This is classic hit from now. Love Joys have never sounded better. Their story of my best friend and “my lover” is very sad-I lost my heart for this piece. Every time I think not even Rhythm and Sound can beat Rhythm and Sound, they just do it. “Best Friend” is music, and music is my best friend. Hope your love is strong enough for this. Crying on the dancefloor.
Sugar Minott & Sizzla Collie
The riddim for this one, Coming From The Country, is a great remake of the song “Oh Mr. DC” from Minott’s Studio One times, produced by Clement Dodd. Sugar is my favorite: warm, big, sad and deep soul, great lyrics, big times. Sizzla’s counterpart is not great work, feeding the younger crowds. Never mind-overall, a great record.
Mikkel Metal Remix EP Pt. 1
This new 12″ from the young Copenhagen dub-tech imprint Echocord features remixes of Mikkel Metal tracks from the label’s first four EPs. Jan Jelinek takes over the full a-side with one of his wise and deep mixes, joining time with soul, history with future. On the b-side, Dubtractor’s mix is very catchy and maybe my favorite Mikkel track, and it’s accompanied by a remix by Lowfour. Best selection of Northern European dub “culture” music.
Apparat Koax
My friend Apparat, the co-owner of Shitkatapult Records (alongside everyone’s darling T.Raumschmiere), presents this 12″ on Ellen Allien’s BPitch Control label that combines the dancefloor with his more ambient style. The three versions include an Ellen Allien remix and a very nice fourth track called “Fuse,” with Ellen on vocals.
Various Nice Up the Dance: Two Worlds Clash
Revisiting the Jamaican music diaspora in novel ways has become Soul Jazz’s stock in trade, and they do it very well. This collection spotlights the crossover between hip-hop and dancehall, Jamaica and the US. Cuts like Tenor Saw’s classic “Ring the Alarm” transformed to a hip-hop beat, Cutty Ranks’s slashing gangsta-style lyrical attacks, Ms. Thing’s hip-hop soul backing up a dancehall flow, and J Live riding an Augustus Pablo melodica harmony give you an idea of what’s up here. But this is more than a bunch of jacked beats; it’s a reflection of a symbiotic relationship, pointing out how each culture periodically energizes and inspires the other.
Winston Riley Productions Dancehall Techniques 86-91
The most effective way to reissue Jamaican music is by focusing on its producers. Such is the case with Winston Riley, whose importance to dancehall music is nothing less than crucial. It was Riley who produced the famed “Double Barrel” and “Stalag” rhythms. He was the epicenter of dancehall’s emergence in the ’80s, launching the careers of Pliers, Admiral Tibet, Super Cat, Cutty Ranks and Buju Banton, to name a few. Dancehall Techniques showcases the early works of those artists supported by the crisp digital production that made them famous.
9 Lazy 9 Week Jones
The Italian ensemble known as 9 Lazy 9 have been around since the acid jazz days, quietly cultivating their alternately dark and whimsical sounds and rhythms. Moody but never overly serious, they’ve emerged from the trip-hop era without compromising their style or sounding dated, and Sweet Jones takes the listener through noir-ish territory with beats that sound like something DJ Shadow would have produced in his Mo’ Wax heyday. But it’s the simple and mature production that elevates Sweet Jones to the next level. With its careful layering of guitar strings, synth accents and jazzy rhythmic elements, the album strikes a distinctive tone, but never bogs down under a heavy emotional load.
Kiyo Chaotech
First impressions can often mislead. Indeed’ still can’t figure out what I was thinking when I first heard Chaotech. For some reason, at first listen, the quiet joys of Kiyo’s shimmering, deftly textured electronics were lost on me. Thankfully’ eventually woke up to the subtle pleasures of this full-length debut by the Miami label’s least abrasive adherent. Though the crunchy beats and machine-age clank that are Schematic’s bread and butter are in plentiful supply, Kiyo is best when he’s at his most abstract, creating warm, richly textured soundscapes that gradually coalesce into an undulating groove, rather than simply grounding them with a hip-hop beat. Most definitely worth a second look.
Phil Niblock Touch Food
Though composer Phill Niblock may have cut his teeth in the New York avant-garde of the 1960s, his work is more influential than ever, with his exploration of the power of overtones influencing numerous young musicians, such as Oren Ambarchi and Rafael Toral. With this two-CD set, his second release on the UK imprint Touch, Niblock dishes up three typically immense compositions, any one of which is enough to satisfy those hungry for dense, Niblockian drones. As always, the apparent stillness of Niblock’s pieces belies an almost unearthly complexity, as layer upon layer of harmonic fields shift and change, and yet somehow stay the same. Transcendent.
Tujiko Noriko From Tokyo To Niagara
With this, her third solo album, Mego’s favorite (and only) glitch-chanteuse Tujiko Noriko steps out with Cologne’s Tomlab to deliver a relatively straightforward record of lightly tweaked electronic pop. Her partner in melodic crime here is producer Aki Onda, whose warm production simultaneously oozes and crackles around Noriko’s subtly ethereal vocals. Of course, Noriko is no mere sweet-voiced pushover (as has been more than evident on her previous Mego releases), and her sensuously eccentric lyrics (mostly in Japanese with a little English interspersed) are thankfully devoid of saccharine sentimentality. They’re sweetly evocative to be sure, but even as she sings of love, loss, zippers and robots, she assures us: “I cry for no one.” Independence has rarely been so lovely.
