Showing posts with label ntorsell. Show all posts
Showing posts with label ntorsell. Show all posts
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buffaBLOG's Best of 2013: Staff Picks - Favorite Shows Part 1


Editor's Note: As part of our best of 2013 coverage, we asked our staff to write about their favorite live shows of 2013. Shows did not have to take place in Buffalo to be included on this list. Part 2, posted on Dec 5th, can be read here.


Ailsa Forlenza
Jeff Mangum @ Babeville in Buffalo, NY, January 19th

Me: Who is that homeless looking man, with the beard? The one who came through?
Friend: Oh, who knows? Look!
Jeff Mangum walks by, with a puppy. We ogle and try to pet puppy. He pulls away and gives a dirty look.
Other friend: That was Jeff Mangum, guys.

Besides being thoroughly humiliated and probably ruining Jeff Mangum’s mood for the next twenty minutes after that, this show was incredible. Babeville is the perfect venue to house this legend, especially in the upstairs church level. That space is made for aching vocals to soar and pinch every part of you. “My Dream Girl Don’t Exist” blew my brains out. I left reborn.

Jaz Fraizer
Well Worn Boot @ Nietzsche's in Buffalo, NY, July 20th

The first time I saw Well Worn Boot at Nietzsche’s, I felt like I was peeking into someone’s kinky bedroom. That’s probably the best description I can attribute to these guys (I’m super proud of that, by the way). The crowd was thick, with plenty of people to mosh against. And was there ever moshing.


Cliff Parks
Phoenix @ Grove Music Festival in Toronto, ON, August 3rd

I really wanted to go with Wild Nothing with Lesionread at the Tralf but I couldn't deny that for the duration of Phoenix's hour long headlining set I jumped around with insane, reckless abandon as they tore through a set that weaved together nuggets from across their career into a satisfying musical movement with wit, interludes, and dramatic crescendos. Nobody held anything back: the band was energetic and generous and the crowd responded in kind, and it was a joyous and wonderful experience that bordered on being out of body. I'd waited years to see Phoenix and they were gloriously, magnificently worth the wait.


Nick Torsell
Actress @ The Orange Peel in Asheville, NC, October 26th

Actress’ music reminds me of fragile light, the type that seeps in through blinds when it’s overcast. The light is fragile and porous, barely illuminating what’s inside the room. Occasionally, the sun peeks out and it illuminates the contents of the space in golden relief, only to lose it when the sun’s rays weaken. If you were at the Orange Peel the week before Halloween, you got a glimpse of the tall, thin producer as he stepped onstage to smoky red stage light, settling in behind a minimal set-up, only to see him disappear soon after as the lights went off, the only thing visible now an opaque half-eaten apple branding his laptop. I’d be hard pressed to tell you exactly what he played, instead of recreating full tracks live, he was disassembling bits and pieces of material from three albums as well as the yet to be released Ghettoville, in order to put them back together again in new ways. It’s difficult for me to call it dance music, but when the drum machines and sonic flourishes would lock together to approach melody, you could feel the crowd exhale and begin to loosen, and then shifting their concentration from the head to the body. More than any other show this year, it played with my notion of the artist and the audience, the expectation versus the reality.


John Hugar
Blondie/X @ The Rapids Theater in Niagara Falls, NY, September 6th

A killer combo of one of LA's legendary punk bands, and one of the leaders of the CBGB's scene in New York, any fan of old school punk lost their mind at this show. X came out first and brought and blew through an energetic set of classics like "Johnny Hit & Run Paulene," "The New World," and "Los Angeles." John Doe and Exene Cervenka proved they're still the most dynamic duo and punk, while Billy Zoom's rockabilly-influenced guitar stylings are as thrillng as ever. Then Blondie took the stage, with Debbie Harry showed that at 68, she's as fabulous as ever. After opening with "One Way Or Another," Blondie played many of their huge hits, like "Call Me," "The Tide Is High," and "Rapture." A particular high point of the set was an emotional rendition of Ellie Goulding's "Lights." When Blondie finally ended the night with their 1979 single "Dreaming," everyone's feet were tired from a night of relentless dancing. This was an amazing show that two of the best bands from punk's early days are as strong as ever.


Steven Gordon
Swans @ The Tralf in Buffalo, NY, July 26th

Not sure if I should call Swans' appearance at the Tralf a show, or an art installation. The loose change in my pocket, the drink in my my hand, and my own central nervous system were all violently wiggling from the ridiculously loud, bass and drum heavy proto-post-rock pioneers. I mean, I'm art-damaged and intentionally-into Noise, but these fellas' onslaught of atypical, anti-cathartic song structure and brutal decibel assault definitely made me want to spray barf or at least run outside for like a thousand cigarettes, but like in a good way. Ish. One of the most challenging demonstrations of art I'm likely to've ever encountered. And I was deaf for days.

Travis Kowalski
Macklemore & Ryan Lewis @ First Niagara Center in Buffalo, NY, November 9th

It was just a few weeks ago the the 'Heist World Tour' featuring Macklemore & Ryan Lewis stopped in Buffalo to perform arguably some of this year's most listened jams. Admittedly, I am not their biggest fan nor was I a huge follower of the openings acts Talib Kweli and Big K.R.I.T., however, the dynamic energy at their show closed a chapter for the many great concerts I have seen this year, making it my personal favorite of 2013. Nothing brings family and friends closer than being arm to arm in a pit, which is why the gig at the First Niagara Center holds a special weight, as it was the first time all of my brothers have been able to attend a concert together.

The hip-hop duo performed their hits "Thrift Shop," "Can't Hold Us," and "White Walls," but they also surprised fans with a guest appearance by UK singer/songwriter Ed Sheeran during the performance of "Same Love." Even more compelling was how Macklemore delivered mini speeches about his personal struggles with alcohol and marijuana in between some songs. Whereas some rappers neglect current social issues for talk about "big booty hoes" or "bad bitches," the legitimacy in his lyrics end up putting him a step above currently unpurposed rappers like 2 Chainz. 

 My overall impression was that the show was high powered and executed excellently with a wide array of song diversity, somewhat ample security, given the amount of people, and constantly filled with energy through a surprise guest appearances making it the perfect transition into the end of the year holiday season.
Ryan Wolf
Josh Ritter @ Asbury Hall in Buffalo, NY, April 13th
Although Josh Ritter’s performance was not flashy or intense or avant-garde, it was pure. Never have I seen a musician so happy to be on stage, sharing his music others. The man had just gone through a divorce (and written an album about it), but there was nothing in his act to suggest bitterness. If anything, Ritter was full of raw joy, unable to conceal his smile during even the most serious songs. If only we all could love our professions that much.

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What We Missed...October


Editor's Note: Over the past few months, our album review coverage has steadily increased, but we still can't cover everything. The 'What We Missed...' posts are our attempt to touch some albums we didn't weren't able to give a proper review to over the past month, but still feel deserve a mention. Enjoy.

Chvrches - The Bones Of What You Believe

This one might've slipped through the cracks, but it's since become quite the critical lightning rod, with some even citing it and Haim's debut as proof that indie rock is dead and buried. Whatever. In any case, this debut from the Glasgow electronica outfit is sheer perfection; a panoply of electronic pop styles seamlessly and tastefully delivered with a needed dose feminist vigor by the magnificent Lauren Mayberry, with nary a beat or note out of place. This album is so strong, even the 2 songs she doesn't sing on are excellent. A wonderful and breathtaking debut. 
~ Cliff Parks


Fuzz - Fuzz

 I just don't get it, Ty Segall has managed to be incredibly prolific while maintaining an equally consistent level of quality. At this point, I have to assume the man is a space alien or robot sent from the future. Fuzz is another one of Ty Segall's bands, pairing Segall with San Francisco based Charlie Moonheart. The record is a blast of epic, heavy jams that moves between sludgy doom and serious riffage with the greatest of ease. Seriously, that might not be the most eloquent way I have ever described an album but Fuzz demands this sort of vocabulary.
~ Mike Torsell

Darkside - Psychic

If you needed someone to score a spaghetti-western set in space in 2013, you’d look to Darkside, the product of producer Nicolas Jaar and guitarist Dave Harrington. Their second album of the year, Psychic, after the refracted Daftside remix project, Random Access Memories Memories, is a study in tension, and having the patience to release that tension slowly. If you need a playbook from Jaar’s already accomplished career at 23, you could look to his Essential Mix from 2012:  a melding of classical, soundtracks, and new electronic/avant-garde music occasionally bubbling up like lava with bits you can move to. Psychic has those moments, the sturdy low-end taking over for the psychedelic and kraut-rock indebted high, only to revert back again. The album itself is a cohesive whole, sonically burbling and rolling into the next moment, each track fitting into the larger machine.
~ Nick Torsell


The Head and The Heart - Lets Be Still

The Head and the Heart’s earnest sophomore album, Lets Be Still, debuted in mid-October to very positive reviews, something that was hoped for by fans who wanted the band to be more than just a flash-in-the-pan folk footnote of Seattle’s music scene. No one is really sure if the band is in the clear yet, but this album is an important milestone in moving beyond that. Though full of the band’s trademark harmonies and nice piano/guitar/violin instrumentals, Lets Be Still is notably different from the first album. Where the first was gritty and jaunty, this album has a polished, studio-produced sound that makes it a perfect coffee shop soundtrack, hence it being carried at Starbucks and the like. “Shake” and “Homecoming Heroes” are the album’s buzzed about songs, but faithful YouTube devotees will be pleased with fan favorites like “Josh McBride” and “Fire/Fear.” 
~ Sarah Machajewski



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Album Review: Four Tet - Beautiful Rewind


There was something comforting about Four Tet’s recent eight-hour DJ set for London-based Rinse FM to celebrate the release of his latest record, Beautiful Rewind. Four Tet, real name Kieran Hebden, provided a sonic pillow, a sprawling set of dub, disco, jungle, house, garage, jazz; showing how it all connects to the mutant form of dance music he makes. Beautiful Rewind is the latest manifestation of his ever-changing musical identity, another step towards the dance-floor.

Four Tet’s transition to the club in the past few years has been a natural one. In an interview with Clash Magazine before the release of There Is Love In You, 2010’s halcyon tinted side-long glance at house and techno, “When I started making this album, I wanted to make music that touched on those moments that make me feel on fire inside, make me feel sublime. I think that ties in the DJing a lot.” The record followed residencies at London’s Plastic People and with James Holden’s Border Community at The End. The years since have seen Four Tet’s total immersion into the world of dance music, fully realizing the skeletal beats he used to bury under warm analog ephemera and old jazz samples. 2012’s Pink was his most straightforward take on House yet, released piece meal as vinyl-only singles before being compiled into an hour-long album, the sum of its parts not the single narrative of his past albums, but the many of a night out. 

Beautiful Rewind is a return to the album as a fully enclosed entity, collecting the sprawl of his eight-hour Rinse FM set and compacting it, confidently switching directions and mood. First track, “Gong,” takes off from Four Tet’s past work with schoolmate Burial, a fractured and reassembled take on jungle and grime. It’s some of Four Tet’s darkest work, the broken refrain “She don’t love me” repeated over the tumbling bass. It merely serves as the half to a whole, with next track “Parallel Jalebi” serving as a feathery counter-balance, undecipherable diva vocals over a fluorescent House pulse. “Jalebi” recalls Four Tet’s best moments, the type of tune that’s simple and beautiful, like all of Rounds’ “Hands” or when the vocals enter on There Is Love In You’s “Angel Echoes.” On “Jalebi,” he does something else, cutting the song off early only to bring it back, a rewind, a pre-internet romanticism of a moment so great that it needs to be replayed, immediately. He’ll do it again on “Kool FM,” a nod to the influential London pirate radio station of the same name, bringing the bonkers jungle beat to the point of release over and over to the point where you think it won’t happen, when it finally does, the track is nearly finished. A high quickly faded into nothing.

Four Tet leaves himself outs, steering clear of any sort of fatigue or stagnation. The fuzzy plinks of “Ba Teaches Yoga” is more atmospheric than anything else on the record, something he still does better than anyone, while “Unicorn” might just be his prettiest song yet. It stutters and rises, revealing it’s kaleidoscopic heart as it begins to race forward. Like Boards of Canada’s “Everything You Do Is A Balloon,” it sounds like it could buffer a science program, one about space or the tectonic shift of the planets.

Most of the album’s heart lays on the dance-floor. Four Tet’s always had the best drum sounds this side of Burial, and now he’s using them for propulsion, like on “Aerial” and “Buchla.” Closing track, “Your Body Feels,” is a communion of his past and his present, of the head and the body.  Its track title is repeated throughout, a come-up and come-on living on in perpetuity, never brought to completion.

Beautiful Rewind continues Four Tet’s streak of excellent records, complete and forward-looking statements that haven’t aged in a sea of post-tronica albums that have.  It also continues an already rich year from contemporaries, Mount Kimbie, Falty DL, Oneohtrix Point Never, the previously mentioned Boards of Canada, who have all released outstanding records that traffic in the same adventurous sonic territory Four Tet does. Chances are he already played them on his marathon broadcast.

Grade: A-



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buffaBLOG's Best of 2013 (so far): Part 4


Editor's note: If you missed any of this week's selections, you can check them out here.

Mac McGuire

 Album:  Phosphorescent - Muchacho

Muchacho, Phosphorecent's latest and best release to date, opens with the angelic "Sun, Arise!," itself bookended by the closing "Sun's Arising," Matthew Houck wastes no time in letting the listener know this is an album of awakening. What is found in between is Houck's journey of redemption, religion, and love, highlighted by the successful pairing of both conventional alt-country elements (mariachi horns, pedal steel slide guitar, violins) and non (synths, subtle electronics, dubby beats). Muchacho features a stunning one-two punch, maybe the best of the year, in the weary and reflective "Song for Zula" and the powerful show stopper "The Quotidian Beasts." The former, which would take top song honors if not for my selection below, features a wandering, Johnny Cash quoting narrator who feels to be "disfigured" by love and will be damned if he "opens [him]self up that way again."



Song:  The National - "Sea of Love"

Like fellow Brooklynites The Walkmen, The National seem to have mastered the art of aging gracefully. Those “Mr. November” days are long gone, while family and a potentially soon-to-be post-rock ‘n’ roll life seem to be the band’s focus these days upon the release of their latest album, Trouble Will Find Me. On the tense and building “Sea of Love,” though, the men in The National remind everyone that they aren't going soft quite yet in their most thrilling and immediate song since “Abel,” and maybe best since “Slow Show.” While rocking out is great and all, it’s the little things that make this track really stand out: the welcoming heartland harmonica, the haunting backing harmonies, and those passionate pleas to “Joe” to “don’t drag me in” during the song’s thrilling conclusion. The great music video certainly didn't hurt either.


Joe Speranza

Album:  The Lone Bellow - The Lone Bellow

Picking an album of the year is a very, very difficult thing to do and without some kind of aggregate it is impossible to do objectively. So all you loyal Daft Punk and Vampire Weekend listeners, and all you Kanye West martyrs, keep that in mind as I explain my choice.

Back in January, I wrote a gushing review of The Lone Bellow’s debut album in which I actually included the line “listening to The Lone Bellow is a potentially life-altering experience.” I wasn’t on drugs and I haven’t quit my job to follow them on tour, but it’s fair to say that my initial bewilderment with how good they are has quietly devolved into casual fandom. I’ve relaxed quite a bit since I proclaimed that “every so often, a band comes along that might just change everything.”

They haven’t exploded like I fearlessly predicted they would, but the release of their album was very important to me and it’s why I’m calling it the album of the year – so far. I previously called them a “kind-of country-sounding band,” which is – I can admit it now – inaccurate. They are very country. And I’m okay with it. And I never thought I’d type that.

The reason they appealed to me back then – and this is doing a disservice to the quality of the album from beginning to end – was that they were a Brooklyn-based band that had just recorded a country album. I grew up outside New York City, in a place where admitting you liked country music was not only frowned upon but a serious character flaw. It was wrong to like country music. So naturally, The Lone Bellow intrigued me. It was finally “okay” for me to listen to country music. And that’s great, because The Lone Bellow is just a beautiful album. The harmonies and buildups are perfect, and – if I can make an intangible tangible – you can hear how much this album meant to them. For more specific details and to read why I loved the album check out the initial review, but what you need to know is that there was a lot at stake for these guys and they really came up big.

The Lone Bellow has easily had the most profound effect on me this year; in case you care, I almost picked Indigo Meadow by The Black Angels – which was a huge return to form for them – but I already knew they were great. The Lone Bellow came out of nowhere and is the sole reason I now consider country music if not decent, tolerable. That’s a pretty big feat, so cheers to them. 



Song:  A$AP Rocky & Skrillex - "Wild for the Night"

In the same way people remember where they were and what they were doing during major, catastrophic events, I remember where I was and what I was doing the first time I heard “Wild For the Night” by A$AP Rocky and Skrillex. I was driving on that uneven stretch of road around the 219/I-90 merge where you start to think your car might just fall apart when all of a sudden, I heard the unmistakable, ghoulish voice of A$AP talking about his pistol and his morning routine. I thought okay, whatever, if my tires blow at least I’ll go out listening to a decent song. This was also around the time when I was deciding whether or not dubstep sounded better or worse than a fax machine and whether or not Skrillex was a genius or a joke. The 45-second mark of the song – the transition from the talking-with-your-mouth-full voice of A$AP to the button pressing brilliance of Skrillex – settled it pretty quickly; “Wild for the Night” literally made me smile and figuratively made everything clear: Skrillex is the shit and dubstep goes quite nicely with rap.   



Ryan Wolf

 Album:  Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - Push The Sky Away

 Perhaps the first contemporary album to use Wikipedia and Miley Cyrus as artistic references without sounding shallow or smugly elitist, Push the Sky Away feels immediately prescient. Nick Cave and company demonstrate their continued awareness of the developing world we inhabit, crawling in its search for knowledge, placing faith in man’s flawed faculties while the Internet gathers and spreads human-generated information that may or may not reflect reality. As the all-knowing Google emerges as a man-made idol, Push the Sky Away returns to the flesh, favoring physical bodies and blood. Finding mystic qualities in seemingly neutral modern technology, Cave’s low-key, mid-tempo pastiche is deeper, darker, and more frighteningly astute than superficial listens suggest.



Song:  Vampire Weekend - "Ya Hey"

Throughout Modern Vampires of the City, Vampire Weekend exchange class-focused secular musings in for serious religious introspection. On the record’s boldest, most full-frontal grappling with the spiritual, indie-pop royalty meets its Maker, addressing complaints, doubts, and praises to Yahweh (or “Ya Hey,” according to the inverted Outkast song title). Concealed within Exodus’s burning bush, God refuses to reveal his identity or “name,” obscuring the cosmic plan “through the fire and through the flames.” Earth’s searching onlookers may be left schismatic and confused, but Vampire Weekend’s fusion of inspired chants and chipmunk crooning sees beyond vicious ironies and mortal “mistakes” in this 21st century open letter to the Creator.



Nick Torsell

 Album:  Disclosure - Settle

 I’ve been having trouble keeping up with the amount of great music coming out this year. Not because I haven’t been paying attention, but because it seems like every time a record takes hold of my mornings and nights, a new one knocks it from its place, clamoring for attention. The past two months have been unbelievably rewarding for me listening-wise, with three of my favorites releasing excellent additions to their catalogs. Boards of Canada, Daft Punk, and Kanye West, whose music has meant very different things at different points in my life but all had an enormous impact on me, all came through, and I’ll be digging through their newest records for years to come. 

 But my record of the year is from a group who more than lived up to my high expectations after following their steady stream of remixes and singles, Disclosure. Settle, the 22 and 18 year-old Lawrence Brothers’ debut record, is body music, joyful and confident in a way that finds a way into your subconscious, coloring the daily rhythm of your routine. Settle is crowd-pleasing in the best way, endlessly appealing and diverse and never once pulling back from the throttle.

Song:  Kanye West - "Blood on the Leaves"

 “Creative output, you know, is just pain. I’m going to be cliché for a minute and say that great art comes from pain.” That’s Kanye in his recent New York Times interview on how his mother’s passing has affected his music. His tracks have always had a tinge of melancholy starting from College Dropout, but there’s a startling shift starting at 808s And Heartbreak where Kanye turns American Gothic. “Blood On The Leaves” is Kanye at his lowest, but also his most triumphant, reigning in a massive TNGHT beat to his own image. When that first TNGHT sample comes in around the minute mark, it’s a chilling moment, the brassy drums boasting Kanye’s total release. It’s the best representation of Yeezus’ apocalyptic nightmare-scape, a long way from a pink polo and a backpack.
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Listener's Digest: Disclosure - "You & Me" (Toro Y Moi Remix)


Chaz Bundick’s house alter-ego, Les Sins, is responsible for his best music in a year when his much more popular main project, Toro Y Moi, released an album. So it was a nice surprise this morning to see Bundick, under the Toro Y Moi name, but erring much closer to Les Sins, remix UK Garage House revivalists' single “You & Me.” For this remix, Bundick slows things down a bit here, taking Disclosure's pristine single and perverting it, not allowing vocalist Eliza Doolittle to finish her lines, locking her into a hypnotic rhythm.

 


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Album Review: Daft Punk - Random Access Memories


Daft Punk, Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter, when they do give interviews, talk a lot about their image. How the band is perceived in their robot costumes versus the actual humans, the difference between their private lives making the music and the public one releasing and promoting it. Random Access Memories is their most affected album yet, the most concerned with their place in music culture and the constant need for them to be a presence, for them to comment in some way, even if it’s through a vocoder.

Random Access Memories is a throwback; an album released through a capital “M” major, Columbia, with an advertising and production budget to match. The things a major can afford for one of its biggest acts, the national television commercials, billboards over Sunset Boulevard, these things are supposed to be viewed and digested as something refreshing in a disposable music release cycle. Instead, it just further reinforces the album’s purpose. This is a big record, an album that sounds inconsumable, too rich and dense to be taken in at once. Random Access Memories can only be understood in fragments, loudly coalescing as you listen to it serially. 

In Ryan Dombal’s feature for Pitchfork, he mentions Random Access Memories has the “the same sort of eclectic reach that would be found at legendary clubs like New York's Paradise Garage, where a normal night could include songs by James Brown, the Police, Steve Miller Band, Talking Heads, and Kraftwerk.” The album quickly shifts, from track to track, in genre and scope. Daft Punk don’t just take from electronic music, a genre they’ve had a major role in shaping the past two decades culturally and musically, but also from G-Funk, soul and prog-rock. The genre pastiche prevents Random Access Memories from flowing seamlessly; instead forcing the listener to find their own connections between tracks as diverse as Daft Punk does Broadway “Touch” into Studio-54 cocaine groove single “Get Lucky.”

“Touch” is Daft Punk at their most overblown, an overwrought epic featuring Paul Williams, the man responsible for Kermit The Frog’s smash, “The Rainbow Connection,” as well as a former contract songwriter for A&M records, the kind of old-fashioned musician that doesn’t really exist in today’s music landscape. The song works as a parable for the fictional robots the actual men behind the masks play, a searching plainly sung almost-ballad about a man who “almost feels real.” The group have spoken a lot about using real musicians on this record, telling Simon Reynolds in a piece on the band in the New York Times, “’It’s an infinity of nuance, in the shuffles and the grooves,’ Mr. Bangalter said, knocking over his drink in his excitement. ‘These things are impossible to create with machines.’” “Touch” is richly layered and orchestrated, almost too much at first, but in the way that some of the most literal and blunt pop songs in the modern Western music cannon are, the kind that stick with you even when they haven’t been heard in years, remembering their chord changes and choruses by heart.

This album is as much about who brought Daft Punk here, as it is about what the group mean right now. Paul Williams first showed up on the friend’s radar as teenagers when they saw Williams’ movie “Phantom of the Paradise,” where Williams plays a Phil Specter-ish figure pulling the strings behind a musician wearing a mask. Bangalter describes it to Reynolds as “our favorite film, the foundation for a lot of what we’re about artistically.” Another major influence is Giorgio Moroder, producer of the disco evergreens by Donna Summer, “I Feel Love” and “Love To Love You Baby,” who appears on “Giorgio By Moroder.” His contribution is a spoken word one, giving one of the most exciting lectures you’ll ever hear about his use of the synthesizer and what it’s meant for modern music. It’s a confident--possibly arrogant--choice for a third track on a long awaited, sure to be hit album, but there’s something in its bombast that speaks to something greater. It’s Daft Punk reaching out for transcendence, a massive tune that could soundtrack an intergalactic stadium brawl. 

Williams sings about “a tourist in a dream” on “Touch” which could also describe the collaborators on Random Access Memories. Quickly integrated into Daft Punk’s world and then just as quickly exiting. In the promotional video, which simultaneously premiered on the Coachella Polo Grounds stage screens and then quickly uploaded online, the list of collaborators practically dwarfed the previous snippet of “Get Lucky.” There’s past collaborators, like Todd Edwards on the best Michael McDonald song you’ve never heard “Fragments of Time”—who also appeared on Discovery’s dance-floor come-on “Face To Face”—to newer ones like Pharrell, Nile Rodgers, Julian Casablancas on the best Phoenix song you’ve never heard “Instant Crush,” and Panda Bear. Taking their turns in stride, Daft Punk molding their songs to get the most out of each. Surprisingly, the most straightforward dance track is “Doin’ It Right” featuring the usually meditative Panda Bear. It was the last track they finished on an album that Daft Punk have been working on since 2008, and the only track that sounds new in an obvious way. The hi-hat clap is reminiscent of the most futuristic music coming out of Chicago footwork, like DJ Rashad and Traxman as well as trap-rap producers like DJ Mustard and Young Chop. On Random Access Memories it serves as both an admonishment to electronic music producer’s the duo claim are artistically stagnant and as a reminder that when they really want to, Daft Punk can make tracks with a computer better than anyone. As Bangalter told GQ, “"It's maybe not 'Kill the father,’ but it's like: Things have to move on."

Nile Rodgers, whose hits with Chic and as a producer for some of the most ubiquitous singles of the 80’s, like Bowies “Let’s Dance” and Madonna’s “Like A Virgin,” propelled him to icon status, is perhaps Random Access Memories most influential voice. “They wanted the classic Nile,” he told Simon Reynolds, “almost like we were doing a record back in the day.” His slinky, impossibly catchy guitar playing is present on three tracks, album opener “Give Life Back To Music”--a prog meets disco jam that features a circular mantra, “Let the music of your life, get right back to music,”-- as well as would-be-single and already single, “Lose Yourself To Dance,” and “Get Lucky.” The latter two feature Pharrell on vocals, arguably one of the most important producers of the 2000’s, responsible for the icy hip-hop classic from Clipse, Hell Hath No Fury. While Pharrell’s vocals are serviceable, they’re low-points on what should be victory laps, slight smudges on an otherwise immaculately clean visage. “Lose Yourself To Dance” is especially startling, featuring a gorgeous Dr. Dre breakdown that sounds like an homage to Daft Punk’s adopted home of Los Angeles.

Random Access Memories sounds expensive and by all counts for a modern record in an age where a platinum record is rare, it is, telling Rolling Stone, "We spent more than a million dollars making it, easily," Bangalter says. "But that's not important.” Whether that money bought the same sort of cultural cache as Discovery, musical immortality, will remain to be seen. For now, it’s proving a surprisingly elastic record that has shaped the mass music discussion for the past two months. It’s an event record, and those have proven rare lately.

Grade: A 



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Listener's Digest: Kode9 - "Kan"


Kode9, boss of London’s future-shocked record label Hyperdub, could just sit on his excellent artist roll and call it a day. Going strong since 2004, the label has released two of the most important records of the past decade, Burial’s Untrue and Laurel Halo’s Quarantine, but Kode9’s own productions are just as integral to the shape of electronic music to come. Following Hyperdub’s release of footwork king DJ Rashad’s “Rollin,” “Kan,” B-Side to his first new music in two years, “Xingfu Lu,” Kode9 dips his toes into footwork’s stuttering and fractured landscape. “Kan” is relentless, barely letting in light through layers of synths and drum hits, it begins like something out of Vangelis’ Blade Runner soundtrack but hurtles towards a trans-Atlantic now.



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Still Digging: About Me


I’ve had nightmares where all my records are stolen, more real and terrifying than those filled with monsters and Batman villains. Looking at my collection, it’s not only albums and singles, but also my last five years, alphabetized on a shelf. It tells more than any “about me” section could ever do, or at least I hope it does. I want it to reflect the parts of me I can’t communicate, a wanderlust in sound, a love of the sonic.

The record store has always been a home for me, a place filled with possibility and discovery, the tactile pleasure of flipping through albums between your fingers bettered only by the brief flashes of color of their covers.  I have my favorites outside of Buffalo, the electronic sections at Rotate This and Sonic Boom in Toronto providing me something I can’t get here, but Spiral Scratch is really my favorite place to buy records. Whether it’s walking into the store and hearing a Thai Psych compilation blasting through the speakers, or getting a record for five dollars cheaper than at Record Theatre (I see you new Kurt Vile), it’s something I’m proud to have in Buffalo. It’s also the only place that’s worth checking the used bin, like the day I stumbled on someone’s 70’s and early 80’s Brian Eno records, or finding Remain In Light at the old location.

I’m sure Record Store is going to be crazy this year, with longer lines, a little too many limited edition remix albums, and needless reissues of classic rock albums, so go in on a weekday sometime. Take your time, talk to Dave at Spiral Scratch about garage rock or fantasy baseball or something. It’s fun; it could be your haven.




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Album Review: The Knife - Shaking The Habitual


It’s been seven years since Silent Shout -- the last album from Swedish brother-sister duo The Knife-- a silence that acts as a statement as wells as a shadow over their new album Shaking The Habitual. There wasn’t just static on Karin Dreijer and Olof Andersson’s end, Karin released a terrific album under the Fever Ray guise, as well as scoring an opera with Olof, Tomorrow In A Year.  But to come back as The Knife is a declaration of intent to use the resources and reach that name provides. The result is an hour and half double album that is almost impenetrable, a purposefully massive album that can wear you down as much as it can provide truly great moments.

Shaking The Habitual is reminiscent of David Bowie’s Berlin cocaine comedown masterpiece Low. That album has a definitive A and B-side, a difference in tone that’s as surprising now as it must have been when it was released in 1977.  While side A is stocked with well-crafted pop songs like “Be My Wife” and “Sound and Vision,” side B is a sonic wasteland more in the vein of Low collaborator Brian Eno’s Discreet Music. Bowie’s “Warszawa” is meant to provoke the feeling of post-war Warsaw, its isolation and ruined landscape with horror-show synths and multi-tracked monk chants. It’s a desperately lonely track and a feeling that The Knife provoke frequently on Shaking The Habitual as they switch from tracks with a more traditional pop-structure to sonic texture.

The brightest track on Shaking The Habitual is also its first track, a way to ease into the murk to come. The track swirls and chimes until it reaches a climax, “I’m telling you stories/ trust me.” The band is heavily concerned with doubt, whether doubting your sources or your own motives. Karin explains in a rare interview, with Pitchfork, “It's important to question my story and my way of telling it, too. It's good to ask questions instead of serving answers.” It presents the album as open, something that will shed and accept meaning as people listen to it years from now.  Compared to the rest of the album, it’s almost bubble-gum, like the threatening “Stay Out Here.” It’s Olofs only vocal appearance on the album, his and Karin’s voices weaving in and out of each other’s way. Something potentially beautiful, like harmony, is rejected for the mechanic grind that suffocates the track.

There is no “Heartbeats” on the album—the single that brought The Knife’s warped perception of what a torch song could be to dance floors and house parties—but there are moments of reprieve. Following the almost 20 minute “Old Dreams Waiting To Be Realized,” a soul-less digital nightmare, is the first half of “Raging Lung,” a thrillingly percussive melancholic pop song that takes shape until it eventually disintegrates into something broken once again. After the fatiguing “Old Dreams” Karin’s vocals are a relief, a human voice to cling to in the darkness The Knife use as a default palette on Shaking The Habitual. On “Raging Lung” Karin sings on the chorus “And that’s when it hurts / When you see the difference.” She’s talking about economic inequality but singing with the affected tone usually reserved for the ache of unrequited love. Shaking The Habitual is an unrelentingly serious album, less about human interaction than their unequal relationship to government and power.

The Knife position themselves as more of an idea than a band, a microphone for their intellectual curiosity. In the past they’ve hidden their faces behind masks, attempting to supersede traditional promotional necessities by refusing to smile or brood in front of a camera for a magazine. In the end, the masks became just as big of a promotional tool, mysterious siblings from Sweden who didn’t show their face and rarely play live. There’s an attempt on Shaking The Habitual to rid themselves of those anxieties, in the Pitchfork interview, “This album plays around with questions and issues that we have been dealing with from the beginning, in a way, but it is much more on a structural level rather than a psychological level.” It creates an album that even when you can nod along to it, like on “Full Of Fire”, it reveals itself as a theoretical knot, a textbook to be deciphered. You realize you’re singing along to a scowling indictment of the straight white male hierarchy present in education and government.

In a bizarre video released alongside the album, the duo gives some insight into their process and motivation through gauzy cuts and sporadic vocal overdubs revealing they wanted to replace the “boundary between normal and strange.” The album is constantly testing boundaries and patience, a battle that creates a creeping unsettling feeling. It’s never comfortable but that’s exactly what they wanted.

Grade: B+






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Listener's Digest: Hudson Mohawke - "Pleasure Principle"


TNGHT’s self-titled EP was a siren cutting through the wilderness last year. It filled its eighteen minutes to excess, overbearing you with speaker-rattlers and beats that could swallow rappers whole. Hudson Mohawke, half of the producer team that makes up TNGHT, finally mastered (it came out as a limited edition vinyl in 2011) and digitally released a Janet Jackson edit, “Pleasure,” today. He gives Jackson a new start, placing her alongside contemporary dance-floor divas Jessie Ware and Aluna Francis of Alunageorge. The result is massive, its cavity inducing synth runs overcome by Mohawke’s maximalist drums.


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Album Review: Colleen Green - Sock It To Me


For Colleen Green, a Massachusetts native living in California, there’s an unbelieving wonder in her new warmer digs. She’s taken to California’s feel, it’s sprawling suburban restlessness contrasted by it’s laid back reputation. Green’s new album, Sock It To Me, is a release from grey skies and cabin fever; a deceptively simple but anxious take on 60’s beach-pop and garage rock.

Green works in the same territory as Hardly Art label mate La Sera, “Kickball” Katy Goodman of Vivian Girls fame, as well as former tour companions Dum Dum Girls and Jeff The Brotherhood.  Her tracks are lean, stripped of anything glistening but instead laying bare her functionally fun guitar lines and sugary sneer. Describing last year’s ep ,Cujo, with Identity Theory, “I wanted it to be really poppy and melodic and sweet of course, but also moody and kinda sad.” This isn’t a new palette, see the Ramones, but it’s the perfect setting for her sunny burnt out jams.

The use of effects on Sock It To Me doesn’t go beyond a tinny drum machine and multi-tracking Green's voice. Check “Only One” where she barely harmonizes on a call-and-response “I really love my boyfriend/She really loves her boyfriend.” It’s plainspoken and unfeeling, giving you a second to doubt. The vocal separation from sincerity gives it teeth, a disconnection from the cliché chorus. Green’s singing suggests stoned resignation, dismissing insecurities with a heavy sigh. Debuting “Heavy Shit” on Nylon, she introduced the track as “trying to deal with things inside your brain that are sometimes un-deal-with-able, and it's so hard to go [at] it alone…The shit becomes all you think about, all you can focus on, and it drags you down." Which speaks to one of the most appealing things about this record, it’s fun and punchy, but it’s also a total bummer.

Green is at her best when she does let a little inflection enter her voice—which is more conversational than musical—like on “Time in the World.” The song bounces with the drum machine that sounds like it could be programmable by floppy, as Green coos along “I’m just so happy you’re mine now.”  Its infectiousness provides a needed break after the monochromatic opener “Only One.”  Meanwhile, on “Close to You,” there’s another edition of Green, here with goth-y synths recalling Joy Division’s dread.  Green’s voice is once again transformed, almost breathless and shaken as she sings “When I’m alone I feel like I could die.” When the guitar comes in towards the end of the track, surprisingly huge and cavernous, it’s a shock. It takes you away from her usual garage bubblegum for a minute, giving you an impression of where she could take her music next.

In the video for “Taxi Driver,” Green drives at night with—judging by her press photos and all the live photos I’ve seen—ubiquitous sunglasses.  The escapist fantasy of being awake while everyone else sleeps, sober while everyone else is drunk, is given shape when she sings, “I wouldn’t have to talk to anybody.” It’s a removal from any semblance of normality and from the same sun she got closer to when she moved to Los Angeles from Boston. 

Green makes a transition from straight up garage revivalist on her 2012 album Milo Goes To Compton to something more in-between on Sock It To Me. Careening from style to style; she’s able to collage together a better album. It’s a similar trajectory to Dum Dum Girls, who have grown into one of the most consistently strong and versatile bands going from more lo-fi beginnings, but she’s not nearly at that level yet.  For now, Sock It To Me will sound good blasting from your car with the windows down, with or without anybody in the back-seat.

Grade: B



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Listener's Digest: Shlohmo w/Jeremih - "Bo Peep (Do U Right)"


Somewhere between Frank Ocean’s vocals and The-Dream’s future shock R&B productions lies Jeremih. After last summer’s Late Night With Jeremih mixtape—featuring would be radio smash “Fuck U All The Time”—he’s back collaborating with beat-maker of the moment Shlohmo. “Bo Peep (Do U Right),” with its glacial bass and radar-love synth hits, builds to a monster climax that feels wide-open and valedictory. It’s the type of song you want soundtracking your next nighttime highway drive. Jeremih calls out “wish somebody woulda seen us” a few times throughout, who doesn’t love a modern love song?



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Listener's Digest: oOoOO - "FoRLorN DuB"


The last we heard from oOoOO, the consonant-allergic producer from San Francisco, was the 2012 EP Our Loving is Hurting Us. A sufficiently dark and shadowy piece of music that owed more to Burial’s haunted nocturnal transmissions than the witch-house productions it was grouped alongside. Our Loving is Hurting Us was able to straddle the line between dance music and Houston's screwed hip-hop. oOoOO has never been afraid of bass, which makes his latest single, “Forlorn Dub” a natural progression into the rich soil of Jamaican music. “Forlorn Dub” is murky, analog warmth and tape fuzz seep in through the vocal sample, and more linear than past tunes. Reminiscent of Peaking Lights and Actress' takes on dub, oOoOO continues to impress.


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Listener's Digest: Drake - "5 AM In Toronto"


Drake is at his best when building his own legend, making “5 AM In Toronto” a welcome follow-up to his last single, “Started From The Bottom.” Where “Started From The Bottom” rang hollow -- look to the laughably misleading title and nagging hook -- “5AM In Toronto” feels like a homecoming. Over a sparkling Boi-1da (the producer responsible for Drake’s first hit “Best I Ever Had”)beat, Drake lets loose what could possibly be the line of the year when he asks“Why every song sounds like Drake featuring Drake." Five in the morning is a lonely time, the night's over and most are not up for work yet, but Drake makes it sound triumphant. And that's really all you can ask of a pop-song.


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Listener's Digest: George FitzGerald - "Thinking of You"


Debuted on his BBC Essential Mix last month, George Fitzgerald returns with another House monster in “Thinking of You.” Fitzgerald cloaks the buildup underneath an inhuman vocal sample, cut-up and smashed back together to sound like a constant come-up. The effect is kinetic and tactile; the almost overwhelming pay-off Fitzgerald leads you to is all metallic hand-claps and fat minor synth-tones. Unlike “Child,” Fitzgerald’s signature tune from last year, this track isn’t fun, it’s menacing and dark.



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Album Review: Shlohmo - Laid Out EP


In the middle of Red Bull Music Academy’s latest episode of H∆SHTAG$, a surprisingly adept series on “internet music phenomena,” Shlohmo gives a succinct impression of his music, “Hip-Hop production, for a long time, has been electronic music.” It’s not a startling confession, TNGHT ‘s self-title EP from last summer was a loud and welcome genre-definer, but it’s a good introduction to Shlohmo’s new cavernous EP, released on his WEDIDIT imprint, Laid Out. Bass-focused, Laid Out bridges the gaps between the bedroom and radio bangers, a missing-link between Lex Luger and Boards of Canada.

Shlohmo points to the Low End Theory, a hub for Flying Lotus’ Brainfeeder label, as a launch point to his evolution as a producer. Going to club nights impacted Shlohmo’s sense of space, the sorts of rooms he plays too. The Los Angeles based electronic hot spot is famous for breeding a laid-back take on Beat music, love-letters to the head-nod. On Bad Vibes, Shlohmo’s 2011 album, he buried the beat beneath layers of misdirection, obscuring the groove until it was just underneath the surface, whereas his 2012 ep, Vacation, was more nocturnal and spacious. Laid Out takes Shlohmo back to the club, a mixture of more exploratory ideas with the more defined structure of pop-music. It’s something he points to in an interview with FACTaround the release of Vacation, “I went through a huge period of only listening to really experimental stuff and atmospheric, ambient stuff. Now, I’m kind of bored. I listen to a lot of pop music too, so now song structure for me is one of my…it’s harder for me to make a song than it is to make a texture and an atmosphere, you know what I mean?” Rather than murky and unconfident, the cross-pollination sounds assured and natural.

The payoff is in “Put It,” a slow burn that features a tuned down hi-hat, a production tip-of-the-cap to the slowed-down rap productions of DJ Screw, Shlohmo mentions in the FACT interview. There’s a distinction in hip-hop instrumentals between tracks that sound like they’re missing something and ones that can stand on their own. It’s easy to imagine a skilled MC rapping over “Put It” and it’s assured cadence, but it doesn’t sound like it’s missing anything either.  Shlohmo doesn’t stay in one spot, or genre, throughout Laid Back. On “Don’t Say No” Shlohmo molds his sound to fit How To Dress Well’s take on R&B, his claustrophobic layering mirroring and accentuating How To Dress Well’s vocal hysterics. I was worried it wouldn’t gel, How To Dress Well’s albums are cloudy and atmospheric takes on pop, but he excels over Shlohmo’s bombast.

There’s a point to be made for Shlohmo being the producer of the moment along with his WEDIDIT label-mate Ryan Hemsworth. Both meld hip-hop and R&B to electronic music, showing the similarities between the three. Shlohmo even remixed Drake’s Take Care lynchpin “Crew Love” and turned it into something sinister, somehow lowering The Weeknd’s voice into even murkier territory. Laid Out is an extension of that track’s feel, an assured mash of genres and styles.

Grade:  B+


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