There’s a saying among comedians which goes, “If everybody laughs, you aren’t doing your job.”  It takes the idea of comedy as more »]]> The Flaming Lips
Embryonic
(Warner Bros.)

There’s a saying among comedians which goes, “If everybody laughs, you aren’t doing your job.”  It takes the idea of comedy as something beyond mere delight—it has the ability to provoke and challenge and divide.  Similarly, I find an odd comfort when I hear or read comments from devotees, in response to any type of art, that essentially say, “I don’t get it.”  It means that the artist is defying expectations, for better or for worse.  In the case of the Flaming Lips, musical departures have been very good for them.  The first happened in the late ’90s, when the band went from a pretty good, kinda weird, semi-psychedelic fuzz-pop-rock band to a micro-tweaked, everything-but-the-kitchen-sink, expansive studio project, starting with the astoundingly dense Zaireeka and the band’s second breakthrough, The Soft Bulletin.

The Flaming Lips’ latest album, Embryonic, may not be an easy sell, but it quite possibly is the best thing the group has ever made.  There’s an overarching wicked feeling to the album, and much of it sounds dirtied-up—in particular, the drums are almost always distorted.  The point of comparison that immediately springs forth is Miles Davis’s electric period (late ’60s to mid ’70s), especially on songs like “The Sparrow Looks up at the Machine” with a menacing groove, wah-guitar stabs, and icy electric piano chords.  At other times, bands like Can or Pink Floyd come to mind—in particular, “Silver Trembling Hands” is reminiscent of the latter’s “One of These Days” with the throbbing keyboard part of early Suicide.

Even on the album’s most playful track, “I Can Be a Frog” featuring Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs providing animal sounds and laughs via telephone, there’s a softly aching, melancholic tone, carried over to the “The Impulse,” which is like Kraftwerk playing jazz.  With the last few releases, at times there was more frosting than cake, but the group has modified its rules so that it doesn’t seem to be an issue.  Miles Davis had Bitches Brew, and Radiohead had Kid A—now, Embryonic is the game-changer for the Flaming Lips.

Forest Magic
Is Energy
(www.myspace.com/forestmagic)

The idea behind the fascinating Chattanooga quintet Forest Magic helps explain why its music is hard to pin down: The concept is that the group is actually from the future, sifting through the remains of the past and shaping them into something new.  For a time, it seemed like the band would approach each live performance with a different method, sometimes making a rhythmic maelstrom, and other times focusing on non-linear pop structures.  However, the group’s main features were always present, with a combination of both organic and artificial sounds and a compelling drive, and every member brings a vital component to the sound balance.

For the outfit’s debut album, Is Energy, the key elements are there, but there’s a different sonic environment at work; it’s a clean recording with a bit of self-control, bringing the center of attention to the songs themselves, and synthetics are used sparingly.  Live, the vocals are sometimes treated with echo effects, and the rhythm section dominates the sound.  On record, the violin is a more prominent instrument, and the vocals and lyrics aren’t obscured.  There are roughly three kinds of songs on Is Energy, and the structured, vibrant numbers comprise the meat of the album.  Also featured are ambient sound punctuation, such as the opening piece and the mid-album “Protector,” and spontaneous alternate-world primitive folk songs like “O” and “It Is Good.”  Highlights include the spry, constantly shifting, nearly eight-minute “Return/Stroll,” which is possibly the band’s most complex track, and the piercing “Teeth,” featuring some feral vocals.

After hearing some of these songs frequently live, it’s nice to have satisfying recordings of them, but it’s important to point out that it doesn’t provide a total picture; one might even go so far as to say that it isn’t quite representative of the band’s live shows, which have defined the group so far.  In a way, much of Is Energy is perhaps like the band’s own personal time capsule, presenting the source material before it is re-imagined and sculpted, to confound easy definition. – Ernie Paik

After the Boston band Mission of Burma reunited following a nearly 20-year hiatus, there was a collective sigh more »]]> Mission of Burma
The Sound the Speed the Light
(Matador)

After the Boston band Mission of Burma reunited following a nearly 20-year hiatus, there was a collective sigh of relief from fans because the first post-break offering, ONoffON, not only didn’t suck but was also pretty good and true to the band’s form.  Next, there was a gasp from fans—the 2006 album The Obliterati was a roaring, tremendous album, revealing the group at the top of its game.  Now, the reaction to Mission of Burma’s new fourth (proper) studio album, The Sound the Speed the Light, is likely to be a firm, satisfied nod.

The trademark elements of a Mission of Burma release are all in full force on The Sound the Speed the Light, with a delivery that’s more about potency and momentum than about being heavy.  There’s a post-punk attack with Roger Miller’s non-obvious, new-rule power chords and non-metronomic, pounding, often unrestrained drumming from Peter Prescott.  Clint Conley completes the power trio with his distinctive, balanced bass guitar tone and tight playing, and all three sing, sometimes simultaneously, with a sustained ardent vigor.  The fourth member, Bob Weston, who has replaced original member Martin Swope, mainly stays out of the spotlight, but at choice moments, he uses loops to throw a bit of disorder into the proceedings, like the shrieks on “So F*** It” or the queasy tape wobbles on “Possession.”

The album is a bit like a companion piece to The Obliterati, with occasional cheeky moments—for example, the charged opener is titled “1, 2, 3, Partyy!” (sic)—and a few slowly burning tracks, like “Forget Yourself” and “Feed,” that are a change from the more immediately pummeling ones.  An uncredited keyboard part emerges on “SSL 83,” but otherwise, the sound of the album is classic Mission of Burma—stirring and ferocious, with a fully formed sonic identity.

David Sait with Glen Hall, Gino Robair, and LaDonna Smith
Postage Paid Duets – Vol. 2
(aPPRISe)

Comedy improv acting is often based on the “Yes, and…” technique, where one acknowledges an element introduced by another (the “yes” part) and then takes the premise further by adding to it (the “and…” part).  Old-school musical improv is similar to this, but new-school improv is a different game, where the performers can completely ignore each other if so desired.  With David Sait’s “Postage Paid Duets,” there isn’t a two-way exchange of information between partners; each part is recorded separately, in a completely different location.  Therefore, only one musician is allowed to react, and in some cases, a third party is called upon to mix and edit the tracks, leaving both performers without a hand in the final synthesis.

For Sait’s second volume of “time-delayed free improvisations,” he enlists three unique musicians, with entirely different instrumentation.  The stringed instrument of choice for Sait is the guzheng, which is a plucked Chinese zither, but Sait avoids traditional scales for the instrument and even strives to use a different tuning for every performance.  The disc opens with his duet with LaDonna Smith, the iconoclastic viola and violin player from Birmingham, Alabama; Smith feverishly runs through a number of her techniques, bouncing between elegant trills and wild glissandos rapidly and playing freely in a colorful, almost defiant manner.

Gino Robair uses a variety of percussion instruments (plus, apparently, a bike horn, motors, and a dolphin call) to lay down a bed of restless clattering, while Sait first lets his notes ring clearly before becoming more chaotic with his playing, bending and attacking his notes.  Soprano saxophonist and bass flutist Glen Hall provides a sense of space, even dissolving into breathy wisps to call for attention.  It’s a fascinating album that’s in a way like a puzzle; knowing how it was recorded, the listener may constantly try to draw connections, either intentional or unintentional.

One of the most startling and arresting albums I’ve encountered this year has got to be the latest release from Arrington more »]]> Arrington de Dionyso
Malaikat dan Singa
(K)

One of the most startling and arresting albums I’ve encountered this year has got to be the latest release from Arrington de Dionyso, best known as the front man of the Olympia, Washington band Old Time Relijun.  It’s loosely rock-centric, but the sounds are so alien and disorienting that most listeners will probably scratch their heads and wonder where on earth this recording came from.  First of all, the entire album is incomprehensible because it is sung in Indonesian, and the liner notes reveal that some lyrics are translations of snippets taken from poet William Blake and also from the mystical, Kabbalistic work the Zohar.  Knowing this only complicates things.  At times, de Dionyso practically spits out the words, with an ardent, dramatic delivery, and at other moments, like on “Mani Malaikat,” he snarls like he’s starting an argument.  However, when de Dionyso wants to sound particularly wicked, he pulls out his secret weapon; this is the ability to do multi-phonic throat singing to create unsettling, otherworldly drones.

Labelmate Karl Blau, playing bass and percussion, serves as the album’s straight man and anchor, and for a few songs, de Dionyso is even joined by his Old Time Relijun bandmates.  When on guitar, de Dionyso leans toward a garage-rock approach, but his instrument of choice seems to be the bass clarinet, which he plays wildly and freely.  Comparisons are difficult, as the album keeps listeners on their toes using foreign rhythms and percussion in the mix.  Although the closest (American) point of comparison would probably be the Sun City Girls, Malaikat dan Singa is not as messy, irreverent, or hit-or-miss.  By the time the listener thinks he might have the album figured out, de Dionyso throws a curveball by borrowing a motif from Serge Gainbourg’s “Requiem pour un Con” for “Tak Terbatas.”  It’s definitely not an album for everyone, but it’s for the adventurous type who embraces the unfamiliar.

Summer Dregs
From Gold to Green
(myspace.com/summerdregs)

Summer Dregs is the name of the virtual Chattanooga super-group organized by keyboardist and songwriter Carl Cadwell, presenting the results of fruitful collaborations with choice musicians and singers from the area.  Cadwell is currently a member of the soul-funk band the Distribution, but it is Cadwell’s previous band, Infradig, that immediately comes to mind when listening to the Summer Dregs’ debut, From Gold to Green.  It’s ostensibly an electro-pop album, but it goes beyond that by defying pop repetition with constantly changing sound sequences.  The electronics are animated and effervescent, with an infectious, hopeful, and bright delivery, and the recording itself is incredibly clean, surely the result of seemingly endless clicking and dragging and micro-tuning so that each piece is in its own proper place.  Certain electronics-heavy bands bear comparison, like the Domino bands Four Tet and Caribou, and fans of the Postal Service might find Summer Dregs to be more sonically dense and intricate.

Josh Green, drummer for the Distribution and Infradig, contributes his talents on most of the tracks, including “To Convince Whom,” with notably busy and tight freestyle beats.  The vocal performances are solid, from people including Reeve Hunter (Chinasaur), John Totten (The Quiet Ones), Robert Heiskell, and Chris Ammons (Jairus), and the most memorable ones are from Ryan Dixon (The Heroes Are Horses) and Stephen Nichols (The Good Players).  Dixon sings with an easy, friendly pop charm with a hint of earthy folk goodness, and Nichols harmonizes using an effortless, assured delivery that’s somewhat reminiscent of Alexis Taylor of Hot Chip when he’s in ballad mode.  Studio wizard Mason Neely adds his touches on alternate mixes for “Bones” and “A,” which features some choice, vaguely disco-flavored string arrangements.  What is served up on From Gold to Green isn’t exactly dregs, but the distillation of some of the finest pop talent Chattanooga has to offer.

The Theremin is one of the most difficult musical instruments to master, because it has no tactile reference points—it has more »]]> Duet for Theremin and Lap Steel
Live
(duetonline.net)

The Theremin is one of the most difficult musical instruments to master, because it has no tactile reference points—it has no frets, keys, open strings, or anything to guide the player toward discrete notes.  This is not a stumbling block for the Atlanta outfit Duet for Theremin and Lap Steel; it’s actually the basis for the duo’s sound and approach.

The lap steel, used almost exclusively for country music, can actually be a versatile instrument, and it’s a perfect companion to the Theremin, as every note from either instrument glides smoothly and weightlessly, without being anchored to any construction.  At times, synthetic drum beats enter the duet’s mix, but I much prefer the rhythm-free style; then, the music is totally unstructured and has nothing to follow, making it some of the most wonderfully abstract music I’ve heard this year.

The duet’s latest CD features two live sets from 2008, with Scott Burland on Theremin and Frank Schultz on lap steel giving completely improvised performances.  The recording is pristine, likely taken from the soundboard, and, if it wasn’t for the applause at the end, it could pass for a studio recording.  Burland and Schultz both channel their instruments’ sounds through laptop computers for real-time processing, making their notes echo and bubble eerily, with fluctuating timbres.

Valid comparisons can be made to Brian Eno’s ambient music, but the music lies a bit closer to the Kosmische music of certain German bands like Cluster.  The duet’s sound is generally easy on the ears, and one strength is being continually stimulating in a subtle, non-jarring way.  There are a few conspicuous diversions, such as the aforementioned drum beats and some manipulated French language vocal samples, but mostly, the CD is the sound of two untethered astronauts with a strange and elegant sonic choreography.

OOIOO
Armonico Hewa
(Thrill Jockey)

The new, sixth album from the Japanese all-woman band OOIOO is entitled Armonico Hewa, which is a language mash-up:  “armonico” means “harmonic” in Spanish, and “hewa” means “air” in Swahili.  Similarly, the group’s music itself is an international blend, but it’s not so simple to define in two words.  The outfit often gets called “tribal,” due to the upfront, tom-heavy drum rhythms, frantic chanting in unfamiliar languages, and other peculiar vocal exclamations.  The songs on Armonico Hewa typically feature short melodic fragments or guitar skronking, hammered out with a throbbing repetition; new wave-style synth chords are prominent on “Ulda,” but usually, the electronic sounds linger in the background, as seasoning.

The front woman of OOIOO is Yoshimi P-We, best known as a drummer in the group Boredoms and the titular character of the Flaming Lips album Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots.  Few bands today are as intensely compelling as Boredoms, but OOIOO sometimes gets close to matching that adrenaline level, bearing certain similarities; at times, Boredoms deliver an updated, overcharged kind of primitivism, like the German band Amon Düül on uppers, but OOIOO seems to go more aboriginal, when it comes to its sources.  The bass lines on “Konjo” and “Agacim” allude to African roots, but this is hardly Paul Simon’s Graceland.

Armonico Hewa is a restless album, although not to the level of early Boredoms material, with violently abrupt stops and starts.  The flow of the album is a bit difficult, so it’s best experienced in manageable doses.  As wild as it sounds, the band seems confined and not quite spread out widely enough.  There typically isn’t sufficient time to allow its rhythms to dig their hooks in deeply or to let the mounting intensity levels reach their full potential.  The album may be about harmonic air, but it could stand a little breathing room.

One can only imagine where the sci-fi post-punk band Six Finger Satellite would be now if it had only started a half-decade more »]]> Six Finger Satellite
Half Control
(Load)

One can only imagine where the sci-fi post-punk band Six Finger Satellite would be now if it had only started a half-decade after it did, but instead, the group’s last album, The Law of Ruins, came out in 1998, well before terms like “electroclash” and “dance-punk” were being bandied about.  After being disbanded for most of this decade, singer and keyboard player J. Ryan reformed the group last year with drummer Rick Pelletier and began working on new material.  However, the release at hand, Half Control, is actually comprised of songs recorded back in 2001, revisited, and remixed for mass consumption.

Six Finger Satellite is at its best when it resembles the aural equivalent of some Road Warrior-esque jerry-rigged motorized juggernaut, held together with bicycle chains and barbed wire.  It’s got the visceral stabs of punk and rogue dystopian synths, with a nagging feeling of instability where things might explode at any second with bits of Chrome-plated shrapnel.  The band’s insane 1995 masterpiece Severe Exposure was so memorable because every element had its place in the group’s sound: the warped Moog synths, the ear-shattering Travis Bean guitar licks that bordered on white noise, J. Ryan’s unhinged vocals, and jagged, high-tension drums.

Half Control is not a retread of Severe Exposure, and that would be fine, theoretically, if each element that was benched was replaced with something equally interesting.  However, most of the first half isn’t as deranged and hysterical as prime 6FS, especially in the vocal department, and when a synth emerges on tracks like “Artificial Light,” it isn’t as strange and unnerving as one might want.  The almost-thrash-metal opener “Thrown Out” provides a good jolt, and the second half of the release gets by on pure energy.  However, 6FS did more than that in the past to set itself apart from the crowd, and now that people are finally catching up to what the group made in the ’90s, it will have to try harder.

Gino Robair
I, Norton
(Rastascan)

The San Francisco composer, percussionist, electronic musician, and improviser Gino Robair takes on the curious, true story of Emperor Norton for his latest release, a spectacular 70-minute opera (of sorts) that manages to sustain a healthy level of unpredictability for the entire duration.  In 1859, the oddball Norton declared himself the Emperor of the United States and made decrees like abolishing Congress.  People were tickled by his character and played along with it to a degree, but of course, Norton was bonkers.  I, Norton serves as a worthy tribute by also being bonkers, with an impressive lineup of dozens of musicians all playing along with the game.

The opera captures the last breaths of Norton, who before ascending to heaven, watches his life flash before his eyes.  Much of the libretto uses passages from Norton’s proclamations and also letters to his love interest, Miss Minnie Wakeman, and vocals sometimes appear as electronically sliced and diced snippets.  Tom Duff reads the part of Norton with a spoken-word approach, but Aurora Josephson, who plays Wakeman, uses more adventurous methods, with an unusual vocabulary reminiscent of the Dada sound poetry of Kurt Schwitters.  The album’s centerpiece and most spacious track is the 28-minute “Mobs, Parties, Factions (Part I),” which is a live recording of the sfSound Ensemble, with full-on strings, winds, and brass; samples were recorded in real-time and instantly recycled for use in the proceedings, using speakers scattered throughout the orchestra.

A lot of territory is covered with a variety of instrumentation, with electronics and gongs providing the dominant sounds, and there are various nods to musical iconoclasts, such as John Cage (with prepared pianos) and Charles Ives, and possibly even Harry Partch, with the use of microtonal chords.  In the liner notes, Robair welcomes musicians to stage their own improvised productions of I, Norton, but his own offering—a sprawling, gloriously peculiar and stimulating work—sets the bar pretty high.