Music Media Monthly

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

Back in 1998, Jeff “King Django” Baker leveraged his position as one of the most respected singers, songwriters, and producers in New York’s ska and reggae scene to take something of a risk: he took a mixed bag of traditional Yiddish songs, some original material with Jewish themes, and even a Yiddish translation of a classic Specials song, gave them all vintage-style ska and reggae settings, and made what may well have been the best ska album of the decade. It was slyly titled Roots and Culture, and what made it special was not primarily its sense of humor–though there are humorous touches throughout–but rather its seriousness. There are sufferer’s anthems that offer shtetl echoes of Kingston’s Trench Town laments (“Shtiklach,” “Lomir Alle Zingen”), hymns of praise (“Ya’seh Shalom”), and a touching meditation on both the permanence and the evanescence of family ties (“A Single Thread”). Django’s Yiddish setting of the Specials song “Do Nothing” gives that 2 Tone classic an added layer of unexpected emotional depth as well. But emotion only counts if the music can support it, and in that regard this album really shines: the songs are full of solid hooks, the arrangements are beautifully put together and at times downright elegant, and the grooves are rock solid throughout. This reissue offers completely remastered (and noticeably improved) sound as well as three bonus tracks, and should be considered an essential purchase for anyone with an interest in traditional ska and reggae music or modern Yiddish song, or both. Grade: A

Speaking of exciting reissues, it is time and well past time that Nick Lowe’s stone classic sophomore album Labour of Lust (originally released in 1979) should be reissued on CD. Better late than never. This was the only one of Lowe’s solo album’s to feature his Rockpile bandmates Dave Edmunds (a distinguished solo artist himself), Billy Bremner and Terry Williams on every track, and its program includes such deathless material as “Cracking Up,” the country-flavored “Without Love,” and the one song for which most American listeners will remember him, the utterly brilliant “Cruel to be Kind.” It’s impressive how well this album still holds up over thirty years after its original release. Is the sound dated? Sure. But world-class songcraft is world-class songcraft, and I defy anyone with a taste for pop music to try to resist it. My only quibble: at full price, a reissue like this ought to include more bonus material than a single B-side.  Grade: A-

The fact that the cello is currently considered a solo instrument in the same league as the violin is largely thanks to the efforts of 18th-century cellist and composer Luigi Boccherini, whose sonatas and concertos for the instrument remain standard repertoire today. He is also generally acknowledged as the pioneer of the string quintet, and wrote more than sixty of them–also part of the standard repertoire for chamber ensembles. But the program on this wonderful disc is comprised of divertimenti for seven instruments: two violins, flute, viola, two cellos, and contrabass. Anyone familiar with Boccherini’s more famous chamber and concert works will know just what to expect here: virtuoso, even bravura writing for the strings; creative juxtapositions of tonal color; melodies of heart-tugging beauty. The Piccolo Concerto Wien (led by bassist Roberto Sensi) play with a perfect balance of technical assurance and limpid grace, and they communicate effortlessly the joy that is always bubbling just beneath the surface of Boccherini’s music. Luckily, there is more where this album came from: the three divertimenti presented here represent only half of the pieces in opus 16, so here’s hoping that Volume 2 will be released soon. Grade: A+

The great British folksinger Maddy Prior has a long-established sideline in traditional English hymnody; the Mellstock Band is a quartet of instrumentalists who specialize in that repertoire and play historical instruments of the period (including the high C clarinet and the dreaded serpent). O for a Thousand Tongues to Sing features ten tracks each by Prior (with the Carnival Band) and the Mellstock Band (with small choir) performing “gallery hymns” of the 18th century. These songs were not actually considered appropriate for church singing at the time, and it was only their great popularity that eventually broke down the barriers of establishment opposition. The songs featured on this disc are wonderful, but there are some problems with the album itself. First of all, the ten Mellstock Band tracks are beautifully played but irritatingly sung–the sopranos seem to be singing well above their range and are quite screechy. Such performance practice may actually be authentic, but it’s no fun to listen to. (The tracks that feature Prior with the Carnival Band, however, are a pure joy to hear.) The other problem with this release is its sneakiness. Although there is nothing on the packaging that says so, this album is actually comprised of tracks taken from two earlier releases: it includes ten of the sixteen tracks from Maddy Prior‘s 1990 Saydisc album Sing Lustily & with Good Courage, plus ten tracks from the Mellstock Band‘s 1986 debut Under the Greenwood Tree (also on Saydisc). There is nothing wrong with such repackagings, of course, as long as they are clearly presented as such. As the Maddy Prior recordings appear still to be commercially available, I would recommend that interested listeners start there rather than with this deeply uneven compilation, and approach the Mellstock Band recordings with caution. Grade: C+

– Rick Anderson

There’s really no reason why this album should work as well as it does. The Axis Trio looks, at first glance, like a typical jazz trio of piano, bass, and drums; however, the pianist and drummer both employ electronic loops and samples as well, and their music involves an unpredictable blend of group improvisation and compositions written by pianist Amino Belyamani. This is the type of thing that can easily (and too often does) dissolve into noodling self-indulgence, but even at its wildest and woolliest you never get the sense that Anthem is anything but carefully structured. Part of what makes this album so exciting and consistently interesting is the way its digital elements coexist happily with analog sounds; it’s not that they’re integrated seamlessly, by any means–it’s almost always clear which noises are being made by conventional instruments and which ones aren’t–but rather that they play together so nicely, even at moments when it sounds like they might be about to start fighting. Anthem has moments that are less compelling than others, but that unpredictability is part of what makes it fun. Grade: B+

Finest Kind is a Canadian folk trio formed twenty years ago when singer and concertina player Ian Robb teamed up with fellow singers Ann Downey (bass and banjo) and Shelley Posen (guitar). Over the course of those twenty years the group has released five albums, the latest of which departs hardly at all from the winning formula that has shaped the previous ones: thrilling (and often startlingly complex) vocal harmonies put in service to a kaleidoscopic repertoire that includes original songs as well as traditional music from the Maritime provinces, the British isles, the North American west (including the odd cowboy song), and occasionally points as far afield as the Caribbean and the Appalachians. Every one of Finest Kind’s albums should be considered a must-own for any folk music lover, but particular highlights on their latest, For Honour and for Gain, include a sung explanation of the trio’s arrangement of “John Barleycorn”; a spirited rendition of what seems to be a combination work song and sea shanty called “Bully in the Alley”; and a gorgeous arrangement of “Lowlands Low” (also known as “The Golden Vanity”). If this is your first introduction to the band, then save time by going to their website and ordering all five of their discs at once–and if I were you I’d just pick up all of Ian Robb’s solo albums while I was at it. Grade: A+

Reggae Retro is a UK-based record label that, as its name suggests, is largely devoted to rescuing classic roots-and-culture reggae recordings (along with vintage ska and rock steady) from the dustbins of the out-of-print list and making them available again to the rather small but famously insatiable international reggae marketplace. A significant number of the recordings available on the Reggae Retro imprint were originally either recorded or produced by Martin Campbell, a prolific British reggae producer and singer who worked with such local stars as Aqua Levi, Robert Lee, Kendrick Andy, and Meneman during the English reggae boom period of the 1980s. For a nice overview of Campbell’s work with these and other, similarly inclined artists during the period, check out Foundational Roots Vol. 1, which includes some fine tracks by the above artists and some performances by Campbell himself. Grade: B

Those interested in a more purely Jamaican sound may want to skip directly to the excellent Channel One Revisited collection, which features an entire album by Kendrick Andy (here credited as Peter Marshall) supported by the legendary Revolutionaries studio band and recorded at Kingston’s Channel One studio. The Revolutionaries were the house band for that studio, and included several members of the Skatalites– but their sound was firmly defined by the playing of bassist Robbie Shakespeare and drummer Sly Dunbar, whose style changed the sound of reggae music in the 1970s. The Revolutionaries provided the backing tracks for such groundbreaking arists as Gregory Isaacs, Black Uhuru, Culture, and Leroy Smart, and spawned countless imitators. Channel One Revisited gathers eight vocal tracks by Kendrick Andy and pairs them with instrumental dub versions of the same songs in “showcase” style (appending one additional unpaired dub track to the end of the program as a bonus). This material may be a bit on the obscure side for newcomers to the world of roots reggae, but it’s a treasure trove for aficionados. (The most, and probably only, reliable source for Reggae Retro releases in the U.S. is Ernie B’s Reggae.) Grade: A

– Rick Anderson

Fans of old-school roots reggae have (for the most part) gradually come to accept that modern musicians working in that style tend no longer to be based in Jamaica. Even if those musicians are Jamaican by heritage, they tend to live in the U.S., or in England, or (increasingly) in Germany–especially Berlin, which boasts what may be the world’s most thriving traditional reggae scene. But how about Castelfranc, France? This tiny village, situated about halfway between Bordeaux and Toulouse, is home to Fredread and his Webcam Hi-Fi Sound System and Tube Dub record label. And if his first full-length album is any indication, the warm, bass-heavy spirit of 1970s reggae has taken over that little village entirely. Featuring singers and toasters that include Joseph Cotton, Roberto Sanchez, Madu Messenger, Tony Roots, and Bethsabee, Livity Is My Temple offers some of the sweetest and most satisfying reggae tracks recorded in recent memory–some of them in “showcase” style (in which the regular vocal version is followed without pause by a dubwise deejay cut), some of them in straight dub mixes, and some of them featuring two or more vocalists offering different melodic and lyrical takes on the same rhythm. Fredread is, frankly, a genius producer and a very fine composer, and his arrangements are excellent; it’s hard to find a track on this program that isn’t outstanding. (As far as I can tell, the only retail outlet for the physical CD release of this album is Ernie B’s Reggae, where it is currently priced at only $5.99.  (For about twice that much you can download the album in MP3 format at Amazon or CD Universe.) Grade: A+

Singer June Tabor has been a fixture on the British folk scene since her Oxford days in the 1960s, and few living folksingers are as respected as she; as a solo artist, collaborator, and band member she has more than 30 albums to her credit. Over the years she has gradually moved away from the kinds of arrangements that one would normally associate with folk song (guitars, concertinas, fiddles, etc.) and towards a somewhat artier, almost salon-style approach in which the arrangements tend to be very spare and to focus on the playing of pianist Huw Warren. Her voice is the color of whiskey with honey in it, and is slightly rough-grained; the songs she selects have, in recent years, leaned increasingly towards the subdued and reflective. Her latest album, Ashore, is built on the theme of mankind’s relationship with the sea, and includes Ian Telfer’s “Finisterre” (which she earlier sang on Freedom and Rain, her excellent collaboration with Telfer’s group Oysterband); a traditional Norse song from the Child ballad collection; several familiar traditional English songs (among them “I’ll Go and Enlist for a Sailor”); a couple of French tunes; and even a version of Elvis Costello’s “Shipbuilding.” Established fans have been awaiting this one anxiously; newcomers will want to let it send them deep into her back catalog. Grade: A-

Who was the greatest of the Renaissance polyphonic composers? Fistfights have broken out over that question (decorous ones, of course, but still), but few would dispute that Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina occupies a place at the very top of the list. And no choral ensemble–with the possible exception of the Tallis Scholars–has built a more enviable reputation for interpreting Palestrina’s sacred music than the Westminster Cathedral Choir. The choir has a long string of top-notch recordings to its credit on the Hyperion label, all of which now seem to be in the process of being reissued on Hyperion’s midpriced Helios imprint. My personal favorite from the choir’s catalog is its hair-raisingly gorgeous account of Palestrina’s Missa Aeterna Christi Munera (scheduled for reissue in March of this year), but I recently discovered another solid winner I had missed when it was originally issued: the choir’s 1989 recording of two other parody masses, Missa O Rex Gloriae and Missa Viri Galilei. Both of these masses find Palestrina operating at the peak of his powers, switching dramatically between homophony and polyphony at unpredictable intervals, using changes in texture to dramatize the text, and delivering the heart-stopping melodies and cascading harmonic passages that have always characterized his large-scale liturgical works. For lovers of Renaissance choral music, this ensembles recordings of this composer’s works are about as good as it gets. Grade: A

– Rick Anderson

If you’re looking for a good candidate for the Coolest Box Set of the Year Award, then it would be hard to find a stronger one than this brilliant 2010 entry from Time Life.  First of all, the content: the performances collected here were all recorded in 1951 for the Mother’s Best radio show.  The shows are included in their entirety, with the banter and the live advertisements included (both of which can get a bit tedious if you try to listen to more than a couple of discs at a stretch).  The performances include what is certainly the earliest commercial recording of “Cold, Cold Heart” (a song so new that the band is audibly unclear on the arrangement) as well as many songs that have never before been heard performed by Williams — in fact, the press materials claim that this box set “increase(s) the number of known Hank Williams recordings by fifty percent.”  The sound is generally very good, and the performances are fantastic.  Then there’s the packaging: The Complete Mother’s Best Recordings consists of 15 CDs, each in a separate sleeve, packaged inside a box the size and shape of a tabletop radio from the 1940s or -50s.  Turn the dial and a digitally-recorded excerpt of one of the shows begins playing through a tiny speaker hidden behind the simulated grillwork. Inside the box the discs are arranged in two rows of slots along with a DVD (that includes interviews with the two surviving members of Williams’ band from this period), a map showing his 1951 tour schedule, and a hardbound 108-page book that includes some never-before-published photographs. Although it’s quite pricey (at $200), this box is well worth it — it’s a treasure trove for researchers and fans of early country music alike.  (Currently, the set can only be purchased directly from Time Life at http://hankwilliamsmothersbest.com/.)

Afro-Colombian music is a constantly shifting and expanding genre of Latin/Caribbean music, and if you want to get a sense of the state of the art, look no further than eponymous debut album by champeta band Systema Solar. Bandmember Dani Broderick explains that champeta “is African music reinterpreted by the Colombian people on the coast. You have African sounds mixed with Colombian rhythms and lyrics, with their lives and feelings, and with live remixing, putting on beats.”  As the band’s name slyly suggests, its particular take on this musical style is deeply informed by the Jamaican tradition of outdoor sound system dances: booming bass, slamming beats, and combinations of rapping and singing make for an irresistible mix of wildly colorful and funky tracks. Listen in particular to the utterly brilliant “Chico,” with its dubby sound effects, funkerrific drums, and sudden incursion of classic Latino pop. If you’re in a snowy part of the country and are longing for some warmth and sunshine, here they are.

There is a pretty good argument to be made that the world is not really in desperate need of yet another recording of Monteverdi’s 1610 Vespro della Beata Vergine, and wasn’t even at the time of this recording‘s original release in 1999. We already have so many good ones, from the likes of the Taverner Consort, the English Baroque Soloists, and Boston Baroque. But this one, from the wonderful Apollo’s Fire baroque orchestra, stands out from the pack and is well worth investigating. Several elements of this recording are notable: first, conductor Jeannette Sorrell’s choice to use larger forces than those used by many previous groups.  The historical arguments on this point are probably going to continue forever, and in the meantime it’s great to be able to hear recordings made both ways.  Sorrell’s ensemble has a rich and desne sound, but remains numble enough to handle the quicksilver changes of tempo and texture that mark so many of the choral sections of this large-scale work. Second is the sense of palpable passion and excitement that Apollo’s Fire generates throughout the program; there is no po-faced Early Music Studies scholasticism here, but rather a sense of wonder and enthusiastic devotion. Third, there is the sound quality of the recording itself: warm and resonant without being annoyingly echoey, sharply detailed without being thin or brittle. This is one of the most rewarding accounts I’ve yet heard of this masterwork of the transitional period between the end of the Renaissance and the beginning of the baroque. (Monteverdi’s Magnificat setting is included at the end as a makeweight piece, a very nice touch.)

Honestly, it was kind of a terrible idea from the outset: get a bunch of top-notch roots and dancehall reggae musicians (Frankie Paul, Ranking Joe, the Meditations, etc.) and bring them together into the studio to create a heavyweight roots reggae interpretation of Pink Floyd’s prog-rock classic Dark Side of the Moon. The thing is, it actually worked — it worked really well, and the album was a hit as well as a critical success.  So two things were inevitable: there would be further such experiments (Radiodread, a reggae version of Radiohead’s OK Computer and Easy Star’s Lonely Hearts Dub Band would both follow in short order), and there would be a dub version. Actually, three things were inevitable: the third is that the dub version would be titled Dubber Side of the Moon (Easy Star ES-1023). So how is it? Not quite as revelatory as the original, but very enjoyable. Remix artists include Dreadzone, Mad Professor, 10 Ft. Ganja Plant, and the legendary Adrian Sherwood, and the treatments incorporate elements of techno and dubstep along with more traditional dub effects. If you liked the original (er, the original reinterpretation, that is) you’re sure to enjoy this third-generation rewrite too. Grade: B+

Jordi Savall plays the viola da gamba (a precursor of the cello) and assorted other vertically-held viols, and also leads the top-notch period instrument groups Hesperion XXI and Le Concert des Nations; his explorations of German, French, and Spanish masterworks of the baroque and Renaissance periods have been some of the most impressive of the past three decades. Little did we know that he was nursing a serious Celtic music jones all this time. He first indulged this secret passion with the release of 2009′s The Celtic Viol (AliaVox AVSA 9865), a program of traditional Irish tunes on which he was accompanied by Scots fiddler Alistair Fraser and other Celtic music luminaries. The album was gorgeous and must have done well, because a year later comes the simply-titled follow-up The Celtic Viol II (AliaVox AVSA 9878). This program is equally lovely, but this time the instrumentation is a bit different: here he is accompanied by the great Renaissance harpist Andrew Lawrence-King and bodhran player Frank McGuire. True to tradition, the tunes are played in sets, and Savall’s playing is both elegant and impressively idiomatic throughout. One of the album’s many pleasures is a photo that shows Savall, in scholarly half-glasses and wearing one of his many decorous scarves, delicately playing a diminutive lyra viol next to the burly, tattooed and bedenimed McGuire as the latter whales on his drum. In fact, that photo pretty much sums up exactly what you can expect from this album: a wonderful juxtaposition of the earthy, the delicate, and the exquisitely tuneful. Grade: A

If you’ve never heard of the 16th-century composer Leonhard Paminger, you are by no means alone. Although he was quite influential in his time and was one of the earliest Lutheran composers to bring a German style to the choral techniques of the Franco-Flemish masters, his music (like that of so many of his equally talented contemporaries) has faded into obscurity and recordings of his work are rare. This disc (Geistliche Vokalwerke, Christophorus CHR 77331) brings together a variety of short sacred and liturgical works: motets, antiphons, psalm settings, a selection from the Song of Solomon. The pieces are sung by Stimmwerck, a three-voice male ensemble expanded to four for this recording. Normally I’m not a big fan of the male vocal quartet sound for this repertoire, but I was completely entranced by this recording — Stimmwerck’s blend is as smooth and sumptuous as ice cream, their tone is soft but robust, and the pieces themselves are gorgeous without exception. I can’t recommend it warmly enough; this is one of the loveliest recordings I’ve heard all year, in any genre. Grade: A+

Fans of folk, country, bluegrass and Cajun music will almost certainly own at least a handful (and probably dozens) of recordings from Rounder Records, a label founded in Cambridge, Massachusetts forty years ago just as the folk boom of the 1960s was starting to wane. To look over the 87-song tracklisting on the four-disc retrospective The Rounder Records Story is to be given a crash course in the history of American roots music, and to dabble in the peripheral genres that Rounder released on its subsidiary imprints Heartbeat (reggae) and Bullseye Blues — old-time mountain music from the likes of Ola Belle Reed and George Pegram; hardcore bluegrass from J.D. Crowe and the New South and Boston stalwarts Joe Val and the New England Bluegrass Boys; Cajun raveups from Beausoleil; zydeco from Buckwheat Zydeco; reggae from Culture; blues and R&B from Johnny Adams and Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown — and then a variety of rock’n'roll, rootsy and otherwise, from the likes of Cowboy Junkies, They Might Be Giants, and Sarah Harmer. This is all great, great stuff, and should lead interested listeners into a deeper exploration of Rounder’s incredibly rich back catalog. Grade: A

– Rick Anderson

Remember Barenaked Ladies? The Toronto band exploded onto the music scene in the early 1990s with a gleefully childish and richly hook-filled debut called Gordon, then matured over the next decade and a half into a group that could be counted on for at least two or three brilliant (and often subtly sophisticated) pop songs per album. In recent years things have gotten complicated, and those complications eventually resulted in the departure of Steven Page, one half of the BNLs’ chief songwriting duo.  I read rumors of alcohol and drug abuse, which I wouldn’t bring up in the august e-pages of MMM except for the fact that if the guy responsible for Page One, Page’s first solo album since leaving BNL, is on any kind of drug, then it’s one I’d like my doctor to prescribe me, please.  Because if there’s a pill that helps people write songs this catchy, clever, and satisfying, I’d like to take it regularly so I can quit my day job.  I’d always suspected that Page was the one primarily responsible for BNLs’ hooks, and my suspicions have now been confirmed; on this album, Page sounds startlingly like Elvis Costello in his Imperial Bedroom period, with fewer French horns.  Page One offers a perfect balance of sweet, bitter, and crunchy, and should be at the top of every pop music lover’s Christmas wishlist.

Jumping back (way back) in time and several territories sideways in content (from sharply crafted pop music to politically risky liturgical music), the Ricercar label has released a stunning boxed set that uses both musical examples and an admirably readable historical essay to trace the political and religious path of the Protestant reformation and the subsequent counter-reformation across Britain and Europe. The eight CDs included in this box contain a blend of newly-recorded performances by the vocal ensemble Vox Luminis and previously-recorded selections from such groups as the Tallis Scholars, Collegium Vocale, Currende, Ensemble Clement Janequin, and many others; composers represented include the usual suspects (Tallis, Byrd, Palestrina, Schutz, Bach) and many lesser-known figures as well (Cazzati, Altenburg, Sebastiani, Tunder). The program follows a clear chronological progression and tends to provide selections from large works rather than entire masses and cantatas, but each disc still stands very nicely on its own as a pure listening experience, and the packaging is simultaneously sturdy, sumptuous and practical.  I don’t hesitate to call this one of the best classical releases of 2010.

Nyabinghi music is an indigenous Jamaican construct that is related to reggae largely by its Rastafarian lyrical themes; musically, however, it’s pretty much sui generis, blending lots of foreign and domestic elements into a sound that features rich harmonies and call-and-response song structures, accompanied only by darkly throbbing frame drums. Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards discovered this music while visiting Jamaica in the 1970s, and eventually gathered some of its most accomplished musicians (notably including the ska and reggae legend Justin Hinds) into a recording studio. The result was a 1997 release titled Wingless Angels; long out of print, it was a gorgeous document that presented Nyabinghi music in nearly unvarnished simplicity (some tasteful bass, guitar, and violin parts were added, as was a puzzling but surprisingly effective layer of synthesized crickets). That album is now reissued as Wingless Angels Volumes I & II, with a second disc of new recordings in the same vein by many of the same musicians. The second disc is pleasant enough, but it is inferior to the first in just about every way; still, it makes a nice bonus to the brilliant original, whose return to market is the real story here.

A new Brian Eno album is always cause for excitement. Small Craft on a Milk Sea does a pretty good job of meeting expectations, though it also confounds them a bit. The first few tracks are ambient in the style of his earlier Music for Films and (especially) Apollo projects; others are a bit more abrasively funky in the style of Nerve Net. All are eminently listenable, and if the programming feels a bit random, the final result won’t be jarring enough to dislodge any members of his large international cult. Very nice.

– Rick Anderson

New College, Oxford, has had an active chapel choir for over 600 years now, and alongside Magdalen College and several other Oxford schools, has set an international standard for choral excellence during most of that period. The choir also has a very long string of brilliant recordings under its collective belt, fifteen of which were collected in the early 2000′s in five-disc box sets that are now being brought back to market in the U.S. by the Allegro distribution house at budget-line prices.

Each box has a theme: the first, Choral Masterpices of the English Renaissance (CRD 5007), brings together many of the usual Tudor suspects (Orlando Gibbons, Thomas Tallis, John Taverner, Christopher Tye, Thomas Tomkins) and nicely combines the expected masterworks (Taverner’s and Tye’s “Western Wynd” parody masses, Gibbons’ and Tomkins’ Te Deum settings) with less well-known material.

The second, Choral Masterpieces of the European Renaissance (CRD 5008), gives the same treatment to works by William Byrd (curiously absent from the English box), Thomas Tallis (curiously duplicated from the English box), Orlando di Lasso, Giovanni Palestrina, Eustace du Caurroy, and Phillipe de Monte.

The third box returns to English soil with a focus on Restoration and Georgian Anthems (CRD 5009) by a long list of English composers both evergreen (Henry Purcell, William Boyce) and relatively obscure (William Crotch, Thomas Attwood Walmisley). For sheer, creamy purity of tone, I think I would give the edge to the Magdalen College choir, but the New College group is consistently excellent on these recordings, most of which seem to date originally from the mid- to late 1990s (the liner notes are vague on that count, though each booklet does include a full list of the choir’s previous single-disc recordings for CRD). These boxes offer an inexpensive and deeply pleasurable introduction to some of the greatest choral music ever written, in any era. (Collective Grade: A)

Trumpeter and composer Sarah Wilson took a roundabout route (through anthropology and theater) to her musical career, and you can hear it in her music. The pieces she has written for her quintet (trumpet, piano, clarinet, piano, bass, drums)  on Trapeze Project (Brass Tonic BTR001) has a lot to do with jazz, but it also has a lot to do with puppet shows (another part of her peripatetic past), second-line New Orleans funeral music, vaudeville, free improvisation, Balkan folk music, American folk music, Persian folk music, and British postpunk (the program includes a strangely affectless version of Joy Division’s “Love Will Tear Us Apart”). As well as being quite a fine trumpeter, Wilson also sings, in a clean, vibratoless voice that almost (but not quite) seems mannered in its lack of mannerism. There’s a sense of excitement, almost glee, that comes across on most of these tunes—one gets the sense that part of that excitement arises from the liminal nature of her style: not quite jazz and not quite anything else either, which, in her words, means that she can “do whatever I want.” It wouldn’t hurt her music much if it gained a bit tighter focus, but it’s also really very lovely just the way it is. (Grade: B)

Laissez les Bons Temps Rouler (“let the good times roll”) is about as clichéd a title as one could possibly imagine for an album of Cajun music. But if anyone has earned the right to use it, it’s fiddler Michael Doucet, who has done more to preserve and popularize the music than anyone since the halcyon days of the Balfa Brothers and the Hackberry Ramblers. His band Beausoleil is widely considered the finest Cajun band currently working, and while one might quibble with that evaluation (Balfa Toujours come awfully close), there’s no denying the power and joy of their sound—particularly in a live concert setting, such as the one documented on this wonderful album (Great American Music Company CD-GA-220). Doucet’s charmingly plain vocals and deceptively simple-sounding fiddle playing are in the forefront on favorites like “Acadian Two Step,” “Zydeco Gris Gris,” “Evangeline Waltz,” and the sassily swinging “Cajun Crawl,” and all of it is wonderful. Fans of the genre should not hesitate to snap this one up. (Grade: A-)

The Suns of Arqa, led by bassist and producer Michael Wadada, has been on the cutting edge of reggae-dub-Asian fusion music since the late 1970s; the band played back-up to the great reggae deejay Prince Far I for his last show before he was murdered in 1982, and ever since that period they have continued to investigate ways of bringing the heavyweight basslines and throbbing rhythms of reggae to various Indian musical traditions. Purists of all stripes may turn up the nose, but at its best this is richly evocative and deeply satisfying music—and never more so than on Know Thyself? (Interchill ichill cd 040). Featuring bansuri master Raghunath Seth, this album presents four ragas; in each case, the traditional three sections are presented without pause between them; the arrhythmic exposition segues seamlessly into the metrically regular middle section and then into a faster and more rhythmically intricate final section. The reggae-flavored basslines are kept to a tasteful minimum here, so as to keep the ear focused on Seth’s gorgeously woody-sounding bamboo flute. The result is a musical tableau that rewards both close listening and meditative drifting. (Grade: A-)

– Rick Anderson