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Lomax Monks

-Craig Young
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Mark D.

-Sabrina Haines
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Matmos

The running theme of A Chance to Cut Is a Chance to Cure is this exact thing I've been ranting about. Surgery by choice. On Matmos' first Matador full length, they utilize the sounds of flesh and surgical instruments to create their own special brand of electronica. Matmos (M.C. Schmidt and Drew Daniel) have been mixing things up for a number of years now. There's no end to the wide spectrum of artists they've worked with. A short list: Otomo Yoshihide and Ground Zero, Tortoise, The Radar Brothers, For Carnation, and others. Collaborations aside, their forte is their original take on modern electronic music. While most are happy with the bleeps and blips that they can conjure out of their hardware, Matmos are about a happy (and often tedious) mix of organic and electronic sounds. The source material and subject matter for A Chance to Cut Is a Chance to Cure says it all. "California Rhinoplasty" is constructed of--with help from a nose flute--a rhinoplasty, an endoscopic forehead lift, and a chin implant. They had gotten clearance from doctors and patients to go into the surgeries and record the sounds you hear on the record. The collection of sounds and mixing took all of two years to complete. Sure, you could probably recreate something similar to those sounds and, who even knows--unless you're a doctor--what refractive eye surgery sounds like, they could be lying. But, they're not. Matmos are the real deal. One of the highlights of the album for me doesn't include any mucus-oriented sounds. "For Felix" is composed of the plucked and bowed sounds from their deceased rat's cage. It sounds as if a symphony orchestra is tuning up, it's totally beautiful. Well, things are starting to really roll. What began as a simple request for a remix by Björk, has turned into the upcoming Vespertine album by the Icelandic one. They'll be touring with her as a portion of her band as well as opening up, so come on out.

-Tiber Scheer
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ML

Pajama Party is a thoroughly beautiful record. As simple as it is complex, as cute as it is damn serious, this is a highly accomplished piece of work. Although this is only available on CD-R, it's obvious from the first listen that ML are the furthest thing from amateur. This is high-brow stuff; intelligent intelligent dance music if you will. Revered not only for musical prowess, ML inject IDM with humor and wit--a refreshing angle considering the ultra-serious nature of their industrial heritage. Leather straps be damned here, these guys are the Ween of IDM. One particularly amazing number on the new disc, "Take That Pants," is partially constructed using flatulence as melody. Go ahead and giggle, but the song runs gassy circles around your subconscious until you find yourself involuntarily humming the fart part.

Pajama Party is filled with amazing melody, awe inspiring percussion, and gooey-rich ambiance that can only leave you wanting to have more. A huge fan of the bedroom electronic freaks, it's great to hear music at this level being recorded onto and packaged with stuff you can buy at Target. Pajama Party is a generous helping of homestyle IDM served by gourmet musicians.

-Jeff Ashley
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Opeth

Blackwater Park takes the aggression of My Arms, Your Hearse and adds psychedelic elements, industrial swirls and a little extra energy and grit. Akerfeldt is in his glory from beginning to end. Maybe add a dab of black metal and a couple of hits of speed to Hawkwind, but then you've gotta make them smooth and cool as cucumbers. There is a strong melodic element that is inherent in all Opeth productions. They can spread hooks so far and wide that every fish will be crawling onto a hook and reeling itself to the boat. Akerfeldt and Peter Lindgren shred the sentimental six-stringers for Opeth and propel the band through the rhythmic barbs of Martin Lopez' (formerly of Amon Amarth) drums. "The Leper Affinity" opens the disc and you won't let out your breath in awe until the disc is done. This is on the year end list for superlative discs--guaranteed. Do yourself a favor and take a walk through Blackwater Park with your undeserving ears.

-Sabrina Haines
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What follows is a line-up of songs that demands attention: NIN's "Head Like a Hole," Gary Numan's "Cars," Love and Rockets "Ball of Confusion," Jane's Addiction's "Been Caught Stealing," EMF's "Unbelievable," Soft Cell's "Tainted Love," Devo's "Whip It," and Dead Or Alive's "You Spin Me Right Round". All executed with enough of the original to recognize parts, and enough abstract meandering to provide hours of "guess what song it is?" fun for the whole family.

I don't know what is better here: the ways the songs are done, or the song selection itself. Obviously some heavy thought went into this. This is a great record that will amaze and dazzle you and your friends. And there are plans for more. At their web site Invisible is taking song suggestions for future releases.

-Jeff Ashley
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Pan Sonic

Both Mika Vainio and Ilpo Väisänen have been exploring more minimalist constructions over the last year outside the frame of Pan Sonic and what they have found at these extremes infuses Aaltopiiri with the vast open spaces of the world above the Arctic Circle. They've explored landscapes at a microscopic level and their music is the enlarged representation of the minute rhythms and melodies which they've uncovered. You breathe these songs in and they start to work on you at a sub-atomic level, their ping and ring of their tones resonating in your genes. Somehow their minimal glitch always leaves me feeling warm and secure even though the tonal shades are crystal and clinical precise. It is mechanized click-dub ambience--a genre-busting sound that we will come to know as the rhythm of Pan Sonic.

-Mark Teppo
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"Eyebrow" opens Brownout and, with its slow, shuffling beat, takes us down below the thermocline, towards the blackness of the trenches. It's a slow passage down through the cold and colder layers, the beat of your heart becoming heavier and quicker as you drop deeper. And when you reach "Jpace," you have reached the bottom and your instruments begin to record the bubbling pop of the ocean floor as it breathes and the whispering passage of night fish with luminescence beneath their scales--lights and colors that burn on a wavelength that your instruments register and translate to you as drifting melodies and subtle drones. You turn away from the instruments for "Suite d256" and listen to the sound of your own vessel, the pings of metal creaking, the resonate tone that rings forever after someone accidentally bangs something--a watch or a wrench--against the wall of the ship. And, as you listen to the vessel, you begin to hear the rhythm of the engines which keep you alive down here; you begin to hear the skittering, bouncing rhythm of the pistons and pipes as they cycle and breathe. You are witness to a migration of sponges towards a hot vent in the ocean floor during "Biorepo," and, as "Hiccup" dissolves into "Odd Job," your vessel begins its return to the surface, its outer hull pinging and cracking with rapid pops as it expands. Your vessel breaks the surface during "Non-specific Acoustic Stimulation," water streaming off its metal shape and--slowly, gradually--the ocean floor recovers from the rushing displacement of your visit. Your sonar records for "Melfad" the sound of the ocean floor returning to its natural rhythm.

Coupled with the cranial explosion of Otto Von Schirach's 8000 B.C. album, Schematic has set two very high standards for IDM in 2001. While Phoenecia's Brownout isn't as much an exercise in mental extrapolation, it is most definitely an adventure in imaginative expansion, a record that stretches time and space with its immersion in dub echoes and water-filled beats. A most highly recommended disc.

-Mark Teppo
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Links:
Run-D.M.C.

That aside, with their latest release, Crown Royal, Run-D.M.C. is back on the spot as if they just went around the corner for a second. Run (Joseph Simmons), D.M.C. (Darryl McDaniels), and Jam Master Jay (Jason Mizell) have 20-plus years in the game and their new material continues to hit heads like a young and hungry Mike Tyson. Run spits rhymes with the best in the business and not only manages to sound like he's been drinking from the fountain of lyrical youth, he does so with an intensity most new cats still lack. You'd think this elder statesman of rap still had something to prove the way he flows like a raging river on track after track. He's got pure adrenaline-like attitude dripping from every verse like perspiration during a workout in 100-degree weather. It's as if Run's mentality on this album is: "You can have my King of Rock crown when you pry this microphone out of my cold dead hand!" And although D.M.C., the fierce low end half of this MC duo, is absent from the scene for most of the album, the few tracks he's on (like "Crown Royal") show he too can still throw it down when his heart's in it. Reminding the listener there has never been a more dynamic duo in rap, the chemistry between Run and D.M.C. is the best in the business, past or present.

Hearing these guys again brought back so many memories for me of rap music over the years. I've seen it grow from an inner city house/block party form of musical entertainment, to a small indie industry struggling for respect and market share, to the most dominant and influential music genre on the planet. I can tell you without hesitation that no rap group or person has done more for the genre than Run-D.M.C. Their list of industry firsts is more prestigious and noteworthy than any other artist. A huge chunk of rap music history has their name attached to it. LL Cool J may be the "G.O.A.T." (that's "Greatest of All Time" to the hip-impaired), but only as a solo performer. The Kings of this rap game overall, duo or otherwise, are Run-D.M.C. You new cats don't have to like them, but you better learn to respect them--they made the game. You don't believe me, check out this little gem of a quote from "Queens Day" from the Crown Royal LP by Reverend: "...And if somebody wanna test mine / yo' watch this / Peter Piper picked peppers... / You see I knew you knew the next line / and I'll bet you said it / it's been a minute / I'm still king of the world so don't forget it."

I haven't forgotten, have you?

-Cecil Beatty-Yasutake
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Stephen Malkmus

The not-so buried treasure, "The Hook," lays five songs deep in Malkmus' debut album. A tale of a young man captured, tortured, accepted, and taught the ways of piracy. He puts the often mythical tales of one-eyes with patches and wooden legs to rest with a simple line. "We're just killers with the cold eyes of a sailor." A lazy rocker, a head nodder, a pretty damn good song.

He does pirates good. Prepare for the pillage.

Pavement has had its history with its successful side-projects: Free Kitten, Marble Valley, Silver Jews, etc. I'd read that the other folks in the band hadn't known the band had broken up until they'd heard Malkmus mention it in an interview. Now, this is something I heard, not something I know. Regardless, that kinda sucks, but..."Argggh! Such is the life of a pirate." Stephen Malkmus jumped ship from California a while back for the Northern environs of Portland, OR. He started up a little thing and put out a single under the name The Jicks. The Jicks (Joanna Bolme and John Moen) have his back, cutlasses in one hand, a Keybass, Claves, and whatever else in the other.

There's another song called "Church on White." He goes on about Yul Brenner playing the King of Siam and being the creepy robot cowboy in West World. Now, I have a friend. He's the grand, grand, grand, grandson of the King of Siam (I don't actually know how many generations removed he is, but he is). This fact has nothing to do with the song, but the second and following verses of "Church on White" seem to not relate to the first either. That's the makings of a great Stephen Malkmus song, though. Often cryptic lyrics can be alienating (so can pirates) and Malkmus has a talent in making the seemingly absurd into great songs. Pick it up buddy.

-Tiber Scheer
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-Mark Teppo
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Uptown Sinclair

Soon enough I was anxiously awaiting Uptown Sinclair's irregular comical communiqués, and not long after that I was pleading with Hill to send me some of his band's music. Happy to report that, as suspected, Uptown Sinclair's music is as every bit as rousing as their manifestos. Hill (who spent time in Cobra Verde) is joined on guitar by his former Sons of Elvis bandmate Tim Parnin, and by Rob Pfeiffer and Bill Watterson (drums and bass, respectively). A collection of well-crafted numbers anchored in catchy pop grooves, the eight songs on 8 Songs have that same shoot-from-the-hip panache; a flow and style whose focus is more on the cadence and the rhythm than on what is being said. That's how the best pop always gets under our skin, and that's what makes 8 Songs a pop perfection. I challenge anyone to listen through this album and not sing along to the chorus of "Girlfriend" or "Superman." As with the band's e-mails, I guarantee you'll be hanging on every turn of guitar and every hum of lyric.

-Craig Young
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It could be the TV commercial featuring George Clooney lip-synching "Man of Constant Sorrow" (a song that shows up four times here, by four different artists. The group actually performing the song as Clooney and Co.--here called The Soggy Bottom Boys--is a fictional group consisting of bluegrass fixtures like lead singer Dan Tyminski, dobro player Jerry Douglas, and fiddler Stuart Duncan). Nevertheless, this movie didn't do well at the box-office--and there certainly aren't any songs with single potential--but the album is doing well. And there's some damn fine music on it. And I'm happy. Honestly. I'm glad that folks are listening to the Stanley Brothers and Norman Blake.

These songs were assembled for a movie, however. In fact, the Coen Brothers reportedly got the songs together (with T-Bone Burnett) before they started filming and used the music to guide their vision. I have a few problems with that. One, the film is a based upon Homer's The Odyssey. Seems strange to pit music that sprang from the rural poor against one of the foundations of the elitist Western Canon. Two, there is a pivotal scene in the movie that uses Ralph Stanley's gut-shaking a cappella performance of "O Death" to set the tone for a struggle at a Ku Klux Klan Rally; in fact, it puts Stanley's voice in a Klansmen's mouth. This is a little smug stroke by the Coen's that could set Bluegrass and traditional country music back even farther. (I mean, even mainstream country music doesn't seem to hold a commercial spot for real country anymore.) How many times have you asked a person about his or her musical tastes and heard the reply, "Well I like all kinds of music...except country, of course." So to further stigmatize things by associating the music with a long-standing racist organization is patently uncool. (I'll bet the oh-so-hip directors would never even consider using Camper Van Beethoven's version of "O Death.") In fact, if you head back to the early part of the twentieth century, it becomes harder and harder to discern what we consider "black" forms--i.e. gospel and blues--from the roots of country music (but that's a topic for an essay and I'll spare you that.)

I leave you with some advice. If you like what you hear on O Brother, Where Art Thou?, I suggest you pick up some Stanley Brothers CDs--any compilation will do. If Ralph Stanley's a cappella work sends the hairs up on your neck, pick up his Almost Home, which features some amazing six-part a cappella work. If you like what you hear from young alterna-country types like Alison Krauss and Gillian Welch on O, Brother Where Art Thou?, check out Neko Case's fierce high Appalachian drama on Furnace Room Lullaby or Laura Cantrell's neo-traditionalist country leanings on Not the Tremblin' Kind. [Click here for Erik's review of Not the Tremblin' Kind. --Ed.] And pick up some Norman Blake, he's on this soundtrack and he's damn good. If you really want to check out some roots of Americana, check out the various artists compilation American Primitive Vol. 1: Raw Pre-War Gospel 1926-1936 from Revenant Records, a label founded by the late great John Fahey. Don't let Hollywood provide your musical education for you.

-Erik Hage
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Links:
Warhorse

-Steve Weatherholt
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W.A.S.P.

-Sabrina Haines
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