Music: Seattle Sound Magazine | Resonance | Ruminator | PopMatters

Tens of thousands of CDs are released worldwide each year—more choices than one person could listen to in a lifetime. But I still frequently hear the incredulous complaint: “There isn’t any good music coming out these days.” To which I consistently reply: “Really? Dig deeper.” Much of my work as a music reviewer attempts to highlight overlooked jazz, classical, and indie-rock CDs interested listeners would probably love if they knew where to look for them and had the time to listen. I love browsing through dusty used CD bins and passing albums across the globe to a network of friends. The process of searching and discovering new music is its own reward.

 

Seattle Sound Magazine covers Seattle's music scene from all angles with in-depth feature stories, exclusive interviews, artist profiles, coverage of local and touring bands, calendar, CD reviews, and regular columns. Issues: OCT '06
OCT '06 Jeremy Enigk weathers band break-ups and a spiritual shakeup with a new album, a new band, and a triumphant return to the spotlight. Indeed and at last… The Wait Is Over Story Joel Hanson Photos Erik Clineschmidt Two songs into his set on the Backyard Stage at Bumbershoot, Jeremy Enigk is finally enjoying himself. With eyes closed and eyebrows raised, mouth drawn taut to reach his elusive falsetto, he turns his back on the audience to interact with his band mates. The four session players look dour, stiffly bent over their instruments until they’re touched by the infectious energy of Enigk’s bent-kneed bobbing and grandiose strumming. In person, 30 minutes later, Enigk is honest, thoughtful, affable. When he speaks, his blue eyes burn with intensity and conviction. Undoubtedly, the man would make an inspiring youth group leader. Though rumors blamed Enigk’s complicated Christian faith for the breakup of his pioneering rock quarter, Sunny Day Real Estate, Enigk confesses that the strong-willed, conflicting personalities of his band mates caused the group’s demise. “I was terrified of quitting that band,” Enigk explains, searching for the right words, “until I realized that I’m safe no matter what choices I make, as long as they’re the right choices. So it wasn’t Christianity. That’s just what gave me the courage to do it.” (for entire article) back to the top
	Resonance champions the independent creative spirit. In every issue, it prospects throughout the artistic spectrum, filters out the riff-raff, and brings discerning readers the risky-yet-refined edge of modern music, film, literature and the arts. The pursuit of fearless, unadulterated content has been its modus operandi since 1994. Issues: 54 | 53 | 51 | 50 | 48 | 47 | 46 | 45 | 44 | 43 | 42 | 41 | 40 | 38 | 36 | 35 | 34 | 32 | 31
	Issue 54: Jason Holstrom
	Jason Holstrom The Thieves of Kailua (Mill Pond)   Seattleite Jason Holstrom’s new “concept” album is the calypso version of the Beach Boys’ Endless Summer, instrumentally refashioned with ukuleles and slide guitars and relocated to the peaceful innocence of the Hawaiian islands. Indeed, the essence of Brian Wilson blows through Holstrom’s fleeting sonic diary of real-life Hawaiian experiences—along with an affectionate, effusive joie de vivre. It seems like nothing bad could ever happen while listening to this music. Even on the song-within-a-song title track, Holstrom transforms the memory of getting robbed into something to laugh about. While Thieves lacks a cohesive narrative trajectory, for those open to its infectious equanimity the album is certain to invoke found memories of the islands or perhaps, for mainlanders, provide the inspiration to finally visit them.
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	Issue 53: Jan Jelinek | L. Pierre
	Jan Jelinek Tierbeobachtungen (Scape) Even if music critic Richard Williams once wrote an honest exposé on the meditative merits of a sine tone heard on a John Lennon album, would he have approved of an entire record aiming at the same experience? Berlin-based producer Jelinek’s Tierbeobachtungen is a collection of creepy drones that often feel, upon first listen, as uniform and monotonous as a series of test tones. But Jelinek adds enough novel sounds into his compositions, as evidenced by the self-referential noise collage “Up to My Same Old Trick,” to transform this album into a singularly hypnotic experience. But whether the listener believes such “music” tedious, or capable of yielding the perceptual epiphany for which Williams was chastised depends entirely on one’s speaker quality, imagination, and attention span.
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	L. Pierre Dip (Melodic) Is Aidan Moffat distraught over the demise of Arab Strap or compositionally liberated?  His third record, a seamless, organic departure from his previous work, makes a strong case for the latter. Moffat opens the six-song album with oceans waves washing ashore, establishing a unifying sonic theme and revealing the compositional architecture of a majority of these pensive pieces. On “Gust,” Moffat elicits an eerie atmosphere with merely wordless vocal loops. But the strong duo of Alan Barr (cello) and Stevie Jones (double bass), as evidenced by the mournful waltz of “Ache,” provide Dip’s most serene, emotionally arresting moments. Moffat ends on a hopeful note with “Drift,” a reminder that the dissolution of a relationship can be a catalyst for meaningful self-reflection and expansive personal change.
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	Issue 51: Quantic | Dani Siciliano
	Quantic An Announcement to Answer (Ubiquity) Brighton-based laptopper Will Holland has collaborated with a revolving cast of musicians while traversing the globe in search of records to mold Quantic’s expansive world-beat sound. On Quantic’s fourth effort, Holland combines sampled sounds from locales as disparate as China and the Caribbean, with jazz, funk and hip-hop grooves. Your interest in the results depends somewhat on your appreciation of the mixture of the aforementioned styles. On the intoxicating, mournful opener “Absence Heard, Presence Felt,” Holland drops sampled Chinese erhu (a type of violin) over a hip-hop beat, but stumbles with the protracted Latino groove of “Sabor,” which could effectively double as background music in a burrito joint. Holland’s musicianship and technical acumen are undisputed, but it’s unclear if he can make a consistently intriguing, cohesive album from his incongruent influences.
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	Dani Siciliano Slappers (K7) Flappers might have been a more appropriate title for this record. Jazz diva avatar Siciliano is cut from the same gender-bending cloth as her 1920’s counterparts—she’s a risk-taker who thrives on bucking convention. Aided by producer/long-time collaborator Matthew Herbert, Siciliano opts for crafty samples and quirky analog keyboard as the sonic mis-en-scène for her seductive, hook-filled wordplay. Some of her suggestive sighs could bring a blush to the snow. What’s most intriguing about Siciliano’s second solo album is the virtual absence of typical chord-based music. Instead Dani appears to utilize a composition-by-subtraction method of songwriting, stripping away acoustic melodies until there’s nothing left to sing over but repetitive keyboard blips and samples. But her approach still leaves plenty of room to pull captivating melodies from thin air. The album’s closer, “Be My Producer,” exemplifies the pervasive electronic simplicity of Slappers. Siciliano creates a hypnotic beat from her sampled voice and then chants siren-like to her husband: “Be my producer/give me the beat/one half seducer of my defeat.” On the Creatures-esque title track, Siciliano’s mantra, “find another way to speak, speak your mind,” feels like a preemptive shot at her contemporaries, a woman’s concise—and justifiable—claim to her own musical territory. If she can dodge such easy comparisons, Siciliano may find herself with a hit on her hands this autumn.
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	Issue 50: Devics | I Love You But I've Chosen Darkness
	Devics Push the Heart (Filter) “You’re wasting all your time here.” One careful listen to Push the Heart and sweet-voiced Sara Lov’s prescient opening line becomes an unintentional indictment of the band’s anemic fourth album. After 2003’s promising The Stars of St. Andrea, the art-student duo has fashioned a disappointing collection of forgettable songs. Undoubtedly, the blame rest squarely on the shoulders of multi-instrumentalist Dustin O’Halloran. His unadorned, colorless piano lines, consistently phlegmatic tempos, predictable guitar progressions and disinterested vocals leave Lov nothing to work with but tepid emotional content. “Just One Breath” and “City Lights” momentarily disrupt the indolent mood, but the cathartic hooks that made songs such as “In Your Room” so memorable are entirely missing here. Hopefully, this is a one-album anomaly. For now, take Lov’s advice and listen elsewhere.
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	I Love You But I’ve Chosen Darkness Fear Is On Our Side (Secretly Canadian) What else needs to be said about a record that’s been made so many times before? This Austin, TX quintet likely spent a majority of its adolescence spinning Sisters of Mercy records by candlelight, wondering if anyone would notice if it revived that band’s tenebrous touches a quarter of a century later. On “According to Plan,” the whip-crack of Tim White’s snare, Edward Robert’s chorus-pedaled bassline, and Christian Goyer’s stern vocals resurrect the Sisters’ stark, unconvincing anguish. Throughout Fear, almost every ’80s darksider affectation emerges as painfully as the memory of your senior yearbook picture. Sadly, the album’s instrumentals are as structurally predictable as the uninspiring sounds used to create them. So what’s the source of the band’s budding popularity: amnesia or nostalgia?
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	Issue 48:  Angels Of Light and Akron Family | Calla | The Drift
	Angels of Light and Akron/Family Akron/Family & Angels of Light (Young God) Musical collaborations between significantly differing groups often yield fascinating records, but not the union of Michael Gira’s Angels of Light with Akron/Family. Each band splits songwriting duties, yielding a potpourri of incongruent styles. The Akron/Family’s musical aspirations lie in the ’70s, where sufficient amounts of dope can make any impulsive compositional decision sound transcendent. The group aims for a free-flowing and periodically beautiful musical chaos of a white-trash gospel choir reviving a rock opera. Gira’s rich baritone, by contrast, resembles the late Johnny Cash’s, and his music finds fertile soil in the bluesy backwoods. One the creepy, country tune “The Provider,” each group’s contrasting visions temporarily merge to achieve something spiritual and memorable, but clearly, both groups are better off on their own.
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	Calla Collisions (Beggars Banquet) Since the group’s inception in 1997, Brooklyn-based Calla has widened its fan base by slowly eschewing a sample-based electronic sound for insipid, paint-by-numbers indie rock. The trio’s tempos are faster, their guitars are noisier, and their four-note, cookie-cutter song structures are undeniably smoother. But not one compositional detour or sonic surprise punctuates Collisions, save the 83-second instrumental “Imbusteros.” Aurelio Valle’s sleepless, gravelly voice augments the boredom by assiduously opting for the easy rhyme. On “Swagger,” for example, he sings: “A massive/offensive/You seem to me obsessive/Your version/diversion/Tell me something I don’t know.” If Calla ever hopes to dig itself out of a fallow furrow fashioned over four albums, the band needs to take a long look in the mirror and follow its own lyrical advice.
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	The Drift Noumena (Temporary Residence) San Francisco’s The Drift—an appropriately named, ambient dub quartet that likes to let its music wander—adeptly shuffle between rock, ambient and jazz-inflected improvisations in the space of a 10-minute song. On “Invisible Cities,” the dynamic changes mirror the twists and turns of an unpredictable river winding towards the ocean. Safu Shokrai’s bassline, as lubricious as anything Charles Mingus concocted in a smack-sponsored stupor, beautifully entwines the driving guitar of Danny Gody (Tarentel), Rich Douthit’s mathematical drumming and the bawdy belching of Jeff Jacob’s trumpet before yielding to a serene and satisfying interlude. Even if a couple of these pieces develop placidly or momentarily lose their direction, the Drift is consistently engaging enough to inspire listeners to take their own unexpected journeys.
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	Issue 47: Death Cab For Cutie | J Ralph | T Raumschmiere | Laura Viers
	Death Cab For Cutie Plans (Atlantic) On Death Cab For Cutie’s fifth album (and major-label debut) lyricist Ben Gibbard refutes the popular contention that most great art is born from pain and dissatisfaction. Now that he’s found love, Gibbard, who has fashioned a career by chronicling a relationship’s most awkward and agonizing moments, turns to the themes of aging and death without compromising any of his lyrical sincerity or refreshing insight. If only the band’s measured musical backdrops were as consistently novel as Gibbard’s lyrics, this album would be a masterpiece. While the tracks “Soul Meets Body” and “Brothers in a Hotel Bed” are as intriguing and catchy as anything the band has previously written, Plans is neither as adventurous nor as cohesive as the band’s landmark album Transatlanticism. But it’s beautiful and comforting nevertheless.
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	SHORTWAVE: J Ralph Jingles All The Way Has any record ever achieved commercial success before its official release? J Ralph’s new album might be the first. The Illusionary Movements of Geraldine and Nazu compiles the majestic orchestral scores Ralph composed for high-profile car companies: Volvo, Honda, and others. The popularity (at least with TV audiences) of Ralph’s work, undoubtedly confirms the musician’s skill. “One Million Miles Away”—written for a 2001 Volkswagen Super Bowl commercial—ran for three years after it premiered. (for entire review)
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	T Raumsschmiere Blitzkreig Pop (Novamute) Marco Hass’ new album may be only months old, but it already sounds dated. That’s because the Berlin-based producer (stage name: T Raumschmiere) daubs countless industrial-rock affectations onto his musical canvas and tries to pass them off as something new. All of Raumschmiere’s sonic lineaments—stomping bass lines, distorted vocals and artificial angst—were pioneered at least 15-20 years earlier by acts such as Skinny Puppy, Ministry, and Nitzer Ebb. Guest vocalist Sandra Nasic completes the ’80s homage with her convincing histrionic mimesis of Pat Benatar on “A Very Loud Lullaby,” Blitzkreig Pop’s unmistakable nadir. Not surprisingly, the album’s two redeeming tracks, the almost ambient instrumentals “Der Grottenholm” and “Patridiot,” find Hass venturing into unfamiliar territory. Too bad the rest of the record exhibits such shameless thievery.
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	Laura Veirs Year Of Meteors (Nonesuch) If Beth Orton sang with more passion and honesty, if Chan Marshall could actually play guitar and did fewer drugs, they’d be soul sisters to Laura Veirs. On her latest album, the Seattle-based singer steers her introspective songwriting away from her quirky, folk-based homeland toward the limpid waters of straightforward rock with mixed results. Veirs remains a master of poignant lyrical imagery, capturing slice-of-life snapshots within single sentences in an awkward but endearing voice. Tucker Martine’s cheesy keyboard lines and Karl Blau’s superfluous backup vocals occasionally emasculate Veirs’ deft compositions. Nevertheless, Martine’s programmed beats and electronic treatments augment some of the album’s best songs: the earnest opener “Fire Snakes” and the delicate closer “Lake Swimming.” Smooth production and Veirs’ well-honed hooks should yield one of this autumn’s crossover hits.
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	Issue 46: HRSTA | Shortwave: Magic Arrows | Shortwave: Stina Nordenstam | Populous
	HRSTA Stem Stem in Electro (Constellation) Guitarist/singer Mike Moya quit godspeed you! black emperor in 1998 but has had difficulty separating his subsequent side-projects from the dreary domains of his former group. However, his current crop of drunken - at times defiant - anthems for the downtrodden contains an unstable emotional intimacy absent in GYBE. Moya avoids the quiet-loud-quiet dynamic employed by his Canadian instrumental brethren and manages a chilling introspective intensity with understated use of guitar, piano, and his tortured voice. At times, his nasal register resembles the late Layne Staley, especially on the creepy cultish opener, "And We Climb." But the eerie expressions supplied by a trio of string players on the instrumentals "Quelque Chose a Propos des Raquetteurs" and "Heaven Is Yours" yield the album’s loneliest, most poignant moments and may help Moya finally shed the chronic comparisons to his previous work.
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	SHORTWAVE: Magic Arrows Life, the Universe and Everything Scott Beschta derives his creative energy and spiritual guidance from unusual sources: '80s science-fiction films, and improvised, drug-filled excursions across the United States. The sample and loop master behind Magic Arrows, Beschta - a nomad, wanderer and reluctant philosopher - is on a mystical journey of self-exploration. "[Being] on the road fills my adventure quota even though Yoda says that 'a Jedi craves not adventure,'" Beschta explains. "I can’t help but be drawn to [adventure] to a certain extreme. Not to go over the edge or anything but to a point where it’s unfamiliar and exciting." (for entire review)
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	SHORTWAVE: Stina Nordenstam A Furtive Northern Light "I feel sick when I have to repeat myself," Stina Nordenstam reveals during her reluctant interview. The Swedish singer inserts languid sighs between thoughts, as though the greatest violence she could do to her fragile, jazz-tinged music is discuss it with a total stranger. But the fear of repetition also explains why for more than a dozen years now, she has experimented with disparate musical backdrops to showcase her alluring vocal whisperings while avoiding live performances and touring. "The song itself needs to be fresh to me when I go into the studio," Nordenstam asserts, "and that’s the problem if you’re playing live, if you’re performing the same song over and over." Nordenstam’s shunning of the stage and the spotlight explains why she is essentially unknown stateside. But with the V2 label’s support, she’s poised to claim her share of fame. (for entire review)
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	Populous Queue for Love (Morr Music) Pilfering sounds from a bottomless well of 60s and 70s jazz records, Andrea Mangia’s intriguing brew of instrumental hip-hop contains some of the smoothest sample collage since Spacer’s Atlas Earth or DJ Shadow’s Entroducing. There are sonic surprises and textural subtleties throughout Queue that only emerge after repeated plays and careful listens. Guest vocalist Doseone serves up whispery wordplay on the dream-like "My Winter Vacation" and Matilde Davoli’s bewitching vocals grace "Bunco" and "Clap Like Breeze." But the instrumentals "Pawn Shop Close" and "The Dixie Saga" offer the album’s most aurally arresting moments as Mangia bridges disparate decades with dazzling electronics. "Maqam Saba" is perhaps the one exception to Mangia’s inventive instrumental alchemy: it’s thin and repetitious, as though leaking through the wall of the next door neighbor’s apartment. But Queue is the perfect pleasure for summer’s upcoming amative adventures.
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	Issue 45: Damon and Naomi | Damien Jurado | Montag
	Damon and Naomi The Earth Is Blue (20/20/20) In the five years between albums, Damon and Naomi divided their time between book publishing, poetry, photography, and unearthing old Galaxie 500 rarities. Unfortunately, that’s diluted their compositional creativity, leaving them with nothing new to say on their current record. The familiar ingredients remain: timorous vocals, gentle acoustic guitar strums, all-too-obvious lyrical imagery, and earnest optimism permeating almost every song. Returning Ghost guitarist Michio Kurihara primarily contributes by overextending songs with his insipid, noodling solos, and the band seems content to repeat past performances. The album's bright spot is "Malibran" in which Greg Kelley’s trumpet and Bhob Rainey’s soprano sax single-handedly push the band in a new, jazz-tinged direction. Clearly Damon and Naomi would benefit from the addition of some new musicians and a few more risks. File under medio-core.
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	Damien Jurado On My Way To Absence (Secretly Canadian) With Absence, Jurado’s sixth album, the tetchy troubadour has begun to repeat himself. In addition to the familiar dingy, dispossessed mood of the record, Jurado inexplicably resurrects songs from his back catalogue, including "Simple Hello" - a cleaner but largely unchanged version of the original found on 1999's Rehearsals for Departure. The song's seamless fit into Absence is proof that Jurado has walked this emotional ground before. While newcomers to Jurado's short-story style songwriting will delight in his ability to paint a meaningful picture within the space of a four-minute song, veterans will remember the first time they heard the outline of these songs on Ghost of David from 2000, and last year's Where Shall You Take Me? - two records that are much better than this one.
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	Montag Alone, Not Alone (Carpark Records) Montreal musician Antoine Bedard's band Montag has concocted a dreamy synthetic soundtrack principally designed to re-direct the listener's attention to the underappreciated present moment. If children have a natural curiosity toward their immediate surroundings, Bedard wants adults to recapture it during the course of Alone, Not Alone. In "Grand Luxe," vocalist Ariel Engle warns the middle-aged and uninspired to look around you, all the wonders, all the treasures... too many of them simply pass us by." Lyrically simplistic without question but Bedard's music, accentuated by a coterie of classical instruments and slightly saccharine electronics, hypnotizes the listener to a state where such sentiments seem poignant and sincere. It’s worth a listen even if you don't suffer from a crisis of perception.
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	Issue 44: Autistic Daughters | Blackouts | Hood | Tristeza
	Autistic Daughters Jealousy and Diamond (Kranky) The best bands build houses of sound with their music, inviting exploration of each room designed for a specific purpose and a different mood. Autistic Daughters' Jealousy and Diamond directs listeners to one large lonely room and stirs up the ghosts of former residents. As witnesses, we join these proceedings just as the band makes contact with a compelling groove. Autistic Daughters summons a consistent mood of deep desolation akin to Dirty Three without the wrenching violin lamentations. Contrabass, harmonium, harmonic and the frail throat of Dean Roberts help these spacious songs maintain a languid pace that varies enough to compel the listener to remain and linger over the details.
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	Blackouts History in Reverse (K) This retrospective of the obscure, post-punk outfit from Seattle features bassist Paul Barker and drummer Bill Rieflin, who would join Ministry after the Blackout's demise in 1985. Aside from that trivia, why this music was unearthed and re-released remains unclear. The songs feature the same driving basslines that Big Black would popularize a few years later. But the band undermines the music with unnecessarily protracted arrangements and the theatrical vocals of Erich Werner. Describing this music is difficult without listing numerous other bands (i.e. Warsaw, Bauhaus, PIL) who did it better. The Blackouts existed alongside those bands but that hardly makes them musical pioneers.
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	Hood Outside Closer (Domino) To those introspective, outdoor types who find spiritual clarity during long walks and determine their musical selections by seasonal changes, please reserve a spot this winter for Hood's latest Outside Closer. The Leeds-based quartet continues to churn out sprawling, desolate songs that are most emotionally evocative when the weather turns cold and the trees abandon their color. A stronger, song-based approach with cleaner production replaces the crackly electronic percussion and lyrical poetry of characteristic of 2001's Cold House. "Winter 72" and "Closure"-with open-snare, sparse piano, and reverb-laden vocals-invoke the melancholic moods of Slowdive circa Pygmalion. Hood keeps its textured music fresh and surprising, leaving just one question to ponder: how can a band this good continue to languish in almost total stateside obscurity?
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	Tristeza Spine and Sensory (Better Looking Records) Instrumental rock bands face more daunting challenges than their mic-fronted brethren: pressure to create music dynamic enough to stand on its own and stylistically original enough to differ from its predecessors. Spine and Sensory, the San Diego quintet's 1999 debut, fails on both counts. Tightly-woven guitar parts and snappy rhythms unfold with mathematical precision and occasional majesty. But these tracks trespass on terrain first plowed by Aerial M and Tortoise and remain too homogenous to sustain the album. "Cinematography" and "When We Glow" are notable exceptions, but Tristeza's unwillingness to venture into unfamiliar territory will likely land Spine in the used bin.
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	Issue 43: Basement Apartment | Tanya Donelly | Japancakes
	Basement Apartment Transistor The creative ghost of Elliot Smith-that is, his luminous voice and flair for winsome ’60s-style pop songs-lives on in Philadelphia’s Bill Ricchini and Minneapolis’s Vince Caro. With Transistor, a collection of sleepy songs redolent with the smells, sounds, and bittersweet memories of an overcast, Midwestern summer afternoon, Basement Apartment achieves as memorable a record as Ricchini’s low-fi, 2002 pop classic Ordinary Time. Standouts "Southern Belle," "No Dancing," and the Byrds-esque "Into My World" mix warm, innocent vocals, pithy hooks, an concisely constructed compositions accentuated by a bevy of Minneapolis friends. Less dynamic than the band’s ambitious, 29-minute debut Intersteller, Transistor is a nostalgic, benevolently lonely, occasionally desperate album-a perfect sonic backdrop for falling in love or falling apart.
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	Tanya Donelly Whiskey Tango Ghosts (4AD) Perhaps there’s never been a more telling self-referential line than the opening words of Tanya Donelly’s third solo album: "I have lost something on the way and I can’t explain." A careful listen to her latest and those words seem like a confirmation of decline. After successful stints with Throwing Muses, The Breeders, and Belly, Donelly has ditched her electric guitar and melodic hooks in favor of acoustic guitar, piano, and gentle, stripped-down, alt-country confessionals. But what’s left after all that stylistic distillation isn’t interesting or engaging. With the exception of "My Life as a Ghost" and "Story High," the songs are sweet, safe, and suspiciously familiar. Watered-down country music may be a fresh, new style for Donelly, but that doesn’t make it so for everyone else.
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	Japancakes Waking Hours (Warm) A good test of music’s value, Brian Eno once wrote, is whether or not it can stop conversation and make you want to listen. Japancakes weave creamy keyboards, pedal-steel guitar, cello, and piano into sprawling, ambient-country instrumentals. But the problem? There’s no edge to this music. While some interest may be temporarily piqued by the simple, Unwed Sailor-like guitar lines of "Thumb on the Scale," and the spacious solemnity of the Rachel’s-esque "Untitled One," Japancakes too frequently opt for a tepid, emotionally innocuous middle ground. The band’s slumberous sound wears thin over protracted tracks that don’t change or surprise frequently enough to pass Eno’s value test. Perhaps an escape from the quintet’s addiction to the pedal-steel and a tempo change or two would have achieved more startling results.
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	Issue 42: Steffan Basho-Junghans | Aki Onda
	Steffan Basho-Junghans 7 Books (Strange Attractors) If John Cage proved that silence can be as eloquent as a wall of music, Berlin-based guitar maestro Steffen Basho-Junghans intends to prove that the steel-stringed guitar can speak as effectively as an entire symphony. In his hands, the guitar becomes an alien and unclassifiable entity, a shapeshifter of styles and sounds. On his ninth album, recorded in real time without effects or accompaniment, Basho-Junghans picks, scrapes, and slides his way through dynamic and dissonant domains. It mimics the way a boat might wander over an unpredictable river in a frightening dreamworld, languishing in calm, limpid waters before gathering speed and intensity as it's tossed about on the rapids. His warped, wind-chime chords pass through Asian and Indian countrysides, and Morricone-esque dusty western plains, while remaining consistently unfamiliar and unsettling. The subtleties of Basho-Junghans' playing are somewhat lost over the course of this two-hour, two-disc set but 7 Books is an ephemeral emancipation of an instrument enslaved by conventional three-chord folk-rock for far too long.
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	Aki Onda Bon Voyage: Cassette Memories, Vol. 2 The latest diary of sound from self-proclaimed nomad Aki Onda is a collection of field recordings spanning 14 years of world travel. Forged from the sounds of everyday life, captured on cassette recorder and layered, Onda's "songs" are divorced from any specific moment in time but nevertheless contain and eerily familiar quality, like a protracted instance of deja vu. Birds sing to each other from treetops. Rain splatters rhythmically on a city sidewalk. Undeground trains roar angrily over their tracks. A seaside breeze swallows the fragile lament of a Moroccan child. Percussionists hammer Brazilian bongo beats while the listener paints mental pictures from a palette of unexpected memories. On "I'll Be Your Mirror" and "Goodbye," Onda mixes wind, water, and machines to create, as Onda himself writes, "a lucid moment when scenes witnessed before, sounds heard before, all seem to flash back in a single spectacle." There's room to roam in this music, as well as an opportunity for the seasoned traveler to rediscover the joy of feeling utterly lost in a foreign land.
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	Issue 41: Badawi
	Badawi Clones and False Prophets (ROIR) The fifth album from 31-year-old percussion wizard Raz Mesinai is a strident, seditious, soundtrack for an undeniably Orwellian chapter in American history. As the Bush administration’s "war on terror" (read: violent quest for global dominance) unleashes its own wave of terrorist violence, Mesinai notes that it is a time for "questioning what we know, and questioning those who lead and mislead us." But Mesinai’s unsettling music speaks much louder than his words. This record is a cathartic political wake-up call: ten tracks of tumultuous middle-eastern rhythms and ominous piano stylings, aided and abetted by a posse of New York City musical icons, including guitarist Marc Ribot and clarinetist Doug Wiedelman. Even if Carolyn Coleman’s chant on "Enter the False Prophets" momentarily disrupts the album’s choleric intensity, listening to Clones is just as satisfying as raising one’s voice during a street march. It might not be enough to overthrow a government, but for a short while it can be comforting to know your anger is shared by others.
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	Issue 40: Laguardia | Saul Stokes
	Laguardia Welcome to the Middle (Universal/Republic) "A good composer never imitates; he steals." Had Igor Stravinsky lived long enough, he might have recycled his famous adage to describe Laguardia’s debut, on which the Philadelphia-based quarter shamelessly borrows lyrical styles and song structures from their ’90s musical heroes. Stately piano chords and key changes from Coldplay; driving, three-chord guitar riffs from Green Day; and the desolate, somnambulistic vocal stylings of Radiohead’s Thom Yorke make frequent and sometimes unwelcome appearances through the short, ten-track album. But Laguardia prove to be more sonic chameleons than petty thieves and cheap imitators. They take their musical influences and, with careful craftsmanship, combine them into an eclectic batch of energetic and infectious songs, demonstrating that Stravinsky’s missive about musical mugging needs to be updated: "A good artist doesn’t merely steal. He steals from a variety of sources to avoid being pigeonholed." If this is the means by which a rock band distinguishes itself, then Laguardia have succeeded admirably.
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	Saul Stokes Fields (Hypnos) With the proliferation of inexpensive, easy-to-use music workstations available to anybody with a few hundred bucks and a lot of time, there aren’t many artists building their own keyboards or forging songs entirely from their own self-created sounds. But Berkeley-based Saul Stokes has been making enticing, homegrown, ambient electronic music for the better part of a decade. Fields, his seventh record, finds Stokes stretching for more serene sonic dominions, particularly on standout tracks "Furioso" and "This Road Is Glowing." There is an oneiric roominess to all seven of the album’s tracks, but Stokes also demonstrates a flair for punchy, almost tribal-rhythm programming that recalls Brian Eno/Michael Brook’s murky, mid-’80s masterpiece, Hybrid. Nevertheless, Stokes’ greatest achievement on Fields is his consistent ability to generate genuine emotional warmth from cold synthetic sounds, making this the perfect album for a midnight drive under the stars in the dead of winter. The only thing missing from Stokes’ impressive compositional pedigree: some soundtrack work to help his inviting, euphonious music reach wider audiences.
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	Issue 38: Califone | Pram
	Califone Quicksand/Cradlesnakes (Thrill Jockey) Even if his roots are unmistakably Midwestern, the soulful music of Chicago's Time Rutili is still firmly planted in the Deep South. His spacious songs move as slowly and deliberately as a lazy summer day, invoking memories of smoldering, lust-filled adolescence whose otherwise undefined, hopeful longings Rutili can touch with a slide of his guitar, a scrape of a fiddle, and his dusty voice. Multi-instrumentalists Jim Becker and Joe Adamik add their own authentic touches to Califone's backwoods sound with banjos, mandolins, and occasional walls of guitar. All the while, knob-twisting beat wizard Ben Masseralla feeds a steady diet of melodic drum sounds and loops into the mix. A sometimes noisier, rougher-edged record than the band's full-length debut Roomsound, Califone still leaves enough space in its songs to stir the sludge of forgotten memories from the river bottom of your past.
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	Pram Dark Island (Merge) Despite the fact that Rosie Cuckston's innocent intonations sounds suspiciously like Laetitia Sadier of Stereolab, the Birmingham, UK-based Pram makes music with distinctly creepier interiors. The band's sixth album Dark Island accesses an orchestral underworld of theremin, violins, trumpets, glockenspiel, and analog synths otherwise tapped only though lucid dreams, Legendary Pink Dots records, and David Lynch films. Angelo Badalamenti, Lynch's sinister soundtrack composer, is certainly familiar with this oneiric terrain. With little more than a vibraphone's plangent tones and the sexy slink of a clarinet, Angelo transformed Lynch's dwarf-dancing dream worlds into unexpectedly haunting and capacious horizons. Even though their music is too sonically adventurous to be so shamelessly pigeonholed, with Dark Island, Pram has managed an eerie 10-song soundtrack for a murky black-and-white film that has yet to be created.
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	Issue 36: The Black Heart Procession | Jeff Buckley/Gary Lucas | Lanterna | Harry Whitaker | Shortwave: Tahiti 80
	The Black Heart Procession Amore Del Tropico (Touch and Go) Listening to The Black Heart Procession is like stepping into a bygone era that never existed, with vocalist/saw-bender/guitarist Pall Jenkins and his piano-playing sidekick Tobias Nathaniel functioning as the protagonists in a black-humored play of their own making. On stage, Nathaniel lays intot the keys with Nick Cave-like purpose and a cadence that Jenkins accentuates with his guitar and broken voice. Meanwhile, drummer Jason Crane fumbles with the stage props-the visual humor offsets music as bleak and funereal as the grittiest black-and-white film. While TBHP continues to experiment with audio/visual combinations, Amore Del Tropico seems to be a logical step in the band's sonic progression: 15 new tracks written as chapters to a tropical murder-mystery film (to be released on DVD in 2003). Decidedly more up-tempo, noticeably more sardonic than previous efforts and spiced with female backing vocals, Amore Del Tropico should TBHP dispel the myth, once and for all, that the band take itself too seriously.
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	Jeff Buckley/Gary Lucas Songs to No One (Evolver/Knitting Factory) Even if Jeff Buckley hadn't drowned in the Mississippi five years ago, he wouldn't have given this album his blessing. Buckley preferred to hone and polish his songs with the masterful touch of producer Andy Wallace before they reached his listeners, and he believed that some of his music wasn't meant to be shared with others. The rough live recordings and studio demos contained on this collaboration with ex-Captain Beefheart guitarist Gary Lucas (two were later reworked for Buckley's debut solo album Grace) certainly seem like private, free experiments. Standout tracks include the power rock of "Cruel," recorded live during a March 1992 performance in New York City, and the whimsical blues of "Harem Man." Plagued by mix-level problems, frequent microphone pops, and muddy production, this compilation nevertheless highlights the exuberant compulsive spirit of Buckley, whose soaring, magical melodies compliment virtually any style of music.
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	Lanterna Sands (Badman) While honing his songwriting skills in Area and then The Moon Seven Times, guitarist Henry Frayne probably never met his compositional twin, Canadian Michael Brook. The two nevertheless reach eerily similar musical conclusions, despite having cultivated delay-pedal-powered cinematic guitar sounds from widely differing influences. With his latest project, Lanterna, Frayne has discovered a structural secret occasionally missing from his previous work: the simplest music can be the most sincere. The sonic essence of these songs is Frayne's chord combinations on the acoustic and electric guitars, which produce an emotionally interactive music with unmistakable summery warmth. While Sands does not deviate much from the peaceful mood established on the opening track "West Side Highway," the album is perfect for listeners feeling nostalgic and a little hopeful.
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	Harry Whitaker Black Renaissance (Ubiquity) Back in 1976, producer, arranger, composer, and piano player Harry Whitaker, recorded his soul-jazz opus "Black Renaissance" and a second track "Magic Ritual" in one take with a collection of talented friends. Built around the funky bass grooves of Buster Williams, these two improvisations are part inspiration and part experimentation, featuring poetry, rap, sermons about black consciousness and dazzling free-form trumpet solos by Woody Shaw. Despite the ease with which it was recorded, it took Whitaker 26 years to release the record in America, having made the mistake of shipping off a copy of the master to an obscure Japanese label called Baystate, who released the album a year later without compensating him. Despite several trips to Japan, Whitaker never located the record company and, years later, the Black Renaissance masters were lost in a house fire. Fortunately for jazz aficionados worldwide, Ubiquity Records has brought Whitaker's inspirational, fascinating, and sometimes irritating masterpiece to a whole new generation of listeners.
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	SHORTWAVE: Tahiti 80 Snap, Crackle, Pop In the opening moments of "Wallpaper for the Soul," Parisian quartet Tahiti 80's new album, an audible crackle of record hiss mingles rhythmically with the first scrapes of percussion. For a few seconds, it sounds like a well-played slab of vinyl instead of a 21st-century plastic CD. The anachronistic moment passes, but the memory of the overlapping eras persists. (for entire review)
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	Issue 35: Tara Jane O'Neil | Tram
	Tara Jane O'Neil TKO (Mr. Lady) Tara Jane O'Neil is the reclusive girl in your high school class: she scrawled lyrics on her desktop and coped with the horror of social interaction by hiding in her room with a guitar, writing lonely songs no one heard until she was coaxed into singing them for someone else. There's a sweetness, a self-consciousness to these songs belied by lyrics like "I've got truth/I've got beauty/I've got a book I keep erasing" and O'Neil's buried-in-the-mix, Beth Orton-tinged vocals make such words seem poignant instead of embarrassing. This makes for a listening experience as intimate and endearingly awkward as if O'Neil were whispering directly into your ear. The only problem: she undermines the album's intimacy and continuity with an array of sloppy guitar loops and reverb-laden drum sounds-perhaps the result of spending more time refining her songwriting skills than reading the owner's manual for her newly purchased gear.
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	Tram A Kind of Closure (Jetset) A more appropriate title for Tram's third album would be A Lack of Closure; the whispery, resigned voice of singer/songwriter Paul Anderson sounds more than a little bitter, like he's been dumped recently and can't quite accept it. So he's turned to the easiest and most petty form of revenge: skewering an ex through a series of songs that only tell half the story and fail to soothe his anger and disappointment. Case in point: "There's better ways/To spend my days/Than waste my life on you"-lyrics that suggest Anderson needs closure as assuredly as he needs grammar lessons. Nevertheless, Anderson's typically sparse, slow-moving compositions rescue such prosaic poetry. He frequently captures the self-pitying, sometimes celebratory spirit of post-relationship loneliness in a manner that might make Nick Cave or Josh Haden take notice. Anderson manages these moods by painting over his simple songs with mysterious and occasionally dissonant string and horn sections, but the result, as beautiful and satisfying as it is, sounds enough like the Tindersticks that you'll feel like listening to their 1995 self-titled album instead.
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	Issue 34: Steffen Basho-Junghans | Neil Halstead | L'Altra | Rivulets | Tarentel
	Steffen Basho-Junghans Waters in Azure (Strange Attractors) In the aural world of Steffen Basho-Junhghans, there's no "correct" way to play an instrument. For one of the world's most innovative steel-string guitar players, this compositional philosophy is as imaginative as it is pragmatic. In 1993, surgery on his left hand relieved the debilitating effects of Carpal Tunnel Syndrome but forced SBJ to alter his playing style-a challenge he accepted and utilized to further explore the tonal and rhythmic limits of the guitar. Slides, string taps, and fingerings of varying pressure-no technique is off limits-allow SBJ to create a disorienting, alien music you'd swear two people couldn't make without the assistance of a vast arsenal of effects pedals and studio manipulation. On Waters in Azure, SBJ continues to coax startling, sometimes frightening sounds from his guitar in a manner that pays homage to his personal heroes-Leo Kottke and Robbie Basho-but whose driving, plangent grooves and horror film harmonics would leave contemporaries Michael Brook or Derek Bailey open-mouthed. Challenging, expansive, and occasionally difficult, Waters in Azure is, most of all, rewarding.
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	Neil Halstead Sleeping on Roads (4AD) What qualities make for a good road record? Should the album be: a) moody enough to transform the roadside rush into a filmstrip of memories, b) lyrically expansive enough to insightfully concatenate your disconnected thoughts, or c) warm and enveloping like a winter coat, acting as a sonic buffer between you and whatever you're trying to leave behind? Mojave 3- frontman Neil Halstead's debut solo album, Sleeping on Roads, is all of the above, making it a viable soundtrack for your next journey. Compiled from a handful of songs left off of Mojave 3's last album and a few new tunes written after a recent breakup, Halstead, sounding as wistful and whispery as Nick Drake, continues to chronicle the transitory nature of human relationships and the spiritual redemption of travel. The difference, this time around, is a more dynamic, optimistic atmosphere accompanying Halstead's folky finger-picking and typically morose lyrical elegies. This is an album worth listening to the next time you have hundreds of miles of pavement ahead of you and all the time in the world to think.
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	L'Altra In the Afternoon (Aesthetics) Have you ever been in the middle of a move and found yourself crouched in the center of an almost empty room, sifting through a cardboard box of old photographs? For the day, you're homeless, floating between two worlds like a ghost and looking for something than will make you belong. Each photo unleashes a steady current of memories that you ride in unexpected directions. Before you know it, hours have passed, the sun is setting through the window, and you've learned something new about yourself during the nostalgic journey. L'Altra makes music for similar purposes, overwhelming you like your most treasured photographs. The group crafts dense, dynamic, pastoral atmospheres with a plaintive coterie of guitar, cello, trumpet, upright bass, piano, and the whispery vocal duet of Joseph Costa and Lindsay Anderson. The epilogue of "Moth in Rain" is a startling, shimmering example of the band's ability to envelope the listener in emotional reverie. Ideal music for the introspective loner.
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	Rivulets Rivulets (Chair Kickers' Union) The Rivulets' debut album is as gray and bleak as growing up in a sleepy Midwestern town, where the rhythm of life is dictated in large part by extremes of weather. With cruel, desolate winters and stifling summers, the town's inhabitants slowly become isolated, feeling boredom and longing in equal amounts. Nathan Admundson's frail, unsure, and endearing voice has a tinge of resignation in it, as though he's lived through this monotony and is lyrically documenting his painful memories of the experience. On "Four Weeks," Admundson sings, "Could you pass me a cigarette? Because I'm dying here and I just want to get it over with." Driven by Admundson's acoustic guitar strums, weighted by Jay Kroehler's murky bass and keyboard drones, and dominated by slow tempos, it will be difficult for the Rivulets to shake comparisons to Low-especially after Alan Sparhawk and Mimi Parker's contributions to the album. But to pigeonhole the Rivulets would insult the quality of Admundson's' songwriting and the unmistakable honesty of this album.
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	Tarentel The Order of Things (Neurot) If you ever saw Zhang Yimou's film Raise the Red Lantern and liked it, you'll appreciate the similarly slow but contemplative narrative trajectory of Tarentel's sophomore effort, The Order of Things. Zhang has a talent for inserting intentional space into his narratives, giving attentive viewers ample opportunity to savor the beauty of his images while unearthing their own reactions to the tributaries of the plot. It's a style and pacing that other viewers would dismiss as boring, but they would be missing the point. San Francisco's Tarentel seem to craft its sprawling instrumental landscapes in the spirit of Zhang's films. The band sets up desolate but tense moods with simple combinations of instruments and samples, from the acoustic guitar and trumpet threnody of "Adonai" to the lonely piano and wistful vocals (courtesy of Windy Allen) on "Ghosty Head," and the brief but memorable field recording/sample of "Vuh." The album's 56 minutes contain enough compositional variety and sonic latitude to allow listeners to emotionally roam wherever they like. This is a surprisingly restrained but satisfyingly capacious album.
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	Issue 32: Shortwave: Hood
	SHORTWAVE Hood Hazy Shades Of Winter "Autumn was always the season of beginning," Truman Capote wrote in his famous novel Breakfast at Tiffany's-a syrupy sentiment that runs thick through the music of English band Hood. The group's latest album, "Cold House," conjures a cornucopia of moods. It smells of fall and the harsh winter that inevitably follows: the first energizing chill in the air, frosty breath like cigarette smoke, dead leaves crunching underfoot. Whether or not Richard and Chris Adams find pleasure in the change of seasons, it seems clear that the desolate winters in the small town of Wetherby, England have seeped into their bones and into the music they began making together in 1990. Chris concurs: "I think nature is intrinsic to the music we make, as it acts as such an easy but stark metaphor for the human condition." (for entire review)
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	Issue 31: The Album Leaf | Califone | Shortwave: Mice Parade | Radiohead
	The Album Leaf One Day I'll Be On Time (Tiger Style) One Day I'll Be On Time is the second full-length collection of evocative instrumentals by Tristeza's Jimmy LaValle. After cutting his musical teeth on such hardcore acts as The Locust and Crimson Curse, LaValle demonstrates his compositional versatility with a series of short, image-inducing pieces guided by little more than his sincere acoustic guitar leads and a few lush keyboard tones. Influenced by Aerial M, Rachel's (sans string section), and Laika's more minimalist moments, these pieces, at their best remind the listener of the remarkable mental distances one can travel in the space of a four-minute song. At their worst, they recall other, more successful forays into the instrumental genre-the work of Harold Budd, Brian Eno, Hector Zazou, Labradford and the like. These are artists whose most effective albums function like short stories, with a beginning, an end, and an overarching mood that makes it possible to complete the journey. LaValle achieves a similar continuity on One Day I'll Be On Time, then undercuts it with songs like "The Audio Pool" and "Vermillon," whose chirpy electronics would make cheesy keyboard maestro Paul Shaffer cringe. LaValle also includes his in-studio discussion with engineer Rafter Roberts before "Story Board," and the device, instead of increasing the intimacy of the recording, redirects the listener's attention towards its production-a gaffe as egregious as a boom mike in a Win Wenders' film. A largely successful sophomore effort nevertheless.
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	Califone Roomsound (Perishable) With a sonic and spiritual transformation that would have impressed Ramblin' Jack Elliot, Tim Rutili and company have completed their musical metamorphosis from introspective indie rockers Red Red Meat to crooked backwoods blues band Califone. Roomsound, their first full-length CD, is a collection of wistful tunes Lou Reed might have written after an ascetic sojourn into the Appalachian mountains with only a guitar, a cloudy bottle of spit-soaked moonshine, and his god-fearing thoughts to keep him company. However, beneath a warm bed of tape loops, percussion and electronics supplied by Ben Massarella and Brian Deck, there is a soulful hint of Talk Talk's influence here as well-another band that understood the power of a well-placed piano chord and how to eloquently communicate with space and silence. Whatever his source of inspiration, Rutili has effectively blended his mumbled drawl and stream-of-consciousness lyrics with the groove-based technical wizardry of Massarella and Deck to craft his finest songs to date.
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	SHORTWAVE Mice Parade Musical Mouseketeer Keeps It Real Peter Gabriel once wrote that great records come from great performances-a philosophy of music-making still dominant in the world of jazz, but almost totally absent in popular music today. Adam Pierce of Mice Parade would certainly agree with Gabriel's sentiment. Instead of producing technically flawless recordings, Pierce prefers the spontaneity, energy, and irregularity of improvisation. He frequently works alone and often commits his first takes to CD. As Pierce explains, "The basic goal is to remember that recording is playing, human playing, with all of its imperfections, and the end result is merely a representation of where one is at that specific time. A record shouldn't be some over-crafted pedestal piece of perfection." (for entire review)
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	Radiohead Amnesiac (Capitol) As evidence by the band's glowing press and growing crowds, Radiohead is tapping into something special-perhaps satisfying a collective spiritual need-with its unusual blend of post-apocalyptic electronic rock. Edward Ka-Spel once remarked, "I thought rock was dead until I heard Radiohead. Then, I realized it was only sleeping." Overblown or not, Ka-Spel's implication is that rock and roll used to have an intrinsic power: the ability to open up new individual and collective possibilities more effectively than any hallucinogen-a quality that's been diluted slowly by fame-obsessed musicians more interested in making fortunes than meaningful artistic statements, and a repressive record industry that ignores most artists who feel differently. (for entire review)
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Sadly the November 2005 issue of this publication was its last. Please can visit their archives at www.ruminator.com.
	Death Cab for Cutie Plans Atlantic During the epilogue of Death Cab For Cutie’s intoxicating new single “Soul Meets Body,” singer Ben Gibbard repeats the words “A melody softly soaring through my atmosphere.” That phrase could double as a description of the band’s gentle fifth album (and major-label debut). Indeed, the Seattle-based indie quartet’s brand of dreamy pop has begun to soften and slow with time, like the body of a middle-aged man mired in mid-life crisis. Gibbard, though, continues to transform his real (and imagined) life experiences into insightful poetry for larger and larger audiences, thanks in part to exposure from his gold-selling side project, the Postal Service, and from DCFC’s performances on The OC. (for entire review)
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	PopMatters is a website of cultural criticism whose subjects include (but are not limited to) music, television, films, books, video games, computer software, theatre, the visual arts, and the Internet. Its goal is to reach the broadest possible audience with intelligent and thought-provoking writing often not readily available within the mainstream mass media.
	Thelonius Monk | Shanti Project 2 | Shipping News | Appliance | L'Altra | Tahiti 80 | Labradford
	Thelonius Monk Monk In Tokyo (Legacy) "The real power of jazz, and the real innovation of jazz is that a group of people can come together and create art -- improvised art -- and can negotiate their agendas with each other and that negotiation is the art." Despite the structural accuracy of Wynton Marsalis' quote from the new Ken Burns' PBS film series Jazz, those jazz musicians who were willing to stretch the limits of that negotiation -- like Thelonious Monk, for example -- were often marginalized or ignored until the radar of societal convention expanded to admit their sonic contributions to the genre. Such was the case for Monk during his first tour of Japan in 1963. (for entire review)
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	Various Artists Shanti Project 2 Collection 2 (Badman) Looking back upon all of the mix tapes I've received over the years from friends, lovers or faceless record labels, I've come to the conclusion that there are at least three basic elements that make up the ideal compilation. The "best" compilations should: expose you to at least a handful of bands you've never heard of, contain a few songs that trigger shared moments of joy between compiler and recipient, and, perhaps most importantly, all of the songs should function as a cohesive whole -- like scenes from a short story -- and, thus, create a general mood compelling enough for you to return to the music from time to time. (for entire review)
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	Shipping News Very Soon, and in Pleasant Company (Quarterstick) It is important to note that Jeff Mueller and Jason Noble, the founding members of Shipping News, recorded their first musical collaborations for the popular NPR program "This American Life" in 1996 -- significant because the open-ended "structure" required to produce compelling soundtrack music still permeates their introspective songs five years later. On their second full-length release, Very Soon, and in Pleasant Company, Noble and crew shun the traditional verse-chorus format prevalent in most radio-ready pop music, instead, fashioning their songs from a series of parts that travel effectively from one emotion to another, and rarely repeat themselves. (for entire review)
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	Appliance Six Modular Pieces (Mute) Appreciating the sounds of Six Modular Pieces requires a type of patient listening more suited to those who enjoy ethnic or world music. In a majority of "eastern" stylings, the "song" moves at an almost languid pace, individual notes take on an added importance, and the piece doesn't move in a discernable direction until several minutes have passed. Nevertheless, the subsequent mood generated by the music is designed as a springboard for creative thought and, hopefully -- like the most effective film, novel or song -- the journey will be different with each listening. (for entire review)
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	L'Altra Music of a Sinking Occasion (Aesthetics) The first time I heard L'Altra's debut album Music of a Sinking Occasion, I recalled an image of my more spirited self in the throes of a mushroom trip. I wandered through Golden Gate Park in San Francisco just after a rainstorm, noticing aspects of people and plants that are often overlooked in ordinary perception. My wondrous attention to detail seemed to slow the passing of time, so when the drug eventually wore off, I felt like I had lived a year's worth of thoughts in six hours. To a similarly tuned ear, the soothingly spacious strains of Music of a Sinking Occasion can essentially achieve the same results. (for entire review)
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	Tahiti 80 Puzzle (Minty Fresh) Tahiti 80 is pristine French pop crafted in the spirit of the '60s rock icons -- like the Kinks and the Zombies -- that the band so obviously adores. However, Tahiti 80's undeniable charm emanates from lead singer Xavier Boyer's ability to successfully channel his infectiously innocent intonations -- like a naïve version of Nick Drake -- through the filters of a second language. I can't imagine an American band using, much less getting away with, a lyric like "I return home with special food for my spirit", but such linguistic solecisms have an unusual appeal in light of the somatic ambience of the accompanying music -- which, more accurately, draws from several '70s sonic sources -- and its capacity to transport you blissfully into the past. For example, the song "Heartbeat", with its bouncy, almost house-like rhythms, and K.C. and the Sunshine Band-esque vocal hook, is so intoxicating and familiar, you'd swear that you once heard it pumping out of an eight-track from a passing, matte-black Camaro, or perhaps in an American Bandstand-induced dream. In addition, the trumpet provided by Eric Matthews and mixes by Tore Johansson keep the nostalgia flowing through standout tracks "Yellow Butterfly", the ABBA-influenced "I.S.A.A.C" and the title track "Puzzle."
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	Labradford E luxo so (Kranky) Perhaps the two most important components of creating memorable mood music are the use of restraint and a respect for silence. In other words, it is everything a composer leaves out of a piece and the sufficient spaces created between the remaining instruments and notes that lead to the most compelling soundtracks. Consistent with the above "rules" of composition, Labradford's ambient instrumental music has become more and more effective as it has grown increasingly sparse and minimalist, just like the blurry black and white image that graces the cover of the band's fifth release, E luxo so. I don't have any idea if Carter Brown and Mark Nelson are still the creative force behind the group; neither their names nor their pictures appear on Mi Media Naranja or the current release. But I don't think it matters if I know; the sparse packaging, abridged liner notes and untitled songs seem intentionally austere in order to direct the listener's attention specifically to the music while nevertheless maintaining an air of mystery regarding its production. (for entire review)
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