Metal Dance: Industrial, Post Punk, EBM

"British producer/musician/designer Trevor Jackson recently compiled a selection of seminal industrial and electro tunes from the early 1980ss. ... MM: What was the impetus behind Metal Dance? TJ: A couple of things. I was searching through the attic of my parents’ house and found a bunch of old tapes I had made as a teenager. I thought it was quite bizarre that there were loads of compilations coming out, but many of them didn’t touch on more commercial records, more club records, what we used to call alternative dance. ... For those who might not be familiar with this music, would you tell us about the genres on the album? That’s the thing! During the 1980s, music wasn’t so genrefied. I suppose the music from this time was outsider music—certainly subversive and alternative. It was mainly made with primitive electronics by people who weren’t always musicians. ... If a library were using this collection as a jumping-off point, are there any albums or artists that you would recommend? I’d have to say start with Cabaret Voltaire, probably some of the most important electronic music artists of all time. ... People talk about Kraftwerk as being the kings of electronic music, but, to me, Yello are equally important" (Matthew Moyer, "Music for the Masses," Library Journal, 6/1/12).

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Sonny Rollins: Road Shows, Vol. 2

"NEW YORK -- Tenor sax legend Sonny Rollins was a triple winner Wednesday at the annual Jazz Awards, garnering musician of the year honors for the second straight year. Rollins also repeated as the top tenor saxophonist. His latest CD, 'Road Shows, Vol. 2,' consisting of live recordings from concerts in Japan and his September 2010 80th birthday concert in New York highlighted by a first-ever public performance with free jazz visionary and alto saxophonist Ornette Coleman, was chosen the year's best jazz recording. 'I was born with some talent for which I am grateful,' Rollins said in a statement read from the stage at the Blue Note jazz club by emcee Josh Jackson, host of WBGO's jazz music magazine 'The Checkout.' 'I copied and learned from my predecessors and I'm grateful to them, and I gratefully accept this award,' said Rollins, who could not attend the ceremony because he was moving to a new home in upstate New York" ("Jazz Awards 2012," Huffington Post, 6/21/12).

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Glen Hansard: Rhythm and Repose

"MR: Glen, let's talk about your new album, Rhythm And Repose. It seems that a lot of these songs are very personal and relationship-oriented. Am I right in assuming that? GH: It is relationship-oriented, but the relationship is really only the vernacular of the language. To be honest, it's relationship-oriented because that's what I've always sung about. But the relationship part is just a part of the language. For instance, the song, 'You Will Become' happens to be about my brother. Other songs may be about my relationship with Ireland. So, yes, it is about relationships, but I think as you get older, those relationships broaden and deepen. In terms of actual romance, there are definitely some songs about that too, but not as many as you'd think. MR: Now, 'Talking With The Wolves' is one of my favorite songs on this album partly because of the line, 'Love that's given easy never dies, it just changes.' That's so true ..." (Mike Ragogna, "A Conversation with Glen Hansard," Huffington Post, 6/22/12).

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Emily Howell: From Darkness, Light

"Music professor, author and composer David Cope has been experimenting famously with computerized composers for years, dating back to a few decades ago when a particularly debilitating bout of writer's block got him thinking: Could a computer get my own brain working again? ... Out of that blockage came a program he affectionately named 'Emmy.' ... Though his Bach-emulating program has since been scrapped, his new program, affectionately named 'Emily Howell,' (the two programs 'are definitely related,' he says) has created some gorgeous original compositions of her own. ... The program's job, Cope said, is to create new styles of music by combining elements of his favorite composers. Every piece of music that has ever been recorded has its inspiration in another form, so why, Cope asks, is it so wrong if a computer program takes the same approach? 'Emily Howell is an interactive partner,' Cope said. 'We sort of speak to one another.' He says it's not about making computers operate on their own, it's about using what we know as human beings about music and the emotional effect a piece of music can have on an audience, and applying that to the power of computer science" (Lucas Kavner, "Musical Metacreation: Can a Computer Write a Song That Moves You?," Huffington Post, 6/20/12).

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Bruce Springsteen: Wrecking Ball

"JON PARELES: 'Wrecking Ball' is Springsteen’s latest manifesto in support of the workingman, and his direct blast at fat cats and banksters who derailed the economy. It’s sincere, ambitious and angry, which can lead to mixed outcomes. It also — which may be a surprise on an album billed as a broadside — holds some of Springsteen’s most elaborate studio concoctions since 'Born to Run.' The album has been growing on me with each play; it starts out heavy-handed, but by the end it moves from duty to pleasure. Springsteen definitely picked the right title song. 'Wrecking Ball,' written from the first-person point of view of the old Giants Stadium, turns a conceit into a homily into a hoot. ... On 'Wrecking Ball' he’s trying to stake out a God-and-country liberalism, a gospel of hard, sweaty work and earned income, while venting direct fury at vulture capitalists. He also comes out pro-immigrant, openly romantic (Kenny Chesney could have a hit with 'You’ve Got It') and reverent to the point of direct Bible allusions. Where agitprop folkies would be doing this rhetorical heavy lifting over a righteously austere acoustic guitar, Springsteen only starts there. The music lifts this album out of its hard-times gloom, and charges off all over the place: roots Americana, electric guitars, synthesizers, orchestra" (Jon Pareles and Jon Caramanica, "Springsteen," New York Times, 3/4/12).

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Ravi Coltrane: Spirit Fiction

"The implicit hope for 'Spirit Fiction,' Ravi Coltrane’s Blue Note debut, was that it would represent a clear step forward. By that token Mr. Coltrane, an unflappable tenor and soprano saxophonist who has made five previous albums over the last 15 years, succeeds handsomely here, delivering his most complete artistic statement, and one of his most self-possessed. Yet it’s instructive that progress, for Mr. Coltrane, involves taking stock of his own recent history, even bringing some of it back into play. 'Spirit Fiction' gives equal time to two pliable ensembles: the working quartet that Mr. Coltrane has led for much of the last decade, and a quintet featured on one of his earlier albums. Each band has its own stride, though Mr. Coltrane’s dry tone and sleek but undemonstrative style impose a sense of constancy and order. Call it counterintuitive, then, that Mr. Coltrane spends a good portion of this album subverting precise alignment. The title track overlays two separately recorded duo improvisations, by the dissected halves of his quartet. It’s an imperfect reconstitution, but the team — Mr. Coltrane on soprano, Luis Perdomo on piano, Drew Gress on bass and E. J. Strickland on drums — doesn’t sound disoriented so much as intuitively sparked, in the way that a blindfold sharpens the ear" (Nate Chinen, "New Albums," New York Times, 6/18/12).

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Scott Lucas and the Married Men: Blood Half Moon

"The Local H front man has been pigeonholed for far too long. Lumped into comparisons with bands that sound like they can't read instead of songwriters that actually share common traits, folks like Josh Homme and Jeff Tweedy, Lucas has continued to fight the good fight on not good stages far too long. This new act is celebrating the release of the newish band's second album, a much more Americana-sounding project than the meat and potatoes rock-and-roll of Local H. Armed with a cast of seven, Lucas is able to flesh out his music in a surprisingly subtle way" (Brandon Wetherbee, "Scott Lucas and the Married Men at the Red Palace," Huffington Post, 6/13/12).

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Copland: Billy the Kid (suite); Third Symphony

"When one listens to music from France, Germany, England, Italy and particularly Russia and Spain, he can usually discover its origin from the particular national flavour which dominates it. Until a few years ago, however, it was all but impossible to do this with American music. The reason was not hard to find: the European nations were rich in folk songs and dances whose characteristics of rhythm, melody, harmony or colour were reflected in the works of native composers. America, the great melting-pot, on the other hand, possessed no such deep-rooted national musical language, no folk heritage upon which to base a characteristic style. The only true American musical idiom was jazz, so it seemed, and that wasn't being worked into concert music very successfully. Today, all these concepts have changed; and one of the men chiefly responsible for changing them was Aaron Copland" (CD notes, adapted from original notes by Paul Affelder, 1959).

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The Cult: Choice of Weapon

"That a band who have been as enormous as the Cult -- a solid decade of super-sized hits, globally sold-out tours, gold and platinum albums -- should return with a new record is no big surprise. But when that record is as good as Choice of Weapon, which is as melodic, intense, dynamic and otherworldly as anything they've ever done, then  you begin to feel that something odd and special is happening. ... When their second album, Love, was released in 1985, they were a fairly psychedelic proposal. ... Their next record, Sonic Temple, was an even bigger hit, but as they reached their peak, the band began to fall apart. There have been splits, reformations and even albums since, but none with the innate power and sense of timing that this one has. Choice of Weapon feels like the absolute right record for the right time" (Rob Fitzpatrick, "A Return to Prophet," Sunday Times (UK), 6/10/12).

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Quatuor Diotima: American Music

"Quatuor Diotima, an expert and intriguing young French group devoted to music from both the Romantic and modern eras, takes on [Samuel Barber's] String Quartet in a compelling new release, 'American Music' (on Naive). (The cover, a provocation, is a Stanley Kubrick photograph of a cocked gun.) The work has always been problematic, with a third movement that is little more than an abbreviated recollection of the first. The Diotima solves that by letting the mournful spirit and elastic linearity of the second part -- the original version of the ubiquitous Adagio for Strings -- soak outward to the movements that precede and follow it. It is a solution as satisfying as it is radical -- which places Barber's proudly conservative piece in fine company with the two other American classics on the disk, Steve Reich's 'Different Trains' and George Crumb's 'Black Angels'" (Russell Platt, "Classical Notes," New Yorker, 6/4 & 11, 2012).
See also: "barbershop quartet"

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Mickey Hart Band: Mysterium Tremendum

"You didn’t think we’d start a publication called Groove without chatting with a member of the Grateful Dead, did you? We spoke with Mickey Hart, one half of the Dead’s drumming duo (a.k.a. the Rhythm Devils) to discuss his latest project, The Mickey Hart Band, which will buzz, pulsate and dance into Bridgeport for Gathering of the Vibes on Saturday, July 21. The band is supporting their new album Mysterium Tremendum, a record that samples sounds from cosmic objects and events, including the Big Bang, and uses them as a foundation for the group to build upon and riff off of. 'That’s the vibratory origin of the universe,' Hart explains. 'The beginning of time and space when the blank page exploded, creating stars, planets, galaxies, the moon, the sun, Earth, us; that’s where the groove came from. What you hear are sounds that are embedded in the music. Some of them are alone. Most of them are part of the music where you really don’t notice, so it becomes part of the fabric.' In their raw form; however, most of the sounds Hart has gathered and collected aren’t inherently musical. 'Not unless you like chirping and thumping and throbbing and pulsing,' he says. The data is run through algorithms created by his scientifically-minded friends to mutate into a frequency range that’s more pleasing to the human ear" (Mike Sembos, "Hart of the Dead," Groove, vol. 1, no. 1).

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Wagner: Tristan und Isolde

"The magisterial German baritone Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, whom I memorialize at the beginning of my column in this week’s New Yorker, made almost too many recordings to count. Monika Wolf, the keeper of his discography, lists five hundred and forty-two items in the latest edition of her catalogue; several of these are boxed sets containing hundreds of songs. When radio and television activity is taken into account, there are, in total, fifty-one hundred and ninety-nine entries. It is a staggering achievement, and not only because of the sheer quantity of the work.   ...  Fischer-Dieskau’s early maturity coincided with the golden age of the LP, and he shows up on at least a dozen indisputably historic recordings of the fifties and early sixties. For example, there he is singing Kurwenal on Wilhelm Furtwängler’s studio account of “Tristan und Isolde,” which would appear on almost anyone’s short list of the greatest opera records ever made" (Alex Ross, "The Fischer-Dieskau Record," New Yorker, 5/29/12).

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Janie Jones: Original Motion Picture Soundtrack

"The star of David M. Rosenthal's rock indie can act, but his soulful duets with Abigail Breslin will leave you jonesing for the album. … KMc: Were you particularly musical before Janie Jones? Did you have a musical background? Was there training involved for this role? Alessandro Nivola: Yeah, I’ve played a lot of instruments, and I played in a lot of bands growing up and I’ve even had to play music in a lot of films that I’ve done. ... I never had any professional ambitions towards music or rock & roll or anything like that, but I’m very used to performing and I’ve done it a lot and I’ve always found that singing is more freeing than other types of performance. Even though I haven’t made it the main focus of my career at all, there is something about it that allows me to feel less self-conscious than I do with other kinds of performance. ... KMc: Who wrote the songs for Janie Jones? AN: Eef Barzelay, who plays in the indie band Clem Snide, which is based out of Nashville. He wrote these great songs for the film, and when I first listened to them it really put the world and the character and everything into a clear focus. I knew what kind of a musician he was then, and what kind of music they were playing" (Kristen McCracken, "Soul Man: Alessandro Nivola in Janie Jones," Huffington Post, 10/28/11).

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Eric Reed: The Baddest Monk

"The pianist Eric Reed brings an assertive intellect to his own music, and as an interpreter he seems to consider the weight of every gesture. ... [On] 'The Baddest Monk' (Savant), an exuberant new album, he reconfigures themes by Thelonious Monk with a combo consisting of the trumpeter Etienne Charles, the saxophonist Seamus Blake, the bassist Matt Clohesy and the drummer Henry Cole" (Nate Chinen, "Jazz Listings," New York Times, 5/24/12).

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Regina Spektor: Begin to Hope

"It was hard to escape her 2006 single 'Fidelity,' with its memorable chorus: 'It breaks my heart,' in which she repeats the first sound of that final word a dozen delirious times ('Har-harhar-Har-harhar-Har-harhar-Har-har-Heart'). Her last two albums went gold or platinum, her most recent, 'Far,' debuting at No. 3 on the Billboard charts. Her fans include Tom Waits and the violinist Joshua Bell, President Obama (who invited her to play at the White House) and Tom Petty. ... She played downtown clubs, composing 30 to 40 songs a year, recording two records on her own that she sold at gigs, until a showcase at the Knitting Factory led to an introduction to the Strokes’ producer, who offered to work with her. Spektor, then 22, was ready to expand beyond the bare-bones sonics of her records to date, into arrangements that reflected the sounds she heard in her head. As she sings in 'Fidelity,' a song that sounds like a pop song about heartbreak, which it is, but which is more truly a song about the heartbreak of hearing songs one can’t quite make others hear: 'I got lost in the sounds/I hear in my mind, all these voices/I hear in my mind, all these words/I hear in my mind, all this music/ And it breaks my heart/It breaks my heart'" (Wyatt Mason, "The Gift of Small Hands," New York Times Magazine, 5/20/12).

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Regina Carter: Reverse Thread

"Ms. Carter, the violinist, has explored timbres both rustic and cosmopolitan throughout her career. Her current preoccupation — and the subject of her most recent album, 'Reverse Thread' (eOne) — is folkloric music of Africa, stamped with her own improvisational flair and helped along by an ace band featuring kora, accordion, bass and drums" (Nate Chinen, "Jazz Listings," New York Times, 4/12/12).

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Paul McCartney: Kisses on the Bottom

"The music on Paul McCartney’s first 'standards' album, 'Kisses on the Bottom,' floats over you like a light mist on a cool spring morning in an English garden as the sun glints through the haze. You want to inhale the fresh air, taste the fragrance of buds blooming, as the sky clears to a serene deep blue. Mr. McCartney exudes the unassuming charm of a country gentleman in a good mood, sitting on the grass and whistling to himself. 'Kisses on the Bottom' breaks the mold of the typical standards album by a rock performer. Far from a solemn, self-conscious act of reclamation, it is more a jaunty tip of the hat to the pop music of his parents’ generation. Every element of the album, produced by Tommy LiPuma, contributes to the feel of a perfectly fitted, custom-tailored suit. The rhythm arrangements by Diana Krall, who plays piano on most of the cuts, have a crispy, airy bounce. In addition to members of Ms. Krall’s band, the guest guitarist John Pizzarelli gives his instrument a buoyant, ukulelelike sound. Mr. McCartney, whose voice is almost as youthful as in the Beatles’ glory days, doesn’t explore lyrical subtext. He trusts in the reliable pleasures of catchy pop tunes, of moon, June and spoon" (Tim Berne, "McCartney Gets Back, Way Back," New York Times, 2/6/12).

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Sweet Bye and Bye: World Premiere Recording

"[S.J. Perelman] and [Al] Hirschfeld wrote the book, Ogden Nash the lyrics and Vernon Duke the score. If Broadway operated like the Preakness that pedigree should have been surefire. ... There is finally an excellent complete recording of the score on PSClassics with a stellar cast. Listening to this extremely pleasurable score, one can see why it didn't gel back in 1946. ... Still, Duke and Nash wrote a rich score, starting with the lilting title song. The humor still works (as in 'Our Parents Forgot to Get Married') There are ballads that still move you (the haunting 'Round About.') Some of them are are familiar -- producer Tommy Krasker used several on a gorgeous album of Duke songs with Dawn Upshaw a few years ago -- I hope it's still in print.) There's a great song called 'Just Like a Man,' which if I didn't know better I would have attributed to Rodgers and Hart. (It is sung eloquently by Marin Mazzie.) Part of its appeal is the youthfulness and high spirits of both the lyrics and the music. Krasker has assembled an impressive, spirited cast, and the music is conducted with finesse by Eric Stern. An actual revival or even an Encores! presentation might seem as cumbersome as the show seemed 65 years ago. Here you have everything that made it noteworthy and you can listen to it in a comfortable chair" (Howard Kissel, "Sweet Bye and Bye," Huffington Post, 10/23/11).

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Scotty McCreery: Clear As Day

"MR: ... Your new album Clear As Day just hit #1 in Billboard, and it features some very personal songs that seem to fit you perfectly. How did you choose the batch? SM: Well, we had a lot of songwriters in Nashville that were writing songs for us. We actually had a big meeting there when I went for Fan Fest, and we were telling them what we were looking for, and the types of songs we wanted. After that, we had a couple of writers that were writing specifically for me, and they sent some songs our way and they were perfect. They were written just for me; it was beautiful. MR: You're pretty young but with that deep voice, you sound like an old soul.
SM: That kind of happened with the music I grew up listening to. Elvis (Presley) was a big influence on me, and then I listened to old country like Conway Twitty, Merle Haggard, and Johnny (Cash) and all of those guys. So, it was in my blood as a small child. MR: Hey, you just became legal. SM: I turned 18 on Sunday" (Mike Ragogna, "Chatting with American Idol Winner Scotty McCreery," Huffington Post, 10/14/11).

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Ben Vereen: Steppin' Out Live

"It's hard to stop the fiery tour de force that is Ben Vereen. Recently seen introducing a production number for Jesus Christ Superstar on the Tony Awards telecast -- the man starred in a 'JCS' back in the '70s -- the quintessential performer nabbed Tony and Drama Desk awards for his breathtaking work in Pippin nearly 40 years ago, and later went on to charm television audiences in Roots and Ben Vereen: His Roots (which garnered seven Emmys). Although he's turned heads in numerous screen and stage works since, Vereen is suddenly jazzed about a new venture, something that's taking him back to the place where, he says, his career officially took flight: San Francisco. ... The show, which runs June 12-17, is slated to hit New York City later this summer -- a CD of the same name has also been released. Think of the new outing as a high-energy tribute to the music of Broadway. There are a number of musical selections made famous by Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis, Jr., among others, but audiences will also hear Vereen perform other classics such as ... 'Mr. Bojangles' [and] 'Defying Gravity,' that latter of which comes from all that he absorbed after appearing in Wicked in the mid-2000s" (Greg Archer, "Ben Vereen," Huffington Post, 6/13/12).

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