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This free-ranging octet from Australia has brought forth their second album and it's a veritable funhouse adventure. Experimental, but gently so, their diverse instrumentation and varied approaches to vocal presentations (theatrical character voices, choirs, rock band exuberance) make for a listening experience akin to someone's perfectly cerebral mix tape. The opening song alone sets the stage for all that follows, constructed like an overture, one theme and setting gives way to another. Much like the parable of three blind men trying to describe an elephant, if three different listeners heard three different songs from this wonderful album, there still would be no complete description possible.
1. Nevereverdid
2. It's 5!
3. klix Paintings
4. Wishbone
5. Maybe You Can Owe Me
6. Do The Whirlwind
7. In Case We Die (parts 1-4)
8. The Cemetary
9. Frenchy, I'm Faking
10. Need To Shout
11. Rendezvous: Potrero Hill
12. What's In Store?
Norwegian duo Röyksopp return with a highly anticipated new album this summer; entitled ‘The Understanding’ on Wall Of Sound.
‘The Understanding’ follows Svein and Torbjörn’s critically acclaimed debut album ‘Melody AM’. Released in October 2001, it has now sold in excess of a million copies worldwide. Amidst dance music’s myriad overhyped disappointments, ‘Melody AM’ was a genuine surprise: a sound nobody expected from a place nobody was looking. Its charm reached clubbers, comedowners and open-minded rock fans alike.
It is now time for ‘The Understanding’. Recorded in Bergen, Röyksopp sing on much of their new album; there are also additional vocals from Chelonis R Jones from Get Physical Records (‘49 Percent’), Karin Dreijer from The Knife (‘What Else Is There’) and new vocalist Kate Havnevik (‘Only This Moment’ and ‘Circuit Breaker’).
Though Amos Lee's music is frequently described as a fusion of folk and soul, such an equation fails to reflect the singular artistry of this impressive debut. Like labelmate Norah Jones (who guests on two cuts), the Philadelphia singer-songwriter recognizes the power of simplicity, distilling an emotional essence that cuts across categories. The opening of his "Seen It All Before" echoes Bob Dylan's "Knockin' on Heaven's Door"; the stunning "Arms of a Woman" channels Otis Redding's "I've Got Dreams to Remember"; "Give It Up" cuts a classic Bill Withers groove; "Black River" has the sound of an age-old spiritual; and the closing "All My Friends" follows Van Morrison into the mystic. Throughout the song cycle, the bare-bones arrangements behind Lee's vocal flutter reinforce an organic unity that transcends genre. For all of the debts he owes to the music of the 1960s and '70s, the results sound timeless rather than retro. In his cautionary "Soul Suckers," Lee sings that "nothing is more powerful than beauty in a wicked world"--and proceeds to prove it.
1. Keep It Loose, Keep It Tight
2. Seen It All Before
3. Arms Of A Woman
4. Give It Up
5. Dreamin'
6. Soul Suckers
7. Colors
8. Bottom Of The Barrel
9. Black River
10. Love In The Lies
11. All My Friends
Pack a posh picnic - that nice young Kieran Hebden is back with his avant-nice Four Tet, and a fourth disc that confirms his position somewhere between a post-glitch Mike Oldfi eld pampering the post-rave middle class with cushioned strangeness and a Ryuichi Sakamoto -type genius distilling all the music he's ever heard through his laptop into a series of informally formless, happy-go-lucky, randomly precise instrumentals.
Liberated by technology to construct all manner of mildly unlikely musical mutations, Hebden programmed a genteel, English country garden version of free jazz on first album Dialogue. His next exercise in balmy, brainy bedroom innovation was to daydream up folktronica on Pause, which provided the answer to the question , what happens if jazzish bass fl ows under Bert Jansch-like acoustic guitars and judicious samples freshened with a hint of hip hop?
Album three Rounds ground up those theories into a digitally dreamy drum'n'nice, loungeweird masterpiece that was good enough to eat. Not bad for what was effectively a side project, a departure from his work with the more furtive, freakier Fridge. On Everything Ecstatic he repeats himself without really repeating himself, which is a fine thing for a cultured, lowkey innovator to do four albums in. It's cosier than its predecessors, as if in the end the whimsical hybrids just become warmhearted, ornamental reminders of more resonant innovation elsewhere.
It's Keith Jarrett's chiming, spaced out Death & the Flower out for a hike with the Yellow Magic Orchestra in comfy shoes lent them by Boards of Canada. The opener, 'A Joy', uncorks the fizz and swats away the flies. Then again, Hebden always begins his albums with exactly the track that should begin his albums, alerting us to the kind of jelly-hued futurism, Anglo-surrealism and chivalrous deviance heading our way.
'Sun Drums and Soil' is 808 State falling backwards through Return to Forever, John Surman falling backwards through To Rococo Rot and Jack De Johnette falling backwards through Mice Parade. 'And Then Patterns' is the soundtrack to a photograph of something exotic fluttering through a dappled glade, while 'Clouding' evokes a baby Steve Reich shaking a rattle at a preschool Harold Budd.
More memorable still is 'Sleep, Eat Food, Have Visions' on which the Tellytubbies play Tortoise while Zebedee plays Osibisa. Then everyone rolls around in the grass and tickles each other's tummies.
All the toys are put away for the last track, the oblique lullaby 'You Were There With Me'. Then after all this agreeable messing about, it is time for bed. Pleasant dreams.
1. A Joy
2. Smile Around the Face
3. Fuji Check
4. Sun Drums and Soil
5. Clouding
6. And Then Patterns
7. High Fives
8. Turtle Turtle Up
9. Sleep, Eat Food, Have Visions
10. You Were There With Me