If you’re not actually rolling in a souped-up Cadillac with Supafly and Koffy Brown, the compilation Inner City Sounds is one of your better alternatives. It’s laced with underground funk, soul and boogie tunes recorded between 1969 and 1977 for Inner City Records. Danceable, sample-friendly cuts like “Mary Love’s More Love” outshine more plodding numbers like United Soul Association’s “Sticky Boom Boom”-which sounds more like notes toward a funk song than an actual funk song. Kitsch notwithstanding, this funky, plucky compilation offers a rare taste of the disco sleeper-joints that once made garages and record stores get crunk.
Various 7 heads R better Than 1
If an outwardly stoic, but inwardly sensitive guy were an album, he would be the 7 Heads R Better than One compilation. Sometimes it’s an album caught up in being a dude, embodied in Djinji Brown’s brawny drum & bass studio effects on “Mr. Dynamite” and J-Live’s Cassanova-ish “Braggin Writes Rmx.” Other times it’s smart, urbane, and not afraid to get down in the muck with you, as in the balmy jazz loop and ponderous flows of “Moodswings” with Asheru and Talib Kweli. Part bro, part brohemian, it’s all about winning combinations.
Lifesavas Spirit In Stone
As the name implies, Lifesavas have a distinctly redemptive vision of hip-hop: they’re out to save us from the bran-muffin beats and wack rhymes that have cartwheeled other rappers to mass popularity. Spirit In Stone has the glib, convincingly rankled tone of Mr. Lif’s I, Phantom-though Lifesavas’s lyrics are less recondite than Lif’s-and the instrumental panache of Solesides’ Greatest Bumps. MCs Vursatyl and Jumbo the Garbageman know how to chop it up, whether they’re cracking about MC egos (“HelloHiHey”) or exhorting fans to fuck the system in every way possible (“Resist”). Musically, Lifesavas venture from crisp, funky boom-bap on the opening track, “Soldierified,” to nimble jazz harmonies on “State of the World/Apocalypse/War;” DJ Reverend Shine’s breaks veer from straight-no-chaser (“What If It’s True?”) to totally tripped-out (“Head Exercise”). In the end, Spirit in Stone is a meaty album for Lifesavas to cut their teeth on.
Various Madlib: Shades of Blue
Crate-digger and storied producer Madlib cooks up a tasty and tasteful chicken soup with Shades of Blue. The album is one part bitches brew: DJ Lord flavors original cuts from Bobby Hutcherson in the joint “Montara.” It’s one part weak sauce: snare-heavy rock beats collide with lilting flutes in the overly-beefed remix of Otis Jackson Jr.’s “Funky Blue Note.” It’s one part meat stock: by layering straight hand-claps over liquid vibes, Madlib discovers something haunting and beautiful in Ronnie Foster’s “Mystic Brew.” Smoke a blunt before listening, and try to get all the nuances.
Pole 45/45
The only thing harder than originating a brilliant, singular sound of your own must be abandoning it for all the mimics who’ve run with your steez. Stefan Betke tries his hand at it, nevertheless, losing his trademark tech-dub stylings for some newfound hip-hop flava. And though 45/45 has its fine moments, it still feels like he hasn’t quite found the new footing for which he’s clearly searching. Still, Pole on a bad day is better than most on their best.
Sutekh Micro-Solutions To Mega-Problems
Following mate Kit Clayton’s debut offering for Soul Jazz’s new MSMG series, Sutekh offers a selection of trademark tech-house tomfoolery. “Mouth Party” stutters on vocal samples, like Akufen going vaguely garage. The deliciously titled “Scraping Nails” recalls tropicalista Tom Z? colliding with a humming refrigerator while “Boulez’s Toes”-referring somewhat mysteriously to French arch-Modernist composer/conductor Pierre Boulez-proclaims it a party. One of Sutekh’s finest moments.
Broadcast Pendulum
UK avant-pop quintet Broadcast releases a peek at their most realized album to date. “Pendulum” and the sublime “Still Feels like Tears” are all sweet motorik propulsion. The spazzy analog jazz of “One Hour Empire” and “Violent Playground” recall vintage Sound Library rarities, and closer “Minus Two” sounds like Oval deconstructing the group’s live jams.
Glenn Branca The Ascension
The ’80s revival shouldn’t be seen as entirely shallow and insipid. With the renewed interest in all things No Wave, releases such as this offer the more potent Jekyll to electroclash’s innocuous Hyde. Best known for linking up Sonic Youth anti-guitarists Lee Ranaldo and Thurston Moore (only Ranaldo is present in this five-guitar lineup), Glenn Branca’s own small guitar arsenals have become the stuff of legend. If these recordings pale in comparison to the live experience, the ecstatic drone of Light Field (“In Consonance)” and “Ascension,” the Delta 5-like funk drone of “Lesson No.2” and the theatrical histrionics of “The Spectacular Commodity” are no less rapturous for it. Essential.
Bingo Palace Whistle Me Higher
Fa Ventilato and Frank Heer may currently hail from Brooklyn, but the sound they make as Bingo Palace is a far cry from the thrift-store self-consciousness of the Williamsburg set. Sounding as if Calexico and Air collaborated in order to simulate both the epic Italian prog of Goblin and Brian Eno-produced Bowie (albeit in a sleek ProTools kind of way), the conceptual leanings of Whistle Me Higher take in Western film scores, svelte house and Giorgio Moroder, and breathe them back as a Casio casino of shifting mirrors.
Broker/Dealer First Public Offering
San Francisco’s Broker/Dealer have quietly done their own thing for some time now, overshadowed by the Bay Area’s better-known laptop stars. Best known for their releases on Cologne’s Traum Schallplatten, First Public Offering sees Ryan Fitzgerald and Ryan Bishop combining the pop underpinnings of Giorgio Moroder, the tech-dub styling of Basic Channel and Force Inc, and the ambient wash of Kompakt in a way all their own. If it’s not a reinvention of the techno wheel, it’s certainly one of the most enjoyable minimal techno full-lengths we’ve heard in recent memory.
