Nina Simone opens French Cuisine, as Alif Tree makes his devotions clear: Simone‘s “Plain Gold Ring” is as sophisticated and heart wrenching as jazz will ever be. Alif Tree‘s minimalist vinyl-crackle-and-warm-beats reworking of that vocal into his own “Deadly Species” shows the Frenchman lovingly crafting acoustic sounds and electronic productions into a seamless, melancholy shuffle. Anna Karina, Shirley Horn, French library music, and Parisian café jazz all get the Alif Tree makeover on an album that would‘ve been as at home in a Truffaut film as on a certain German label of no little renown.
Bob Marley and the Wailers Africa Unite: The Singles Collection
What can be said of a new single-CD collection from the man who, besides James Brown, had more impact on music worldwide than anyone else in the past 40 years? What does another CD with “Get Up Stand Up” and “One Love” achieve? It‘s better (read: larger) than the frat-party standard, Legend; there are (dull) remixes by the ubiquitous Will.i.am and Ashley Beedle, and even a great newly discovered track (“Slogans”). But all in all, Africa Unite seems like just another easy answer to one of the deepest questions in 20th century music.
Delta 5 Singles & Sessions 1979-81
Along with Gang of Four and The Mekons, the female-fronted, double-bass attack of Delta 5 rounded out a holy trinity that erupted from late ‘70s Leeds. And as this lovingly crafted collection-complete with liner notes from author Greil Marcus and Mekon Jon Langford-shows, the group more than shouldered its responsibilities. From the Go4-style sharpened guitars and Situationist lyrics to the XTC-like pop of “Anticipation” and the Joy Division-esque warble of “Shadow” (one of three previously unreleased live tracks), Delta 5 might at first come across less like a unique moment in post-punk history and more as the ultimate amalgamation of that era. But that would sell D5 short: more than most of their contemporaries, Delta 5 understood that dance music and punk were not only complementary, but part of the same lineage, that mashing riffs over disco beats was more “appropriate” than “appropriation,” and that Blondie caused more change than Crass ever could.
Various Artists Salmonella Dub/Remixes And Radio Cuts
The carefree horns of “Drifting” highlight what‘s best about this five-piece New Zealand reggae outfit: an attention to the subtle nuances that serve as every band‘s trademark. Add in great harmonies and production and this collection settles somewhere between dub lite and R&B. While displaying a penchant for the necessary resonant echo (check out Adrian Sherwood‘s take on “Push on Thru”), this hodgepodge is truly scattered; for instance, a gorgeous Groove Corporation cut jogs alongside an unnecessarily hyper Concord Dawn drum & bass track. Like fellow New Zealanders Fat Freddy‘s Drop, Salmonella‘s brilliance lies in vocal hooks; when textured correctly, their sound sparkles.
Various Artists Beck: Guerolito
To tune up Guero would require as nonchalant and dexterous an approach as Beck employed to create the original. But somehow the sonic alchemy here, steeped in bossa/mariachi/electro-clashing, results in one of the tightest remix records of any popular artist. Boards of Canada, Beastie Boy Adrock, and Homelife take sharp stabs at re-digitizing the melodious hooks and analog electronics floating inside this LA native‘s mind. While it‘s a commendable homage, nothing beats Air‘s big-synth ‘80s tinkering on “Heaven Hammer (Missing),” which sounds as if it were pulled from the soundtrack of a coming-of-age John Cusack flick.
Uske Orchestra Niko Et La Berlue
What good is the use of abstraction if the result is so esoteric only the creators have an inkling of an idea about what‘s been created? At his most chaotic, even Frank Zappa retained some semblance of rhythm. There is nothing remotely rhythmic or melodic on Niko Et La Berlue. The entire record plays out like a soundtrack to Poltergeist in the Balkans, relying on the inane to propel odd time signatures, babies chanting, tiny pianos, and the occasional horn. By the middle of the first song, the record becomes laughably unbearable; 11 more songs and all laughter is gone.
Saint Etienne Tales From Turnpike House
Eclipsing the blandness of their last two studio albums, Saint Etienne‘s seventh is a dazzling return to the idyllic ‘60s pop melodies of So Tough (“Sun in My Morning”) and the infectious disco of Tiger Bay (“A Good Thing”). They spin the mundane-shopping, arguing with a lover-into daydreamed moments, as when singer Sarah Cracknell stares down the culture of news-generated fear in the exquisite “Side Streets.” “Stars Above Us” finds her dancing on rooftops to the most memorable hook since Stardust‘s “Music Sounds Better With You”-proof that they‘ve not lost their masterful ability to convey the excitement of youth, decadence, and your first time… on the dancefloor.
Dandy Jack and the Junction SM Los Siete Castigos
Perlon, those purveyors of the most serious of minimal techno, lighten up here with a positively mischievous release by Dandy Jack (Chilean expat Martin Schopf). On Los Siete Castigos, Schopf teams up with Swiss DJ Sonja Moonear, recalling and revising the stripped-down Latino micro-swing of his earlier collaborations with Ricardo Villalobos. The bouncy squiggles and congas of “Globe Trottel” recall childhood romps after the ice-cream trucks of yesteryear, while “Arabs in the Desert” is so playfully percussive it begs for audience participation on an upturned plastic water bucket. The quirkiness loses some luster about two-thirds of the way through the album, but it‘s a fun romp while it lasts.
Judith Juillerat Soliloquy
We were all shocked last year when this unassuming mom of two from some podunk town in France won Björk‘s remix contest with her slow-burn redux of “Army of Me.” That track (“a(r)mour,” included here) makes an appearance alongside 12 other equally menacing lullabies on Soliloquy, Judith Juillerat‘s first album. Juillerat drapes her wet-velvet vocals over oceanic synth washes and intricately syncopated techno crinkles, speaking volumes out of the silences embedded in haunting pieces like “vol-au-vent.” Her sonic imagination curls like a piece of antiquated filigree, Victorian in its restrained ornamentation. An assured debut overall.
Calibre Second Sun
If Calibre‘s 2001 debut, Musique Concrete, was a sketchbook of raw and undefined drum & bass compositions, then his sophomore release, Second Sun, is his portfolio of intricately detailed, well-constructed, and fully realized pieces. From the dramatic opener “Bullets,” featuring the heavenly vocals of Diane Charlemagne, one quickly grasps how Dominic Martin has musically matured his loose ideas into complete masterpieces. The tantalizing string arrangements on the title track, the rolling boom-bap of “Go Back to Go Forward,” and the rub-a-dub skank of “Kiya” find Martin invoking the simplest pleasures with the subtlest touches. Sprinkle in the breezy house grooves of “Don‘t Watch This” and “These Few” and the alluring downtempo number “Drinnabilly,” and you have an album that gets better with every listen.
