The purported nexus for fans of progressive dance music right now is obviously Germany. What�s missing from that idea, however, is how all of the labels centered in the area are beginning to seriously outsource their material. Up and coming producers from all over are beginning to make in-roads. One of the most exciting is house producer Jesse Somfay, who recently had his first 12� released on Traum�a dreamy and romantic Villalobos indebted slab of wax that augurs great things ahead. The Stypod recently asked Jesse what he�s been listening to�

Derek Howell� You Wanna Do What

This is an absolutely stunning track from an absolutely stunning new artist. From his recent two part EP on John Digweed’s Bedrock label, ‘You Wanna Do What’ is a glittering progressive workout which just keeps building with gradually rising pads and paranoid sounds echoing in the distance. It reaches an absolutely blissful crescendo after what seems like an eternity of psychedelic build up. And this certainly is a very good eternity. Derek Howell is one of the hottest artists to watch out for in 2005 if you love excellent progressive music full of emotion.

[buy it here]

Polmo Polpo- Kiss Me Again and Again

Out on a new limited EP series from Intr_Version, Polmo Polpo crack out a 21 minute long punk-funk epic. The changes throughout the track are so groovy you could suffocate. Jittery guitar licks, warm basslines, and distant horns pop in and out as melodies shift in subtle ways. Thirteen minutes into the track a beautiful section of guitar arpeggios and strings come in and depict the sun rising in the funkiest possible way. The track then slowly shifts back into a form similar to where it began but just a little different full of paranoia and shuddering background percussion. A very hot tune to lose your mind to!

[buy it here]

M83� Don�t Save Us From the Flames

M83 has been one of my favorite bands of the last few years. From the new album Before the Dawn Heals Us, ‘Don’t Save Us From the Flames’ is a shoegazer’s wet dream. Dripping with reverb and slightly over driven guitars and synths, it recalls some of the most emotional moments from bands such as Slowdive. Simply put, beauty is back and it is here to stay!

[buy it here]

Crambe Repetita� Abstraction

Ben Kamen � �So The Light Came To Contain Numbers�
Arvo Part � �Fuer Alina�
Stars Like Fleas � �I Write This From The Dancefloor�
Oren Ambarchi � �Triste�
Stars of the Lid - �I Will Surround You�
Andrew Thomas � �Untitled�
The Wind Up Bird � �Fluff and Meat, Perhaps Resulting in the Annihilation of Both�
Thomas Koener � �Hym�
Edward Artemiev- Selections from his re-recordings of the soundtrack to Solaris

Conceived as one-half of a mix for a friend of mine, this one is quite a bit different from most that I�ve made in the past. That being said, it more accurately reflects what my college radio show used to sound like when I was doing it solo (my last two years at school were spent doing a collaborative show with Gavin Mueller).

While I won�t bother going into what the specific tracks sound like, my general idea was to go from sparse to overwhelming in as few steps as possible over the course of the half-hour. The key track for me is �I Write This From the Dancefloor,� which moves it past the dueling pianos of Kamen and Part.

Next week, the other half of the mix: �Blow (A Jacques Lu Cont Mix).�

One of the reasons I really dislike Led Zeppelin is the amount of times that I recall Plant using the word �baby� with reference to his lady friends. It�s not that I regard it as sexist or derogatory, but to my ears �Baby� is not a word I feel I could comfortably use to describe a woman I wanted to either make sweet love to or settle down with. It just sounds bloody stupid. Hearing other males use it whilst singing makes me cringe, and hearing it in everyday conversation between couples is even worse. I dunno…just one of those things that I find bizarre. So here are three examples of the better sex using those same words and sounding mighty good doing it too.

Beverly Knight� Not Too Late For Love, [Affirmation]

�Sweet baby don�t you cry / Everybody feels the same.� Tell �em Beverly. I know there were a lot of people out in TC land punching holes in plasterboard walls when Joss �It�s obvious I got shagged Robbie Williams, that�s why I told my boyfriend I loved him in my acceptance speech cos I�m guilty as a girl can be� Stone won Best Urban Act at the 205 Brit Awards over the darker skinned Jamelia and Dizzee, but spare a thought for Beverly Knight. She never gets any credit at all for carrying UK soul on her shoulders.

[buy Affirmation here]

Macy Gray� Sweet Baby, [The Id]

I despised that first Macy Gray LP and come to think of it the second LP was pretty horrifying too. And her cameo in Training Day? This, however, is a real piece of magic with Macy dropping the Sesame Street act for a few minutes and, for once, sounds like she means what�s actually coming out of her mouth.

[buy The Id here]

Aretha Franklin� Since You’ve Been Gone (Sweet Sweet Baby), [Lady Soul]

Aretha�s voice. We need to get the scientists in those underground labs to begin creating some form of biomechanical machinery to replicate that instrument as soon as possible because I don�t want to be sitting here in a few years on her tribute night listening to Mariah and Christian attempting to replicate it. From my very own ultimate �Getting Ready T Go Out� mixtape, this manages to sound lulling, pissed off, fierce, tired, defiant, loving, relieved and horny all in one 2.25 slice of rolling horn, piano and cymbal genius.

[buy Lady Soul here]

Topping year-end lists everywhere, the Arcade Fire seemingly appeared out of nowhere to claim a whole clutch of hearts with their debut album Funeral. Stylus writer Josh Drimmer called the album, �as celebratory, emotionally rich and life-affirming as a good funeral should be, but never is.� We asked drummer Jeremy Gara to share some of his recent favorite tracks.

The Wooden Stars� Uncivilized

One of my favourite bands, and easily one of the most influential in my social scene. From Ottawa, The Wooden Stars put out records and toured for years until around 2002 when they disbanded. Reformed just recently�accepting the challenge as a 40th birthday wish for friend and producer/engineer Dave Draves�they’ve since played a few shows and have a few more lined up, and there’s talk of getting back in the studio to finish an album started before they stopped playing a few years ago. This song is my favourite of the sessions, and as luck would have it, it’s close enough to being done that it’s up there on their website.

[visit the website here]

Cocteau Twins� Cherry Coloured Funk

When I was a teenager, I started visiting Toronto pretty often to see some new friends. One of the roomies where I stayed had always been a Cocteau Twins fan. She had all the records and she’d re-recommend them every now and then. Maybe, subconsciously, I was waiting for the right time to explore, because I only put one on a few months ago. Since then, I’ve barely listened to anything else.

[visit the website here]

The Books� A Little Longing Goes Away

Despite a recent surge of press and their names popping up here and there, I’ve still not read a thing about The Books. I think it’s a couple of guys? Either way… the music is so curious, beautiful, and unpredictable. It’s not too often I can either totally enjoy it all the way through, or decide to dig in, repeat some sections and raise an eyebrow and wonder “how in the hell do they do that?” I think that’s why I’m nervous about reading into what they do. I enjoy not even being able to picture the number of people there, let alone what they’re doing.

[visit the website here]

With such a general title, of course, you could easily put up a couple of thousand songs. And this took a while to put together � I wound up excluding a couple of songs I figured weren�t that hard to find (the Fall�s take on William Blake�s �Jerusalem�, Joey Ramone�s �What A Wonderful World�, Fischerspooner�s version of Wire�s �The 15th�), and sorted through the rest until I came up with three I�m pretty sure most people haven�t heard. I�m not saying these three are better than the source materials, but, well, they are�

Plumtree� You Got Me Runnin�, [Super Secret Songs]

Super Secret Songs was a benefit album for a venue in Kitchener Ontario called the Korova Caf�. I�ve never been there, don�t know if it�s still open, and have never seen or heard the compilation. But due to my rabid love for this band I managed to get my hands on their contribution, a cover of an old song by the immortal Def Leppard. It�s definitely less hair-metally than the original, but it�s not as if Plumtree avoids bringing The Rock; as anyone who�s seen the liner notes from their last album, with the band admiring Sabbath Bloody Sabbath could tell you, this cover isn�t intended ironically. I just happen to enjoy the song more in an indie style, which I�m sure makes me a horrible person in some circles.

Deadsy� Brand New Love, [Commencement]

Deasy are, to be generous, not very good, and only two songs one their Commencement are worth listening to more than once. But one of those, their cover of Sebadoh�s �Brand New Love�, is ridiculously addictive. You really haven�t heard the song until you�ve heard it transformed into whirring, overdriven Gothic synth-pop. I sure as hell didn�t guess it was a Lou Barlow song until I looked at the credits, but the gap in quality between it and the band�s original material was clear enough.

[visit the official website here, buy Commecement here]

Mercury Rev� Cortez The Killer, [Unreleased]

Okay, I lied, kind of; this is better than the �original� album version of Neil Young�s Aztec epic, but it doesn�t hold a candle to the better live versions, the ones that any fan is going to point you towards. This is some radio session from the Deserter�s Songs era as opposed to their earlier, weirder stuff, so it�s a textured and quiet reading of the song rather than a noiseburst, basically nothing more than massed acoustic guitars and Jonathan Donahue�s voice. But it�s still wonderful, the band not yet succumbing to utter tweeness and this cover, as the announcer says at the end �on borrowed guitars and borrowed time�, feels like it�s sneaking out before that curtain fell.

[visit the official website here, buy Secret Migration here]

Avant-folksters Wooden Wand and the Vanishing Voice have accumulated an enormous discography of various ephemera in their short history. Ian Johnson recently reviewed one of these pieces in Stylus� Rubber Room, claiming that Harem of the Sundrum �recalls the bleakest of Leonard Cohen.� We asked lead Wand, James Toth to contribute some songs for the Stypod. The results:

Turner Cody� Cry With Me

I cover this on a new 7″�this song, and all of Turner’s amazing Buds of May album, is my favorite secret of the past few years. Total time machine vibes, gorgeous lyrics; this seriously puts songwriting folks like me to shame. Easily the most underrated dude I know of right now.

[visit an unofficial website here, read an interview here]

Death Vessel� Mean Streak

I’m not a big fan of the ‘dude sounds like a lady’ thing that’s big in certain circles right now, but somebody sent me a promo of this album and I just happened to be feeling adventurous that day and threw it on while I drank and answered email. It took me about 45 minutes to get past the first song, which is positively one of the most beautiful things I’ve heard all year. I actually taped this on repeat for the car and I never get sick of it. Something about the phrasing, lyrics…you can hear the devil in it somewhere.

[visit the website here, buy an album here]

Feathers� Past the Moon

Like Chet Baker’s vocal stuff + Layers of Onion / Hangman’s vibes = jaw
dropping / tremendous. I wish I could write a song this good.

Kelly Clarkson� Gone

I�ve decided to cherrypick a bit from my talented writers this week. First up is a track lauded by Charles Merwin in his review of Kelly Clarkson�s latest as �bananas.� I�m not at all too sure what �bananas� means exactly, but I imagine it�s good. Clarkson�s production team really outdid themselves here, creating an incredibly tight masterpiece of production that rivals Ashlee Simpson�s �Surrender.� And, unsurprisingly, it�s written by the exact same duo. I need to track these two down more often. For proof that they�re the most exciting team in modern mainstream pop go straight to the bridge.

[buy the album here]

Ricardo Villalobos and Luciano� Something Bad

I�m unsure about the origins of this release, but it sure sounds like Villalobos and Luciano covering Michael Jackson, so I won�t ask Michael F. Gill to explain exactly where it came from. The duo break the original down to its constituent parts and build it from the ground up, focusing primarily on the vocals and their ability to act as melody and as rhythm. The best house mix of Jackson yet? Certainly better than Luomo�s recent effort.

Saint Etienne� Filthy

While hunting down some rare Saint Etienne releases for a writer wanting to do an upcoming project, I came upon this particular gem from the band�s catalogue. The song originally appeared on You Need A Mess Of Help To Stand Alone, a compilation apparently only released to the band�s fan club. Dating from sometime in the early 90s, this sounds like, as much Saint Etienne work does, a lovely shape of things to come�this time for trip-hop by way of Salt �n� Pepa.

Everybody Who Pretended to Like Me is Gone was a mite of a letdown for anyone who had the first two vinyl Walkmen EP�s. They contained all thirteen of its tracks. The three exclusives, though, are well worth converting to a more portable format.

The Walkmen� Don�t Be Long, [8 Songs 12� EP #1]

Ssshhhcka-schicka, Ssshhhcka-schicka, vwoop-i vwoop-i, vwoop-i vwoop-i, Boom-bi-di-Boom Boom BAP BAP, THUDDA thudda THUDDA thudda, Boom-bi-di-Boom Boom BAP BAP! If I tried to mix those parts together on this keyboard as thoroughly as they are in the song, you wouldn�t be able to read it. It�s all accompanied by a wonderful ascending chordal lead that sneaks in two nearly-implied notes after the lead four. The Walkmen are doing a Soca/Afrobeat shindig thing, but East Village Stylee! It takes many moments of listening to realize that it�s best counted in 8/4, and by then it�s kicked into a throbbing straight-time chorus. The instrumental bridge then rocks you to oblivion. That�s it, just under three minutes of one long verse, a chorus, repeated with different lyrics, and a brief bridge outta there.

The Walkmen� Pictures Of Us, [8 Songs 12� EP #1]

A few shards of feedback, a couple beats of driving drum accompanied by peanut-gallery keyboards, and, wham, the vocal hits: �Pictures of us, in the Spring. We were so young, I was still, I was still, scattered in love, on the ground, in a heap�It doesn�t matter�� This song takes call and response to a new pasty level of angst, switching off rhythms and leads every four bars, and pounding away like few Walkmen songs do. There�s plenty of ambience here, but it�s all raging and astatic, bursting through the wall of kineticism as they rarely do on record. I�ve seen them do it as an encore starter�is that Animal on the drums, in a sweater-vest?

The Walkmen� It�s A Crime That I Complain, [8 Songs 12� EP #2]

An archetypal Walkmen drunk song, the abridged lyrics are �I�ve grown accustomed to you�the way you speak. It�s a crime that I complain. Sometimes I exude thinking of times I�ve passed in some useless crowd. Maybe I�ve beat it; perhaps I�ve just got bored. Ohhhoh� Maybe conversation could care anymore. Now and then I get drunk to hell. I wake up sick and I hate myself. It�s a crime that I complain. I don�t mind the quiet, (aaaaah-aaaooaahh, mixed in throughout) if talking�s such a drag, forget it forget it�. By the time you figure out those lyrics with the help of the headphones, you�ve both sobered up and realized that no-one likely got that phrasing out while drunk. I�d guess it�s expressive of a real feeling, but a bit practiced for delivery. Plod plod plod plod, intro revised into outro as a slow, agonizing build to extended drum-roll guitar-tremolo finish–mine has the stylus lifting, yeay!

[visit the website here, buy one of those EPs here, read Joe Panzner�s Stylus review here]

Goblin� Suspiria

An eerie, galloping prog lullaby, Goblin�s title theme from Dario Argento�s 1977 highly stylized, surreal tale of a German ballet school-cum-vaguely satanic temple/haunted house is often regarded as the prime slice of Italian horror movie music from one of the genre�s most prolific contributors (the band worked on many of Argento�s movies, and, most famously, 1978�s Dawn of the Dead). Goblin�s marriage of whispers, ambient sounds, slimy synthesizers, and some backseat guitar shredding lends Suspiria much of its tense, haunting atmosphere, and by some accounts, Argento had played the soundtrack during the film (at high volumes) to keep the cast properly unnerved.

[buy it here]

Fabio Frizzi� Main Theme from �Zombie�

Lucio Fulci�s 1979 quasi-sequel to George Romero�s Dawn of the Dead, here about an American woman in search of her doctor-father and a British journalist travel to an island of the Antilles populated by zombies, whose existence has a tenuous, yet attractive relationship to the local practice of voodoo, features a great Fabio Frizzi thudding synth-junk-calypso theme which surfaces and resurfaces throughout the film to a point of mind-numbing ominousness, serving as a march tune for the flesh-eating inhabitants. The layering of synths and blossoming of the melody reflects perfectly the feeling of the movie: less of a shocker, and more of a hypnotizing, building dread. This movie houses not only a beautiful scene of a zombie mournfully sucking on gore in silence (save the hushed slurping), but a stuntman/underwater zombie slowly carrying on a battle-dance with a Real. Live. Shark.

[buy it here]

Ennio Morricone� Piume di Cristallo, from �L’Uccello dalle piume di cristallo� (The Bird with the Crystal Plumage)

This is from one of Dario Argento�s earlier (1969) movies, more in the nuanced �giallo,� or thriller style (giallo, for yellow, the color of many of the similarly themed Italian paperbacks of time). Appropriately, the music is slightly less overt; a lilting melody overlaid with eerie wind chimes turns to a sort of rustic folk-noir with some beautiful vocal counterpoint. Interesting, in part because Morricone is so often associated with westerns when, in fact, he had a fair amount of experience with this kind of music/film.

[buy it here]

There was nothing during my time in college that would make me turn off a station faster on my car radio than to hear �Jesus!� blaring out. It�s a shame, too, because they had one of the most vibrant five seconds of rock music that I could bear to hear each time I hit the seek button before realizing where I had landed. In any case, here are three tracks that are about religion that don�t make me immediately turn away without even giving it a chance.

CJ Bolland� The Prophet

There�s an enormous tradition of dance music mixing with religion. Dance music being a religion, even. I remember reading a paper while in college, in fact, that (if I remember correctly) talked about how because gay black men were not welcome within their home churches after coming out, would substitute the club for their religion (with the DJ acting as preacher). While this isn�t my favorite track of all-time, I think it�s a good one and representative of the idea.

[visit the official website here, buy stuff here]

The Trees� Psalm 45

But don�t get yet: the last two tracks today are some of my absolute favorites (whether Christ is involved or not). I should mention immediately about the Trees that it is scheduled to be reissued in a four(!) disc-set sometime in the future on Timothy Renner�s Some Dark Holler label. As you can hear the record crackles on this, it needs it. And I�m sure Renner will do a stunning job.

In any case, The Trees were a strange band that combined lyrics from the Bible with Eastern instrumentation. Sounding like Fairport Convention meeting the Maharishi with a little dash of The King James thrown in, The Trees were original freak-folksters.

[visit the Some Dark Holler website here, read a review here]

Lift to Experience� Falling From Cloud Nine

It�s hardly a surprise that Lift To Experience broke up after their debut album. That album was a concept double album in which Texas was the center of the apocalypse. Lift to Experience make a deal with God to help usher it in�in exchange for a hit record. I think I have that right. Anyway, this song is one of the most straight-forward on the record. Many of the tracks tend to meander, both furthering the narrative and delivering some crushing rock along the way. Couple this with some ridiculous pen and pixel cover art and it�s a no-brainer to say that this is easily my favorite record released in 2001.

[visit Lift to Experience’s website here, buy The Texas Jerusalem Crossroads here]