MELOMANIA brings you the rites of Spring in 12 scintillating movements
with at least a couple of these pieces - guaranteed to please any of you intrepid readers.
HONEYGLAZE [LP/CD](Speedy Wunderground UK)
On their first effort, this young is working with music that embraces its naivete openly to charm and disarm. Singer/guitarist/keyboardist Anouska Sokolow is smart enough to know, she should write what she knows - her life. The jangly “Female Lead” casts its gaze upon the world where she can be someone else only to end up (like her hair) making herself less like herself. Behind Sokolow, the rubbery basslines provide a bit of R.E.M.-ish countermelody and the drums never interfere. While Honeyglaze may be offering up yet another slice of teenage life, Sokolow demonstrates a sense of humor about it all. (NOTE: Honeyglaze has charmed its way into an opening slot for Wet Leg.)
DON'T PROBLEM - Liminality [LP](Bridge The Gap)
The London Underground Jazz scene is starting to aggregate into some larger groups. Melt Yourself Down already maximized this motif this year. Now it is time for this octet to give us the proverbial "blow-and-go" album where nothing slows down and everyone goes for broke (witness the near-Heavy Metal ending of "King Kong.") Don't Problem is a monster band, their horn patterns (often led with baritone sax) are sharp ("Lemon Party Boys" mixes its tough staccato underbelly with a legato-note laden near crime drama-like theme - and a touch of mariachi.) Drummer Rudi Schultz-Wiremu is in the same zone as Moses Boyd consistently driving every song harder up the hill. His brother Louis has a sweet tone in the lower register and can create some riffs that just thump ("Liminality.") Don't Problem is another stunning phase of the continuing evolution of Jazz.
ERICA ESO - 192 [LP](Hausu Mountain/Redeye)
CHELSEA JADE - Soft Spot [LP](Create AUS)
On this pair of breathy vocal/strong female Electronic Pop albums, the group Erica Eso and the artist Chelsea Jade push their slinky, dancefloor-ready Pop in a pair of slightly different directions. Erica Eso's Angelica Bess sings like a rapper. She pushes and pulls her words around the sizzling (but straight beats) to lend propulsion. In the heartfelt "Home Is a Glow," Eso even stops on a dime for a doubled-part that is rhythmic in its own right. The spartan drum machine rhythms are accented with Mac DeMarco/Steve Lacy style guitar and colorful synth washes. Erica Eso roots their songs in familiar terms but allows them to spin out of control into alternate patterns and unexpected detours. "192" never feels too progressive or even off-kilter, as Erica Eso manages to keep all their changes in context to their melodic plasticine Soul.
Chelsea Jade (friend of Lorde) sounds a bit like her friend (the "Royals" -ian verse rant on "Good Taste") until she wisely allows the synths to envelope her voice. Once she finds her way into the dense backdrop ("Optimist") whether breathy or in her slyly powerful high range, her voice in all forms is caroming off of everything you hear until it is no longer so familiar.
BOB VYLAN - Presents The Price of Life [LP](Ghost Theatre UK)
This daring Hip-Hop collective from London is putting Grime, Hip-Hop, and Punk together into a force of nature. "Presents The Price of Life" takes most of its comparisons from Sleaford Mods, Rage Against The Machine, and Linton Kwesi Johnson. Each of these tracks (even the interlude) immediately feels vital. Bob Vylan is not interested in the current ongoing party culture that has taken over Hip-Hop. Instead, their songs are both political and personal. In that most dangerous way, they sloganeer ("CENSORED (Interlude)/Turn Off The Radio," and the slamming "Pretty Songs,") proselytize (the hardcore "GDP" and the sinuous lesson "Health Is Wealth") and confess ("Must Be More.") The second it loses even a grain of its sincerity, they holler above it all like Reggae toasters shouting above the din of The Bomb Squad. Bob Vylan is arena-ready with in-your-face rebellious lyrics that never pull punches only to then knock you out with razor-sharp riffs and recording ideas ("Phone Tap" is actually staged within the song.) While the truth hurts, this one could fit everywhere.
blackwinterwells - Crystal Shards [CS](Eyeball)
This new strain of Gothic SynthPop infused with Hip-Hop continues to be intoxicating in the right hands. They know how to both echo the chill of their home of Hamilton, ONT and recreate that druggy, acid-washed feeling of Hip-Hop with all the trimmings. Under the layers of effects and devices, Madeleine Winter channels her past with EDM into an overstimulated present (the wild parts of “darkkglass” approach the lower range of Fire Toolz.) “OMEN” shows off a panoply of synth sounds and voices at different speeds to capture a personal world out of control. However, Winter’s genius trick is actually pitching the whole thing down for the dramatic verse. Like the “Sulfur” EP (containing the genius Gothic love song “thread",) blackwinterwells shows real promise proving that there are more variations of grey to color the world.
EIKO ISHIBASHI - For McCoy [LP](Black Truffle AUS)
OREN AMBARCHI, JOHAN BERTHLING, AND ANDREAS WERLIIN - Ghosted [LP](Drag City/Redeye)
Jazz is starting to sound more like the Post-Rock that once took its inspiration from Jazz. Fresh from the score to the Academy Award-nominated “Drive My Car,” the Japanese experimentalist creates three tracks that are feather light but still deeply moving. These songs are improvisational Jazz with a late-Sixties Miles/Eighties-Metheny sense of direction. Melody is the guide “For McCoy” (named in tribute to her favorite cast member on “Law and Order”) but it never overwhelms the mood she creates. “I Can Feel Guilty about Anything” (told in two parts - again like “Law and Order”) is like Dream Pop where the chaos of Miles-ian sounds rises from the mist. “Ask Me How I Sleep At Night” joins Metheny-esque guitar, with saxophones to rise and fall above some fantastic brushwork from Joe Talia. At the point where you think you know just where it is going, Ishibashi tosses in a Joni Mitchell-esque change or the lightest flute parts and a shimmering vibraphone to let it ring in your head just a little longer. Not just for Jazz lovers or Tortoise lovers who became Jazz lovers.
Humility is not an easy facet to communicate in music. Soloing tends to emerge from a sense of bravado. Accompaniment tends to exist to democratically (or dictator-like) push a player to their heights or make the musical message of a group seem like total cohesion. The bass-driven “Ghosted” from Ambarchi, Berthling, and Werliin lives outside of this realm in a phantom place where World, Jazz, and the Avant-Garde are one. Rhythm is everything to “Ghosted,” the drums and bass are regularly cutting time into different segments through their combinations. Bassist Berthling is double-tracked leading to an otherworldly sound. Drummer Werliin is subtle but never absent, always inventing different accents in the same pattern and laying down a Philly Joe Jones-ish “wham” every now and then. However, “Ghosted” is Ambarchi’s show. His guitar work is revelatory. Mostly, he is using it so far in the background, you have to use your Brian Eno-like “squint” to identify it. In the context of playing with these two as his motor, Ambarchi’s changes often feel like entering a new environment. In addition, the guitar rarely sounds like itself. Here it can be a reverent almost organ-like sound. Elsewhere, he lets it bubble up through gates and delay to almost overwhelm you. At its most guitar-like, Ambarchi lets it devolve to the point that the “solo” is just the guitar making sounds through various periods of vibration and manipulation of this repeating effect. Like good Avant-Garde music, it leaves behind what music even is for textures and ideas that the mind cannot easily translate. Yet, “Ghosted” is not minimal. (The only comparison one can make is with 1975’s “Ictus” from Andrea Centazzo. However, since that record was mostly Centazzo, it regularly finds its Avant-Garde magic in getting carried away.) “Ghosted” works mostly because it is about control. Like some Alan Watts axiom or R.D.Laing theorem, these three musicians turn their compositions into a Moebius strip of sound where it feels as if the music is somehow recreating itself. “Ghosted” proves that true music is each performance combined into that elusive cohesive one.
SON HOUSE - Father of Folk Blues [LP](Hi Horse)
At the beginning of his comeback, Son House was discovered by a whole new generation of fans of Folk music. Like their counterparts in the British Blues Boom, they were looking to the past for music that was alone in its purity. Delta Blues men and women were like method actors - channeling the experience of every day into a simple yet visceral song that could tell their story as well as those of the people around them. So, when Son House re-entered the studio in 1965, he had aged into a wise man. An inspiration to Robert Johnson, listening to his most famous songs ("Death Letter, " "John The Revelator," and "Preachin' Blues") explodes from your record player. All those nights of playing around some campfire or on someone's back porch were communicated in every grizzled howl, sweetly aged slide guitar solo, and words reduced to their bare minimum for both repetition and impact. Whether it did not have the same impact as his earlier recordings would have to come later. "Father of Folk Blues" is a work of discovery - your invitation to explore the lineage of the Blues.
THE BIRDS - The Birds Ride Again [7” BOX](The Flood Gallery UK)
Pity The Birds. What was a great name for a band in the Mod Rock-meets-Tamla Motown days, became an albatross around their necks when The Byrds began their campaign of taking Folk/Rock to the masses. Like all good British R&B bands, they had to scrap their way out of their neighborhoods and eventually win a Battle of the Bands. What followed were these four singles that showed how they gave their Blues covers a real jolt (“You Don’t Love Me (You Don’t Care” originally by Bo Diddley,) pumped volts into Soul (a hard “Leaving Here” that rivals The Who’s rendition, ) and a couple of searing originals written by its most famous member - Ronnie Wood. “How Can It Be?” swaggers like a back-alley fight even with the echo-y backing vocals. While “You’re On My Mind” hops around like a more Mod version of The Yardbirds with Ali McKenzie’s mixture of street tough attitude and sardonic sweetness. The Birds were pulling all the parts of the music they loved together. These singles show the development of their pre-Freakbeat style (as early as 1964-65) and how the system sadly swallowed them and spat them out.
HERON - Twice as Nice, Half The Price [CD](Talking Elephant UK)
Many of the late Sixties Folk albums lean so heavily on tradition, that they forget about how Folk could also be light and freeing. Maidenhead's Heron was indeed very of their time ("Love 13 (Lone)" could be either CSN or Prelude.) So in the Seventies, a lot of Folk bands ventured into Prog - which allowed them to be taken more seriously. However, Heron maintains their Beatlesque love of melodic music. "Something Inside" may not have the best lyrics, but its Band-ian arrangement keeps you starry-eyed throughout. Like their Cambridge brethren Caravan, Heron found warmth in letting the songs (“Big A” and its Danko bassline) carry them along. On the more acoustic cuts, their guitars blend in their most bucolic way. While the tracks only border on British Folk (“Winter Harlequin,”) Heron sounds far more at home on American Folk songs like “John Brown” whose arrangement makes it ring differently. When “Twice As Nice” was released in 1971, they tried to Ummagumma an entire bonus LP of well-chosen covers (Woody Guthrie and “This Old Heart of Mine” for example,) but as the band’s Tony Pook once said in hindsight, “I think that there was enough material there for one very good album, but one quite mediocre double album.” “Twice As Nice” remains a fantastic find, earnestly sung and recorded even though it was their last album.
And now..for the non-bucolic conclusion
DEVIL MASTER - Ecstasies of Never Ending Night [LP/CD](Relapse/The Orchard)
Philadelphia’s Devil Master sounds like a well-worn blast from the past. Wielding thrash drumming and a deathly echo-drenched yowl upfront, this Black Metal from the days when it was closer to Venom. The familiar chorus-laden ring of overlayed guitars against the locomotive chug of their riffing axes is central to their dual-piston power. “Golgotha’s Cruel Song” is classic Thrash with Darkthrone-esque stops and changes. “Acid Black Mass” somehow starts off blistering and finds its gallop over to reach higher until its thunderous bridge. However, it is “The Vigour of Evil” where they really develop their own sound between its clarion call guitar part, the Motorhead-ish middle guitar part, and a low-end massacre that recalls both Iron Maiden and The Birthday Party. Now add in the subtle wash of synths on “Abyss In Vision” and reminisce about Killing Joke or even Sisters of Mercy beneath their six-string squall. Devil Master is busy conjuring some real magick.
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