"Lo-fi" music was conceived as a stripping away of studio pretense. Often, it's quite the opposite, but the original idea is intact in this Seattle duo's work. Bumbling percussion, ragged vocals and rough hooks channel both modern anti-folk and early Stones and Kinks.
Start by imagining Missy Elliott as a Cockney Brit from outer London--OK, that's a tough one. But the English need to get their hair done too (in Sovereign's case, a demi-cornrow with a dash of Sporty Spice does the trick), and as long as that's the case, this recent Jay-Z signee will keep dropping tight breakbeats about baggy trousers and shiny new trainers.
The Danish pair go a step further in their presentation of retro rock as something vicious. Surfy guitars, always packing switchblades, and dressed to kill, get matched with a sketchy programmed template. The genre's early days have been translated to its most modern.
Erran Baron Cohen, brother of Borat (Sacha Baron Cohen), has made a valiant effort to make Hanukkah a cool holiday, and he's done a great job. By combining klezmer, reggae, electronica, tango, and many other genres, Cohen reinterprets classic Jewish holiday songs as well as offering unique originals.
Hanging out with Broken Social Scene and listening to Mogwai has honed the hushed gloom offered by this Canadian indie-dream-pop group. But a lot of the deft moves here are clearly self-invented, most notably the mixing of Tahiti 80-like bouncy kit beats with spacious post-rock soundscapes.
When they debuted in 1993, their identity was unknown until the press revealed The Fireman as Paul McCartney and Youth. The duo still doesn't flaunt their ex-Beatle affiliation, but their third effort is less electronic and more '60s psychedelic than their previous albums.
Subcultural industrial icon Ogre (Skinny Puppy, KMFDM, Pigface, Ministry, Revolting Cocks) evades obsolescence yet again by rewiring his abrasive synth-driven and polemical sound for the 21st century. Hailed as a pioneer of the industrial electronic scene, Ogre has remained innovative for more than 25 years by administering a blisteringly intelligent "detailed post-mortem" on the slough rehashed by lesser, fading figures.
Fans will find a familiarly corrosive array of electronics and percussion that fuels his vitriolic critique of corruption, ego, and infantile aggression, yielding nothing less than a sulfuric formula of antipathy and attitude force-fed down the throat of … Read more
The Gen X-ers who brought you '90s alternative alienation are now staring hard at 40, and their responses have varied. For ex-Our Lady Peace man Maida, the new move is a spare and broken-in adult (read: quieter) rock. "The Hunter's Lullaby" adds up to a dignified set.
Sometimes, a band will record in a warehouse so they can tell people they recorded in a warehouse. And sometimes, they'll do it to sound like this. No strangers to the post-industrial motif--they're from Jersey--Carlon drop a swoony stunner that makes full use of its cavernous space.
With his band The Comas on hiatus, Andy Herod's self-produced new project, Electric Owls, embarks on an exploration of musical experimentation while dwelling on the distinctly dark and cryptic with the release of the Magic Show EP.
Aptly titled, the four tracks propagate the mystical spirit of Halloween with many macabre references in songs such as "Cannibal Superstar" and "Darken Me," both lyrically dredging up feelings of death and dethronement put against a backdrop of slightly offbeat--yet melodic--pop hooks and intertwining harmonies. Less heavy songs also appear on the release, such as the unusually jaunty … Read more
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