You know how when you’re a kid, everything is absolutes? Modern dance music is kinda still stuck there, flipping between the night-and-day of dour seriousness vs. punch-your-mom-in-the-face party ethic. It makes it hard to find music that does more than soundtrack individual emotions.
Somewhere between the Juan Maclean’s raucous four-on-the-floor formula and chamber vox techno of the likes of Imogen Heap or Bat for Lashes, there lies a fabled land called subtlety. Most the time, only Brian Eno lives there. But for goddamn once in our lives, a new guy, Vitalic, nee Pascal Arbez, hits it. More than hits it. Owns it.
Vitalic’s debut full-length OK Cowboy made waves back in 2005 with its woozy blend of smarter-than-average synths and weirder-than-average samples. But there was this one track, “The Past,” that came on like an Adderall-powered freight train loaded with paperback copies of Steppenwolf. (That’s a metaphor for being rad and subtle at the same time.) And it left you being all “Why can’t he make a whole record like that?”
Wish granted. Our boy Arbez is back and he’s got a danceable Enola Gay filled with subtlety bombs. Eponymous cut “Flashmob” feels like the bastard child of Justice and Lindstrom—detuned and headfucked, but not too far gone to exude shy thoughtfulness.
The Dead Weather
Horehound
(Third Man Records)
*3.7*
Goes well with: The White Stripes, The Kills
In 2003, Rolling Stone named Jack White the 17th best guitarist ever. Now, three Grammys later, he’s featured—alongside Jimmy Page and The Edge—in a documentary about the history of the electric guitar (It Might Get Loud).
Am I the only one who thinks there’s something wrong about the way White’s been fast-tracked to rock-god status? The dude’s basically a decent vessel for Southern rock traditions, but short of “Seven Nation Army,” he hasn’t written a catchy, heavy tune for the ages. All of a sudden, he gets acting gigs, gobs of cred and the creative license to launch indulgent, spotty side projects without actually laying the groundwork of a Physical Graffiti or a Joshua Tree to deserve it.
The Dead Weather is another such vanity project. This time around, Jack’s chosen to pass much of the vocal duties to Alison Mosshart of The Kills, who manages to wrap her voice in enough bad-mic flatness to sound exactly like White himself. The record is an uneven affair, full of half-formed solos, shoddy drum clatter and the sort of creepy Dixie posturing that makes people who have never been to the South think Black Snake Moan is a factual cultural study.
Ultimately, Horehound sounds a lot like the rest of White’s oeuvre—self-satisfied and undercooked but with frustrating glimpses of brilliance. I’m sure it will win him another Grammy, and then maybe Obama will appoint him ambassador to Electric Ladyland or something. FULLPAGE>>>>>>>>
Much has been written about Sasu Ripatti’s background as a percussionist, his jazz-tutored attention to detail that creates the pulsing timpanic lifeform that is a Vladislav Delay record. But we’ve seen other exotic percussion beasts in the techno zoo, from Aphex to Squarepusher. That’s not what makes Ripatti so different, so appealing. It’s the tremendous tenderness with which he crafts the enclosure housing his drum organism that sets a Delay cut apart. His echoing, woody taps and complaining metallic sighs exist in a sodden, bottomless womb of texture and void, a place which, as on “Kuula” from Delay’s newest longplayer Tummaa, seems to coax more meaning and richness from his reserved keyboard-and-found-sound palette than seems possible. I CAN’T STOP READING>>>>>>>
Avant-jazz playing techno dress-up is nothing new. Chicago rock-deconstructionists Tortoise offer a take on academic analogtronica that borrows from the likes of Squarepusher and new-jack gear-bashers Holy Fuck and Battles, with an result that’s emphatically lukewarm. It feels odd to call anything as busy as Beacons of Ancestorship “middling”—typically such a distinctive sonic construction merits either worship or ridicule. Sometimes the record lifts off, but mostly it just hovers in the vapor, never landing long enough to deliver a memorable moment. GIVE///MORE>>?
The titular flagship of What Did You Say is sort of like a single-speed track bicycle. It has few moving parts, no complicated gear shifting or particularly clever gimmicks, but it’s more than sustained by its speed, purity and momentum. Bodycode’s Alan Abrahams leads the track right off with the uncomfortably forward-mixed spoken word “How can you say you’d live without me?” question/mantra. Vocalist Lerato sounds like she’s right there in the room with us and she’s super pissed off. Little hats fire around her like tiny leaks springing out of a highly pressurized fire hose. The bassline shivers under her like a taut rubber band about to snap off in our faces…it’s a balancing act of restraint and weirdness. “Our minds and bodies…are one…” she repeats, and thank god she’s not my girlfriend. >>READ MORE, YOU ARE IN MY THRALL.
