The Black Keys: El Camino (Nonesuch / Warner Bros.)

The Black Keys: "Lonely Boy"

The Black Keys has come a long way from its modest start in Akron, Ohio. Ever since the early 2000s, the band has been one of the most consistent acts around, churning out album after album of gritty, blues-infused garage rock. But with recent appearances on The Colbert Report and Saturday Night Live, as well as a North American tour featuring numerous arena stops, the band has refined its sound to adapt to its new surroundings and mounting exposure. And El Camino, the band's latest effort, showcases that adaptation, as the band has cultivated a bigger, more varied sound.

Guitarist/vocalist Dan Auerbach and drummer Patrick Carney once again teamed up with Danger Mouse to oversee the production, and the result is one of the band’s most instrumentally diverse offerings. Though the songs are firmly fixed in the classic Black Keys style (tactile distortion, clamoring drums, bluesy vocals, and noodling guitar solos), El Camino builds on the band’s recent exploration of musical diversity and experimentation. The excellent “Dead and Gone” sounds like a ’60s jamboree, chocked full of xylophones and layered, harmonized vocals; “Gold on the Ceiling” features a variety of synths and new guitar sounds that integrate seamlessly into the duo’s signature rock-outs; “Little Black Submarines” starts out with a heartfelt, acoustic folk arrangement before colliding with a wall of grunged-out guitars and crashing cymbals.

The Black Keys may be getting bigger, but that hasn’t hindered the duo’s creative energy. If anything, it’s gotten stronger on El Camino.

- Text by Michael Danaher.

The Roots: Undun (Island / Def Jam)

It’s rare when an album asks deserving questions yet doesn’t let the message overshadow the music. But that’s what The Roots has done with its tenth studio album, Undun, which does for Philadelphia what The Wire did for Baltimore — portraying the dark and ruinous underworld of a drug trade that preys disproportionately on certain races and classes, especially their young.

The record traces the last hours in the life of Redford Stephens, a fictional Philly man whom Roots drummer ?uestlove says was inspired in part by The Wire’s Avon Barksdale. A low-level drug dealer, Stephens is a protagonist but not quite a hero. Over funk-fueled bass lines, ?uestlove’s signature beats, and a tasteful sprinkling of soul, the story is unraveled — backwards from the time of death — by MC Black Thought and a handful of guests, including Aaron Livingston, one half of Icebird.

It’s hardly a holiday record, though it does include a cameo by indie darling Sufjan Stevens, whose “Redford (for Yia-Yia and Pappou)” also helped inspire the Roots’ character and comprises the final four tracks of the album, interpreted in various styles. The third of these segments, “Will to Power,” is the most compelling, showing ?uestlove battling avant-garde pianist DD Jackson in a frenzied duel that owes more to free jazz than R&B.

It’s not untruthful to say the music on Undun stands alone — it doesn’t need its narrative any more than Fucked Up’s David Comes to Life needed its — but the words add a weight that transforms it from a solid hip-hop release into a powerful record. Musically, it ventures into some surprising territory, and lyrically, it communicates an urgent message.

- Text by Timothy A. Schuler.

Jacaszek: Glimmer (Ghostly International)

Jacaszek: "Dare-gale"

Polish composer Michał Jacaszek has made a specialty of moody, atmospheric ambience using a classical palette, with bowed strings, operatic voices, and chimes to construct a brooding build. His new album, Glimmer, is his first for Ghostly International, and though it might be misclassified as an electronic album — partly due to its affiliation with Ghostly — it's almost entirely an ambient classical release.

There's enough digital treatment and rearrangement to warrant a partial electronic tag, but it's otherwise a very organic album. Jacaszek wrote and recorded the acoustic-guitar and mellotron passages, and then he enlisted a number of other Polish musicians to play the harpsichord and clarinet parts. It's all a very stirring mix, with the harpsichord, bass clarinet, guitar, and vibraphone — not to mention the washes of fuzz — creating a richness of texture.

The album's inconspicuous complexity and professional performances make it a gem among ambient releases. Those factors also help explain why it's been a bit since Jacaszek's last release, and Glimmer was worth the wait.

- Text by Scott Morrow and Patrick Hajduch. Read the debate here.

Keep Shelly in Athens: Campus Martius EP (Planet Mu)

Keep Shelly in Athens: "Campus Martius"

Hailing from Athens, Greece, Keep Shelly in Athens (whose name is a play on the Grecian suburb Kypseli) is a down-tempo/chill-wave electronic two-piece that has garnered steady 'Net buzz since last year. The hype, to this point, might be a tad undeserved, but the duo's recent In Love With Dusk EP demonstrated potential across a spate of digitized genres, even if it was heavy on the Ibiza influence.

The major appeal here is the interplay between singer Sarah P and producer RPR, whose styles seem to be coming into their own. With Campus Martius, the duo's first release on Planet Mu, there's less of the beach-y nightlife and '80s cheese; instead, there's an urban, industrialized, and ambient vibe to better fit Sarah's elongated and reverberated vocals.

The EP also includes bits of spazzy Aphex Twin drum-and-melancholy, deep bass lines, vocals that would sound at home on a Sneaker Pimps record, and of-the-moment pitched vocal slicing. These elements hang together in a way that seems familiar and yet revelatory, and as a result, Campus Martius occupies a pleasant, bassy corner of the dubstep/post-dubstep/synthesizer continuum.

- Text by Scott Morrow and Patrick Hajduch. Read the debate here.

Loka: Passing Place (Ninja Tune)

Loka: "Sam Star"

In 1999, Liverpool residents Karl Webb and Mark Kyriacou began an exciting studio collaboration as Loka, merging psychedelic, classical, groove, down-tempo, and jazz elements in a daring but foolproof fusion. The project quickly signed to Ninja Tune, but the duo's first full album wasn't released until 2006, and Webb retired from the project in the following year. But now Loka is back, led by Kyriacou and the live Loka band, and the results were worth the wait.

Like that debut full-length (Fire Shepherds), Passing Place is a hybrid of the aforementioned elements. Here, however, a calmness meets the subdued tempos, and celestial vocals are part of a multilayered mélange. In fact, the oft-mentioned down-tempo feel of Fire Shepherds seems lively in comparison to Passing Place, which, despite its active moments, achieves a rare balance of beats and serenity.

“Entrance,” Passing Place’s opening track, almost tricks the listener into thinking that this album will be just like Loka’s first, with the heavy, haunting bass rumblings. But just as the song seems ready to launch into a break beat, a beautiful wordless vocal solo sets the mood of the album’s remainder. The vocal additions (by live-band members Lido Pimiento, Eleanor Mante, and Jaci Williams) weave through the keyboards, drums, and guitars and often determine the haunting, melancholy, or calming feel that each track transmits. It's a wonderful new direction, helping Loka to reestablish itself as a forerunner in classical psychedelia.

- Text by Lauren Zens.

Honorable Mentions

Anomie Belle: Machine EP

Czar: Vertical Mass Grave (Cracknation)

Eastern Blok: Underwater

Goldmund: All Will Prosper (Western Vinyl)

Sunn O))): øø Void reissue (Southern Lord)

My Brightest Diamond: All Things Will Unwind (Asthmatic Kitty)

My Brightest Diamond: "Reaching Through to the Other Side"

Detroit-based singer/songwriter Shara Worden has long made a career as an indie-pop mercenary. Over the past decade or so, she has lent her talents to Sufjan Stevens’ Illinoisemakers, collaborated with The Decemberists, covered Radiohead for an OK Computer tribute album, appeared on numerous compilations (including her excellent cut on Dark Was the Night), and contributed to the chamber ensemble yMusic (which also includes Bon Iver, Antony & The Johnsons, the New York Philharmonic, and Rufus Wainwright).

Clearly, Worden has no problem keeping busy. But even in the midst of her many endeavors, Worden has found time for her indie-pop pet project, My Brightest Diamond, without ever skimping on musical quality or integrity.

Such is the case on All Things Will Unwind, My Brightest Diamond’s third effort on Asthmatic Kitty, as Worden’s talents are as focused and as strong as ever. Swaying between sweet, soft-edged crooning (“She Does Not Brave the War”) to full-on, forceful belt-outs (the latter half of “Be Brave”), Worden knows exactly what she’s doing. The songs swell and sway, kept adrift — and often take flight — thanks to Worden’s cosmic vocal work.

The album is suspended by quirky arrangements and orchestrations, serving as a backdrop to Worden’s ever-present voice. And Worden — an educated composer who has turned out several scores for off-Broadway productions — intertwines vocals and music together flawlessly, devising a kind of majestic, orchestral masterpiece.

- Text by Michael Danaher. Read the full review here.

Rob Crow: He Thinks He's People (Temporary Residence)

Rob Crow: "Sophistructure"

Rob Crow doesn't like to be pigeon-holed. As a musician, he's built numerous additions onto the foundational Pinback, which he cofounded in 1998 with Zach Smith. Those side projects have spanned math rock (Heavy Vegetable), doom metal (Goblin Cock), and indie pop (Optiganally Yours), and that diversity shows up immediately — albeit in pop form — on Crow's latest effort, He Thinks He's People. The intellectual songwriter offers five sounds in the first five tracks, which leaves eight more tracks to explore eight more sounds. He almost does it.

The diversity works because the tracks are short, but if there's a drawback to Crow's willingness — and ability — to play whatever style comes to him, it's that the album struggles for cohesion. Fortunately, Crow gives us the simple and driving drum beat that's typical of Pinback, which grounds the record and keeps it from floating away. The array of pop styles also means that listeners have to give the album more than one chance, which might be a fool-proof way to build a fan base. You've got "This Thread" for Mark Kozalek fans, "Build" for math nerds who like to play with time signatures, and everything else for those folks who like Crow for Crow.

The other common thread on He Thinks He's People is Crow's rather flippant approach. The art consists of a Microsoft Paint-style illustration of a stick figure in a doghouse. Songs are titled things like "Pat's Crabs," "Tranked," and "Locking Seth Putnam in Hot Topic." The music recalls Benji Hughes in that it's music that seems to say, "Who gives a shit?" even when you know it's giving a shit.

- Text by Timothy S. Aames.

Freestyle Fellowship: The Promise (Decon)

Freestyle Fellowship: “Step 2 the Side”

In the early ’90s, LA rap group Freestyle Fellowship burst on the scene with an innovative blend of jazzy/funky hip-hop production and dizzying rhymes. Though the group only had two albums before reuniting for Temptations in 2001, its members — Aceyalone, Myka 9, PEACE, Self Jupiter, and J Sumbi — have gone on to notable solo careers and collaborations (including with Haiku D’Etat and Abstract Rude), and Fellowship has maintained a legendary status ever since its inception.

The Promise is the Fellowship’s first album in 10 years, and it reflects a modernized sound. Though Temptations was more nuanced and reflected stylistic growth — and less of that early-’90s style — The Promise leaps into the synthesized world.

The group’s diverse samples and unconventional hooks, as usual, keep things fresh from track to track, while still retaining the characteristics that were adopted by contemporaries such as A Tribe Called Quest and successors such as Jurassic 5 and Blackalicious. “Gimmie,” about a handout-seeking acquaintance, is one of the album’s best examples of the group’s matured sound, working a fat synth sound and boom-bap beat over a neoclassical string melody and piano tinkling.

There’s just enough of new and old for old-school fans and newbies alike. Whether or not you’ve been initiated to the Fellowship, pick up The Promise.

Electro Quarterstaff: Aykroyd (Willowtip)

Electro Quarterstaff: "Waltz of the Swedish Meatballs"

Hailing from the urban wilds of Winnipeg, Electro Quarterstaff is an instrumental tech-metal quintet in the vein of Dysrhythmia and its ilk. Whereas other progressive outfits with a zillion riffs opt for smaller lineups, Electro Quarterstaff rounds out its sound with a triple guitar assault, maximizing its potential for harmonies and solos.

Though there's always a lot going on, the guitars typically don't overload the listener, and the axe-men try to avoid getting in each other's way. If there's a complaint, it's that the band doesn't stretch into its cited (personal) influences, outside of Gorguts (which includes two members of Dysrhythmia). The MO of Electro Quarterstaff is not one of a genre-hopping metal band, but it would be interesting to hear the group touch on the non-metal influences, which include Frank Zappa, Miles Davis, and Béla Bartók.

Five years after the band's last album, Aykroyd is not a departure; it simply finds Electro Quarterstaff refining its riff-intensive style. Don't let the album's beautiful minor-key intro fool you: Aykroyd is all riffs all the time, displaying masterful skills without coming off as self-indulgent.

Sandro Perri: Impossible Spaces (Constellation)

Sandro Perri: "Love and Light"

Over the course of five side projects and countless collaborations, Toronto-based producer Sandro Perri has dabbled in many styles, offering touches of indie pop, Western music, and more to his folk-based style.

Impossible Spaces, his third solo album, fully steps outside of Perri’s categorical boundaries. The indie-folk foundation is augmented by elements of electronica, jazz, and bossa nova, made possible by a diverse palette that includes guitar, flute, oboe, brass, synths, and samples. Many of the musical elements transform mid-song, through crescendos or the entry of bass, but Perri’s soulful voice remains as the album’s constant, softening any stylistic alterations.

- Text by Lauren Zens.

Sahy Uhns: An Intolerant Disdain of Underlings (Proximal)

Sahy Uhns: "Anticipation of the Night"

Sahy Uhns (pronounced "science") is the solo moniker of electronic/hip-hop producer Carl Madison Burgin, whose debut CD comes as part of a 5" x 5" book with photographs of dilapidated homes in the California deserts. The deserts are said to have inspired the album, but the glitchy, beat-ridden sounds therein are more the soundtrack for robots break-dancing than cactus needles rustling in the wind.

Though at times it simply resembles another detailed IDM album, An Intolerant Disdain of Underlings stands out with highly melodic phrasings and nuanced differences in timbre. "I'mage" is one of the album's best examples, as its blipping 8-bit sounds lead into twangy, squirming melodies that seemingly are from sequenced kora or lute samples. Huge break beats then drop back in the mix to optimal effect.

Falling somewhere between the styles of Warp recording artists (Chris) Clark and Harmonic 313, Sahy Uhns' debut is a beautiful, danceable sound collage that's good for the car or the dance floor.

- Text by Scott Morrow. Read the full review here.

Honorable Mentions

Class Actress: Rapprocher (Carpark)

Cradle of Filth: Evermore Darkly… EP (Nuclear Blast)

Guantlet Hair: s/t (Dead Oceans)

House of Low Culture: Poisoned Soil (Taiga / Sub Rosa)

Jonti: Twirligig (Stones Throw)

Kuedo: Severant (Planet Mu)

M83: Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming! (Mute)

Moholy-Nagy: Like Mirage (Temporary Residence)

Puscifer: Conditions of My Parole

Trayer: Afterlife an Abandoned Theme Park (Porter)

My Brightest Diamond: All Things Will Unwind (Asthmatic Kitty, 10/18/11)

My Brightest Diamond: "Reaching Through to the Other Side"

Detroit-based singer/songwriter Shara Worden has long made a career as an indie-pop mercenary. Over the past decade or so, she has lent her talents to Sufjan Stevens’ Illinoisemakers, collaborated with The Decemberists, covered Radiohead for an OK Computer tribute album, appeared on numerous compilations (including her excellent cut on Dark Was the Night), and contributed to the chamber ensemble yMusic (which also includes Bon Iver, Antony & the Johnsons, the New York Philharmonic, and Rufus Wainwright).

Clearly, Worden has no problem keeping busy. But even in the midst of her many endeavors, Worden has found time for her indie-pop pet project, My Brightest Diamond, without ever skimping on musical quality or integrity.

Such is the case on All Things Will Unwind, My Brightest Diamond’s third effort on Asthmatic Kitty, as Worden’s talents are as focused and as strong as ever. Indeed, the most engaging aspect of My Brightest Diamond is undoubtedly Worden’s voice. With such grace and skill in tow, it’s no wonder that so many acts enlist Worden as a hired hand. Her voice is so pure, so strong yet delicate, so confident and dynamic, that there is no denying the presence of an immense talent. Swaying between sweet, soft-edged crooning (“She Does Not Brave the War”) to full-on, forceful belt-outs (the latter half of “Be Brave”), Worden knows exactly what she’s doing. The songs swell and sway, kept adrift — and often take flight — thanks to Worden’s cosmic vocal work.

But for people familiar with My Brightest Diamond, this isn’t much of a surprise. Worden’s success came because of her spine-tingling vocals. Her new album, however, also boasts refined musical and instrumental qualities. All Things Will Unwind is suspended by quirky arrangements and orchestrations, serving as a backdrop to Worden’s ever-present voice. And Worden — an educated composer who has turned out several scores for off-Broadway productions — intertwines vocals and music together flawlessly, devising a kind of majestic, orchestral masterpiece.

Yet even with the heavy orchestral influence, there is still much room for variation and experimentation on All Things Will Unwind. “In the Beginning” starts with Andrew Bird-esque finger-picking before breaking into fluttering wind instruments and Sufjan-esque arrangements. And “Ding Dang” experiments with varied percussive approaches. Even vocal themes vary, from political musings on the excellent, faster-paced “High Low Middle” to the endearing “I Have Never Loved Someone,” written for her newborn son. There are dueling vocals on “Everything is in Line” and elegant, sweeping strings on standout track “Escape Routes.” All of these variations keep you guessing what surprise the next track will bring.

When all is said and done, All Things Will Unwind clearly stands as a thing of beauty. There is a heartfelt genuineness permeating each song, and the culmination of strong musical prowess, intense lyrics, and vigorous vocals make it My Brightest Diamond’s best effort yet. With talents like these, Worden should remain a very busy woman for years to come.

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.

Son Lux: We Are Rising (Anticon)

Son Lux: "Rising"

Composer / pianist / electronic artist Ryan Lott writes music for a post-production company, for dance productions and the arts, and, when he finds the time, as Son Lux, where he joins the worlds of classical orchestration and hip-hop pastiche.

For his second full-length album, We Are Rising, that spare time was in especially short supply, as the eclectic musician took a challenge from NPR (inspired by The Wire) to write and record the entire thing over the course of the shortest month of the year.

Given the album's level of craftsmanship and production, listeners would never guess the impulsive dare that set it in motion.  Its nine songs are even more meticulously arranged than the Son Lux debut album, At War With Walls and Mazes, and they achieve a remarkable range of sounds, from traditional (woodwinds, brass, strings) to modern (synthesizers, guitar effects, collected sounds).

The combination of styles makes Lott something of a Sufjan Stevens for the beat crowd (Anticon releases his albums, after all).  We Are Rising finds him moving further in Stevens' direction — fewer beats and more neoclassical orchestrations behind the indie balladry.  But these songs still bear a distinct Son Lux stamp, and they're a down payment on an ever-promising future.

Graviton: Massless (Translation Loss)

Graviton: "Mu Lepton"

Featuring guitarist and multi-instrumentalist Sacha Dunable of progressive-metal outfit Intronaut, psych/space/post-metal trio Graviton makes its recorded debut with a husky 10-track full-length.

Moments of elongated singing and slow, deep riffs draw comparisons to Isis and its ilk, but the band as a whole sounds very different. With intermittent piano melodies, synthesizers, 12-string acoustic guitar, and programmed beats — not to mention sonic accessories such as lap-steel guitar, field recordings, and "Celloblaster" — Massless is a new brand of spacey post-metal.

Throughout the album's 45 minutes, Graviton strikes a healthy balance between melody and dissonance, accessibility and complexity, and past and future.  Three-part vocal harmonies coast over plummeting canyons of riffage, only to segue to extended acoustic interludes or spoken-word samples about particle physics.  Post-metal lovers may have a new favorite band, and everyone else has something exciting to discover.

NOW Ensemble: Awake (New Amsterdam)

NOW Ensemble: "Burst"

In 2008, New Amsterdam Records opened shop to release and promote music by boundary-breaking classical musicians. The NOW Ensemble, a melodically inclined chamber quintet, launched the label with its previous album, and Awake ever so slightly expands the group's timbres for another dynamic collection of melodic and rhythmic interplay.

Featuring compositions by NOW guitarist Mark Dancigers, New Amsterdam co-founder / NOW composer Judd Greenstein, and New Amsterdam label-mate Missy Mazzoli, the album finds the ensemble's arsenal of flute, clarinet, electric guitar, upright bass, and piano dancing together in an arresting display of harmony and counterpoint.

Throughout Awake, simple and complex repetitions are deftly woven together, forming patterns that engage listeners while urging their ears to dig deeper, layer by layer.  Even a distant touch of dark, distorted guitar and ominous accents complement "Velvet Hammer" and "Magic with Everyday Objects," and perhaps future albums by NOW Ensemble will share traits with more of the New Amsterdam roster.

Agoraphobic Nosebleed / Despise You: And On and On… (Relapse)

Agoraphobic Nosebleed: "As Bad As It Is"

Despise You: "Bereft"

Short, fast, and to the point. That's the MO of Despise You, a no-nonsense hardcore outfit from California whose first material in 10 years comprises half of this split release with grindcore masters Agoraphobic Nosebleed.

With 18 tracks that average just a minute each, Despise You packs as much into its half as possible, offering terse exclamations over basic riffs, distorted low end, and push beats.  ANb introduces itself with a sludgy down-tempo track — a style that swerves from Agorapocalypse, its last album of assailing tempos, squealing guitar leads, and lightning-quick fret work. Its second track, however, returns those familiar sounds, and the following two "songs" challenge Despise You for the album's shortest durations (25 and 27 seconds).

Bill Frisell: Sign of Life (Music for 858 Quartet) (Savoy Jazz)

Bill Frisell: "It's a Long Story (1)"

Over the span of his 30-year career, guitarist Bill Frisell has shifted further away from jazz and experimental styles and further toward country, western, and folk instrumentals.  Sign of Life, his latest with the string-based 858 Quartet, is another in the instrumental folk vein, albeit one whose group was borne of improvisation.

The 858 Quartet is Frisell plus three esteemed string players — violist Eyvind Kang (Secret Chiefs 3, Sunn O))), John Zorn), violinist Jenny Scheinman (Vinicius Cantuaria, Marc Ribot), and cellist Hank Roberts (Tim Berne).  In 2005, they created an improvised take on works by German artist Gerhard Richter, but they've since grown into a regular unit, and Sign of Life marks a decided shift to composition.

Written during a composing retreat, the album has soloing and apparent moments of improv, but it's markedly closer in style and spirit to Frisell's Disfarmer project or Beautiful Dreamers trio (which also features Kang).  The Richter 858 album, which is much more dissonant and whose beauty is more subjective, might be best considered a musical caterpillar — eventually morphing into something more striking and graceful.

Honorable Mentions

Blue Sky Black Death: Noir (Fake Four)

Boxcutter: The Dissolve (Planet Mu)

Daedelus: Bespoke (Ninja Tune)

Deafheaven: Roads to Judah (Deathwish)

Steve Earle: I’ll Never Get Out of This World Alive (New West)

Explosions in the Sky: Take Care, Take Care, Take Care (Temporary Residence)

Jefferson Friedman (w/ Chiara String Quartet & Matmos): Quartets (New Amsterdam)

Jookabox: The Eyes of the Fly (Joyful Noise)

Kambar Kalendarov & Kutman Sultanbekov: Jaw (Cantaloupe)

Klang: Other Doors (Music of Benny Goodman) (Allos Documents)

Daniele Luppi: Malos Hábitos soundtrack (Ipecac)

Nine 11 Thesaurus: Ground Zero Generals (The Social Registry)

Primordial: Redemption at the Puritan's Hand (Metal Blade)

Small Brown Bike: Fell & Found (No Idea Records)

Tindersticks: Claire Denis Film Scores, 1996-2009 (Constellation)

What are the origins of Le Disquaire / What is your background in music?

When we opened in 2006, there was no independent record store in Saint-Brieuc anymore. We've grown up with such places (and we had been working for several years in that type of shop) where music may be something more than just a product. We wanted to share our passion and experience.

What does the store do particularly well — any specialty genres or formats?

We sell all kinds of music and all formats (including lots of vinyl), which means having the artists that you don't find anywhere else. That's what make us different and that's why we work with many labels and artists (mainly French for the moment).

What is the musical community like in your area?

We are lucky to have a rich musical community in Western France. There are a lot of events all over the year. Les Transmusicales in Rennes may be the the most important. [For] a few years, many bands in all kinds of styles have contributed to this vitality. You may have heard of Yelle, friends of ours; they will release their second album in March and will start their American tour in Coachella.

Which albums has your store sold the most over the past month?

Agnes Obel: Philharmonics (PIAS, 10/4/10)

Timber Timbre: s/t (Arts & Crafts, 1/13/09)

Sufjan Stevens: The Age of Adz (Asthmatic Kitty, 10/12/10)

Funeral Party: The Golden Age of Knowhere (Sony Music, 1/24/11)

What is the "Showcase" series?

The Showcase series consists of having artists playing live in the store (album-release party or acoustic set before a concert in the evening). Since 2006, we've had over 80 showcases with artists such as Emily Jane White, Yelle, Radio Moscow, Laura Veirs, and almost all the local bands.

Any big future plans for Le Disquaire?

We hope to be able to go on the way [that] we do as long as possible, even if it's hard to be independent (as much in France as in the States, I guess…), and to celebrate our fifth birthday at the end of 2011.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

* * *

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Iron and Wine: Kiss Each Other Clean (Warner Bros., 1/25/11)

Iron and Wine: "Walking Far from Home"

When Iron and Wine made its debut in 2002 with underground sensation The Creek Drank the Cradle, it immediately became apparent that there was something special at hand. The album — anchored by lo-fi acoustic finger-picking set to Sam Beam’s hushed, harmonized vocals — featured no bells and whistles.  It remains a blunt testament of Beam’s humble offerings as a songwriter and the splendor that he can achieve through it.  Today, when listening to the album, you still get the feeling that the songs were written by Beam while he sat on the front porch of a ramshackle home, located on a dirt farm somewhere down south, singing “Upward Over the Mountain” as the late summer sun sets beyond the horizon.

After releasing the similarly arranged The Sea and the Rhythm EP in 2003, Beam moved forward with a slightly varied approach. However, while 2004 album Our Endless, Numbered Days reintroduced Iron and Wine to the indie world through cleaner production and subtly varied instrumentation, Beam’s uncanny ability to write a song so straightforward yet elegant was still intact. Elements of The Creek Drank the Cradle still shined through, and it seemed that Beam was the new Elliott Smith, the new tender soul, the new whipping boy who endured the battlements of love and loss.

But after three straight years of supplying listeners with remarkable song craftsmanship and an unparalleled dulcet voice, Iron and Wine reemerged in 2005 with the Woman King EP — and something had changed. No longer was Beam content with the hushed, folk-ridden lullabies that he had crafted so perfectly in the previous few years. Instead, he was determined to make noise, to make you notice him. In 2007, The Shepherd’s Dog confirmed this, featuring drums and a barrage of percussion, electronic effects, keyboards, flanged vocals, jangly pianos, and a number of other tricks. It was as if Beam were trying to prove that he wasn’t a one-trick pony — that he could be just as experimental as he could melodic.

Now, with Kiss Each Other Clean — the band’s first major-label effort since leaving native indie label Sub Pop — Beam has written another chapter in the ever-evolving songbook of Iron and Wine. If The Shepherd’s Dog’s purpose was to marry Beam’s old-world folk hymns with his more experimental, stylized jamborees, then Kiss Each Other Clean is his attempt to abandon his roots entirely.

The album picks up where The Shepherd’s Dog left off and doesn’t look back — ever. From the onset, it’s apparent that this will not be a typical Iron and Wine album. Though the opening track, “Walking Far From Home,” features a confident, catchy melody at the forefront, always so prevalent in Beam’s songs, the vocals are flanked by fuzz, piano, spacey harmonies, drums, keyboards, and fizzling digital effects—a far cry from a band that started out with one man and an acoustic guitar.

And the album only gets more diverse from there. “Monkeys Uptown” features an Of Montreal-esque bass line paired with strange sound effects, percussion, xylophone, and an electric-guitar solo; “Big Burned Hand” features a clownish saxophone, a rock organ, and hokey keyboard effect akin to Super Furry Animals; and “Rabbit Will Run,” featuring a recorder and a variety of tribal drumming, sounds like a stripped-down experimental collaboration with Four Tet. But perhaps the most interesting aspect is that, in addition to the band’s new-found love for experimentation, there is scarcely an acoustic guitar present on the album at all.

Aside from a few tracks, Beam has abandoned the instrument completely. The bright side, though, is that he is able to orchestrate his lovelorn song structures and melodies by other means. With a barrage of instruments present at all times throughout each track, Beam has left no room for the simple sanctity on which his songs were once founded. Instead, he has taken those delicate melodies to a higher level, as it is apparent that he’s trying to achieve something bigger, something better, something magnificent. (Perhaps that’s why he jumped from an indie label to a major one.)

Fans might want to think of this as Iron And Wine’s The Age of Adz. (Beam even drops an F-bomb, just as Sufjan Stevens did, to the shock of loyal fans). And like Stevens’ unique songwriting tendencies that are still being displayed on his latest effort despite the drastic change in approach, Beam’s gift for writing and arranging quality tunes is able to shine through all the digital ornamentation and multi-instrumental adornment.

When you strip these songs down, it’s very likely that Beam originally crafted them on an acoustic guitar, just like the old days. On a track like “Tree By The River,” you’re able to understand that the original Iron and Wine is still at the heart of each song. Kiss Each Other Clean is the antithesis of where Iron and Wine once stood; it is the anti-Creek Drank the Cradle. But to Beam’s credit, he’s made all the right moves.  A band should evolve, not remain static, and this latest effort is certainly a sign of that. It should be interesting to see where Beam takes his brainchild from here.

The shop attracts a diverse clientele, and its ability to draw business from collectors and dealers around the world has fueled its success. Though its strengths are numerous, Kingbee is unparalleled in its selection of Northern soul vinyl. We spoke with Les Hare, Kingbee's owner, and got the lowdown on this music mecca.

Mike holds Kid Canaveral's Shouting At Wildlife

What was your motivation for starting a music store? / What is your background in music?

Always was a big record collector, then [I] started doing record fairs with my spares, and it kinda carried on from there. I have also deejayed off and on since 1971.

How has Kingbee survived the digital boom?

By having a loyal customer base both locally and across the country. We also get record dealers from Japan regularly visiting to replenish their shop stock. Sales from our website help, but mostly it's the large amount of stock that we turn over in the shop.

Does Kingbee have a specific area of expertise? What draws people from far and wide?

If we had to say one genre in particular, it would be Northern soul, as we have thousands of 7-inch singles and a great selection of compilation CDs. We also sell a lot of reggae on vinyl and alternative, jazz, blues, soul, dance, and classic artists like The Beatles, [Bob] Dylan and Tom Waits.

Les holds Stone Roses' 20th anniversary reissue

Which albums has your store sold the most over the past month?

Belle and Sebastian: Write About Love
Arcade Fire:  The Suburbs
The xx: X
Bob Dylan: Bootleg Series Vol.9
Sufjan Stevens: The Age Of Adz

What is the weirdest special order request you've ever received?

Well, we’re next to a chemist (pharmacist) and a news agent, so we always get asked for things like nail clippers and scratch cards by mistake, but the weirdest music request I can think of is [when] the purple woman who only liked purple things bought a copy of Purple Rain on purple vinyl from the shop. She had absolutely no interest in the music at all.

How would you describe the Manchester music scene today?

Healthy, as always. We are primarily a secondhand store, so we don't sell a lot of local artist CDs. We have been blessed as a city over the years with some of the best-ever bands.

Any big future plans for the shop?

To increase online sales, but not at the expense of having less stock in the shop.

As usual, ALARM leaves no genre unexplored in our list of this year's overlooked gems.

Sigh: Scenes from Hell (The End, 1/19/10)

Sigh: "The Summer Funeral"

With a history of fusing other revered genres to a doomy combination of black metal and thrash, Japan's Sigh used its eighth studio album to deliver symphonic, epic metal that calls upon classical instrumentation to top its rock foundation.

Brass, woodwind, and string instruments — as well as organ and piano — accent as well as lead sinister melodies that take surprising turns through fanciful themes. Raspy, menacing vocals coat each track, resulting in a dramatic presentation that isn't much at odds with its complex backdrop.

RJD2: The Colossus (RJ’s Electrical Connections, 1/19/10)

RJD2: "Games You Can Win"

Following a divisive album that saw the introduction of poppy, soulful vocals, producer RJD2 returned with something of a split release — an album that leaves no shortage of accessible, vocal-driven tunes but that emphasizes some inventive instrumentals.  Whether or not you dig the soulful RJ, there's no doubt that the music on The Colossus is some of his best to date.

Chicago Underground Duo: Boca Negra (Thrill Jockey, 1/26/10)

Chicago Underground Duo: "Spy on the Floor"

For 15 years, the Chicago Underground Duo (and Trio, Quartet, and Orchestra) has been an avant-garde jazz outlet for prolific Chicago musicians Rob Mazurek (Exploding Star Orchestra, Isotope 217) and Chad Taylor.  Boca Negra is an interesting dichotomy, as spiraling vociferation leads to upbeat grooves, shifting piano chords, harmonic electronics, and ambient samples.

Algernon: Ghost Surveillance (Cuneiform, 1/26/10)

Algernon: "Broken Lady"

The brainchild of guitarist Dave Miller, Algernon walks a thin line between melodically driven post-rock and instrumental unconventionality.  Ghost Surveillance places greater emphasis on synthesizers and sprawling song structures, but at its core is the combination of accessibility and technicality that has defined Miller's style. Noisy, circular rock riffs transform to tranquil, wandering passages. "Timekiller," the album's fourth track, is a beautiful, buoyant number — and one of the band's best creations to date.

Bei Bei & Shawn Lee: Into the Wind (Ubiquity, 1/26/10)

Bei Bei & Shawn Lee: "East"

In the hands of a marvel, the guzheng — a gorgeous Chinese zither — resonates with tactile beauty as its many strings are plucked with precision.

Bei Bei, a native of Chengdu, China, is one such musical technician. And this collaboration with Shawn Lee, a prolific producer who can man as many genres as he sees fit, is undoubtedly one of the year's finest albums.  Together, the two use Into the Wind to navigate through funky down-tempo jams, Kung-Fu flavor, hip hop, soul, and driving grooves.

Daníel Bjarnason: Processions (Bedroom Community, 2/1/10)

Daníel Bjarnason: "Bow to String I: Sorrow Conquers Happiness"

Best known as a conductor and arranger for indie groups such as Sigur Rós, composer Daníel Bjarnason also holds a lofty classical résumé. Processions, his proper debut, is, at many points, a challenging classical work.  Powerful cellos scale and race with crackling percussions before settling into gently bowed and pizzicato string accompaniments; easily half a dozen strings battle for dominance in a sorrowful, harmonic piece that resonates long after hearing it.  Undoubtedly, Processions is a daring and original debut.

Shining: Blackjazz (Indie Recordings / Distribution, 2/2/10)

Shining: "Fisheye"

Beginning as an experimental acoustic jazz ensemble, Norway's Shining — the brainchild of saxophonist Jørgen Munkeby — transformed to a progressive jazz-fusion outfit before delving into its darker side for a collaboration with black-metallists Enslaved.

Blackjazz pushes deeper into the band's dark recesses, forging a progressive industrial sound for the young century.  Big, complex rock riffs, twisted through gnarly distortion, form the foundation and support a mass of frantic, whirring synth lines and gut-wrenching black-metal screams.  In all, Blackjazz is a new epic — and perhaps the best metal album of 2010.

Pillars and Tongues: Lay of Pilgrim Park, LP + download (Endless Nest, 2/9/10)

Pillars and Tongues: "The Center of"

With just three members, Pillars and Tongues manages to craft powerful folk abstractions and interwoven, trance-inducing vocal dynamics. Both composed and improvisational, these shifting forms evoke spiritual vibes in their soulful essence, heavenly harmonies, and repeated patterns.

Dessa: A Badly Broken Code (Doomtree, 2/9/10)

Dessa: "Dixon's Girl"

The only female member of Minneapolis hip-hop collective Doomtree, Dessa is a spoken-word vocalist, singer, and MC whose awaited full-length was finally released earlier this year.

On A Badly Broken Code, her true solo debut, Dessa's vocal diversity is matched by its underlying music, ranging from hard-hitting beats and rhymes to lilting harmonic overdubs.

The Bastard Noise / The Endless Blockade: The Red List (20 Buck Spin, 2/16/10)

The Bastard Noise: "Mutant World of Shame / Underworld"

A spinoff of treasured "power-violence" hardcore group Man is the Bastard, The Bastard Noise is approaching its 20th anniversary of creating noisy electro-doom brutality.  For this split release with hardcore/punk experimentalists The Endless Blockade, the group utilizes the trademark drum-and-bass style of Man is the Bastard in combination with its far-out sounds.  The Endless Blockade contributes three tracks to the release — one 14-minute epic and two avant-garde remixes.

Freeway & Jake One: The Stimulus Package (Rhymesayers, 2/16/10)

Freeway & Jake One: "Know What I Mean"

Continuing his life after Roc-A-Fella Records, former freestyle star Freeway now makes his debut on Rhymesayers, a fitting new home — if only temporary before a move to Cash Money.  Fellow Rhymesayers standout Jake One provides a funky, malleable backdrop for Freeway's fiery delivery and lyrics that are alternately personal and light in content. And though Freeway deserves his accolades, Jake One's production is the MVP of this collaboration.

Carolina Chocolate Drops: Genuine Negro Jig (Nonesuch, 2/16/10)

Carolina Chocolate Drops: "Hit 'Em Up Style" (Blu Cantrell)

Beholden to the traditions of Americana and early African-American folk, the string trio Carolina Chocolate Drops continues blurring the lines of old and new. On Genuine Negro Jig, the group's fifth album, a few original numbers and a trove of traditionals take root in banjo, fiddle, and percussion. Three-part harmonies shimmer on the famous folk tune "Trouble in Your Mind," and simplicity shines on gripping renditions of "Why Don't You Do Right?" by Kansas Joe McCoy and "Trampled Rose" by Tom Waits.  Most surprisingly, Genuine Negro Jig includes an enjoyable rendition of "Hit 'Em Up Style," an unintentionally farcical pop hit by Blu Cantrell.

Mako Sica: Dual Horizon LP (La Société Expéditionnaire, 2/16/10)

Mako Sica: "I'Itoi"

A translation of the phrase "land bad," Mako Sica has more than a nominal Native American influence; the trio's distant vocal reverberations and dirge-inspired tunes recall the spirituality of America's original inhabitants.

Between the vocalizations of Brent Fuscaldo, the melodies of guitarist Przemyslaw Krys Drazek, and the rhythms of drummer Michael J. Kendrick, Mako Sica maintains a strong balance of abilities — with a brooding combination of jangly guitars, reverberated vociferation, and instrumental dynamics.

High on Fire: Snakes for the Divine (E1 Music, 2/23/10)

High on Fire: "Snakes for the Divine"

Stoner-metal trio High on Fire has built a devoted following over the past dozen years as fans fell in love with Matt Pike's gruff vocals and thunderous guitar riffs. On Snakes for the Divine, Pike uses his throat to channel Lemmy Kilmister; meanwhile, the band has picked up its pace and crafted an album that isn’t as outstretched. Hard-hitting riffery leads an effort that, though diverse at times, may be the band’s most driving release.

Jaga Jazzist: One-Armed Bandit (Ninja Tune, 2/23/10)

Jaga Jazzist: "One-Armed Bandit"

Five years have passed since we've heard the powerhouse melodies of Norway's Jaga Jazzist, the post-rock/"nü-jazz" conception of brothers Lars and Martin Horntveth.

One-Armed Bandit, immediately the group's best album, resembles symphonic prog rock, arguably a few steps removed from parts of Frank Zappa's expansive catalog and closer to countryman Jono El Grande's diverse and theatrical style.  This album, however, is much more cohesive than either of those comparisons suggest, and at times it is nearly overwhelming with grooves and harmonious refrains.

Rob Swift: The Architect (Ipecac, 2/23/10)

Rob Swift: "The Architect"

Turntablist/DJ Robert Aguilar, formerly of the X-ecutioners, has long utilized his love of jazz, R&B, and other musical movements to create compelling hip-hop instrumentals while displaying his tight beat-juggling skills.

The Architect is Swift’s foray into the classical world. In addition to a multitude of sampled styles and sounds, classical cuts comprise a substantial chunk of this Ipecac debut. Rearranged strings, organ, and horns often make the foundation of a given track, occasionally evoking high-tension Italian Westerns, as Swift’s scratches dance atop banging beats.

Rotting Christ: Aealo (Season of Mist, 2/23/10)

Rotting Christ: "Aealo"

For more than 20 years, Athens' Rotting Christ has traversed different directions on the metal path.  With its previous release, Theogonia, the group released a striking, original album that fused its dark sound to the ethnic sounds of its ancestors.

Like its predecessor, Aealo features female Benedictine chants, lingual pipes, and a medieval feel. Combined with dueling high-pitched harmonies and powerful guitar work, these new elements highlight an album that should be among the most original metal releases of the year.

Ali Farka Touré & Toumani Diabaté: Ali and Toumani (Nonesuch, 2/23/10)

Ali Farka Touré & Toumani Diabaté: "Ruby"

As two of Africa's most internationally renowned musicians, guitar legend Ali Farka Touré and kora phenom Toumani Diabaté have displayed impeccable abilities while integrating the styles of other cultures into their ethnic sounds.

Each Malian, the two collaborated for the acclaimed In the Heart of the Moon in 2005, shortly before Farka Touré's passing in 2006. Fortunately, the two set aside time to record new material before touring for In the Heart of the Moon, and the result is another beautiful set of duets that sees a posthumous release.

Throughout Ali and Toumani, Farka Touré roots each creation in melodious African-blues pieces. Diabaté's virtuosity accents each track in the form of fanciful scales, which at times evoke classical harpsichord passages, perhaps most notably on "Sabu Yerkoy."

Fang Island: s/t (Sargent House, 2/23/10)

Fang Island: "Sideswiper"

Mostly comprised of ex-Daughters, the good-time rock quintet Fang Island was one of the most quickly ascending bands of 2010, jumping onto tours with The Flaming Lips and Stone Temple Pilots following the release of its first full-length album.

The self-titled release is chock full of palm-muted and speed-infused indie-prog anthems, with über-layered vocal harmonies to go with a triple-thick guitar assault and distorted-bass bludgeoning.  It's one of those rare releases that feels absolutely radiant and thrashing at the same time.

B. Dolan: Fallen House, Sunken City (Strange Famous, 3/2/10)

B. Dolan: "The Reptilian Agenda"

Going way back with Sage Francis, rapper B. Dolan is a like-minded MC and slam poet whose style isn't terribly dissimilar to that of his long-time friend. Fallen House, Sunken City is Dolan's second full-length for Strange Famous, and it's full of the sociopolitical themes (if often in quick blasts or asides) and contentious delivery for which he's known.

In addition to some seemingly personal lyrics, Dolan takes passing shots at big business, taxation, the pharmaceutical industry, the concept of ownership of natural resources, the Israeli razing of Palestinian developments, and, among many other things, the so-called New World Order — dropping clips of Dick Cheney and George H.W. Bush in "The Reptilian Agenda."  On top of Dolan's socially conscious rhymes, A-list production by Alias makes this one of the year's top hip-hop releases.

Archie Bronson Outfit: Coconut (Domino, 3/2/10)

Archie Bronson Outfit: "Shark's Tooth"
Archie Bronson Outfit: "Shark's Tooth"

With its warbled vocals and driving percussion, British psych-rock trio Archie Bronson Outfit is like a more adventurous Wolf Parade — as comfortable burning up the dance floor with clean, bouncy riffs as it is turning up the reverb and rocking in a garage.

Coconut is the band's first LP in nearly four years, and it kicks off with a crunchy, swirling guitar line and a hypnotic bongo-laden beat. Produced by DFA's Tim Goldsworthy, Coconut gets spaced-out and drone-like at times, but it always offers a hint of pop accessibility amidst the static and haze.