WHITE RUSSIAN GALAXY
The Crimea
Tragedy Rocks [2004]
[Download] [Purchase]
WHICH ONE?
Steve Reid Ensemble
Spirit Walk [2005]
[Download] [Purchase]
TWO WORDS
Kanye West, Mos Def & Freeway
Spitkicker Collabos Vol. II [2005]
[Download]
NOUVEAU WESTERN
MC Solaar
Prose Combat [1994]
[Download] [Purchase]
There's not a whole lot going on at FMGT homebase lately, despite prolonged bouts of PS2 (you know I'm playing The Warriors every chance I get) and made-for-TV movies. I have more tests at the end of the week, and I'm keeping busy with work. Hunky dory, no?
This quartet of songs will put some hair on yer chest like there's no tomorrow. Even Ditka knows it. Dig right in.
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The Crimea are another mob of tuneful Limeys, with a sound reminscent a little of the Shins and other power-pop twenty-somethings. They've been around for a while under various names (The Crocketts) and, after floundering and getting dumped from British label V2 back in 2002, they consolidated their musical portfolio and emerged in their current form. Sure to be welcome between any hip youth's ears much as at yer grandmother's tea party, this quirky quintet is where today begins and yesterday ends. This is a catchy, infectious track opening their album "Tragedy Rocks", and believe me, if tragedy does indeed "rock", then consider the Crimea at the front of the queue.
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Next up, some bop-shuffle jazz, courtesy of the Steve Reid Ensemble. The erstwhile drummer, a Bronx-born, Swiss-based, wandering rhythm-maker, has rough-housed and set up shop with the jazz elite over his 40-year career -- Martha and the Vandellas, Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, Sun Ra, Fela Kuti, Miles Davis to name but a few.
His sound fuses the best of his brothers-in-arms, and is something to behold. "Spirit Walk" teams him up with another enviable roster: Russian keyboardist Boris Netsvetaev (chicken-shack B3 grooves and John Medeski imitator), hefty bassist John Edwards (I close my eyes, and I think John Pattitucci's in the room), a boisterous horn section in soprano Chuck Henderson and bass Tony Bevan, and Four Tet's Kieran Hebden anchors the sound with his electronic sensibilities.
The entire album is blast-yer-jaw-off good, and this is just a small taste of a superb release and a great continuation of Steve Reid's phenomenal career.
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Batting clean-up, a little rough-shod hip-hop from the Spitkicker imprint. Known for their compilation/mixtape series "The Next Spit", where MF Doom and Prince Paul have worked their DJ magic, the "Collabos" series could be the next big thing. CDs full of hip-hop wet-dream matchups is the name of the game; here, man-of-the-moment Kanye duels with Mos Def and Freeway over a funky, old-school-sounding beat. Textured with gospel chorus interludes and harmony, it's bound to get a little love from the FMGT crowd.
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Finally, perhaps one of my favourite MCs, the indomitable MC Solaar. Way back in FMGT infancy, I posted a track from this 1994 import "Solaar Power", and it's hard enough to pick the best song. Full of French/Senegalese flair, Solaar's rhymes are fluid, seductive, and float effortlessly over sultry, jazzy samples. "Nouveau Western", the first single from the album, takes a classic Serge Gainsbourg. It's a match made in heaven, and I'm opening the pearly gates.
Perhaps best known for appearances on Guru's Jazzmatazz project, as well as songs on the compilations Tommy Boy's "Planet Rap" and Island's "The Rebirth of Cool", MC Solaar is the perfect footnote to another solid day. Enjoy, back tomorrow.
3 comments:
mc solaar! my aunt bought me that album when I was a sophmore in high school because solaar had performed at the university where she works. i remember thinking i had the most diverse collection of hip-hop of all my friends because i had a french rapper. nouveau western: great song.
entirely unrelated note--- last night, saw a very small show that inspired me to write a review, so here it is:
band: great lake swimmers
venue: bottom of the hill, sf
review:
Barely There
Jonah Hall
The Great Lake Swimmers is one man tonight: Tony Dekker. Normally the frontman who likes to stand in the back, Tony has nobody and nothing to hide behind tonight. The quartet of swimmers who accompany his songs on the albums are gone. Standing on a stage, alone with his plugged-in acoustic guitar and his poetry, Tony Dekker has been burying his head to his chest, listening for the sounds that will tell him if his guitar is in tune or out. The crowd, or rather, smattering, appears reclusive, not the typical indie hipster folk that comprise the audience at typical San Francisco shows.
If you can call an unassuming climb of four side stage stairs and an unlocking of a guitar case an entrance, then we have had an entrance. Why this man is following a local foursome of poseur punk, complete with the requisite number of tattoos, silver studded belts, and the proper punch of raunchiness is a mystery to us. The only thing unique about this group was the fact that these poseur punks were still making music at their age. Aside from the six-foot tall, voluptuous, overly suggestive, to the point of being downright demanding, female bassist/lead poseur, the group is made up of men in the throes of their respective mid-life crises. The music is loud and without melody, and the minutes that their final few songs take up feel extremely wasted.
But now here is Tony. He is a hologram, flickering before our eyes. Here is his guitar, is it a Yamaha? His fingers appear delicate. He will be strumming and picking tonight, no swift movements. No plastic pick, just small fingers, counting time and placing a few chords delicately around the neck and body of the instrument, the show tonight is an unveiling. At first unsure, without expectation, but with truly pain-full shyness, the strumming begins. The chords change, the sound carries, the foundation is set, and the poetry begins.
The poetry struggles up out of the mouth of the songwriter, the guitar, the vocal chords, the melody of the song, all vehicles for these broken-down words. We hear of nature, of earth, of the elements, of all things invisible and beaten-down, of the universe that lies within a crack in the wall. The animals of the world find theirs. This is about the struggle to be heard. Among the chaos, the grand sweep of sub-atomic particles and impossibly placid water. This is an acknowledgment of the insignificance of humans. We are each a grain of sand, swept soundlessly from one end of the earth to the other. Struggling to be heard, fighting to come out.
Tony is not comfortable up there, ten feet away. He has pulled himself, forced himself, coaxed himself up onto this stage. It is the perfect way, the only way, for these words to come out and achieve this harmony in the dimly lit intimacy at the bottom of this hill. Crystalline. Unadorned. Wonder, beauty, these words get near what is happening here.
We are glimpsing a shooting star, a solar eclipse, a hummingbird, a beached whale. We are walking, alone and together, deep in the woods, tumbling over tree roots and brush, and suddenly, miraculously, a doe pops out from around the bend. And the doe slowly rotates its head toward us inquisitive, alive. The doe blinks. The music floats down and we want to let this artist--that’s what this is: art—know that we are inside of his web. We clap thunderously, the thirty or so of us, we shout and the shout seems odd, the music so delicately beautiful, so haunting, so spare, it is odd that we shout, but we shout because we want to show something. We want to say thank you. And we do.
The sunken cheeks, the fuzzy chin, the constricted throat, the sustaining croon. Nine songs. Forty minutes. Transcendence.
Jonah --
I've been away for a few days, but seriously, top-notch review.
Tell me more about this guy -- what has he released? I want more!
Excellent writing.
Great Lake Swimmers are great. Both their full-lengths are fantastic. You can't go wrong. Also, Love the Ditka picture. Go Bears!
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