Review: Ojos de Brujo, Techari Live

Ojos de Brujo are a large band from Barcelona that perform a combination of nuevo flamenco, Gypsy, Indian, African, Caribbean, hip hop, rap, and more that I find utterly intoxicating.  Not only do they make music that I could, and often do, listen to all day, they completely control the packaging and production of their music on their own record label.  Rather than release CDs designed to squeeze every last dime out of the buying public they put out lavish productions that reflect their love of the music they make and their desire to share that music in as pleasurable a way as possible with the rest of us.  I love this band.

Following 1999’s Vengue and 2002’s Bari, Ojos de Brujo released their third album of new material, Techari, in 2006.  On December 22nd of the same year they performed the material from the album along with some new tunes at a gig in their home town of Barcelona.  Techari Live presents that concert in two formats, a CD and a DVD.  Although I very much enjoy the CD, I find it the less satisfying of the two.  As often happens in live performance a number of the songs from Techari are played at slightly faster tempos than they are on the studio album which results in the loss of some of the lilt and sway that can make Ojos de Brujo’s music so captivating.  Also, the intensity and power of a live performance from a nine member band augmented by two flamenco dancers and innumerable guests blasts away some of the nuance and subtelty that is present on the studio recordings.  Having said that, the live gig is expertly recorded and mixed so that all of those musical voices can be clearly heard and distinguished.  It’s a masterful recording.  And the band . . .  God in heaven, the band is amazing.

Watching the band perform can greatly enhance one’s appreciation and enjoyment of this music.  There are a lot of musicians working here, they are playing rhythms, counter rhythms, cross rhythms and polyrhythms that are dizzying in their complexity, and all of these guys can count.  The group is so tight they are beyond belief.  They’re playing within rhythmic structures that are so complex and so fast they’re almost impossible to figure out and yet the band will stop, turn and shift gears on a razor’s edge.  Being able to watch them is a great help in keeping track of who is playing what and in separating out the different rhythmic strands.  As if two percussion players, a drummer, a turntablist, and two flamenco guitarists all playing different rhythmic lines weren’t enough the band adds a pair of flamenco dancers for even more rhythmic goodness.  They do one number where spitfire rapper Maxwell Wright and flamenco dancer Susi Medina carry out a vocal-foot percussion dialogue that begins with them trading eights and shifts to trading fours and then twos at a speed and complexity that has to be seen and heard to be believed.  Another highlight is the duet between Ojos de Brujo’s spectacular vocalist Marina Abad and guest vocalist Martirio on “Todo Tiende”.  Those are two great moments but there are many, many more.  Time after time this band will stop you dead in your tracks and leave you awestruck.  These guys can really play.

Although the CD and DVD contain the same songs (for the most part, there are a couple of extra studio tracks on the CD) the sequencing is different on each which is a nice touch because they provide different listening experiences.  The DVD features surround sound but it is not recorded in either DVD-Audio or SACD.  In addition the DVD has a documentary on the making of “Techari”, a short on putting the gig together, and a collection of the videos they made for tunes on the album including the terrific video for “Sultanas de Merkaillo”.

As can be heard on the Barcelona Zona Bastarda compilation, Barcelona is currently the home of an exceptionally vibrant and creative music scene and Ojos de Brujo is one of its leaders.  They are are an extraordinary band that has put out one excellent album after another.  Techari Live is no exception and by also providing a visual record of the concert on DVD Ojos de Brujo gives us another way to enjoy their joy-infused and celebratory music.  Highly recommended.

Review: The Heliocentrics, Out There

Some CDs stay “In the Mix” list for a long time because I have to force myself to listen to them enough times to give them a fair review.  Others stay in the mix because we’re enjoying them so much we just can’t get them out of rotation.  “Out There” is of the second kind.  It’s a terrific disc.

The Heliocentrics are an eight piece band that sound like they’re led by drummer Malcolm Catto.  The music on “Out There” is instrumental with occasional brief spoken passages.  The album is supposed to capture some kind of trip into the cosmos and back - you know, out there - but the overarching structure is relatively unimportant to enjoyment of the album.  There is no simple way to describe the music in terms of genre because there really is no genre that captures it.  On “Out There” the Heliocentrics combine elements of funk, big band jazz, free jazz, fusion, psychedelia, Middle Eastern music and electronica into a mix that is so rich and varied and so well played that considerations of genre seem beside the point.  The album contains 20 tracks ranging from 0:16 to 5:26.  You never know what’s coming next but the arrangements are so adept and the band is so solidly synched on groove that even the more abstract and out there passages can be easily enjoyed by listeners who are unfamiliar, or perhaps uncomfortable, with free jazz.  There’s so much going on across this CD that you can listen to it every day for weeks and still pick up something new.

If the album has a weakness it’s that the relatively short running time for most of the tracks doesn’t give the band an opportunity to stretch out and examine the music a bit more.  More than a few moments go by that could serve as the basis for extended passages of exploration.  Of course “Out There” would then be more of a jazz album than an I-don’t-know-what-to-call-it album.  Maybe it’s better the way it is.

“Out There” is the Heliocentrics only album and there’s not much info out there about them.  The album may be a one-off from a group of studio musicians.  I sincerely hope not because if these guys can continue to make music like this, I’ll buy everything they put out on sight.  If they are a one shot and it sounds like this is the kind of music you might like, get the CD quick because it may not be easy to find in the future.  Sometimes you hear a CD and know you’re going to be pulling it out of the rack periodicaly for years to come.  In our house this is one of those CDs.   Recommended.

Review: The Blakes, The Blakes

The Blakes are a trio composed of brothers Garnet (vocals, guitar) and Snow (vocals, bass) Keim and Bob Husak (drums).  They sound like what they are – three guys who’ve spent a lot of time on the road without money behind them who like to get laid.  “The Blakes” is their first album.

The CD opens with “Two Times” a down and dirty rock song yowled with the lazy malevolence of a snotty teenager who doesn’t give a fuck what you think and knows your daughter will do whatever he wants because he’s cool and you suck.  Every parent’s nightmare.  If this was all The Blakes were about it would get old fast but the band keeps changing it up while keeping the focus squarely on rock.  “Modern Man” sounds so much like an “Exile on Main St.” era Stones track that Mick Jagger could sue for copyright infringement.  The main difference is that The Blakes sound more dangerous than The Stones have for several decades.  There’s more than a hint of British Invasion style rock running throughout “The Blakes” but the band rarely sounds like they’re simply copying the older style.  It’s an influence, not a model.

The Blakes are the kind of band that is becoming harder to find as the years roll by.  As rock ages, and it’s old now, the billions spent and made and the decades of image marketing and have made it more and more difficult to just play rock pure and simple.  The Blakes pull it off.  They don’t sound like they’re trying to fit into some currently popular variant of rock and, with the exception of “Modern Man”, they don’t sound like they’re trying to be a band like (fill in classic rock band here).  They’re a basic rock band that knows how to kick ass.  No gimmicks, that’s it.  If that sounds like your thing, give these guys a listen

Review: Connie Price and the Keystones, Tell Me Something

Good music, odd CD. Connie Price is the studio name of producer and multi-instumentalist Dan Ubick. When they first started to record, the Keystones were primarily Ubick and trumpet player Todd M. Simon with Ubick playing most of the instruments. On “Tell Me Something”, the band’s second full length CD, the Keystones are a full band of session musicians with Ubick restricting himself to drums, percussion and electric guitars.

“Tell Me Something”, like Galactic’s recent CD “From the Corner to the Block“, makes hip-hop out of a variety of MCs combined with musicians playing instruments rather than producers constucting music tracks out of samples. The music on “Tell Me Something” is strongly funk and R&B influenced, the arrangements are solid, and the band is tight. These guys could have stepped out on stage in a Soul Review in the ’70s and knocked the sudience dead. With Ubick focusing on drums, the Keystones, like Galactic, are drum oriented with clattering funk rhythms prominently anchoring the songs. This works well with MC driven music that puts the vocals up front. With an array of keyboards, a full horn section and a string quartet the Keystones provide a much fuller sound than Galactic who are doing it all with five guys. Also, Galactic shoots more for a live production of the multi-sound, layered sample approach to hip hop while the Keystones are focused more on soul-review style band arrangements. Both methods are successful in their different ways.

I found the MCs the weakest aspect of “Tell Me Something”. The vocals range from rhythmic rapid fire word rhyming to singing. For the most part it’s the same old same old which results in the music being much more intriguing than the vocals. Set against the more typical background of sampled and constructed beats the vocals might work better but when supported by these inventive and well played arrangements they come across as ordinary and uninteresting. You keep wanting the MCs to step up to the level of the musicians, or, if they can’t, to get out of the way.

What’s odd about the CD is that it includes two discs, the one I’ve described and a second that presents the same program with the vocals stripped out. Even though all of the tracks except two were arranged to support the MCs, which holds the horn section in particular in check, most of these songs are much more interesting to listen to without the vocals. The instrumental disc is the one we end up listening to most of the time. Why would the band give us the music-only CD in addition to the regular one? My first thought was that they are justifiably proud of the music and want the audience to hear it. But the audience can hear it as it was meant to be played on the vocal CD. It’s hard to avoid the suspicion that the band thought the vocals were more of a hinderance than a help and released the music-only disc so the audience could appreciate the band without the distraction of the vocals.

Whatever the reason for releasing two discs, the result is the best of both worlds for the listener. If you like the work being done by the MCs, it’s there for you to enjoy; if you think the arrangements and musicianship sound better when heard alone, you can listen to them with the vocals taken out. “Tell Me Something” works either way and can be enjoyed by listeners who like soul reviews, hip hop, or a combination of the two. It’s all good.

Review: Jill Scott, The Real Thing Words and Sounds Vol. 3

Jill Scott is a talented woman who has been attracting a good deal of critical paise for her singing, songwriting and acting since her first album “Who Is Jill Scott? Words and Sounds Vol. 1″ was released in 2000.  Her third album in the series, “The Real Thing” has received more than its share of positive reviews.  I’m afraid I’m not hearing it.

“The Real Thing” is a collection of songs that sound less like an attempt to make music than a machine tooled product designed to fill the music slot in the lives of people who define themselves in terms of the brands of the clothes and shoes they wear, the handbags they carry, and the cosmetics they use.  “The Real Thing” sounds like a lifestyle accoutrement for the people whose understanding of human relationships comes from Oprah and Dr. Phil.  Musicianship and arrangments are pro-tooled settings for Scott’s often breathy and dramatically emotional sung / spoken lyrics.  It’s like something an ad agency whips up as auditory background for the product in a TV ad.

I’m clearly deaf to whatever charms “The Real Thing” might possess and just as clearly am not part of the audience the album was manufactured for.  If it sounds like you are part of this audience, the positive reviews the album has received in the music press are more likely to capture what you hear on the CD.  However, if you find that your tastes in music are more or less in agreement with mine, especially with regard to female vocalists like Annie Lennox, Alice Smith, Sharon Jones, or Amy Winehouse, avoid “The Real Thing”.

Review: Minipop, A New Hope

Minipop are well named.  They’re a quartet out of San Francisco that writes small jewel-like dream pop songs that each have the sound of having been burnished to a fine sheen before they were released to the general public.  “A New Hope” is their debut album.

If you think dream pop is all about twee cutesy-poo, “A New Hope” may surprise you.  Lead singer and lyricist Tricia Kanne has a hint of little-girl fragility in her voice but it is fully offset by the adult heft of her lyrics.  Her opening “Oh Matthew, do you know what you do? / You give me bruises / Oh Matthew, I don’t know what to do” over Velvet Underground-like guitar chords on “Ask Me A Question” is spooky.  And it gets spookier when the song leads to the rousing hooked chorus of “I like the way you are” and you realize Minipop’s guitar and keyboard player’s first name is Matthew.  It’s a great tune. 

The rest of the band also belie the twee image of dream pop with strong drumming from Lauren Grubb, varied and at times fuzzed out rhythm guitar from Matthew Swanson and solid, driving bass from Nick Forte.  Sure, they do mid- and down-tempo numbers but they also do well structured pop rock.  They also do hooks well and many of the songs on “A New Hope” worm their way into your head only to come out later to entertain you when you’re away from your music platform.  Several times after “A New Hope” came into the house I turned to something else after a couple of listens only to go back to it again when I found their songs kept coming back to mind.  Kanne’s multitracked vocals are what will likely attract initial attention but once you start to pay attention to the rest of the band you realize this is a tight ensemble with solid chops that does not lack for songwriting craft.

“A New Hope” won’t be for everyone but if you like well-written and well-played pop rock with a dreamy edge give Minipop a listen. 

Review: Yeasayer, All Hour Cymbals

With their debut album ”All Hour Cymbals” Yeasayer has accomplished something most bands never achieve – an album that is both rooted in popular music forms and has a sound and approach that is so unique they don’t sound like anyone else.  Their songs are rich with American, Middle Eastern, Indian and African influences and end up sounding like music that is native to a culture that doesn’t exist.  If “All Hour Cymbals” is any evidence, it should.

Yeasayer is a quartet composed of Chris Keating (guitar, vocals), Anand Wilder (keyboards, vocals), Ira Wolf Tuton (bass), and Luke Fasano (drums).  Listening to “All Hour Cymbals” it sounds like all, or at least some, of them are also accomplished at the mixing board as the music often has layer on layer of instruments, percussion and choir-like harmonies or chants.  Middle Eastern instruments, African rhythms, tribal chants, and soaring choirs weave in and out of the music in a polyrhythmic stew.  With all of these bits and pieces it should be a jumbled mess but it’s not.  The melding of this wide variety of influences is exquisite and the soundscape is kept clean and uncluttered.  Independently of their skill as musicians and songwriters, Yeasayer are masterful at putting it all together.  With everything that’s going on in these songs, they still sound natural and easy.  Organic.  It’s this seeming naturalness that makes the music sound so rooted as if it comes from a culture that has existed for eons. 

Yeasayer has been attracting a good deal of favorable attention and it remains to be seen whether the band can keep it together under the flood of positive press.  For right now, “All Hour Cymbals” is a superb example of why getting stuck listening to the music that was popular when you were young is a big mistake.  If you’re not paying attention to what’s going on now, you’re going to miss CDs like “All Hour Cymbals” and that would be unfortunate.  Albums like this don’t come along very often but when they do they make listening to all the variations on a theme you’ve heard too many times before worth it.  “All Hour Cymbals” is the kind of album people go back to time and again over the years.  Strongly recommended.