The Strugglers - You Win

Acuarela



Rating: 6/10

Although my street cred may irreversibly turn to dust, I kind of like this record. While most alt-country artists take advantage of the momentum created by Richard Buckner, Will Oldham and Ryan Adams – sounding merely pictorial and unashamedly flat – The Strugglers offer a more prosaic association with a certain folksy American tradition. You Win takes no conceptual jump but the band, hailing from North Carolina’s "Paris of the Piedmont," Carrboro, manages to savagely grow early seeds still bearing fruit.

It’s not an original idea, though – it never was, really. And it definitely stretches back to Neil Young, (Smog) and the like. But The Strugglers do so in a defiantly manner, which is half the way to prevent their final work from getting a depreciative look. Always exploring an introverted terrain, these songs possess the comfortable scent of a fireplace burning constantly on a Sunday afternoon.

From "The Rejection Letter," a spacious, silent outburst of restrained anger, to the self-titled epilogue, this album is eminently coherent, a solemn chant of the disenchanted, if you will. Does my heart feel warmer at the completion of these 50 minutes? Only slightly. Nevertheless, I can see this was the only way songwriter Brice Randall Bickford II had found for his music to keep pace with his ideas.

Let all music history fall down like yellow, aged print matter – by that time, The Strugglers’ page will probably remain blank and this record will feel like a cucumber in the gardener’s ass. But for now, it’s no crime to crank these songs up, incorporate the solitude of reclusive numbers like "Necrophilia" and "Distant Demands," and contemplate the big black hole on the wall.

Enjoy the inertia provided by the guitars, the banjos, the drums, and the rich string and piano arrangements. The next Bonnie ‘Prince’ Billy record is only a few weeks away to warm up fall evenings.

http://www.lostatsea.net/review.phtml?id=59029949944f08128a0d28

Jet Sam - Remote

Earsay



Rating: 4/10

With all due respect, this EP is like having sex with a bartender: enjoyable while it lasts, but lacking all manner of memorable details to make for a nice, juicy shit-chat at the water cooler the following morning. Jet Sam is an Israeli power trio, ideologically rooted in the old tradition of American rock trios. They are gifted musicians, though sometimes dangerously reminiscent of the megalithic style of Our Lady Peace and Days of the New.

That reverence to acts of the past is simultaneously their greatest virtue and their Achilles’ heel. Post-grunge is so dated it drags the dutiful ear into a spiral of arbitrary rejection and circumspect prejudice. But if you idolize Nickelback just as much as you say you revere Nirvana, this may score high in your summer passions’ hit list. Besides, Omer Hershman’s voice and guitar playing are irrepressibly good in academic terms, as are Yair Yona’s bass and Ran Jackobovitz’s drums.

Nevertheless, they end up sounding monumentally annoying after a second rerun, especially in numbers like “The Days” and the live version of “Man from the Park”. And so Remote is like a little tragedy just waiting to happen. These guys should have been told that tossing a hard rock album, with all the clichés of post-grunge, and never moving a millimetre from the safe rock n’ roll commandments, would put them at risk of a rotund disapproval.

If I had to highlight something from this 23-minute EP, I would choose the 23-second watering effect at the beginning of “India”. Just don’t take their on-stage curriculum as a consequent guideline! Even though they have performed in some of New York’s finest venues, they’re still too “monkey see, monkey do” for the average taste. Jet Sam is another abortive record away from falling into a collective purgatory, that of the act more ready to give a shot in the foot than a shot in the dark. So let me just put the lights out and see if they get the message.

http://www.lostatsea.net/review.phtml?id=51232798344c6775504af9

#8: "With a humble heart, on bended knee"

Glaxo Babies This Is Your Life
ESG Insane (Tambourine Mix)
Aloe Blacc Long Time Coming
Sufjan Stevens Springfield

eléctrodos avariados:

Thom Yorke
The Eraser
Analyse

Amen Andrews London
Kerrier District Robotuss
Tim Maia Imunização Racional (Que Beleza)
Sachiko Kanenobu
James Figurine Leftovers
Billy Nicholls Would You Believe
Labi Siffre I Got The

Brothers on the Slide: the Story of UK Funk 1969-1975
Linda Lewis Sideway Shuffle
Cymande Brothers on the Slide

Monoton Ein Wort
The North Sea & Rameses III Death of the Ankou
Johnny Cash Help Me

Jamaica to Toronto: Soul, Funk and Reggae 1967 to 1974
Ram Love Is the Answer
Jo-Jo & the Fugitives Fugitive Song

Jezzreel Sun Will Shine
Alva Noto Gulf Night
Oneida The Adversary
Plaid & Bob Jaroc The Return of Super Barrio
Rotary Connection I Am the Black Gold of the Sun

o coffee breakz recorda:

Milton Nascimento
Milagre dos Peixes
Gran Circo

#7: "Salvation comes for free"

Four Tet

Syclops - Mom, the Video Broke
Madvillain - Figaro (101 Remix)

Roc 'C'
Hear Me Now
Lover's Choice

Dirty On Purpose
Mara Lights
Light Pollution

Big Youth
Tipper Tone Rock
Pride & Ambition

London Is the Place for Me Vol. 2
Tunji Oyelana - Onmonike
Ambrose Cambell - Yolanda

Isan

Yttrium
Amber Button

Boogy Bytes 2: Mixed by Sascha Funke
Henrik Schwarz, Dixon & Ame - Where We At
Carsten Jost - Uccellini

Chris Smither
Have You Seen My Baby?
I've Got Mine

Hacienda Discoteque Vol. 1
Yazoo - Situation
Deee-Lite feat. Osca Child - Wild Times

Dr. Octagon
It's the Morning
Ants feat. DJ Dexter

Flying
Alice
Mosquito

Silverhead
More Than Your Mouth Can Hold
Rolling with My Baby

Fingletoad, Strange & Siho
Woman
Angela Lee

Keene Brothers Beauty of the Draft
The Takeovers Insane/Cool It
Psycho & The Birds The Killers

Bruno Spoerri
Les Electroniciens
Soft Art Theme

Matthew Dear as Audion
Lee Curtis - Ketamine Christmas
Rovert Babicz - Battlestar

Les Rallizes Denudes Distant Memories

Takashi Nishioka

Os Mutantes

A Minha Menina
Mágica
Meu Refrigerador Não Funciona
Jardim Elétrico
E Seus Cometas no País do Baurets

Daedelus - Denies the Day’s Demise

Mush



Rating: 9/10

MF Doom, Sci, Laura Darling, Prefuse 73, TTC, Cyne, Mike Ladd, and Hrishikesh Hirway. These were some of the guest appearances that could be found on last year’s Exquisite Corpse, a record so unparalleled that its mere existence defied any successful progression from that point. For their follow up, Denies the Day’s Demise, Santa Monica-based Daedelus played all instruments and provided all vocals with the exception of "Sundown," sung by Amir Yaghmai, and "Our Last Stand," which deserved additional programming by Jonathan Larroquette.

And, although its predecessor is like a milestone in soundscaping, Denies the Day’s Demise proves that Daedelus needn’t have an army of guest stars to craft an enjoyable album. But this is more than that. Denies the Day’s Demise is an enjoyable album, one of those which ultimately leads to wild speculation as to whether any future albums in the same vein will ever manage as well. Releasing one album per year as Daedelus (real name: Alfred Weisberg Roberts) blends sterile digital fragments with dreamy swirls of sound and color to a pleasant and always promising result.

2002’s Invention from Plug Research had already beached Daedelus far from the insipid, uninspired playground in which modern producers are content to frollick, and Denies the Day’s Demise is the true and definite realization of the Promethean skills he hides under his fingers. Boldly creative tracks like the opener. "At My Heels" (isn’t that narration voice reminiscent of Burroughs?) and "Like Clockwork Springs" are defiantly at odds with the vacant promenade that is to escalate the American Top 40 on a Saturday afternoon.

By the third song, "Bahia," Denies the Day’s Demise treats listeners to the discovery of soaked Brazilian rhythms, remarkably able to still find space on the producer's palette. This time, Daedelus explores samba and bossa nova, and integrates their vernacular, juicy nutrients in an already succulent platform. He provides these bits of dash now ("Petite Samba") and then ("Viva Vida"), adding the punch just when it is needed rather than dumping it all over the map, opting to sound fresh rather than obnoxiously literal. Apart from these Latin influences and the funky element they provide, the disc is a dense, cerebral, sweated-over work of art.

The orchestral sketches in numbers like "Dreamt of Drowning," merged with some figures of an aural past, notably arrangements from the 30s, risk putting this record in the jazz section of a slippery home catalogue. The IDM counterpart in this record – there’s at least one in every Daedelus album; in Exquisite Corpse it was "Just Briefly" – is "Our Last Stand," a hit-and-run game that inebriates both the mind and the legs. His arsenal is like any other producer’s; a fistful of boxes, beats that defy gravity and common sense, and samples that induce headaches when isolated from the blanketed comfort that they give to their music. But, while most simply obliterate their potential in their haste to create the illusion of newness, Daedelus is a devoted, creative artist.

Alfred Roberts has been releasing records and remixes solo, under the Daedelus moniker, and also with Frosty as Adventure Time or, as he puts it, "soon enough The Long Lost (with Laura Darling)," but he never lets his music sound obsolete. Even after repeated listens. Choosing to take cues from the past, Daedelus never alienates the modern electronics he has in store. And, unlike Winsor McCay’s creation, Little Nemo, featured on the cover, he knows how to sound wiser every day.

http://www.lostatsea.net/review.phtml?id=369208214448daeb17c462