Stylus contributor Peter Chambers presents a mix of electronic music…

Nativespeaker - dysappearance

Tracklist
01: Louderbach - For Lack of a Better Solution [buy]
02: DJ Koze - Madame Zifandl [buy]
03: Sleeparchive - Image Photometer [buy]
04: Studio 1 - Gold [buy]
05: Auch - Tomorrow Goodbye (Villalobos mix) [buy]
06: NSI - Clara Ghavami (extended) [buy]
07: Efdemin - Post Script Blues [buy]
08: Moodymann - Dem Young Sconies [buy]
09: Plastikman - Hypokondriak [buy]
10: Pansonic - Pyokki Halko [buy]
11: Claro Intelecto - New Dawn [buy]
12: Nike.Bordom - Unfinished Symphony [buy]
13: Bj�rk - Headphones (� mix) [buy]

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What happened to bands who just had fun? Bands who tailor made songs for driving around in your pick-up with the windows down without looking like a redneck? The type of band that, despite success, never got to the point where they felt it necessary to speak of social issues or make a double album, or worse, a concept album. Bands that brought the rock in a way that didn�t seem like a job, but rather a necessity; an itch they couldn�t quite scratch, and the only way to sate it was to play hard; bands that you could get drunk and sing along to?

Exhibit A: the Georgia Satellites; hailing from Atlanta, the group achieved momentary success with the novelty hit �Keep Your Hands to Yourself,� and were soon written off as a kitsch act; not fitting in with the synth-based acts and hair bands of 1986. They were not of their time, a band who borrowed heavily from country and the blues based stylings of the Rod Stewart-fronted group the Faces vying for mainstream success must have seemed like a joke to MTV producers who showed the humorous video until the joke just wasn�t funny anymore. But the Satellites clearly weren�t fazed and soldiered on, making some of their best music even after sales plummeted. They went on to make more rock n� roll in the style of the Faces, a band to whom the Satellites could be named the spiritual successors, even copping the style of the early Faces-backed Rod Stewart solo records with the acoustic �Another Chance,� the best song that Ronnie Lane and Ron Wood never wrote.

And like the Faces, they were at the heart of it, an extremely good bar band. Some people have negative connotations to the phrase �bar band� but I never have. I consider the Stones and E-Street Band to be bar bands of the highest caliber, the Faces even more so, and Georgia Satellites fit right in line with that dynasty. Of course, the kind of bar these guys play at I have never been to, but would love to visit (I�m guessing it�s on Beale Street). This becomes clear to the listener when one sees what the Satellites do with their cover songs. Frontman Dan Baird was a top-notch songwriter, but he was an even better arranger; turning Ringo Starr�s �Don�t Pass Me By� from a tepid attempt at a country number into a bonafide barroom rocker. But the Satellites moved into the transcendent realm with their medley of the John Fogerty tunes �Almost Saturday Night/Rockin� All Over the World,� making, for my money, one of the best and most rockin� Saturday night barroom sing-a-longs ever. Why the Black Crowes hit it big and these guys are living off royalties from various Southern Rock compilations is a mystery.

So buy all their records (especially Open All Night), grab a bunch of friends and a cooler of cheap light beer, drive out to the middle of nowhere, crank it all the way up and prepare to have laryngitis Monday morning. It�s the only way to get the full effect of the Georgia Satellites.

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When you try and call attention to a group called Band Marino, there�s little that can stop the inevitable association with the far-more recognizable name of Gnarls Barkley. Yet aside from the clever wordplay referencing our modern-day sports figures, very little common ground can be found between the likes of last year�s St. Elsewhere creators and this Orlando-based quintet. By comparison, if the synthesized, soul-driven sound of Cee-Lo Green and Danger Mouse is the representative equivalent of a loving, musical marriage, consider Band Marino�s vagabond minstrels the abandoned bastards of a passionate one-night stand.

Comprised of singer/songwriter Nathan Bond, multi-instrumentalist Jonathan Nee, bassists Abe Couch, guitarist Jesse Adams, and drummer Dylon York, this young indie-rock ensemble successfully project a traditionalist, folk culture influence within their debut effort, The Beast and the Sea. Underneath the tent of their own unique gypsy/carnival sound, the boys of Band Marino create an impression of doing something slightly stupid or illegal, but still manage to make you consider joining their nefarious activities. For example, on the standout track, �Every Time I Make a Girl Cry I Know I�ve Done My Job,� Bond playfully presents himself as a conscience-deprived good-for-nothing. But just as you can picture the empty bottles of alcohol fall over from his swaggering guitar strumming, for all his middle finger acknowledgements�cursing the food on his plate and the clothes on his back�the song itself is honest, giving it a level of likeability that sneaks by your better judgment.

Coming across as a sobering afterthought, �Feel It in the Air,� serves as an excellent, follow-up track. Rustic in its initial melody, with an acoustic guitar and banjo tethering it all together, it crosses into a slow-burning electric hook. Bond meanwhile sings his words as if in a trance. Lines such as �questions hang in side the air before us / We�ll take a day to understand� come through with a Thom Yorke warble. Eventually allowing the rest of the group an appropriate amount of room, it�s halfway through that the song finds its greater stride. No longer tip-toeing around its own sentimental ambiguity, the band stomps out its exit with a fitting guitar solo.

One of Band Marino�s best closing remarks come with the storytelling of �Arlee Hayes,� a �sad character� who unwisely chooses to sail to war and leave his love behind. As mandolins mingle with a trudging electric guitar, Bond�s fictional persona wrestles with an outcome he can�t avoid. The true tragedy of the song, however, occurs when Bond makes reference to the album�s title. Amidst the cowboy-western freak-outs, he points out that there is a beast waiting in the sea for Arlee Hayes. Intentional or not, Bond creates a symbol for the mistakes we wish we could take back; and we�re just hoping our ship doesn�t sink.

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Stylus contributor Andrew Spaulding connects the dots…

Tracklist
01: Luigi Russolo - Risveglio Di Una Citta [buy]
02: Igor Stravinsky - The Rite of Spring: The Sacrificial Dance [buy]
03: Schoenberg - Quatuor A Cordes II in f#, Op. 10: II. Sehr Rasch (Tres Rapide) [buy]
04: John Cage - The Perilous Night [buy]
05: La Monte Young - The Well Tuned Piano (excerpt) [buy]
06: Spacemen 3 - An Evening of Contemporary Sitar Music (excerpt) [buy]

So you say Bill Callahan�s dropping the Smog moniker and beginning to use his real name? Strange. Yeah, I guess it is kind of a big deal. Oh. What do I think? Well, I don�t think much of it at all. I come from a land, one decade past, utterly awash in Red Apples, and I refuse to leave home.

Why would I? It�s unfathomable to imagine abandoning the heartbreaking sincerity of a man crooning:

Most of my fantasies are to be of use
To be of use
To be of some hard
Simple
Undeniable use

And while it�s the same man, biologically, urging that I climb aboard the new/real-name bandwagon, the similarities between his past and present self stop there. Smog�s �To Be Of Use� is a simple, steady melody in an uncontrollably hectic world; there�s nothing the song�s singer fears so much as being a flashlight at night in the middle of downtown Tokyo, and I don�t have it in me to leave him behind now, relegated to obscurity and occasional namedropping from arrogant hipsters thirty years hence.

How often does a musician assault an unsuspecting listener by sonically placing a double-sided mirror less than one foot away? Smog�s words conjure my reflection as well as they exhibit his own. I�m as naked as he is, and I hate him for this indecent exposure (mine, not his). I gag on the bittersweet realization of our mutual eagerness. I am perplexed by my sudden nudity. I am drugged and wondering how I got here.

How dare this man say so much by saying so little and drag me to alive? More importantly, however, how can I thank him?

I want to capture this moment, this rare opportunity to pinpoint an instance in an artist�s repertoire and say, �This is why I love his music.� Most cameras would be useless since lenses tend to blush and blur at such proximity (I haven�t any macro lenses or extension tubes at my disposal). And so, as the song slides into the coming day, I�m refusing to call Woke on a Whaleheart the upcoming Bill Callahan album. I�m sticking to a name.

Smog.

It�s the best way I can think to be of use.

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The recently departed Jean Baudrillard once wrote, �television knows no night. It is perpetual day. TV embodies our fear of the dark, of night, of the other side of things.� Night falls, and televisions go on, the blue light burning away our fears; night falls, and the volume rises. Nowhere, Baudrillard suggests, is this endless daylight more visible than in our cities: air-conditioned, eternally lit banks of buildings contain crowds and crowds of children, alone and afraid of the dark.

Xiu Xiu has seen this city and lived to tell about it: as one might expect from a band founded in Southern California, their songs tend towards the cinematic, both in the lavishly violent sense of a Hollywood blockbuster, and in the way a chilly, empty movie theater can feel apocalyptically lonely. �Suha,� from 2002�s Knife Play, bridges these brutal extremes. Singer-songwriter Jamie Stewart tends towards melodrama�by the end of the song, he�s moaning, �My name is Suha / I�m twenty-five years old / I�m going to hump a cop��and these indulgences sound tinny and false, weightless intelligences gathered from a �Law & Order� rerun. But when Stewart soars, he soars: after a moment of static fuzz, the song sweeps towards the chorus. �I hate the desert,� Stewart states, and you know what he hates is being deserted.

On their 2005 debut album, The Physics of Meaning took on that other big city, and �Manhattan Is an Island� is one of the loveliest, most forlorn portraits of urban discontent to date. The song is a flatline, its monotonous hum recalling the drone of an elevator, or the long, pale hallways of an apartment building. When Daniel Hart sings, �I was reborn a river / Drifting out to sea,� you see the gray East River, that much-maligned tidal strait whose islets were once home to the city�s insane asylums. The river�s deadly whirlpools earned it the name Hell Gate, and this macabre history permeates its way into �Manhattan Is an Island.� The song is almost deadly in its lonesomeness, yet Hart�s lyrics give way to hope. When he sings, �city�s holding out for a hero / I don�t want to fall out of love,� he reminds us that things weren�t always so dismal. The name Hell Gate, after all, derives from the Dutch word Helegat, which means �bright passage.� The city�s bright all night, it�s true, but sometimes that light is real, or at least we dream it is.

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My penchant for amassing hordes of cover songs, the deadliest of nostalgias, has gotten the best me. In search of repeat gratification, or at least a variation on it, I�d sift through genre after genre for that song. Somewhere along the line my misdirected worships became iconoclasm: after my tenth serving of said song and somewhere in the middle of the eleventh comes the earth-shattering, appendix-bursting realization I�ve been listening to the wrong one. Monuments are torn down, faces scratched off, souvenirs are sold next to the bathroom�someone has gone all Nietzsche on my songwriter and killed God.

Ironic thing is there�s only two versions of �Tall Trees in Georgia,� at least that I can find. The original was recorded by folkstress Buffy Sainte-Marie for I�m Gonna Be a Country Girl Again. It�s amazing; fragile and quivering, pocketed punches behind her soaring vibrato. But sometimes the guitar charges a little too hard, shoves the needle-sharp dynamics askew. Buffy�s voice is too vital, the vibrato too shrill, her voice too stern. Mind you, this is all in retrospect.

Eva Cassidy�s �Tall Trees in Georgia,� off her Live at Blues Alley, was probably sold at Starbucks once (which is to say, scoff-inducing in passing, instantly endearing upon listening). Her blushing introduction about how she�s loved the song since childhood, how she�s wanted to sing it for so long, threatens to derail it�an oncoming hand-in-forehead moment as someone stumbles through their adoration and worship. But then she starts singing and the room dissolves. It�s about losing love, trying desperately to get it back, and finding out everything has changed. Her voice is cosmic, soaring to cathedral highs, panning low, every note gossamer and lost. The guitar paces languidly below her, impossibly prudent, and immaterial as the rest. And where love songs are about empathy, your pain spilling into someone else�s, Cassidy can�t have it. She�s stuck meditating on the forever of action�and inaction. She�s a relic to her regrets, trapped by tall trees on one end and eternity on the other.

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Stylus editor Todd Burns presents a mini-mix of electronic music…

Tracklist
01: Faze Action - In the Trees (Carl Craig C2 Remix) [buy]
02: Riton - Hammer of Thor [buy]
03: Beck - Cellphone’s Dead (Villalobos Entlebuch Mix) [buy]
04: DJ T - Lucky Bastard [buy]
05: MIA - Swoon [buy]
06: Daso - Thujon [buy]
07: Popnoname - No Doubt [buy]

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2006 is still in the early stages of decomposition, and I�m still itching to make a Top Ten metal albums� list. Problem is, I can�t think of enough releases from last year that deserve to be on it. Not an issue, perhaps, for the lover of technical musicianship, collage aesthetic, and/or fashionable inflection of noise. But I need the old ways; the 4/4 gallop and twang, the turbine-like power-chord-cycles, the symmetry, the fist-clenching choruses based on progressions officially fixed in steel since 1979. Not just to hold on to the past, but to partake in its rebirth, keep it perpetually bursting out of the present�s chest cavity� as it were.

�Traditional metal� appears to have been on the rise in 2006, but most of it was comically bad, or just unremarkable for a variety of reasons. Hipsters and neo-hardcore kids getting attuned to the retro-metal trend of several years ago, outfitting it with new bad haircuts and putrid misuse of irony. A legion of very young denim-vested thrashers suddenly appearing as if by magic, earnestly recreating an idealized version of underground metal 1987, perhaps inspired by the bad-ass with the Slayer t-shirt in �Saved by the Bell� reruns. The past is indeed alive, and composting in very strange, smelly ways on TV, in wallets, in design studios.

However, a few bands have done the unthinkable; they�ve curdled sentimentality into venomous, hard-driving music that can still inspire movement. �Forward mass retain� to quote one deranged fan�s insight into the nature of heavy speed. Praise the gods, there�s still steel worth proselytizing about.

Midnight is a band from Ohio, composed of one guy named Athenar, plus his posse of Midnight Mistresses. Some of the best hard rock songs wrought in the past several years can be found on the Midnight retrospective CD, Complete and Total F@#cking Midnight. The back cover features the same pentagram design as the first Bathory, the original one-man metal project. Sounds to me like Athenar owes more to Venom, Motorhead, Hellhammer, and some of the tougher moments of early 80s Judas Priest, but that�s a non-issue. His metal�s a fury of enraged Mongoloid vocals, punky rhythms, larger-than-life distorted guitars and some of the finest pentatonic, proto-shred solos in the kingdom. All the instrumental tones are very lo-fi but huge sounding, and the songs stick to simple formulae, delivered with a weird mix of total confidence and near-hysteria.

Sounds like the writing and recording processes are almost one-and-the-same for Midnight. You might call the results �gestural;� one guy utterly possessed by the power of rock, playing the first patterns skimmed from the surface of his mind, with what I estimate to be roughly a zillion percent conviction. It�s not as easy as it sounds. For one thing, a lesser guitar player/drummer could never make it. And Athenar�s level of confidence with the chosen song-format is also rare, indispensable for the Midnight spontaneity to work. In the face of current media-tech deluge, Midnight is an antagonistic new format for the spirit of pure heavy metal rock�n�roll, uninhibited by a detrimental excess of thought or leisure time in which to wonder, �hmmm, maybe this would sound better with poly-rhythms and an onomatopoeic bassoon?� Listen to �White Hot Fire,� know that the future and the past are one, and that it�s time for violence tonite.

Japan�s Terror Squad is another band that sounds as if it�s about to burst into flames from an excess of crazed enthusiasm. For a band whose only discernable influences are actually from 1987 (most notably Killing Technology by Voivod), they have an uncanny way of sounding at the forefront of contemporary heavy music, in danger of plain falling off the horizon line at times, if the truth be told. The �Squad has no problem mangling any notions of �good form,� only criteria being that they perform instrumentally challenging thrash-based metal with an extremely live sound (i.e. retention of errors, few �unrealistic� production values or theatrical elements). Compared to the Midnight CD, Terror Squad�s Chaosdragon Rising is very modern-sounding in its use of precise syncopated rhythms, complex song structures, dissonant chords, atonal noise, hyperactive shredding, a saxophone, basically everything that had critics pooping themselves over certain �noisecore� acts a few years ago.

The guitar player, Lord of Nightmare, is responsible for most of Terror Squad�s references to the past, and most other things anomalous and breathtaking in their music. He plays a lot of high-pitched, one-finger power chords of the type found in Motorhead�s classic material, drops in melodies from classic rock radio and ugly diminished Voivod-isms in equal measure, and solos just like nothing on Earth, with bum notes left in for character. In �We Bite (Requiem for Restless Souls),� vocalist Sonicriot capitalizes on the element of surprise, illustrating just how effective relentless screaming can be, sans the use of any prefigured �scary� or �angry� typecast. The song is a microcosm for the vast tracts of form crested upon by this band�s intensity, going from beat �em up style-speedcore to bleats of avant-noise in the Boredoms vein, diminishing to a whisper then erupting into anthemic arena rock, replete with enervating and undoubtedly sincere catch phrases, and a blitz of shred guitar. Never forget, your fire burn�

Catch phrases like that never sound as good in type, which brings us to Dawnbringer. Anybody familiar with sole composer Chris Black�s music journalism knows that he�s a great writer, and there�s a singular literary bent to Dawnbringer�s new album, In Sickness and In Dreams. To my knowledge, the album is an unprecedented exercise in form. 14 short song-sketches blending seamlessly into one dark image. 24 minutes, 34 seconds of continuous narrative sound. There�s a lot more continuity here than the average �A.D.D.-core� fan might enjoy. Funny though, that Black�s use of repetitive patterns, the �oompa-oompa� drumbeat and variations on The Metal Chord Sequence (non-initiates, think the �Eye of the Tiger� intro), channels more densely packed information than any tech-core doodle within earshot. I hear the whole thing was conceived as sheet music, which is evident from the ornate punctuation binding each musical phrase to the whole.

Sonically the album is like a well-engineered digital home demo, a good depiction of events but rarely arresting in itself. Instrumental performances are always subordinate to composition. One gets the sense that this is an album to �read� as much as listen to, for the lyrical narrative, and also in the sense that listening can be a form of reading, interpreting sound patterns from different contexts to reconstruct a story. Dawnbringer meets with a fair amount of indifference, but to a small circle, the name is practically shorthand for �the best modern metal.�

The ideal listener grew up on a specific blend of sub-genres, from which Dawnbringer emerges as a knot of cultivated idiosyncrasies. Depending in your fluency in Iron Maiden, NWOBHM, 80s German speed, the melodic extremes of early-mid 90s Scandinavia, the minimalist side of contemporary USBM, and the peculiarities of latter day Motorhead and Riot, each familiar trope and bit of punctuation can stand for a variable amount of symbolic worth. The content of In Sickness and In Dreams can increase by powers of ten, it can twist into life and act out any number of weird Modernist novella plots centered on betrayal, isolation, longing, and dread. Conversely the album can sound underdeveloped and easily dismissed, but I assure you, that�s your own fault. This is a vessel for hellish concentration manifested into epic form that�s worlds apart from any contemporary heavy music product. No single track can do justice to the whole, but �Under No Flag� strikes close to the heart.

So heed my warning, before we reach the thick of carnage in 2007. The future�s already here, it sounds like �Overkill,� �Aces High,� and �Skald Au Satans Sol� burning down the runway for an ascent through blackened skies.

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Recently an acquaintance asked me to explain Japcore, which I considered a request akin to asking an explanation of cloud or tree. I mumbled something about the Stalin and had no idea what else to say except that a bunch of disenchanted Japanese musicians in the 1980s decided to yell about the problems with a capitalist society as well as other societal flaws. The blank stare on his face alerted me to a job poorly done. But, honestly, what can one say about Japcore? It isn�t like being asked to explain how to search for online Prince albums when standard QWERTY keyboards don�t come equipped with a �Prince Symbol� key (which, if ever faced with such a question, I�d most likely walk away). Japcore is Japcore, for goodness sake: loud, angry, dirty, and fun.

I can only imagine what Reck, frontman for Japanese band Friction, had running through his head when he wrote �Crazy Dream.� My guess is something along the lines of �1-2-3-4. 1-2-3-4. Snare snare snare snare. Bang bang bang bang. Rock out!�

And while I have no idea what they�re saying aside from, of course, �crazy dream,� hearing Reck roll his r�s confirms my suspicion that, even if the song has the possibility of being rife with sociopolitical commentary, the band members are thoroughly enjoying themselves.

In 1979, Tsunematsu Masatoshi would go on to replace Lapsi, Friction�s original lead guitarist. However, Tsunematsu�s solo work, particularly on tracks such as �Do You Wanna Be My Doggg?!� is fantastic in its own right. Vocals jump in and out, dodging the spittle from crash-cymbal rants. Guitars gnash their teeth at a bassist ever ready for a fight. And, dear god, are those handclaps? Why yes, in fact, they are. And just when the absurdity of it all hits, the song ends with a sharp �hey!� as in, �Hey, who are you calling absurd? You�ll take these handclaps and you�ll like them, Ms. High and Mighty MP3 Blogger.�

To an American, Japcore is a matter of sensation; listening to it makes me feel like a toddler with a copy of Nashville Skyline. Something is clearly lost on me; the language barrier is great enough, I think, to the point of irony. Nevertheless, I�m still bouncing around the room, giddy enough on father�s shoulders to ignorantly clap my tiny hands along with Dylan�s �To Be Alone With You.�

Japcore�s just a grownup version.

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