January 16th, 2008
Los Angeles always seems strange in the rain. Jim Morrison once may have said something to that effect. Then again, Jim Morrison once declared himself the lizard king and was known to drink blood at wiccan ceremonies, so maybe he wasn’t the best best guy to take advice from. But he was right in this instance. On those rare moments when actual weather interrupts the city’s 340 days of blue sky and white light, LA takes on an unnaturally sinister tone more commonly found in film noir than in actual everyday reality.
About a week ago, a howling gale shook the town, dumping buckets of sweaty, oily rain all over the city. Everyone panicked. Drivers either ignored the inclement weather to skid into jagged wrecks, or else they inched forward at five miles per, crawling timidly and fearfully as though they’d never seen a drop of precipitation in their lives. It was the sort of storm that made you feel like you were trespassing on the earth. The blocks were flooded and each mile I drove, a deluge of hissing spit battered my windshield. On my stereo, the tweaked out, sugar rush of Los Campesinos giggled and I was struck with the epiphany that at that moment, there was nothing I wanted to hear less.
I wanted storm music. Lightning, thunder and wrath of the gods type shit. Fuck all that twee noise, I wanted to bump In the Future (and watch Back to the Future but that’s a separate, ongoing thing that we must discuss at a later date). So with the wind shaking my car all across the road, the sky pitched and cackling, Black Mountain’s ferocious assault rained down upon my head. The first track, is called “Stormy High.” It might be the most appropriately named thing you’ll hear all year. Another song is fittingly called “Wild Wind.” The album itself is a brooding, towering heavy work of psychedelia. A drug-addled, shambling record that re-shapes Sabbath, Pink Floyd, Led Zep, into an unsettling, gorgeous mass. To paraphrase the words of another man often compared to the late lizard king, it’s enough to make you want to make it rain.
Buy In the Future
From In the Future
MP3: Black Mountain-”Tyrants”
From Black Mountain
MP3: Black Mountain-”Druganaut”
Posted in Album Reviews | 5 Comments »
November 28th, 2007
About three weeks ago when I was in New York, Tal Rosenberg pretty much gushed non-stop about the Burial record’s brilliance. At the time, I didn’t even know that the London-based Dub Step producer had a new album coming out, which isn’t much of a surprise considering fewer than ten people know his actual identity, he doesn’t do shows and he’s not exactly known as being PR friendly. Apparently, his eponymous first record was named last year’s Album of the Year by The Wire, but since I have a hard-time justifying spending ten bucks on an issue of a music magazine, I don’t read The Wire.
In fact, other than a spectacular track called “Unite” on a Dubstep primer I own, it’s safe to say that all I knew about Burial three weeks prior was that “Ceremonial burial” was a crucial and awesome civilization advance in the greatest computer game ever made.
Since then, its been hard not to read about Burial, with every music magazine from London to Brooklyn to E. Brooklyn, rushing to heap it with praise. So I’m a little hesitant to even bother wasting any more words on an album that basically everyone knows is great and at this point, it feels almost bandwagonesque to even chime in, but fuck it.
The thing is, I was pretty underwhelmed by Untrue on the first few listens. It’s not the sort of record that makes much sense in supine, sun-stunned Los Angeles. It’s a bleak record, ideal for wintertime New York or London, a druggy drunken stagger through black drizzle and an incinerating 5:00 a.m freeze. It’s as asphyxiating and claustrophobic as it is austere and beautiful, a mess of of gurgling vaporous soul samples and popping, crackling, two-step drums. Tal called it the sound of the world eating you alive and that’s as accurate a description as I’ve read. Download the MP3’s below, but you’re better off buying the record and waiting for the right time to let Burial’s melancholy, menacing mood music warp its way through the contours of your mind.
See also ex-Stylus editor Todd Burns’ review in the LA Weekly
Buy Burial-Untrue
Download:
MP3: Burial-”Archangel”
MP3: Burial-”Ghost Hardware”
Bonus: From Box of Dub (Dub Step and Future Dub)
MP3: Burial-”Unite”
Posted in Album Reviews | 6 Comments »
November 18th, 2007
I only received a few hundred words in the Times to review Free at Last, mainly because I couldn’t tell my editor in good faith that the record deserved more. I get why people have been buzzing on it. The first two leaked singles (”It’s Over”) and the Jay-Z collabo were nice. And sure, the Roc’s back and that deserves some ink, even though Beans-excluded, Jay’s track record at exposing new talent to to the world is piss-poor (or have you forgotten Sauce Money and A-Mil?). Not to mention the fact that both Curtis and S. Dot are on-board as Executive Producer’s. But honestly, after listening to Free at Last, I’m convinced that he only got the back cover of the Fader because the hipster nation admired the sheer lustrousness of his beard.
I’ve been reading Check the Technique lately and more than anything it re-affirmed the stark differences between the hip-hop of yesteryear versus that of today. Specifically, the importance that rappers previously placed on originality. Whether it was De La’s black hippies gimmick, M.O.P’s rap as Premo-produced scream metal, or Digital Underground’s hip-hop Funkadelic, it was damn near impossible to make a name for oneself without a fresh identity. Sometime in the last decade that idea was lost (and yes, I imagine it has something to do with Puffy).
In a rap world where Young Jeezy isn’t laughed out of the building and “journalists” don’t bat an eyelash at calling Lil Wayne the greatest rapper alive, Freeway is certainly far from bad. But he’s even further from being good. Strip him of big name guest appearances and his Just Blaze-lite beats and the guy is nothing more than another humorless “hustler/rapper” (and not the other way around.) I called Free “JV Jay-Z” in the Times review, but that might be a bit too charitable. He’s more like a poor man’s AZ. The type of MC that can spit a solid 16, but one summarily incapable of projecting himself as anything more than a) a hustler b) a cocaine aficionado c) someone who reps the streets (and yes, Free at Last actually has a song called “Reppin’ the Streets.”). Don’t get me wrong, Free at Last certainly has its moments. But truthfully, you’re better off playing Reasonable Doubt for the 532nd time, or even digging up that old copy of Do or Die, or hell, trying to grow your very own billy goat beard.
Review of Free At Last in the LA Times
MP3: Freeway-”It’s Over”
MP3: Freeway ft. Jay-Z-”Roc-A-Fella Billionaires”
Posted in LA Times, Album Reviews | 13 Comments »
November 15th, 2007
I immediately dismissed White Williams after noticing he was tabbed as the opening act on the Girl Talk/Dan Deacon Hipster Headache 07! tour (sponsored by Dewars.) Then I saw his album art, begging to be filed into the “why can’t irony finally die?” category. But upon closer examination, wading into this American Apparel infested territory looked shockingly promising, considering the album art featured two people hitting a hookah and exhaling the word, Smoke. Good enough for me.
Unlike his ex-tourmates, Williams’ music doesn’t sound like it was composed after an all-night snort-fest consisting of 4 Adderrals, two rails, and a few pixie sticks for good measure (dude, you haven’t lived until you’ve taken bumps from the green flavor). Instead, the man born Joe Williams pays homage to the archetypal hipster tropes: Bowie, Eno, Roxy Music, T. Rex, Beck. While the sound might not be that original , the 23-year old New Yorker has synthesized his influences well to produced one of the year’s best debuts. As Eric “Marathon Packs” Harvey so aptly put it in his Pitchfork review, “Smoke could be Midnite Vultures Redux: Something for the Blunted.”
So while White Williams might roll with a few too many emaciated dudes in throwback Pirates caps, ultimately Smoke deserves some burn (da-dum ching). Even if he’s a lot less cool than White Goodman (who would most certainly whip that flabby Dan Deacon into shape.).
But Seriously, I Really Do Have Shackles
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Download:
MP3: White Williams-”Headlines”
MP3: White Williams-”The Shadow”
Posted in Album Reviews | 2 Comments »
October 25th, 2007
Now that “Fiascogate” has crushed the dreams of the Okayplayer message board junkies who’d hoped to anoint him the rightful heir to the Native Tongues conscious rap throne, they’d be well served to redirect their dork-outs (like Buggin’ Out, but nerdier) towards 24-year old South Carolina MC, Danny!, a rapper/producer who reminds me of what everyone hoped Lupe would be pre-Fiasco fiasco.
Of course, the attention paid to fucking up “Scenario” was wildly overblown and only received the coverage it did because a) it was on national television and b) instead of apologizing, Lupe got more defensive than Ann Coulter at a Hanukkah celebration. I’m all for people having their own opinions, but I think most of us can agree that Hammer was not more important than Tribe. And if you don’t agree, go listen to “Pumps and a Bump?” again. If anything, the debacle merely proved that underground heads were wrong in the first place to even think Lupe would be the next Tribe, De La, or the J.B.’s (this, of course, being categorically impossible).
However, if it were possible, I would hope that the next Tribe would have a better sense of humor than Lupe, who despite being a very good rapper has a comic ability roughly akin to your average Lesbian Tax Attorney and/or Bill O’ Reilly. What’s often missed when discussing the whole “Tribe is the Greatest Rap Group Ever” theory (admittedly, not a bad theory), is the fact that the entire Native Tongues crew were a bunch of funny dudes. For every “Scenario” there was an “I Left My Wallet in El Segundo,” for every “Electric Relaxation,” Phife would describe himself as the height of Muggsy Bogues, with the complexion of a hockey puck. Shit, De La were one of a handful of rappers to ever successfully utilize the comedic interlude.
Somehow, Prince Paul is Responsible for Both This and MC Paul Barman
Which brings me to Danny!, a 24-year old South Carolinian who released two studio albums and two beat records before realizing some minor success with last year’s Charm, an LP that earned him a spot on the Grammy short list and a deal with Def Jux. Like Lupe, Kanye, Little Brother, and every other rapper that ?uestlove has kissed with his neo-Native Tongue, Danny!’s identity comes in opposition to the gangster posturing of the “mainstream.” He went to a liberal arts college, his rhymes are clever and complex, his beats are a Fruity Loop bowl of 9th Wonder and The Ummah, and his influences are unmistakable. A loose homage to De La Soul Is Dead, Danny Is Dead! aims to emulate De La less in actual content and more in that record’s idea of being a third way between the daisy age and dope boys.
What ultimately makes the record so likeable is Danny’s wit and sense of self-awareness. He boasts that he’ll use his fame to get Raven Symone’s phone number. (Why I’m still not sure). On “Rhyme Writer Crime Fighter” he imagines himself as a rhyming super hero aiming to get home in time to watch “Seinfeld.” On “Press Conference,” he admits he doesn’t get a lot of love outside of the two or three people who know about him. Hell, the full name of his website reads “DannySwain…but who cares?” Don’t worry though, this isn’t on the MC Paul Barman “It’s funny because I know how bad I am” tip, Danny! has punch-line humor too, bragging that’s “he’s on iTunes, you’re on iSuck.”
With his official Def Jux debut slated to drop whenever El-P gets off the year-long touring treadmill, Danny has flashed enough potential for one to think that he has a shot at greatness in the future. Yet for that to happen, he’ll need to transcend his influences and create his own De La Soul Is Dead, rather than merely try to re-create it. In the meantime, Danny Is Dead! is enjoyable enough to leave you willing to listen to his request to “Let, Let Me In.”
Buy Danny is Dead
Download:
MP3: Danny!-”Rhyme Writer Crime Fighter”
MP3: Danny!-”Check It Out”
Posted in Album Reviews | 5 Comments »
October 16th, 2007
I usually re-post my Stylus articles in their entirety here, but it feels wrong to to do so for this one, as seems to make a lot more sense over there. I told my editor, Todd Burns, it’s either one of the best things I’ve ever written for them or one of the worst. Hopefully, it’s the former, apologies for wasting your time if it’s the latter. Either way, this is a great record from what I consider to be one be the finest songwriters I’ve heard in a long long time. Even though their band name still sucks.
My Stylus Review of Sunset Rubdown’s Random Spirit Lover
Download:
MP3: Sunset Rubdown-”Up on Your Leopard, Upon the End of Your Feral Days”
MP3: Sunset Rundown-”Winged/Wicked Things”
From Shut Up I Am Dreaming
MP3: Sunset Rundown-”Stadiums and Shrines II”
From Sunset Rubdown EP
MP3: Sunset Rubdown-Three Colours II
Posted in Album Reviews | 2 Comments »
October 9th, 2007
Cease to Begin, the sophomore effort from Band of Horses sees its official Sub Pop release today and has been met with solid reviews, with Pitchfork throwing it a 7.7 and Stylus giving it a solid B. In his piece, Derek Miller wrote that, “Band of Horses can still pen some itchingly addictive tunes. Cease to Begin may well be an album of transition, but these Carissa’s Wierdos have proven enough in just two years to mark them as a band to hear stadium-huge in small arenas and smaller speakers in whatever splotch of this vast humming place you call your own.”
Derek’s right, but if you asked me why I like Band of Horses the answer is much simpler: they still sound an awful lot like My Morning Jacket and early Neil Young. While that that might not be original enough for some, any band capable of successfully channeling the pastoral hayseed goodness of Jim James and Shakey is good enough for me.
The move to small-town Mt. Pleasant, South Carolina seems to make sense for the band, whose first album, Everything All the Time, seemed more grain silo’d and bearded than it did rainy day and caffeine-addled. There’s always been a rural straw-chewing quality to their music, nothing complicated at, just shambling pleasant songs to throw before you go to sleep at night or right when you wake up. This might not be a great album but it’s certainly a very likeable record from a very likeable band. Plus, they name one of their songs “Detlef Schrempf.” Which is awesome. Hopefully the next album will have a song “Xavier McDaniel.”
Download:
From Cease to Begin
MP3: Band of Horses-”Is There a Ghost”
From Everything All the Time
MP3: Band of Horses-”The Funeral”
MP3: Band of Horses-”Great Salt Lake”
Unfortunately, Schrempf is More of a Kraftwerk Man
Posted in Album Reviews | No Comments »
October 9th, 2007
Reading Crock Tock’s review of the Dark Star Orchestra show in San Francisco has gotten me in a Dead sort of mood. To get my fix before I see DSO this coming Saturday at the El Rey, I’ve been listening to The Dead’s Golden Gate Studio’s Autumn demos, recorded on November 3rd, 1965, in the final month of their pre-Kesey, pre-Acid Test days.
What’s most strange about these sessions, recorded under the Warlocks name, is how little they sound like the band the Dead would become. Just six songs and 18 minutes, the cuts are far from the the experimental wankery that you’d expect, and more like lost lost gems from a Nuggets compilation.
This is still Pigpen’s band and the raw lo-fi tracks are filled with squiggling harmonicas, garage rock riffs and creaky organs that sound like a hybrid of the Seeds and the 13th Floor Elevators. For anyone with even a passing interest in the Dead, it comes highly recommended.
Tracklist:
1. Can’t Come Down-3:05 2.Mindbender-2:42 3. The Only Time is Now-2:52 4. Caution-3:21 5. I Know You Rider-2:42 6. Early Morning Rain-3:21
Download:
ZIP: Grateful Dead (Warlocks)-Golden Gate Studios 1965
Posted in Album Reviews | 2 Comments »
October 3rd, 2007
Considering Zilla, is a regular contributor to this site, I’m obviously not the most objective person to evaluate his music. But the truth is, if I didn’t think his music was great, I never would’ve asked him to blog for me in the first place.
Since I first wrote about them roughly a year ago, Clean Guns have systematically appeared on just about every single hip-hop blog in this weird and narrow corner of the Internet. The reason behind this is very simple: Clean Guns have the rare ability to navigate the tightrope between traditionalist boom-bap and electro and indie-rock referencing progressivism. They’re intelligent enough for the underground kids, tough off enough for the coke-rap set to bob their head to.
Coming on the heels of their impressive debut, Sometimes There is Trouble, and this year’s Living in Harmony Mixtape: , the World Domination EP is arguably Clean Guns’ finest work yet. With brilliant beats supplied by Los Angeles producer, World Domination Headquarters, Zilla and his partner Knowledge Don step up their game, displaying a marked improvement on the mic, a testament to their prodigious work ethic. I could say more but the record is available as a free download. If you like smart hip-hop that you can play very loud in your car, chances are this will be one of your favorite records this year. Now, all Clean Guns need to do now is invent a you tube dance craze, then maybe world domination will be within their reach.
Download: Clean Guns-”World Domination EP” (left-click)
Posted in Album Reviews | 2 Comments »
September 28th, 2007
There’s wolves in the garden,” Chris Richard belts out, midway through the fourth song of The Ortolan, the debut from the Silverlake quartet, the Deadly Syndrome. Every time I hear the line, it instantly triggers memories of an ‘80s movie that shall forever remain nameless, a fact I attribute to having spent one too many high school evenings taking bong rips and watching the highs and lows of a hoops-playing teenage werewolf who may or may not have loved a girl named Boof.
Most of Ortolan’s detractors will probably hear something else in the lupine line. They’ll bitch and they’ll moan about how the Deadly Syndrome sound just like [insert critically acclaimed Canadian rock band] here. And they’ll point out the obvious: Richard’s knock-kneed falsetto resembles Spencer Krug, Winn Butler, Alec Ounsworth, and the rest of the many seeds that David “The O.D.B. of Indie” Byrne planted in contemporary yelp rock.
But they’re missing the point. The Deadly Syndrome aren’t trying to re-invent the Catherine Wheel, their brand of rock gladly reads from the same Canadiandie playbook as the rest: the now-familiar array of odd instrumentation including a xylophone and the accordion and the facility to frame anthems into a off-kilter ‘90s Sub Pop song structure. But, at the same time, the Deadly Syndrome make it their own, displaying a distinctly folk tilt that suggests that they’ve absorbed their share of Fairport and Fahey, in addition to the more contemporary Moon and Antarctica/In the Aeroplane Over the Sea touchstones.
Sars: A Far Worse Deadly Syndrome-
Most importantly, The Ortolan shows an inherent knack for transmitting the wild-eyed schizophrenia of the band’s notoriously frenetic stage show to the studio, a difficult task for veteran bands, let alone a bunch of former film school kids who came out of virtually nowhere to become one of Silverlake’s biggest bands in merely months. The Ortolan feels looser than most first LP’s, almost jammy at times, with not a single song clocking in at under three minutes and nearly a third crossing the five minute mark.
The record’s superficially benign instrumental patches reveal exactly why Steve Aoki was wise in dangling a record deal in front of them approximately 16 minutes after they formed (proving once again that no one is capable of resisting the fried rice at Benihana). “I Hope I Become a Ghost” rides out on a flying dust cloud of mad monk piano keys and caveman drums. “The Ship that Shot Itself” is buoyed by an ethereal accordion line that breathes and swells, fleshing out the bare-bones folk guitar line. “Emily Paints” starts out like lukewarm Hot Hot Heat but resurrects itself mid-song like a forest full of dead trees struck by lightning, burning in an orange crush-colored haze of guitars.
The Ortolan makes the typical first record mistakes, of course. Instead of ending on its arena-rock high note, “Emily Paints” tacks on a keyboard-heavy coda that works live but feels unnecessary on wax. “Hearts” commences with a few shoegaze guitars that seem thrown in just because. And the lyrics are merely passable, not yet reflecting the good sense of humor that the band has evinced in their YouTube videos promoting the record.
In the end, it often boils down to something one of my Stylus colleagues recently pointed out: if something sounds good, it is good. The Ortolan is a very good record, perhaps the finest from the batch of bands that has broken out of Silverlake in the last few years. It remains to be seen whether the Deadly Syndrome will evolve into a great band, but judging from The Ortolan’s frequent moments of excellence, I’m willing to bet its follow-up will be leagues better than Teen Wolf Too.
Download:
MP3: The Deadly Syndrome-”Eucalyptus”
MP3: The Deadly Syndrome-”Winter in You”
Posted in Album Reviews | 1 Comment »
