If going major usually signals curtains on an artist‘s creative era, hats off to Black Dice, who‘ve gone pop, as it were, with aplomb. Broken Ear Record is, to these ears, their most realized and (gasp!) beautiful album. Album-opener “Snarly You” and its lazy drum machine concoction notwithstanding, there is hypnotic ecstasy to be found here in the fuzz-and-lock groove of “Smiling Off” and especially the gorgeous loping guitar rays of “Heavy Manners.” It‘s in the contrast of light and dark, of hypnosis and chaos, where one finds Black Dice‘s meta-gold. It‘s the oblivion and lift off that makes this a near-perfect record, broken ear or not.
Ron Trent Presents Ital Foods Dub Life
As much a visual representation of culture as hand-woven Kente cloth, “Dub Life” communicates a story that is both hyper-textual and abstruse. Inspired percussion and dub-influenced effects make this tune an intricate and percussive delicacy.
Konono No.1 Congotronics
Sometimes the worst of conditions and places can produce humanity‘s best music. Konono No.1 is about making oneself heard through a dictator‘s fortress wall, the out-of-tune symphonies of street life and ancestral ghosts. The Congolese orchestra drives to a beat chiseled out of car parts and pots and pans, while centering on an amplified likembé (thumb piano) to lead them into trances. The jams collected here have a simplicity that is so dense and raw that the music swelters from the body heat of a thousand on a dirt street. Cutting through the bustle are the likembé‘s melodies, which have a tattered electricity that haunts for days on end.
Mouse on Mars Live 04
Typical electronic concert albums are either lazy, carbon copies of studio-made tracks or improvised messes for the brave to sit through. Post-techno stars Mouse on Mars have achieved a happy balance between the two extremes on Live 04. As their Deleuze-drugged jabber about rhizomes and “bodies without organs” hints, they couldn‘t release a mere concert tape-instead, they meshed together bits of their top performances from hundreds of hours of recordings. The results-created with guitar, bass, keys and a trapkit-are striking as they give their oldies wider breathing spaces and greater spontaneity. “Diskdusk” and “Wipe That Sound” are funkier and more unhinged, while “All The Old Powers” melts out of the stereo. Despite risks of Basement Jaxx-like big-beat schmaltz, MoM is still full of too many good ideas after more than a decade of existence.
Emotional Joystick Plays!
Anyone who says hardcore techno and gabberhouse is dead, fuck you! announces some bum. Violence ensues on the dancefloor, and yet a wiseass on a Fender Rhodes whistles and claps along. Emotional Joystick‘s day-and-night formula on Plays! is about shoving scatterbrained drill ‘n‘ bass rhythms up against soothing, faux-Blue Note jazz melodies on the Fender. This creates a sharp dynamic, as on the opener, “Ask Me No Questions,” which goes on a laser-shooting rampage while keyboard riffs smile at the carnage. Squarepusher milked such a formula dry eight-odd years ago and Plays! merely seems to remix such past glories.
Various Artists Greg Wilson: Credit to the Edit
Mr. Wilson is credited as one of the first DJs to import electro into the UK-namely through Madchester‘s feted Hacienda club where the seeds of rave culture grew in the sidewalk cracks. However, his fingerprints were best left every Wednesday at Legend where he helped solidify British black beat culture. Credit to the Edit is a fine snapshot of Wilson‘s sets from early to mid-‘80s, where disco went underground and became mechanized. Wilson traces the electro element of robo-funk with the likes of Kool & the Gang, Uncle Louie and Chic. Nowhere does the electro-disco connection positively hypnotize like Raw DMX‘s “Do It To The Funk.” Oh, and Chaka Khan‘s “I Feel for You” kills 80% of today‘s glitch-hop scallywags dead.
Mestizo and Mike Gao Blindfaith
Not unlike many of his Galapagos4 label-mates, Mestizo opts to create hip-hop of the overcast and apocalyptic variety. And considering the current state of affairs in the world, he aptly keeps the vigilance going on his sophomore release, Blindfaith. But this album isn‘t entirely gloomy-new beatsmith Mike Gao counterbalances the darkness with occasionally bouncy output, as on the swing-styled “Pick Up 52‘s.” Whatever the mood at hand, these beats and rhymes maintain a level of natural intricacy that requires nothing less than full attentiveness.
Pumpkinkhead Orange Moon Over Brooklyn
On Pumpkinhead‘s full-length debut, this once battle-ready rapper proves that he‘s graduated from the corner cipher and is ready to take on focused subject matter. Rocking hard over the crisp beats of Marco Polo, Pumpkinhead keeps his wordplay sharp yet graspable throughout. From challenging our war-hungry government (“Grenades”) to pondering the course and possibilities of his life (“Anything”), he presents a fairly well-rounded effort. But more than anything, this album is a testament to Pumpkinhead‘s undying dedication to hip-hop. As he tells all the cynics on the cut “Here,” “You‘ll never relate to my blood, sweat and tears.”
Various Artists Texas Funk
If the affair between Stones Throw‘s reissue imprint Now Again and British funk obsessives Jazzman proved hot and heavy on last year‘s Midwest Funk, consider Texas Funk the consummation of a new musical marriage. Twenty-one tracks of obscure Lone Star groove-from the famous (Lou Pride, Mickey & The Soul Generation) to the thoroughly unknown (Soul Ones, Eddie Finley, and The Cincinnati Show Band)-melt Latin boogaloo and Chicano horns into their thick, messy funk. A truly class act, from the universally fine selections to the thoroughly informative and beautifully presented 24-page booklet. Highly recommended.
Jumbonics Super-Baxophone
Had Matt Smooth and Rob Mac scratched up a copy of their Super-Baxophone album and slid it into an unsuspecting crate at some vinyl emporium, groove-sample and library-music freaks would be selling their homes for the eBay bid dosh. With Jumbonics, the Speeka duo explores a shared love for half-cheesy ‘60s organ sounds; these get layed over hip-hop beats fresh enough to turn heads, but subtle enough to be Richard Lester montage-scene material. S-B expands upon the original “Jumbonics” EP‘s slick, urbane, jazzy funk with a smile that belies a dirty little secret.
