Animal Collective Review

This review originally posted here.

Besides the moniker, there is little uniting the disparate and diverse groups that have come to reside under the umbrella label of “indie rock.” Once a term charged with a DIY ethos and armed with record deals from plucky independently-owned companies, indie rock has become a catch-all for all vaguely-rocking, non-major-label music produced by white twenty-somethings living in Brooklyn. Sound wise, only a few common elements put these indie groups together in the same category; indeed, the dissimilarities from group to group seem to define the genre more than the similarities. When we think big band swing, a sound-concept and its representative samples pop to mind: Benny Goodman, Count Basie, Duke Ellington. When indie rock is the style in question, a fragmented kaleidoscope of music appears: what exactly do The Decembrists, Of Montreal, Death Cab, Cansei de Ser Sexy, and Franz Ferdinand have in common again?

Listening to the recent album by Animal Collective, “Merriweather Post Pavilion,” I was struck by an indie rock universal: its sonic range. No indie fan would miss a beat hearing squealing guitars, acoustic quietude, analog synths, accordions and horn sections, kitschy and ironic gestures, and earnest beauty all on the same record. Another signature sound of this new movement is of a more concrete nature – much of indie rock today celebrates in the primacy of technology. Groups distribute their music online and have become masters of MySpace and Facebook; they also use technological tools extensively in the creation of their music. It seems that everyone today sings the body electric.

However, most groups do not use technology in the way Animal Collective does. Electronic touches in most groups (see the Brazilian Girls review) harken back to the 1980s with club beats, synthesizer leads, and rumbling basses. Animal Collective’s electronic forebears can be found more in German sound wizard Karlheinz Stockhausen and French sonic subversives Pierre Henri and Pierre Schaeffer than in 80s pop. Witness the atmospheric introduction, “In the Flowers,” a noisy and chimerical production that uses as much odd sampling as it does guitars and vocals. When the main groove and chorus hits us almost three minutes in, a rhythmic dissonance between bass drum pulse and synthesized arpeggios demonstrates that, even in their most accessible moments, Animal Collective maintains the cool detachment of authentic avant-gardeists. And “Merriweather Post..” is widely considered to be their most accessible album.

Of course, behind the group’s experimentation lies another, opposite sensibility. If Stockhausen is one major inspiration, then the radiant pop of the Beach Boys must be another. The intricate vocal harmonies and ringing melodies of “Guys Eyes” and “Taste,” for instance, could be B-sides from the Pet Sounds sessions. The ultimate synthesis of these two tendencies can be found in one track from the beginning (“My Girls”) and one from the end (“Lion in a Coma”). After a minimalistic wash of major chords, “My Girls” settles into an irresistible groove that culminates in a single line of lyrics repeated again and again until it turns incantatory. The other piece, in the odd time signature of 9/8, features a drone of mouth harp and fuzz bass that is overlaid with a melody that seems too elegant to work over such a scuttling accompaniment. The fact that it does work is testament to Animal Collective’s sui generis approach.

The sonic range of today’s indie rock, as exemplified by Animal Collective’s new album, is essentially an audacious risk. Groups perform delicate tight-rope acts to bring unlike elements into harmony with each other. When they fall, they fall; but when it works, the results of such high risk music-making can be luminous.

Cat on a Hot Tin Pan Alley Roof

Everywhere you look there's more hurt for the music industry. Rather, more hurt for large recording labels. A recent article from Encore refers to a lawsuit by Eminem's publishing company, FBT Productions, against Universal Music Group in regards to unpaid royalties from digital downloads. The $1.6 million sum is rather unimpressive as far as industry lawsuits go. What matters it the resounding effects of the lawsuit's outcome. The debate is whether digital downloading falls under licensing or distribution royalties. Being that (legal) digital downloading is relatively new there has yet to be any clear definition on the subject, but one of the things you will notice about the above article is how Steve Jobs pops into the picture. Jobs' presence in music lawsuits is ominous yet comforting, much like witnessing a vision of the virgin mother in your taco platter from Burrito Boy. Jobs has been using Apple's sway to control the flow of royalties in the music business for a few years now. Jobs hotly contested a motion to increase iTunes royalties paid to publishing companies by $.06 per song, a number Apple contests would render iTunes a liability rather than an asset. Another important influence he's had is the controlled rate of download at $.99 per song. This is a number that the RIAA has been contesting for years and yet is still a number that Jobs fails to budge upon.

What does this mean? When the hottest artist in the businss, Justin Timberlake, disappoints with first week sales of 700,000 instead of immediate platinum status, it convinces people just how prevalent digital downloading has become. When the RIAA announces that it can no longer support litigation costs against downloaders and has thus decided to drop all such lawsuits it means that circumstances have spun out of the RIAA's control, and that the public has loudly resounded popular music is not worth paying for (a sentiment hotly contested with the mixed results of Radiohead's In Rainbows release). Consider that the recording industry has no control over how much to charge over this new consumption idiom and we see how the traditional music industry model is spiraling out of control. Sadly, the recession-proof entertainment industry is feeling the hurt like the rest of us. After years of legislation and contract models favoring the big business practices of record companies we are now coming to a point where it will become less and less profitable to maintain a major record label. With tools like MySpace, Garage Band, iTunes, ReverbNation, and a host of other digital DIY services you too can become a successful performing artist, and without giving the majority of your earnings to big business. I hope this ushers in a new era of the working artist, where musicians can support themselves by doing what musicians have done best all along: performing to the masses. Look for new and innovative ways musicians choose to market themselves, as it will likely be the means with which new popularity is established.

The State of Things (a.ka pop culture today)

There was a running joke a few years back poking fun at the sudden flood of band names such as The Hives, The Editors, The Subways etc. – the joke went that if the band had a name that started with ”The” and a plural ”Somethings”, it was a pretty safe bet that you were in for a ride of late 1970’s/early 1980’s new waveish rock á la Joy Division.

In the Indie Rock scene, that name trend may have subsided, but the New Wave ”disco rock” sound is stronger than ever with bands like Interpol and We Are Scientists. Ironically the indie scene should be a trendsetter and show a way forward, yet it’s busy aping the past like there’s no yesterday (no pun intended).

And if that’s the case in the supposedly spearheading indie scene, surely things must be all kinds of wrong in the stuff that dominates the charts?

And if you ask me, they are. Personally, I can’t remember a time when ”mainstream” pop/rock music was this bland, uninspired, calculated and formulaic.

What was the point in time when mainstream music stopped being, you know, good? Personal tastes aside, there was a time when Duke Ellington was mainstream. James Brown. Stevie Wonder, The Beatles, The Stones… When the so called ”pop music” used to be on the level of, say, Michael Jackson’s ”Off The Wall” or ”Thriller”, instead of mindless fluff like let’s say, Hilary Duff. Hey, that rhymes.

What was the point in time when the music being put out started being dictated by the tastes of Disney tweens (and/or their parents), and clueless people who always listen to the music that’s ”popular”? Case in point: adults literally camping out to buy Hannah Montana tickets for themselves, not for their kids.

In 1973, Madison Square Garden was sold out by a little band called Led Zeppelin. In 2008, it was the Jonas Brothers.

In an MTV comedy show the writers wanted to make a reference to Bob Dylan. The producers were against it, because according to them the MTV audience wouldn’t have a clue who Bob Dylan is. The fact that most of MTV’s daily lineup consists of various ”reality” type TV shows might have something to do with it.

In general as well, you have to be actively seeking ”good music” (whatever that is), because it sure doesn’t dominate the charts anymore. Sometimes I feel people’s behavior these days resembles that of a group of lemmings, who will watch ”Sneezing Panda” on Youtube for 24 million times (literally, and growing) because there’s a common mindset that it’s funny and something that keeps us entertained for the few seconds it lasts. Or maybe it’s just another form of being lazy. Instead of spending the energy to actively seek something for yourself, enjoying the joy of discovery in the process, it’s easier when Seth MacFarlane offers it to you on a silver platter in a Family Guy episode.

It’s easy not to think anymore. Thinking is overrated, the way to operate in today’s world is coming up with a right combination of words to google with. You don’t even have to bother spelling, Google corrects you if you were just in the ballpark.

YouTube has gained an unexpected role of an educator in matters of all pop culture. Without it, teens might never know that the catchy horn riff Kanye West used a few years back is actually from a Curtis Mayfield song, or that the main hook of that Gym Class Heroes track is actually straight from a Supertramp song. This sometimes results in hilarious confrontations in the Comments section of the site, when advocates of the sampling artist come marching in somehow claiming that the new version – which wouldn’t exist, hadn’t it been for the original song - somehow outweighs the song it borrows from. The site is also filled with a worryingly large number of kids’ cover versions of such classics as the ”Angry Video Game Nerd” theme.

One outfit in particular has been busy showcasing almost a complete lack of any creativity whatsoever, the already mentioned Gym Class Heroes. Sampling is hardly anything new, but when your only creative thing to do is changing the lyrics from ”we don’t have to take our clothes off” (a 80’s single by Jermaine Stewart) to ”we just have to take our clothes off” – with chart success - there’s something seriously wrong.

Hollywood’s hardly any better. The movie industry is busy putting out movies that are either re-living the past (currently the 1960’s and 1980’s it seems), the mistakes of the very present (countless movies chronicling the build-up to the still ongoing war in Iraq, like “In The Loop”, or quite a few about American soldiers’ actions in Baghdad); and perhaps the most obvious example: the numerous remakes (latest offenders: The Day The Earth Stood Still starring Keanu; the forthcoming Karate Kid starring Will Smith’s son; The Graduate remake possibly with Demi Moore and Justin Timberlake).

The point of all this? I think I’m just mad at myself for spending another five minutes watching “laughing baby” or “Chocolate Rain” on YouTube once again, and not doing anything creative.

Brazilian Girls Review

Originally published on Fábrika, 02/03/09.

Pop music has always been an international creature. Easy as it is for America to lionize its role in what has become a global phenomenon, every corner of the world has added something unique to popular music as it’s gone through its violent evolution. Pop the world over owes (African-)American music a huge debt of gratitude. But pop builds on itself; it adapts to new climates and cultures. Led Zeppelin in England wouldn’t have been who they were without Robert Johnson’s wailing conversations with the Devil in the American South; the Germans and the Japanese made an enormous contribution to today’s electronic pop world, although at the time Kraftwerk and Yellow Magic Orchestra were perceived by many to be bizarre novelty acts from brainy countries. In other words, the roots of global pop are American, but pop music has a well-stamped passport—it has been to many places.

The same can be said of NY-based Brazilian Girls’ third record, the appropriately titled “New York City.” In many ways, this collection - like the band (who for the record doesn’t have any Brazilians and only one girl) - is simply a musical travelogue. It is self-consciously obsessed with place, and indeed this is the Brazilian Girls’ greatest charm. In their hands, languages and styles commingle in a brilliantly colored kaleidoscope of international locations. Vocalist Sabina Sciubba regularly sings in six different languages. The band itself seems a tribute to the concept of the “genius loci,” what ancient Romans called the spirit of a place.

Take the opening cut, “St. Petersburg.” In this groovy, bossa nova-infused, dreamy tune, Sciubba narrates a trip though the Baltic metropolis. On an album called “New York City,” by a band called the “Brazilian Girls,” we enter into a musical vignette on a Russian city. On the darkly plodding dance track “Internacional” later in the album, the theme of place takes its most fevered and obsessive form: the lyrics to this one are simply a list of international cities spoken in a seductive, smoky, and foreign-accented tongue. The sexiness of this cut carries a potent message: “Internacional” is a celebratory fetishization of cosmopolitanism.

The record is a wooly tangle of different sounds and approaches. Highlights include “Good Time,” a hummable, instantly loveable dance tune with surreal lyrics (“Some people want to do crazy things in green amphibians…”); “Berlin,” a brass filled, schmaltzy waltz that would be at home in Kurt Weill’s Weimar Germany; and “L’Interprete,” a surprisingly intimate, vulnerable, and stunningly beautiful French ballad.

All this veering between different languages and countries can leave one feeling jet-lagged and dislocated. A critic of the band might argue that all this travel negates itself: in the end, you’re nowhere. But there’s a playful lightness to the record that buoys the spirit despite their occasional forays into hipster cosmopolitan chic. After all, you can always take a Red Bull in the airport en route to another adventure.

Kassin+2 Review

In 1928, the Brazilian poet Oswald de Andrade penned an influential statement of purpose for the modernist movement in his country, a work that appeared under the unusual title “Manifesto Antropófago” (Cannibal Manifesto). His thesis was both radical and banal: Brazil’s greatest cultural aptitude lay in “cannibalization,” tearing juicy ideas from the still-warm flesh of other cultures and digesting them into the Brazilian body. It was this artistic concept that informed the Tropicalia movement forty years later – vanguard musicians like Caetano Veloso, Os Mutantes, Tom Zé, Gilberto Gil, and Gal Costa drew from bossa nova, psychedelic rock, American R&B, avant-garde composition, the blues, and every other living, organic musical style to create a totally new, distinctively Brazilian sound. The theory of artistic cannibalism, then, has always been at the heart of modern Brazilian popular music.

The recent collaborative album by the Rio-based “+ 2” trio – a project consisting of Moreno Veloso, Domenico Lancelotti, and Alexandre Kassin – is the perfect embodiment of the “cannibalismo” ethos. In a unique format, each trio member has taken turns headlining their albums: we’ve already been treated to “Moreno + 2” and “Dominico + 2,” and this Kassin volume, entitled “Futurismo,” completes the triptych. (The album title is an homage to both cannibalismo and to tropicalismo, and it is clear from the first track that Kassin’s beautiful songwriting owes a debt to these earlier movements.)

There is much of this album that is identifiably Brazilian: Kassin and his collaborators freely mix gentle yet complex melodies, breezy bossa guitars, and much of the other musical sweetnesses that conjure beaches, swaying palms, and other stereotypes from the vast South American country. Yet this is not your mother’s idea of Brazilian music. Embedding into the recognizably cool and effortless milieu are cutting-edge programming and electronics, frantic indie rock grooves, and a whole panoply of cannibalized sounds. Paradoxically, perhaps it is this quality of synthesis that makes “Futurismo” such a quintessentially Brazilian album.

Take the song “Samba Machine,” for instance. Here, we have a punchy guitar groove and a plodding samba bass line accompanied by a retro drum machine and vocal harmonies sung through a vocoder. Half way through the song is a distorted blues guitar solo. It is a mish-mash of competing musical signs, from the traditional (samba and blues) to the contemporary (electronic flourishes). In “Namorados,” your ear is initially greeted with a Björk-like electronic soundscape, with synthesizer sweeps and blips and bleeps; but then a bossa nova guitar line enters along with Kassin’s relaxed, wet voice. On “Pra Lembrar,” an orchestral introduction reminiscent of The Beatles and Pet Sounds-era Beach Boys gives way to a lilting, highly chromatic melody with Rhodes piano punctuations and a sunny, tropical disposition. Every song on the record plays out in a similar fashion: stylistic surprises abound.

Behind all the experimentation and deliciously cannibalistic gestures, however, is a set of gemlike songs, all masterfully crafted. Ultimately, analytical categories aside, this is where Kassin’s “Futurismo” truly shines.

Virtual Symphony

This is a fantastic, completely 2009 idea: Tan Dun has composed a symphony and is inviting everybody to download music for their respective instruments, rehearse with a video of the Chinese composer conducting directly to you and your specific part, then record (video or audio) yourself playing it. All submissions will be assembled into a virtual orchestra and will be played in Carnegie Hall this Spring; and the best auditions will be invited to NY to play the work in person under the baton of Michael Tilson Thomas. This is music making for the web generation.

Music Review Podcasting

Go here to download a podcast of my recent review of the new Guns n' Roses album "Chinese Democracy." I'll be doing music reviewing in this format more in the future.

Music as Torture Update

What do Nine Inch Nails tunes and the Barney theme song have in common? In addition to Reznor's and the dinosaur's penchant for purple velvet, they both share the unfortunate commonality of torture.

As I chronicled in a series of posts from last April, the US military and intelligence services have been using music as a weapon of torture with imprisoned "foreign combatants" since the invasion of Iraq and the opening of Guantanamo. Today, however, it was reported that musicians whose music was used in these enhanced interrogations are organizing and fighting back (including angsty NIN frontman Trent Reznor, Massive Attack, former Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello, and a crew of children's song writers).

More on this development here.

Manze Dayila - Solé

Originally posted on Fábrika here.




Listening to the recent album by New York-based Haitian singer Manze Dayila made me think of the title to A Tribe Called Quest’s first record, “People’s Instinctive Travels and the Paths of Rhythm.” This title has always impressed upon me the organic and always moving nature of music, its ability to traverse seas and cross cultures. Indeed, the cultural travels and complexities that inform the history of any post-colonial music are profound. Picking up the exact same rhythmic motto in Cuban son, Dixieland jazz, samba, and West African drumming, for instance, gives one a glimpse into the journey of one people from Africa to the New World. These are the paths of rhythm.

There are numerous crosscurrents of musical influence apparent in Dayila’s music. On one hand, you have the Caribbean sources: her band, The Nago Nation, possesses a technical mastery over the gentle lilt of reggae (witness the opening cut, “Kwi”). There are even traces of calypso in some passages. Among “Caribbean sources” can be included, of course, many different varieties of native Haitian music that have developed on the western part of Hispaniola over the last few hundred years as a distinctive mixture of West African, French, Spanish, and Taino influences. In addition to her immediate roots, Dayila’s band dabbles in African forms both ancient and modern, from the elegant flourishes of the “kora” (a many-stringed harp) and the rhythmic patter of the “balafon” (an African variety of marimba) to highlife and other contemporary African genres, themselves the result of all sorts of fascinating cross-Atlantic musical borrowings. (The second track, “Miseye Rigaud,” exemplifies this well.) Toss into this mix a healthy dose of samba (“I Want to Be Free”) as well as the great-grandchildren of these earlier colonial styles, hip-hop and club electronica (“That Feeling” and “Simbi D’lo”), and you can begin to approximate Dayila’s sound. Of course, all the music on this record represents a coming together of different influences and musical cultures – nothing in here in purely one thing or another. Like the colonial history of Haiti itself (and the rest of the New World), this is an album where diverse sounds mingle freely.

Another notable feature of the album is Dayila’s earthy contralto voice. Like Sade, her instrument is as haunting as it is distinctive, often occupying that titillating sex-ambiguous register where a voice can be either a mannish woman or a womanish man. Her melodies are broad and expansive, even when the grooves underlying them are quick and jittery. Soaring above the lively activity of the band, Dayila’s voice is powerful and elemental in a way that is all too rare in today’s world of pop music. Moreover, the quality of her singing convinces you that the lyrical subjects of her songs are of equal weight (although she sings almost entirely in Haitian Creole).

Manze Dayila’s “Solé” is a superb record with a chimera’s soul. Listening to it is like standing in the middle of an intersection where all sorts of paths of rhythm are colliding in a steady rush.

Señor Coconut and his Orchestra: Around the World

Originally published on Fábrika here:

As a great music critic once put it, “pop eats itself.” Nowhere is this dictum as playfully and wantonly embodied as in “Around the World,” by electronic musician Señor Coconut. Our shape-shifting DJ (a.k.a. Atom) has resurfaced under yet another alias to produce a quirky, delightful collection of international pop covers. His self-described style, “electrolatino,” is an idiosyncratic mixture of cha-cha, mambo, merengue, and various other assorted Latin American genres fused with a healthy dose of beat science and a generous supporting section of horns and vibraphones (his “Orchestra”). On paper, this seems to be an odd, incoherent, and kitschy concept – covering such hallowed pop ground as “Sweet Dreams” (The Eurythmics) and “Kiss” (Prince) as lounge lizard, irony-drenched mambo tunes should be violating some unwritten law of pop appropriateness. Yet, surprisingly and inexplicably, “Around the World” is a stunning success. In a pop music world where ironic detachment is all too often a vehicle for angst and despair, Señor Coconut shows us just how fun and original kitsch can be.

Outsiders appropriating Latin music is nothing new. Señor Coconut is part of a long line of distinguished Lationophiles, from Dizzy Gillespie’s experiments in Afro-Cuban rhythm to Herbie Mann’s leisure-suit 60s chic. (If you wanted to go way back, French composer Georges Bizet was dabbling in the exotic textures of Cuban music for his iconic opera “Carmen” in 1875). Where Coconut differs from the above, however, is in his unabashed, brazen disregard for any notion of authenticity. As he points out on his website, mambo itself is a synthetic genre invented by a Cuban exile living in Mexico and writing for the American market. It is therefore a byproduct of multicultural crosscurrents, just like “Around the World.” Nothing in pop music is stylistically “pure,” and this revelation is flaunted across the fourteen tracks that make up the album.

But don’t take “Around the World” as simple empty pastiche. The international covers included here, from the ones mentioned above to 80s German electronica “Da Da Da” and the Antonio Carlos Jobim classic “Corcovado,” are immaculately re-imagined here with a deft ear to the arrangements and a keen sense of humor. Don’t expect the bluesy, seductive saunter of “Kiss” with a clave and timbales pasted into the mix: all the covers here are complete makeovers of the originals. The concept of the album may be all about carefree amalgamation, but the arrangements themselves are precise and carefully planned. This outing is a rigorous exercise in genre bending without losing sight of the sublime silliness that makes the collection so immensely listenable.

Señor Coconut has accomplished something truly elusive with this record. “Pop eats itself” is a commentary on the unimaginative, derivative nature of most popular music. Coconut has demonstrated here, however, that derivatives can in fact be imaginative. Who’d have thought that the sound of pop eating itself could be so much fun?

Thievery Corporation Review

Originally published in Fábrika here.






For most groups, establishing a unique signature sound is a matter of transcending strict genre – witness, for instance, Sigur Ros with their symphonic soundscapes that seem to defy the broad label “rock.” This is understandable, for as much as we cling to the norms of a given genre to define our tastes, we always want our favorite musicians to violate those same norms. As unique as Sigur Ros may be, they still play electric guitars and drum sets. For the Washington, D.C.-based Thievery Corporation, however, a different approach is taken. Instead of transcending genre, this duo embraces diverse musical forms, cutting their material up in the laboratory of beatcraft to produce something that is defined more by the sheer quality of synthesis than by anything else. Their music is the sonic equivalent to collage art.

On their latest record, Radio Retaliation, Thievery Corp. continues in this aesthetic. One can’t help but marvel at the global, “one world” philosophy that underlies their sampling choices – on this record, we have everything from hints of dub reggae (“Sound the Alarm,” “Radio Retaliation”) to classical North Indian music (“Mandala,” featuring the virtuosic Anoushka Shankar on sitar). It is a testament to the syncretic skills of the group that they can put so much diverse musical material through the mill and still create a coherent product. Highlights of the album include: “Hare Krishna,” which features the buoyant samba-funk guitar and vocals of Brazilian star Seu Jorge; “El Pueblo Unido,” an uptempo Afro-Cuban track complete with piano montuno and brass section; and “(The Forgotten People),” which employs samples of a Middle-Eastern oud and dumbek drum to great effect (despite the unsubtle political commentary of the title). Listening to this record is a veritable world tour of disparate genres.

Of course, underpinning the whole project are two themes consistent with previous Thievery Corp. releases: politically charged lyrics and a lush production style. Although the stylistic conceit of each song varies wildly, all of the tracks on the record are given a similar sound, complete with textured, ambient waves and that classic down-tempo signature, the heavily reverb-modified Fender Rhodes piano. It is this style – pulsating grooves, samples, and sonic swirls – that moves Radio Retaliation beyond simply a grab-bag of world styles and into its own orbit of electronic-lounge-downtempo-chill out-(insert genre) music.

To me, this last point is what makes Radio Retaliation a shallow, if reasonably enjoyable, listen. The name of the group is quite appropriate: Thievery Corp’s music steals from all over the place, processes it, and spits out something that, while being a product of genre-play, ends up as firmly embedded in genre as anything else. Minus the transcendence.

Vampire Weekend

When I discover a new band or album that really captivates me, I can become somewhat monomaniacal about it. When I get the CD, I listen to it continuously for a period of time. Sometimes I spin it so relentlessly, I'm surprised the plastic doesn't melt. 

I've been doing that this week with Vampire Weekend (or at least whatever the digital equivalent is—VW's myspace page is melting just a little due to my repeated plays). This band, out of New York, has captured my musical attention. Their instruments could have been picked up in their parents' basements (drums, bass, hollow body electric guitar, and what looks/sounds like the casio keyboard I had when I was 12). They look like your average mediocre group of friends who obviously think they are better than they actually are. 

But their swagger is writing checks that their music can cash.* Youthful confidence and nonchalance is backed up by a keen melodic sense and catchy, quality songs that bear repeating. Musically, the songs are made up of many great elements, but none are more basic to the success of this album than the band's rhythmic sensibility. Every moment of their songs is permeated with some sharp, infectious, face-melting rhythm. Rhythm in music, to me, is much more basic than melody or harmony. VW's rhythms (and their songs along with them) can get into your head and never leave—the kind of ohrwurm that you don't want to get rid of. And bands that get creative with rhythm (Jimmy Eat World is another that comes to mind) seem to always be on my listen list.

I'm aware that I'm riding the VW wave kinda late—their debut album came out in early 2008—and you might know all of this already. But if you are a late-comer like me, you might want to check out their music (and some worthwhile music videos) on their myspace page or the band's website. 

*This blog has never had a Top Gun reference, and I thought it was high time for one.

3 New Albums: Portishead, Guillermo Klein, Immortal Technique

Portishead: Third

After an eleven year hiatus, nobody knew quite what to expect from one of Britain's founding trip-hop groups, the reclusive and highly influential Portishead. Third, while not as deeply groovy and immediate as 1994's debut smash Dummy, nor as richly textured and harmonically labyrinthine as 1997's self-titled record, is still a force to be reckoned with. The Bristol, UK, trio of Geoff Barrow, Beth Gibbons, and Adrian Utley have emerged from their creative coccoon (I would say "womb," but tact tells me not to put it in the same sentence as "Bristol" this week), reborn with vitality, freshness, and even a few of the old tricks. (Go here for samples - iTunes DRM files won't let me preview them here.)

While the first two records created a sonic environment akin to listening to your grandpa's scratchy, low key jazz records in a creepy basement, drawing heavily from hip-hop beat craft, Third is much more influenced by Radiohead and all the other electronic rock outfits of the intervening decade. Part of the band's new sound is reactionary: upset that their down-tempo grooves of the 90s have been co-opted into hipster-lounge chic for affluent urbanites, the new record tries to shake things up with startling electronic bleeps and blurps and Sonic Youthian noise. The opening cut, "Silence," with a harmonic form based entirely on minor thirds, is identifiably Portishead; but it's guitar driven, heavy, and actually fast. Gibbon's ghoulish voice lets the listener know that Portishead is to be taken seriously, thank you. Her melodies are bizarre, snaky, deceptive, unpredictable, totally unlike anything else in pop, and amazingly effective. But they are uncompromising and definitely not for the fans of the hipster rip-off legions. The song ends suddenly, without reason - I actually checked my iPod on first listen, thinking it had run out of batteries. No. "Silence" is an aggressive reclaiming of the ground that Portishead originally broke.

The band's blend of electronic manipulation, live drums and guitar, samples, and vulnerable, dessicated female vocals is a potent mix. "The Rip," one of Portishead's most lyrical little gems, is a great example of the band's new sound. It starts with acoustic guitar arpeggiations, naked voice, a gentle synth drone and a bassoon (!). Portishead's harmonies often move chromatically, and listening to it here makes you realize how rare this sort of thing is in pop, and how ravishing it can be to the ear (is Mr.Barrow a Wagner fan, I wonder?). About half-way through the song, the stripped down, bare, and human sound world gives way to the realm of machines, as a brassy analog synth takes over the guitar arpeggios and the drum groove enters. Landing on a long note, Gibbon's voice is electronically manipulated to hold as a drone over the groove, essentially becoming another electronic instrument in the mix. Portishead's cyborg soul is on full display.

Guillermo Klein and Los Guachos: Filtros

Quite possibly the most exciting new jazz release I've heard this summer, Argentine pianist-singer Guillermo Klein teams up with his 11-piece band (too big for a combo jazz sound, too small for a big band effect) for a collection of stunningly original music. Unlike many successful modern jazz groups that draw extensively from the energy and directness of rock, Los Guachos performs a fastidiously composed, intricate type of improvisational music that gives a nod to the world of classical music. Like his countryman Osvaldo Golijov, Klein is a chameleon that refuses to see boundaries and borders, preferring to view all music on a level field (there's a Pampas reference in there somewhere but it's not coming to me).

From the first second of the record, "Va Roman," we are hit with Klein's casual, amateurish voice (an acquired taste) over tidally pulsating piano chords. The groove, when it comes in (the masterful Jeff Ballard on drums is amazingly subtle here), is gentle, graceful, but deceptively complex as well (a large 12/4). A skilled orchestrator, Klein uses the ensemble to paint delicate colors behind the soloists; his sense as a writer for large ensemble is influenced by the superbly talented NY bandleader Maria Schneider (and indeed many bandmembers are the same here), but his periodic structures are simpler and more steady. His harmonic palette is positively dazzling; on "Yeso," later in the album, the listener is struck by what might be an Unpluggled Radiohead B-side.

The classical influence can be found in the forms and techniques underlying this superb collection. On "Miula," for instance, Klein uses an effect derived from the string quartets of mid-century American iconoclast Elliott Carter, "metric modulation." Simply put, this technique transforms a subdivision in one tempo (say, triplets) into the pulsation of a new independent tempo. When coordinated well, a groove can transform instantaneously into another seemingly unrelated tempo at the drop of a hat - it's jarring and seriously spicy (and underused, for that matter). In addition to classical techniques, Filtros takes on some beautiful 2oth century compositions (György Ligeti's "Hungarian Rock" and Olivier Messiaen's "Louange a l'eternite de Jesus"), adding the expressive freedom of jazz to an unexpected context. Pulling the European avant-garde, American jazz, and South American folk songs into his eclectic mix, Klein is truly a jazzer for the 21st century. I can't recommend this album strongly enough.

Immortal Technique: The 3rd World

For those of you who think that hip-hop has lost its will to speak truth to power in forceful and urgent terms, listen to Harlem-based MC Immortal Technique. I've followed the career of this underground rapper for a few years now, starting with the furious Revolutionary: Vol. 1 (2001), and I can say with all seriousness that his talent is unmatched in all of hip-hop. He is simply a phenomenon with no peer. The third volume of his "Revolutionary" series, The 3rd World, like its predecessors, is intense, thought-provoking, and will have you running to the computer to look up references with every other verse. This is pure Edu-tainment, as KRS-One formulated the idea: political, hard-hitting, muscular, but also fun.

Like Guillermo Klein, Immortal Technique is a product of different continents. Born in Peru but raised in Harlem, this half-black half-Hispanic rapper has a unique perspective in the traditionally binary world of hip-hop (black and white). He raps in English and Spanish, and his lyrics tend towards the far left: he takes on the topics of American economic imperialism in Latin America, the Iraq War, media failures, the Washington Consensus, CIA complicity in the international drug trade, and the War on Terrorism, all with remarkable humor, lacerating vitriol, and a refreshing clarity and coherence of ideas (this is no Rage Against the Machine!). To understand Immortal Technique's persona, imagine if Noam Chomsky grew up on the mean streets. Yet, while few teenagers would delve into leftist politics and contemporary events with much zeal if forced to read about it in the library, the format of hip-hop - true to its mid-80s, Public Enemy form - makes some pressing political commentary accessible to all who revel in phat beat-craft.

The producer here, DJ Green Lantern, is more slick and produced than his previous collaborators (vol.1, while brilliant, is low-fi and indie to the extreme). This has earned the album some criticism from hard-core, keep-it-to-the-streets type fans; personally, I could take it or leave it. It's not really the point anyway. To me, the real attraction of IT is his brilliant word-play and sense of social justice. In this sense, he is unmatched, although the new album falls short of the first two Revolutionary volumes in the number of epiphanic verbal fireworks. If it were produced by any other MC, I'd say the album was amazing; from IT, it is so-so. Moreover, this album loses its focus frequently, veering off into senseless cant and silly communist agitprop. It's an inconsistent collection, so I'd recommend Vol.1 to the IT newcomer.

Nonetheless, this is an artist to watch. If Immortal Technique ever gets as popular as Jay-Z (an impossibility), you can bet that the younger generation would be out there on the streets chanting down Babylon.

Food Tastes Good

The aisles of my local beautifully disorganized used bookstore disgorged something truly fabulous and strange into my waiting hands a week ago. It's perhaps the oddest, and certainly the most amusing cookbook I've ever set my food-writing-loving eyes on. What is this culinary wonder, you ask? Well, my friends, it just so happens to be a collection of recipes sollicited from prominent indie rockers.

It's called (ahem) I LIKE FOOD, FOOD TASTES GOOD

It's fascinating to see what some of these bands cook and eat ... or don't. The highly predictable (Pork Loin with Poblano Chiles from the oh-so-Portland-trendy Decemberists or They Might Be Giants' "Countrypolitan," which involves pomegranate juice) trades twos with the "... what??"-inducing. Death Cab for Cutie's "Peanut Butter and Veggie Sausage Sandwiches" spring to mind. ("Shouldn't be tasty, but it is," says their singer.) And who on earth would have predicted that the Violent Femmes, in all their rough-around-the-edges glory, would be cooking wild boar ragú?

The dishes themselves are amusing enough, but the recipe instructions are frequently (though not always - it's like a treasure hunt) written in a sort of odd email vernacular that's half recipe, half manifesto, half insight into what famous-ish musicians do when they're not on stage. "the honey will not want to mate with the lime at first, but it will." "Make some jasmine rice, why don't you?" "When the lentils are officially finished cooking, put on side 1 of the Beatles' Revolver LP."

Devandra Barnhart, though, is the one who takes the cake ... or the fried bananas, as it were. His ingredients list for "my favorite recipe for AFRICANITAS RICAS you shall require!" includes "many bananas! two eggggs!! SOUR CREAM!!! HONEY!" And this instructions passage cracks me up:

"STIRRRR!!!!!! leave the bowl alone and go get another bowl, crush the graham crackers into a fine fine powder! like sand!
SIR
LAWRENCE
OF ARABIA!!!!!!!
put it in bowl number two!"

Not to be outdone, from Jonathan Richardson of the Early Day Miners (who, I'll admit, I've never heard of), a cocktail comprised of ice, sake, and root beer. Says its creator, "it's about half and half as far as drinkability." He calls it the Karate Kid, and I'm planning on taking his word for it (shudder), but if anyone else wants to take the challenge ...

Look out, Julia Child. The rockers are a-comin' for your tiara.

Singing Fish

The field of zoological musicology, touched upon intermittently here in the annals of M&M, has had a new breakthrough: the singing toadfish. Follow the link to read the story and see a video.

For another M&M posts on this thriving academic discussion, go here, or, if you have a minute, go here (but certainly don't go here, because it doesn't have anything to do with this topic whatsoever).

Across the Universe

Cheap, I know, but I woke up with that song in my head this morning. I'm sure Yoko will get to me soon enough (who was, in her defense, a very prominent and respected figure on the Downtown scene until she had to devote her life exclusively to championing the impossible-to-determine wishes of her late husband).

I had a conversation with Zach awhile ago about my distaste for beats. Well, not necessarily my distaste, but my distaste for the abuse of beats. So much of our mainstream music is derived from simplistic percussion patterns that are, in my mind, equivalent to finger painting in Mrs. Oliver's AM Kindergarten class down in E hall. Don't let me downplay the basic rock beat, or finger painting for that matter. In the hands of seasoned professionals, people who understand the nuance of their craft, finger painting can be a welcome distraction in the hands of a pop-retro New Yorker trying to lively up the scene a bit. In that sense a solid and simple rock beat is sometimes tasty and the only thing that satisfies. All too often, however, the greater nuance of the craft is abandoned for the time-tested formulaic feeder-bar pellets that satiate the numbed mentality of the majority of the music-digesting public.

This led me to a series of conversations with Zach, percussion instructors, any anyone else who could put up with my rant for long enough. We've covered frequency spectra, social implications, and the simple unknowns, such as why you shake your ass when you feel the beat (my 2-year old is a perfect case study, being that he is as of yet not spoiled by mainstream media but has managed since he was able to shake a limb at any form of groove-based music I've thrown at him). Since those days... 4 months ago, I have since re-evaluated my stance.

A lot of the trouble in deciphering drums is context. Our most common context is the use of drums in relation to other sound producing objects. Popular music often pairs the drums with guitars, vocalists, keyboards, and most often the drums share a symbiotic relationship with the bass. We are all familiar with this role of drumming. If you stretch this paradigm into the realm of techno music it takes on a whole new identity, often becoming the carrier instrument itself. In the hands of artists such as Aphex Twin or Squarepusher the drums become the primary voice where everything else, all other musical conventions we have inherited and love, is accompaniment. If you examine the orchestral tradition of percussion it is largely effect based. Bass drums signified cannon blasts, snare drums were in sync with military tradition, sheets of metal were used to insinuate thunder, etc. These ideas aside, all are completely separate from the traditions of cultures in Africa and Indonesia, where you often see percussion as non-accompanimental, and rather the only class of sound producer present. The polyrhythmic and interlocking nature of the musics of these people lend a different perspective into the role of percussion in human life. Among the Ewe of Ghana the use of interlocking percussion represents the structure of their social life. In various gamelan genres of Indonesia the cyclical structure of the gongan depict balance in nature and the universe. In that sense I have found a sort of home for what I see as a powerful means of expression through drums and percussion.

A necessary aside at this point. I cannot go further without first identifying a few traits of our society. First, we, after all these years, have still failed to abandon the antiquated dichotomy of good versus evil. That, my friends, is a bunch of medieval schlock that really has no place in the universe. The universe does not operate on terms of good and evil, only in cause and effect. For example, consider the 1994 collision of the Shoemaker-Levy9 comet into Jupiter. I use this as a common example, as it is a recent occurrence of a catastrophic event that people would likely remember. That event caused an unquantifiable amount of damage on Jupiter, that even if we could comprehend it could not be construed as evil, although the destructive magnitude of a comet hitting Earth would likely result in may cries of impending Armageddon. No, rather, at some point in the existence of the comet it was acted upon or reacted to a series of physical phenomenon that destined its trajectory to collide with, or rather its attempt to occupy the same physical space as Jupiter at the same time as Jupiter, in which case an event occurred. That is the nature of our universe. Nothing of peaceful coexistence, rather an infinite number of energy collections reacting to each other in a set of physical bounds. Sometimes certain states of energy collide, sometimes they coincide, and sometimes they exist hypothetically independent of other collections of energy. Occasionally the introduction of two collections of energy interact in violent means. I do not mean that by our social connotations (again, the good and evil paradigm), rather violence as a measure of magnitude.

In that sense you can see a clear path for the workings of a modern drummer. Sometimes you explain the interactions of sounds, sometimes you collide them, and sometimes you implicate an event of intense magnitude (putting a crash cymbal on beat 1). If you think about it our existence is nothing more than a series of relationships. The relationship between friends, the relationship between atoms, the relationship between time streams, or the relationship between the Earth and the Sun which it circles. The drums are a musical way of depicting the existence of, maintenance of, and evolution of such relationships throughout music. At least in the hands of a skilled performer they are.

This can all segue into a similar conversation I had with a friend last night about music being man's only viable attempt to play God. That comparison considered, David King is a deity.

Bleakonomics (Part 2)

Returning to the topic of the economics of live music...

The Principle of Fun leads to an interesting reality for live musicians: the more money you get paid, the less fun you're expected to have (ie. the more you're supposed to pander to the manager, the audience, etc.); the less money you get paid, the more freedom you have to have fun and play some music. There is thus an inverse relationship between compensation and creativity.

Let's look closer at this. By means of illustration, I'll take the two gigs I played last week: in the first gig (Gig 1), I got paid a fair (not great) Miami market rate of $100 for three hours. In the second gig (Gig 2), I was paid $65, which is low by hopefully any market's standards. (I'm sorry Chris and the rest of you Bostonians!) In the first gig, I showed up expecting to play a sideman job: with those sort of fair wages, it is assumed that you will play exactly what the leader/manager/club owner wants. You are getting paid to work, not to have fun. Predictably, the gig went along according to this rule.

Gig 2, on the other hand, was a different story. Since we weren't getting paid well, there weren't any limitations on what/how we should play. The gig was creative, exploratory, and spontaneous - in a word, fun. Not having to "work" for our money (since we weren't getting a lot), we were free to simply play music. Looking back on the great Sex Mob show, this was probably the dynamic at work that night - Bernstein et al were getting paid barely enough to cover their cab rides, but because of that, they were up there playing creatively, doing the material they wanted, and getting drunk. They were having fun, and so was the audience. No economic imperative weighed down on their shoulders.

Perhaps we can illustrate this principle as two lines on a graph, one dipping down (money) and the other up (fun and creativity). As the money goes down, your freedom as a performer goes up. In the center, where the lines comes together, is the hypothetical "best realistic scenario" - you make decent money and you get to have a decent creative say over the performance. It is a compromise that many musicians shoot for in their gig selections.

Of course, the extremes of this model tip the scale completely (those .01% of musicians referred to earlier). When Radiohead gets up there to perform, for instance, they can essentially do whatever they want and people will eat it up. When an act commands that level of demand, they don't need to pander anymore. Witness Miles Davis's audience-disrespecting antics or Nina Simone's legendary stunts. Artists at this level have broken the scale, but they are by far the exception rather than the rule.

No doubt, astute M&M readers, you have grasped the Catch 22 of live music bleakonomics - the better you play, the less money you make. Of course, there are a million exceptions to this rule, but by and large I've found that it holds in most markets.

Musician-readers, please supply your impressions and stories about this little paradox embedded in the dismal science of live music. And be sure you leave a tip for the band at your favorite club next time.

The Bleakonomics of Live Music

I remember seeing the great downtown jazz group Sex Mob play a show in New York back in 2000. At the time, all the members of the band were well known in the scene, and they completely packed the club (Tonic, R.I.P.) with enthusiastic fans. It was an amazing show: they played with the sort of creative recklessness and playful pomp characteristic of great live jazz, but still not exactly a daily phenomenon. At the end of the show, when leader/trumpeter Steven Bernstein was drunkenly thanking the audience, he opened his mouth and started ranting about the economics of being a (semi-famous) jazz musician. "Do you know how much each of us in the band made tonight? Playing three hours for a full house? Guess... (silence) $40 each." He then proceeded to pull two grimy twenties from his pocket and flash them for the audience.

Watching this spectacle was a bit of a slap in the face: I had always assumed that guys like Bernstein, who are popular and well recorded, made good money and lived in medium-sized houses in the suburbs. In fact, their gigs were paying them peanuts, just like the motley ensemble of club dates, restaurant gigs, and corporate shindigs that were sustaining me through college.

It's certainly not easy being a gigging professional musician in the US. In all honestly, it was this experience and others like it that eventually steered me away from a career as a jazz bassist and towards more regular sources of income. As Nolan has chronicled in this blog and a few of our other writers have experienced as well, playing music for money is a strange and frustrating proposition. And the phenomenon of lousy and unpredictable pay isn't limited to jazz either, a genre with admittedly negligible market appeal - indeed, this seems to be a live music universal for 99.99% of American musicians. Barring Madonna, J-Z, Springsteen, and a handful of other leviathans, we're all in the same boat here.

In my experience, I have come to learn a few things about the bleakonomics of live music. Let's begin with the most obvious and simple explanations. On the surface of this equation, of course, are the same market principles that guide any commercial system - the "invisible hand" connects supply and demand. Therefore, each scene is very different. I made far more money playing in Portland than I ever did in NY, and it wasn't because I was that much of a better player during my two year tenure in Oregon (quite the contrary!): New York is flooded with great musicians. Of course, there are also a lot more places to play there than in Portland, and a lot more demand, but still - the scale tips in Portland's favor. That's why musicians from all over the country are flocking to the City of Roses right now. On the opposite end of the spectrum is a city like Boston: with mobs of students scrambling for gigs, the market value for live music is kept really low. There is more supply than demand.

This is the textbook, simplistic look at why we poor musicians get paid so pathetically. But underlying basic supply and demand are a few other principles that can't be reduced to economic modeling (well, I guess this post is an attempt to supply a "bleakonomic" model). And the most important principle here is the Principle of Fun.

Work sucks. That's why it's called work - we perform tasks in order to make money to support our worldly lives. Of course, many people find great reward in what they do, but on the weekends and during their vacations, you can bet they're not doing their jobs. So the principle of labor in many ways is based on exchanging time doing what you don't want to be doing (ie. work) for money that will enable you to do what you want (ie. eating, having a roof over your head, taking trips, drinking whiskey every night to numb the pain, etc.).

Musicians disrupt this labor principle. We have fun playing music, and we voluntarily do it all the time without getting paid. It is a recreational activity. CEOs, the line goes, get paid the big bucks because they are under constant pressure and are micromanaging a million things at once - no "fun" in the traditional definition of the word. Musicians, on the other hand, get paid peanuts because, really, we're just getting up there on stage and having a merry ol' time. Why should the restaurant manager pay us fairly - if not well - when we're having such a good time doing what we're doing while he's running around making sure the shipment of tomatoes came in on time?

I'm going to break this down into two entries lest this turn into one of my obnoxious novels of a post. Stay tuned for more BLEAKONOMICS!

Ragging Pony: Rapper. Trianglist. Badass. ~An Elegíe for a Pioneer~

Needless to say, the lack of formal academic study on the roll of the concert triangle in modern hip hop is perhaps the greatest travesty of the current millennium. Much critical attention has been heaped upon the beats, lyricism, and culture surrounding the genre of hip hop, yet critics remain shamefully silent when discussing the role of the triangle.

The triangle, in the context of predominantly bass heavy hip hop, is the epitome of extreme. It hovers, much like a silken butterfly, over the primal grind of the electronic beats, sustaining an angelic high over the blare of subtones. Handled by a skillful maestro, the triangle is nothing short of majestic, orgasmic and sublime.

Lauded as the “Godfather of Triangle” in the elite triangle-conscious communities, no one has done more to elevate the stature and role of this underappreciated instrument than the Brooklyn born rapper and percussionist, Ragging Pony. Mr. Pony has worked with some of the biggest names in popular hip hop: Usher, Nelly, Timbaland, Dr. Dre and 50 Cent to name but a few of his recent collaborators. No matter what rapper he is paired with, Ragging Pony’s triangle virtuosity is unmistakable, ringing heavenly through the sometimes bleak slant of the lyrics.

Like most trianglists in the hip hop genre, Ragging Pony was not formally trained. He learned how to play triangle in the streets. At the tender age of ten, Mr. Pony fashioned his own triangle accoutrement from a twisted piece of barbed wire and left home to study under the tutelage of the local triangle gang, the “Idiophonic-Chronic.” In an early interview with GQ, Mr. Pony revealed, “I learned all the basics in the hood with my posse. Ya know: rudiments, double-stops, dynamic sensitivity. All that shit. But trianglin’ is in my blood. My great granddad left Africa with only the shirt on his back and the triangle in his pocket.”

In a recent interview with Rolling Stone, Dr. Dre shared some charming anecdotes about Pony’s work habits. “We were working on “Nuthin' But a 'G' Thang” when I said to myself: yo, we need us some triangle to make this jam really pop. We got the bass drum on 1 and 3. Got the snare on 2 and 4. I want some tinkle-tinkle in there.” Ragging Pony arrived at the studio with multiple steel enforced cases containing his arsenal of triangles and beaters. Dr. Dre continued, “Ragging P warmed up for nearly three hours before he let us even record one take. I mean it, he’s that serious. He got like, 50 of these triangles of all different sizes. Maybe more. So. Yeah. He’s that good.”

Ragging Pony, a self-professed triangle connoisseur, experiments with many varieties of triangles but settles almost exclusively on the Remo 15A, known as the Stradivarius of triangles, for recording.

Being a hip hop triangle superstar has taken its expected toll on Ragging Pony. He is frequently accused of being a “sellout” by many of the underground hip hop trianglists. Few have been as vocal as East-LA born idiophone idol, MC Killah. As a representative of the chill West Coast triangle sound, Mr. Killah is happy to voice his complaints, recently telling a reporter for the LA Times, “Man, that Pony don’ know shit about the triangle! He’s a panderer. Straight-up. I mean, how many times can you accent 2 and 4? Lame.”

There is a notable stylistic difference between the two coasts. The New York “tinkle-hop” triangle performers frequently mute the triangle with their palm shortly after the mechanism is struck, choking the vibration and muting the sound. The result is pleasingly staccato and a perfect accompaniment to the dance club. East coast trianglists weave in and out of the beat, employ double time phrasing, and commonly implement fast sixteenth notes, displaying a musical dexterity reserved primarily for classically trained musicians. West coast musicians, located in the greater Los Angeles area, are known for their effective use of legato, stunning technique, and general sparseness of sound, free of all tonal surplusage. While a New Yorker would accent the downbeats with metallic flourishes and ornamentations, a West coaster would strike the triangle on beat one then let it ring gloriously until the next measure, much like the ringing drones of the Saint Catherine church bells.

And of course, East coast trianglists use stainless steel beaters whereas bronze is favored in the West.

Tragedy struck this weekend in a Boston dance club during an impromptu “triangle-throw down.” Similar to its vocal counterpart where rival rappers competitively deliver their best lines to establish dominance, trianglists from all over the country flocked to “The Silver Pyramid” in Boston to flaunt their skills. Things started civilly, with factions of both the East and West warming up with pianissimo rolls and simple patterns. However, these territorial groups couldn’t commingle indefinitely: soon there was a crescendo evident in both the volume of the triangle duelers and the passion in which they played. Ragging Pony led the East coasters, arrogantly playing thirty-second notes and pouting his lips. The West coaster responded by slowing their playing even more and experimenting with vibrato, waving their cupped hands over the resonating triangles and slouching further into their chairs. Violence erupted and the trianglers flooded into the street. Dave Meyers, a local newsstand owner and witness to the mayhem, described what happened next in an interview with Downbeat, “So all of a sudden I hear this tingle-tingle type sound, like ice-cream truck music on speed. I goes outside and there’s all these black guys hitting these metal triangles and looking really pissed off about something.” Years of feuding was brought to a head when an unidentified Californian, distinguishable solely by his languid playing style, shoved his triangle beater into Ragging Pony’s left eye, ending his career and his life. Interest in the work of the recently martyred Mr. Pony spiked as the result of his death, fulfilling his dream of exposing the integral role of the triangle in the world of modern hip hop.

Note: The Ragging Pony Estate will release a posthumous album for solo triangle in memory of Mr. Pony, One Voice: One Triangle, in late 2008.

Music in Moscow

This will be my final post on Russia before returning to our regularly scheduled programming.

There are few other nations on the planet with as distinguished a musical history as Russia. In fact, this aspect of the country was what originally got me interested in learning Russian and traveling here years ago: any nation that can produce Stravinsky, Shostakovich, Mussorgsky, Prokofiev, Schnittke - not to mention a huge portion of last century's great instrumental virtuosos - must be endlessly fascinating. The richness of Russian musical (and literary) life impelled me to dive into the richness of Russian culture in general, leading to my 10+ year condition of Russophilia.

Moscow's Tchaikovsky Conservatoire, alma mater to Rachmaninov, Scriabin, Khachaturian, Gubaidulina, Schnittke, etc.

The value Russians put on the arts is enough to make any artsy American jealous. In the US, "concert music" is ghettoized to the conservatories and concert halls and is seen as a symbol of class and advanced age. This phenomenon has been documented in numerous historical studies: classical music in America has long been deeply tied to the classist ritual of getting dressed up in a tux and heading out for an evening of civilized, continental entertainment. The fact that the JP Morgans of US history have had to support the arts (as opposed to the generous government subsidies so common in European nations) is a telling indication of this. Unlike Germany, Italy, or Russia, we lack a deep history of native "art composition," and thus this music is not firmly embedded in our collective cultural identity. For much of industrialized American history, classical music has represented a sort of inferiority complex where the most civilized classes embrace the European musical legacy in order the bask in the golden glow of High Culture, a quality lacking in our own land.

Of course, this is a simplification - Americans, it appears, have always been suspicious of the "high/low" dichotomy inherited from Europe, and our most significant contributions have come from between the cracks, not from the world of "art music" proper (see Stephen Foster, jazz, the blues, ragtime, Gershwin, Copland, Ives, etc.). In American music, race has played an integral and dynamic role: as Dvorak predicted so many years ago, our greatest musical contributions to the world have come not from the upper echelons of society, but from the bottom. In this important respect, it is impossible to compare the musical life of America with that of Europe because the models we are following are so completely different. This huge complexity aside, however, I am always amazed when I travel around Europe just how vibrant classical music is to contemporary life. An opera in Prague (at the same opera house where Mozart debuted Don Giovanni, no less!) is cheaper than a movie; Wagner's third "Ring" opera cost $6 to see in Vienna, and the hall was packed with young people.

Classical music is a hugely important part of modern Russian life: one can see massive ads promoting the latest version of Boris Godunov when driving down Moscow's wide avenues; the Bolshoi Theater is one of the city's most important architectural gems, right up there with the oldest cathedrals and the Kremlin (it is also situated right in the heart of town); amazingly competent amateur chamber orchestras set up and play Mozart in the subways, much as a lone saxophonist would do in New York. I asked Katya if the average person there knows who Valery Gergiev is (the director of St. Petersburg's famous Kirov Opera and a regular guest conductor at the MET), and she looked at me as if I just asked her if Russia has cold winters. He is a celebrity there. We in the states have not seen a celebrity conductor since the days of Toscanini and Bernstein - even many culturally literate people have no idea who James Levine and Michael Tilson Thomas are.

But Russia is not just rich in its classical music life, as I found out during my stay in Moscow. I had the opportunity to see a variety of live shows, from opera (the Bolshoi Theater company performing Verdi's late masterpiece Macbeth), to klezmer-rock and avant-garde jazz. The klezmer outfit Nayekhovichi (self-styled "garage rock klezmer"), led by the well-known independent singer Vanya Zhuk, was a playful group that reminded me a lot of the experiments taking place in New York's downtown scene. Zhuk's lyrics were a polyglot combination of Yiddish, Russian and English (which meant that I could understand every third word), but for me the star of the show was the band's virtuosic clarinetist, who clearly understood the idiom of Naftule Brandwein and David Krakauer as good as anyone around today (see myspace link above for song samples).

Nayekhovichi at the Moscow Jewish Center

Russian jazz musicians have consistently impressed me. With the Iron Curtain keeping Western culture at bay and having not been privy to the developments of the style for the last fifty years or so (besides illegal samizdat tapes), when the wall came down all of a sudden Russian jazzers got an ear-full. Sonny, Coltrane, Miles - it all came at once, and many Russian musicians play with an excited delirium and a sort of "look what I can do!" innocence and enthusiasm.

At a cozy little Moscow club, I saw an amazing jazz trio (pno/bs/trp) led by trumpeter/composer Vyacheslav Gayvoronsky. The idiom here was something akin to Medeski Martin and Wood at their freer moments: deep grooves would give way to sonic chaos, which in turn would morph back into chunky, danceable rhythms. The highlight of the show to me was an original that featured a militaristic drum tattoo and march-like bass pattern; over this martial mix, Gayvoronsky screamed command-style exhortations into his trumpet. The whole performance was a ripping and witty satire of the meaningless absurdity of war. (For a sample of Gayvoronsky's music, go here.)

Vyacheslav Gayvoronsky Trio at Moscow's Dom

Like any independent music scene, Moscow's avant-jazz musicians are all involved with one another in a dense web of projects. The bassist for the trio above (Vladimir Volkov) is also a member of a very well-known indie rock group called Auktsion ("Auction"). Their music strikes me as possessing both a Radiohead melodic impulse and a Downtown experimental sensibility. Their most recent record, Dyevochki Payut, features Downtown regulars Marc Ribot, John Medeski, Frank London, and Ned Rotherberg. (Go here for a representative sample, a song called "Zhdat.") Like Stravinsky, Mussorgsky and many others in the hallowed pantheon of Russian musicians, the experimental scene in Moscow today is steeped in both wild-eyed revolution and folk-inspired tradition.