CMJ Days 4 & 5: The Drowned in Sound Review

It’s a beautiful Friday afternoon in Brooklyn, and a few world-weary souls have headed over to the Knitting Factory for the Village Voice showcase. New Thrill Jockey signings Javelin play to a barely mobile crowd, even offering to do a Q&A if anyone gets bored. Thankfully, there’s no need, as their shrill vocals and glitchy electronica brighten up the small audience. Javelin are likely to make a far greater impact when they get a chance to play at a decent time to a bigger crowd.

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CMJ Days 1, 2 & 3: The Drowned in Sound Review

Our first stop is at Le Poisson Rouge to see Bradford Cox in his Atlas Sound guise. Cox straps on an acoustic guitar, occasional harmonica, and a plaid shirt, and is backed by fellow Atlanta residents The Selmanaires. Is Bradford trying out a few Neil Young moves? There’s certainly a huge Crazy Horse-style guitar solo that rips right through one of the songs in this Logos-centric set, although the downbeat tone positions him closer to Tonight’s the Night than Ragged Glory. It’s a shift away from Cox’s recorded work under the Atlas Sound moniker, which might be a surprise to anyone expecting straightforward replication, but actually provides a neat counterpoint to the recorded versions of these songs. ‘Shelia’ is one of the best pop songs of 2009, and positively burns a hole through the venue when it emerges mid-set.

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4hero - Extensions: Review

Anyone who has a natural compulsion to run to the hills when the words 'nu jazz' are uttered may want to flee with some haste at this point. Extensions consists of delicate reworking of various tracks by 4hero, a.k.a North London drum and bass pioneers Dego McFarlane and Mark Mac, which have been recorded by a selection of artists who populate the nu jazz genre. Needless to say, the fractured rave-gone-wrong darkcore tune ‘Mr. Kirk’s Nightmare’ does not get a look in, although the concept of a slick and soulful rendition of that particular song would be an intriguing proposition. But listeners who have followed 4hero’s career since those early days won’t be surprised at the choice of tracks here—a jazz influence was creeping into their music as far back as the 1993 EP, Journey From the Light.

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The CMJ Music Marathon 2009: Tips, Hints, and Previews

The storied history of the annual CMJ Music Festival in New York City includes many legendary performances and panels. Who can forget Factory Records head honcho Tony Wilson and his infamous “wake up America, you’re dead!” conference from 1990? Or appearances by Nirvana, R.E.M., the White Stripes, Eminem, and countless others? It’s certainly not easy to obtain entrance to the festival—-the price is steep, the lines are long, and a badge doesn’t guarantee entry at the packed-out shows. But people come back undeterred year after year, and the 2009 incarnation of the Music Marathon will be no exception.

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The Future of Music Coalition Considers Journalism

The annual summit held by the Future of Music Coalition occurred in Washington D.C. this past week, allowing a number of music industry figureheads to get together to discuss pertinent problems in the business. Topics such as royalty rates and net neutrality dominated proceedings, but there was also a sizable chunk of debate about the future of music writing. You just know the art of writing about music is in trouble when the Coalition decides to name a panel Critical Condition: The Future of Music Journalism, although there were a few thoughts and debates on future innovations in the field.

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Kurt Vile - Childish Prodigy: Review

Who is Kurt Vile? There are no easy answers on Childish Prodigy, his first album for Matador, and his third full-length solo release in a little over a year (in addition to his role as guitarist in The War On Drugs). At times Vile’s constant need to dream up new versions of himself makes him seem like an indie-rock Walter Mitty. Anyone looking for his modus operandi won’t find it here, and it’s unlikely that he has one — rather than assimilate a set of influences into an overall sound, he prefers to lurch from one style to another over a set of songs, presumably crossing off genres on a beer stained notepad as he goes along. Blues-rock? Check. Lo-fi? Check. Shoegazery noise? Check.

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Back to the Future: How the ‘90s Infiltrated the ‘00s.

The alternative music scene has often looked to the past for inspiration. In the ‘80s, the Jesus & Mary Chain and Echo and the Bunnymen respectively paid tribute to the Velvet Underground and the Doors, and that lineage continues to flourish to this day. A cursory listen to Brooklyn bands like Crystal Stilts and Vivian Girls offers two examples of bands strung somewhere in-between the territory mapped out in the ‘60s and the ‘80s, with influences amalgamated through obsessive listening to both leaders and followers. An entire decade stretched out before those ‘80s bands began plundering the past and, for a while, a 10-year stretch of silence seemed to be the normative passage of time before old sounds became fresh again and aging rockers began eyeballing a big bag of reunion swag.

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Kraftwerk and the March of Progress

The earliest Kraftwerk records weren't exactly made in a void—-Kraftwerk and Kraftwerk 2 bear some obvious rock hallmarks that depreciated significantly as their career unfolded. Those albums are loosely connected to similarly minded experimentalists in the then-burgeoning krautrock scene, who were, like Kraftwerk, enamored with the nihilistic proto-punk of the Stooges and the MC5. That those two bands hailed from Detroit, a city that toiled away to the ingrained rhythms of industrial machinery from the then-thriving auto industry, was telling. The march to work, soundtracked by the precision-tooled cadence of pistons and parts being methodically slotted into place, has often been summoned up as a common metaphorical motif to describe Kraftwerk's steely stomp through music history.

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