Music Media Monthly

Lux Perpetua: Requiem
Anonymous
Ensemble Organum / Marcel Pérès
Aeon AECD 1216

The polyphonic Requiem mass emerged as a liturgical form in the late 15^th century, and in its earliest examples it can provide both a deeply moving and a hair-raisingly eerie listening experience. I have found no performance of an early Requiem more unsettling or weirdly beautiful than the one on this recording by the Ensemble Organum. The Lux Perpetua burial Mass dates from the late 1400s, and its authorship is unclear; many scholars attribute it to Antoine de Févin (of Louis XII’s court), while some believe it to be the work of Antoine Divitis (a Flemish contemporary of Pierre de la Rue and Alexander Agricola). It’s an unusual work—the ordinary contains no Credo or Gloria, and settings of New Testament texts are scattered throughout along with plainchant sections. But the singing style is what you’ll really notice: basses introduce sections with dark, reedy declamations that sound like Tibetan throat singing; a reading from the Gospel of John is sung by a solo voice in a melismatic style that sounds more Arabic than European; melody lines are ornamented in ways that bring to mind Balkan music. In between all of these moments of musical oddity is a constant sonic tapestry of rich polyphonic part-writing that conveys all of the solemnity, sadness, and devotion that one would expect from a 15th-century burial mass. This is an extraordinary recording, and a tremendously moving one. Grade: A+

The Leiden Choirbooks, Vol. 1 & 2
Various Composers
Egidius Kwartet & College
Etcetera KTC 1410/1411

Moving forward a few decades into the early- to mid-16^th century, we encounter sounds that are more familiar and certainly more refined. In 1566 there was major upheaval in the Dutch city of Leiden, during which several churches were sacked; one of them, the Pieterskerk, lost all of its valuables except for a set of choirbooks containing masses, motets, Magnificat settings, and other liturgical works by such eminent composers as Nicolas Gombert, Clemens Non Papa, Jean Richafort, and Thomas Crecquillon. The excellent Egidius Kwartet and College is now two volumes into what will eventually be a six-volume series of recordings documenting the music in these remarkable books. Each volume consists of two discs; the first set includes a disc of ten motets and a second disc containing two masses, one by Gombert and the other by an anonymous composer. The program on the second volume consists of motets, hymns, and Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis settings. The Egidius ensemble includes only men (as any 16^th-century choir would have), and their sound is clean but not too stark. The music itself is consistently excellent—this was the high-water mark of polyphonic writing in northern Europe, and anyone who loves the music of this period will want to get ahold of these discs and put some money aside for the forthcoming volumes in the series as well. Grade: A

3 String Quartets
Mihály Mosonyi
Festetic Quartet
Hungaroton HCD 32692

The liner notes to this recording inform us that Mihály Mosonyi “was one of the most influential figures on the nineteenth century Hungarian Romantic musical scene,” which leaves me feeling a bit embarrassed at never having heard of him. But I’m very glad to have made his acquaintance; this world-premiere recording of three of his six string quartets, all written during the late 1830s, is both interesting and thoroughly enjoyable. Although Mosonyi was something of a protonationalist composer (anticipating the folk-based work of Zoltán Kodály and Béla Bartók), the two early quartets presented here tend to stick to the Viennese-School verities; there is plenty of charming melodic invention, but not much innovation. The fifth quartet, also presented on this disc, is more forward-looking but no less accessible. The Festetics Quartet plays on period instruments, which must have been something of a challenge with these sometimes passionate pieces, but they acquit themselves beautifully. The recorded sound is rich and clear. Grade: A-

Tribute
Carsten Lindholm
(self-released)

I came across this disc when an ad popped up on my Facebook page — if memory serves, it said something like “If you like Jon Hassell, you’ll like this.” I’ve loved Jon Hassell since I was a teenager, so I clicked and was immediately entranced. Drummer Carsten Lindholm characterizes his music as “Filmic Ambient Jazz,” but don’t be fooled–while its textures are generally pleasant, this music is far from easy listening and it is “jazz” only in the broadest sense of the term. Tracks like “Elefantastic” and “Bazzland” give guest musicians like trumpeter Rene Damsbak and guitarist Eiven Aarset space for improvisational soloing (including some very Hassell-ish electro excursions), but the overall flavor of Lindholm’s album is that of a long and winding journey into a deep, dark cave filled with a wide variety of electronic beats, textures and melodies. Some of the beats are jazzier, some are more funky and jungly, but at all times the focus is on the big picture: Lindholm is less interested in exploring melodic and harmonic variations than in building layer upon layer of sound design until he has created a dense but accessible construct of multiple moving parts, any of which rewards close attention. The album is titled Tribute because several of the tracks were composed in specific homage to musicians who have inspired him, including Mike Mainieri, Nils Petter Molvaer, Jens Melgaard. This is an intriguing and lovely album. Grade: A-

– Rick Anderson

Like many people of my generation (the awkward one that comes between the Baby Boomers and the Gen-Xers), I was introduced to the concept of “ambient music” back in the 1970s when I encountered Brian Eno’s seminal album Discreet Music, a very aptly-titled disc that consisted of four long tracks: the title track, which filled up one side of the album with unbelievably soothing but somehow never cloying loops of simple piano figures, and three variations on Pachelbel‘s “Canon in D Minor,” a baroque potboiler that is rendered barely recognizable by the extension and slowing of different parts by different instruments. This music came as a revelation to me: it was easy to listen to and utterly undemanding, but at the same time rewarded close attention. As it turns out, Eno had hit on something powerful and basic, and the ideas he developed during this period (which, it’s worth pointing out, were not entirely original) have been picked up and carried further by many other composers and sound artists, especially in the world of electronic music. Having received a number of interesting releases over the past few months that come from various neighborhoods in the ambient tradition, I offer here a rundown of some of the best of them—along with suggestions as to their possible uses in everyday life.

Erik Wøllo’s Silent Currents consists of two discs, each a 50-minute performance recorded live on the radio, one in 2002 and the other in 2007. Each contains of a blend of prerecorded and improvised material. This is beatless, floating ambient music—the kind on which it is nearly impossible to focus one’s attention for very long. Texturally it resembles Robert Fripp’s “Frippertronics” tape-loop experiments of the 1970s, but is, if anything, even more formless and harmonically static, though quite lovely in the way that a particular color of wallpaper might be lovely. Compared to this, Brian Eno’s ambient music was punk rock. Suggested uses: Putting babies to sleep; meditation; lowering (to the point of somnolence) the energy level at the end of a party. Grade: B

Where Erik Wøllo’s music floats, the music of Stormloop (a.k.a. Kevin Spence) alternately throbs and shimmers. But the overall mood of Snowbound is perfectly encapsulated by the album title: this is not so much music as sound sculpture, and what the sculpture looks like is an enormous and nearly featureless snow field, punctuated only by mile-deep, echoing chasms. Here questions of “beauty” and indeed even of “music” seem rather beside the point—this is programmatic music intended to evoke a physical environment of equally balanced beauty and terror. Suggested uses: Put this on when you feel the need to be reminded how grateful you are to a) live in a civilization b) with central heating and c) other human beings. Grade: B

On Dokument .02, the latest release from the Dadavistic Orchestra, there’s not much in the way of harmonic movement, but lots of color and many pitch variations; listening to this album is kind of like watching a bunch of slow-moving clouds change into a series of interesting shapes. Among the fogbanks and drone layers will emerge sudden glistening features: a long series of arpeggios, a series of echo-laden water drips, tiny Buddhist chimes, an occasional swell of iron-bar clangor. There is a pervasive analog warmth to the Dadavistic Orchestra’s sound which should not be confused with emotional accessibility: this is music of warm, soft surfaces laid over a core of cold metal. While much of this music is attractive, it’s ultimately rather forbidding. Suggested uses: Making unwanted guests feel vaguely uncomfortable; accompanying silent horror films. Grade: B+

Flumina consists of 24 brief pieces, each of them a partially- or fully-improvised piano composition by legendary film composer and electronica artist Ryuichi Sakamoto. On each of the two discs are twelve pieces, each of them written in one of the 12 key centers available in the Western chromatic scale. Sakamoto played one of these pieces at the beginning of each of his shows on a Japanese tour; when all 24 had been recorded, he sent them to Christian Fennesz for overdubs and other manipulation using electronics, guitars, and synthesizers. The result is strange and deeply lovely. Sakamoto’s piano pieces are aimless in the best sense: there are lots of chords, but little sense of harmonic momentum; despite this, he manages to convey a mood of deep melancholy. Fennesz, for his part, counterbalances that mood with the eerie and detached electronic sounds he brings to bear on Sakamoto’s pieces. The result is a bit like listening to Debussy and Alva Noto simultaneously. Suggested uses: To accompany reading on a rainy day with a cat on your lap; looking through old high school yearbooks. Grade: A

With Ishq’s And Awake, we start getting into slightly (very slightly) more rhythmic territory, and also, interestingly, something that starts edging closer to the easy ambience and pseudo-mysticism of New Age music. The pictures of dervishes whirling on this album’s cover and inside artwork might lead you to expect music with a Middle Eastern flavor and of an explicitly mystical cast, but neither turns out to be the case; while there are touches of exotic percussion, much more prevalent are luscious washes of synthesizer chords, water sounds, and gently rocking chord changes (note in particular “Mizu,” which explicitly evokes Brian Eno’s early experiments in ambient music). Given that Ishq is a duo consisting of guitarist Matt Hillier and vocalist Jacqueline Kersley, it’s interesting that this album contains very little sonic material that comes recognizably from either a guitar or a voice. All of it, however, is sumptuously beautiful and should be welcomed both by fans of New Age music and by those for whom the New Age is anathema, but who have a taste for ambience. Suggested uses: Snuggling with a loved one; reading Persian love poetry; taking a nap. Grade: A

– Rick Anderson

Here’s a straggler from the Christmas pile, one which I’m pleased to give a slightly more thorough treatment than the ones in last month’s holiday round-up got. The jaded music buyer will notice that the label is “Steinway & Sons,” which means that this disc is basically an advertisement for a piano company—an advertisement for which the listener must pay (kind of like buying a Coca Cola t-shirt). The good news is that the music on this album is well worth the purchase price, regardless of the company name on the title and imprint. A Steinway Christmas Album (Steinway & Sons 3005) is a beautiful solo piano recording by Jeffrey Biegel, an artist possessed of both formidable chops and admirable taste. The program includes a variety of secular and sacred selections, opening with a bravura arrangement of “Sleigh Ride” and continuing on to selections from the Nutcracker, gentle seasonal lullabyes of various types, and wonderful new arrangements of traditional tunes—most wonderful of which are Donald Sosin’s affectionate “Hark the Herald Angels Sing (In the Style of Beethoven)” and Carolyne Taylor’s arrangement of “Ding Dong! Merrily On High” incorporating material from Bach‘s “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring.” Needless to say, the piano itself sounds great. Grade: A

For those of you already sick to death of holiday music, allow me to recommend one of the least festive releases I’ve heard this year: Bay Area Dubstep, Volume 3 (Full Melt FMRCD004). Dubstep is the bastard zombie offspring of techno, drum’n'bass, and dub, a dark and shambling brand of dance music whose shuddering basslines and staggering, off-kilter rhythms can be danced to only by the exceptionally gifted. This is music for those who like their grooves powerfully abstract , their moods grim, and their vocal referents Jamaican. Like most interesting dance-music developments of the last twenty years, dubstep originated in London, but its impact has been global. An ocean and a continent away from its English home, dubstep has found fertile soil in the underground clubs of San Francisco and Oakland; on this third volume in the Bay Area Dubstep series you’ll hear bangers from such local eminences as Djunya (the lovely and south Asian-flavored “Bura”), Natty Nation (the paradoxically dark and cheerful “Love Each Other [Blackheart & Rastatronics RMX]“), and Arch Rival’s spooky and bracingly minimalist “Hideout.” A couple of tracks are tedious, but most everything here is good, grumbling fun. Grade: A-

If your tastes run to more decibels of guitar and fewer decibels of bass, then join me in welcoming back to market the sharp and hooky debut album of Australia’s own Screaming Tribesmen, probably the best power-pop band to emerge from the Land Down Under during the 1980s. Originally issued in 1987, Bones and Flowers (Grown Up Wrong GUW 004CD) was actually the original Screaming Tribesmen’s only proper album release (there was an earlier EP, and a couple of other albums would be released by later versions of the band after its original lineup dissolved). This reissue adds two B-sides, a handful of demos, and a live version of a song that never appeared on any other release. The Tribesmen’s sound is dated in some ways: Mick Medew’s vocals are kind of thin and weedy in a particularly 1980s way, and the production style is characterized by that strange blend of grit and gloss that was so popular during the period. But in other ways it’s timeless: the combination of jangling guitars, hooky choruses and tight song structures never goes out of style. Grade: B+

Liquid Stranger is an electronica artist who seems to recognize no genre borders, which means his albums tend to be something of a sprawl; but he’s also a genius of groove, which means the sprawl is always luxurious. On The Arcane Terrain (Interchill ICHILLCD42), he attempts to “obliterate the boundaries separating dubstep, grime, dub, breaks, hip hop and outernational crunkadelica,” and he arguably succeeds. There are guest appearances from post-dancehall toaster MC Zulu, old-school rapper KRS One, and producer Heavyweight Dub Champion, among others, and the beats really do range all over the place: heavy monster dub on “Bombaclaad Star,” squidgy dancehall hip hop on “Rise,” slippery electrofunk on “Totem,” straight-up space dub on “Vigilante.” Like all of Liquid Stranger’s other releases, this is top-quality stuff. Grade: A

– Rick Anderson

Over the past few months, a pile of Christmas releases has been gradually deepening on my desk—and I do mean “Christmas,” not “holiday,” releases; for some reason, not a single Hanukkah or Kwanzaa or Festivus disc has come my way this year. Since the Christmas-music season would seem to be well underway (based on my recent experiences in a variety of grocery and department stores), I figured it would be a good idea to provide a little bit of a clearinghouse in this month’s Sound Recordings column for those who may be in the market for something new and maybe a bit unusual in the Yuletide music department.

Do you like Gypsy jazz? (Of course you do.) If you want a general idea of what Django Reinhardt and the Quintette du Hot Club de France might have sounded like swinging through lighthearted holiday fare like “Let It Snow,” “Santa Claus Is Coming to Town,” and even “Sleigh Ride,” then look no further than A Very Gypsy Christmas by guitarist Doug Munro and La Pompe Attack (GotMusic GMR-002). This disc isn’t quite as much fun as it really should have been—the Djangoesque groove seems curiously subdued in a few cases, and the recorded sound is maybe just a bit dull around the edges. But there are lots of genuinely fun moments, and the vocal contributions by Cyrille-Aimee Daudel are a very nice plus. Grade: B

In a much different jazz vein, consider the elegantly understated but richly complex and very rewarding A Child Is Born, by pianist Geri Allen (Motema MTM-69). Relying mostly on solo piano and electric keyboards (overdubbed in some cases), Allen achieves what very few other artists have been able to: she creates an album that is recognizably Christmassy while still making a unique and personal artistic statement. She does this, in part, by putting her own stylistic stamp on familiar material like “Angels We Have Heard on High” and “We Three Kings”—her arrangements are original and at times fairly abstract, but they leave enough of the source material in place to convey their meaning clearly. She also does it by bringing in new material: thematically appropriate original compositions and a handful of traditional tunes from a variety of other cultures round out a program that is both pleasingly varied and comfortingly familiar. Her playing, it should almost go without saying, is exquisite throughout. Grade: A

For yet another completely different jazz approach to Christmas themes, we turn to the Harry Connick, Jr. Trio’s The Happy Elf (Marsalis Music MARS 0017). The title track is actually a story based on a musical theater piece of the same title by Connick; the album opens with a recitation of the story. The remainder of the program is purely instrumental, and although every track has a Christmas-themed title, none of them bears any obvious melodic relationship to a Yuletide melody. This being Harry Connick Jr., the music is consistently good, rollicking fun, with lots of blues and New Orleans influences. But none of it is likely to pass muster with your local Holiday Music Enforcer (at least I know it won’t with mine). An interesting side note: an animated special based on the story will air on NBC on December 2. Very nice stuff, but only marginally Christmassy. Grade: B+

Perhaps the strangest and most disappointing Christmas disc I’ve received so far is Appalachian Christmas, by multi-instrumentalist and composer Mark O’Connor (OMAC Records 16). O’Connor is a wonderful fiddler and guitarist, but I’ve found myself often disappointed by his forays into grand themes. Here he seems, pretty explicitly actually, to be offering an Appalachian-themed Christmas album. One would expect to hear traditional Christmas tunes performed in styles that have something to do with the American mountain south. Instead, we get tunes played in a welter of disconnected styles: an orchestral arrangement of “Away In a Manger” with vocals by soprano Renee Fleming; jazz settings of “Winter Wonderland” and “The Christmas Song”; a lovely lullabye sung by Alison Krauss; schmaltzy and undistinguished arrangements of tunes like “Sleigh Ride” and “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring.” This isn’t a terrible Christmas album, by any means, but it feels thrown-together and disjointed—and only sporadically does it have anything to do with Appalachia. Grade: C+

I’ve saved the best for last. Led by singers John Roberts and Tony Barrand, the English folk quartet Nowell Sing We Clear has spent the last several decades making some of the most delightful and unusual Christmas albums you’ll ever hear. I usually restrict myself to covering new releases in this column, but as a special Christmas gift to our readers this year I’m going to draw your attention to several of this group’s past albums, any one of which would make a spectacular gift for the folks music lover(s) in your life. The group’s albums are more or less interchangeable, which I mean as a compliment: each of them offers an interesting and thoroughly enjoyable blend of familiar songs in unusual (often quite old) settings, newer songs written after traditional patterns, and songs you know and love performed in the group’s uniquely powerful harmony style. Each member of the group is an accomplished instrumentalist and the songs are often accompanied by a shifting complement of accordion, fiddle, and banjo, but it’s the voices and the repertoire that really set Nowell Sing We Clear apart. Whether revisiting classic material like the “Cherry Tree Carol” and “While Shepherds Watched,” or unearthing obscure wassail songs, or featuring new (and sometimes political) compositions, their albums are always humorous, moving, and strikingly beautiful. My personal favorite is Just Say Nowell, but I haven’t heard a disappointing album from this wonderful group yet. All can be found (and ordered) at http://www.goldenhindmusic.com. Grade (cumulative): A+

– Rick Anderson

Belgium’s Ricercar label has been at the forefront of early-music recording since 1980, when it was established at the same time as the Ricercar Consort. Over the course of thiry years and about 250 releases, the label has introduced the world to the legendary ensemble leader Philippe Herrweghe with both the Collegium Vocale and the Chapelle Royale, and at various times its roster has boasted such eminent groups as the Namur Chamber Choir, Les Agrémens, and Vox Luminis. In recent years, Ricercar’s excellent single releases have suddenly begun to be augmented by projects much more ambitious: a series of boxed sets, each of them featuring a 200-page hardbound book and eight discs of music culled from the Ricercar back catalog.

So far the series includes three entries: the first one was titled A Guide to Period Instruments (the term used to indicate the instruments used during the Renaissance, baroque, and classical periods, many of which are structurally different from modern versions and quite different-sounding), and its recorded tracks were mostly excerpts arranged with the text for didactic purposes. The second is called Reform and Counter-reform and uses musical examples to trace the sometimes wild and bloody history of Protestant reform and Catholic counter-reform that roiled English and European society throughout the Renaissance and baroque periods. Bach‘s Lutheranism and William Byrd‘s Catholicism are placed in what is often a startling and even alarming context by both the music and accompanying book.

But to my mind, the best of these beautifully presented and attractively priced boxes is the one that is just being released this fall: Flemish Polyphony. The composers of the Flanders region (which during the 15th and 16th centuries included the Netherlands, Belgium, and part of northern France) developed multipart choral writing to an unparalleled level and created what is still some of the most heart-stoppingly beautiful music ever to emerge from the human mouth. This box focuses on the great early polyphonic masters of the 15th century: first-generation pioneers like Gilles Binchois and Guillaume Dufay, mature stylists like Johannes Ockeghem, and his pupils Josquin Desprez and Pierre de la Rue, among others. These composers’ innovations would later be taken further by successors elsewhere in Europe (most notably the brilliant Italian composer Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina), but the best of their early work would endure up to the present day and can still be heard in chapels and cathedrals across England and Europe. This box features great performances by such ensembles as Diabolus in Musica, Discantus, Capella Pratensis, and the always-wonderful Piffaro wind band, and with a list price of around $65 it should really be considered an essential purchase for any lover of Renaissance music. Grade: A+

Before there was Pere Ubu, and before there were the Dead Boys, there was Rocket from the Tombs, one of several mid-1970s bands that prepared the way, like a crazy-eyed desert prophet, for the coming of punk rock. Today, Cleveland, Ohio may not be the first city that springs to mind when the word “protopunk” is spoken, but the fact is that punk fans owe Cleveland almost as much a debt as they do New York City or even London, for it is there in 1974 that Rocket from the Tombs (featuring singer Crocus Behemoth, a.k.a. David Thomas, and guitarists Peter Laughner and Cheetah Chrome) first began tracing the outlines of both the Dead Boys’ metal-tinged punk rock and Pere Ubu’s “avant garage” style. The band lasted only about a year and never formally recorded an album, but scattered singles were gathered into CD titled The Day the Earth Met Rocket from the Tombs in 2002, and in 2011 a new lineup (featuring Thomas, Chrome, original member Craig Bell, legendary guitarist Richard Lloyd, and current Pere Ubu drummer Peter Mehlman) got together to make an album of new material. The result is enough to make you question whether any other music has been made in the past 37 years. Apart from the sharp, crisp production quality, there’s nothing on this album to make you believe that it isn’t still 1975. These guys still roar with an economic and single-minded aggressiveness, as if the bloviations of prog-rock still needed to be refuted and the fattening disco baby still needed to be killed in its crib. When Thomas warbles “Honey, I Sell Soul” or mutters about how “Good Times Never Roll,” you believe him both times, and Chrome and Lloyd’s guitars are corrosive and coruscating by turns. This is music by men who have gotten old but not tired—or at least, whose irritation at getting old and tired has prodded them into new and increasingly desperate action. It’s a great reminder of the absurdity of the idea that rock’n'roll is “young people’s music.” Excellent. Grade: A

– Rick Anderson

I’m something of an aficionado of South Asian electronic dance music, but until recently I had never heard of either Dhamaal Soundsystem or its cofounder Janaka Selekta, whose solo debut has now been released on the Chaiwalla’s Boombox label. The breathtaking quality of this album has quickly sent me scrambling to learn more about this artist’s backstory and to catch up with the related releases that I’ve missed. Pushing Air is, as its title suggests, strongly concerned with matters of the bass, but it gives equal sonic attention to intriguingly complex and melismatic vocals from singers like Hema Ram (on the gorgeous “Nomadic”) and Taamara (on the even prettier and multilingual “Time”). There are also appearances from reggae great Lloyd Hemmings, Asian Dub Foundation bassist Dr. Das, globetrotting percussionist Karsh Kale (who offers a fine remix of “Awake”), and singer Sukhawat Ali Khan. The grooves vary widely from electro dub and dubstep, to breaks, house, and techno, all of them richly textured and interwoven with Asian instrumentation. There is hardly a weak track to be found anywhere on this exceptional album. Highly recommended. Grade: A

The combination of guitar and piano is kind of a problematic one: both are chordal instruments that operate in more or less the same pitch range, and in chamber ensembles accompaniment is usually provided by one or the other. Put them together and you raise the question of sonic redundancy. Pair a classical guitar with the delicate tones of a fortepiano and the difficulty is compounded: why pair two instrument with such similar range and timbre? One answer is offered on this fine recording by guitarist Philippe Villa and pianist Carole Carniel, who perform a completely winning program of light works for guitar or mandolin and keyboard by Ludwig van Beethoven and Anton Diabelli. These are not the famous variations that Beethoven wrote by invitation on a waltz tune of Diabelli in 1819, but rather a brief set of two sonatinas, one adagio, and an andante with variations written for keyboard and mandolin alongside a longer set of sonatas and other pieces (including six Scottish dances) for piano and guitar by Diabelli. One obvious challenge with this repertoire is that of keeping the two instruments aurally separated enough to make them distinguishable, a problem handled in this case by means of production technique: the guitar is mixed somewhat more forward. All other aesthetic questions quickly fade away. Villa and Carniel play with both tenderness and vigor, embuing the Scottish dances in particular with completely charming energy. Any lover of late classical chamber music is bound to enjoy this wonderful album. Grade: A-

The death of Kate McGarrigle in 2010 came as a blow to all lovers of American and Canadian folk and folk-rock. She and her sister Anna had been performing together as a duo since the 1960s, eventually producing some of the most engaging and sometimes willfully quirky music of the 1970s. Anna’s song “Heart Like a Wheel” was an unlikely hit for Linda Ronstadt in 1974, and Kate gave birth to two children who would eventually become icons of modern indie pop: Rufus Wainwright and Martha Wainwright. In the wake of Kate’s death, the Nonesuch label remastered and reissued the McGarrigles’ first two albums (Kate & Anna McGarrigle and Dancer with Bruised Knees) along with a third disc of demos and outtakes and a booklet with lyrics, a few new photos, and some brief essays from Anna and the production team, titling the whole package Tell My Sister. For newcomers, the two proper albums should come as something of a revelation–Kate’s slightly warbling voice may take a little bit of getting used to, but the songs are utter gems, particularly the aching “Heart Like a Wheel,” the wryly political rock steady of “Complainte pour Ste.-Catherine,” and the gently rocking “Be My Baby.” Established fans will want this set for its improved sound quality and the odds-and-ends appendix (although I personally found the third disc less than consistently compelling). Grade: A-

Echoes of Swing is a German jazz quartet that specializes, as its name suggests, in music from an unfashionably early era. Not what we usually would consider the “swing” period, but earlier: back when tunes would end with the “twank” of a quickly-muted cymbal, when piano parts still harbored audible echoes of ragtime, when Harmon mutes were deployed with abandon, when the word “swing” hardly needed to be used because it was taken as a given. Despite playing without a bassist, the group plays with absolutely impeccable time and a sense of swing that is simultaneously dead serious and lightly, elegantly fun. On Message from Mars they adapt classical melodies by the likes of Chopin and Shostakovich(!), and take on respected standards like “Don’t Explain” and “Spring Is Here” with new arrangements that are as respectful as they are innovative. There are even a few originals slyly thrown in, among them a very fine blues composition by saxophonist Chris Hopkins playfully titled “Twilightnin’ Hopkins.” This album is a delight from beginning to end. Grade: A

Some kinds of pop music achieve popularity quickly, then fade away just as quickly, but never really die. One of these is rock steady, a subgenre of Jamaican music that acted as a transitional style between the jazzy headlong gallop of ska in the early 1960s and the slower, smokier rhythms of roots reggae that had taken hold by around 1970. Characterized by a loping, rubbery rhythm that accentuates both the off-beats of ska and the heavy third beat of the emerging reggae sound, rock steady enjoyed popularity in its native land for only a few years but has left an indelible footprint on the worldwide musical landscape. As evidence for that assertion, consider At Low Fyah!, a brilliant and pitch-perfect evocation of the classic rock steady sound from Smooth Beans, a great band (with a terrible name) that hails from Madrid. Being able to recreate the classic rock steady sound is impressive, but much more impressive is the quality of both the songwriting and the performances on this album–every song boasts a solid hook, the vocal harmonies are seamless, the grooves are effortlessly powerful. The fact that every track is an original composition just makes the album that much more impressive. I would strongly recommend this disc to any fan of old-school reggae. Grade: A+

– Rick Anderson

Few musical fusions seem quite as unlikely on the surface as that of South Asian folk music and Anglo-Caribbean techno, yet upon further reflection it seems inevitable that they would eventually intersect and form something new. Both India and Jamaica are former British colonies, and immigrants from around the Caribbean and South Asia have enriched London’s cultural mix for nearly a century–and those influences have been brought back to the subcontinent in turn. In London’s and New Delhi’s various ethnic enclaves and dance clubs the sounds of reggae, bhangra, mento, ska, and calypso have intermixed freely with those of punk rock, hip hop, and disco over the past several decades to create a wide variety of exciting musical hybrids. If you want to hear some of the most exciting of those experiments, check out dimmSummer Presents: Subcontinental Bass (available by download only from High Chai Recordings), which includes tracks from artists based both in and out of Asia: you’ll hear dubstep, L.A. bass, drumstep, reggae, and related electro genres from the likes of Naz, Liquid Stranger, Kush Arora, Piyush Bhatnagar, and label head dimmSummer himself. Much of it is brilliant, and all of it is well worth hearing. Grade: A+

For another take on Anglo-Indian musican fusions, consider the case of the Suns of Arqa, a 30-year-long experiment by bassist Michael Wadada in exploring the mystical connections between reggae and the raga-based classical music of India. Purist aficionados of either form may scoff, but over the years Suns of Arqa have produced an impressive number of entrancing and sometimes deeply moving recordings, most of them organized around Wadada’s richly melodic basslines and featuring varying combinations of funk or reggae drums, sitar, tabla, breakbeats, devotional chants, and any number of other musical elements depending on whom Wadada has encountered and decided to work with at any given moment. The description may make Suns of Arqa’s music seem like woolly-headed New Age noodling, but in fact it is anything but: even at its most meditative, this is music that feels as if it’s plumbing the depths of the human experience while simultaneously celebrating mankind’s ability to dance in about 100 different ways. Case in point: their latest release, titled Stranger Music, draws on beats originally created by the late Muslimgauze and lyrics by Leonard Cohen. Like so many of the Suns’ projects, it’s an objectively crazy idea that works surprisingly well. Grade: B+

Another band that has been exploring the margins of electronic dub and avant-garde reggae sounds is the New Zealand-based Pitch Black, a duo consisting of multimedia artist Michael Hodgson and producer Paddy Free (the latter also known for his ongoing Salmonella Dub project). Whether recording their own material or remixing the work of others, Pitch Black’s sound tends towards the spacious, dark, and expansive — imagine The Orb with a more compelling rhythmic framework — and is very frequently informed by the richly melodic and rhythmically off-kilter traditions of the reggae bassline. Pitch Black’s latest release is exactly what its title indicates: a collection of remixes that the duo has created based on work by Mirror System, Katchafire, Laya Project, International Observer and others, along with some rare and previously-unreleased material pulled from their own vaults. Very nice. Grade: B+ 

And if what you prefer is a more undiluted version of dubwise reggae in a more traditional (but still modern) style, then by all means check out this convenient and attractively priced two-disc best-of compilation just out from the UK-based (but pan-European in orientation) Zion Train, whose strictly roots-and-culture orientation has never stopped them from collaborating with artists from Poland, Crete, Brazil, France, and other far-flung locations. Reputed to have been one of the late producer John Peel’s favorite live bands, Zion Train is a versatile combo led by Neil Perch, who performs on his own with a vocalist for sound system gigs and is joined by a full band when occasion calls for it. Dub Revolutionaries: The Very Best of Zion Train offers an excellent overview of the group’s twenty-year recording history, including the brilliant and pioneering “Follow Like Wolves” single that established their reputation in the early 1990s, a previously unreleased Peel Sessions track, some vinyl-only rarities, and their first singles: “Dub Power” and “Dub to Power” (originally issued as “Power One” and “Power Two”). Setting oneself apart from the crowded pack of neo-dub experimenters is a tall order, and Zion Train has been doing it consistently for more than two decades now. Highly recommended to newcomers as an introduction to the band’s rich and deep back catalog. Grade: A-

– Rick Anderson

Echo Beach is a German label dedicated to both promoting and updating the classic sounds of dubwise reggae. Dub was an early approach to remixing that emerged in Jamaican open-air “sound system” dances and recording studios in the early 1970s; producers would drop instruments and vocals out of the mix and add them back in periodically, using effects like delay and reverb to drastically alter the sound and turn the original vocal version into a new musical beast entirely. The label’s name was inspired by a Martha & the Muffins song, a New Wave classic of the same title. To celebrate the 30th anniversary of the song’s release, the Echo Beach label has put together a compilation (Echo Beach: 30th Anniversary Remixes) of fourteen remixes of the tune by the likes of Hakan Lidbo, Oliver Frost, Dub Spencer & Trance Hill, and Aldubb, among many others. The mixes’ styles vary wildly, from funky to house-y to dubby to ambient, but all are worth hearing and the best ones are fantastic.

If you remember the sounds of vintage ska, rock steady and reggae with affection, then you’re in good company; every generation has rediscovered the pleasures of those sounds, from the British punks of the late 1970s who embraced the roots-and-culture styles of Rastafarian reggae to the New Wavers who fostered a second-wave ska revival in the early 80s and the youngsters who made ska-punk a brief but intense worldwide craze ten years later. As each of those waves has receded it has left a small but intense audience behind in each generation, making it possible for some of the foundation artists from the early ska and rock steady years to have second and third professional lives. Roy Ellis is one of those, a true ska originator who, with the band Symarip, recorded the deathless Skinhead Moonstomp album in 1969–a record which has gone on to sell seven million copies since. He subsequently turned his talents to gospel and soul music, but in 2005 returned to the ska scene and in 2010 released The Boss Is Back, a very fine collection of new ska, rock steady, and reggae material on the Spanish Liquidator label. Ellis’s voice is as clear and strong as ever, and his backing band provides a variety of grooves, all of them absolutely watertight. Old-time fans will love this album, and newcomers will probably find that it sends them running to the record bins to find original pressings of the old-school favorites.

Don Dixon is a bass player, producer and songwriter whose production credits include albums for R.E.M., the Smithereens, and Hootie & the Blowfish. But his most significant work has been produced more quietly, as a solo artist, as a member of the relatively unheralded Arrogance, and, occasionally, in collaboration with his wife, the artist and singer Marti Jones. Over the course of a couple of decades, those collaborations have come in the form of one-off duets that have popped up on Dixon’s solo albums or on tribute compilations. Living Stereo is the first full-fledged Dixon/Jones project, and it’s a true gem; it consists of six Dixon originals and covers of tunes by the likes of Dave Matheson (of Moxy Früvous fame) and John Bassette. The arrangements are quirky and often focus on unusual percussion sounds, and may be a bit startling to those used to Dixon’s more jangle-pop-oriented work of the past, but even the most unorthodox arrangements work beautifully. The blend of Dixon’s gravelly baritone and Jones’s more finely-grained voice is always thrilling, especially on the album’s high point, a quietly hair-raising rendition of the Otis Redding classic “These Arms of Mine.” Jones takes most of the song by herself, but on the final chorus Dixon joins her in rough-hewn harmony, and the effect is electric. Dixon and Jones are a musical treasure; here’s hoping we’ll have another duet album from them in the not-too-distant future.

Drummer Paul Motian has been a legendary sideman for decades, but some of his finest work has been as a leader; his work with the Electric Bebop Band used multiple electric guitars to shine new light on what one might think of as a tired repertoire, and his early work on the ECM label helped to define that imprint’s signature sound. But his work with this quartet stands out as something special even in the context of all of Motian’s other recordings. All you really need to know is the personnel listing: guitarist Bill Frisell, saxophonist Joe Lovano, bassist Charlie Haden. Anyone who has been paying any attention at all to jazz over the past four decades will know instantly what to expect: ensemble playing of nearly telepathic sympathy, solo passages that expand the melodic source material without breaking it, and accompaniment of a quality that comes only from genuinely unselfish and truly professional musicians. The program here is strictly standards, and standards of the hoariest variety: “Body and Soul,” “I Got Rhythm,” “You and the Night and the Music,” like that. In the hands of tired old veterans this material would be flat and lifeless; in the hands of fiery young turks it would probably be unrecognizable. But Motian and his friends simply give it new life.On Broadway Vol. 2 (originally issued in 1990 and reissued in 2011 by Winter & Winter) made me instantly regret having somehow missed the first volume, which I’ll be seeking out directly.

– Rick Anderson

Although it has produced its share of musical innovators (Desmond Dekker, King Tubby) and even genuine crazies (Lee “Scratch” Perry, Eek-A-Mouse), reggae is a style of music most commonly associated with strict stylistic formulae; those who push the boundaries too much tend suddenly to find themselves outside the fold. For this reason among many others, Adrian Sherwood’s On-U Sound label is quite an anomaly. Since its founding in 1981, On-U Sound has simultaneously nurtured and hacked at reggae music’s deepest roots, providing a platform (and brilliant instrumental backing) for such roots-and-culture purists as Prince Far I, Bim Sherman, and Congo Ashanti Roy, while at the same time helping artists like African Head Charge, Strange Parcels, and Little Axe create entirely new musical hybrids that belong in no genre known to planet Earth. Sherwood’s over-the-top approach to production—one that takes the echo-and-drop-out remix aesthetic of traditional dub to its logical extreme—is the one element that unites most On-U Sound releases. For those without ears to hear, much of On-U’s output is bewildering; for fans, the On-U brand is synonymous with mind-expanding musical pleasure.

Unfortunately for fans, the On-U brand is also synonymous with organizational chaos. Not for nothing did the label’s old website bear the title “17 Years of What Might Loosely Be Called Business.” For decades, hungry fans were teased by announcements of upcoming releases that never appeared, or, even worse, by promises that classic albums and singles previously pressed in drastically insufficient quantities would be reissued. Sherwood has never been particularly apologetic about the On-U business model, such as it is; entropy is part of that model. It’s as if he had consciously taken the principles of dub (which call for individual instruments and voices to be remixed so that they float in and out of the sonic field in unpredictable and often radically disorienting ways) and applied them to the business of running a record label.

Over the years, other labels and distributors have stepped in to help bring back the On-U catalog and to distribute new releases, but none of those relationships has lasted very long. The latest attempt to bring order to the On-U universe seems to be coming from Sherwood himself; with the help of Redeye Distribution in the US, On-U has both issued a brilliant new African Head Charge album and reissued three of the label’s earliest and most sought-after LPs, each of them a CD in LP-style cardboard packaging with bonus material: the New Age Steppers’ eponymous debut album (the first full-length release on On-U Sound), Creation Rebel’s Starship Africa, and African Head Charge’s Off the Beaten Track.

Of the three albums, those wanting a relatively accessible introduction to On-U Sound will probably do best to start with Starship Africa. Creation Rebel was something of an Anglo-Jamaican supergroup that included such session stars as Lincoln “Style” Scott (drummer for both the Roots Radics and Dub Syndicate), guitarist “Crucial” Tony Philips, and keyboardist Clifton “Bigga” Morrison. Starship Africa is an instrumental album, its tracks given numerical titles, and while all are musically innovative and consistently interesting, none is forbiddingly weird. The reissue adds several bonus tracks including vocal turns from Ranking Superstar, Jah Woosh, and the still-lamented Prince Far I. Grade: A-

My personal favorite of the three is undoubtedly African Head Charge’s Off the Beaten Track. The brainchild of percussionist Bonjo Iyabinghi Noah, AHC sounds like the bastard offspring of Alan Lomax and Bunny Wailer. The music takes field recordings of pan-ethnic work songs, hymns of praise, and cattle-herder chants and throws them into a postmodern blender with chunks of reggae bassline, dubwise sound effects, layers and layers of percussion, and Noah’s own implacably cheerful vocals, creating something that sounds like everything in the world and is yet completely original. Originality is overrated in pop music, of course, and what really matters are the hooks–which are plentiful, if weird. For me, the constant hook is the blissful juxtaposition of dark and sometimes nearly frightening sonics with Noah’s relentlessly smiling and uplifting melodic sense. But some listeners will probably find this music merely frightening. Grade: A

Then there’s the New Age Steppers, an avant-punk-reggae collective that came together to make a self-titled album for On-U back in 1981. This band, such as it was, featured members of the Slits (notably vocalist Ari Up), the Pop Group (notably vocalist Mark Stewart), PiL (guitarist Keith Levene), and Rip Rig + Panic (Neneh Cherry, who would later go on to be a successful solo artist) along with reggae singer Bim Sherman, among others. Their style was by turns abrasively confrontational and accessible and even pretty. Ari Up’s take on the Junior Byles classic “Fade Away” is instructive: the groove is deep and rootsy, the atmosphere richly dubwise, and her vocals progress steadily from passionate to intense to hellaciously post-verbal. Not for the faint of heart, The New Age Steppers is nevertheless a richly rewarding album. Grade: B

The On-U Sound webpage promises more reissues, new releases, and even a “deluxe box-set” to come in 2011. I’ve learned over the years not to get my hopes up. But oh man, a deluxe box set…

– Rick Anderson

This month the Sound Recordings column looks at recordings with a twist: two examples of musical compositions that are embedded in pieces of physical hardware.

The first will be familiar to some readers: it’s a device known as the Buddha Machine. Invented in 2005 by electronic music composers Zhang Jian and Christiaan Virant, this machine is a deceptively simple-looking device that resembles a 1960s-era transistor radio — except that it has no dial or tuning mechanism, and plays only a set of four loops that are hard-coded into the machine itself. One knob turns the machine on (it is powered by two AA batteries) and adjusts the volume; the other knob changes the pitch at which the loops play. There are no other controls, although a 1/8-inch jack does allow the listener to disable the external speaker and listen through earphones. The Buddha Machine is currently in its third version, which features the duo playing drones and very simple melodies on the gu qin, a plucked Chinese zither.

How does it sound? Okay. The Buddha Machine website boasts that this third edition features “higher audio quality” than the first two, and if that’s true, then the fidelity of those earlier versions must have been pretty awful. When played through the speaker, the sound is a bit ragged around the edges and there is a distracting whirring noise in the background; through earphones, the music itself is better defined but so is the irritating background noise. The melody is minimal in the extreme, but that actually turns out to be part of the music’s charm, as is the case with much of the best ambient music. However, it’s never exactly clear when or whether one has passed from one loop to another, and there is no way to force such a jump, which is a little bit frustrating. As a conversation piece, the Buddha Machine can hardly be beat; as a musical experience, it’s mostly a curiosity; as an aid to meditation, it’s quite effective. Those who are more interested in the music contained on the various versions of the Buddha Machine and less interested in the device as a piece of sound art are advised to check out the “What Does It Sound Like?” page on the Buddha Machine website, where all of the music coded into the three machines released so far is available for free download under a Creative Commons license.  There are also very affordable Buddha Machine apps available for the iPad and iPhone. Definitely worth checking out. Grade: B

A piece of music that is simultaneously more traditional (in that it consists of music composed in a more-or-less conventional style) and more radical (in that the music is hard-coded into an even stranger piece of equipment) is composer Tristan Perich’s 1-Bit Symphony. It is released on the Cantaloupe Music label (owned and operated by the famous Bang on a Can avant-garde ensemble), and consists of a circuit containing a single microchip that performs an electronic composition in real time when its power switch is turned on. The circuit is housed in a CD jewel case, but there is no CD — there is only the circuit itself, glued into the interior of the case and fully visible through the clear plastic, its two largest components the lithium battery that powers the performance and the knob that controls its playback volume. There is no integral speaker; to listen, one plugs a set of earphones into a 1/8-inch jack cut into the edge of the jewel case. The piece itself consists of five movements, the last of which repeats infinitely until the power is switched off.

As with the Buddha Machine, one can be intrigued in varying degrees by the hardware itself, the concept behind its execution, and the musical content. I found Perich’s music to be interesting and enjoyable (it is not abrasive or “difficult” to any great degree), but the execution of it to be a bit on the sterile side; as one might expect, the delivery is quite mechanical-sounding and relentless, though the music is not without humor and moments of delicacy and even elegance. I found it impossible to listen through the piece at a single sitting, which is a problem given that the piece begins anew every time the device is turned on — perhaps a future version will allow the listener some way of jumping between movements. In the meantime, though, 1-Bit Symphony remains a fascinating piece of conceptual music art and not a bad piece of music besides. Grade: B+

– Rick Anderson