The Answer Is In The Beat

Obnox: The Juke That Sat By The Door 12″ EP (Chunklet, 2014)

January 17, 2015 at 3:45 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

A typically blistering effort from Lamont Thomas’ incredible garage-noise-soul duo Obnox. Opener “Loud Speaker” starts with a short spoken intro talking about frequencies found on records, then “Dark Arts” batters your skull in for a few seconds with a super loud fast song that ends before you even start counting. “All Hail The Deejay” is a blurry midtempo song which repeats its title a lot, and “Sit Yo Ass Down” is more of a slower funk groove and also repeats its title extensively, and feels like the centerpiece/mission statement of the record. “Thanks For Yesterday” is a more straightforward soul cover (not sure who the original is by), and “(Do) The Clap” is a Gories-like stomp with a fuckton of distortion and a fast caveman beat. “Buzz Clique” is a brief backwards outro.

Nausea Valley: Blood On The Spaceship (Toothless Eyeball Records, 2014)

January 16, 2015 at 6:08 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Ypsilanti folksinger/puppeteer Patrick Elkins’ latest project finds him in outer space, with help from Craig Johnson (Laserbeams of Boredom), Chelsea Jordan, and MC Trashpedal. Johnson’s drums and synths aren’t as manic as his usual solo work, but they add a spacey aura that isn’t always present with Elkins’ work. There is a lot of spacey echo on these tracks, which is nice. Chelsea Jordan generally sings the same lyrics/melodies as Elkins, as they do on the album they did together a couple years ago, but “Temple Without A Dome” (which features human beatboxing from Johnson) has them duetting both seperately and together. Easily my favorite song on the album is also the shortest by far, “Your Glow”, a spacey surf-pop number which comically ends after 37 seconds. “Lately I’ve Been Thinking About Leaving And Never Coming Back” is a solid E6-ish psych-pop song, whose lyrics (as the title suggests) seem like a mouthful, but they make sense and they sound cute and funny and wondrous and it’s a really good song. The last few songs are where the album gets really spacey, doing away with drums and drifting into some weird electro-acoustic zones, with the vocals and guitars of “Signal From The Shore” seeming to mutate and disintegrate, and the double tracked vocals on “Of Nebulous Origins” echoing into the void. So far there isn’t much info online about this project or album, but there is a Bandcamp with one song from the album, so that’s a start.

Jaga Jazzist: ’94-’14 (Ninja Tune, 2015)

January 15, 2015 at 6:54 pm | Posted in Reviews | Leave a comment

Jaga Jazzist celebrate 20 years of existence with a commemorative vinyl box set, but the title makes you think it’s going to be a grand career-spanning retrospective, when all you get is a straight reissue of A Livingroom Hush and 2 12″s of new remixes. I wish they would’ve just billed it as a deluxe reissue of A Livingroom Hush. Which is still a great album, but this just seems misleading. Anyway, if you haven’t heard A Livingroom Hush, it’s basically the go-to album for this band, it originally came out in 2001 and it perfectly demonstrates their unique jazz+drum’n’bass+glitch sound at its best. “Animal Chin” has and always will be a ridiculously fun track, with its speed-limit-exceeding breakbeat-propelled rhythm and paper-shredder glitches. The other tracks aren’t quite as crazy, but they always show excellent musicianship and cutting-edge technology. Tracks like “Airborne” seem like they could be from any number of Cuneiform bands, but then there’s the subtle glitches and electronic production. “Real Racecars Have Doors” tips into noisy post-rock territory, and “Low Battery” has a slow neo-soul-esque beat. “Midget” is another fast, choppy glitch overload track, which nowadays seems like a throwback to the era when Ninja Tune used to release stuff like Animals On Wheels and other “drill-n-bass”. “Lithuania” is an 8-minute suite that starts off calmly but then gets into some glitchy mutant disco. “Cinematic” is a slow-burning finale with spare piano notes and hissing waves of noise. The remixes are all of tracks from the group’s later material, which I’m not as familiar with. Clark and Illum Sphere both create jazzy, choppy house tracks, with Illum Sphere distorting everything into the red, to great effect. Big Black Delta go the woozy chillwave route, while Machinedrum creates jazzy atmospheric juke. Teebs stamps out the group’s lush strings with crackling static and thick, skipping beats. Miguel Atwood-Ferguson covers “Rose Heiress” in a beatless, airy string arrangement. Moire does a chilled-out downtempo remix of “Oslo Skyline”, and Invader Ace does a more punchy, overtly danceable remix of “Toccata”.