LTRblog

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Darkside - Psychic (2013)

Darkside is the work of electro-pop minimalist composer Nicolas Jaar and Brooklyn-based multi-instrumentalist Dave Harrington, which steeps Jaar's spacious solo work with brittle bursts of electronic distortion, watery drums, and slick neon guitar patterns. A self-titled EP in 2011 yielded three lengthy songs of the duo's wild combination of airy atmospheres and menacing fuzz, but debut full-length Psychic moves into more compositional territory, though it remains drifty and narcotic in ways similar to its predecessor. The album kicks off with 11-minute standout track “Golden Arrow,” moving like a suite through an intro of dark, fuzzy ambience and wobbling stereo effects into a sleazy, submerged house beat and fragmented synth and string samples. Caught between the creeping underground thump of minimal avant-techno experimentalists like Pole or Gas and the sharp, clean lines of nocturnal pop acts like the Chromatics or James Blake, the song is an unlikely success in its deep contrasts. Space is a primary concern throughout Psychic, with plenty of ambient interludes and raw tape experiments serving as cushioning between pop moments like the oddly bluesy dirge of “Paper Trails” and the dubby shadows of album-closer “Metatron.” Ultimately, it’s the contrasts and the way they fit so well together that makes Psychic a success. The meeting of hurried noise, slick dubstep-styled R&B undertones, wonky blues, and grainy electronics seems destined for ugly clashing, but somehow the organization of sounds, stereo field space, and the amount of distance Jaar and Harrington put between the disparate elements themselves makes so much compositional sense that the album floats by like a strange, faraway dream.

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Josh White - Chain Gang Songs (1958)

http://www.discogs.com/Josh-White-Chain-Gang-Songs/release/2909713

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Maze - Joy and Pain (1980)

With their fourth album, Joy and Pain, Maze and Frankie Beverly once again went gold with little or no support from pop radio. One of the band’s most celebrated releases, this classic soared to the top of the R&B charts thanks to such hits as “Southern Girl” and the haunting title song (which, in 1988, rapper Rob Base would use without Beverly's permission). In interviews, Beverly expressed some disappointment over the fact that Capitol promoted Maze as strictly an R&B act and made no effort to promote Joy and Pain to pop audiences. And yet, Beverly wasn’t about to become less R&B-oriented in order to cross over — his contention was that, like Al Green and Marvin Gaye, he could reach pop radio without having to compromise. An essential album, Joy and Pain is the work of a band that made consistently rewarding soul and funk by sticking to its guns.

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Elton John - Tumbleweed Connection (1970)

Instead of repeating the formula that made Elton John a success, John and Bernie Taupin attempted their most ambitious record to date for the follow-up to their breakthrough. A loose concept album about the American West,Tumbleweed Connection emphasized the pretensions that always lay beneath their songcraft. Half of the songs don’t follow conventional pop song structures; instead, they flow between verses and vague choruses. These experiments are remarkably successful, primarily because Taupin's lyrics are evocative and John's melodic sense is at its best. As should be expected for a concept album about the Wild West, the music draws from country and blues in equal measures, ranging from the bluesy choruses of “Ballad of a Well-Known Gun” and the modified country of “Country Comfort” to the gospel-inflected “Burn Down the Mission” and the rolling, soulful “Amoreena.” Paul Buckmaster manages to write dramatic but appropriate string arrangements that accentuate the cinematic feel of the album.

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Curtis Mayfield - Curtis (1970)

The first solo album by the former leader of the Impressions, Curtis represented a musical apotheosis for Curtis Mayfield — indeed, it was practically the “Sgt. Pepper’s" album of ’70s soul, helping with its content and its success to open the whole genre to much bigger, richer musical canvases than artists had previously worked with. All of Mayfield's years of experience of life, music, and people were pulled together into a rich, powerful, topical musical statement that reflected not only the most up-to-date soul sounds of its period, finely produced by Mayfield himself, and the immediacy of the times and their political and social concerns, but also embraced the most elegant R&B sounds out of the past. As a producer, Mayfield embraced the most progressive soul sounds of the era, stretching them out compellingly on numbers like “Move on Up,” but also drew on orchestral sounds (especially harps), to achieve some striking musical timbres (check out “Wild and Free”), and wove all of these influences, plus the topical nature of the songs, into a neat, amazingly lean whole. There was only one hit single off of this record, “(Don’t Worry) If There’s a Hell Down Below We’re All Going to Go,” which made number three, but the album as a whole was a single entity and really had to be heard that way. In the fall of 2000, Rhino Records reissued Curtis with upgraded sound and nine bonus tracks that extended its running time to over 70 minutes. All but one are demos, including “Miss Black America” and “The Making of You,” but mostly consist of tracks that he completed for subsequent albums; they’re fascinating to hear, representing very different, much more jagged and stripped-down sounds. The upgraded CD concludes with the single version of “(Don’t Worry) If There’s a Hell Below We’re All Going to Go.”

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R. Stevie Moore - What’s the Point?!! (1984)

http://www.discogs.com/R-Stevie-Moore-Whats-The-Point/release/1111159

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Daryl Hall - Sacred Songs (1980)

In what must be the most bizarre coupling ever, Hall is accompanied by none other than King Crimson figureheadRobert Fripp on production and, of course, on guitar. This record suffered at the hands of record company mismanagement. Originally recorded in 1977, Sacred Songs wasn’t granted a release until 1980. RCA worried aboutHall's lack of commercial vision. However Hall and Fripp’s creativity strangely works. Sure, there are pieces that wouldn’t do as singles, but for an album regarded as being so uncommercial, there are plenty that could have been: the wacky title song, “Something in 4/4 Time,” “Farther Away,” and “Why Was It So Easy” (the latter being one of Hall's best ballads). Most bonkers of all is “Babs and Babs,” a straight-ahead Daryl Hall track until a Fripp soundscape kicks in from nowhere! Fripp’s own “Urban Landscape” shows him having withdrawal symptoms from Bowie's infamous Heroes sessions. The onward march of studio technology means that the sound here is slightly dated. Still, it's a must-have purchase, ending with another killer ballad “Without Tears” — Earth magic indeed.

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Black Sabbath - 13 (2013)

There’s a lot of pressure involved with being the rulers of the underworld, and nobody knows it better than Black Sabbath in 2013. Inarguable legends and at least partially responsible for creating heavy metal as we know it with their classic ’70s material, Sabbath have spawned generations of followers and become one of the final words of the genre. There have been countless reunions and mutations of the band following vocalist Ozzy Osbourne's first dismissal in 1978, and even 13 doesn’t quite deliver on fans’ decades-long desires to see all four original members back together. Original drummer Bill Ward sits the record out due to disputes over the recording contract, with Audioslave/Rage Against the Machine drummer Brad Wilk providing beats in his stead. Despite this considerable absence, 13 comes closest to recapturing the desperate feel, plodding grooves, and unparalleled metal magic of those first classic Sabbathrecords than anything the members of the band have done since, in any permutation or combination. Kicking off with two sludgy tracks, each over eight-minutes long, the Rick Rubin-produced 13 takes a few moments to get its legs. Once warmed up, however, each element falls somewhere between studied re-creation of the past and logical progression, be itTony Iommi's spooky guitar tone, Ozzy's nasal howl, or the panic attack dynamics and sense of nuclear dread that made the moods of Sabotage and Vol. 4 so thick. Sharp tempo changes and caustic drop-tuned blues metal riffs make up tracks like “God Is Dead?” and the doomy “Age of Reason.” Many of the album’s eight tracks stretch past the seven-minute mark, full of heavy compositional shifting. The mellower acoustic track “Zeitgeist” rewrites the spacy “Planet Caravan” from second album Paranoid, revisiting the same cosmic motif of that song, complete with Iommi's mostDjango Reinhardt-influenced soloing. The lyrics, all penned by bassist Geezer Butler, are focused on internal religious and mental conflicts, with final track “Dear Father” tackling living with memories of abuse. The album is heavier, more precise, and more interesting than the past several decades of output from the bandmembers would suggest. Without fully replicating the energy of their untouchable first six records, Sabbath have risen to the unique challenge of not becoming self-caricatures, turning in something new while still reactivating the strengths of their younger days. The backwards-looking tendencies of 13 are something the band is fully aware of, as signified by the reappearance of rain and church bells sound effects on the last track, the same sounds that opened their first album in 1970. The influence of earlySabbath has become so omnipresent that it’s come back to influence its very creators four decades later, but the results are unexpectedly brilliant, apocalyptic, and essential for any die-hard metal fan.

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David Bromberg - Demon in Disguise (1972)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demon_in_Disguise

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Ed Blackwell, Don Cherry, Charlie Haden, Dewey Redman - Old and New Dreams (1979)

http://www.discogs.com/Don-Cherry-Dewey-Redman-Charlie-Haden-Ed-Blackwell-Old-And-New-Dreams/release/1178024

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Mount Eerie - Lost Wisdom (2008)

The searching, noisy-then-delicate music of Eric's Trip had a big impact on Phil Elverum's work in the Microphonesand Mount Eerie, so this collaboration with Eric's Trip and Broken Girl singer Julie Doiron and guitarist Fred Squire is inspired, if only because it makes the connection between Elverum and Doiron's music even stronger. Though Lost Wisdom came together during some downtime for the three musicians, its simplicity and immediacy sound intimate instead of tossed off. This is the spare, somber, introspective side of Mount Eerie, with just the barest hints of Squire's guitar adorning Elverum and Doiron's voices. Doiron's singing, both with Eric's Trip and Broken Girl, has always been uniquely lovely and vulnerable, and Elverum uses her as perfectly as he has Mirah, the Blow's Khaela Maricich, andWoelv's Geneviève Castrée on other projects. He and Doiron sound completely natural yet haunting trading verses and harmonies on "Lost Wisdom" and "Grave Robbers" -- both of their voices, and the music that surrounds them, have a deceptively fragile urgency that barely rises above a whisper for most of the album. Even the album's loudest moment, "Voice in Headphones" (which, along with "What?," could pass for one of the bonus tracks on the deluxe version of the Microphones' The Glow, Pt. 2), still fits with the rest of Lost Wisdom's delicacy and directness. That simplicity applies toElverum's songwriting as well; his imagery becomes more tangible with the years, getting to deeper truths about love, death, and rebirth without getting too tangled in words: it doesn't get much more direct than "You Swan Go On"'s "With your hand down my throat/You held on to my heart/And pumped the blood through." "If We Knew..." is a sweet song about aging, love, and marriage that doesn't sound sappy, while a warm glow turns into a destructive fire on "Flaming Home." Mount Eerie take many forms and sounds, showing how comfortable Elverum is with just a room and a guitar or a large cast of players performing his songs; Lost Wisdom is a small-scale gem that shows off his (and Doiron's) gifts to their finest.

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Gary Wilson - You Think You Really Know Me (1977)

Gary Wilson's You Think You Really Know Me may be the weirdest album released in 1977; it's also one of the most influential. The impact of this quirky lo-fi record can never be truly measured. Not many people are aware of it; however, it inspired Beck's sonic collages and showed college radio stations that home tapings shouldn't be ignored. Wilsonrecorded You Think You Really Know Me in his parents' basement, and it certainly has an intimate feel. On "6.4 = Make Out," Wilson sounds like he's whispering in your ear. With a voice reminiscent of Lou Reed's, Wilson aches like a sexually frustrated Barry White. Porno-movie synthesizers create a sleazy atmosphere as Wilson reaches new heights of emotional intensity when he bellows, "She's real/She's so real," at the track's end. A person is left wondering if the girl actually exists or if he's just trying to convince himself that she does. Even more unsettling is "Loneliness," whereinWilson confesses in a distorted, psychotic voice, "Sometimes I wish I were dead," followed by samples of running water and a telephone operator. But this isn't a gloomy LP. "You Keep on Looking" and "And Then I Kissed Your Lips" utilize chirpy new wave keyboards years before they became fashionable. Wilson is having fun on You Think You Really Know Me, and his enjoyment is infectious, especially when his lunatic personality hogs the spotlight.

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The Dynamic Clark Sisters with Mattie Moss Clark - Is My Living in Vain (1980) 

http://www.discogs.com/Dynamic-Clark-Sisters-The-With-Mattie-Moss-Clark-Is-My-Living-In-Vain/master/297348

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Ice-T - Power (1988) 

As riveting as Rhyme Pays was, Ice-T did hold back a little and avoided being too consistently sociopolitical. But with the outstanding Power, the gloves came all the way off, and Ice didn’t hesitate to speak his mind about the harsh realities of inner-city life. On “Drama," “Soul on Ice" (an homage to his idol Iceberg Slim), “High Rollers," and other gangsta rap gems, Ice embraces a first-person format and raps with brutal honesty about the lives of gang members, players, and hustlers. Ice’s detractors took the songs out of context, arguing that he was glorifying crime. But he countered that, in fact, he was sending out an anti-crime message in a subliminal fashion and stressed that the criminals he portrayed ended up dead or behind bars. Another track that some misconstrued was “I’m Your Pusher," an interpretation ofCurtis Mayfield’s “Pusherman" that doesn’t promote the use of drugs, but uses double entendres to make an anti-drug statement. (Ice has always been vehemently outspoken in his opposition to drugs.) In the next few years, gangsta rap would degenerate into nothing more than cheap exploitation and empty clichés, but in Ice’s hands, it was as informative as it was captivating.

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Matmos - The Marriage of True Minds (2013)

After the release of their underrated 2008 analog synth excursion The Supreme Balloon, Matmos applied their conceptual discipline to collaborations with the So Percussion ensemble and old friends like Lesserand Wobbly. Drew Daniel and MC Schmidt also spent those years conducting parapsychological experiments that became the foundation for The Marriage of True Minds, putting subjects in a state of sensory deprivation and transmitting the concept of the duo’s new album to them telepathically. Whether it’s the result of the album’s lengthy genesis or the time they spent working on more restrained projects, this is the freest Schmidt and Daniel have sounded in some time. “Mental Radio" is one of the most audacious tracks, mixing Latin rhythms, sloshing water, traffic noises, and free jazz. And while “Ross Transcript" might be a more formal version of the musique concrète that informs all of Matmos’ music, its collage of radio noise, eating, and other sounds is just as brash. However, The Marriage of True Mindshas its subtle moments. “You," a mellow sci-fi jazz cover of a song by Palais Schaumburg’s Leslie Winerand Holger Hiller, plays with perception as it offers a grand opening statement: percussion that sounds like rattling spoons is actually a tweaked sample of tap-dancing, and as Nautical Almanac’s Carly Ptakintones “Telepathy/We want to know," sleek piano and upright bass glide up to meet her, embodying the need for connection that is at the album’s heart. When Matmos use samples of their subjects describing what they saw and heard, it feels like commentary on how much gets reinterpreted when making, describing, and evaluating art. “Very Large Green Triangles," which first appeared on 2012’s GanzfeldEP, reconfigures singer Ed Schrader’s session into a pomp-filled piece of gothic chamber pop. “In Search of a Lost Faculty" gathers all the mentions of triangles — of both the geometric and musical varieties — during the experiments into an eerie epic that suggests that this may not have been coincidental. Indeed, the silly/scary duality of phenomena that can’t be easily proven or disproven is one of The Marriage of True Minds’ biggest, and most entertaining, themes. Dan Deacon’s throat singing on “Tunnel" is equally intense and playful, accompanied by a pounding house rhythm that exemplifies how Matmos’ music can appeal to minds and feet at the same time. However, the album’s most surprising track is a cover of theBuzzcocks’ “E.S.P." that begins as apocalyptic rock, complete with death metal growls courtesy of Bloody Panda’s Gerry Mak, and punishing guitars from Pleasure Wizard, then morphs into riff-heavy pop sung by Schmidt and Daniel themselves. It’s not their prettiest song, but it’s a bold and strangely fitting end to an album that marks 20 years of Matmos’ music. Effortlessly balancing the duo’s freewheeling, meticulous, ominous, and playful sides, The Marriage of True Minds would be fascinating even without its (admittedly inspired) concept for the way it delivers some of the most abstract, and most visceral, music in their career.