This is the third volume of Soundway’s excellent overview of Nigerian music, focused on that country’s formidable output throughout the ‘70s. Post-colonial existence, periods of military rule and democratic experiments, a population explosion (especially in the metropolis of Lagos, a sprawling destination not only for Africans, but for people from all over the world), favored nation status with OPEC, and an influx of Western thought engendered a cultural blossoming the likes of which had rarely been experienced in the country’s history. While past Nigeria Special volumes dealt with traditional musics and segues into the nation’s rich disco and funk legacies, Rock Special focuses on, as the label states, “psychedelic Afro-rock and fuzz funk.”
All roads lead to Lagos, of course, but there are only a handful of roots to trace directly to the sounds on Nigeria Rock Special; namely, the worldwide popularity of Afrobeat superstars Fela Kuti (as well as his one-time drummer and musical director, Tony Allen); the influence of Cream’s Ginger Baker, who recorded with Fela and later formed the group Salt with prime movers in the Nigerian rock and funk scenes; and the imposition of reps from major labels EMI and Decca, who saw potential in the sales figures Fela was generating worldwide. Groups like the Funkees, Question Mark, and The Action 13 sprouted up throughout the ‘70s, the culmination of student and military bands absorbing the sounds of the Stones, the Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, and other groundbreaking acts of the era, and applying it to traditional rhythms and styles of play.
It’s no surprise, then, that much of Rock Special sounds like a more shaken-up, direct take on the tracks from the other comps in the series, evidenced by heavier guitars, effects pedals, and freaked-out melodies. Joe King Kologbo & His Black Sound’s racing “Another Man’s Thing”–ostensibly a warning to other men to keep their hands off his woman–cranks up the pulse to traditional Afrobeat, then to a hollering, forceful rock imperative. The reedy distortion busting up the guitar lead over a deft polyrhythmic pace threatens to derail at any moment. The Hygrades’ instrumental “In the Jungle,” on the other hand, looks directly to the sort of machine-tightened funk interplay of the JB’s as its source of inspiration. Still other offerings from mainstays like Ofo the Black Company and BLO point towards the heady amalgamation of funk, rock, and soul in practice by American crossover acts like War and Mandrill.
As with all the Special collections, Nigeria Rock Special takes great care in cutting across a diverse and unique musical period with a workmanlike sense of duty, balancing a wide swath of sounds with strong sequencing and significant attention to detail. Certainly not the first collection to tackle such sounds (the excellent Luaka Bop offering Love’s a Real Thing having proceeded this volume with many of the same acts), these latest additions to the reissue canon sparkle with the pride and strength of a nation’s contributions to the rock diaspora.
Don’t have time to search out this week’s essential new music? That’s why we’re here.
CocoRosie “God Has a Voice She Speaks Through Me”
Our favorite indie-pop duo featuring gender bending half-Cherokee sisters–one a classically trained opera singer, the other a former model–goes funky on its new digital single. The chimes, shimmering electronic textures, heavily-processed vocals–it all sounds a bit like vintage Bjork bouncing off a funhouse mirror.
Listen on MySpace: “God Has a Voice She Speaks Through Me”
Beck “Chemtrails”
Beck’s hush-hush collaboration with Danger Mouse is going to be a lot more far out than we thought based on this moody piece of Skip Spence-inspired psychedelia. Hopefully the CD will come with its own built-in laser light show.
MP3: Chemtrails
The Ting Tings “Great DJ”
You’ve seen the iTunes commercial, read the hysterical reviews and seen their pretty mugs all over the blogosphere. Now hear what all the fuss is about, as this British guitar ‘n’ drums duo “ah-ah-ahs” its way through the leadoff track from its fantastic debut album, We Started Nothing.
MP3: Great DJ
Mates of State “My Only Offer”
After a cross-country move, this husband and wife team delivers the prettiest mid-tempo piano ballad ever about placing an offer on a new house. At least, that’s what we think this song is about.
MP3: My Only Offer
Mudhoney “I’m In and Out of Grace (Live)”
From the Seattle band’s newly remastered debut EP, Superfuzz Bigmuff, this demonic wall of noise is a good reminder as to why these guys never sold as many records as Pearl Jam.
(via Sub Pop)
It is the sound of a Brooklyn night that Religious Knives chases: a bag of green in the hand, rooftop hangs, leaning on the keys, leaving one place to go to the next. Over a handful of heavy releases, this outfit–now a quartet of guitarist Mike Bernstein and keyboardist Maya Miller, both of Double Leopards; drummer Nate Nelson of Mouthus; and recent addition Todd Cavallo on bass–has matured from a slurred, anxious drone into something much more relaxed, confident and fleet-footed, set against martial rhythms and repetitive, deep tonal anchorage. The group’s sole instinct seems to be how to treat these vibes and test them against time and conditions to impart the true, tangible core of the sounds they create with altered mood and hazy perception.
Resin, the first “studio” recordings of their quartet lineup, combines the tracks from an earlier 12” single, a handful of tour-only cassettes and CD-Rs and a few unreleased and live offerings. Sounds coalesce on Resin almost instantly, setting up a brocade of thick, aggressive stew for the drums to roil beneath on opener “In the Back.” Steadiness is key here, and what separates this track from, say, Sonic Youth’s first EP, is merely a matter of a few decades and some grittier production, but that’s not really the point. It’s somewhat of a foregone conclusion that nothing new is going to happen in any record you listen to. Religious Knives understands this, and instead works on the feelings that this music can impart–a disruptive dream state where safety and anxieties begrudgingly coexist–to leave the listener with a more lasting impression of their soundcraft. As Resin surges on, you’ll hear similar paeans to the Fall (“Everything Happens Twice” could have appeared on “Dragnet”, sans Procol Harum-esque organ solo), to the Doors (“The Sun” and both halves of “Twelve Bottles and One White Cone,” featuring No Neck Blues Band drummer Dave Nuss), and to the lonely-soul aspects of dub reggae (“Luck,” backboned with a haunting melodica lead). But overall you’ll discover a band that has exercised a great deal of control over this corner of music, and manipulates space, silence and headroom to create a profound state of being, lurching onwards with the weight of city life all across their shoulders, trying to alchemize it into Acapulco gold.
Wine-drunk in the churchyards, climbing burial mounds
And the band marched in circles, continued the sounds.
– Dark Meat, “Freedom Ritual”
You’ve never heard anything quite like Universal Indians before. No, really. You haven’t. While Detroit five-piece the Dirtbombs feature two bass players and two drummers, Athens, Georgia’s Dark Meat/Vomit Lasers Family Band/Galaxy–or just Dark Meat for short–boasts 17 musicians banging away on a variety of instruments: Celtic harp, didgeridoo, fiddle, horns, and a beer can (naturally). There’s also a group-within-a-group, the Phil Spector-inspired vocal trio the Subtweeters.
More conventionally, Dark Meat incorporates bass (one player), drums (two), guitars (three), and brass (fourteen), yet the effect isn’t as hippie dippy–or completely cacophonous, for that matter–as that line-up implies. Unhinged rave-ups, like “Well Fuck You Then,” “Assholes for Eyeballs,” and “There Is a Retard on Acid Holding a Hammer to Your Brain,” don’t exactly suggest sunshine and flowers.
North Carolina songwriter/guitarist Jim McHugh, the ringleader, has a vocal style that lies between Iggy Pop and Mark Arm, further distancing Dark Meat from the realm of freak folk or New Weird America. Granted, they’re weird all right, but except for the a cappella intro, there’s little folk to be found on their first record. Dedicated to the “Holy Ghost of Albert Ayler” (the free jazz sax player), Universal Indians comes on like the peyote-popping grads of a high school marching band reuniting to play proto-punk.
This expanded edition of Dark Meat’s 2006 debut adds three bonus tracks: two live numbers recorded in Gram Parsons’ not-so-happy hunting ground of Joshua Tree, and Ayler tribute “Universal Indians.” Apart from atonal instrumental “Disintegrating Flowers” (a little irritating, but it’s over in two minutes), the whole strange set works better than it should. Nonetheless, this collective probably makes an even greater impression on stage, where their costumes and confetti become part of the spectacle.
Tour dates:
Apr 25 2008 - Red Barn, Peoria, Illinois
Apr 26 2008 - Empty Bottle w/ ENON, Chicago, IL
Apr 27 2008 - Nomad World Pub, Minneapolis, MN
Apr 28 2008 - The Aquarium, Fargo, ND
Apr 29 2008 - The Waiting Room w/ Drakkarsauna, Omaha, NE
Apr 30 2008 - The Jackpot Saloon w/ Drakkarsauna, Lawrence, KS
May 1 2008 - Hi-Dive Saloon w/ Drakkarsauna, Denver, CO
May 2 2008 - Kilby Ct., Salt Lake City, UT
May 3 2008 - Friend Friend Friend Fest, Missoula, MT
May 4 2008 - The Comet, Seattle, WA
May 6 2008 - Doug Fir Lounge, Portland, OR
May 8 2008 - Hemlock Tavern w/ The Ohsees, San Francisco, CA
May 9 2008 - The Cellar Door, Visalia, CA
May 10 2008 - The Echo Lounge, Los Angeles, CA
May 14 2008 - Walter’s on Washington w/ Quiet Hooves, Houston, TX
May 15 2008 - The Mohawk w/ Quiet Hooves, Austin, TX
May 16 2008 - Lola’s w/ Quite Hooves, Ft. Worth, TX
May 17 2008 - Good Records, Dallas, TX
May 18 2008 - The Conservatory w/ Quiet Hooves, Oklahoma City, OK
May 19 2008 - Mojo’s w/ Quiet Hooves, Columbia, MO
May 20 2008 - The Record Bar w/ Quiet Hooves, Drakkarsauna, Kansas City, MO
May 21 2008 - The Blue Bird w/ Quiet Hooves, St. Louis, MO
May 22 2008 - Mike N Mollys w/ Quiet Hooves, Champaign, IL
May 23 2008 - Summercamp Festival w/ Flaming Lips, Chillicothe, IL
May 24 2008 - Av/Aerie w/ Quiet Hooves, Chicago, IL
May 26 2008 - Lee’s Place, Toronto, ON
May 27 2008 - Zoobizarre, Montreal, QC
May 28 2008 - Music Hall of WIlliamsburg, Brooklyn, NYC
May 29 2008 - Space 1026, Philadelphia, PA
May 29 2008 - Johnny Brendas, Philadelphia, PA
May 30 2008 - Mountain Jam w/ Levon Helm, Woodstock, NY
There’s something rather unsettling about The Evening Descends, the second release from Norman, Oklahoma-based Evangelicals. In fact, their music depends on it. The overkill of noise, reverberating multi-part harmonies, modulated instruments and sonic accidents is the unfortunate watermark. Lead singer Josh Jones has a voice that warbles, almost uncontrollably, as if he’s being poked with a Taser, stuck in the throes of an adolescent voice change, or being taken over by a spirit–or all of the above. The latter is the point, I think: beyond cobbling together a kind of freak-twee-prog, which is equal parts curious, whimsical, foreboding, and cute, Evangelicals transmit more than a little churchiness.
It’s definitely a bizarre sort of gospel, however, and conversion isn’t always easy. This is most clear in “Bellawood”, which at five and a half minutes, is the longest song on the album, its most ambitious–and at varying points, its most and least successful. It screeches in, on swampy horns, feedback, and buzzes, before a voice–Gomez from “The Addams Family”, no doubt—says urgently “They’re ganging up on me, what do I do?” The answer, “Run,” is almost overwhelmed because that’s what the music starts to do, howling and whirling, with gusty guitars, urgent drumming, and thunderous clashes made by hard-to-identify instruments. The refrain is Jones spelling “Bellawood,” with Evangelicals trademark overlapping background vocals chiming in like the choir at some junked-up, outer space, 21st century revival. The song keeps jostling back and forth between this spooky frenzy and its languid antithesis, making for a startling, sometimes electrifying, but more often schizophrenic offering. I find it a shorthand for the entire album: otherwise gorgeous moments spoiled by clutter. Beyond miscellany and trippy proselytizing, there’s no unifying thread to this album. Evangelicals are a concept band, for sure, but here they border on gimmick.
The artists on LSD Pond make good on the album title by building layer upon swirling layer into aural sculptures. You won’t need drugs to listen to this one–they’re built right into the music.
This double-disc release of the collaboration of three bands–Bardo Pond of Philadelphia; and LSD March and New Rock Syndicate, both of Japan–picks up where Funkadelic left off on Maggot Brain’s title track as well as that album’s outro cut, “Wars of Armageddon.” The careful sonic structuring of the eight instrumental (there’s vocals on one cut) improvisations on LSD Pond is also reminiscent of the great Seventies German eclectica troupe CAN.
All the people involved here are old hands at improvisational music and do not indulge in random, “we’ll let it play out however it may,” jamming. Rather, akin to sonic artist and guitar alchemist Keith Rowe, they squeeze and buffet their axes until they have wrung out of them every conceivable register of tone and cycle of feedback that seem possible in the given time. And they are diligent in ensuring that each guitar exploration finds fertile new ground.
The drumming of Jason Kourkounis–ex of Delta 72, Burning Brides, Hot Snakes and presently doing double duty with The Night Marchers–on disc one is the key force keeping these sonic excursions reined in, disallowing them from drifting into Hippieville. Whenever a number seems susceptible to stagnation, Kourkounis’s scattershot power licks, Ziggaboo Modeliste-esque bass drum, and jazzy snare trills draw the whole team squarely back into the yoke to pull on to the next soundscape.