New Releases for May 6, 2016
Ryan Adams – Heartbreaker [Reissue/2000] 2xCD+DVD/4xLP+DVD (Pax Americana)
Deluxe reissue of Ryan Adams’ first solo album, expanded with unreleased outtakes, pre-album demos, exclusive photos, and a DVD of a solo acoustic club show from 2000.
Alaric – End Of Mirrors CD/LP (Neurot)
New full-length album from Oakland dark punk band Alaric, whose members have done time in Noothgrush, Enemies, Cross Stitched Eyes, Dead and Gone, UK Subs.
Aloha – Little Windows Cut Right Through CD/LP+MP3 (Polyvinyl)
“We hadn’t heard anything from Aloha in half a decade, but they’re back with their first album since 2010’s Home Acres … [reviving] their constantly evolving blend of indie-rock, jazz, and pop on Little Windows Cut Right Through. Our first preview is opening track ‘Signal Drift,’ a song as textured and melancholy as we’ve come to expect yet unlike anything in Aloha’s oeuvre. A contagious dance-rock pulse surges beneath Tony Cavallario’s Bono-reminiscent vocals, and there’s real beauty in the way the pitch-shifted melody squeals its way through the incessant shimmer.” — Stereogum
John Angaiak – I’m Lost In The City [Reissue/1971] CD/LP (Future Days Recordings)
I’m Lost In The City is the sole vinyl LP offering from Yup’ik singer-songwriter, John Angaiak. Born in Nightmute, Alaska, in 1941, Angaiak began playing guitar at a young age, quickly learning the basics before serving in the U.S. Armed Forces. Upon his return, Angaiak enrolled in the University of Alaska, Fairbanks, where he became active in the preservation of his native language as part of the school’s Eskimo Language Workshop. Inspired by the program’s work and a friendship with music student Stephen Halbern, Angaiak recorded I’m Lost In The City, a project that helped to document and promote the previously oral Yup’ik language into a written one through a series of songs.
Anohni – Hopelessness CD/LP+MP3 (Secretly Canadian)
Hopelessness is the debut solo album from Anohni (aka Antony, the lead singer of Antony and The Johnsons), and was coproduced by Oneohtrix Point Never and Hudson Mohawke. It is a dance record with soulful vocals and lyrics addressing surveillance, drone warfare, and ecocide. A radical departure from the singer’s symphonic collaborations, the album seeks to disrupt assumptions about popular music through the collision of electronic sound and highly politicized lyrics. In a Q&A with fans (via Pitchfork), Antony discussed the inspiration for album single “4 Degrees,” saying: “I have grown tired of grieving for humanity, and I also thought I was not being entirely honest by pretending that I am not a part of the problem. ‘4 Degrees’ is kind of a brutal attempt to hold myself accountable, not just valorize my intentions but also reflect on the true impact of my behaviors.”
Jaye Bartell – Light Enough CD/LP (Sinderlyn)
Jaye Bartell began his creative life as a poet. The Massachusetts native moved to Asheville, NC, in the early aughts to pursue his writing full time, and while there he started playing a few shows around town. After stints in the Pacific Northwest, Buffalo, and Asheville again, he found himself in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, with a small back catalog of gentle, lyrically driven folk songs backed by little accompaniment save for manipulated field recordings.
Juliana Barwick – Will CD/LP (Dead Oceans)
Julianna Barwick’s revelatory third full-length, Will, is a surprising left turn for the Brooklyn experimental artist. Conceived and self-produced over the past year in a variety of locations, the electric Will departs from the weighty lightness of 2013’s Nepenthe. If Nepenthe conjured images of gentle fog rolling over desolate mountains, then Will is a late afternoon thunderstorm, a cathartic collision of sharp and soft textures that sounds ominous and restorative all at once. Guest contributors include Thomas Arsenault, aka Mas Ysa, Dutch cellist Maarten Vos, and percussionist Jamie Ingalls (Chairlift, Tanlines). “True to form, [album single] ‘Nebula’ incorporates spiraling synthesizers and more loops of the Louisiana native’s vocals than there are layers in a doberge cake.” — SPIN
Beverly – The Blue Swell CD/LP (Kanine)
Since the summer of 2014 and the release of Careers, which Stereogum dubbed an “exceptional shoegaze-pop debut album,” the main driving force behind Beverly has been Drew Citron. While Beverly began as a recording project between two friends, The Blue Swell represents a fresh start for the band. On the album, Citron’s main collaborator is longtime tour mate and noise pop producer Scott Rosenthal (The Beets, Crystal Stilts), with Kip Berman (The Pains Of Being Pure At Heart) lending co-writing talents to Victoria. While you’ll still find reverb, catchy hooks and a track or two like Bulldozer or South Collins that could perhaps fit into Careers, the new album takes a less aggressive and more melodic turn. The Blue Swell is, in some respects, bolder, more playful yet more grounded.
Andy Black – Shadow Side CD (Republic)
New solo album from the Black Veil Brides frontman – produced by John Feldmann (Panic! At The Disco, The Used, Good Charlotte, Hilary Duff).
Carla Bley/Andy Sheppard/Steve Swallow – Andando el Tiempo CD (ECM)
New music of wide emotional compass by the NEA Jazz Master.
Joanna Brouke – Hearing Music 2xCD/2xLP (Numero)
She was a composer who wrote scores with geometric shapes, a poet who became a pioneer of early electronic music. Joanna Brouk’s little-known body of work exists at the nexus between ambient, new age, drone, and classical minimalism – stark in its simplicity, lush in its expanse. Studying under Robert Ashley and Terry Riley at the fabled Mills College Center For Contemporary Music before graduating into the margins of the ‘70s bay area new music scene, Ms. Brouk blazed her own trail well outside of the musical establishment to create uncompromising electronic and acoustic work of sleek beauty and primal power.
New Releases for April 22, 2016
CDs + Vinyl:
The 69 Eyes – Universal Monsters CD (Nuclear Blast)
12th album from the Helsinki, Finland-based death/goth rock band.
Aborted – Retrogore CD/2xLP+CD (Century Media)
Fans should expect nothing less than one of the most relentless and fiercest albums from one of Belgium’s favorite extreme metal bands.
A$AP Ferg – Always Strive And Prosper CD (RCA)
New album from the member of the A$AP Mob (along with A$AP Rocky and A$AP Yams). Always Strive And Prosper is the follow-up to 2013’s Trap Lord, and features collaborations with $cHoolboy Q, Future, Big $ean, Chri$ Brown & Ty Dolla $ign, Rick Ro$$, Chuck D & Mama Ferg, Future, $krillex, and more.
Billy Bao – Lagos Sessions CD/LP+MP3 (Night School/Munster)
A furious mash-up of afrobeat, distorted drone and thrashing noise.
Nik Bärtsch’s Mobile – Continuum CD/2xLP (ECM)
After four ECM recordings with his other band Ronin, Bärtsch presents this new album featuring Mobile augmented on three pieces by a string quintet. Textures from jazz, funk, new music, minimal as well as ritual and sacred music are organically interwoven with Bärtsch and his partners aiming for an energetic total group sound rather than displays of soloistic virtuosity.
Bob Berg – New Birth [Reissue1978] CD (Elemental Music)
Digitally remastered edition of this 1978 album from the jazz saxophonist. The deluxe packaging includes a 16-page booklet with original liner notes and new essay by jazz journalist Bill Milkowski plus restored artwork, photos and session notes.
Alpha Blondy – Positive Energy CD (VP)
In his home country Côte d’Ivoire the retirement age is 60. The grand seigneur of Ivorian reggae is 62 years old now, but shows no desire to retire anytime soon. Positive Energy is Blondy’s 18th studio album.
Blue Man Group – 3 CD (Rhino)
Third studio album from the acclaimed performance artists, comprised of 14 new percussive, instrumental tracks.
Blue October – Home CD/LP (Up/Down)
Blue October is the San Marcos, TX-based band known for their shimmering melodies and heart-string pulling lyrics, and boasts one of the more emotionally charged and magnetic frontmen in music today in Justin Furstenfeld. “Justin Furstenfeld is a happy man these days, as chronicled on Blue October’s new album Home. And the singer, who’s gone through the wringer of well-chronicled drug addiction and personal issues (including a fierce child custody battle) over the years is well aware of how unusual a little bit of bonhomie seems. ‘It’s crazy how life happens that way,’ he tells Billboard. ‘Honestly, some people are like, ‘Hey man, what’s up? What are you taking that makes you so positive?’ Honestly I’m not taking anything. I continually am blown away by how good life can be when you just treat it like it’s special.’ Sonically, meanwhile, Home was inspired by drives Furstenfeld made through the desert from west Texas to California while making radio promotion visits for Sway. He refers to the sound as ‘desert rock’ — although not to be confused with something as heavy as, say, Kyuss. ‘The desert was very inspiring,’ Furstenfeld says. ‘I wanted to make the album more about the beat and the bass and the atmosphere and the hook of the vocal than a rock power chord album. It makes me feel like less was more as long as that central beauty was there, as long as the lyric and the meaning was there and the melody was memorable and timeless.’” – Billboard
Frank Butler – Stepper [Reissue/1977] CD (Elemental Music)
Digitally remastered edition of this 1977 album from the jazz drummer. Butler never became well known but was highly regarded by fellow musicians and performed with jazz notables like Duke Ellington, Dave Brubeck, John Coltrane, Miles Davis and Art Pepper in the 1950s and 1960s. In the mid-to-late 1950s, he was a member of the Curtis Counce Quintet. Sidelined for many years by an addiction to heroin, he did not record an album under his own name until the 1970s.
BWB [Rick Braun/Kirk Whalum/Norman Brown] – BWB CD (Artistry Music)
Trumpet, sax and guitar. Any way you call it; three men of deep talent, genre-busting chops, and musical influences deeper than the collective American pop and soul songbook.
