MUSIC | Records – Jazz & World ALSO RELEASED
CHAIN & THE GANG Minimum Rock N Roll (Fortuna POP!) ●●●●● The latest missive from Ian Svenonius, the Gore Vidal of garage, and his ‘crime rock’ reprobates Chain & The Gang (pictured, above) is guaranteed free of ‘unnecessary sounds, extraneous words, too many sentiments, frivolous notes and spare beats’. At least they don’t spare the funkiness though, with habitual doses of lean guitar swagger and prowling basslines. Instrumental ‘Fairy Dust’ is all bassline and doesn’t want for anything, except perhaps Svenonius’s breathless rhythm’n’blues rhetoric, dispensed elsewhere in call-and-response debate with his cool chick sidekick Katie Alice. (Fiona Shepherd) ■ Chain & the Gang play Broadcast, Glasgow, Wed 28 May. SHIT ROBOT We Got A Love (DFA Records/PIAS) ●●●●●
Talk about house style. Shit Robot, aka Irish DJ/producer Marcus Lambkin, has been adopted by the DFA family and fits most snugly into their retro electro groove, sending out warm analogue vibrations on second album We Got A Love via cosmic instrumentals ‘Space Race’ and ‘Tempest’, plus lovingly crafted deep house, hip NY electro funk and disco-infused tracks which hit the sweet spot on the dancefloor. Chicago housemeister Lidell Townsell and comedian Reggie Watts are among the guests who know where the party’s at. (FS) ■ shitrobot.com THE WAR ON DRUGS Lost In The Dream (Secretly Canadian) ●●●●● A decade ago, Adam Granduciel and Kurt Vile ploughed their shared love of Bob Dylan into a new band, The War On Drugs. Vile has since left the fold, while Granduciel persists with the Dylanesque vocal inflections. A tantalising 80s AOR influence runs right through this album, but Granduciel
doesn’t know when to press the stop button, so most tracks drift on in a hazy, sometimes listless fug, like a psychedelic Springsteen. Which is just fine, if you have the time. (FS) ■ thewarondrugs.net
MAGIC EYE Babylon (Not Not Fun) ●●●●● Look to the East! This kaleidoscopic EP from Edinburgh haze-pop trio Magic Eye is the stuff of fluoro- dreams all right – especially if your reveries feature sun-bleached vocals, mirage-like guitar riffs, visions of palm trees and nagging pentatonic hooks. Their gorgeous, blurred-rock voyage alights in various paradisical realms (‘Japan’, ‘Babylon’), as the band simultaneously gaze at their shoes and conjure the stars. (Nicola Meighan) ■ Read a Magic Eye interview, page 73, soundcloud.com/magic-eye-1 COURTNEY BARNETT The Double EP: A Sea of Split Peas (House Anxiety/Marathon Artists) ●●●●●
Last summer, swaggering blues-pop chanteuse Courtney Barnett won legion fans with her low-slung, heat-sick chorale, ‘Avant Gardener’. It’s a highlight on the Australian’s collection of new songs (plus an old EP), and there is sage advice, too: ‘I masturbated to the songs you wrote,’ she drawls on slacker-ballad ‘Lance Jr.’ ‘It helps me get to sleep, and it’s cheaper than Temazepam.’ Indeed. (NM) RANDOLPH’S LEAP Clumsy Knot (Lost Map) ●●●●● Prolific indie poet Adam Ross has barely drawn breath since last autumn’s ace Real Anymore EP (Olive Grove), but now he’s back, with his fab orchestral band in tow, for another welcome, wordplay- fuelled compendium of lovesick croons (‘Foolishness of Youth’, ‘Weatherman’), instrumental wrangles (‘Saxophone’), awkward hosannas (‘I Can’t Dance To This Music Anymore’) and gorgeous,
76 THE LIST 20 Mar–17 Apr 2014
JAZZ & WORLD JAZZ THE APOPHONICS On Air (Weight of Wax) ●●●●●
Apophonics: a pun on ‘apophenia’, the human tendency to see patterns in random data. This masterful set of free improvisation, however, is anything but formless. The Apophonics boast three of music’s most advanced instrumental thinkers: on saxophones, John Butcher; on bass, fellow Londoner John Edwards; and on ‘energised surfaces’ and synth, American percussionist Gino Robair, whose recent gigs include Glasgow Improvisers Orchestra
and Tom Waits. Robair vibrates his drum skins with an EBow, household gadgets and bicycle horns, producing drones, rasps, scrapes and clatters while Edwards’ bowing evokes a creaky trapdoor, out of which creeps Butcher’s chromatic theme. On ‘London Melody’ a frolicking marimba dances a demented fugue around pizzicato bass, while Butcher runs amok through a poultry farm. While On Air might not astonish in the way that Butcher’s solo sets do, it’s a joy to hear him in engage in such energetic and emotionally resonant collective improvisation. (Stewart Smith) JAZZ ALEXANDER HAWKINS ENSEMBLE / ALEXANDER HAWKINS Step Wide, Step Deep / Song Singular (Babel Label) ●●●●●/ ●●●●●
Step Wide, Step Deep sees the brilliant young Oxford pianist Alexander Hawkins lead a new incarnation of his sextet through a playfully knotty set of tunes. On ‘Step Wide, Step Deep / Space of Time Danced Thru’, Shabaka Hutchings’ bass clarinet climbs giddily up the slant staircase Hawkins and drummer Tom Skinner construct, before a reflective mid-section of shimmering guitar and piano ushers in a rolling bop groove. The
wistful blues theme of ‘Advice’ showcases Bates’ terrific Hot Club-meets-Billy Bang fiddling. An inspired synthesis of avant-garde and classic jazz strategies, Hawkins’ solo piano debut, Song Singular, is perhaps even better. Snatches of ‘Take The A Train’ intersect Cecil Taylor-like torrents of geometric energy, while his inventive chord voicings bring a beautiful dissonance to even the most delicate moments. (Stewart Smith) WORLD LOBI TRAORÉ Bamako Nights – Live at Bar Bozo 1995 (Glitterbeat) ●●●●●
Rawer than any of his studio albums, this newly uncovered live recording from 1995 captures the late Malian guitarist Lobi Traoré on electrifying form as he sets a hot Bamako basement club on fire. There’s a palpable sense of joy as Traoré and his band hotwire Bambara roots to an electric mainline. Traoré has a flanger pedal, and damn right he’s
gonna use it. In the wrong hands, this stomp-box can
reduce the gnarliest of tones to a cheesy whoosh, but for Traoré it brings a psychedelic swirl to his clean sound and a skyscraping rush when he kicks in the overdrive. From the sparse Ali Farka Toure-like blues of ‘Ni Tugula Mogo Mi Ko’ to the accelerating polyrhythms of ‘Sigui Nyongon Son Fo’, this is a killer set, Traoré delivering his vocals and guitars with impeccable timing, leaving space for his superb rhythm section to really cook. (Stewart Smith)
WORLD MESTRE CUPIJÓ E SEU RITMO Siriá (Analog Africa) ●●●●● Following two magical trips to Colombia, Analog Africa continues its exploration of Latin America’s under- recognised music with this celebration of the great Brazilian bandleader Mestre Cupijó, who died in 2012. Cupijó was the moderniser of Siriá, a blend of the music of escaped African slaves and that of the indigenous people of the Amazon rainforest. Relatively obscure in the rest of Brazil, Siriá is the carnival music of the northern state of Pará, boasting bright, tropical horns and syncopated rhythms. The selections here are drawn from Cupijó’s six studio albums, yet they have the feverish ambience of a great live recording. It’s impossible to sit still or feel blue while listening to this music. One of his most popular tunes, ‘Mingau de Açai’, sets the scene with its boisterous saxophone riffs and witty vocals, while ‘Farol Do Marajó’ weaves a more delicate, Joao Gilberto-like vocal into its brassy grooves. (Stewart Smith)