"Scratchcard Lanyard" #124 ALTER.NATION.MiX - weekly favtraX 08-04-2021 (19trx 1h 30m)

 ALTER.NATION #124(19trx 1h 30m)

Dry Cleaning, Ghlow, Mythic Sunship, La Femme, Du Blonde, Moontype, Flock of Dimes, Ryley Walker, Gary Bartz, Ali Shaheed Muhammad,Adrian Younge, Luca Yupanqui

weekly favtraX 

0 8 - 0 4 - 2 0 2 1

"Scratchcard Lanyard"

Wry, spoken word post-punk from South London four-piece. Combining Florence Shaw's detached spoken word vocals with intense post-punk instrumentation, Dry Cleaning's music contrasts the surreal and the mundane. 

Dry Cleaning - New Long Leg / Scratchcard Lanyard / Every Day Carry

...Working with producer John Parish, the band polishes their style like a blade on their debut album New Long Leg, and they contrast Shaw's understated delivery and their fired-up playing more sharply. When it comes to deadpan yet nuanced vocalists, Shaw rivals Kim Gordon and Laurie Anderson. With the way she casts a critical eye on the world with erudite confidence, it only makes sense that she has a background as a university lecturer, and as she subverts the usual expectations of female vocalists to be emotive or decorative, her profound, mundane, and odd observations unite in a surreal blur. On "Scratchcard Lanyard," one of New Long Leg's finest moments, she intones "I've come here to make a ceramic shoe...I've come here to learn how to mingle" and its putative chorus "Do everything/Feel nothing" with the same emotional weight, brilliantly conveying her feelings of ennui and overwhelm... the transporting solos guitarist Tom Dowse contributes to almost every track. And while Dry Cleaning downplays pop music's most familiar techniques -- easily identifiable verses, choruses, and vocal melodies -- New Long Leg never really feels alienating, even when the band takes tension and release to extremes on "Every Day Carry." They know exactly what they're doing, and the risks they take result in a debut album that brings a fresh energy to post-punk that's equally challenging and rewarding.

Swedish-Russian duo who merge post-punk, electroclash, and industrial influences into a heavy blend. Dark alternative duo Ghlow twist industrial, post-punk, electronica, and metal influences into a potent blend that recalls acts such as the Raveonettes, Crystal Castles, and Curve. 

Ghlow - Slash and Burn / Not Fit For This / Hollow

Four years after their conception, Swedish-Russian alternative duo Ghlow released their official debut full-length, Slash and Burn. A potent blend of their varied influences -- post-punk, electronica, industrial, and doom metal, to name a few -- the set makes up for brevity by offering a tight, corrosive assault that recalls acts like the Raveonettes, the Jesus and Mary Chain, and Curve. Vocalist Emille de Blanche is a force, holding her own atop the noisy release crafted by Nikolay Evdokimov as expertly as Toni Halliday, Shirley Manson, and Jehnny Beth in their own respective groups...

Heavy instrumental band from Copenhagen taking notes from the limitlessness of free jazz and the volume of '70s psych. Danish psych-rockers Mythic Sunship look to the cosmic journeying of the 1970s Krautrock and free jazz scenes as well as the volume of early proto-metal for a sound that hedges toward the heavier side of exploratory instrumental rock.

Mythic Sunship - Wildfire / Maelstrom / Landfall

Copenhagen-based instrumental quintet Mythic Sunship have explored the intersection of psychedelic rock and free jazz prolifically, releasing sprawling albums almost once a year since their inception around the start of the 2010s. Sixth album Wildfire finds the band in a state of chaotic upheaval as always, but pushes their sound to even more frenetic places than usual... As Mythic Sunship continue to evolve at a rapid pace, this chapter of their development is one of the strongest and most immediate. Wildfire is alive with euphoric joy, and the energy is both unrelenting and contagious.

Avant-indie-electronic collective led by main songwriters Marlon Magnée and Sacha Got. The Parisian collective La Femme combines its French heritage with sounds from across the globe in surprising and appealing ways.

La Femme - Paradigmes / Paradigme / Cool Colorado

With each album, La Femme's musical horizons have widened significantly -- an impressive feat, considering that their 2013 debut album, Psycho Tropical Berlin, already blended Krautrock, surf, coldwave, psychedelic rock, and yé-yé... they discover plenty of new territory on Paradigmes... More often, though, La Femme take their listeners on a style-hopping journey. In its first few songs alone, Paradigmes ranges from the silvery processed vocals and wailing brass of the title track, which feels like a number from a retro sci-fi musical... "Cool Colorado" is a laid-back homage that drifts along like a puff of pot smoke, and hearing about cowboys and Sweet Georgia Brown in a thick French accent over groovy brass and tambourines goes a long way toward making them seem cool again... La Femme's passion for seeking out new (or vintage) sounds to add to their omnivorous pop is contagious, and never more so than on Paradigmes.

The fiery, fearless rock project of musician, composer, animator, and video director Beth Jeans Houghton. Du Blonde 's swaggering, heart-on-sleeve rock came into being when musician, composer, animator, and video director Beth Jeans Houghton reinvented her music.

Du Blonde - Homecoming / Pull The Plug / Take Me Away

On the gritty, underappreciated Lung Bread for Daddy, Du Blonde's Beth Jeans Houghton dove into the messiness of heartache and mental health issues; on Homecoming, she looks at them from the other side. Just as her previous album's grungy textures heightened its angst, the slick shine she uses here adds layers of resonance. Homecoming is pop on Houghton's terms: She puts a candy coating over her anxiety and frustration... 

Indie trio who fuse fuzzy alt-rock, punchy guitar pop, and intimate singer/songwriter fare under the direction of songwriter Margaret McCarthy. A fusion of fuzzy alt-rock, punchy guitar pop, and yearning singer/songwriter components, Moontype evolved from the spare, voice-and-bass guitar demos of songwriter Margaret McCarthy.

Moontype - Bodies of Water / Anti-Divinity / Stuck On You

Beginning life as the skeletal bass guitar demos of vocalist/songwriter Margaret McCarthy, Bodies of Water is the debut album of Chicago-based indie rock trio Moontype. What the songs evolved into is something not only fleshy and urgent but often raucous and shape-shifting, with the band noting that they often let McCarthy's intimate lyrics dictate rhythms. As a result, tracks like "When Will I Learn," "Blue Michigan," and the lonesome "Stuck on You" are among others that feature subtly shifting meters. The latter song also reveals some of the country music background of guitarist (and one-time jazz performance major) Ben Cruz and drummer Emerson Hunton, who also play together in projects spanning jazz and avant-garde music. The track's quiet, galloping rhythm manifests in skittering snare, a lively bass line, and rhythmically animated guitar, albeit with a limited range, at least until Cruz breaks out a solo to end the song. .. Throughout the album, McCarthy's vulnerable confessions and airy vocals unite an ultimately compelling set of songs that may appeal to noise rock and indie singer/songwriter fans alike.

Wye Oak's Jenn Wasner explores more-intimate, dreamy pop with her solo side project. The solo project of Wye Oak singer/guitarist Jenn Wasner, Flock of Dimes finds the songwriter exploring the more intimate, atmospheric side of pop with her dreamy musical excursions.

Flock of Dimes - Head of Roses / Price of Blue / Hard Way

On her luminous and sometimes piercing sophomore LP, Jenn Wasner struggles through the overwhelming nature of heartbreak, coming to grips with the conflicting roles of both the breaker and the broken. Written in quarantine and recorded with a trusted cadre of collaborators, Head of Roses builds on the singer/songwriter's growing canon of intimate yet approachable art-pop which she releases under the name Flock of Dimes. Ultimately more layered and complex than Wasner's work as part of Wye Oak, Flock of Dimes' material manages to express an acute vulnerability without becoming stuck in the quagmire of deflated confessionalism...

An accomplished fingerstyle guitarist and singer/songwriter whose recordings run the gamut from folk to rock to experimental music. Ryley Walker is an accomplished fingerstyle guitarist, singer, and songwriter from Chicago whose music and evolution as an artist have proven mercurial...

Ryley Walker - Course in Fable  / Striking Down Your Big Premiere / A Lenticular Slap

At some point during this busy stretch, he also found time to compose and record some of his most intricate and satisfying solo material to date, released here as Course in Fable, Walker's fifth album. An artful nexus of impressionistic songwriting, prog-rock vision, and melodic nuance...Album opener "Striking Down Your Big Premiere" leans heavily into its progressive nature, shifting seamlessly between time signatures and conjoined micro-suites to create a surprisingly effective whole. The musical interplay between Walker, guitarist Bill McKay (another Chicagoan), bassist Andrew Scott Young, and drummer Ryan Jewell is simply electric, and his increasing confidence as an ace bandleader makes it all feel effortless... Walker may tip his hat to Chicago's experimental underground or prog behemoths like Genesis, but with this release, he's very much his own man.

Gary Bartz - An assertive and agile post-bop alto saxophonist who has dabbled in fusion and funk. / Ali Shaheed Muhammad - Pivotal player with A Tribe Called Quest, and also a successful producer (D'Angelo's "Brown Sugar") and collaborator with Adrian Younge, among others. / Adrian Younge - All-around talent with an uncanny ability to transform his obsession with late-'60s and early-'70s music into unique, impeccably made projects.

Gary Bartz / Ali Shaheed Muhammad / Adrian Younge - Gary Bartz JID006 / Spiritual Ideation / Blue Jungles

The Jazz Is Dead project curated by producer/multi-instrumentalists Ali Shaheed Muhammad and Adrian Younge operates with a particular m.o. The duo enlist a revered jazz musician whose work and influence have reached past the genre. They surround him with players -- including themselves -- and the same vintage equipment used on their storied catalog dates to create new music. Alto giant and composer Gary Bartz checks all the boxes. In addition to early stints with jazz masters Miles Davis and McCoy Tyner, Bartz cut a series of groundbreaking albums under his own name and with his N.T.U. ... Opener "Spiritual Ideation" is introduced by a harpsichord and a funky snare shuffle. A gently bumping bassline welcomes Bartz's alto. He enters on the modal melody, and immediately begins to embellish, append, and expand it. The backing singers wordlessly create an ethereal dimension... 

Gary Bartz

Child of artists Elizabeth Hart and Iván Diaz Mathé, who used MIDI technology to record an experimental album while their baby was in utero.

Luca Yupanqui - Sounds of the Unborn / V5

Sounds of the Unborn was recorded by Psychic Ills bassist Elizabeth Hart and Argentine producer Iván Diaz Mathé while Hart was pregnant with their daughter, Luca Yupanqui. Using biosonic MIDI technology, the pair attached devices to Hart's belly and translated the vibrations and heartbeats into sound waves, controlling synthesizers and producing improvised, free-flowing electronic music. .. The audio itself is a strange mélange of rapidly pulsating heartbeats, amniotic textures, and reflexive movements, resembling an unstructured blend of dark ambient, post-industrial, and glitch. It's entirely at home on a label that sometimes releases horror film scores -- the clattering, swooping opening piece "V5" could easily soundtrack an intense psychological thriller...

Dry Cleaning, Ghlow, Mythic Sunship, La Femme, Du Blonde, Moontype, Flock of Dimes, Ryley Walker, Gary Bartz, Ali Shaheed Muhammad,Adrian Younge, Luca Yupanqui

083 ALTER.NATION.MiX weekly favtraX 25-04-2020

ALTER.NATION #83

Brendan Benson, Dead Ghosts, Hazel English, Other Lives, Wares, Lucinda Williams, Peter Oren, BC Camplight, King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, Macula Dog, Lorenzo Senni, Ali Shaheed Muhammad, Adrian Younge, Azymuth

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2 5 - 0 4 - 2 0 2 0

"Freak Out"

Gifted power pop performer who also spent time, beginning in 2005, collaborating with Jack White in the Raconteurs.
Brendan Benson - Dear Life / Freak Out
Those familiar with Brendan Benson might know him for his role in the Raconteurs, the guitar-heavy rock band he started with Jack White, or for the striking solo albums he's been slowly releasing since the mid-'90s. With seventh solo album Dear Life, Benson actively explores beyond both the rock heaviness of the Raconteurs and, to a lesser degree, the power pop songwriting greatness that's defined his solo work... An amazing singer, Benson's ability to harmonize with himself is one of his many gifts as a songwriter. As with all of his albums, his understated vocal arrangements are one of the guiding forces on Dear Life. It's exciting to hear Benson take some new risks with these songs, but also a relief that he never gets too far away from the deft songwriting and pop sensibilities that he's been refining for all these years.

Raucous and lo-fi garage punk with an eclectic spirit from this Vancouver four-piece. Playing a soulful but stripped-down fusion of garage rock, first-generation rockabilly, punk, and lo-fi noise, Dead Ghosts are a band hailing from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Conjuring a deliberately primitive and swampy sound with a psychedelic undertow, the group staked their claim with their self-titled 2010 debut album...
Dead Ghosts - Automatic Changer / You Got Away
Formed nearly a decade ago in Vancouver, Canada, the garage-rock group grew out of founders Byran Nicol, Drew Wilky, and Mike Wilky's desire to hang out, listen to records and play music. After the trio uploaded a few demos to Myspace--this was 2008, after all--a small punk record label from Iowa reached out and asked if they wanted to do a single... "When we started playing, we were just messing with recording, and generally goofing around. We had no vision at all... Playing a distinctive brand of swaggering, blues-infused lo-fi rock, the five-piece quickly won over transatlantic fans and scored fresh fodder for their lyrics with their punk-rock antics.

A singer/guitarist who fuses elements of dream pop, jangly folk-rock, and breezy indie pop into her observant songs, Hazel English relocated from her native Australia to the California Bay Area in 2013.
Hazel English - Wake UP! / Born Like
Following a handful of viral songs in the mid-2010s and a pair of EPs that landed her on Polyvinyl's roster, Wake UP! is the full-length debut of Australian ex-pat Hazel English... The resulting recordings still reflect core attributes that were part of English's music from the beginning: namely, a '60s sensibility, a knack for breezy melodies, and a touch of dream pop luster. Wake UP! opens with a swelling mixture of organ and guitar on "Born Like," a psychedelic pop tune that quickly settles into a midtempo bass groove shaded with broken guitar chords and rim clicks, as English addresses the other half of a harmonious relationship.

Stillwater, Oklahoma-based atmospheric indie rockers invoke names like Alt-J, Fleet Foxes, and early Radiohead.
Other Lives - For Their Love / Sound of Violence
The fourth full-length effort from the Nebraska-based indie rockers, For Their Love finds Other Lives in fine form, applying their moody sonic expertise to a spectral ten-song set that parses themes of self-worth and existential dread in an age of political, social, and economic turmoil. Commencing with the ruminative "Sound of Violence," a sumptuous bit of '60s-leaning orchestral pop that evokes the Wally Stott string arrangements of "Montague Terrace"-era Scott Walker, For Their Love was self-produced in Oregon's Cooper Mountain region in frontman Jesse Tabish's A-framed cabin, and the material mostly reflects that pastoral setting...

Uniting folk, punk, and synth pop into fiery, fearless anthems for outsiders, Wares is the project of singer/songwriter/guitarist Cassia Hardy. A fixture of the punk scene Edmonton, Alberta -- one of Canada's most conservative cities -- she honed her rebellious songwriting...
Wares - Survival / Tether
...Now, she sounds impatient to dive in and live her truth. There's more heft, more urgency, and, most of all, more volume powering Survival's outsider anthems. That might be because this time around, she's not quite as much of a loner: While Wares is technically still Hardy's solo project, this time she's backed by the live band that supported her during her 2018 tours. The megawatt energy of an especially inspired show ignites the punk and emo roots of Wares' music, harnessing those styles' power to unite misfits and express the kinds of outsized emotions that are essential to Survival...

A gifted songwriter with a strong and distinctive voice who became a roots music icon with her fearlessly personal body of work.
Lucinda Williams - Good Souls Better Angels / Man without a Soul
Lucinda Williams is incapable of sounding anything less than 100-percent engaged and sincere. Whatever she has to say, she clearly means it, and that more than anything else is the thread that runs through 2020's Good Souls Better Angels, her fourth album since she launched her own record label and took full control of her process of recording and releasing music. Cut mostly live in the studio with her road band -- Stuart Mathis on guitar, David Sutton on bass, and Butch Norton on drums -- these 12 songs play like a long stream-of consciousness journey, with Williams writing in blues structures that repeat certain lines like a mantra while her band either sneak up on the music like a ghost or howl with elemental, bluesy skronk (the raw, gritty tone of Mathis' guitar matches Williams' vocals for sheer ferocity...

Midwestern singer/songwriter with a deep, textured vocal tone that delivers contemplative, socially conscious indie folk. A singer/songwriter with a deep, textured vocal tone, Peter Oren weaves elements of country, blues, folk, and early rock & roll into his contemplative indie folk.
Peter Oren - The Greener Pasture / In Line to Die
A kiadás, amelyet "disztopikus farmomnak / telefon témájú albumomnak" neveztek, a The Greener Pasture az Indiana énekes / dalszerző, Peter Oren harmadik teljes hosszúságú albuma. Ez egy ugyanolyan társadalmilag tudatos második albumot követi, az antropocén. Míg ez a rekord inkább az éghajlatváltozással foglalkozott, a Zöldebb Legelő úgy véli, hogy fokozottan támaszkodunk az okostelefonokra, valamint a gazdálkodás, a környezetvédelem és a nagyobb politika bizonyos romboló tendenciáira. In keeping with the album's phone-related themes of isolation, Oren decamped to a cabin in the woods outside of Nashville to record it... Throughout, Oren sells his consistently smart, crafted messages with a resonant voice and presence that command attention -- like a quality folkie should.

New Jersey-born singer/songwriter combines sunny indie pop with darker lyrical themes that reflect his personal struggles.American singer/songwriter Brian Christinzio -- who performs under the name BC Camplight -- received widespread acclaim for his one-man band take on classic pop songwriting. Marrying well-crafted if quirky pop melodies with lyrics that often dealt with dark themes informed by his struggles with depression...
BC Camplight - Shortly After Takeoff  / I Only Drink When I'm Drunk
He may have returned to the U.K., but Brian Christinzio's post-deportation blues remain, as do his mental health struggles, which suffered further damage after the sudden death of his father. Fortunately, his sharp wit and gallows humor are in abundance on Shortly After Takeoff, the Philadelphian singer/songwriter's third album since relocating to Manchester, getting signed to Bella Union, getting deported, and eventually moving back. Working under the name BC Camplight, Christinzio writes literate, self-effacing, darkly funny songs about his personal life in a tone similar to Stephin Merritt or Father John Misty, though his pop savvy recalls the sophistication of Brian Wilson or Todd Rundgren, albeit with a maverick synth-punk streak...  Christinzio is a master craftsman in terms of song structure, building tension and discomfort only to provide a glorious uplift and rhythmic shift on the chorus of opener, "I Only Drink When I'm Drunk."...

Australian psychedelic collective with an intense work ethic and a wildly experimental outlook that reaches from synth prog to folk rock.
King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard - Chunky Shrapnel / A Brief History of Planet Earth
From the beginning of their career, King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard have been road warriors and over time have grown into a can't-miss live experience. Chunky Shrapnel captures the band in full flight over the European continent during the last part of 2019 and is made up of songs taken from various shows... The album ends with the epic-length "A Brief History of the Planet Earth," a jam that's spliced together from four different nights in four different cities and winds its way through trippy psychedelic riffs, flute solos, barely in-control guitar solos, and lots of crowd interaction. Chunky Shrapnel is a testament to the band's powers as a live act and is sure to make their fans happy...

Macula Dog are an unabashedly strange, arty group from Queens, New York City who make mutated experimental pop which instantly brings to mind the Residents and Devo. The group refer to themselves as a "four-person electronic duo," as members Mark Brothers (Mark Matthews) and Bruce Brothers (Ben Mendelewicz) perform with mannequins (Matt Brothers and Ben Brothers) strapped to their backs.
Macula Dog - Breezy / Red's Corvette
Elaborately costumed, highly conceptual art-rock duo Macula Dog create mutated electronic pop filled with fractured rhythms and jarring sonic textures. While some bands try to write straightforward songs but can't help displaying the quirkier aspects of their personalities, Macula Dog go all in, making everything as weird and confusing as possible, because it makes sense to them, and they know there's someone else out there who gets it... "Reds Corvette" is the centerpiece, a sinister crime caper of a psychotic, Day-Glo-clad villain with a bounty of shrunken heads stashed away in the trunk of his getaway vehicle... The enigmatic duo dare their listeners to keep up with them and figure it all out, and their most tightly focused work to date is just as bewildering as anything else they've done.

Lorenzo Senni is an Italian experimental musician and visual artist best known for deconstructing the epic build-ups and ecstatic synthesizer arpeggios of '90s trance and hard techno, dubbing his style "pointillistic trance."
Lorenzo Senni - Scacco Matto / Discipline of Enthusiasm
...Dubbing his style "pointillistic trance," the avant-garde Ferry Corsten gradually breathed more life into trance's hollowed-out skeleton with his subsequent releases, adding more bass, counterpoint, and progressive song structures, yet stopping short of constructing full-on trance anthems.. These tracks are bursting with playful melodies, and they move far beyond the hypnotic repetition of Senni's earlier releases in this style, contorting rhythms into fantastic formations... On tracks like opener "Discipline of Enthusiasm," he punches up the triumphant melodies with sparks of distortion, and hammers sharp curves into the rhythms, making sure nothing becomes predictable...

As a member of A Tribe Called Quest, Ali Shaheed Muhammad played a pivotal role in the evolution of rap music throughout the 1990s, factoring in the development of the jazz-rooted, sample-based production approach that epitomized Native Tongues,
Adrian Younge is all-around talent with an uncanny ability to transform his obsession with late-'60s and early-'70s music into unique, impeccably made projects.
Ali Shaheed Muhammad / Adrian Younge - Jazz Is Dead 001 / Apocalíptico feat. Azymuth
Adrian Younge and Ali Shaheed Muhammad both have impressive resumes as purveyors of modern soul, jazz, and hip-hop. Younge, a bassist, keyboardist, composer, and producer, has scored films such Black Dynamite and collaborated with artists ranging from Philly soul legends the Delfonics to Wu-Tang Clan's Ghostface Killah. Meanwhile, Muhammad was a member of A Tribe Called Quest and has worked on various projects outside that group. Together, Younge and Muhammad formed the Midnight Hour, a versatile band that brought a modern edge to retro soul and jazz sounds...The lone long track on 001, "Apocalíptico", is a nine-minute long jam featuring the current incarnation of Azymuth, a Brazilian jazz-funk trio originally formed in 1971... While the purpose of 001 might be to pave the way for upcoming Jazz is Dead releases, the album exists nicely as a standalone example of where modern jazz has been, and where it could be going.

Brendan Benson, Dead Ghosts, Hazel English, Other Lives, Wares, Lucinda Williams, Peter Oren, BC Camplight, King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard, Macula Dog, Lorenzo Senni, Ali Shaheed Muhammad, Adrian Younge, Azymuth