Week Of 7/17 - Psychobilly, Reggae, Punk, Metal, Trad. Indian

Keeping it eclectic this week, and with little fanfare:

New Releases:

Jimmy Cliff
Rebirth
Label: Universal Music
Released: 7/17 2012
Genre: Reggae

The first album from this reggae master in seven years. I recently became a fan of Jimmy and I gotta say, this is a great album. His voice is awesome, a bit high pitched, but still amazing. It does contain a few of the tracks from the Record Store Day single, which is good. If you missed that you missed some awesome Clash and Rancid covers. It's quite a few tracks, all of them pretty short. Nothing rambles on, he cuts it short and quick - this is where punk got some of it's timing from. Definitely an album to go get, some great mellow reggae.

Adding To The Backcatalog:

Biohazard
No Holds Barred - Live In Europe
Label: Roadrunner Records
Released: 1997
Genre: Heavy Metal, Hardcore Punk

A straight off the board, unedited, live set from the hardcore-metal-punk band of the 90s. Pure thrash sitting right here, unrelenting. The early 80s attitude cut with a late 90s sensibility. Pulling from every album up to that point, it's a non-stop hour of hardcore. Caveat - it's pretty much just for fans of Biohazard. Some of the sound quality isn't great, no new tracks, or remixes or anything. Just a live show. What a live album should be really.

Dedashish Bhattacharya
O Shakuntala!
Label: Riverboat Records / World Music Network
Released: 2009
Genre: Traditional Indian, Modern Indian

Not content to just play classical music on traditional instruments, Debashish invented three new kinds of lap slide guitar and has mastered them. It shows on this recording, a slide guitar style to make any blues artist a little green with jealousy, playing classical Indian musics as well as some original recordings. This is pretty much a solo effort on his part but it's amazing. It's also very quiet and soft, and good for taking a nice nap to, or meditation. Very relaxing.

HorrorPops
Hell Yea!
Label: Hellcat Records
Released: 2004
Genre: Psychobilly, Rockabilly

Back up the other side of the energy scale. HorrorPops deliver a knock out of an album here. Their first studio effort, it's good in its own right. But once you compare it to the later two albums you hear them not quite together yet. Still putting their sound under them this is a bit of stock-standard psychobilly. And, well, it's good, some real power is emerging here. Definitely a must have for psychobilly fans, or just plain rock and swing fans too. This is straight up enough to fit onto a whole range of dance floors.

Iron Maiden
The Reincarnation Of Benjamin Breeg (10")
Label: EMI Records
Released: 2006
Genre: Heavy Metal

Been sitting on this 10" single since it's release. It varies from the CD Single in that the b-side is two different tracks from the Radio-1 Sessions. The CD contained a massive rendition of Hollowed By Thy Name; this has The Trooper and Run To The Hills. The title track isn't the greatest cut from the album (A Matter Of Life And Death), and kind of drones on. The B-Sides are strictly for die-hard fans only. This is a fan item, I'm a huge fan so... of course I got it. Otherwise, it's just more Iron Maiden.

Hidden Tracks:
Unter Null
I Don't Belong Here
Label: Self-Released (www.Unter-Null.net)
Unter Null is putting out a new album soon, and this was put out to subscribers of her mailing list as a teaser. An instrumental track that goes very dark and rhythmic. A perfect extension of her past her, this one slows things down just a little, and grinds into the air with the same kind of audio-perfection you get from Noise Unit's sound. A fantastic teaser and you should go visit the website and fund the new album. You can also pick up this track by backing her next album on SellABand.

Next Week:
Some music from Vietnam, a long lost soundtrack finds its way back into my collection, some more hardcore from Biohazard, and some brand new Synthpop, plus a few surprises.

Week Of 3/20 - Classical, Flamenco, Industrial, Hard Rock

This week I get into some classical composers, industrial from Germany, and Flamenco by way of Classical Indian sounds....

New Releases:
Anoushka Shanakar 
Traveller
Label: Deutsche Grammophon
Released: 3/20 2011
Genre: Flamenco, Classical Indian





Anoushka Shankar's latest release finds her pairing up with a number of Flamenco musicians, at the front are her sitar and the guitar of Javier Limón. The music, and rhythms are unmistakably Flamenco in style, but the instrumentation is mostly Hindustani sounds. At the same time, it feels like you're listening to traditional Indian music. Their combination is often hard to pull apart, the blend of the two is nothing short of amazing. It's this kind of amazing musical synergy that gets me to go exploring further and further into what people can do with fusing music from around the world. This album is absolutely worth finding and picking up. It's energetic, and at the same time it's also a great album to put on and just let fill the space with pleasing sounds.

Adding To The Collection:
OOMPH!
Wahrheit Oder Pƒlicht
Label: Supersonic
Released: 2004
Genre: Industrial Rock, Neue Deutsche Harte




By 2004 OOMPH! had become giants in the genre in Europe, not quite as big over the US, and groups beyond Rammstein still hadn't quite broken through into the market here. Which is too bad because this album is great. Hard, a little rough around the edges, and good use of female vocals as not just chorus, but counter-verse and bridge. It's a solid album of industrial-rock, heavy on the guitars without ignoring the harder beats and dance-floor aesthetic. Not being a German speaker, much less ability to translate the sung word, I can only really comment on the music here - not the content of the songs. If you like Rammstein, this is the band you want to go get to add to your collection. I can say this album does feel somewhat formulaic, like they haven't quite broken out of a musical rut yet.

Halestorm
Halestorm
Label: Atlantic Records
Released: 2009
Genre: Hard Rock




This is the debut album from Halestorm. Like a lot of groups over the last decade it's a female lead vocal and a standard rock band behind her. Lzzy and Arejay, the Hale siblings, started the band with their dad back in 1997, releasing an EP in 2000 when they were still kids. The debut album is, musically, decent. Lzzy's voice is solid, doesn't sound like she's yelling or trying to imitate someone else. It's the lyrical content - it's almost an entire album about break ups, or how good the guy had it and how the girl will do so much better, etc and so on. Basically, girl-power rock focused completely on relationships, which gets boring about two songs in. Their new album comes out in April and I'm hoping it's possible they're changed writing tactics. But this album is basically emo-punk set to hard-rock and heavy metal, musically simple and contextually boring. There's some power hidden in there, they just need to cut loose with different material.

The Rough Guide To Classical Music
J.S. Bach
bonus CD: Angela Hewitt Plays Bach
Label: World Music Network
Released: 2011
Genre: Classical



The Rough Guide series started to delve into the Classical artists a short while back, Baroque composer J.S. Bach was the first. The collection here is interpretations by different conductors and musicians. Celloist Steven Isserlis starts off the collection. Conductor Roy Goodman, with the Brandeburg Consort, provides Orchestral Suite No. 1 in C Major Overture and Suite No. 1 in D Major parts 2-5, upbeat and quicker paced than I expect classical. Conductor Harry Christophers, with the Sixteen, takes on Praise The Lord parts 1-2, which frankly just sort of adds space to the next collection. Angela Hewitt fits in The Well Tempered Clavier in both C Major and C Minor, I find her piano mesmerizing honestly, it's light and relaxing. The Purcell Quartet and Swiss Baroque Soloists provide a Concerto each. Soprano Johanette Zomer provides the Cantata I Have Enough. And finally Thomas Schmögner ends the collection with Sleepers Awake, an organ prelude. I don't have a lot of experience with Classical, or Baroque, music. But I do know a diverse and wide collection when I hear it, and this seems to cover a good deal of Bach's styles and writings.


The second disc is just piano pieces performed by Angela Hewitt, as a piano player I find her amazing, interpreting Bach and you can't help but just sit back and listen. It's an amazing collection, honestly, covering a lot of ground, and doing it fluidly. The way the chosen pieces fit together I forget it's not written as an album for release but a series of pieces written years apart in some cases. The second disc here is worth the price of this collection.


Next Week:
And that's all this week, next week... a lot of heavy metal makes it's way through the speakers... several live albums, the new Overkill, and just to mix is up some EBM.

Week Of 1/3 - Modern Classical, House, Downtempo, Traditional India

Tried to mix it up a little this week. The New Release is a 7" Single from Ingrid Michaelson. The A-Side was released as a digital single last year, but the 7" Record is a new release with a B-Side Demo. Her new album comes out at the end of January. Adding to the collection I found two albums that "everyone owned" from the mid 1990s that somehow never made it into my own collection...

New Releases:
Ingrid Michaelson - Ghost
Label: Cabin 24 Records
Released: 1/3 2011
Genre: Modern Classical, Rock
It's hard to really judge an artist on a 2-track single. This one includes both the album-version and a demo of the song Ghost. It's a good song, has some pop-radio legs to it, and could easily earn itself some decent airplay if give the chance. The full album will be released later in January, and hopefully this song will be an indication of what to expect. If you want the demo version of the song you'll have to go track down the 7" record at your local indie-store. Otherwise the album-version of the track is available digitally. The song is primarly Ingrid and her piano, but strings and percussion accompany it lightly in the background to create a fuller sound. A bit light rock, modern classical style.


Adding To The Collection:
Tori Amos - Under The Pink
Label: Atlantic Records
Released: 1994
Genre: Modern Classical
I think this is one of those albums everyone is supposed to own, or claims to own. A few of the songs got some heavy radio play, contributing to her stardom. In all honesty, the first two thirds of this album are boring to listen to. They're not bad songs, just kind of bland. It's the last five tracks, starting with Cornflake Girl, where things pick up, a little color enters, some depth appears. The songs become more than displays of Tori's singing and piano. These last few tracks feel like full songs, where before they felt more like half-formed ideas. The albums she produced after this one improve greatly, you can tell this album is early in her career and her sound is still finding itself. A good album, but there are better from her.

Fatboy Slim - You've Come A Long Way Baby
Label: Astralwerks / Skint Records
Released: 1998
Genre: House
This is another album that everyone owned, or was supposed to own. It is classic mid/late-1990s house music, how it never ended up in my collection is anyone's guess. Probably because half of the tracks on it were so hard to avoid I never got around to buying it. The sound is firmyl big-beat, though the really big bass sound isn't quite in it. From the samples to the beats to the flow of the record the whole thing really does sound like the accumulated collective sound of popular house music from the early to mid 1990s. There's a lot of tracks that aged well, and bounce right along.

Ustad Sultan Khan - Rare Elements (Remixes)
Label: 5 Points Records
Released: 2004
Genre: Downtempo, Trip-Hop
I had never heard of this artist before this album ended up in my collection, but with remixes by Thievery Corporation and Radar One it was worth checking out (the wife is the one who found this gem one night of crate digging). It's all very downtempo style trip-hop and house. I don't know how to compare it to the original recordings, so I don't know if the remixes took great liberties or if they were very close to the originals. I do know this is a great mellow album without being too quiet. Ustad was a sarangi player, and a member of Tabla Beat Science (reviewed recently on 12/27), from India. From that I can imagine that his normal recordings are very traditional Indian with modern aesthetics mixed in. Making these remixes probably just a little more modern, but not a lot. I highly recommend seeking out this, or other, recordings of his if you're a fan of Indian music.


The Rough Guide To The Music Of India & Debshish Battacharya
Label: World Music Network
Released: 2010
Genre: Traditional, Indian
Sticking with an Indian theme, this rough guide pulls in from all over the musically diverse Indian continent. It's extremely diverse, with a lot of different styles and genres to pull from, it does a pretty good job of covering them all. Tabla, Sitar, Sarangi, water bowls, and vocals. This is definitely an introduction to styles and music of India, like many Rough Guides stands best either to find new artists in a particular styles, or in a larger mix of music from similar regions. With this album comes a live performance of Debshish Battacharya, on a custom designed slide guitar. It's a live recording, with only two other musicians to accompany him. As you listen you get the usual rhythms you associate with India, but towards the end of the performance the song slips into nearly a blues rhythm. So much so I almost wondered if he hadn't pulled out a bottle-neck to complete the concert, showing that many rhythms are nearly universal. For this second bonus album alone it has become one of my favorite Rough Guides to pull up and listen to.

Next week is an Unwoman marathon, I had a flash-drive of hers sitting around with a complete discography that I had yet to really crack into, so I loaded several of the albums from it all at once to listen to. The drive contains a lot of music, but I wanted to really get her main discography into my collection. Listen Hard!

Week Of 12/20 - Industrial, Dubstep, Psychedelic Rock, House

Late, blame the holidays.

New Releases:
Caustic - Justin Beaber's Never Say Never
Label: Self Released
Released: 12/20 2011
Genre: Industrial
Caustic gave away this free digital remix EP on his website. It's... a remix EP. Nothing massively interesting here, but it does include his awesome cover of Oxyacetalene. Beyond that, good for completionists.


Adding To The Collection:
The Black Angels - Phosphene Dream
Label: Blue Horizon
Released: 2010
Genre: Psychedelic Rock
More from the Black Angels this week. This second album isn't nearly the tribute to Vietnam that their debut album was. Still, they still have the late 60s down pat. The whole album reverbs around, sticking firmly to the rock and roll genre without wavering or faltering.  An excellent piece of rock, but nothing really sticks out above the others. It's just a solid offering all around with no hidden gems, but no clunkers either. Overall, definitely the better of the two albums, a little more experience show through here.

Nero - Welcome Reality
Label: Cherry Tree / Interscope Records
Released: 2011
Genre: Dubstep
From early 2011 before Skrillex's manic style took over. This feels more like the electro combination of Daft Punk and any standard House beats. The female vocals reach back and pull up a lesson from 1990s Trip Hop as well, effortlessly mixing all the styles into a dubstep sound. For all that, it's good in a generic 'toss it in the mix' kind of way. Doomsday is a bit of a heavy bass track, after that though it all kind of mixes together into something good but not great. It will be interesting to see their second album in the future, hopefully they get more adventurous and expand on the sound while keeping the trip-hop style vocals present.

Tabla Beat Science - Live In San Fransisco At Stern Grove
Label: Axiom Records
Released: 2002
Genre: House, Indian Traditional
This one I love, the first half is almost nothing but traditional sounds, tabla and vocals take up most of it. Very little of the Indian House you expect from some of the players here is evident - Karsh Kale,  DJ Disk and Midival Punditz leave it very light. Karsh plays all percussion here, none of his normal house stuff. The second half takes off with a lot of house, scratch, and more DJ influence, in a very nice mix. I don't even know where one track ends and another starts, and don't need to. It all blends so well as a live set that it might as well be a continuous mix album. This album is worth tracking down just for the performances on the tabla alone, really excellent live set.

Fabric Live 37 - Caspa & Rusko
Label: Fabric
Released: 2007
Genre: Dubstep, Electro
Speaking of Continuous mixes, this a joint effort from Dubstep DJs Rusko and Caspa, just shy of thirty tracks of dubstep-house-dub continuous mixing. They range all over the dubstep spectrum from the 2007 era - which is less frantic and more paced. You can definitely hear the dub underpinnings in the heavily altered beats. This is the genre in its most pure and raw form, while it's still very underground, pulling from as many influences as it can. One of the better DJ mixes I own honestly, in any style of electronica. If you're trying to get into Dubstep, or just want an above average dubstep mix, find this and add it to your collection.


Bonus EP
The Crüxshadows - Christmas songs
Label: Self Released
For Christmas Rogue released three songs for download, one track celebrating his recently born daughter, and two more holiday songs of a more traditional bent. All three are good darkwave/goth takes on the holiday, very good slightly down tempo holiday songs to mix up the constant high pitched bells everyone else uses. A nice little present for the season.

Next week - Scottish Folk, Ambient, Arabic, and some modern Jazz from Japan, plus a surprise or two...

Week Ending 4/16 - Rock, Industrial, Goth, Blues, Indian

Smattering of everything this week. The two New Releases I picked up were a single from Tim Skold and Caustic's full album. Both digitally, Metropolis Records nicely provide a PDF booklet of the liner notes, not just the cover art. Which I highly appreciate and may switch all my Metropolis purchases to digital format. If only more labels followed in their footsteps.

Caustic - The Golden Vagina Of Fame And Profit
Label: Metropolis Records
Released: 4/12 2011
Genre: Industrial
His first release on Metropolis, the album is a very old-school industrial release. No squealing guitars, just thumping beats and crunchy noise. A couple tracks are mostly instrumental and are, in the context of the album, a bit annoying. I'd throw them into a mix and let them get happily lost in the background of a long day. The stand outs are Hiroshima Burn (a massive beat and lyrics that make me want to throw down in a mosh pit), Orchid (Unwoman lends her vocals to a great anti-rock cut), Chum The Waters (not as pure awesome as the remix on the single off the album, but still awesome and full of drums), and White Knuckle Head Fuck (just beautifully angry). Good old Industrial club cuts.

SKOLD - Suck
Label: Metropolis Records
Released: 4/12 2011
Genre: Industrial
The single off the upcoming Skold album. Tim Skold has been in the business a long time, and after 15 years is finally putting out another solo album. The first five tracks are the Title and four remixes. It's a great industrial-rock song, an ode to wanting to be the Rock Star - very fight club. The last three tracks are all non-album tracks. It's nice to see a single contain several non-album tracks instead of just one. If they're any indication of the upcoming album (out 5/10) then it will be an excellent and dark album.

Double Down - Polarity
Label: self released (purchase through CD Baby)
Released: 2008
Genre: Rock
Double Down is a Denver local band, rock and blues-rock. Polarity was released during a time when they were switching out bassists almost as fast as Spinal Tap went through drummers. It's a good solid rock offering, good for nights when you just need something blue collar with some blues thrown in. Bar Rock, really.

The Victim's Ball - The Victim's Ball
Label: self released (purchase through CD Baby)
Released: 2010
Genre: Gothic-Rock
I call it Gothic Rock, but there's no guitars. Though if there were it'd fit perfectly into the early/mid-80s Goth Rock scene. It's traditional instruments from the late 18th- early 19th century. The album focuses around the French Revolution and the supposed Victim's Balls (parties held by surviving nobility) afterwards. It's a dark and melodic album, good for late nights.

Rough Guides
World Music has a service where you subscribe to receive two new Rough Guide compilations a month, given mail from the UK takes a random about of time I never really know when I'm going to get these. . . My wife picks which two compilations she wants to listen to every month.

RG to Desert Blues:
Blues coming out of the North African region. Traditional music mixed with modern guitars, and some other modern elements. It does feel very blues, not in the classic American Delta sense, but in a more overall 12-bar feeling of the genre. Some of it is a bit rock, some of it is hard to find the blues under it. All of it is really good. This one comes with an extra CD from the group Etran Finatawa, which is just excellent.

RG to Indian Lounge
Hard to categorize this, it's not quite techno, not quite lounge, little bit night club, lots of traditional, and all kinds of things mixed in. One track strikes me as "Dub Bhangra" - the only words I have for it. Some of it's slow, some of it bouncy and fast. The Rough Guides are really eclectic selections normally, and if this is even a sampling of how an Indian night club moves they listen to just about anything and incorporate it into everything.