"Robber" #116 ALTER.NATION.MiX - weekly favtraX 10-02-2021 (11trx 46m)

  ALTER.NATION #116 (11trx 46m)

The Weather Station, Celeste, Common,  Lenny Kravitz, Chuck D, Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings,  Woody Guthrie, X, Robbie Krieger, Miss Grit, TV Priest, Dry Cleaning,Iceage, Puma Blue, A.J. Croce

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"R o b b e r"

The mercurial project of Canadian singer/songwriter Tamara Lindeman. The project of singer/songwriter Tamara Lindeman, the Weather Station's songs are too musically and emotionally nimble to be classified easily.

The Weather Station - Ignorance / Robber

On Loyalty and The Weather Station, Tamara Lindeman's music evolved by leaps and bounds. On Ignorance, she reaches another peak. When the Weather Station's tour for their 2017 self-titled album ended, she spent months researching the enormous impact of climate change. She attended demonstrations and hosted a series of discussions with other musicians and activists, but Lindeman had to explore the issue -- and people's resistance to addressing it -- in her music... Though she's previously shied away from theatricality, there's no denying how powerfully she uses it on the album's opening track, "Robber." Over slinky yet uneasy synths and strings, Lindeman meditates on how the privileged steal resources in a croon embodying the seductiveness of the status quo. The silvery highs of Lindeman's voice still resemble Joni Mitchell, as do the cleverly captured details of Ignorance's lyrics... While she's growing so much with each album that it seems risky to call this Lindeman's best, it's safe to say this is another outstanding achievement from the Weather Station.

British-American R&B singer/songwriter who crafts languid, jazzy songs elevated by her powerful vocals.

Celeste - Not Your Muse / Stop This Flame

...The first new single off Not Your Muse, the mannered and grand pop-soul belter "Stop This Flame," appeared at the top of 2020 and almost cracked the Top 40 in her native U.K...  Along the line, Not Your Muse had several intended release dates and at some point was supposed to be an EP. Chaotic roll-out notwithstanding, the album is sure-footed and attests to the artist's high standing among the crowd mining pre-disco R&B, jazz, and pop. Celeste and her fellow songwriters and producers -- led by main collaborators Jamie Hartman and Josh Crocker -- have all the knowing, tasteful moves down pat and exhibit some tricks of their own...

Grammy- and Academy Award-winning rapper and actor who has kept the sophisticated lyrical technique and flowing syncopation of jazz-rap alive.

Common - A Beautiful Revolution, Pt. 1 / A Riot In My Mind feat. Lenny Kravitz, Chuck D.

Breaking stylistically with the more physically militant hip hop records that have been getting attention in recent years, Common's Beautiful Revolution is an album about mindset, the resistance from within. His lyrics call for resilience, determination, and self-love in the face of oppression, distraction, and hatred... 

Veteran R&B singer who enjoyed the onset of stardom in the 21st century with the soul revivalist combo the Dap-Kings. / Sharon Jones' soul-funk outfit was also a popular backing band, notably with Mark Ronson and Amy Winehouse.

Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings - Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Rendition Was In) / This Land Is Your Land

One of the realities of the music business is that when an artist with a degree of popularity dies, you can count on plenty of their rare and unreleased sides getting repackaged for public consumption once their obituary puts their name back in the news... Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Rendition Was In) demonstrates Sharon Jones gave 150 percent every time she stepped up to the microphone, regardless of the circumstances, and this album is a testament to her great talent as well as her gift for putting her own stamp on any song she chose to try on for size.

Influential L.A. punk band known for an exhilarating blend of punk, rockabilly, and blues, with a sound and style that outlived the movement.

X - Strange Life feat. Robbie Krieger

Last year, in a true out-of-nowhere surprise, Los Angeles punk legends X returned with their new album Alphabetland. This was X’s first album since 1993’s Hey, Zeus!, and it was the first one from the band’s full original lineup since 1985’s Ain’t Love Grand. More importantly, it was good! Alphabetland wasn’t going to threaten Los Angeles or Wild Gift on anyone’s list of the best X albums, but the band was still able to summon the fiery underdog chemistry of their early days, and the contrast between John Doe and Exene Cervenka’s voices still sounded really cool. ..

Miss Grit - Grow Up To

...Miss Grit’s latest is called “Grow Up To.” It might the more straight-ahead rocker of the bunch, but in the context of Miss Grit that still means that “Grow Up To” is built on gnarled rhythm and big mutated guitar riffs. “Grow up to, grow up to, grow up to is my ongoing obsession with what’s next,” Sohn said of the track. “The lack of content with the present leads to the chaos and collapse of this song.”

Post-punk quartet from England who marry bitter, witty ranting with roiling, noisy rock grooves.

TV Priest - Uppers / This Island

...Thick walls of guitar-based throb? A pounding rhythm section making a serious wallop? A vocalist who talks rather than sings as he bellows what sounds like blank verse poetry about the sorry state of our culture? All these qualities are present and accounted for on 2021's Uppers, the first album from London quartet TV Priest... Drinkwater is a muscular, charismatic frontman and he brings a strong voice and a subtly intelligent phrasing to his rants, which manage to be direct and filled with impressionistic detail at the same time. Alex Sprogis' guitar work is artful enough to elevate his sound above the traditional post-punk clang and skronk...  and bassist Nic Bueth adds occasional keyboards that bring an effective level of atmospheric menace when they rise up in the mix... Every worthwhile band needs a good drummer, and Ed Kelland has the strength and the imagination to give this music the backbone it needs...

Wry, spoken word post-punk from South London four-piece.

Dry Cleaning - Strong Feelings

Ever since their initial EPs prompted us to name Dry Cleaning a Band To Watch, we were looking forward to how they might expand their sound across a debut album... The band has been working on the album for a bit, though, like many artists, recent events impacted the end results. “I found the lockdown played into some of the themes I was interested in anyway, living in a small world, a feeling of alienation, paranoia and worry, but also a joyful reveling in household things,” frontwoman Florence Shaw says. 

Danish band who offer a smart and ambitious spin on punk that's still packed with emotional and physical power.

Iceage - The Holding Hand

...Iceage’s latest is called “The Holding Hand.” “The song lives in a slurred world, movements are elastically stretched out and strength is found in weakness while you find it hard to tell the difference between fume and matter,​” Elias Bender Rønnenfelt said in a statement. “​Gently the swaying intensifies, feel it escalate. Reach out for the holding hand, it seems almost within scope now.”​ Musically, “The Holding Hand” seems to build on the more spaced-out, noise-tinged moments of Beyondless, sitting in an anxious cloud that builds up without ever quite releasing.

London singer/songwriter with a dusky, hypnotic style steeped in 1990s indie rock and trip-hop influences.

Puma Blue - In Praise of Shadows / Oil Slick

The debut full-length album from London's Puma Blue, 2021's In Praise of Shadows, showcases his hypnotic blend of lyrical indie rock and jazzy, '90s-style downtempo electronica... Similarly evocative, "Oil Slick" nicely updates the vintage trip-hop of bands like Morcheeba and Massive Attack with its frenetic groove, strings, and sax solo. It's also impressive how balanced Puma Blue's sound can be...

Singer, songwriter, and pianist whose eclectic style is influenced by vintage jazz, R&B, and pop; son of Jim Croce.

A.J. Croce - By Request / San Diego Serenade (Tom Waits cover)

In the wake of his wife's unexpected death from a heart ailment in 2018, AJ Croce found comfort in the past: he returned to some of his favorite music, songs he'd play at parties and jam sessions with fellow musicians. Hence the name "By Request": these are the songs he'd play to entertain a close crowd... and lingers on the poetry of Tom Waits' "San Diego Serenade." Croce's arrangements stick to the originals but don't treat them as sacred texts: as a pianist and vocalist, he glides through the changes, savoring the lyrical and melodic turns of phrases and taking solos to suit his mood. The result is a spirited, nourishing listen, a low-key testament to the restoring power of music.

The Weather Station, Celeste, Common,  Lenny Kravitz, Chuck D, Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings,  Woody Guthrie, X, Robbie Krieger, Miss Grit, TV Priest, Dry Cleaning,Iceage, Puma Blue, A.J. Croce

05-03-2020 alter:MiX # 33 alter tracks in PRSNT_PRFCT_MiX

Sharon Jones

05-03-2020 alter:MiX # 33 alter tracks in PRSNT_PRFCT_MiX [from recent past] # Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings, Bahamas, FIDLAR, Courteeners, Cursive, Whyte Horses, Gladie, St. Vincent, Nina Kraviz, Jacco Gardner, The Heliocentrics, Ron Gallo, Sunwatchers, Wire, En Attendant Ana, Shadow Show

M U S I C

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By the sound of them, you would have thought Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings started making funk-threaded soul music together in the 1960s. Few devotedly retro acts were as convincing. Few singers as skilled as Sharon Jones at stuffing notes with ache and meaning would be willing to invest in a sound so fully occupied by the likes of Bettye LaVette and Tina Turner in the Ike years, too. But what Jones brought to the funkified table had legs of its own -- eight of them, to be exact -- and they belonged to Binky Griptite, Bugaloo Velez, Homer Steinweiss, and Dave Guy -- her Dap-Kings.
Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings
Matter of Time 3:22
Just Give Me Your Time 2:29
from Soul of a Woman 2017
Sharon Jones was 45 years old when she cut her first single with the retro-soul combo the Dap-Kings in 2001. She'd been trying to find a way into the music business for years before her partnership with the Dap-Kings unexpectedly made her a star, but it was obvious that once the right people heard her, they knew she one of the great R&B singers of her generation. Once the door opened for her, she didn't look back for a second. While Jones had beat cancer once, she wasn't as lucky when the disease reappeared in 2015, and through 2016 she played shows and recorded session in between rounds of treatment, with cancer finally claiming her life in November of that year. Some artists, knowing they have only so long to live, use their final recordings to sum up their lives and careers, but that was clearly not the case for Jones. Soul of a Woman, recorded during the last months of her life, is not an album about mortality; instead, this is the work of a woman who was determined to make the most of every moment allotted her. Soul of a Woman is a superb exercise in deep soul big-city style, and if Jones was ailing when she recorded her vocals, you would never guess to listen to the finished product...

Bahamas is the solo project of Toronto-based guitarist and musical gun-for-hire Afie Jurvanen. With a carefully trained ear for melody that he's honed during his time playing with the likes of Feist and Howie Beck, Jurvanen's solo project has a stripped-down and contemplative sound that focuses on doing more with less, allowing his voice and guitar to do most of the heavy lifting on his quiet indie folk meditations.
Bahamas
Alone 3:24
Bad Boys Need Love Too 3:41
from Earthtones 2018
Afie Jurvanen's fourth Bahamas LP, Earthtones finds the guitarist/songwriter joined by the all-star rhythm section of Pino Palladino and James Gadson. With decades of legendary albums to their individual credit, the bassist and drummer happen to have played together on none other than D'Angelo's Black Messiah. It's not a trivial recording note, as Jurvanen sought them out due to that album and wrote much of Earthtones with these particular collaborators in mind. The result dials up the soul and slow-boiling funk while retaining Jurvanen's laid-back demeanor, all to steady, head-bobbing effect...

Channeling classic skatepunk, thrash, and surfy lo-fi indie, Los Angeles combo FIDLAR emerged in the early 2010s, rising from the D.I.Y. underground to make a surprising run on Billboard's Heatseekers chart with their eponymous full-length debut, which was also a critical favorite.
FIDLAR
Get Off My Rock 3:17
Almost Free 2:15
from Almost Free 2019
---Their spotty sophomore release, 2016's Too, wrestled with frontman Zac Carper's newfound sobriety in the face of the group's chosen lifestyle and typical subject matter; on Almost Free, they further complicate things by introducing some politics and social commentary into the mix. To their credit, FIDLAR have made legitimate attempts to get out of their creative comfort zone and go somewhere new. That said, Almost Free is somewhat of a mess. Recording at Hollywood's legendary Sunset Sound with Ricky Reed (Jessie J, Twenty One Pilots), FIDLAR strike out in a variety of different directions, landing some new tricks but slamming a lot more...

29-01-2020 alter:MiX # 33 alter tracks in PRSNT_PRFCT_MiX

Aaron M. Olson / L.A. Takedown

29-01-2020 alter:MiX # 33 alter tracks in PRSNT_PRFCT_MiX [from recent past] # L.A. Takedown, Roine Stolt's The Flower King, Buke and Gase, Cherry Glazerr, The Wood Brothers, Hurt Valley, Lake Street Dive, Spencer Radcliffe, Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings, Bahamas, FIDLAR, Courteeners, Cursive, Whyte Horses

M U S I C

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Los Angeles-based instrumental rock project equally inspired by Krautrock and '80s action movie soundtracks.L.A. Takedown is a cinematic instrumental rock project helmed by Los Angeles-based composer/musician Aaron M. Olson, along with a revolving cast of additional contributors. Inspired equally by prog/Krautrock as well as film and television scores, the group's music is equally suitable as a soundtrack for cruising through the desert as well as beach escapades.
L.A. Takedown
Bad Night at Black's Beach 2:50
L.A. Blue 3:40
City of Glass 5:18
from II 2017
Following a cassette on Burger Records and a self-titled LP consisting of a single 41-minute epic, II is the third release by Aaron M. Olson's L.A. Takedown project, and the first recorded with a full band. The group take their name from a 1989 made-for-television crime thriller, and they aim to re-create the soundtracks of that era, but of course it doesn't sound like an exact facsimile. The group twist Krautrock and prog influences into their sound, and the arrangements and rhythmic patterns are complex and a bit suspenseful, but they still have a generally easygoing, beach-friendly feeling. The full-band upgrade means that there's less of an emphasis on synthesizers here than on past L.A. Takedown recordings, and a much more fleshed-out sound...

Gifted prog rock guitarist is a member of the Flower Kings and Transatlantic. He is also ex-Yes vocalist Jon Anderson's collaborator. His distinctive guitar style combined David Gilmour's debonair midtempo, Steve Howe's sharp edges, and Frank Zappa's virtuosity. 
Roine Stolt's The Flower King
Lost America 9:50
The Alchemist 6:57
Rio Grande 7:49
from Manifesto Of An Alchemist 2018
With Manifesto of an Alchemist, guitarist/ vocalist/composer Roine Stolt looks all the way back to his 1994 solo date, The Flower King (hence the singular band name). His list of collaborators on this ten-song, 70-minute outing includes proper Flower Kings' members bassist Jonas Reingold, guitarist/vocalist Hans "Hasse" Fröberg, and Michael Stolt on bass and vocals, with Marco Minnemann (from Stolt's other collaborative project, the Sea Within) Max Lorentz on Hammond organ, Zach Kamins on assorted keyboards, Rob Townsend on reeds and winds, and Nad Sylvan on lead and backing vocals. Stolt claims that this is both a new and old album; most of these songs were developed from riffs, melodies, and arrangement ideas from more than a quarter-century of demos and notebooks grafted on to newly composed parts, most of which were created in the studio. Perhaps because of the treasure trove of older material he rummaged through, Manifesto of an Alchemist was completed exceptionally fast: it took only a month from first recordings to final mix. That quick turnaround time presents listeners with a clash of impressions. First, it is uncharacteristically "raw" sounding. The artist told an interviewer that, "A lot of the guitar work is actually my spontaneous 'demo' guitars ... I didn’t want to process ideas too much...."

Experimental duo from New York who use instruments and electronics they created themselves to make playful but challenging music. Playing unique instruments of their own design, Buke and Gase generate a sonic palette that's very much their own, rooted in the traditional functions of guitar and bass but thrown into different relief. Their songs, usually built from ideas generated during extended improvisation, mix fractured melodic lines and strong but jagged rhythms, generating a sound that's playful but also curiously alien.
Buke and Gase
Stumbler 3:26
Derby 2:30
Eternity 4:36
from Scholars 2019
If you remember Buke and Gase as that experimental duo who play the instruments they built themselves, you might want to adjust your expectations before listening to 2019's Scholars, their first full-length album after a five-year recording layoff. In their previous work, Aron Sanchez and Arone Dyer constructed their music around two instruments of their own creation, the buke, a large, six-string relative of the ukulele played by Dyer, and the Gass, a fusion of the guitar and the bass used by Sanchez. However, while both instruments are part of the mix on Scholars, this time around the duo have pared back on organic instrumentation and jumped deep into electronics...