Maga Bo Archipelagoes

A Tribe Called Quest’s lyrics for “Award Tour” seem particularly suited for Maga Bo–“He’s on a world tour, with Mohammed his man, going each and every place with the mic in his hand, Cape Town, Zanzibar, Dakkar, Morocco…” Rio’s globetrotting sound recordist has used his day job to hip-hop and dance music’s benefit for a while now, collaborating with vocal artists completely off most westerners’ radars. When fiery delivery from MCs like Bigg, K-Libre, Xuman, Teba, and others get laced together with Bo’s deep understanding of global musical timbres and a keen appreciation for booty-shaking beat science, the result is the favela on blast Diplo strives for but doesn’t always achieve. Outta-national? Globalista? Sure, but Bo is speaker-bangin’ before all else.

Rothko A Life Lived Elsewhere

Lovingly hand-packaged and mailed out by Mark Beazley himself, Life assesses that of his decade-old band, which featured members Crawford Blair and John Meade until 2001. The three turned bass and keyboard tones into Kranky-style ambient that’s sometimes perfectly poignant (“Truth Burns,” “Zurich Trains”) and occasionally grating and discordant (“Not gone. Not Forgotten”). It’s all in the pot for this retrospective, which is only available from Beazley’s website. You may have heard Rothko through a Four Tet remix or an association with ambient superhero Susumu Yokota, but this collection shows the breadth and depth of the group’s output. The best of these miniature meditations do what the band’s namesake artist did with his work: they’re rich as a color field painting, and elemental as the weather both outside and in.

Talkdemonic: Beat Romantics

Oregon’s rock-scattered Pacific coast is a grand, wordless expanse of aching beauty, which happens to be a good way to describe Eyes at Half Mast, the latest from Portland duo Talkdemonic. Lisa Molinaro and Kevin O’Connor craft a sort of instrumental pop from the unlikely pairing of viola and drums, making music that fits easily into the cinematic Northwest landscape but eludes comparison and classification.

Molinaro came of age in Gainesville, Florida, a tight-knit northern city that was home to a thriving hardcore scene in the late ’90s. “I was totally immersed in punk rock music, anything that was loud and sweaty and made you laugh and cry. But how do you fit playing a viola into that?” she asks rhetorically. “I was still drumming up strength to be a woman who wanted to play just about anything in a male-dominated scene.” After “a period of intense growth” in Gainesville, Molinaro moved to Portland to pursue music full time.

O’Connor, on the other hand, grew up in the conservative political shadow of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation in southeast Washington. The reservation was the main source of nuclear warheads during the Cold War and is currently the most contaminated nuclear site in the United States. “We would periodically find out about explosions and accidents on the reservation that weren’t reported in our local paper,” he recalls.

Since being introduced about six years ago, the two have rightfully earned local-favorite status in Portland. The follow-up to their 2006 album, Beat Romantic, was delayed, though, because Molinaro was offered a touring gig with fellow Portlanders The Decemberists.

While Molinaro was moonlighting with Colin Meloy and company, O’Connor laid the groundwork for Eyes. “There was quite a long period where I wasn’t working very much,” says O’Connor. “My day-to-day was getting up, drinking coffee, and going into the basement to work on music. [When Lisa returned], we hunkered down and moved my basement studio out to this really big house in Oswego. We had five or six different large rooms with natural reverb, so we were able to try a lot of things out with Lisa’s strings.” The result is an album of lush arrangements, captivating percussion, and an uncommonly unique sound that, at least in Portland, feels right at home.

Favorite Portland artist:
Lisa Molinaro: Horse Feathers. Justin Ringle is a very good friend of ours and I admit that helps, but his incredibly gifted talents as a vocalist and heartbreaking songwriter alone are what make him deserve my highest praise.

Nudge “War Song”

Nudge appears to have a very submissive and peaceful agenda with “War Song,” as the three-piece band synthesizes live instrumentation and singing with computer-generated sounds in this eerie track from the Infinity Padlock EP. Member Brian Foote (who runs the Outward Music and Audraglint labels), Paul Dickow (a.k.a. Strategy), and Honey Owens (of Jackie-O Motherfucker) comprise the PDX-based spacey psych-rock collective and paint a vibrant- yet- illusory picture that has a noteworthy sense of optimistic melancholy.

War Song

Say-Wut “Furious Remix (Say-Wut Rewind)”

Unruly Records just took home four Best of Baltimore Awards (an annual happening conducted by Baltimore City Paper), one of which was for Say-Wut, who snagged the Best Club Music producer title for 2008. To celebrate, we’re throwing up this remix from the producer and erstwhile Horseman Entertainment boss. Those unfamiliar with the B-more sound need only check this track’s rubbery synth horns, hammering drums, and aggressive bass for an education.

Say-Wut – Furious Remix (Say-Wut Rewind)

Ce Jeu

Yelle most definitely loves her costumes. We’ve seen the French chanteuse decked out in everything from Technicolor aerobics clothes to one of those happy face dresses in her last visual endeavor, and last week she sent out an announcement stating that those attending one of her U.S.tour dates should don homemade masks for the occasion. So it comes as little surprise that the latest video, for “Ce Jeu,” off last year’s Pop-Up, finds Yelle and her boys, Tepr and Grand Marnier, making attire the focus of the visuals (that and dance moves, of course). Perhaps this is inspiration for the upcoming Halloween holiday, although we suspect bright colors and zebra stripes are just another day for these three feel-good music makers.

All The Shallow Deep

“All the Shallow Deep” is a psychedelically lush chapter of Blank Blue’s bizarre tale, which is set sometime in the future of an earthquake-caused Armageddon that prompts the West Coast to separate from the rest of the United States. For the video to this track, Elvin Estela, a.k.a. DJ Nobody, and Niki Randa collaborated with Hashim Bharoocha and Dean Fernando, who directed and produced it with enhanced visual art from Kime Buzzelli that pays reverence psychedelic classics like Easy Rider. “All the Shallow Deep” appears on Blank Blue: Western Water Music Vol. II, the official follow-up to Nobody’s 2003 album, Pacific Drift: Western Water Music Vol. I, and is out now on Ubiquity Records.

Hood Internet Drops Tobacco Mixtape

Feels like we’ve been waiting years for the Tobacco‘s debut solo album to drop, the release of which was announced this past July. Lucky for everyone, the Black Moth Super Rainbow boss has stayedplentybusy keeping us occupied until the sinister full-length is unleashed on October 14.

For his latest trick, he’s turned F***ed Up Friends over to the Hood Internet guys, who took seven of the album’s tracks and created a mini-mixtape that includes a prominent guest appearance by Aesop rock, as well as spots by Rob Sonic, Def Jux boss El-P, Mr. Lif, and others. As the Hood Internet guys say, Let’s Get It.

The Hood Internet vs. Tobacco & Aesop Rock
01 Little Pink Getaway Car feat. Cage, Breeze Brewin
02 Hairy Candy at 11:35 feat. Mr. Lif
03 Coffee Hawker feat. John Darnielle
04 Dirt RMX feat. Zaid Maxwell
05 Lime Eaters feat. Camp Lo
06 Dark Pink Goo feat. Rob Sonic
07 We’re Backwards Famous feat. EL-P

F***cked Up Friends
01 Street Trash
02 Truck Sweat
03 Hairy Candy
04 Hawker Boat
05 Side 8 (Big Gums
Version)
06 Yum Yum Cult
07 Berries That Burn
08 Get My Nails Did
09 Dirt (Featuring Aesop Rock)
10 Gross Magik
11 Little Pink Riding Hood
12 Backwoods Altar
13 –
14 Tape Eater
15 Pink Goo
16 Grease Wizard

Crucial Afrobeat Albums Reissued

Spanish imprint Vampi Soul has reissued three new Afrobeat and Highlife music collections, available in the U.S. through Light in the Attic distribution. These three releases add to the label’s growing catalog of Latin, African, and South American classic soul, rock, and psychedelic pop titles.

Their first offering is a stunner: Fela Kuti’s Lagos Baby: 1963 – 1969, issued as both a double-CD or three-LP set, plus a bonus 10” single. The collection features early recordings by Fela Ransome-Kuti and the Koola Lobitos (his band before he formed Egypt 70) that blend Highlife, jazz, soul, and other influences to form the sound he later popularized as Afrobeat. These recordings are licensed from The Fela Kuti Estate and Premier Records, with liner notes by African specialist Max Reinhardt and artwork by Victor Aparicio. The bonus vinyl 10″ captures Fela’s “Afro Beat On Stage, recorded Live at the Afro Spot” performance, with original artwork and liner notes.

Vampi Soul’s Highlife Time! collection recounts the formation of West Africa’s signature jazz-pop dance music during an era of rapid post-colonial change. The hybrid style is as celebratory as the historical time itself, featuring rollicking guitars, blazing horns, and intricate vocal harmonies. The two-disc or three-LP set features Highlife legends like Accra, Roy Chicago, Rex Lawson, and Dr. Victor Olaiya. If Fela’s Afrobeat is all you know about West African music, this is a natural next step. To quote the Vampi Soul crew: “Highlife became the soundtrack for a [continent] freeing itself from the shackles of an empire.”

The third Vampi Soul reissue, Afrobeat Nirvana, is a collection of late ’50s to late ’80s West African sounds, featuring established names like Tony Allen, Orlando Julius, and Fela himself, as well as more obscure West African musicians like Fred Fisher and Opotopo.

Watch Fela in concert:

AeroCCCP Readies Halloween Comp

Though less common than the ubiquitous Christmas-themed sampler, musical compilations celebrating Halloween are nevertheless circulating out there, one of which is Brooklyn-based AeroCCCP Recordings‘ forthcoming Halloween of Bloody Nightmares release.

Described by the label as “a spine tingling musical story or soundtrack to a non-existing horror film,” the disc, out November 24, features contributions from the likes of Otto Von Schirach, Cock Rock Disco boss DJ Donna Summer, Snog, Candie Hank, and others dropping IDM, rock, electro, and industrial tunes. Add to that some creepy samples and track titles involving Frankenstein, Satan, and one called “Dance oft he Living Dead Chickens,” and the whole thing begins to feel akin to a really fucked-up kids cartoon.

Additionally, the artwork was created by St. Petersburg duo Doping-Pong, who drew inspiration from a Russian folk tale about an old woman who enjoyed torturing little children.

Halloween of Bloody Nightmares
01 Otto Von Schirach “Zombie Halloween”
02 End “Everything in Excess (Halloween Version)”
03 Wonderkid “Monster Goes to Hollywood”
04 Retrigger “Victim #2”
05 Monster Zoku Onsomb! “Frankenstein”
06 Messer Chups “Inferno Image (First Version)”
07 Freaks’ Tricks “DJ Jekyll Meets MC Hyde”
08 Messer fur Frau Muller “Nightmares (MFFM Remix)”
09 Denim Venom + Nina Martine “Dø Dø Min Kjaere
10 Snog “Social Disease feat. Monster Zoku Onsomb!”
11 Doubt to Nothing “Blut Kult”
12 Bazooka Boom “She’s Diabolic”
13 DJ Donna Summer “Planet Mars: Murder!”
14 Candie Hank “Willie the Killer”
15 Messer fur Frau Muller “Iron Felix Kubin
16 Messer Chups “Little Blood Sucker”
17 Ferris Wheel (St-Petersburg) “Winter-the-Satan”
18 Oleg Kostrow “Death of Frankenstein”
19 Jack Blanchard “Dance of the Living Dead Chickens”

Pictured: Otto Von Schirach. Photo by Nathan-Lam Vuong.

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