easily described as a sequence of softly rippling, algorithm-based tones that sound a lot like a computer rendition of wind chimes, Hearing is Forgetting… was in fact inspired by the wind chimes outside of Allen’s bedroom window.

Unsurprisingly, the album lends itself to quiet reflection and inner calm, but it differs in some fundamental ways from music that we might typically identify as “meditative.” Whereas other ambient artists — and even Allen’s previous work — tend toward inducing heightened awareness in the listener, Hearing is Forgetting… instills a distinct sense of non-awareness, non-being even, and was in a sense designed to evaporate when we turn our attention to it.

“If you can get your ears and mind somewhere between listening to this music and ignoring it,” he offers, “it really will reveal itself.” At least, he admits with a chuckle, he hopes so.

"By removing the identity and removing any attempt to impact, your brain doesn’t get in its own way. And whenever you stop trying, things just grow out of you."

Heavily influenced by the writings of Zen philosopher Alan Watts, Allen often applies Zen and Taoist principles to his music and uses his music as a vehicle to explore a longstanding preoccupation with the nature of perception itself.

“The area between the objective and subjective universe is really what interests me,” he explains. “What’s happening outside of our skin, what’s happening inside of our skin and in our minds, and then the dissonance and lost-in-translation kind of thing that happens in the act of perception — all of my work deals with that. All of it’s about manipulating perception.”

Nonetheless, Hearing represents a dramatic step forward from its predecessors and arguably marks the first time that Allen has succeeded in penetrating the realm of meta-perception with sound. For the most part, despite sharp distinctions between them, his other albums — Gesemi Tropisms (2005), Observing a Warmth (2006), Satori in Atlantis (2007), and The Fourth Way (2008) — all strike an impressive, almost paradoxical balance between sedate and gripping.

But in all of these cases, the listener is able to “follow” the music from beginning to end. You might get carried away, but you never fully lose yourself, or your sense that the music exists as something solid and tangible. “All of my previous work had been pretty linear,” Allen says, “in the sense that it definitely goes somewhere from beginning to end. There are trajectories and different compositional gestures and sections that take you different places. I wanted to get away from that.”

Enter the work of installation artist and light sculptor Robert Irwin, whose use of shadow and light to remove the boundary between sculpture and the space surrounding it inspired the conceptual framework for the music on Hearing. (The album title is a take-off on author Lawrence Weschler’s 1982 biography on Irwin, Seeing Is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees.)

When Allen happened upon one of Irwin’s “light disc” pieces at the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, DC, he saw an opportunity to take his music a step further by translating some of Irwin’s ideas into sound.

“The discs are about three or four feet in diameter,” Allen explains. “Looking at one of them, it casts this three-dimensional effect where you can’t tell where the piece ends and the room begins. They’re actually hard to identify. Irwin was so interested in the way that light and color affected each other, and affected everything around them, that he would go into the installation space and paint away shadows and paint all the walls and ceiling and floor an identical color. So that way, there was no possible intrusion on the work.”

Irwin eventually took this approach to its logical conclusion, which appealed to Allen. “At a certain point,” Allen says, “he abandoned the notion of there being an actual focus on a piece. He stopped working on canvas because it dictated such a harsh edge for where a piece stops. So I started thinking, ‘Okay, I need to make something that has no boundaries.’ I thought, ‘It doesn’t need to be defined; it doesn’t need to have an edge.’”

Newly inspired, Allen still had to figure how this all was going to work. “What’s funny,” he recalls, “is that I thought about this for months, but right outside my bedroom, my neighbor has a wind chime. It’s just so beautiful, particularly if there’s rain or something like that going on at the same time. A wind chime is infinite; it’s a set pattern of notes, but somehow, it’s always different. It’s got an essence, more than a composition does, that’s just happening. And it’s delightful to listen to.”

Not to mention, it’s easy to listen to. Part of the reason that Allen didn’t initially look to the wind chime was that he often listened to it passively, barely noticing that it was there — much, he says, like being in a state somewhere between listening and ignoring.

“I thought, ‘Man, there it is!’” he says. “I wanted to remove the template of sound and creation and space and time, remove all of that from the music and just have this pure sensation. As soon as that clicked, I started doing the work immediately.”

Like all of Allen’s albums, Hearing is, sonically speaking, quite distinct from the rest. “Everything on there,” he explains, “is made from complex sine tones that I created with my computer that all have overtones drawn out in a very specific way. Whenever they interact with each other, the overtones of each frequency collide and create these meta-frequencies.”

Hence the harmonic “rippling” effect that mimics a wind chime. “It was important,” Allen says, “for me to make something that was musical but was also static, just kind of suspended there.”

If that sounds like a conceptual conceit, the way the tones hang in space — “just kind of suspended there” — actually mirrors Allen’s way of life. “As I grow older,” he says, “I want to dissolve myself as much as possible. I do my best to keep myself in a state of non-existence. I’ve removed my self from the situation, where living becomes ‘such-ness.’ By removing the identity and removing any attempt to impact, your brain doesn’t get in its own way. And whenever you stop trying, things just grow out of you.”

Certainly, full-length albums seem to “just grow out of” Allen, at a rate of one per year. In listening to any one of them, one gets a clear sense that the music resolves, that it reaches a kind of natural conclusion. But Allen compares his work to the way a school of fish moves. As far as he is concerned, there is nothing driving those movements other than movement for its own sake. There’s no way to gauge, then, what Allen might put out next.

Just this year, he took an unexpected detour when he released Dimensions of Tomorrow, an album of sample-based hip-hop instrumentals under the name Datalove. Datalove manifests a beat-bumping (if still somewhat esoteric) side of Allen that has yet to emerge in the music he puts out under his own name. As a musical alter-ego, Datalove provides not only a refreshing, 180-degree change of pace but also some possible clues as to what Allen might accomplish when his muse inevitably swings back in the direction of formlessness.

Even then, though, Hearing is Forgetting… will likely still stand as the challenging, rewardingly impenetrable work that it is.

Cleric: Regressions (Mimicry)

Ultimate annihilation, the end times, post-apocalyptic Earth — these are worn-out visual clichés, but ones that apply to the devastating music of Cleric.

For its full-length debut, this Philadelphia quartet specializes in demolishing tech-metal eruptions, savage math breakdowns, and grindcore blasts that give way to doom dirges, sinister atmospherics, nightmarish vocal distortions, and even the stray melody and piano line.

With nary a repeated passage and most major pieces measuring more than 10 minutes, Regressions sounds like a personalized soundtrack to death. Each track is meticulously arranged, and though it very much is for fans of musical complexity, the album has enough head-banging potential to ensnare lovers of "regular" metal. Undoubtedly, Cleric's music isn't quite like anything else.

Cleric: "A Rush of Blood"
Cleric: \"A Rush of Blood\"

My Education: Sunrise (Strange Attractors Audio House)

The name of German director F.W. Murnau is most synonymous with Nosferatu, the classic 1922 silent film that lost a lawsuit for copyright infringement of Bram Stoker's Dracula. Just as crucial to his legacy, however, was his work on Sunrise: A Song of Two Humans, a co-recipient of Best Picture at the first Academy Awards in 1929.

Nosferatu has been the frequent subject of live scoring — rather recently by Tortoise too — but Sunrise doesn't receive the musical accompaniment as often.

Now enter My Education, an Austin quintet whose dramatic and dense brand of instrumental post-rock is noteworthy for its exquisite harmonies and use of strings. Sunrise is the band's homage to Murnau's Oscar winner, woven together over two years of live presentation.

Combining a traditional rock lineup with viola, cello, and vibraphone, My Education captivates with flares of tension and scrupulous melodies. "Sunset" and its reprise "Sunrise" are chamber-infused duels of harmonies that are interwoven with acoustic guitar and tuba.

Sunrise's most powerful and dynamic effort, "Oars," comes after a few more tracks of post-rock bliss that is evocative of Dirty Three, Grails, and Tortoise. The track's hiccuping, quick-twitch beats create a head-nodding background for swirling guitars and more shining string harmonies.

My Education: "Oars"
My Education: \"Oars\"

Grand Valley State University New Music Ensemble / Terry Riley: In C (Ghostly International)

As one of the premier names in minimalist classical composition, Terry Riley has influenced and worked with key figures such as Steve Reich, John Adams, Philip Glass, and Morton Subotnick. His landmark piece, In C, wasn't a traditional composition but rather a series of 53 modules that hold different patterns and instructions.

Its hypnotic repetition and varied interpretations have led to countless performances and recordings by dozens of different ensembles and bands. The latest to take the mantle is the Grand Valley State University New Music Ensemble, a 16-piece Michigan group that recorded In C early last year for a daring remix album, featuring contributions from Glenn Kotche, Nico Muhly, DJ Spooky, Daniel Bernard Roumain, and a dozen others.

This particular release is a live recording of the New Music Ensemble working through the landmark piece with electronic producer/composer Dennis DeSantis on laptop and effects. By and large, their rendition is one of traditional instrumentation, with strings, woodwinds, percussion, and the familiar marimba pulse swelling and retreating.

DeSantis, however, adds IDM elements three-quarters of the way through, infusing the piece with electronic life. The result is an interpretation that pays fierce tribute to the original yet is a brand-new way to experience In C.

The Grand Valley State University New Music Ensemble: "In C" (excerpt)
Grand Valley State University New Music Ensemble: \"In C\"

Devastations: s/t (Brassland)

Following success early last decade in their homeland, these Australian natives migrated to Europe and exposed the Western world to their somber brand of alt-rock, goth, and neofolk.

The trio's fourth but self-titled effort finds Devastations stripping back its rock elements even more, focusing on Americana sounds and baritone crooning. The album remains peppered with Nick Cave-style rockers, such as "Loene," that rely on medium-gain guitars and Hammond organ.

However, like Cave's endeavors with Dirty Three violinist Warren Ellis, it seems that Devastations' trajectory — at least incrementally — is toward softer songs that are built on acoustic guitar and piano.

Devastations: "Previous Crimes"
Devastations: \"Previous Crimes\"

Bushman's Revenge: Jitterbug (Rune Grammofon)

Norwegian guitarist Even Helte Hermansen, no longer a part of prog-industrial countrymen Shining, has focused on the power-trio ferocity of Bushman's Revenge.

His effortless talents, ranging from Hendrix-style psych rock to heavy-jam improvs befitting Nels Cline, make the far-reaching band a potent yet enchanting experience. Jitterbug is the trio's third album, released just a year after You Lost Me at Hello, and it reveals a band manifesting its talents into an ever-more-cohesive mix.

Honorable Mentions

Balkan Beat Box: Blue Eyed Black Boy (Nat Geo Music)

Frog Eyes: Paul's Tomb: A Triumph (Dead Oceans)

Gogol Bordello: Trans-Continental Hustle (Columbia)

Mike Reed’s People, Places & Things: Stories & Negotiations (482 Music)

Mono: Holy Ground: NYC Live with The Wordless Music Orchestra (Temporary Residence)

Now available on iTunes, the debut album of Kenan Bell is remarkable for many reasons.

Most importantly, Bell's presentation of live-band, indie- and electro-inspired hip hop is a unique blend of rhymes and style. However, Bell's young career is just as noteworthy for other reasons — namely that he's a former grade-school language-arts teacher who has achieved a remarkable level of buzz without the presence of an established label.

His EPs and remixes (including rapping over Pink Floyd and Peter, Bjorn & John) are a minor Internet sensation, and the acclaim has led to a featured song in the NBA 2k10 video game — all before his debut has become available.

The buzz is deserved, however, as Bell's band eschews samples to blend melodic guitars and buzzing bass lines with synthesizers and fat beats. His verses often riff on the same rhyme, but his flow and originality prevent things from going stale.

Bell says that he makes hip hop for people who “know their Basquiat as well as their basketball,” and he's as quick to reference Bo Diddly as Dungeons & Dragons. Some will tie his success to the ascension of indie rap, but regardless, Bell's popularity seems destined to continue growing.

Kenan Bell: "TGIF" (featuring Aceyalone)
Kenan Bell: \"TGIF\" (featuring Aceyalone)

Daniel Bernard Roumain: Woodbox Beats & Balladry (Thirsty Ear)

Haitian-American violinist Daniel Bernard Roumain is a man of myriad talents, combining classical training with rapid-fire rock beats, DJ scratches, electronics, and funky bass lines.

Though his "highbrow" pieces can be dramatic, orchestral affairs, Roumain accurately portrays his music as "more to do with Prince than (Niccolò) Paganini," and his résumé includes seemingly incongruous credits such as commissions by Carnegie Hall and an arrangement of a Lady Gaga song for American Idol.

Roumain has hooked up a few times with DJ Spooky, most recently at the Vancouver Olympics, and he has worked with other famed composers such as Philip Glass and Ryuichi Sakamoto. These great musicians surely seek Roumain's technical talents, but his compositional skills are just as special.

Woodbox Beats & Balladry is a highly dynamic album, calling upon elements of IDM, piano balladry, and Vernon Reid-style wailing on top of Roumain's standard amalgamation. It's an outstanding album whose adventurousness perfectly fits the 21st Century.

Daniel Bernard Roumain: "Sonata for Violin and Turntables, Part 4"
Daniel Bernard Roumain: \"Sonata for Violin and Turntables, Part 4\"

Black Francis: Nonstoperotik (Cooking Vinyl)

In 2007, indie-rock icon Charles Thompson — best known as Frank Black — reverted to his original Pixies stage name to release Bluefinger, a solo album inspired by Dutch musician and artist Herman Brood.

Since that time, Thompson has remained busy in many ways, including more dates with the reunited Pixies (as well as plans to record a long-awaited fifth album). He released a solo EP and created a score for The Golem, and Nonstoperotik — perhaps surprisingly — is his first full-length since Bluefinger.

Like the title, much of the lyrical content is blatantly sexual, though much of the musical backdrop does not convey a typically erotic or sensual sound. The results of Thompson's straightforward vocals are mixed, and pretty tracks such as "Rabbits" seem more suited to be instrumentals.

At other times, Black's voice reflects a passionate yearning, such as in the driving rock sounds of "Dead Man's Curve." The eponymous track is a gentle piano and string ballad, and accompanying instruments crop up throughout the disc — one that, like previous efforts, may create mixed feelings among Black Francis fans.

Black Francis: "Dead Man's Curve"
Black Francis: \"Dead Man\'s Curve\"

Mulatu Astatke: Mulatu Steps Head (Strut)

Dubbed the "father of Ethio-jazz," composer Mulatu Astatke came to prominence in the 1960s, helping to usher in an intercontinental fusion of genres.

Last year, Astatke garnered rave reviews for his collaboration with The Heliocentrics, a UK collective led by percussionist Malcolm Catto that concocts funky, trippy hip-hop pastiches. The pairing was outstanding, but Mulatu Steps Ahead — Astatke's first solo album in more than 20 years — is no less skilled, only different stylistically.

His instrument of choice is the vibraphone, and though the glistening mallet instrument takes the lead with aplomb when necessary, it is far from being the focal point of Mulatu Steps Ahead. Smoky brass motifs and cool woodwind solos are accentuated with piano chords and intermittent fiddling, and the disc never loses its jazzy, funky feel.

Different instruments, such as the West African kora, make cameos, but no matter the orchestration, Astatke finds a way to make it graceful and collected.

Mulatu Astatke: "Green Africa"
Mulatu Astatke: \"Green Africa\"

Honorable Mentions

Deru: Say Goodbye to Useless (Mush)

(Jedi Mind Tricks presents) Army of the Pharaohs: The Unholy Terror (Enemy Soil)

Tomasz Stanko Quintet: Dark Eyes (ECM)

Having created a template for the more ambient side of krautrock with seminal band Cluster (among other bands/collectives), collaborated with the likes of Brian Eno, and contributed to numerous soundtracks, Roedelius is a studied and practiced master of the minimalist gesture.

Tim Story, meanwhile, has made quite a name for himself in a somewhat shorter time frame. Disenchanted with rock in the '70s, and drawn to the ambient sounds of Cluster and the heady deconstruction of Can, Story began combining these ambient elements with classical influences like Béla Bartók and Claude Debussy to create something wholly alien yet deceptively unobtrusive.

If the whole of Roedelius/Story isn't more than the sum of its parts, Inlandish is at least equal to that sum, an impressive feat. It might seem backhanded to call Inlandish meditative, but it's a charge of which Roedelius/Story might have a hard time clearing themselves.

With Roedelius' piano and keyboards offering the skeleton, and Story's production and electronic manipulation providing the flesh (if one can call it that; the "flesh," in this case, has all the substance of mist), they create a soundtrack to a Socratic dialogue, an existential debate in which all paths of argument lead to fecund silence.

Some stray beats may weave their way into the music, but they are never jarring enough to create more than a ripple on the music's glasslike surface. Lazy ears would be inclined to dismiss this as new age, but this would be an error.

Rodelius' spare, simple piano lines have more in common with Philip Glass, or a less archly iconoclastic John Cage, than with Scott Cossu or Yanni, and Story's manipulations are too neoclassical and dissonant to write off as music for wine tastings (though both artists have suggested that wine was tasted during the course of recording).

Titles like "Ripple and Fade" and "House of Glances" might suggest comforting cerebral wallpaper, but they might also suggest quiet observations of mundane enigmas.

- Lyam White

Grönland Records: www.groenland.com/2006

Instrumental(-ish) Boston group Irepress has completed its sophomore album, Sol Eye Sea 1, which will be released February 17 on Translation Loss (a new song can be heard here). The group's mathy, melodic, chugging, epic songs can be heard on a five-week US tour that begins March 4.

Les Claypool has announced a four-week traveling mini festival, scheduled to begin in early March, that is officially titled The Oddity Faire: A Mutated Mini Fest. The fest's outstanding lineup is different depending on the city; guests include Secret Chiefs 3, Saul Williams, DeVotchKa, Yard Dogs Road Show, O'Death, and The Mutaytor.

And speaking of Secret Chiefs 3, the incomparable Indian/surf/metal group has a concert DVD being released in March on mastermind Trey Spruance's Mimicry label.

Hardcore trio Young Widows has announced a major list of tour dates that run from February through April. See the list here.

Dan Deacon has announced a six-week tour, starting April 3, that will feature a full ensemble in support of Bromst, his new album due March 24 from Carpark.

Marking its final recording with long-time member Reed Mathis, the Jacob Fred Jazz Odyssey has made a new studio album, Winterwood, available for free downloading on its website.

Next Tuesday, February 3, Tibet House US hosts a benefit concert and dinner at Carnegie Hall. Performers include Philip Glass, Antibalas, Keb' Mo', Vampire Weekend, The National, and more.

Nile linchpin Karl Sanders has another solo album in the works, this time to be released through The End Records. Titled Saurian Exorcisms, the album will be out April 14. Some awesome preview tracks are already posted on Sanders' MySpace page.

Despite comments from main member Tobacco that the group was on indefinite hiatus, dreamy hip-hoppers Black Moth Super Rainbow have a new album, Eating Us, that will be released on May 26 via Graveface.

New York jazz group Dred Scott Trio has a live album being released via Ropeadope on February 3.

Hardcore group Pulling Teeth has a new album, Paranoid Delusions | Paradise Illusions, that takes a crushing and despairing direction. The album is available today to preorder from Deathwish Inc. and its official release date is March 31. Hear a preview track, "Foreshadowing," here.

Grindcore group Agoraphobic Nosebleed will release its fourth full-length album, Agorapocalypse, through Relapse on April 14.

Aether: Artifacts (Exponential) [US]

URB Magazine calls Artifacts a hip-hop album, unquestionably. I challenge that statement because I feel that just cheapens the icy beauty of 2008's best electronic album.

That challenge'll take some doing since most of my friends into labels like Mush, Anticon, and Stones Throw are feeling this album from long-standing San Antonio micro-imprint Exponential.

Even my friends who would turn their noses up at those kinds of "race" records yet turn around and buy albums from Warp (WASP?) artists like Boards of Canada and Flying Lotus are feeling this one.

Sure, Artifacts is even constructed of pastiche of loops — just like a hip-hop album, but the only guy in hip hop capable of making a record like this is DJ Premiere, from whose playbook Aether borrows liberally. I can practically guarantee that Primo ain't gonna be rockin the M83 or My Bloody Valentine's "Glider" EP in search of those fragile melodies and tender hooks all over this sucker.

Twenty years ago this album actually would have been labelled some sort of goth or Cure-damaged amalgam, stripped of the boom-bap, and it's hard to shake the emotional and art-damaged beauty Aether steals directly from dudes like Roger Eno and Steve Reich on this album. But here comes the "amen" break, some Lee "Scratch" Perry sub-bass action, the latest noise from Berlin, and even a few timbales.

Voila! Suddenly, the trip down new romantic lane got enough rhythmic go juice to keep high-school kids from getting their asses kicked for daring to explore their sensitive sides. There are so many possibilites uncovered on Artifacts, from indie to ambient, but what this is definitely not is unquestionably hip hop. Rather, it is one of the great downtempo chill albums of this decade.

John Tejada: Fabric 44 (Fabric London) [UK]

Twice last year, the Fabric label looked out westward for some top-shelf DJ mixes. First we had Mark Farina on #40 — who sounded better than he had in years — and closing out the 2008 roster comes this offering from Los Angeles techno veteran John Tejada.

This guy has been around forever and worked in every facet of techno, including mid-'90s drum & bass. But at his molten core, like many other DJs from LA, you'll find a KDAY influence buried below. The infamous AM radio station was known in the 1980s for its electro-party style, typified by artists like the World Class Wreckin Cru and J.J. Fad.

As expected, the mix has some of those KDAY electro underpinnings, but it could have used some old-school quick mixing tricks to enliven it. The second half of the mix after Orbital's acid/piano house classic "Farenheit 303" just fades into a dull and tuneless mess.

It's a shame because the first half of Tejada's mix brings out some undiluted techno influences, and frankly, it's a breath of fresh air to hear that in opposition to all of the SF tech house and everyone else's just-plain-dreary minimalism. Too bad Fabric 44 is so hit or miss, as though Tejada can never quite find the right groove.

If techno boys like Carl Craig and Justin Maxwell ain't your bag, I'd say you can probably safely miss this one. But even if you do like this kind of stout techno, you may be kinda disappointed by Fabric 44's lack of focus.

Hercules and Love Affair: Hercules and Love Affair (DFA) [US]

I absolutely loved this record. It has become one of my favorite mainstream pop records since the second B-52s album. And though there is no "Planet Claire" on the self-titled debut album from this NYC nu-disco outfit, it does manage to crank out a theme song ("Hercules Theme") and "Blind" — one of the finest singles of 2008.

"Blind," especially, has the whole Nile Rodgers '80s thing going on, but the lyric delivered by transgendered persona Antony is as painful and bittersweet as anything penned by Patti Smith.

That combo of Manhattan indulgence and Lower East Side grittiness had me immediately identifying with Hercules and Love Affair while the slick dancefloor production left me ready to bust a move. I wish more pop albums could be this bold and yet still manage to have some fun.

Various: Sean's Lolla 08 Mix

My pal Passean has a definite nose for good pop music, and this collection inspired by his annual pilgrimage to Lollapalooza was an excellent indicator of what was actually good last year that got played on the radio — something that most of you reading this will quickly discover that I know little about.

Cat Power does her best to sound like Chrissie Hynde jamming with the Muscle Shoals players on the empowering rocker "Aretha, Sing One For Me," while Warp artist Jamie Lidell channels his inner Motown on "Little Bit Of Feel Good," "Another Day," and "Wait For Me" from his latest.

These artists shocked me by wearing their influences so much on their sleeves, and yet the retro appeal somehow really worked for both of them quite well. I was also surprised at how I absolutely fell in love with the Amy Winehouse and Mark Ronson pairing, "Valerie."

I know the inspiration for the song is the Brill Building and old Phillie Spector all the way, but with a barbed lyric and Winehouse's raspy pipes, I'd say this song was better suited for a punk rogue like Johnny Thunders. But with all of those greats dead now (RIP Ronnie Asheton), who could even do this song properly (although I do have visions of Elvis Costello & the Attractions…)?

I really miss simple two-and-a-half-minute pop gems like "Valerie," and Mick's kid seems capable of making them in his sleep. To Mr. Ronson, I say, "Kudos."

Lastly, I wanted to mention Marshall Law — a DJ that my man Passean really supports and turned me onto a few years back. Law is obviously an old-school college radio DJ, and doesn't create the typically annoying Beyonce vs Nirvana or Phil Collins vs ANYBODY mash-ups associated with dead-from-the- neck-up plane-crash survivors like DJ AM. On the two cuts on this comp, he wields his massive record collection like a highly specialized weapon.

The street music rave-up is part hip hop and part The Blow Up and could only be topped by the flawless "All Apologies" mash-up. I generally hate mash-ups because they debase the power of the DJ's hands, but when I hear a cat like this tear it up manually on Nirvana like that, it restores my faith in the DJ — which has been shaken these past few years.

The rest of the disk is loaded mostly with the typical college rock faire that I have grown tired of over the years and did little to spark my interest, but these above-mentioned artists made me rethink writing off 2008 as a total lost cause.

Lars Horntveth: Kaleidoscopic (Smalltown Supersound) [Norway]

Norway's Smalltown Supersound imprint is no stranger to 30-minute-plus epic tunes — look no further than Lindstrøm's latest album for proof of that.

However, the sophomore album Kaleidoscopic from Jaga Jazzist leader Lars Horntveth takes that extreme to its logical conclusion with an album that is 37 minutes long and composed entirely of one track — "Kaleidoscopic."

Do I dare call this a single, and how much will it cost if I buy it on iTunes? Performed by Horntveth and the 41-piece Latvian National Orchestra, the album is a concept soundtrack to an imaginary movie, and what a movie it must be.

I hear echoes of George Martin's side on the Beatles' Yellow Submarine album and even funky old Lalo Schiffrin in some places, but generally, Kaledioscopic sounds like a low-rent version of Philip Glass on ecstasy at a rave, trying to convince everyone that he's Steve Reich and coming up with the soundtrack to The Party instead.

It's fun, but in the same hollow kitchy way that those Martin Denny and Arthur Lyman records are too.

- Sean-Michael Yoder

Sean-Michael Yoder is a Chico, California-based music writer and tastemaker. Check out more at vinyljunkierecords.blogspot.com