Monster Magnet's guitarist Ed Mundell has a hankering to play even more psychedelic material than he can with the Monster Magnet. So to fully satisfy his craving he not only goes big-time psychedelic but takes you down an almost instrumental route. This rocks although it might be better with more vocals. I think it is very difficult to make instrumental songs as interesting as those with vocals. There is the rare vocal that pops up for a few seconds to offer a break from the instrumentals ("Hey Alright," "Kiss the Sun," "Shit Kicker" and "Hope You Die").

The Atomic Bitchwax utilize an everything-and-the-kitchen-sink musicality which runs the gamut from Santana-styled rock ("Crazee Fandango") to blues ("Ain't Nobody Gonna Hang Me at My House") to psychedelia ("Hope You Die" and "Getting Old") to gritty '70s hard rock ("Stork Theme," "Birth to the Earth," "Hey Alright," "Hope You Die" and the blistering "Shit Kicker") which is where The Atomic Bitchwax hang loose and jam. "Last of the V8 Interceptors" starts out with a rip-off of Blue Öyster Cult that's brilliant and proceeds at a doom pace annihilating all in their way. Keith Ackerman is so precise on the drums that he scares drum machines out of their chips. Chris Kosnick performs admirably on his bass duties and contributes the occasional gritty, but good, vocal. Mundell really stretches his boundaries beyond his Magnet-ic worlds, but a lot of the Monster is still hanging. He is a tremendously gifted guitarist and this really allows him to showcase his chops. If you love guitars and instrumentals, this will be a welcome addition to your collection. Best of all, this is really good cruising music after a tense day at the office.

-Sabrina Wade-Haines
[ top of page ]

-Steve Weatherholt
[ top of page ]

Links:
EPMD

Guest artists on the album include Busta Rhymes on "Rap Is Outta Control," a remake of EPMD''s own 1991 classic. MOP guest stars on a remake of the Juice Crew classic "Symphony" which sparkles thanks to a taunting classic violin loop. "U Got Shot" is definitely going to make heads nod thanks to a clever sampling of Old Dirty Bastard's "Brooklyn Zoo" and guest MC appearances by 8 off Agallah and 215.

Eric and Parrish's molasses-like flow and one-two counter punch style is the only thing that hasn't changed on this new album. When mega-legends Run DMC one day retire, I believe these two young men will inherit rap music's title of "Best Rap Duo." Until then, they continue to hold down the #2 spot with a consistent and endless supply of sly wit and sharp-tongued braggadocio.

As if all this wasn't enough to get you to buy their album, they've included a second disc in their limited edition version of Out of Business that contains their greatest hits. Songs like "You Gots To Chill" and "So Whatcha Sayin'" are included. If you're a fan of DMX, Jay-Z, or Jermaine Dupri, you'll recognize where these artists got some of their musical inspiration from. Some of EPMD's brilliant early sample work has been recycled over the last couple of years for big bucks by some of today's more popular acts. Wanna have some fun with the fellas? Play name that sample and see how many of today's hit songs you can find with samples borrowed from EPMD. I'm out and you, dear reader, have some shopping to do.

-Cecil Beatty-Yasutake
[ top of page ]

Links:
Hicky

Well HOT damn! Along comes a band out of the great Pacific Northwest that gives a shit-kickin' to country as a whole, and fits into none of those styles. Just south of alternative is a little town called fucked up. That is where Hicky lives. Give a welcome handshake to Hicky and their debut release, The Proof is in the Booze.

If through some bizarre act of nature Johnny Cash and Tom Waits had a child that inherited each parent's nasty habits and grew up listening to punk, you would have Hicky. The whole records reeks of bad habits and excessive consumption. The Proof is in the booze is a sawed-off-double-barrel musical discharge that is both humorous and powerful, even endearing at points with songs like "Somebody Loves You" and "Too Beautiful."

Hicky are all over the map musically, at the root is blues/country/punk. But they kick it into weird variations by spinning onto things you wouldn't expect. For instance track five, "Good & Lit," serves up a damn fine JSBX romp style ho-down. And "Thursdays" is a dark and creepy number that would be at home in any David Lynch film.

It's not all fun and games though. The foursome is a talented bunch and holds it's own musicianship wise with anybody. And as tongue in cheek as it all seems on the surface, when you sit with the record and pick out its subtle nuances you get the sense that these guys are perfectionists in a geeky sort of way. The music has some real depth. Hey guys...when are you playing live?

As an aside to this review, I must mention that CD carries a bonus in the way of a video you can play on your computer. And all I will tell you about it is that it was found in the back of a rental car and it is absolutely fucking hysterical.

-Jeff Ashley
[ top of page ]

Links:
Holger Czukay

His first studio album since 1993's Moving Pictures finds Czukay in a much lighter mood. Where Moving Pictures detailed nocturnal environments, Good Morning Story is very much a diurnal album, opening with the Pooka-gone-permanent whimsy of "Invisible Man," rollicking through the evocative landscape of "Good Morning Story" to the drifting open water ambience of "Mirage" which closes out the disc. It is a stellar return from a man gone too long from our auditory environments.

Czukay, one of the godfathers of the tape splicing style of sampling as pioneered in his days as the sonic mastermind of Can, still builds tracks with a staggeringly inventive structure. His physical methods remain, giving great organic depth to the movement of the loops and spliced sounds, a near immediacy which is sometimes lost with other "created" pieces of work. There is a creative frenzy in his pieces which translates through the lighthearted rhythm and the infectious inflections of his voice whether it is talking about a walk to the store or posing the question of "whither hath gone my Invisible Friend?" The lengthy "Mirage" is an ambient dream skillfully woven around you like a sheath of spider silk with its haunted violins and drifting radio voices and expansive drones.

Operating for many years in a vacuum in his Cologne studio, Czukay has clearly taken some time recently to listen to what these "kids" are up to and you can find elements of a great deal of modern electronically crafted music bubbling out of his new songs. And much like his stolen splices of tape, these influences are but tiny chips and bursts made all new by his artful arrangements. Czukay creates entire landscapes--musical cultures which never existed--as sonic backdrops. In this late technological age, he isn't the forerunner of the next generation of sound sculptors; yet, his techniques have never been matched and his creations never quite equaled.

-Mark Teppo
[ top of page ]

Links:
Macy Gray

So back to this Macy Gray recording, On How Life Is, here's a female singer who in the company of Lauryn Hill speaks of respect and reciprocity, and of Destiny's Child who sing about trifling dudes in "Bills Bills Bills," we have cute Macy with a song about sitting around waiting around for that guy to call her because she had such a great time with this guy in the aptly titled "Why Didn't You Call Me?" I could rant about how lame the song is thematically but it would be hypocritical of me to say that I've never been there (remember the joke in the cowboy hat). Plus, the track is so sing-songy, you can't help but pipe along to Macy's Billie Holiday meets Tina Turner-like vocals and the song may be tongue-in-cheek. Then there's the trite sex songs "Caligula" and "Sex-o-matic Venus Freak" and though I could pretend to make a commentary but if the Artist (who I adore) can consistently write songs like "P-Power" and I consider that okay; then I would be deemed biased. So, I suppose that Macy, after all, doesn't need to be a serious songstress. Macy does have star magnetism and a presence and her songs are catchy, pop soul songs. She does create a microcosm of her own (she studied screenwriting at USC). Listen to "I've Committed Murder" which portrays a world where she kills her man's berating boss; then there's the romantic idealism of making the attempt to walk away from what you believe is a fated lover in "I Try" and then there's "Do Something" and anyone who samples "Funky For You" effectively and gives Funkadelic its rightful props, is all good with me.

So, I guess I worked out my Macy Gray dilemma, her music is light in spririt; maybe not the next Lauryn, but you don't need to be a visionary poet to be a pop star anyway. So Macy, go on with your bad self.

-Hope Lopez
[ top of page ]

Links:
Mark Lanegan

-Craig Young
[ top of page ]

Tracks that stood out for me on Mary included "Sexy," a light bouncy mid-tempo number for heads still clinging to her hip-hop soul days. Also "Time," written entirely by MJB herself, musically incorporating portions of Stevie Wonder's "Pastime Paradise." Then there is "Not Lookin'," an intriguing duet between MJB and K-Ci Hailey, who rumor has it wasn't Mary's first choice, but turned out to be the only one who could stand up to her vocally. On "Don't Waste Your Time" MJB goes all out, head to head, with the first woman inducted into the Rock & Roll hall of fame, a woman who's won the most Grammys ever, and has more million-dollar-selling singles than any other woman past or present. I'm talking of course of Ms. Aretha ("Respect") Franklin. There's taking a risk, and then there's just plain suicide. Mary ignores the first, and skillfully side steps the latter rising to the occasion, creating a picture perfect moment of the past, present, and future working together. Soul music could be making a comeback and the timing couldn't be better, with hip-hop soul in the capable hands of Faith Evans and Lauryn Hill (among others) it's nice to see someone blazing a new trail. It's not always about what you want, sometimes it's about what you need, and what you need is Mary.

-Cecil Beatty-Yasutake
[ top of page ]

Links:
Me'Shell Ndegeocello

Ndegeocello's ability to capture the range of sadness is evident throughout this recording. "Fool of Me" is a reverse torch song. Delicate piano, light rhythm, Ndegeocello's rich vocals soft but with a message of self-contempt: "You made a fool of me, tell me why...you say you don't care?" The melancholic cynicism is heard in "Faithful" with its lyrics: "My daddy made no excuse/I believe my lies are truth/Why won't you eat what you are fed...no one is faithful, I am weak..." "Sincerity" and "Wasted Time" express equivocal relationships. "Beautiful," the lovely but moody cover of Hendrix's "May This Be Love," and "Grace" discuss the more fulfilling side of being in love. "Loyalty" has an old Stax sound with smooth guitar and Ndegeocello's punctuated singing: "Come be with me/soothe my broken heart/Show me loyalty." Bitter has a sincerity that keeps from being a sad and cynical record. It has the capacity to make you reflect as if you just heard a poet hit you with themes of universal relevance.

-Hope Lopez
[ top of page ]

I had this horrible nightmare and when I awoke this cd was in the deck. This is so retro, so '80s that you will think that you are a bit player in "Night at the Roxbury." At least they have some right to sound that way as they have never changed their sound and they were actively involved with '80s hair metal. These guys are the real deal and sound exactly the same as ever. I wish they had updated the sound. Maybe make the vocals a little deeper and beefier as opposed to the screams of high-pitched metal that is assaulting my ears.

If you enjoyed Metal Church, Accept or Iron Maiden in the '80s, this will fulfill your metal needs. Filled to the brim with '80s metal-rockers and the heart-felt ballads for the babes. Oh yeah, you know they were digging deep to cover Aerosmith's "Toys in the Attic." Usually bands like to cover obscure gems, but not Metal Church. I can say they are true to their roots, at least they aren't popping up hawking their wares for a cheap and tacky buck. They are doing what they love, go and buy it if you love this style.

-Sabrina Wade-Haines
[ top of page ]

-Sabrina Wade-Haines
[ top of page ]

Links:
Muslimgauze

Shorter tracks make for more intense listening as you don't have the luxury of falling into the repetitive trance which comes from some of the longer pieces on other releases. There is a sharper focus here that results in tracks like "Valencia in Flames" which leaps and burns out of your speakers in quick, flaming fury and is quickly gone, leaving a smoldering track across your ears, the dub drop-outs still rattling around your head. Bryn has always made distortion of the master material, dub echoes, and clicking dropouts part of the Muslimgauze oeuvre, consistently pushing the rhythm of the track through these veils of sonic disturbance. "Al Souk Dub" finds us in the marketplace listening to the spray of voices and the rattle of machinery in the distance, all the while captivated by the hand drums in the foreground as their sound is splintered and fractured in such a non-organic manner that the dichotomy of human hands creating and mad machinery fragmenting the replay of the source is permanently welded together. "Catacomb Dub" resounds with the dust of forgotten hallways, sand stirred up by a passing tremor that takes a long time to return to its quiescent state. "Dust of Saqqara" has a hint of stringed instrumentation in the distance, but you can't reach it because there is a plague of black buzzing scarabs crawling all over you, their thick distorted buzz filling your mouth and ears.

There is something wrong with the wind that comes out of the Muslimgauze desert--there always has been. What you hear is never clean, the sounds carried over the high walls and down the dusty streets to you is never free of scarring and mutilation. And Bryn sought this state; he sought to make music which would have an impact on you, much as his feelings towards the situations in the Middle East have always driven his music. It isn't a recreation of ethnic material, but rather one man's continual fight to alarm us and shake us from our complacency through the wild disturbances and explosive energies which bubble and fume from his material. Muslimgauze isn't easy listening, just essential.

-Mark Teppo
[ top of page ]

Links:
Negura Bunget

-Sabrina Wade-Haines
[ top of page ]

Links:
Public Enemy

"Hey Cecil. Just wanted to note to you how interesting I found the name of track one on PE's new album. To name a song 'Dark Side of The Wall: 2000' attaches an immense amount of 'baggage' to that song for anyone familiar with Pink Floyd. The two albums referenced (Dark Side Of The Moon and The Wall) stand arguably as Floyd's two finest conceptual works. DSOTM is basically a meditation on the vacant items that seem to consume life (i.e. time, money, pride, ambition, etc.) and how these agendas may eventually lead us into madness. The Wall is a little more personal, alluding to events that harrowed the soul of writer Roger Waters that caused him to build a 'wall.' However, the album's character found himself sealed from the closure and evolution that could make him whole.

"My initial reaction to the track name was, admittedly, sarcastic. Pink Floyd references are all but cliché here in the late 1990s. But if Chuck D is serious about these references, it adds an interesting layer of silt to what I am sure is the new album's river bed. As of this e-mail I was unable to procure for myself the lyrics to the song. But I will say that combining the ideas of those two albums is of interest. The name 'Darkside Of The Wall: 2000' suggests a modern day state of perpetual un-wholeness; a mad pursuit of cash and gain, wasting our energies to the vehicle of what we think life is all about (see The Matrix, or THX-1138), all while fostering the inner-rot we gather along the way by putting forth fronts that keep us from healing. Seems pretty accurate.

"To be honest, assuming that Public Enemy really know their Floyd is quite alien...but that's just my white-boy talking. Perhaps in a song title by itself, Chuck D has re-exposed one of the more subtle public enemies once again."

If you're curious to know if the album lives up to it's opening track title, and all it entails, I suggest you give it a listen. I don't know much about Pink Floyd but I do believe that this is PE's finest work since It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back, and Apocalypse 91...The Enemy Strikes Black. There's A Poison Goin On has restored my faith in the belief that there is music for those who listen, music that inspires and makes you think.

-Cecil Beatty-Yasutake
[ top of page ]

-Steve Weatherholt
[ top of page ]

Links:
Sinforosa

Unfortunately, the music itself doesn't come through on that promise. The sound quality is excellent, as expected, but the songs never catch at the corners of my ears and pull me in; hell, I have a hard time even telling the tracks apart. The instruments are well-played but predictable, and I can only hear so much open guitar strumming in one sitting. Vocalist Traci Nemeth has an excellent tone, but an aversion to enunciation which makes it difficult to decipher the lyrics (only partially included in the liner notes). There are some highlights, though, when her voice is doubled, as in "Vicaria" and "Lunar Bells." Acoustic pop tinged with folk needs some blemish and character to make it interesting; maybe it's just the constraints of recording that give Deadly Faerie Tales all the dark character of a brand new white pine shelf. Maybe not.

-Paul Goracke
[ top of page ]

Links:
Six Feet Under

-Steve Weatherholt
[ top of page ]

For forty-seven minutes the listener is treated to an amazing display of mixin', scratchin' and blendin' that will make you laugh out loud one moment (thanks to some clever vocal snippets), and stare in awe at your speakers the next. Using mere turntables, he takes original compositions and re-shapes them into something altogether greater, transforming your living room into an after hours lounge of unique jazz and R&B grooves.

This release is also special because Vitamin chooses to make all the music you hear on Table Manners 2 the old-fashioned way, sampling the various original artists' works instead of using the various commercialized compilations of grooves, and break beats found at your local record store. This is in contrast to many of his peers who are busy taking turntablism to the extreme, blurring the line between art and noise. Vitamin D makes music first, artfully accentuating it with his turntable magic like a master composer. The only flaws on the disc are the various freestyle raps laid down throughout, though there are one or two exceptions. The best example would be the first freestyle on the album by Samson S whose energy level and ability set things off nicely for what follows. If you're in the hunt for some next level Sh*t and want to hear a cat make dope music with his hands, pick up Table Manners 2--you won't be disappointed.

-Cecil Beatty-Yasutake
[ top of page ]

-Steve Weatherholt
[ top of page ]