Rap, dubstep, jazzy electronica, experimental, indie and folk. What does it all mean? Just Good Music!
LISTEN AGAIN via On Demand streaming, or you can grab the podcast or click the link below (but not they’re in mono, unlike streaming).
Busdriver has a new album out, and about time! Entirely produced by Belgian producer Loden, it’s lushly melodic, and sees Busdriver mostly singing, albeit still in surrealist phrases and often rapid-fire. More rap-oriented is the bonus 7″, a sarcastic song with additional help from equally obtuse alt-rapper Aesop Rock.
Awesome Japanese dubstepper Goth-Trad is up next, with the first and last tracks from his excellent new album. In the middle I played the insane “Law” from a couple of years back, with a hyperactive bassline, computer game arpeggios and crazy drum fills.
Most of the new SkyRider is way too much in the ratchety wubwub style of US dubstep, which is a shame since he’s better than that. I do like “Empty Houses” though, with its drops into dub reggae and a great female vocal sample.
Back with last week’s find of Michel Banabila, we have takes from the three recent releases I featured then. See that playlist for more info — brilliant electronic-tinged jazz and experimental ambient sounds.
I was inspired by Banabila to dig out Peter Knight’s solo album from last year, and we heard some of his very beguiling minimal jazz composition — prepared piano and electronics under his soft trumpet.
Last week’s centrepiece was from Oren Ambarchi’s new album, and tonight we have the two following tracks, which are also things of beauty. His cover of Kiss guitarist Ace Frehley is rich with doubled acoustic guitar, fingers on wine glasses and wordless vocals.
Italian percussionist Andrea Belfi features again from his ROOM40 album, with loose percussion grooves and abstract electronics, as well as a piece from where I first heard him, in collaboration with Machinefabriek.
And Machinefabriek also has a new 7″ out any minute, on new label Vintermusik (click the link for more details). It’s a brief but gorgeous piece of layered vocal samples.
After The Books’ Nick Zammuto started releasing demos of tracks from his new solo/band project last year, I pulled out his incredible 3CDR set Solutiore of Stareau from 1999, but it wasn’t until now that I listened through it properly. The first two discs are relatively abstract sets of rhythmic guitar patterns and heavily scratched vinyl crackles, but the third (later re-released as Willscher) combines these two modes into some more song-shaped forms, leaning sometimes towards the idm that he was listening to at the time.
Pretty awesome, but even moreso is the demo of “Harlequin“, which I hope ends up on the new Zammuto album.
I’m really not sure that any of the tracks from Sufjan Stevens’ Age of Adz needed remixing, but Shigeto decided to take on the opening track “Futile Devices”, and he makes it more electronic and beat-oriented without obscuring the beauty and delicatness of the original, so props to him.
A few years ago I got an EP on the beloved Static Caravan from a new artist called Beth Jeans Houghton & the Hooves of Destiny. Houghton is a precocious young artist who draws from English folk and other roots musics, and the EP was a real delight. She’s since made a name for herself with an outlandish stage act and a well-crafted image, and her debut album has now landed from the mighty Mute. There’s a bit of an overblown quasi-classical orchestral thing going on, and it’s a little less delicate and straightforward than the earlier EP, but she’s certainly a great songwriter, and the arrangements are strong. I’ve only given it one listen so far, and I’m looking forward to getting to know it better.
And finally, I’d meant to run through a few of the perfect lo-fi pop ditties of Chris Weisman, but ended up running out of time. One take from his latest album, and next week there’ll be lots more!
Busdriver – Feelings [Fake Four Inc.]
Busdriver – Superhand’s Mantra (Fuck Us All) feat. Aesop Rock [Fake Four Inc.]
Busdriver – Here’s to Us [Fake Four Inc.]
Goth-Trad – Man in the Maze [P-Vine/Deep Medi]
Goth-Trad – Law [Deep Medi]
Goth-Trad – New Epoch [P-Vine/Deep Medi]
SkyRider – Empty Houses [SkyRider Bandcamp]
Michel Banabila and Mete Erker – Terra Incognita [Tapu Records]
Michel Banabila – Monochrome Pictures [Audio Tong]
Michel Banabila – MitVz4 [available from Bandcamp]
Peter Knight – Unknowness 1 [listen/hear collective]
Oren Ambarchi – Passage [Touch]
Oren Ambarchi – Fractured Mirror [Touch]
Andrea Belfi – Poaofbp [ROOM40]
Andrea Belfi & Machinefabriek – Pulses & Places 4 [brombron]
Andrea Belfi – D [ROOM40]
Machinefabriek – Ontrafelde tonen 2 [Vintermusik]
Zammuto – mbast goodanswerremix [self-released/re-released by Apartment B]
Zammuto – Harlequin (working version) [demo, released then removed from his Soundcloud] {available if you google it}
Zammuto – swap(a,b); [self-released/re-released by Apartment B]
Sufjan Stevens – Futile Devices (Shigeto remix) [free download from Stereogum]
Beth Jeans Houghton & the Hooves of Destiny – Nightswimmer [Mute]
Beth Jeans Houghton & the Hooves of Destiny – Lilyputt [Static Caravan]
Beth Jeans Houghton & the Hooves of Destiny – Atlas [Mute]
Beth Jeans Houghton & the Hooves of Destiny – Cruel Francis [Static Caravan]
Chris Weisman – music on a tape [Autumn Records]
Listen again — ~ 155MB
enjoyed it!