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alice russell, quakers, magTRANSCRIPT
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EDITOR-IN-CHIEF M. Sean Ryan [email protected]
CREATIVE DIRECTOR Monica So [email protected]
CONTRIBUTERSWRITERS:Mike Levine @goldnuggets
Carly Lewis@carlylewis
PHOTOGRAPHY:Joshua Sarnerwww.jsarnerphoto.com
Tim Bugbeewww.tinnitus-photography.com
Ethan Weinstein
Christian D. Capestanywww.graphicsindust.com
Lyndon So
DESIGN:Francisco J. Hernandezwww.siftkid.com
ILLUSTRATION: Marie McLaughlin
www.mariemclaughlin.carbonmade.com
CONTENTSLETTER FROM THE EDITOR
PLUS 1 Other Lives, Zee Avi, Bebel Gilberto, Robert Glasper Experiment, Royal Baths, Fanfarlo, Joe Henry, Atlas Sound
Q&AMaG: The New Competitive Edge
FEATUREOn the Corner With Alice Russell
NEW ALBUM REVIEWSQuakers, The Men, Vijay Iyer, Laura Gibson
LOONEY BINVinyl from the last three years and 1959
THE HASHNew tracks for the spring, older songs from winter and beyond
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LETTER FROM THE EDITOR
This is the new HASH, same as the old HASH.
Okay, not exactly. Issue 4, aka # 4, is our first issue of 2012. And on some level it’s also a pencil mark on the wall indicating how tall HASH has grown, now that it’s officially a year old.
We have an especially eclectic helping of concert coverage this time
around—but I don’t want to give everything away. I will however say that
the two key fixtures of this Winter-Spring Issue hail from opposite sides
of the Atlantic. On one side is Alice Russell, among the more muscular soul
singers you’re likely to ever hear. She’s about to release an album-length
collaboration with Quantic, her British compatriot who relocated to Cali,
Colombia—where they recorded the LP. It’s titled Look Around The Corner,
and it seems likely to remain one of our favorites through the end of 2012.
Closer to home is MaG, an indie emcee from the Bronx. I caught up with
him at length earlier this year to discuss his past and how it’s always
intersected with that of rap. MaG is putting final touches on his
second self-released LP, Freedom, which he recorded in part at the new
Rubber Tracks studio in Brooklyn. You can follow his moves or stay tuned
to either his Bandcamp or our blog for updates; Freedom is expected in
early May.
Naturally, there are people to thank who have helped us in bringing
you their stories. Sincerest thanks are owed to Marie McLaughlin and
Francisco Hernandez for their brilliant teamwork: Together, you reflected
vivid sounds and feeling into an inspiring configuration. I want to thank
the HASH heavyweight, contributor and supporter, Josh Sarner for all
of the hours and enthusiasm poured into the many photos filling the
following pages. To that end I also thank Ethan Weinstein and MaG
himself, for being so generous to the cause.
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Thanks also to Christian Capestany—glad you enjoyed switching creative
hats—and new contributor Tim Bugbee: I don’t know what we did to
deserve your flawless photography. Last but definitely not least, I’m
grateful for the ‘graphs Carly Lewis and Mike Levine sent my way. You’ll
find their thoughts on provocative new albums by The Men and Vijay Iyer,
respectively, at the back of this issue.
But there wouldn’t even be an issue, let alone one this dazzingly
tactile, if not for the countless hours and support donated by my partner
in crime: HASH’s creative director Monica So. As always, we’ve provided a
smattering of clickable links within our articles to encourage support of
the musicians on the pages and playlist. If you like their music, buy it!
And if you find your next favorite discovery here, won’t you tell us?
Turn the headphones and brightness up—
M. SEAN RYANEditor & Writer in Chief
Subscribe | Follow
KID KOALA’S RECORD ROOM
IN MONTREAL, CANADA
MAG IN BROOKLYN
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A SOUND AND GRANDEUR, MILES AWAY FROM ITS INDIE ROOTS
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JONATHON MOONEY BOWERY BALLROOM, NYC
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JESSE TABISH
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THE OKLAHOMA QUINTET OTHER LIVES SUMMONS A SYMPHONY FOR ITS RICHLY ARRANGED AND OFTEN MOMENTOUS MUSIC. Photo: Josh Sarner
Midway through its set at Bowery Ballroom on a
mid-February night the band Other Lives struck
the opening bars of “For 12,” a standout from its
second album, Tamer Animals (TBD Records). They
began in a soft charge: chords stretched for all
their elastic worth, underneath a gentle, galloping
pulse. “I was in the dark age, searching for the
ones in my mind,” sang bandleader Jesse Tabish,
his voice cutting a straight line through it all. “I’m
so far away.”
Like most of the other songs from the record,
which the Stillwater, Oklahoma band self-produced
and released last year, it sounded fit for a spaghetti
western—musically and thematically reaching for
a bygone era. Yet with Tamer Animals the ultimate
goal is always a movement beyond its individual
pieces or signifiers. More ambitious than Other
Lives’ self-titled debut, it aims for cinematic gran-
diosity and frequently achieves it, by measures
both subtle and overblown.
The latter was more the case during this
performance, for which the band, expanded to a
six-piece, brought orchestra-like artillery to the
performance. No member was limited to a single
instrument; a flock of violins and percussion
abounded. There was a timpani drum, castanets,
tambourines, a harmonica, trumpet, clarinet,
xylophone—even the type of service bell you’d
expect at a drycleaner, maybe a hotel.
By and large this was a re-creation of the richly
arranged Tamer Animals. And while on record it
allows an almost symphonic sensibility for contrast,
at Bowery it often eschewed subtlety in favor of
sheer force. Noise became purpose whenever the
band built to a climax: in the welling volume of
“Tamer Animals,” multi-instrumentalist Jonathon
Mooney rifled erratic runs through a trumpet while
Tabish slapped the bottom-range of his keyboard
at whim; he even rang that service bell as violins
crested decisively during “Weather”—though
whatever chime it made was lost within the din.
But there was striking nuance, too. Closing
with “Dust Bowl III,” a majestic track at the heart
of Tamer Animals, bass and organ player Josh
Onstott bowed the underside of his xylophone
at the front of the stage. He extracted a faint
metallic shimmer that sighed gently over Tabish’s
first verse, ostensibly about the shifting desert
sky and breeze. Other sounds gradually floated
to the surface, though soon enough the gather-
ing percussion became a locomotive-like engine,
firing belligerently below the fervor and bolstered
further by a guest trombone player and extra
percussionist who emerged for the close.
Wherever dynamics buried him, Tabish’s sing-
ing was apparent for what it was: a textual layer, as
much as any of the other instruments. Throughout
Other Lives’ appearance at the Bowery Ballroom
this seemed entirely the point, since, as a lyri-
cist, Tabish opts for the runic, often relaying them
in a mumble and middling melodies that hover
safely within the mix. “We are on our way home,”
he murmured during “Dust Bowl,” the swirling
symphony coalescing to his vocals, or perhaps the
other way around. #
www.otherlives.com
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ZEE AVI
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ACOUSTIC POP THAT SOOTHES BYTIPPING ITS CARDSIN BROOKLYN, ZEE AVI SURROUNDS TROUBLED SONGS WITH SOFT, SUPPLE TONES.
Late in her Thursday night set last month Zee Avi
was sashaying demurely within the semicircle
created by her band. She moved in small circles,
taking care not to wander far from a spare kick
drum nearby. She spiked it to accent some of her
words, using a mallet and a force at odds with her
tiny frame and hospitable stagecraft. She sang
through a domestic dispute, each wallop carrying
more and more meaning.
At least until Avi cooed, “You make me wanna
throw this shoe right through that concrete wall.”
Then again, any more of a violent explanation
for those connotative thwacks might have been a
stretch for the 25-year-old singer-songwriter from
Malaysia whose tuneful demos and sunny bear-
ing attracted a YouTube audience sizable enough
to spawn a recording contract several years ago.
Undermining conflict with a wink or a nod is her
strong suit, and though she didn’t always bludgeon
that point home, Avi proved it repeatedly during
her appearance at Brooklyn’s Knitting Factory.
Mostly she relied on the songs from her new
album, ghostbird (Brushfire). Like Avi’s eponymous
debut from 2009, it’s marked by coyly sketched
relationships that tiptoe around platitudes and
melancholic indulgence. In “Anchor” she consid-
ers that self-absorption and withdrawal as its own
undoing: “Even my lover’s no longer enamored by
me / Cause I’m an anchor / So far down the line,”
she sings. “Deep in the ocean that’s in my mind.”
But with her performance in Brooklyn Avi kept
things light, or at least reassuring. She scatted
playfully after cornering a guilty mate in “Bitter
Heart,” the most emblematic of her early songs.
She chimed how her “love will pay the rent,” while
strum-slapping the kind of acoustic pattern popu-
larized by John Mayer’s ballads. At one point she
introduced a song as about a couple going through
existential crises, “But don’t worry,” she promised,
“it’s not too heavy.”
Later, a small medley veered gamely into
“Pumped Up Kicks,” last year’s multivalent pop
anthem by Foster The People: cheerful on the
surface, grisly when you pull the lyrics from
beneath the whistled refrains. That combination
planted it firmly within Avi’s family of songs, espe-
cially considering its Tin Pan Alley-like structure
and airtight melody.
Her penchant for form is a redemptive element
of ghostbird. Musically, it’s a more diverse affair
than Zee Avi, her debut on Jack Johnson’s Brush-
fire Records label. While that album was of a piece
with Johnson’s tepid seaside-folk, ghostbird is an
expansive realization of island pop as more of a
folk amalgam. Guided by Mario Caldato, a Brazil-
ian producer who’s shaped many of bossa nova’s
plush-voiced stars, its arrangements usually bend
toward Avi’s Bornean roots, neatly blending the
local into its sweep with songs like “Bag of Gold”
or “Siboh Kitak Nangis,” sung in Malay.
For all its internal workings, much of the music’s
charm can be pinpointed to Avi’s intuitive singing.
She pivots critical phrases, scooping syllables or
injecting them with the warble you’d expect of a
jazz singer. In places on ghostbird she’s clear-voiced
but not quite piercing, recalling Joni Mitchell but
with more cheek, less ache. Songs like “Bag of Gold”
and “Milestone Moon” would have fit nicely on any
of Mitchell’s albums from the early ‘70s.
The latter may have been the song Avi and
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her band treated best at Knitting Factory. They
preceded “Milestone Moon” with an extended jam
led by guitarist David Hurwitz, who played the
sape, a cumbersome four-string lute from Borneo.
Hurwitz lofted lyrical runs and tight filigree over
slow-moving drones. It sounded like a blues, maybe
a Celtic hymn, or more likely a pentatonic theme
plucked from East Asia—appropriately without a
home.
After some time Avi sauntered to the micro-
phone. “My mind is a madhouse I only share
with you,” she sighed. It was the most distressed
sentiment she sang all night, but it sounded the
sweetest. #
www.zeeavi.com
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DAVID HURWITZ
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BEBEL GILBERTOHIGHLINE BALLROOM, NYC PHOTO: JOSHUA SARNER
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A MODERN JAZZCELEBRATION,ON ITS OWNTERMSTOASTING A NEW ALBUM, ROBERT GLASPER CONVENES FRIENDS FOR A NIGHT OF COMPE-TITION, RIBBING, AND TRIBUTE.Photo credits: Mike Schreiber
Sifting jazz through other channels is nothing new
for Robert Glasper. While he’s played behind his
share of R&B and rap luminaries, the pianist has
mainly seen his own rise in stock thanks to three
solo releases on Blue Note since 2005: each one
strong, and each marked increasingly by extra-jazz
ingredients—hip-hop chief among them—which
always rebounded via mix of dizzying skill and
smooth tact.
For the last two nights in February, Glasper
appeared at the Highline Ballroom along with his
current band and a selection of guests. They had
come, purportedly, to celebrate Black Radio (Blue
Note), released the day of the first show. In the
spirit of that album, a rotating cast of vocalists
came and went, and Glasper’s quartet, officially
the Robert Glasper Experiment, didn’t rely on these
voices so much as they melded them to its equation.
Permeable circles define Black Radio, which
cannily features soul singers and rappers like
Yasiin Bey, Erykah Badu, Bilal and Lupe Fiasco.
Like prior Glasper records, the album incorporates
a keen appreciation for the beats crafted by the
late producer J Dilla, as well as how they might
undergird new sounds or bend into something else
entirely. There’s homage to Kurt Cobain, David
Bowie, Sade—not under the presumption that
genre is a barrier worth attacking so much as a
malleable construct that depends on its handlers. A
key, and easily overlooked proposal arrives during
one of several in-studio conversations included on
the album when a voice chips isolationism within
jazz—“just trying to be Charlie Parker”—into a
squishy discussion about pinning blame for the
state of music.
Taken on jazz’s terms, Black Radio isn’t marked
by conventional virtuosity. It splits the difference
between a jazz trio’s flexibility and the simmering
precision within neo-soul. But in sound, and thus
in concept, it holds together remarkably well—
which may be more significant given the length of
the guest list than because of the sources it pulls
from. The Experiment’s intuition and sensitiv-
ity congeals a dozen rhymers, singers and those
in between, with what feels like its own kind of
technical prowess.
Which says as much about Glasper as it does
his surrounding unit of players. Bassist Derrick
Hodge is anticipating his own debut on Blue Note
as a leader, and as with reeds, keys, and vocoder
player Casey Benjamin—who’s toured with Patrick
Stump—Hodge has been tapped by rapper-producer
Q-Tip. That leaves drummer Chris Dave, who was
away for this show, touring Europe with D’Angelo
since January. While Dave was missed at Highline,
his usual fill-in Mark Colenburg served as a stun-
ning remedy.
Less crucial to this performance was Benjamin’s
vocoder—produced by a keyboard and small bank
of voice-manipulating dials to his side. Within
Black Radio the mechanized vocal is a binding
textural element, an effective whisper behind
the featured vocalists. It landed awkwardly and
a bit inflexible when paired with Lalah Hatha-
way, whose earthly sigh rarely rested in one place
during “Cherish the Day.”
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ROBERT GLASPER IN THE STUDIO
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Though fluid and at times fiercely vibrant, each
personality figured neatly within this evening of
music as well. “We’re gonna sprinkle people in,
”Glasper suggested early in the evening. “Like
little musical snacks.” His deadpan deepened the
silliness of that remark.
This would prove a night of many more, and
better wisecracks. Somewhere around Bilal approx-
imating Glasper to a “black Yanni,” the sense of
ceremony melted away, and this performance
shifted from commemoration into something else.
It seemed as much about the music as seizing a
rare gathering and enjoying it, between songs as
much as during.
The banter was its own form of entertainment,
but at times it mirrored the music. Like whenever
the acrobatic soul-singer Chrisette Michele alter-
nated impromptu bars with Glasper. Her improvising
was wildly fluid yet laser-sharp, and when her
scatted gasps scratched between registers it was
as if Michele were somehow tapping a second voice
humming along in a parallel dimension. Later, a
monumental instrumental tête-à-tête surfaced
in “All Matter,” from Glasper’s 2009 album Double
Booked, between the Swiss harmonica master
Grégoire Maret and Benjamin, playing sax. It called
to mind a classic hothouse duel, begun as an
exchange of echoes and minor twists, culminating
in intense outpour.
But this wasn’t purely a night of contentious
interplay. On its own, the Experiment exerted its
calculus to older, unsurprising influences early
on—like Roy Ayers, whose mid 1970s funk was
more hospitable to Benjamin’s vocoder glissando.
The Experiment began with the opening suite of
“A Love Supreme,” building studiously around
the inclinations of Colenburg’s volatile cymbal
patterns. Glasper meanwhile was anything but
verbose, always appearing deep in thought, staring
with fixed expression at someone else, honing in
on the impulses, processing.
Even as a leader, Glasper’s supportive sensi-
bilities remain intact. He’s collegial—even more
so when surrounded by like-minded hyphenates.
Which was the company he brought to Highline,
and the one he trusted with this loose program.
They closed in a J Dilla medley, exploring a palette
of grooves, expanding them to explosive peaks
with hard-bop finesse, receding to calmer valleys
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that conjoined the two. Assured and charming
as ever, Yasiin Bey led the charge, linking with
Bilal along the way for a poignant reprise of their
collaboration on the Dilla-furnished “Reminisce.”
At one point Bey reintroduced the theme that
began the evening. “A love supreme,” he intoned,
evoking a return to some origin and a never-ending
cycle in the same breath. #
www.robertglasper.com
THE ROBERT GLASPER EXPERIMENT. (L-R) DERRICK HODGE, CASEY BENJAMIN, GLASPER AND CHRIS DAVE
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ALL THE DIFFIDENCE, MINUS THE MENACEROYAL BATHS AIR MOODY NEW SONGS TO BROOKLYN CROWD, AND LACK-LUSTER EFFECT.Photos: Christian D. Capestany
For most of rock’s indie ilk a single gesture or
mood will suffice. Look to the bevy of bands foot-
ing the lo-fi bum-rush of the past two or three
years, or more popular expressions like Bon Iver’s
keyboard-washed tenderness, the ho-hummery
of Kurt Vile, even Arcade Fire’s soaring disaffec-
tion. Performing live presents these groups with
a universal challenge: control the milieu that’s
become the medium enough either to convey or
twist it anew.
So it goes with Royal Baths, a guitar duo
recently relocated to Brooklyn from San Fran-
cisco. The group specializes in funereally warped
psychedelia, a tenor cooked around the open-tuned
filigree of principal guitarist Jeremy Cox and the
murky intonations of co-guitarist and usual vocalist
Jigmae Baer. It drips atmosphere, and when Royal
Baths arrived at Knitting Factory earlier this month
they underlined its dependence upon authoritative
thrust.
Last month the duo released its second
album, Better Luck Next Life (Kanine). In content,
it’s a continuation of the carefully wrought distance
staked by the group’s 2010 debut, Litanies. Once
more, Baer’s incantations and gripes come across
in a low mumble—a touch more discernible this
time around. They detail pride in a subverted glory
best summed by “Black Sheep,” where Baer and Cox
chime, “I have learned to laugh at the black in my
soul,” in eerie harmony.
When it’s not solipsistic in scope, the album’s
subjects are drawn in equally ambivalent tones, as
in “Faster, Harder,” a slice of San Francisco rock
circa 1967 touting the diffident refrain: “I love
my damaged girl.” Then there’s the opening line,
“When we met on the street it was hate at first
sight,” a fitting salutation from an album that
revels in inverting stock phrases and the cliché—
and titled Better Luck Next Life.
But Royal Baths remain a band that says more
with its guitars than anything else. And this was
true also true of their set at Knitting Factory.
Cox’s jittering guitar vernacular recalled the Velvet
Underground’s transmuted surf-riffs, however a
tentative rhythm section failed to counter or spur
his lead. The clave-feel of “Burned” resurrects the
Bo Diddley-stomp which Quicksilver Messenger
Service—another San Francisco group—rechan-
neled throughout the late ‘60s; here, that groove
was rigid and almost unrecognizable. Cox’s skittish
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outpour bled outward instead of rebounding against
anything that stung of importance.
“Nightmare Voodoo” also from Better Luck Next
Life, was similarly undersold by a tepid tempo where
more of a thrust would have transcended. Its march-
ing chorus overthrows creeping verses with purpose
and the prickly harmonies Baer and Cox execute
so well, and felt like a missed opportunity on this
occasion. There was precision in those vocal harmo-
nies, but without momentum they didn’t’ carry the
intimidation or wry glare from the record. #
www.facebook.com/royalbaths
JEREMY COX
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JEREMY COX
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YOUNG MANFITZGERALD’S, HOUSTON
PHOTO: LYNDON SO
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FRAYING THE MUSIC TO BETTERFIT ITS CHARACTERSIN NEW YORK, PRODUCER AND SINGER-SONG-WRITER JOE HENRY CATERS HIS GUEST LIST TO NEW, JAZZ-INFLECTED FOLK SONGS.Photo: Lauren Dukoff
On the first of two nights that he appeared with
his band at City Winery, Joe Henry announced they
would be playing songs from his new album, and
those songs only. “We’re gonna do it like a play,” Mr.
Henry offered, and he meant it.
His quartet plunged into that album’s opener,
“Heaven’s Escape,” kindling a slow-burning tempo
that crackled and flickered around Henry’s ragged
tenor. He sang like a wretch indignant with his lot
in paradise: “Somewhere there’s a heaven for you
and for me / But oh, won’t you please tell me now /
Just how, my love, will we escape?”
In general and certainly in Reverie (Anti-),
his latest recording, Henry is a songwriter most
concerned with shifting shapes and settings. Judg-
ment and perspective are the seeds of his craft.
Reverie is Henry’s thirteenth solo record, and it
positions the reedy-voiced crooner like an actor;
he channels an array of personae, ruminating and
sometimes wandering in their socks before chang-
ing them entirely. The instrumentation is acoustic,
the arrangements spare and purposefully dishev-
eled—precise in their imprecision.
Little surprise then that Reverie’s strongest
moments arrive whenever that shabby exterior suits
its characters. And in this format it’s sorry saps
like the grass-is-greener protagonist of “Heaven’s
Escape” that Henry plays best. In “Odetta,” he’s a
daydreamer waiting to be discovered; “Please carry
me along,” Henry begs the song’s titular character,
too forlorn or indifferent to try and walk alone. The
bluesy “Sticks and Stones” follows a down-at-heels
narrator always on the move—or on the run. Its
refrain: “Every new leaf I had is gone.”
This was the type of harmony on display during
the performance at City Winery. Accentuated, even:
during “Sticks and Stones” Henry’s rhythm section
embodied the song’s ramshackle ethos, separating
away from the frontman’s simple guitar line into
arrhythmic improvisation—akin to the recorded
track but decidedly more furious and intent on
chaos. They buried the pulse,
pushing the clamor to what
seemed like the edge of order
before snapping back to support
Henry’s final verse.
In sound, Reverie is less
than a far cry from its predeces-
sors—notably the 2001 album,
Scar. That remains a watermark
for Henry, who emerged in the
late eighties as part of the
so-called alt-country movement
alongside peers like the Cowboy
Junkies and the Jayhawks. More
than a decade later, he leapt
for more melancholic terrain,
enlisting a trés ensemble that
included Brad Mehldau, Brian
Blade, Marc Ribot, and featured
Ornette Coleman. Together,
they painted Henry’s folk songs
into darker corners, with stron-
ger shades of jazz and blues.
Henry had some help from
Mr. Ribot here, too. The guitar-
ist performed on his own earlier
in the evening, extemporizing
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a meditative arc of post-tonal blues on acoustic. He
also joined Henry at points in the main set, and
rendered “Tomorrow Is October” into a memorable
duet. A master whenever it comes to circumscribing
a singer inside a musical climate, Ribot exaggerated
the space surrounding Henry’s teetering vocals.
Rarely did they rise or fall in unison, though one
always seemed to dissipate into the other.
Henry was even joined by his son, Levon
Henry—who he introduced as his “favorite living
tenor saxophone player.” But the guest that made
the biggest impact—took the reigns, really—was
Loudon Wainwright III. The prolific folk singer,
with whom Henry composed music for the movie
Knocked Up, walked out from the wings to lead the
entire group through his own “Motel Blues” and
close the show.
“I’ll write a song for you / I’ll put it on my next
LP,” the 65-year-old bellowed: “Come up to my room
/ Sleep with me!” Wainwright is still playful and
a singer of inarguable command, but this was a
former self, a younger model—one last character,
just passing through. #
www.joehenrylovesyoumadly.com
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ATLAS SOUNDPARADISE, BOSTON PHOTO: TIM BUGBEE
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More than anything, Bronx-native
Joel Daniels insists he is a fan of
hip-hop. That comes first. But for
Daniels, who’s stamped a handful of playfully
street-savvy rap releases over the past five
years under nom de guerre MaG, hip-hop was
never a spectator sport.
As he tells it, growing up on Creston Ave thrust him into a musical pocket of salsa,
reggae, and rap. But coming of age where Kool Herc sired hip-hop—much less
during the vaunted age of New York nonpareils like B.I.G., Nas or a then up-and-
coming Jay-Z—really left him one option. For MaG the mid-‘90s swell of local
heroes arrived during formative years, which he spent at Fiorello H. LaGuardia
High School of Music and Art and Performing Arts—known more succinctly as
the “Fame” school, and, lately, as the alma mater of fem-firebrands Nicki Minaj
and Azealia Banks.
M
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But it wasn’t until about eight years ago, according to the smooth-
pated emcee, that he seriously considered himself a recording artist.
By 2007 he’d finalized a full-length mixtape with Harlem representative
DJ Vega Benetton; by 2009, ended a short-stint down south with a
return home, and to form—sort of. By the end of that year MaG
dropped a follow-up mix and his first proper album, but transitioned
from his toothier stance as a hardened boaster on the block to a role
model, more political in insight.
The rhymes didn’t lose their urgency though. Still
swelling with references, MaG’s bars in $5 Cover and
especially his first LP, I Ain’t Going Back To Retail, grew more thoughtful. Less windswept than Reago-nomics, his first, MaG’s second mixtape was a some-
times-gritty memento to urban circumstance, as
concerned with enjoying the sunny skies despite the
picture at ground level as it was with questioning
that scene itself. “Miss Neuorleans” stretched those
horizons beyond the Bronx.
Meanwhile, Retail conjured the daily stuff of an artist
hustling a day job rather than the streets, working the
Myspace-Twitter-Facebook-Bandcamp roundabout
of today’s indie playbook and, above all, keeping
honest. Within those personal politics MaG’s chief
concern was the type of man to become, and he diag-
nosed flaws in both the first and second person.
Apart from his idols, there was a new name that
had by this point crept into MaG’s already crammed
bars—Tiff. Since those 2009 recordings his most
frequent shout-out has been a salute to his fiancé of a year, a writer,
director, and producer named Tiffany Rose. Somewhere between
preparations along that front, working as a discharge coordinator
for formerly incarcerated inmates in the Bronx, and squeezing in
studio time, the indefatigable MaG settled down to discuss hip-
hop’s heavyweights, as well as Freedom, his next album, antici-
pated in early May. He’s a man of opinions. Then again, that’s not
exactly a revelation considering his 2009 declaration: “This ain’t guns
or trap / I’m try’na bring Primo back.”
35PLUS 1 9Q&A: MaG
First thing’s first: What’s the with the name?I had been trying to find a rap name for dumb long. I used to go
by J.D., my initials. I always thought MacGyver was cool because
he could make something out of anything. I was just going by Mac-
Gyver for a while. Then I thought about copyright infringement, so
I just shortened it to MaG—even though I was just spelling it wrong
[laughs]. It worked out. My mom hates that name though. What was your experience at LaGuardia High?LaGuardia afforded me an opportunity and a differ-
ent outlook, so I latched onto it. Growing up in the
Bronx, it was mainly Hispanic and black. Literally, I
had no communication with a white person till high
school. It was eye-opening. I went there as a drama
major. But drama kids were the weird, I’m-into-
myself type; the kids in my neighborhood weren’t
doing drama clubs. I knew I wanted to entertain—
I’ve known that forever. And I always rhymed, but I
wanted to be like a Mos Def. So I started getting
into jazz, because that felt like I was still sticking
to my blackness. But now, it’s more about the art of
going back into the classics. I’m a huge fan of Sam
Cook, Frank Sinatra, those guys. LaGuardia built
that foundation. What’s the story behind I Ain’t Going Back To
Retail?I worked retail for a number of years. I climbed up
the ladder, but it got to the point—I knew I wasn’t
happy. I would go to work and my entire mood
would shift. When I quit that job I told myself, “I’m
not doing it again.” I wanted the Retail project to
be like a badge for people: You’re not going back to whatever life
you lived that you felt didn’t served a purpose. Because we all have
choices. Once I decided to make music, like, “This is what I do,” I was
never going to put myself in that position, where I was unhappy,
again. I do this because it feels right.
Your next album, Freedom, you’ve been recording at Converse’s studio, Rubber Tracks. What’s it like in there?Really, it’s just an unbelievable space, and it’s amazing. There’s the
Converse wall with the shoes. They have the huge A room; the B room.
36
The A room has a set schedule. Stalley was there, [producer] Buckwild
with Dante Ross from Warner Bros., laying down rough mixes. It’s a
dope experience.
What’s your hope for this album?To reach people. To have it be received well and to have people
“get” the vision. I write for myself. I write for the hip-hop head.
But I want my music to have a broader reach. Freedom has gone
through so many changes just because I feel like my aesthetic has
changed. I was in a certain groove with Retail, and now
it’s a different groove with Freedom. I don’t like that
feeling of hearing a project and it not sounding com-
plete, not being cohesive. The Roots’ undun: that’s the
barometer. I’m a fan first. If it doesn’t sound right, I don’t
want to hear it—so why would anyone else?
Do you think that cohesion is lacking in rap?Definitely. Hip-hop albums, especially now, sound like
mixtapes; it sounds like a bunch of songs everybody
thought were hot so they put them all together, and it
doesn’t work. But look at Nirvana’s Nevermind. You
can tell by the sound of it that they put work into that.
I hate when you can tell something is manufactured. I
remember talking with someone who was like, “You need
a club song, a street song, a song for the ladies...” The
compartmentalization—it’s so stringent. At the end of
the day, I’m gonna write a love song because I’m in love
with Tiffany Rose, and not to fit into some “standard”
for what should be on a rap album.
It’s having that eclectic ear, but then taking it and having
it influencing what you’re doing. Even now, emcees singing on
hooks? Before Drake, Kanye did it. When you hear influences,
it’s not because someone jumped on the bandwagon: I believe that
Danny Brown listens to Fleet Foxes because you hear it in his
music. I was listening to Mumford and Sons the other day; that
album was on repeat. Would it come up on my album? Maybe not.
But I love it. For a while, everything I judged was based on Life After Death because that’s a [Source Magazine rated] five-mic
album. But then I created my own “what a five mic album is.” Sigh No More is a five mic album to me.
37
What’s most important to you as a lyricist? Making sure it’s coming from a personal place. As much flak as
Drake gets—that’s why I dig him. I’ve always felt music should be a
representation of yourself, even if it’s extravagant. I dig Rick Ross. I
appreciate his approach. I feel like it’s hard to be a good liar in hip-
hop. You can be a decent one and get away with it for a time, but it
catches up with you. You can’t be a liar for that long.
Even if you’re talking about guns and coke—if that’s all you know,
I can’t really be mad at you. When people try too hard to be some-
thing in order to fill a role, that’s when I feel there’s a
disparity. Certain artists accentuated certain parts of
their life. B.I.G. did that all the time, but he was believ-
able. If you’re not influenced by what goes on around you
then you’re not an artist. With Nas: I feel like I’m on that
corner with him, always, watching whatever he’s describ-
ing. I’m trying to paint a picture, and I definitely got that
from Nas. I want you to feel like you’re there with me.
Which of your songs best encapsulates the MaG-ethic, what you’re about?“This Is My Time,” off the Retail album: The hook isn’t
much of a sing-along, but it means something to me.
It’s about my struggle. Any song I write comes back
to that: I’ve struggled and I’m happy with where I’m
at because I’ve put myself in this position. I haven’t
piggybacked. It’s emotional. Every time I perform it I feel
something. Do you buy the notion that in hip-hop you
have to knock someone out of their place in order to advance?Not at all. The best feeling in the world for me is hearing something
and being like, bam, “I wish I woulda wrote that.” Kendrick Lamar’s
“His Pain”: It’s a song I wish I had written. Not in a jealous way. I love
his music; I want to be inspired. There’s something about hip-hop—if
we’re not mentioning our friends, our circle, then we don’t wanna give
anybody else props. To some it’s competition. To me, it’s inspiration.
Kanye didn’t have to compete. He was like, “Listen, this is who I am.”
Kanye made me feel like I could be myself as an emcee and make
it. Before all the craziness—the soundbytes—the music speaks for
Q&A: MaG
38
itself. Dude is who he says he is in the songs. It’s not like there’s no
competition because I’m that dope, but I don’t feel like I’m fighting for
sales or attention with other artists.
Anyone you haven’t mentioned who’s particularly inspiring?If I ever met Mos Def I would have to be like, “Thank you. You
inspired half of my catalog. You opened an avenue for me
to find my creative threshold.” Because I was just writing
shit when I was young. It got to a point when I was 15, 16,
writing about shooting people in my mom’s room: I’m like, “I
do not do any of this.” But Mos showed me a different way.
I got to an age where I was growing up and I needed to grow
and write my experiences.
I would also say Andre 3000. I remember hearing “Interna-
tional Players Anthem”: the first verse dictated a fair chunk
of my writing. He’s writing an essay, except it rhymes, and
there’s little nuggets for when you play it back. It’s that
vagueness that I enjoy, because I don’t wanna know every-thing about you. When you can’t imagine anyone else on a
song, that’s when you know somebody’s created an avenue.
Those guys came up during the nineties, though. How do you translate that vagueness in the current land-scape of social promotion?I took awhile getting on Twitter; there’s too much “I’m in
the studio,” pictures... When I listened to 36 Chambers I didn’t know any of that. I put the cassette in and I was
just blown. I want people to know my story through the
music, to be surprised, because there’s none of that now.
You take away an artist’s mystique and it’s not really art.
If I put Jay-Z’s entire catalog together, I know his story and
that’s only because of what he says when he’s rhyming.
There are certain things that are under my control. I want to
control how the music gets to you, how you hear it. How
you feel about it? I can’t control that. It’s who I am. If you
dig it, cool. If not, I want you to at least be able to say,
“He’s honest.” Music is one thing. For me, respect for the
individual is more important. #
mrmag.bandcamp.com
39Q&A: MaG
I W A N T T O C O N T R O L
H O W T H E M U S I C
G E T S T O Y O U , H O W
Y O U H E A R I T . H O W
Y O U F E E L A B O U T I T ?
I C A N ’ T C O N T R O L
T H AT. I T ’ S W H O I
A M . I F Y O U D I G I T,
C O O L . I F N O T, I W A N T
Y O U T O AT L E A S T
B E A B L E T O S AY,
“ H E ’ S H O N E S T. ”
40
on the corner with
41
on the corner with
By M. Sean Ryan
Marie McLaughlin IllustrationFrancisco J. Hernandez DesignB+ Photos
42
Russell with Quantic in London
43
Russell with Quantic in London
It’s still morning when Alice Russell accepts the incoming Skype request chiming somewhere on her laptop’s monitor. She’s at home, though not for long, in Brighton, the coastal city to England’s south. And despite the obligatory cup of morning tea, there’s still the slight rasp to her voice that’s always given Russell’s bluesy howl its serrated edge.
Today it’s adding some extra scrape to her hefty chuckle, which surfaces frequently, considering the heap of items on the platinum-haired vocalist’s agenda. “I was looking up fl ights to Austin when you called,” she smiles. But that’s for next month; once this “little chat,” as Russell calls it, is fi nished she’ll drive north for some scheduled studio time in London with go-to producer Alex Cowan, aka TM Juke. They’re hammering away on the brassy singer’s next solo album. “Busy bees,” she offers blithely.
In space and time, she’s a long way from Cali, Colombia, where Russell recorded Look Around The Corner, a surging collaboration with Will Holland, the producer and bandleader known as Quantic. Since leaving England in 2007, Holland has lived in what Russell endearingly calls “the old-town bit” of Cali. There, in his home-built analog recording studio, the pair rekindled what’s proven a reli-able chemistry over the past decade.
But they’ve arguably done much more. Look Around The Corner realizes that spark with a swing and lushness that will likely stand as the benchmark for either of their future records. Just as remarkable is the degree to which the album’s unhurried fl ow belies the disjointed manner in which it was assembled—across two sessions and several years. “It was like an old friendship,” Russell suggests. “You can always go back, start where you left off.”
Mainly that’s because Russell and Holland were tossing ideas across the room, instead of borders or oceans, via email, as they’d done in the past. Saddled with Holland’s combo—the pianist Alfredo Linares, congas player Freddy Colorado and bassist Fernando Silva—the group drafted songs according to Holland’s modus operandi: prizing feel, performance, and vibe before anything else.
Russell’s fi rst stay in Cali yielded a few songs. “The next one,” she explains with a slight cackle, “was more produc-tive and focused.” But there was something about that session which ultimately pulled them back together. They’d recorded a bold and sinewy take on “I’ll Keep A Light In My Window,” a favorite of Russell’s originally by disco group Eruption and adapted to greater consider-ation in the late’70s by Marvin Gaye and Diana Ross and
No soul singer carried the torch for R&B through the 2000s as steadily as Alice Russell. For over a decade now, the British singer has exercised her rare stock of command and elegance over a throng of vintage funk and enterprising blues. But she’s never recorded an album-length collaboration with Quantic, one of her champions and most reliable producers—until now.
44
the Temptations. They also cut what would become the title track, folding crosscurrents of Latin rhythm with one of Russell’s most gospel-informed performances ever. “We were fusing together the love we have for gospel-soul albums,” says Russell. “We were listening to a lot of records, but I think we had that idea before we started—what we wanted to fuse.”
Still, both Holland and Russell faced their own set of obli-gations and tours. Russell released her third album, Pot of Gold, in 2008. The funk-fi lled LP was also the fi rst co-release on her own imprint, Little Poppet. These days, when conver-sation turns to post-label politics she still acknowledges the importance of artists retaining more control. But Russell is no ideologue; she confesses the administrative demands can pose are more than her taste for tedium. “Change is always good and bad,” the singer resolves.
Russell grew up in the rural countryside of Suffolk, in the East England town of Framlingham. Despite the isolation,
music was never in short supply. Her father was an organist and also conducted choir and orchestra. He immersed Russell in the classical realm at an early age. She fi rst heard Handel’s “Messiah” while seated on a fl oor, playing idly with toys; went on to song in the school choir; took up cello at 7. Through it all however, the radio was a constant contender.
As an adolescent in the early ‘90s Russell listened to BBC Radio1’s top 40 radio—when “it was still good stuff,” natu-rally. Yet despite her dalliances with grunge and drum ‘n’ bass Russell maintains that whenever she went back through her radio-recorded mixtapes, the pervading variety was soul. Later, once she had the pocket money her collection expanded to better suit those tastes. “You always fi nd your way to the loves you’re gonna develop when you’re older anyway,” the chorister says, but not without voicing grati-tude for the classical side of her upbringing.
At age 16 Russell attended university for two years—as an art student. Singing, she says, was more a passing interest. “When you step back and are like, ‘I’m this,’ it’s kind of pompous,” she reasons. “But then, it isn’t, I suppose. When people say ‘I always knew I wanted to do that,’ I admire that. Because I still don’t know what I want to do, in a way.” But it’s been some time since anyone might consider a title for Russell beside singer, except maybe Russell herself: “I’m always a contradiction.”
Russell fl owered as a vocalist during the late 1990s, at the same time the hip-hop-R&B-soul-exchange known as neo-soul was gaining momentum in the U.S. It was not a trend that went unnoticed. “I love Aretha,” she says, but the powerful vibes of newcomers like Jill Scott and Erykah Badu—“Miss Badu”—introduced a fresh sense of expression and purpose. “It did feel like it was of a time,” Russell sums, adding that D’Angelo was nothing short of a revelation: “Every now and then, something like that Voodoo album will come out and encapsulate so many sounds and infl u-ences. It was reaffi rming.”
it was like an old
you can always go back, start where you left off.
“WHEN PEOPLE SAY ‘I ALWAYS
KNEW I WANTED TO DO THAT’
I ADMIRE THAT. BECAUSE I
STILL DON’T KNOW WHAT I
WANT TO DO, IN A WAY... I’M
ALWAYS A CONTRADICTION.”
45
Her rapport with Quantic began shortly thereafter, and eventually led to Russell’s signing with the indepen-dent UK label Tru-Thoughts. The early 2000s pitted the singer with the also fresh-faced Holland, a DJ with an appetite for diffuse, worldly sounds but more impor-tantly a guitarist with an ear for arranging. He quickly seized upon Russell’s burly vocal range, and made her a regular feature whenever his grooves were overtly indebted to hip-hop or James Brown.
A prolific producer, Holland instituted Quantic as a formidable brand over the ensuing decade. His Quantic Soul Orchestra was a guiding force of contemporary salsa and Antillean-flecked funk, merging traditional grooves with rhythms, sounds and textures beyond Son Cubano. Since Tropidelico, the 2007 LP that system-atically toured Latin jazz dialects and put his home studio through its first test, Quantic has stuck to his
pared-down installation, Combo Bárbaro.
That conjunto has a fi rm hand in Look Around The Corner. Aided by local percussionists Wilson Viveros and Larry
Joseph, they steer several instrumental pieces, like the soft
pachanga “Una Tarde en Mariquita,” or “Road to Islay,” an
accordion-fi lled homage to the Scottish island that fi nds
unlikely propulsion in mariachi brass. But by and large
the combo lends vibrant hues to the songs, which strike a
balance between salsa and the spry, danceable pulses of
late-’60s soul.
These sounds work in service of the record’s themes, which
waste little time in surfacing. The title track is its opening
statement: a sympathetic invocation to celebrate the
present, to “rise with the dawn” instead of “sleepwalking
into the dark.” “Magdalena” and “Su Suzy” reproach their
titular characters for hiding their best qualities, which
it was like an old
you can always go back, start where you left off.
46
double as the key to self-satisfaction: “To be content is to know yourself,” goes the refrain.
But the suggestive strain in these songs resists sanctimo-nious fi nger pointing. There’s refl exive discourse—”We’re all the sinner man, we’re all the thief,” Russell sings in “Here Again”—yet mostly the mood is a celebratory one. “Magdelena,” rollicks like any of Stevie Wonder’s late-1960’s songs. And one of those songs, “I’d Cry,” is even included, though as a moody distillation of the original.
The choice of covers is in tune with this subject matter, too, particularly “I’ll Keep A Light In My Window,” where Russell bellows her mission, to “ease the pain that a life can bring, help them fi nd a peace their spirit needs.” Where initia-tive cannot counter malaise, resolution is the alternative. In concept and performance it’s one of the most powerful moments of Look Around The Corner, and Russell recorded the vocal in her fi rst take.
But she isn’t one to boast. Russell gives credit instead to the greats, to idols like Chaka Kahn and the late Minnie Riperton—whose clean soprano and powerful harmonies certainly exert their infl uence at points in the album. “I was defi nitely thinking of Minnie with the melody,” Russell says of the title track. She mentions being struck by a Wax Poetics article, uncovered from the stack in Holland’s home, profi ling the relationship between Riperton and her husband, producer Richard Rudolph.
“It was like a guilty pleasures project,” Russell resolves. “Sort of bathing in the memory of all the people you loved.” But throughout its composition and recording, those artists remained references rather than the goal.
After the fi nal session had concluded, Holland circled back to vitalize the songs with help from producer Mike Simmonds. They layered Look Around The Corner with dynamic arrange-ments of strings, horns and vocal harmonies. Once a fi nal mixing session in London assured its fi nal details last fall, the album was a thing of the past.
Since then Russell has been back working with TM Juke on her next solo album, which she hopes to release this
year too, though that may be unrealistic. She has diffi culty describing the sound, but brings up the Black Keys and Prince, and describes it as, “Not about the meaning of life but just about what the heck we’re doing.”
And so it goes, from one project to the next. Retreading the days that birthed Look Around The Corner (which will see proper release April 3rd) on a mid-February morning is something of a rare look back for Russell. She arrives in the U.S. this month, along with Quantic and the Combo Bárbaro, fi rst to Austin, Tex., for the citywide South By SouthWest festival and then for a select few dates on the West Coast. Together they’ll be performing and promoting Look Around The Corner, of course, recreating its vibrant party of songs—and perhaps fi nding some time to reminisce.
Visit Alice Russell’s Website Visit Quantic’s Website
”IT WAS LIKE A GUILTY PLEA-
SURES PROJECT. SORT OF
BATHING IN THE MEMORY OF
ALL THE PEOPLE YOU LOVED.”
47
48
NEW ALBUMS
QUAKERS
49NEW ALBUM REVIEWS
QUAKERS (Stones Throw)
Quakers
It’s impossible to ignore the complex behind
Quakers, the first album by the same-named and
many-manned hip-hop collective. Bound and begun
by producers Geoff Barrow of Portishead—credited
here as Fuzzface—his longtime collaborator and
engineer Stuart Matthews, or 7Stu7, as well as the
Sydney-based DJ Katalyst, the group situates itself
as the party of the dark horse. The briefing makes
this clear: these three
were discontent with
the so-called state of
rap and, conspiring to
create a “proper” hip-
hop album, selected
a long list of choice
rappers to appear on
this project and tac-
itly function as the
mouthpiece for its
values.
But Quakers, the
group, uses the same
breath to dec l a re
underdog status as
it does to declaim itself a formidable federation.
Hence Quakers, the album, aspires to be something
of a rejoinder to rap’s zeitgeist—an underground
torpedo. Nearly every song carries this cause, and
there are 41 in all. The mission isn’t a new one or
particularly unheard of, but it readily defines the
many brief performances that join together into an
impressive whole.
The turnout is half the story here. Over 30
emcees answered the call of Barrow et al. And while
it revolves around a not-so-veiled elitism, Quakers
employs so many to its cause that any air of righ-
teousness feels dissolved. Still, most of the lyri-
cists rap like the future of music is at stake, and
those who do lace their bars with an appropriate
vengeance. Consider Guilty Simpson’s chest thump-
ing in “Fitta Happier,” where he’s “swingin’ knuck-
les of brass,” happy to “leave a rapper on the ground
with his jugular slashed.” Or “The Turk,” which
features Jedi Mind Tricks-affiliate King Magnetic’s
acrobatic assonance: “Fuck a compilation, the
connotation / I’ll stomp your face in, the combina-
tion of domination and trauma patients that rhyme
with hatred / Thin line between conversation and
confrontation.”
There’s similar
brandishing all over,
especially in “Side-
winder” and the tum-
bling “War Drums.”
But nowhere is music
itself shaped as a
weapon any better
than “Soul Power.”
The New York duo
Dead Prez details a
history of black music
but refracts its
musical compnents—
“James Brown in the
pocket, Mississippi gutbucket”—into something
deeper: “The black Buddha within, or the lotus
sittin’ on the dock of the bay, getting red with
Otis.” Like Quite Nyce, who effuses brilliantly for
two relentless minutes in “Jobless,” Dead Prez
also proffer their musical power as something
“engraved,” invoking wax and vinyl grooves.
Which only begins to introduce the turn-of-
the-90’s East Coast rap so lionized by these guests.
Verbal and sampled references to De La Soul, A
Tribe Called Quest, and Wu-Tang Clan are littered
throughout, though for the most part the produc-
50
tion sounds steeped in its own world—and will
likely serve as a standard for whatever follows this
year. The hooks are hazy, full of grain and crackle.
At times they play like a lucid dream through TV
Land’s wee-hours programming—“Outlaw” apes
Twilight Zone sonics that coalesce with synthe-
sizers into something vertiginous behind British
newcomer Deed’s droll wordplay.
Overall, Quakers’ beat-making triumvirate culls
sharp energy to spur its pugnacious roster. They
confine 32 rappers to lean, mostly chorus-less cuts
that rarely exceed two-and-a-half minutes and
keep the album purposeful. The most notable shift
in this stride arrives in Aloe Blacc’s appearance.
He too frames his lyrical prowess as something to
be feared during “Sign Language,” but rather than
raise his tone, Blacc nestles it against the gently
smoldering vamp. He’s languid and potent, and
underlines how homogenous of an impression the
other personalities make.
The irony is that Quakers triumphs because of
its lack of singular characters. Each effort adds
to the impetus, and allows the album to mount
a linear assault that’s still multidimensional. For
a document of dissatisfaction with the times,
Quakers doesn’t stagnate or indulge in unabashed
reverence of the so-called good old days. It
throws the gauntlet to its adversaries—real and
imagined. #
OPEN YOUR HEART (Sacred Bones)
The Men
You will spend the first three minutes of Open
Your Heart wondering how or why you managed
to accidentally put on a Foo Fighters record. The
opener, “Turn It Around,” is safe and unassail-
able, like a present-day Dave Grohl doing his best
impression of a raging badass but then going home
to sleep in a really nice bed. Thankfully, the song
gets increasingly aggressive and cataclysmically
pounds its way into “Animal,” at which point that
Foo Fighters-juncture becomes forgiven and forgot-
ten, but no less out of place.
The multiple personality disorder from which
this record suffers comes off less like we-play-
what-we-want punkism and more like a bunch
of scatterbrains who forgot what their band was
supposed to sound like. Case in point: “Country
Song,” a twangy, vocal-less promenade that mean-
ders around like a troubadour unsure of his next
move. Meanwhile “Oscillation” is self-assured pop-
core — seven whole minutes of it—and it ends
with such sinister Ian Curtis-esque howling that
there remains a shred of hope for this album to
evolve into a noisy treasure. Without such sporadic
detours, it would have been.
But it never quite melds together; it opts
instead for track-by-track diversity so vast, albeit
individually good, that it feels like a demo reel.
51
By leaps and bounds, Open Your Heart ’s
namesake track is this album’s high-
light, amalgamating all of the above
(the swagger, the chaos, the Curtis-
like vocals) into a quintessential dive
bar jam (you’ll wish you were hearing
it at 285 Kent instead of through your
laptop speakers.) It’s a shame that the
next song, “Candy,” sounds like a Tom
Petty B-side.
On “Ex-Dreams,” Open Your Heart
wraps with one last tease of the Brook-
lyn band’s forté: it is an unabashedly
rowdy punk rock odyssey, with militant
percussion and urgent everything else.
Give The Men praise for pulling off a
handful of gems on a record this exploratory. Slap
them on the wrist for not making up their minds.
—Carly Lewis
ACCELERANDO (ACT Music)
Vijay Iyer
Vijay Iyer has always existed in worlds that seemed
head-scratchingly incompatible. He’s a math and
physics double major out of Yale who’s furnished
beats to Das Racist, warped M.I.A.’s “Galang” into
jazz-trio territory, and meshed traditional sounds
from India inside a jazz context on more than one
occasion—plays a mean piano, too. Iyer not only
seeks the eccentric or unprecedented, he’s up to
the task; he delivers with a slickness that leaves
you wondering why—whatever it is—it hasn’t been
done before.
Accelerando (ACT Music) is his first record with
bassist Stephan Crump and drummer Marcus Gilm-
ore since the trio’s exalted 2009-opus Historicity.
And as much as any classical player or Italian might
expect, Accelerando exemplifies extreme forward
NEW ALBUM REVIEWS
PHOTO: ACT / JIMMY KATZ
52
motion. Take “Little Pocket Size Demons,” origi-
nally a Henry Threadgill funk burner; Iyer echoes
Threadgill’s zigzagging sax honk but anchors the
filigree and jagged tonality with booming block
chords, reducing the piece to the trio’s own terms
while extracting a vitality worthy of the original—
even the stormy shuffle remains intact.
They find something more hypnotic covering
Flying Lotus’ “Mmmhmm,” where Crump bows both
long tones and a tireless bassline with equal finesse.
Iyer and Gilmore expand and compress accordingly,
realizing the elasticity of FlyLo’s cosmic composi-
tion. “Human Nature (Trio Extension)” is a lyrical
companion, more straightforward in its handling
of the Michael Jackson ballad. The awkward title
acknowledges the unaccompanied rendition Iyer
recorded in 2010, for his Solo record. That recording
was tribute; here it’s a powerful exhibition of the
three-piece’s well-oiled intuition.
In many ways that dynamic brings to mind that
of the late Esbjorn Svensson’s trio. Like Svensson,
Iyer’s proficiency can ensnare less-initiated listen-
ers in the same motion as it befuddles an enterpris-
ing experimentalist. Wherever his stylistic urges
dart, his dynamism flourishes.
But here each player gets his fair share of spotlight.
Crump surrounds his traditional walking patterns
with dizzying rhythm during “Wildflower.” And
despite his mid-section solo, “Actions Speak” is
more marked by Gilmore’s peppered funk-pattern,
which carries the piece from start to finish.
Accelerando closes with its most faithful rein-
terpretation. Ellington’s third stream suite “The
Village of the Virgins” finds Iyer playing to romantic
inclinations, balancing soft impressionism against
a slow and winding swing. It’s a staid resolution to
an album so marked by tension and velocity.
“It’s inspiring when someone reconciles the
seemingly irreconcilable,” Iyer once said of the
tragically obscure hard-bop pianist Herbie Nichols,
whose “Wildflower” also appears here. Accelerando
may be an even more precise articulation of that
inspiration.
—Mike Levine (@goldnuggets)
LA GRANDE (Barsuk)
Laura Gibson
As an acoustic singer-songwriter Laura Gibson’s
voice is obliged to matter, to be a character unto
itself. And since 2006 the Portland, Ore., bardess
has crafted several modest releases that were un-
surprisingly delicate and given to her exceptional,
dry falsetto. In places, it could be stifling.
With those in mind, La Grande, Gibson’s latest
53
and best, arrives like a breath of fresh air. She’s
joined this time around by a semi-West Coast
cohort of players from The Dodos, Calexico and
The Decemberists. They add the crucial, adven-
turous flesh to Gibson’s bare-bones arrangements
that allow La Grande to better swerve pathos and
embrace idioms outside woodsy folk along the way.
To be sure though, that sensibility is still a
pervasive one. The album’s title, cover and Gibson
herself credits the extent to which the rural north-
west surrounded and seeped into the project. Then
there are the everal songs that feature Gibson sing-
ing through muffling filters, like “Red Moon” or
“The Rushing Dark,” where her refrains slip in and
out of clarity. In either case, the singsong melody
ousts the importance of her words for a grainy,
epochal effect.
So La Grande sounds of a region, maybe even
an era. Yet within its rustic soundboard are seam-
less variations: there’s bossa-glide in “Lion/Lamb”;
the lap steel burnishing “Skin, Warming Skin” is
full-on Texas country; “La Grande,” the title track,
mixes harpsichord flourish against a low groaning
pump organ, and begins the album with barreling
momentum—through a vividly sketched, conifer-
ous trail. Aesthetic doesn’t limit La Grande’s jour-
ney, and journey is at the heart of the record.
But Gibson’s traversing is mostly internal, and
she paints her conundrums in three-dimensional
strokes. “Are you carried by a restless wind?” she
queries in a soft croon during “The Fire”—her
advice: “If you’re drawn to the flame, be not afraid
of the fire.” When she isn’t stoic, she’s convinc-
ingly vulnerable. “Try as I may to carve my path, I
cannot keep myself from stumbling back to you,”
she warbles alongside sighing clarinets in “Milk-
Heavy, Pollen-Eyed.”
In La Grande, paths, decisions and identity
all alternate between shackles and emancipators.
Domesticity usually runs diametric to the restive
pursuit of happiness, but for Gibson the larger
lessons are less to do with the actual choice and
more with arriving to a state that’s free of regret.
Because too often that’s why we pass judgment.
In “Crow/Swallow” Gibson gazes fondly upon moth-
erly hips, before resolving, “I cannot keep their
pace.” But a more important revelation arrives
moments later. “One cannot curse a crow for her
course, or choose where her feathers may fall.” #
PHOTO: PARKER FITZGERALD NEW ALBUM REVIEWS
54
LOO NEY BIN
OWL SPLINTERSDeaf Center2011, Type
Point of Extraction: InSound.com
Reason Picked:
• Ben Ratliff is never wrong.
Sounds Like:
• An ambient fog that truly needs to be
appreciated end to end, with your best pair
of headphones.
• Erik Skodvin’s cello is stridulating incantations.
• The creaking, failing spirit of a dilapidated
house in the barren Norwegian countryside.
• The soundtrack to rapture, or nightmares—
it depends.
You Had Me At:
• The shuddering, streaking omen that is
“Divided.”
• The swelling murk of “The Day I Would
Never Have,” or how it peels away to Otto
Totland’s amorphous piano chords, or how
it reveals the kitchen plates clinking in the
background.
• The Massive Attack depth charge that’s
dropped like an anchor into the heart of
“Close Forever Watching.”
Worth Checking:
• Side One: “Divided”
• Side Two: “Close Forever Watching”
BEHOLD THE SPIRITWilliam Tyler2010, Tompkins Square
Point of Extraction: InSound.com
Reason Picked:
• Willem Maker said so.
Sounds Like:
• Dense, open-tuned guitar undulation.
• Wordless Americana.
• A New Age dust storm of white noise,
found-sound, steel guitar, violin, traffic
noise, brass, and static.
• Bron Yr Aur bluegrass.
You Had Me At:
• The radio chatter and low-brass oom-pah in
“Terrace of the Leper King”; the chameleonic
finger-picking throughout.
• That tractor-engine rattle replicated by the
snap opening of “The Green Pastures.”
Worth Checking:
• Side One: “Oahspe”
• Side Two: “Signal Mountain
55LOONEY BIN
KIND OF BLUEMiles Davis1959, Columbia
Reason Picked:
• If there’s one album to begin a vinyl
collection with, it’s this one.
Sounds Like:
• The session you’d choose to magically sit
in on, if granted one chance to travel back
in time.
• Modal majesty.
• See next section.
You Had Me At:
• “So What”: too cool to be a question.
• Coltrane’s blues in “Freddie Freeloader.”
• Miles’ first (and most piercing) note (ever)
in “Blue In Green”; the infinite plushness of
its chords; Coltrane’s sighs.
• That first octave drop in “Flamenco
Sketches,” or the rest of Paul Chambers’
heart-murmur bassline; the rhythm section’s
limping harmony; Cannonball and Trane
waxing tragic.
Worth Checking:
• Every track has its own Wikipedia entry.
You do the math.
MR. M Lambchop2012, Merge
Point of extraction: InSound.com
Reason Picked: It’s a soundly-crafted album
and mood.
Sounds Like:
• A codeine-fueled mashup of Tea For The
Tillerman, In Rainbows, and Astral Weeks.
• Classical guitar duet with an answering
machine message, in “2B2.”
• A tender, cryptic, beguiling, vexing
tribute Vic Chesnutt might have okayed.
You Had Me At:
• That very first line. Welcome back Wagner.
• (Producer) Mark Nevers’ wizardry in the
second half of “Gone Tomorrow.”
•”I used to know your girlfriend back when
you used to have a girlfriend / She was nice
and you were not, but I was the big prick
back then.”
Worth Checking: Side One: “Gone Tomorrow”
Side Two: “The Good Life (Is Wasted)”
56
HASHSPRING
SINFUL NATUREBear In Heaven
I Love You, It’s Cool
Brooklyn synth trio Bear In
Heaven’s first album since 2009
is a stunning dance party of
sweet nothings both whispered
and rhapsodically bellowed. Like,
“Let’s get loaded and makes
some strange thing come true”:
bandleader and vocalist John Phil-
pot’s toast during the strangely
anthemic “Sinful Nature.” Or ear-
lier, when he entreats, “Surrender
your self control/ are you for real
or are you hiding your sinful
nature?” Throughout, Philpot
tries to crack through his subjects’
shells. “I wanna know exactly
what you are,” he keens in a bot-
tomless echo during lead-single
“Reflection of You.” I Love You, It’s
Cool (Dead Oceans/Hometapes) is
masterfully produced—by David
Wrench and Philpot—such that,
although they move in and out
of focus, those vocals always re-
main immaculately placid—even
amidst the tempestuous “World of
Freakout,” which plows through a
synthesizer minefield.
PADS OF LIGHTWhite Hills
Frying On This Rock
With their third LP in as many
years, the Brooklyn duo White
Hills claim a more programmatic
approach than their off-the-cuff
shoegazer Hp-1 (Thrill Jockey).
”Pads of Light” is the opening
salvo, and it oozes pyschedelic
minimalism. Transfixed, guitar-
ist singer Dave W. snarls a non-
sense refrain for four pummeling
minutes, refracting Alice Cooper
through Pink Floyd’s prism and
hotboxing the garage till the
drywall resembles outer space
at Mach 9. Other tracks are more
stubborn; “Robot Stamp” ham-
mers a single chord enough to bend
it out of tune and back again—for
12 minutes. But “Pads of Light”
makes the most belligerent bid to
be the bedrock of Frying On This
Rock. Forget three-chord songs;
this may be a three-chord album.
The guitars bite, the groove’s grow,
revelation ensues.
57WINTER/SPRING HASH
YOU ONLY WANT IT ‘CAUSE YOU’RE LONELYParlovr
Kook Soul
This lead single trumpets the
approaching third album by
Montreal trio Parlovr—pronounced
parlour. It arrives on a blissful
stream of echo-chamber doo-wop,
all airy coos and snapping fingers
that eventually burst in a surge
of Electric-Light theatrics. But
the neon-hued jubilance swaddles
something darker; ruminations
like, “You’ve got four fingers
right on your pulse, but you can’t
seem to find your heart,” set the
scene for the squandered hopes,
lust and innocence: “You’ll never
get it back,” goes the murmured
post-chorus comedown. Wrap the
sonics and emotional baggage with
Parlovr’s slapstick performance-
antics and you have Kook Soul, out
May 15th on Dine Alone Records.
File next to your Passion Pit and
Metronomy mp3’s.
BOOBIE MILESBig K.R.I.T
4eva N A Day
The new mark of a champion: set
your best pre-game Gipper speech
against the sleepiest backcloth of
smooth jazz you can cut, and stay
motivational. In the simplest
terms, that’s what Mississippi
mastermind Big K.R.I.T. pulls
off with “Boobie Miles,” the first
track teased from his latest mix-
tape. But that’s pretty much been
par for the course for the 25-year-
old rapper. Last year’s Return of
4eva (self-released) crystallized
several prolific years of laid back
pep-talk rap and self-tailored
slow-jams. “The only difference
between a winner an’ a loser is
a winner plays until he wins,”
Coach K.R.I.T. flows, following
his moral compass through a
Gato Barbieri quiet storm, never
breaking a sweat.
NO ASSFIDLAR
No Waves/No Ass
This LA surf-tet rides two-chord
jangle with more cheeky melodies
in tow than they’d ever admit.
FIDLAR—that’s Fuck It Dog Life’s
A Risk—is a self-styled, devil-
may-care foursome and they’re
not fielding requests for anything
else. “No Ass” is side two of the
split 7” single on Mom+Pop, and
adds two more to the small reper-
toire begun by last year’s DIYDUI
EP (White Iris). They glorify booze,
female-anatomy, and friends with
poor balance. The opening couplet
here is as dramatic as things get:
“Broken heart / bloody nose,” or
something like that—somewhere
beneath the wooly, lo-fi fog there’s
a fuzzier soul.
IT’S SO HARDPill
The Epidemic
With his latest, DJ Holiday-pro-
duced mixtape, Atlanta emcee Pill
strafes time and space. Whether
it’s trap-rap (“Parkin Lot”),
party-jam escapism (“Dreamin”),
or woozy club-hopefuls (“I’m So
Player”), each song finds some
root in Pill’s beginnings in At-
lanta’s 4th Ward. And when his
attention shifts wholly, it’s for
more consumptive, harsher re-
alities—like “Memories,” a eulogy
for his recently deceased mother.
Throughout, Holiday strikes a
savvy balance between bombastic
and agreeable soul grooves. Here
he’s minimalistic, paving Pill’s
no-luck story with a slickness
that transitions to plaintive hol-
lers: more an echo than consola-
tion. For Pill, this is revisiting a
common scene and subject, but
he’s zeroed in, vividly traipsing
through neglected corridors and
barren bedrooms housing five
58
HASHSPRING
bodies and one mattress—back
when his diet was ketchup, ra-
men, and books that showed pic-
tures of someplace else.
THE CRYING SONG (ALBUM MIX)Jason Urick
I Love You
Jason Urick’s third album is an
otherworldly sound cloud: five
ambient compositions, all ripe
with suggestion. At any point
its insular minimalism may
sound awash with heartbeats,
infant-like braying, or accordion-
breath—so faint and ambiguous
are the Portland programmer’s
aural devices. The mechani-
cal chirrup of “The Crying Song
(Album Mix)” is its own breed
of tinsel-tone, and its cyclical
pattern creates a jocular orbit—
making it the most straightfor-
ward track of the bunch. I Love
You (Thrill Jockey) churns its
inner-workings into unlikely
soundscapes—from the seem-
ingly tropical (“Ageless Isms”)
to ricocheting, interstellar wails
(“I Love You”). The distance be-
tween them makes for an even
heavier trek considering Urick
regards this LP as a map of his
emotions during its recording.
STREET SONGMatthew Dear
Headcage
Matthew Dear spent nearly all of
the past decade proving himself
an electronic producer of ency-
clopedic reach and understated
significance. His oblique compo-
sitions rattle and slap more than
they thump; their digital baubles
mimic his whispers or bur to his
baritone. Early in “Street Song,”
one of his latest, Dear’s sonorous
timbre is bifurcated into a shrill,
parallel stream. It overtakes his
natural voice and frames the
ensuing melody in a spectral
moan. But the effect is far from
distancing. “Trust my hand as I
guide you through,” he proposes
by the end of this impressionistic
opus: one of the four tracks that
collect into Headcage, an EP teas-
ing his next album, Beams (both
on Dear’s Ghostly International
label), due later this year.
LIONS OF LEASTPontiak
Echo Ono
Literally a band of brothers, Pon-
tiak prefers its tools, sounds, and
ideas well-worn. England’s late
‘60s power blues, contemporane-
ous San Francisco bruisers like
Blue Cheer, Los Angeles in 1993:
they’ve scrutinized their sources
front to back. Sometimes those
studies are all you hear. Echo
Ono (Thrill Jockey), released late
in February, is the latest fuzz-
odyssey borne from the Virginia
trio’s studio: a farmhouse that
doubles as a sanctuary for their
analog collection of Moogs and
tube amps. But guitarist Van Car-
ney takes just as much pride in
these vintage apparatuses as he
does in blowing them out. “Lions
of Least,” the first, most vigorous
and best cut off Pontiak’s latest
is also the one that sounds most
likely to blow a fuse. Its riff is
obstinate and voltaic—and all
but eclipses the placeholder lyr-
ics lining this elliptical chantey.
59THE HASH
THOSE DICKSThe Experimental Tropic
Blues Band
Captain Boogie
From Diddley to the Cramps, these
Belgians prefer to shower their
idols in volcanic distortion rather
than sycophantic praise. The
Experimental Tropic Blues Band
wields megaphone static and
screeching feedback on even their
lukewarm tracks—if you don’t
want to listen, imagine what John
Cale might have played while fall-
ing down a flight of stairs. This
venomous romp blitzes with
hardcore intensity circa 1981, but
the rapid-fire guitar break at its
middle doubles as a nod to surf
guitar legend Dick Dale—and
makes the song’s title even more
germane.
SUPER VIOLÃO MASHUPLucas Santtana
Sem Nostalgia
It’s no accident that Sem Nostal-
gia (Mais Um Disco) begins
with this six-string mashup.
The latest—and first stateside
release by Lucas Santtana in
over ten years—is nominally a
bossa album. As the tittering
bombardment of its lead track
makes plain, Santtana’s aim is
to stretch the Brazilian guitar
beyond traditional acoustic
barriers. That happens in this
album, though not to the frenetic
extent it does here; most of Sem
Nostalgia flits studio-concocted
tidbits over Santtana’s sure
handed playing from a safe
height. Still, apart from “Super
Violão Mashup” and the shiver-
ing “Recado Para Pio Lobato,” its
strongest moments are its most
classical: sultry and devoid of
techno-processing. For more of
those, consult “Cira, Regina e
Nana” or “Ripple of the Water.”
ENDLESS WINTERDoldrums
Empire Sound
Stare into the cover art of Empire
Sound—for nine minutes. When
Airick Woodhead, Doldrums’
teenage architect (and sole
member), sings “We can take on
any shape” in this post-apocalyp-
tic sizzler that prismatic image
will suddenly snap into focus.
The Montreal-based wunderkind’s
breakthrough EP is a sonically
splintered portfolio piece that’s
rudimentary, though it feels
anything but. Its tracks are an
amorphous network of stems and
bytes that hiss and splash across
hip-hop, post-rock and African-
leaning minimalism: its bound-
aries as muddled and faceless as
that superimposed cover.
HIT’EM UP STYLECarolina Chocolate Drops
Genuine Negro Jig
On their Grammy garnering Genu-
ine Negro Jig (Nonesuch) this
North Carolina string band came
out swinging, slinging traditional
jigs and folk tunes from the Pied-
mont-region as cannily as early
2000s R&B-hop. If that last bit
made your mental record player
skip then direct your playlist to
this cover of Blu Cantrell’s 2001
Top-40 earworm. The handiwork
of TLC producer Dallas Austin
is splayed across a fiddle and
banjo, but the shopping-spree-as-
revenge narrative remains intact.
The Drops’ Rhiannon Giddens
breathes life into the vocal line
HASHTHE
though, curling a horizontal
melody with bluesy gulps and
growls till the track sounds like
a bronzed, distant cousin of its
original.
UNSPOTTED CLOTHESLuke Roberts
Big Bells & Dime Songs
With his Thrill Jockey debut
Luke Roberts turned his unac-
companied acoustic melancho-
lia into slow-shuffling country
songs that were equally steeped
in last-legs spirit. The tunes were
about being broke, literally and
emotionally, but the arrange-
ments were rich. By comparison,
Roberts’ recent release, The Iron
Gates at Throop and Newport, is
more static. Thematically, he’s
flush with possessions, except
they weigh him and the music to
a slow crawl. It’s a drier collection
than Roberts’ first album. And
in retrospect, one of that LP’s
best songs, “Unspotted Clothes,”
carves out a limbo-state between
the two. It’s a striking and reflex-
ive ballad to a turning point, or,
as Roberts foretells: “The story,
how I made it over / And it will
go, ‘Unspotted Clothes’.”
BLUES FOR PERCY DANFORTHJack Rose
Luck In The Valley
Jack Rose walked a befuddling
tightrope between preservation-
ist and modernist. But it was a
cord of his making, the type of
construction beyond a guitarist
of any less radiant a technique.
Rose glommed onto the acous-
tic worlds of John Fahey, and
subsequently dipped his rolling,
finger-picked compositions in
pre-war Americana, the scales
and drones of Indo-classical, and
slide stylings that slipped easily
between either. To some extent
those proclivities date back to
his time with rock-and-noise
experimentalists Pelt. They find
their final expression on this
posthumous release from 2010,
a year after Rose died of a sud-
den heart attack at age 38. Its
opening track is a loosely con-
structed nest, where jaw harp
and tambura drones cohabitate
with shreds of harmonica—a
suggestive tapestry for Rose’s
sublime ambling.
CUIDATE COMPAY Eddie Palmieri
Azucar Pa’Ti
Before he founded his seminal
salsa combo La Perfecta, Ed-
die Palmieri had cut his teeth
playing in mambo and charanga
circles, most notably with Tito
Rodríguez; before that Palmieri
58
was studying Machito Orchestra
and Dizzy Gillespie records; even
earlier, and through it all, he
was taking cues from his older
brother and also pianist, Charlie
Palmieri. Always synthesizing,
Palmieri revolutionized the nuy-
orican beat along with lead-horn
player and arranger Barry Rog-
ers, wrapping trombones and
flutes to the full-bodied heart-
beat Palmieri has always lifted
from his piano. This 1965 record
is his ‘perfect’ conjunto in its
prime. It furnished the landmark
recording “Azucar,” as well as
this track; “Cuidate Compay” is
La Perfecta at its leisurely best,
and would be echoed and ampli-
fied a few years later by Carlos
Santana.
CAOSKissey
Plethora
Since graduating from the mid-
decade Myspace hype-bubble
with her 2008 album Plethora
(R2), Tina Asplund has drifted
from what appeared to be a fairly
linear trajectory. She’s resurfaced
in less commanding roles, mostly
on obscure acid-house or -jazz
singles, and increasingly as a
producer—recently, she remixed
Pharoahe Monch’s “Simon Says”
into a piano-snare strut. You
could say she’s better known
as Kissey, or Kissey Asplund,
but that’s marginally true. And
that’s a shame. Plethora remains
her only album and an uneven
debut that took a more onerous
path to melody and groove than
the music of her most obvious
forebear, Erykah Badu. Favor-
ing brittle top lines and far-
flung, spacey samples instead, it
underlined Kissey’s fluid feel as
a singer as often as it rendered
the songs sterile. The ruffling
Vince Guaraldi piano strokes
of “Caos” recur throughout the
album, and for good reason.
Its richness suits Kissey’s thin
croon, and makes her rhythmic
exploration a compelling one.
THE ERASERChristian Scott
Yesterday You Said Tomorrow
By this point it might be easier
to tally the Thom Yorke songs
that have not been covered by
jazz players since 2001, rather
than the other way around.
On this 2010 album (Concord
Jazz), Christian Scott does little
to bend the title-track from
the Radiohead frontman’s solo
album: the feeble melody is
echoed by the trumpeter’s evoc-
ative whisper; the vinyl-like
hiss replicated by a mic’ed snare
drum that rebounds the piano
line with dusty distortion. “The
Eraser” is more than a pretense
for discursive improvisation
too. Scott’s meditations are
appropriately terse, and his ace
ensemble transposes the seduc-
tive air of the original. It’s the
sole song from this record that’s
not an original composition, or
tied to an extra-musical state-
ment—some other track titles:
“American’t,” “Jenacide” and “The
Last Broken Heart (Prop 8).”
HASHTHE
© 2012 HASH, LCC.