March 4th, 2010
Sach O endorses ONE indie band a year. This is that band. Listen.
Before carpet bagging, indie-rocking Leafs fans that wouldn’t know a Smoked Meat sandwich from a proper bagel invaded Montreal*, my city already had a vibrant, self-sufficient music scene en francais. Content to move units among the Province’s 6 million Francophones, local musicians were certainly influenced by the outside world, but for the most part there was little dialogue between those aiming for the local market and those hoping to strike it big elsewhere. The last decade’s indie boom changed that to an extent, but there’s still a fairly evident divide between say, Sunset Rubdown and Malajube. The future is bright, however, and increasing cross-pollination between Montreal’s twin scenes is only furthering the cause of good music as acts like bedroom duo Eli et Papillon prove.
Splitting the difference between Franco-folk tradition and international indie pop appeal, singer Elise Larouche and instrumentalist Marc Papillon’s recorded output feels like a demo in name only. The recording’s a little rough, but in the honest way that bedroom pop is supposed to sound rather than the critic-baiting, artificially lo-fi approach currently rocking the blogs. Besides, robust production would be superfluous — with their strong songs, charismatic and gifted lead singer and attention to arrangement, Eli & Papillon’s music doesn’t need to hide behind production parlor tricks, it speaks for itself. Recalling a young Belle & Sebastian (a loaded comparison I admit) with Scottish irony replaced by Gallic Romance, the group’s lyrical concerns fall squarely upon longing, love and loss. Such earnestness could be a fatal flaw but singer Elise’s vocals propel the songs past any clichés, pulling heartstrings with uncommon clarity. With all due respect to punk’s idea that anyone can sing, it’s nice to hear a contemporary indie record by someone who can actually sing.
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February 2nd, 2010
Sach O bringin’ ya Badman Sounds.
I know dear readers, I know: enough with the bass/dubstep already. Jeff lives next to Low-End Theory, that’s his excuse but shouldn’t I be reporting on Studio 1 obscurities or the latest in (potentially but not really) game changing rap? The truth is even more sinister than you think: I talk about this stuff on the site’s (secret, elitist, real-rap hating) forum constantly. I’ve already demanded that the Blurry Drones’ project name be changed to DougBASS Martin. But the fact of the matter is, when you’ve spent most the past decade listening to reissues from your parents’ era and scavenging for the last few shreds of rap that you can connect with in any way, you tend to get excited at the prospect of a current musical movement that you can embrace whole-heartedly. Plus, the leap from dub to dubstep isn’t all that huge as today’s DITDC candidate proves.
As half of the Dub-oriented production duo Smith & Mighty, Rob Smith has had a meteoric impact on Bristol’s music scene for over 20 years. From producing Massive Attack’s Hip-Hop heavy debut single (Any Love) way back in 1988 to early Bristol Jungle experiments to UK-to-JA collaborations with Henry & Louis (Time will Tell), Rob Smith and Ray Mighty have been integral in Bristol’s musical development and the duo have constantly and consistently kept their sound dubwise and bass heavy, no matter the genre or era they’ve worked in. In this respect, Dubstep’s emergence to the forefront of England’s dance culture proved to be a serendipitous occurrence: Rob Smith (now solo as RSD) had been making future-dub for years by the time it found itself a new name and worldwide audience. Released at the tail end of last year, “Good Energy” collects the man’s recent output for Punch Drunk and a few other associated labels and proves that like reverb in a soundclash, dub’s impact has only echoed out further over time.
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November 2nd, 2009
Sach O can’t stop partying.
When it came to vocalists, Reggae fans became increasingly open-minded in the 1970’s. From weirdo toasters to Rastafarian firebrands, Jamaican audiences quickly embraced the unique voices that followed Reggae’s creative boom leaving a number of wonderful Rocksteady acts in the dust. Thankfully, not all soul-influenced groups faded into the sunset–many persisted and found success, bridging their earlier romantic approach with the rebellious spirit of the times, resulting in powerful, gospel-like paeans to Jah and sufferer’s odes to Jamaican life. Of these groups, few were as successful as the legendary Heptones whose collaborations with maverick genius Lee “Scratch” Perry stand as some of the finest Jamaican music ever recorded.
Like the Temptations teaming up with Norman Whitfield, The Heptones’ work with Perry is a daring fusion of pure soul and psychedelic weirdness. Known for velvety voices that would have been just as comfortable belting out ballads in Detroit or Memphis as rockers in Kingston, the Heptones weren’t obvious candidates for the Upsetter’s avant-garde production. Thankfully, what could have been a total mess instead feels like the best of both worlds on Party Time!–a record that merges the group’s perfect pitch with Scratch’s bubbling soundscapes.
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October 13th, 2009
Sach O never joined the Psychic Friends Network.
Paper Mache
Dionne Warwick built her career by flipping the conventions of easy listening and infusing them with soul and passion but it’s still shocking to hear her weary, resigned kiss-off to the 60’s consumer culture she was supposed to embody. While the hippies were raging from the outside, Dionne takes an insider’s look at modern culture’s failure to offer anything of substance to the people whose lives it was supposed to enrich. Years after punk dulled our ears to the electric guitar, it’s still shocking to hear this kind of stuff over xylophones and accordions.
Wives and Lovers
Opening with off-kilter ¾ jazz drumming, “Wives and Lovers” is Dionne getting to play bad girl, threatening a housewife that she’ll steal her man right from under her. On one hand, the whole thing feels like a period piece to modern ears but on the other, just how many R&B singers are singing about the exact same thing with a few extra slang words in 2009?
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October 12th, 2009
Sach O would have totally hit that back in the 60’s.
When it comes to pop music idolatry and indie cred name-dropping, composer Burt Bacharach, lyricist Hal David and singer Dionne Warwick are simultaneously too conservative and too radical to get theirs. They didn’t rock the pop world like The Beatles, waste-away in an acid fueled nightmare like Brian Wilson or produce the Ramones at gunpoint like Phil Spector; so for second-generation flower children and fist-shaking punks, the trio weren’t the first choice in the stylistic-revival lottery. Taken on their own terms however, the Bacharach/David/Warwick alliance was remarkably prescient: their producer-singer format would go on to become the de-facto standard in black pop and their chamber music orchestration would find a home with everyone from twee kids to psychedelic soul artists. Or put another way: how many groups do YOU know that can claim influence on Timbaland and Aaliyah, Belle & Sebastian, Isaac Hayes AND Stevie Wonder in equal measure? These days, Bacharach and David get occasional props, be it Austin Powers shout-outs or band nerds conspiring to bring back string sections but truthfully, they would just be a forgotten (if remarkably talented) 60’s songwriting team if it weren’t for their secret weapon: Dionne Warwick.
Paving the way for every black vocalist who’s tried her hand at the pop charts, a quick look at Warwick’s career reads like a how-to guide to contemporary success. She couldn’t belt them out like Aretha or play teenager like Dianna but Dionne’s take on swinging-sixties pop was equal parts seduction and heartbreak. Combined with her image as a sophisticated black woman, that seduction was something that couldn’t be discounted in an era where inter-racial relationships were still verboten. Before James Brown came out and said that he was black and proud, Warwick was making strides for racial equality by being the sultriest singer on the pop charts, race be damned. Whitney, Mariah and Beyonce all owe their stardom to the post Brill-building pop that Warwick recorded with her producers.
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August 23rd, 2009
Sach O something-something-something Muhammad Ali.
Lyrics. In this dance about architecture, lyrics are the proverbial Tango on a Gehry. For every genre with an expressly coded form of lyricism (say, Hip-Hop) you get two where it’s impossible make an objective statement. Is Jim Morison’s poetry art or the ramblings of an overblown 60’s acidhead? Depends on who you ask. And the plot just gets thicker when you throw in a foreign language: how can a reviewer accurately assess a song when he can’t even understand the words? With this in mind, I approached Brazilian legend Caetano Veloso’s Bicho (Beast) humbly and with but a few tools: a longstanding appreciation for the man’s recordings, an Allmusic profile describing him as “The Bob Dylan of Brazil”, Babelfish and the absolute certainty that you don’t need to understand a word of Portuguese to appreciate the grooves on display.
Best known as a singer-songwriter in Brazil’s late 60’s Tropicalia movement, Veloso is one of those artists that everyone’s heard of and yet few grasp. It’s understandable, considering his intimidating discography spans five decades and over thirty albums. Genres covered include acoustic balladry, psychedelia, straight-forward rock and experimental, to name just a few. Recorded after an eye-opening trip to Lagos for that year’s Art and Culture festival, 1977’s Bicho stands as one of the most interesting and approachable points in Veloso’s oeuvre-boasting a great song collection, an inspired backing band, and clean, occasionally orchestral production that never goes overboard.
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June 15th, 2009
Sach O rides like a Samurai
Fuck a cliché–Marseillais rapper, Shurik’n’s 1998 solo release, “Ou Je Vis” (Translation: Where I live), is poetic autobiography. While that’s like describing rap as “the hood CNN”, Shu’s rhymes about French rap’s second city actually fulfil their aspirations. Marrying an investigative scope to vivid descriptions of personal struggle and a metaphorical exploration of eastern culture, “Ou Je Vis” stands as one of the most uncompromising albums ever recorded.
As a member of the country’s single greatest rap crew IAM, Shurik’n grew from the group’s Phife into an emcee rivaling group leader Akhenaton, playing a major role in the group’s ascent to mega-stardom with 1997’s “L’Ecole du Micro D’Argent”, an album still regarded as the most successful in French history. However, when his solo debut was released the following year, few were ready for the stark collection of pessimistic musings delivered over minimalistic self production. “Ou Je Vis” wasn’t the expected follow up to a blockbuster, rather it was 32 years of frustration put on wax; a personal album preserving man’s struggle and society’s failings for posterity.
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April 13th, 2009
SACH O SACH O Sach O sach o IS IN EFFECT EFFECT Effect effect
The received wisdom is that Dub is first and foremost a technological and chemical achievement. Years before professional remixing and electronic music, Jamaican producers took crude equipment and created a revolution out of reverb, bass and collie weed, setting the stage for the idea of musical recordings as source material rather than final product. Roots music meanwhile, was the thinking man’s Reggae: ideological, idealistic and full of ideas. Black Uhuru and Burning Spear had something to say, Sly & Robbie were a studio rats experimenting with effects.
Granted, with so many versions being producer-only affairs and so many tracks concerned solely with satisfying the sound systems, it’s not unfair to think of dub as music for the body. What’s often forgotten though is that for millions of reggae fans, dub is Jamaica’s own psychedelia: mind expanding music in the vein of Pink Floyd’s Wish You Were Here. So it’s one of music’s great ironies that Jamaica’s psych revolution was often shepherded by England’s punks: a group little enthused by wandering hippie grooves.
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March 16th, 2009
Sach O ate fries with mayo and two burritos while researching this story.
In the mad dash towards Tropicalia, Hindi-Pop, Afrobeat, and every other hastily discovered internet-approved form of non-Anglo pop music, there hasn’t been much room for humor. Seriousness begets authenticity, authenticity begets that warm fuzzy feeling of self-importance in a record nerd and anything remotely funny reminds everyone that we’re still all dealing with pop records and NOT discovering some long-lost culture. Our foul decade was one with irony as a defining virtue, but oddly enough while the “wink-wink-nudge-nudge” so-bad-its-good ethos works for shitty electro, everyone wants their (ahem) “foreign records” to represent an ideal, authentic representation of another culture, sans giggles. Why else would you bother with stuff that isn’t in English?
(Note: I guess I shouldn’t complain. Apparently Irony+Afrobeat=Vampire Weekend, a band that makes the paternalistic accidental colonialism of 80’s “world music” look downright appealing in comparison.)
Chakachas’ Jungle Fever is a funny record. It’s also inherently inauthentic, a funk album by a band of Belgian session musicians specializing in Latin styles already well past their due date among connoisseurs. This would be enough to damn it to the cut-out crates of history, to be dug up by Madlib for some obscure mix-CD except for one important detail: the title track was such a monstrous funk jam that when Polydor released it States-side in 1971, it went on to be a dance floor smash.
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March 11th, 2009
Sach O dedicates this one to his lil brother chilling in Jamaica
When the time of judgment comes to pass, Island Records founder Chris Blackwell better hope that Jah’s into Pop music and not hardcore Roots. All of his accomplishments in promoting Jamaican music aside, his Mango subsidiary’s tempering of Reggae’s revolutionary aesthetic through dubious mixing and poor A&Ring will go down as a capital sin against music.
Case in point: Burning Spear’s incredible Marcus Garvey album. While the record stands as a classic example of Roots Reggae, precious few have even heard it in its intended form. Worried that a concept album about revolutionary black leader Marcus Garvey lacked crossover potential (garsh, ya think?), Blackwell and Island subsidiary Mango records decided to remix the album before its international release, resulting in a brighter, faster, sunnier record.
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