# 3 by HASH Magazine

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

M. Sean Ryan

sean@hashmagazine.com

CREATIVE DIRECTOR Monica So

monica@hashmagazine.com

CONTRIBUTERS: WRITERS: Mike Levine @goldnuggets

Carly Lewis Alex Butler

PHOTOGRAPHY:

Joshua Sarner

www.jsarnerphoto.com

Wesley Thompson

mrwthompson@gmail.com

Cameron Sterling

www.cameronsterling.com

Jerry Yates

DESIGN: Francisco Hernandez

ILLUSTRATION: Christian D. Capestany

CONTENTS LETTER FROM THE EDITOR PLUS 1

4 6

Cymbals Eat Guitars, Thieving Horses, ATP Festival, Fleet Foxes & The Walkmen

Q&A: Alec Gross: Finding The Path Less Traveled

FEATURE:

26 32

Scratching Through Space : Kid Koala Opens The Doors To His Universe

NEW ALBUM REVIEWS LOONEY BIN THE HASH

42 46 48

LETTER FROM THE

EDITOR

Sitting on a shelf in my bedroom is a hand drawn street map of Montreal. Highlighted are a bookstore, a record shop, and the best spots for munchies— burgers, pie, bagels, etc. They’re all favorites of Kid Koala, whom you will meet in the feature story of this issue. As you’ll see, he’s drawn many things and will probably continue to create many more. But I think I can safely say that the sketch of his hometown, done after our lengthy conversation in his home, is going to remain Kid Koala’s most meaningful piece, at least for me. I want to use this space to extend my personal gratitude and say thank you again to the Kid Koala camp for having HASH up for the visit—and for all of the tasty recommendations. With that said, I give you # 3: This autumn roundup continues our emphasis on new music from around the world. Our album reviews stop in Norway, Morocco and back to Canada, as contributing writer Carly Lewis discusses the debut album by Charlotte Cornfield, a young, freewheelin’ Montrealer and folk writer. Other guest reviews return us to the states; Mike Levine recounts the hyperkinetic live show by the young rock band Cymbals Eat Guitars, and Alex Butler dishes on the latest album by DJ Shadow. Meanwhile I tour the Americana that singer-songwriter Alec Gross calls his own in # 3’s Q/A. If you’ve combed through past issues you may notice the Looney Bin is much better stocked this time around. That’s another item for which we owe Kid Koala thanks; all of the vinyl in this issue was plucked from Montreal’s record shops, as per his recommendations.

KID KOALA’S RECORD ROOM IN MONTREAL, CANADA

There’s much more waiting around the page, so I’ll make my exit with the usual appeals. If you would like to receive email notifications for updates, newly launched issues and more, look to the Contact tab at the top left of our page—clicking there will allow you to receive HASH newsletters. I thank all of our contributors to # 3 for their ideas, their hard work and their patience. And I also thank you, the reader. If you haven’t already, be sure to follow our social media updates on Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr for features between issues. And lastly: If you have a camera, a pen, or a computer, and you would like to be a part of HASH, send us a note at hello@hashmagazine.com. I hope you enjoy the music we loved from this past season. See you in the winter issue—

M. SEAN RYAN Editor & Writer in Chief

JOSEPH D’AGOSTINO OF CYMBALS EAT GUITARS

ROCK’S INDEPENDENT SPIRIT: ALIVE AND SWEATING

IN BROOKLYN, CYMBALS EAT GUITARS BRINGS YOUTH, PASSION AND ETHIC CENTER STAGE. By: Mike Levine @goldnuggets Photos: Joshua Sarner At Glasslands earlier this year the New York-based Cymbals Eat Guitars was road-testing material for a yet-to-be-released second album, Lenses Alien (Barsuk). And it sounded like rehearsal: singersongwriter Joseph D’Agostino and drummer Max Miller testing unaired material with still adjusting members—Brian Hamilton on keyboards and bassist Matthew Whipple. By the time D’Agostino and his crew circled back to Brooklyn late last September, this time appearing at the Music Hall of Williamsburg, the quartet had some legs—at least enough to support the energy of its frenetic leader. Opening with the eight-minute “Definite Darkness” from Lenses Alien, D’Agostino wasted no time working to a healthy sweat. Swinging his wellworn Fender Stratocaster and pounding through chords as if hitting a crash cymbal and around, he appeared on a constant verge of collapse. The band maintained a steady regimen of feedback-induced noise and heavily distorted riffs, D’Agostino leading in endearingly kinetic fashion. Establishing this tense spectacle the group followed, as the album does, with “Another Tunguska.” One of Lenses Alien’s more concise tracks, ‘Tunguska’ is a cathartic follow-up, light in sonics but lyrically dense. “I worship the day of the invisible wave, then a stream of revenants surged outward,” D’Agostino began, his lyrics flowing in stream-like currents—their abstract twists putting him in a unique class of 22 year-old songwriters. The opening numbers outlined a spectrum of comfort: hammering away to the brink of disintegration in one song, serene and dreamy the next.

That range helps Lenses Alien stand among the more compelling releases of the year, and the group wisely stuck to that material. Only two songs from 2009’s debut Why There Are Mountains (Sister’s Den/ Insound) made their way into this show. If Mountains re-ignited indie rock’s fading vigor in a way bands like Built to Spill did in the nineties, Lenses Alien is a logical progression; it extends the mission by throwing the kitchen sink at the form. More than a showman, D’Agostino is a skilled parser of decades’ worth of sub-genres, splicing melody and noise into his own blend. That standard expanded during the epic “Rifle Eyesight (Proper Name),” a song that spans more musical ideas in its eight minutes than most entire albums manage. At Music Hall it was a definitive, frenzied highlight: The group moved in lockstep through layers of droning distortion before reverting back to indulgent pedal tones. Five minutes in, the jam in static frequencies transitioned to melodic pop-bliss. And there with the crucial melody was D’Agostino, singing, “The door slams behind us in a flesh lined heaven.” “Sorry folks, this happens too often,” Hamilton jested not long after, during an awkward point between songs in which the bandleader changed a freshly broken string. The keyboardist’s crack hardly drew a response—least of all from D’Agostino, whose intensity conveyed a workman’s sense of duty all night. His band rounded out the thunderous set with “Gary Condit,” prodding its gentle sections into harmonious singalong. Once finished, the members of Cymbals Eat Guitars immediately set about packing their equipment, exiting with barely a word—bound to the standard set by a young but unswerving leader. cymbalseatguitars.com

MATTHEW MILLER

BRIAN HAMILTON

PLUS 1

MAJESTIC INDIE GUSTS, ON AN INTIMATE STAGE THIEVING IRONS, THE ROCK QUARTET SPEARHEADED BY SINGER-GUITARIST NATE MARTINEZ, DEBUTED NEW SONGS AT ITS REHEARSAL SPACE IN BROOKLYN. Photos: Wesley Thompson

“I just want to be here now,” Nate Martinez sang to the vigilant group gathered in his bunker-like practice space, “Waiting for the perfect song to start the perfect night.” Martinez, who records and performs as Thieving Irons, would offer no better summation of the intent within his brand of songwriting all evening. That lyric arrived in “Mile Long Minutes,“ one of a number of new songs Thieving Irons debuted from its second album, Behold, This Dreamer!, early last September. It was also among the more transparent statements the bandleader would sing. As a vocalist Martinez is often ambiguous, twining phrases that, like the underpinning music, offer fragments whose bleary edges sync into a resounding sensation. “On Paris time, while London wails, sun-drenched sky give me hail,” he sang in “Below The Avenues,” while “Sleepwalking Into The Ocean” opened: “They said we walk with shadows and lead with our left foot / Hold the pain in our hands, just a whisper in our minds.” Occasionally those pieces conjoin into a narrative, as in “Mile Long Minutes,” where Martinez waxes poetic on a—perhaps not imagined—journey by sea. Mostly though, Thieving Irons’ is a tapestry of faint layers that unite into a loosely arranged mood—a tone

NATE MARTINEZ

sustained for some duration: perhaps an LP, or a concert, maybe a ‘perfect night.’

PLUSPLUS 1 111 9

L-R: JOSH KAUFMAN,

On this particular evening, it was in

both a highlight and an exhibition for mutli-

a dimly lit basement where Thieving Irons

intsrumentalist Dan Brantigan, who added

slowly revealed its methods. Between songs,

embellishments that were alternately eerie

Martinez noted the dungeon-like setting of

and warm via lines of flugelhorn and an

the band’s rehearsal room: “This is the place

Electronic Valve Instrument, which produces

where dreams are made,” he quipped, the

a futuristic tinkle.

microphones still thick with reverb. “And

Accordingly, however brawny Martinez’s

lost,” finished one of his players, the words

guitar tones sounded before each song, the

decaying in a convincing echo.

leader found an effective muzzle, favoring

Opening numbers “Below The Avenue” and

soft plucks or finger-picking to something

“Block Island Blues“ were stealthy but never

so caustic as strumming. The punk-leaning

plodding, pushed along by muted tones. For

“Poison“ was an exception, though less

these and many others, drummer Andy Nauss

notable than the few songs that flashed more

played with wooly mallets or with a softly

teeth in a set of billowing numbers. Guitars

clenched fist, a towel frequently draped across

burned deeper during “End of September,”

a drumhead to soften his pulse. “Venus” was

flitting country twang into fleeting crevices;

ANDY NAUSS, NATE MARTINEZ

L-R: NATE MARTINEZ, DAN BRANTIGAN

meanwhile the piano-bounce of the stately

Bereft of miscues, there was a sense of

“Sleepwalking Into The Ocean” marched to

purpose in every subtle chime of cymbal or

soaring fanfare—bolstered here by bassist

wisp of air from Brantigan’s arsenal, even the

Josh Kaufman, who played an auxiliary floor

faintest pulse from the bottom-end surround-

tom.

ing Martinez. And yet the bandleader’s

The evidence offered by this intimate

own performance rarely appeared informed

preview suggested Thieving Irons continuing

or impacted by these offerings. Rapt with

in the mode of last year’s debut, This Midnight

concentration, his eyes remained closed for

Hum (TuneCore), but not without evolution.

nearly every moment of the recital. That he

Some of that album’s finest stages were akin

delivered one of its more stunning moments

to a soft wind, an unimposing breeze into

alone, in “Letters To Catherine,” it hardly

which Martinez’s lobbed his vocals more so

came as a surprise. #

than he pushed or strained them. Such a stride is where the songs in this set found

thievingirons.com

Thieving Irons delving further, and with more care.

PLUS 1

ATP FESTIVAL RELOCATES BUT REMAINS REWARDING

of harsh performances—not exactly oppressive, but muscular and embattled. The group, drummer/producer Geoff Barrow, singer Beth Gibbons and guitarist Adrian Utley was met with more than just celebratory exclamation in the wake of a prolonged absence; there was an almost palpable sigh of relief as the expanded concert roster capably recreated Portishead’s dreary but always-imaginative grooves. Other groups found the Asbury conven-

THE SECOND DAY OF ALL TOMORROW’S PARTIES I’LL BE YOUR MIRROR UPHELD THE SERIES’ DISTINCTIVE ECLECTICISM, LEANING HEAVILY TOWARD BRUTAL SONICS.

tion hall an inhospitable space to strike

This year for the first time All Tomorrow’s

Gibbon’s vocals. She’s still a reliable focal

Parties produced its US edition outside the

point, whether oscillating between quivering

familiar environs in The Catskills. Other

vulnerability (“The Rip,” “Sour Times”) or

ATP concerts held earlier in the year, in

adenoidal rasp (“Over,” “Cowboys”)—espe-

London and Tokyo, also shifted away from

cially when harnessing both, as during the

the respective resort locale, which so many

molten “Glory Box.” Meanwhile Utley embel-

found endearing—and essential. Thus, when

lished with sparing arcs of filmic guitar-

a sonic balance throughout the day. For the headliners, however, the stylish beats fashioned by Barrow crept and rolled with unfaltering balance, forming a sooty bed for

it arrived stateside, in Asbury, NJ, ATP I’ll lines, suggesting surf rock here, an old spy Be Your Mirror was billed as somewhat of a flick there. sister event, though in practice it packaged the same esoteric values.

The songs silhouetted pain and paranoia, among other mental states easily reached

A globally minded festival series, ATP when solitude is a starting point. Still, it was registers its musical taste as an extension of somewhat soothing in contrast to the bulk

the artists it appoints to curate each event.

of sets preceding Portishead’s. An outlier

The annual installment in the U.S. took

was Beak>, another trio begun by Geoff

place earlier this fall from September 30th

Barrow—in 2009. Beak> was the first group

through October 2nd and, like its London

to convene on Saturday, testing new songs

counterpart, was curated and headlined by

that congealed neatly with those from the

Portishead. Saturday, the second day of the

group’s only album. Bass player Billy Fuller

festival, brought the Bristol, Eng., group to

and Barrow smeared their muffled harmonies

its first stage this side of the Atlantic in

to vaporous effect, especially during “Battery

more than 13 years.

Point,” a distended but dramatic close.

Portishead crowned what had, by the time

Afterward came contending sets from

the trio took the stage, amounted to a day

Foot Village and Marc Ribot’s Ceramic Dog.

BETH GIBBONS OF PORTISHEAD

Ribot is a guitarist known for proliferative session-work as much as the distinct, musky blues he’s lent to records like Tom Waits’ Rain Dogs or Raising Sand by Robert Plant and Allison Krauss. Peek into his band’s set and you were as likely to hear untidy covers of Dave Brubeck as you were Jimi Hendrix. But if Ribot’s bluesy free form wasn’t your brand of caustic there was Foot Village, a Los Angeles quartet of drummers that prefers its statements shrieked—mangled, if possible— and executed by blunt force. With titles alternating from Fuck The Future to Friendship Nation (and circling back for the obligatory Fuck The Future II), the group outlines its brand of nihilism in titles alone—2009’s Anti-Magic has songs in Morse Code, i.e.: “-.. .-. ..- -- -.-. .. .-.-.-..-.. . (aka Morse Code ‘No Jam’)”. If nothing else that’s at least helpful; in song, Foot Village’s proclamations are consistently hurled through a static of belligerent drumming and megaphone-addled shrieks. The

Brooklyn-based

psychedelic

band

Oneida was an underdog favorite all day, generating buzz with an eight-hour set a block away in Asbury Lanes. Barrow and the Ceramic Dog rhythm section reportedly sat in on drums over the course of the afternoon, and Yo La Tengo’s James McNew was a daylong addition on bass. Despite redundancies—three guitars, dual keys and drumming—Oneida’s droning odyssey was still swinging rather than colliding into its internal components by the time I managed to stop in—some six hours after they’d begun. Apart from its spectrum of guest talent, Oneida’s jam offered a respite from the brawny sets that characterized Saturday’s program. Power-prog trio Battles continued in the spirit of Foot Village, and even Ribot, with a set

FOOT VILLAGE

marked more by overall intensity than its individual songs. That’s a quality also endemic to Gloss Drop (Warp), the album Battles released this year; it’s rife in crystalline sound and fidgety rhythms but often-diverging melodic ideas. The group manipulated synths and guitars into steel pan-like timbres to achieve the album’s frenetic interplay, but John Stanier’s drumming commanded the room’s collective gaze, his high-set crash cymbal both a peculiar sight and an accent on the walloping intent with which he capped his ideas. Swans and The Horrors were similarly concerned with their own stubborn idioms. A band since 2005, The Horrors sacrifice personality in their rally to straight-ahead garage glam. It was undersold in this case by the convention hall’s tinny acoustics. By comparison, the recently reunited Swans brought a near-30-year record of unapologetic showmanship to their set, which, fortunately for them, took place in the more acoustically inclined Paramount Theatre. Led by Michael Gira, the six-man veteran enclave swirled immense clouds of distortion into ominous marches, engaging through sheer force of will—and rendering The Horrors’ dreamy guitar-pop limp by comparison. # www.atpfestival.com

ASBURY LANES

SWANS

BEAK>

FARIS BADWAN OF THE HORRORS

ABOUNDING VOICES SHARE CENTER STAGE FREEWILLIAMSBURG’S WATERFRONT SERIES CONCLUDED LATE IN SEPTEMBER WITH A CONCERT FEATURING BOTH THE WALKMEN AND FLEET FOXES. Photos: Jerry Yates Fleet Foxes landed in Brooklyn’s East River Park in September for what bandleader Robin Pecknold admitted would likely be the band’s last show in or around New York City for some time. Like most of the verses and refrains he sang that night, it was an undisguised remark, one that wouldn’t merit deeper investigation or deconstruction. But this concert was significant in a way Pecknold’s announcement hardly suggested. It was a benchmark of sorts, the cap to a string of summer concerts orchestrated by FreeWilliamsburg. This year, the Williamsburg Waterfront series boasted headliners like TV on the Radio, Death Cab For Cutie and Sonic Youth. For the 2006-formed Fleet Foxes, coexisting amongst that crop of peers—all at least twice the age of the Seattle sextet—might have been its own accomplishment. But closing the waterfront series constituted a mere a stop in an ongoing international tour—not even the band’s first. Besides youth, Fleet Foxes’ popularity separates the corps of harmonists from its so-called peers. So does its notoriety—and both fans and detractors fasten to the same musical

CHRISTIAN WARGO ANDit’s ROBIN qualities. Mostly thePECKNOLD saccharine gleam to OF FLEET FOXES Pecknold’s songs, which are paens to broth-

L-R: CHRISTIAN WARGO, ROBIN PECKNOLD OF FLEET FOXES

PLUS 1

erly love, cosmic abandon and transcendental awe;

House” and “Your Protector.” Meanwhile Pecknold

but there’s also the plain melodies undergirding

steered the supporting voices through bound-

them, which make for easy sing-along, enriched

ing new numbers “Battery Kinzie” and “Bedouin

further still by thick, multipart harmonies.

Dress.” The lead singer was purposeful when he had

That system was warmly received during this show in Brooklyn. Fleet Foxes built a galvanizing,

to be, especially in “Blue Ridge Mountains” and “Helplessness Blues”—the best songs he’s written.

if not monolithic set that teetered between the

Preceding Fleet Foxes were New York’s own

ornate Helplessness Blues (Sub Pop), released earlier

dapper denizens The Walkmen. Their opening set

this year, and the group’s remarkable leap from

was a scrappy one, and rose and fell with the cries

the gate in 2008, which yielded Sun Giant and a

of frontman Hamilton Leithauser. “You’re one of

self-titled LP. Fleet Foxes opened standing in dark- us, or one of them,” he sang, hoarse and aggrieved ness, allowing the swirling coos from “The Plains

during “Juveniles,” from last year’s Lisbon (Fat

/ Bitter Dancer” to steep while an ominous thump

Possum). Leithauser played his role with consis-

pounded underneath. A standout from Helplessness

tency, physically straining to embody his lyrics.

Blues, the hulking song builds from an entrancing

Reeling, punching empty air, the frontman under-

chorale to a verse-driven middle that simmers in

scored a combative current within The Walkmen’s

anticipation of a jubilant third act, which inverts

model of rock, which happens to be the polar

the minor key for dramatic sendoff.

opposite of Fleet Foxes.

Its tempo could have been livelier in this case,

Both groups are towed by powerful voices. But

which, as it happened, would have suited rest of the

leading The Walkmen is a singer willing to blow

performance too. ‘Bitter Dancer’ all but established

the slightest turn of phrase into an outright alter-

a template for the evening, its segmented structure

cation. Leithauser followed his group’s cues, lower-

allowing pauses and lulls that the audience readily

ing to a whisper in “While I Shovel The Snow” and

filled with cries of approval and expectation.

“On The Water”; but he was most comfortable when

Quite often that response buried the musical

overpowering his band, as in the scathing rendition

transitions during more expansive songs, of which

of “All Hands And The Cook,” where he sustained a

there were many. Suites distinguish the second

glottal yowl, and a sense of near-collapse.

Helplessness Blues, and underline Pecknold’s chang-

At the other extreme is Pecknold, a songwriter

ing ambitions for structure—though for content

who has shirked confrontation in nearly every step

it remains much the same. In Brooklyn the group

of his band›s still-young career. At the beginning of

quickly settled into a pattern of slow-chugging

Fleet Foxes’ encore, the bandleader returned alone

sagas that plodded more often more than they

to perform “I Let You,” an unrecorded song and

segued with smooth efficiency. “Sim Sala Bim” was

something of a staple in recent live performances.

a notable exception, drawing grins even from the

In subject and tone, it seemed conspicuous. “I

band at the kinetic climax.

couldn’t sleep, so I slept on the floor / And I heard

Still, there was majestic precision in Fleet Foxes’

four,

sometimes

five-part

harmonies.

you two letting your hair down,” he sang against a slow, melodic current. He may have broken

Between tumbling patterns, drummer Joshua Till- several guitar strings throughout the evening, but

man offered a clear and consistent high register

Pecknold never seemed more vehement than in the

along with bassist Christian Wargo during “English

hushed tension of that recital. #

HAMILTON LEITHAUSER OF THE WALKMEN

Finding The Path Less Traveled PHOTOS BY: CAMERON STERLING DESIGN BY: FRANCISCO HERNANDEZ

When I meet Alec Gross he’s deep in thought, standing contemplative before a jukebox inside a near-empty bar on the Lower East Side. He’s made the first of two picks, a Ray LaMontagne tune already whispering overhead. We shake hands and exchange our mutual admiration for the song: “It’s perfect,” Gross settles before arriving at a follow-up and taking a seat. The sentiment makes perfect sense given the singer-songwriter’s inaugural, album-length address. There’s depth and ambition behind Alec Gross’ Strip The Lanterns, to say nothing of its weathered country-grain, both of which put the New York-based balladeer in league with artists like LaMontagne. But there’s also a brassy muscle at work in this party of mostly love songs, particularly the standout “If You Don’t Mind (Baby Go Ahead).” Gross hardly shies from themes that are dark and layered, exuding an instinct for potent narratives. He’s one to favor the everyday object as a dramatic device, capitalizing on the heft of, say, “the toast we were burning,” to anchor or color a story. As for the story itself, Gross’s debut patches together a memoir of timeworn romance and emotional culpability. It’s centered on a Mr. Ron Avery, but he’s little more than a footnote. (In fact, he’s a subtitle, i.e., Strip The Lanterns: The Night Terrors of Mr. Ron Avery.) Which is fine: Like any great novel or record—as Gross is quick to mention—success lies less in shaping characters, and more in the sympathy their faults and hardships instill. Connection is Alec Gross’s concern, as much as pinning his lyrics with arrangements that are appropri-

I love that concept: that the truest statement you can make is going to be the best fit for this place.

ately sensitive or robust. And there’s natural chemisSince you bring it up—most bands simply list musitry along that avenue: Excluding its hushed numbers cians, but you list Steinbeck (among other authors and (“Dancing Music,” “You Make Sense To Me”), Strip The artists) in your MySpace influences. Lanterns builds into robust mountains that rumble with Yeah, you have to, right? Without sounding egotistiechoes of classic folk-rock and R&B—Gross’ influences. cal, if you’re going to be an artist then you have to draw from everything. Then you’re not emulating a song; Theirs is a heritage he reveres, and is reluctant to imyou’re emulating a story or thought and processing it plicate himself anywhere near. But Gross sets his own through a folk song or a rock song. sweeping standard, and it’s marked by his unblemished Do you think that defines the singer-songwriter world croon. A week before, just around the block, he led a full-band at folk club The Living Room. The set was these days? I played a songwriter series recently at a really nice efficient and vivacious, most of the songs cresting in full waves that never toppled Gross’s commanding vo- club in New York. I was so psyched, and it was shocking cals. Between came his banter, a revolving door of wit, to me, the lack of depth—and the presentation: “Here’s self-deprecation and tongue-in-cheek salesmanship. In my breakup song.” As if it matters. What’s interesting to either capacity, Gross has the wherewithal to win over me is what songwriters present: shallow, light songs as a room. Which, reverence for “The Greats” aside, puts being deep. So there’s a lack of depth, I think. I don’t know that it’s different than any other art form. Every him in a class all his own: Entertainer. genre has it’s own list of priorities. It’s all over your site’s page for the album—what’s That songwriter series was shocking for me. These the deal with Cinematic Americana? [Laughs] I made it up! I couldn’t imagine anything are songwriters, so that calls upon a certain level of, more pretentious. What is this music? Is it dark folk “What’s important, and what can you do?” You don’t rock? Does it matter? If you have to describe your mu- have a band backing you. You don’t necessarily have sic—I think that’s accurate. I could sub-categorize it as the greatest voice in the world, but you can write. And The Band meets Stax soul, or something; I think that’s it’s not about the number of words per second or how many syllables, but, “How weird can you get with somethe record. thing that’s universal?” Your show at The Living Room had real electricity to There’s a really great Hemingway quote, or about it. I got the sense that you bring that to each show. Well thank you. Yeah, I’m not a recording artist. The Hemingway. He’d sit down to write everyday, and he recording thing is really fun because it’s a different me- would always start each story by writing the truest thing dium, but it’s not my Beach Boys, Paul Simon-kind of he knew in that moment. It was like: ‘Write the most thing; it’s not my world. I’m much more a performer honest, true sentence you can, and go from there.’ I love than a writer. Music is a way to perform, I think. That’s that concept: the truest statement you can make is gomy sense of it. Could’ve been an actor or something— ing to be the best fit for this place. Cause a good song is touching on a universal that everybody can relate to maybe. but doing it in a way that nobody else thought of before. Did you do theatre in school? That’s when a song just kills you. I did. Anything to get in front of people. I grew up Who are you listening to these days, or do you stick with music, but when I was 13 or 14 it took over everything. So I guess there just wasn’t really any other op- to your favorites? I am very closed-minded. I still have my favorite retion. cords and I listen to them a lot. I’m very threatened by Who were you listening to? being overly influenced by somebody, not having my All the standards, I think. Bob Dylan, The Beatles, own voice. I’m almost afraid of hearing really great muThe Who, Cream. A lot of those mid-sixties British sic. Ray LaMontagne: I’m afraid of listening to him too bands, then I started getting really into the blues. I got much, because I think he’s really great. a guitar when I was fifteen. All I wanted to do was play What are your desert island records? Bob Dylan songs. It’s so cliché, like being a painter and Oh, that’s a great one. Paul Simon, Graceland. Beck’s saying: “I love Picasso.” But there’s a reason why people say that. Steinbeck is my favorite author; there’s a rea- Sea Change. It’s tough with Dylan to figure out what it would be. Even more than Bob Dylan I think that Neil son why everybody likes John Steinbeck.

Photo: Joshua Sarner

I’m very threatened by being overly influenced by somebody, not having my own voice. I’m almost afraid of hearing really great music.

in the back of my head. “Burning Grounds,” the story of the song is an old man that grew up in the South in the late 1800s and bore witness to a lynching. He was just a kid, but he was watching this thing and in watching it he was complicit in this horrific crime. Just witnessing it is enough to dirty one’s hands—that can’t be let go.

The influence came from this poem by Yev Yevtushenko called “Babi Yar.” It’s a Holocaust poem about this Jewish town in Ukraine; the Germans came in and emptied the town. This town of like 30,000—just exterminated. They had like four or five survivors who either were Young can say the simplest thing and mean the most— wounded or fell before the gun hit them, and laid in a pit like a Bob Marley kind of vibe: “Turn Your Lights Down with dead people for a day, then crawled out. The poem Low,” where the final lyrics go [sings], “Oh I, Oh I, Oh I.” is stunning: “In the fields of Babi Yar…. Trees stand in It’s an amazing lyric, and there’s no better poetry then judgment, all things here scream silently.” It’s talking those two words. The way it’s presented, how could it about the grass, the stones, the trees, they’re witnesses mean anything more? It comes back to that honesty so they’re complicit in the horrors too. That’s what the thing; there’s no more an honest statement than, “Oh, final verse in “Burning Grounds” is about: “Damn the I. I’m at a loss for words—oh, me.” trees, damn the people’s eyes they just look around, Your site has hilarious promos, and you were very damn us all…” This kid is still complicit in this lynching of a human being, as is the stone, as is the grass, as are funny between bits during last week’s show. I struggle to be self-aware. It’s very easy to get the trees. wrapped up in what you’re doing. If I have to do some- Everything comes from me. But I’d rather write about thing to publicize this gig, then I’d better be making fun characters and people than about the stuff that’s just of myself. The tee shirt? I mean how can you do that and boring and typical—a diary entry. be straight-faced? The shirts are great, but I can’t model Where did “strip the lanterns” come from? them and not have a sense of humor about it. You can’t I don’t really know what it means. I think it’s a meansell your face, unless you’re a model—you can’t sell this face—without a sense of humor. But I spent all this ingful phrase. It’s kind of about Bob Dylan: You have this gunslinger who’s wiped out all the villains, so now money on the record. I have to sell something. you have a new generation of gunslingers coming up I love everything about music except the self-promotion. and there’s nothing left to do. Am I gonna write anyI hate it, and it takes up 90% of my music time. For all thing that’s better than what’s been written? You’re left the evils of the labels, they did allow artists to create. in this landscape: he’s burned all the cotton, he’s salted all the land, poisoned all the wells. Who are your favorite comics? I’m a huge Larry David fan. Dave Chappelle: I It’s not just him; it’s all the greats. Who’s better than the thought that was really important comedy. Chappelle’s Beatles? Smokey Robinson? Who sings better than Otis Show touched upon all those terrible, taboo things. It Redding or Ray Charles? That’s the kind of stuff I want was political. I think the stuff that Larry David and Louis to sing and I want to play. I’m limited by that. I’ll never C.K. touch on are very important. Comedy is huge for be any of those people. I’m never going to kill you like me. I live and breathe it—and then I have my songs. John Lennon can singing “Jealous Guy.” Why can’t those intersect? Do they? I just wanted to make the best artistic thing I could Only casually. I really do think about them very difmake. I didn’t care about how commercial anything ferently. Songs are the tragedies. The comedy is the was—that’s why I started the record with an acoustic comedy. song that’s long and about an old couple. All I can really How many of the albums songs start from personal control is how good I think these songs are, and how good the statement is. That’s what I did—I went full experience? Typically I’ll have an idea for a story, and I’ll file that in. The LP was really the truest sentence I could write.

In a few hours Eric San will be on a plane, pummeling through whatever clouds are hanging between his home in Montreal and Los Angeles. Tonight he’ll DJ a Fall Formal celebration at The Orpheum Theatre being thrown by hitRECord, the collaborative videography initiative led by actor Joseph Gordon Levitt. He of Inception and 500 Days of Summer fame asked San to jet down and lend his talents on the turntables. Those not as chummy but still familiar with him know Eric San as Kid Koala, the underground composer and scratch-specialist behind some of the last decade’s most perversely creative hip-hop, disparately-minded collaborations, and multidimensional albumart concepts. The most recent is Space Cadet, a 130-page space-noir graphic novel bundled with its own soundtrack. It was released late in September—some eight years after San laid the first sketches to paper. It’s also the reason why right now, instead of packing, he’s giving a tour. The exhibit—and you could call it that— is the turntablist’s home-built studio, where ongoing projects are still taking shape. The Record Room, as it’s dubbed in the book’s credits, spills across the bottom level of San’s quaint two-story residence: a cornucopia of instruments, equipment and in-between-gadgetry that might at first appear something like a music-crazed magpie’s homemade shrine. “If this were a kitchen, it would be gross,” San says, his shy murmur bubbling upward into a laugh. Standing casually in a black tee broadcasting “A John Hughes Film,” he’s sandwiched in a narrow aisle bordered by shelves and tables, all teeming with hardware the Vancouver-born DJ spent half his life collecting. “This means we’ve been busy,” he says, “When it’s actually photo-ready

we’ve been doing nothing but cleaning up.” By we San means his wife Cori, a set designer and frequent Kid Koala accomplice. She’s working quietly at her end of the room, the more open space at the front where miniature architecture and other tiny environs sprawl across tabletops in a variety of finished states. A sedate ambience permeates throughout the room. The midday sun able to find its way in is the only source of light; Grizzly Bear’s cavernous tunes pump softly through the den, careful not to upset its equilibrium. This is where San, still boyish as he slides into his late thirties, composed the music that ushers readers across the intricately etched pages of Space Cadet. In both look and sound, it’s a marvel of insular expression. Over 130 cartoonish, black and white pages the author renders a girl’s adventures through space and how the absence positions her robot caretaker, who remains behind. As the pages progress, their fatherdaughter relationship is patched together through increasingly poignant flashbacks. “Some of my acquaintances that have written me back were like, ‘I had to take a walk after that’,” San says, starting to laugh, “Which is not the intent.” But there’s an undeniable bleakness to Space Cadet, apart from its themes of separation and loss. And that’s owed to the story’s presentation, the black panels creating a kind of negativephoto effect. By 2004, the auteur recalls, “I had the storyboard for a 130 page book. But I only had 20 of these boards. I couldn’t find them online or in the US or Canada—the only way was to pillage art supplies while in

France, on tour. Before sound check I’d tell the promoter, ‘We’ve got to get as many of these as we can!’ And I’d literally buy them out of stock.” The black etchboards are perfectly suited to the story, a savvy canvas behind the cadet’s intergalactic travels and an equally appropriate backdrop for her guardian robot, whose solitude is that much more palpable against the empty space. “I thought it was going to be a breeze because it was mostly set in space,” San continues, feigning laziness. “Then I started doing indoor scenes. The joke was on me.” But if there’s one thing that defines Kid Koala’s oeuvre it’s the fastidious level of detail in whatever art or music he’s assembled. The scratching symphonist may claim to be lazy while in self-deprecating mode, but devotion to detail defines his many recordings, and especially Space Cadet. By San’s count, some panels took upwards of 50 hours to complete. “A lot of it was slowly learning this technique over eight years,” he says of the inverted color scheme. “When I actually got to the etchboards: that was the fun part.”

“It all has a tone,” there’s some sort of ghost in all those machines.” Naturally, San buys into the notion that Space Cadet’s parallels to parenthood became more personal after he became a father himself. “It accelerated the idea that I had to finish this book,” he chuckles, “I was already flashing forward and backwards. Time all of a sudden takes on a new mean-

FEATURE

“I thought it was going to be a breeze because it was mostly set in space. Then I started doing indoor scenes. The joke was on me.”

ing.” He was still in the midst of the etchings when the arrival of his daughter Maple became imminent. “You could feel the meditative but almost nervous sort of excitement, like, ‘Tell me when the contractions start!’— slowly filling in this wall,” he reminisces with a laugh. Completing the majority of panels while on tour, San didn’t begin recording the music until just after Maple, now three, arrived. With his newborn often sleeping to his side, the turntablist would tease out the quiet piano passages that stir Space Cadet’s pages. He sums the book itself as a screenplay for a silent movie, and the music is appropriately cinematic: suppressed yet rich in piano melancholia, with spooky, sci-fi glitches and swoops enhancing the sensation that the notes are slipping into a vacuum. Most of the soundtrack was recorded using actual instruments, “But always with the

The original etchboards for Space Cadet // Close-up

intent of being scratched,” says San. Composing and recording to vinyl, he scratched over the mix, sprinkling the faint hiccups and streaks raining throughout the music as he remixed it to finalized form. Turntables are on every track, even if, as he says, “they’re sometimes kind of stealthy.” That quiet character of sound seems more and more apropos as the orchestrator proceeds through his studio. Showing the slightest paunch, San is a soft speaker and tends to trail away from his sentences in a non-committal “I guess.” But his sheepish reservoir opens into a giggle so readily and often it’s no stretch to label the mousy maestro a dependable laugher. The buoyant cheer he flashes is like a window into the lighthearted, youthful strand of humor running through Kid Koala’s music and artwork, regardless of the mood he’s cast within a project. Space Cadet is no exception.

Nor is it the only story-soundtrack opus he’s produced. But the DJ-composer’s body of work spans more than the just audio-visual divide. San’s lengthy catalogue of collaborations is as much a whirligig of artists as it is styles. There’s the past work with Gorillaz and Deltron 3030—a cult-favorite partnership with beatsmith Dan The Automator and Del the Funky Homosapien. (They’re nearing completion on Deltron Event II, the sequel to their first and only album. It’s anticipated next spring.) Then there’s the trip-hop gem he recorded as a part of Lovage, another ad hoc collective, plus the jam-based projects with Bullfrog or The Slew, the bashing quartet formed with Wolfmother’s rhythm section. But for San, who grew up digesting New Orleans and vocal jazz as much as he did classical composers like Chopin and Debussy, being a worthy collaborator has never been about the number of adventures; it’s a matter of near brutal attention to detail, and execution of concept. Even in straightforward albums, of which he’s recorded three—with handfuls of EPs and remixes to boot—Kid Koala consistently projects a visual element; no DJ finds more rhythmic possibility in sampled dialogue. But it’s projects like Space Cadet that convey, or at least better relay his multifaceted creativity. “Everything I do is on a several-year arc of completion,” he explains, “I always have a lot of projects going at the same time, so the time-intensive ones don’t really scare me.” The longest-running project is still under construction. Those miniature models at the front of the Record Room? They belong to the project loosely titled Mosqui-

FEATURE

“If this were a kitchen, it would be gross... This means we’ve been busy,” to Book, begun around the time as Space Cadet. Instead of etchboards, its pages are lined with photographed 3-D models. The process is so intense focus that frequent breaks are a matter of necessity for San and his wife, who have been chipping away with longtime colleague and friend Louisa Schabas. San gestures to a shelf roughly four-feet long. It’s sporting a row of miniature models from Mosquito Book, which, ccording to him, are for chapter one. There are thirteen chapters.

San stops at a long desk housing a set of turntables, a few cubbies of vinyl and other assorted consoles. Countless black wires connect and coil the arrangement into a loose knot. This table is an island, engulfed by a perimeter of analog and computer recording equipment that gives

way to pianos and six-strings along one end, with more shelves of records on the other. “This is pretty much what I’ve whittled it down to,” he says of that striking record collection, mostly a smattering of orchestral pieces, francophones, and hi-fi percussion recordings—some he’s owned since age seven. As the collector tells it, digging for records in his teens slowly became digging for recording techniques, once textural curiosity spawned the hunt for how artists or producers achieved this puzzling timbre or that exciting effect. Over time, inquiry became understanding. “It all has a tone,” he says, gazing at no rack in particular, “There’s some sort of ghost in all those machines.” Collecting began in earnest when San started touring professionally, seeking and scouring flea markets around the world. These days the repertoire makes for a

lengthy list: spring reverbs, tape recorders and samplers, a reverb tank with Germanium preamps—he explains the pre-modern transistors allow a grainy buzz, or “Dr. Who-sound,” for those in the know. There’s also a classic ribbon microphone, the type used by the likes of Billie Holiday. Functioning ones are rare due to the fragility of its magnetized metal ribbon. “You can actually break it if you sneeze onto it or something,” he says, noting it took several years to find this particular model. “It’s the most similar to the human eardrum, arguably. You get this very natural sound.” San acheived the intimate tone of Space Cadet recording his piano lines into the vintage mic. He also set, and eventually realized the goal of using every item in this room, however infinitesimal the appearance. “Even the Ferris Bueller sampler over there,” he

says, pointing out a cumbersome, 8bit sampler. (It stores its loops onto floppydiscs—which, yes, Matthew Broderick’s best-known character put to use, sampling a convincing snore in order to skip school.) It’s something of a novelty, sure, but San insists upon its formidable filter options. “We also had space echoes and oilcan echoes,” he continues, detailing the mechanism behind the hovering, eerie warble they create: “They have about two table spoons of magnetic oil in them and there’s a disc that spins; it charges the oil and the oil keeps the sound. Then the playback dips into the oil and you hear it. It goes back and it re-records—but oil,” he digresses, laughing. The result is the spooky effect rippling throughout Space Cadet, which San describes with words like “sploshy,” “dusted,” or “whirly.” Further down the line he points to

FEATURE

a shelf where multiple brown books are graphic novel, the precursor to Space Cagathered and brings up Carpal Tunnel Syndet. Completed in 2004, Nufonia Must Fall drome, his first LP on the London-based is a 350-page exposition of a lovesick roindependent hip-hop label Ninja Tune. Al- bot accompanied by a barely 17-minute most burdensomely conceptual, the alsoundtrack. By contrast, Space Cadet marks bum is a true suture-work, a project San a much more sophisticated package—its says required “severe, focused digging.” He music fuller and better suited to the story’s cites the “Barhopper” tracks, on which he length. Still, it’s easy to imagine the two first sampled a glut of drunken pickup lines tales occurring in different corners of the and then probed spoken-word records for same universe; not only does Space Caa usable woman’s response. The pursuit det graduate from Nufonia Space Academy, is indexed in those brown volumes. “I felt San admits that the design for her spacesuit like a librarian those few years,” San musis a simple inversion of his Nufonia robot— es. “I was more interested in making stoflip one character and you have the other. ries with a radio play-kind of dynamic, like When asked whether the innumerable ‘Fender Bender,’ with people arguing.” variations of robots already illustrated, and He’s since acknowledged it as the no doubt copyrighted, ever led to writer’s “weirdest” record he’ll ever make. “I think block, San springs on the question: “I have Carpal was really that first jump into seelegions of robots!” And he has his reasons. ing what directions it could go,” he says, “I don’t like to get into the 76 muscles in the calling it a necessary step. San names inface,” he says, “What I like about the robot is novative tracks—“Drunk Trumpet” or that it’s very flat—you get into what they’re “Temple of Gloom”—as precursors to sub- thinking. I like that kind of interaction.” sequent tunes that are just as complex, As for who is interacting with the story, but arguably much stronger. Like “Basin San embraces any and all. “I didn’t think of Street Blues,” a standout from his second this book as a kids book or an adult book,” LP, Some Of My Best Friends Are DJs (2003), he reflects, seated now in a diner-style and a brilliant free-scale Dixie-collage both booth at the middle of the Record Room. evocative of and indebted to Louis ArmHe mentions a local elementary school restrong’s original. cently requested several copies of Space The DJ remembers the seed for Space Cadet for the classroom. “I was like, ‘Okay, Cadet finding soil during this creative phase. sure!’” he says, bemused. There’s early evidence in “Space Cadet 2,” But coinciding with the visual appeal a track from Some Of My Best Friends Are to youngsters is a layered core of themes DJs that hints sonically at the deep-space that’s resonating with adults. Apart from epic that would take shape over the next sending some on long walks, San says decade. More important perhaps is the several friends relayed a sudden urge to muted piano motif San slips into the same phone their parents: “That’s good! That’s song’s waning bars; they would anchor the a response.” The story’s thematic bedrock, minimalist soundtrack of his next underwhich the author encapsulates with terms taking, Nufonia Must Fall. like connectivity and cycles, involves both “I was sketching these robots and what sides of the age divide—a balance in apwould become Nufonia,” he says of his first peal gleaned from comedic favorites like

Monty Python or The Muppet Show. “Sometimes the humor is quite advanced, but there’s always something for the kids to get into,” he says of the latter. San relates that duality to Space Cadet: “The ambiguity lends itself to interpretation. Generally, that’s why we keep text out of the books. I think it’s just more involving sometimes.” Involvement and interaction is precisely the intent behind the concert program the prime mover has planned for Space Cadet. He’s still one to helm the more conventional set, either playing solo or with the Slew. But at the other end of the spectrum are productions like Music To Draw To…, a sporadic series first tested in Montreal in 2009, in which the deckmaster DJ’s a more tranquil setting—cafes and less venue-oriented spaces—spinning low-key grooves for attendees to sketch along to. There is no dancing, but there is hot chocolate. Conceiving a production for Space Cadet, San similarly dismissed the notion that dancing or even standing would be appropriate. He and wife Cori devised 20-by20-foot space pods on which attendees sit, dialing the music in on their own pair of headphones. At times the show is pindrop quiet, says San, recalling preliminary exhibitions in Montreal and at Mass MoCa, “Having that atmosphere kind of loosens it up. It’s like you’re in your own space ship, musically.” Beginning this month Kid Koala takes the Space Cadet Experience to Europe, stopping in Belgium, France, Germany, and the UK. The tour allows a mobile-type of pseudo-residency, spending weeks in one city or country before advancing to the next. With fifteen years of festival circuits now under his belt, it’s a pace the vinyl-maestro is content with: “There were years when I was doing 300 cities,” he re-

members. “As much as I enjoyed that, it was the simplest common form of touring in terms of production—at the end of the show, it’s still you up there performing.” Touring Space Cadet not only brings the audience into the performance with interactive music stations, it allows San to travel more comfortably with his family. By next spring he plans to return the production back home, fittingly, to the Canada Aviation and Space Museum in Ottawa. “It’s cool to just get people out of the same old clubs,” it sounds like an after-

“I never meant to make a sad story..— Most DJs don’ t want to leave the audience in tears, but if this is the show that does that, oh well.” thought the way San says it, but there’s nothing closer to a Kid Koala manifesto: reimagining conventional formats, indulging the impulses born from his warm and sometimes zany core. San sees his approach as a pursuit of the sounds he grew up with and also grew to love—but on the turntable. “With turntables, there’s got to be more to life than just that one experience or style of music,” he offers, then dismisses such a goal should even be limited to spinning records, if it can cultivate a deeper experience. Without dwelling San segues back to Space Cadet. “I never meant to make a sad story— most DJs don’t want to leave the audience in tears,” he concedes. “But if this is the show that does that, oh well.” He rounds out the resolution with a laugh. #

FEATURE

NEW ALBUMS HANDMADE [DELUX EDITION] Naïve Hindi Zahri “Love is so beautiful and cruel at the same time,” Hindi Zahra croons halfway through Handmade, the full-length debut that accelerated the French Moroccan singer’s globalized ascent shortly after its release last year. Overwhelmingly, the tenor of the album and the few songs Zahra has released outside of it can be reduced to that lyric, from “At The Same Time.” And though double-edged romance is hardly unchartered territory in popular folk or vocal jazz—and these are camps in which Zahra stakes claim—there’s little in Handmade that feels familiar. The melodies and textures are warm and inviting, a Mediterranean mélange of acoustic strings and sashaying tempos. They glide alongside Zahra’s vocals, careful to never overpower. Which is crucial, because Zahra is a singer of small voice but staggering intuition; she harvests her enchanting charisma through

measure

instead

power. It’s no mistake then that “Beautiful Tango” is arranged as a first impression on Handmade. The

opening track is the most iconic in original and Until The Next Jour-

derer, and Two Horses is a record

the set, hypnotic and tailor-made ney, a six-song EP Zahra released of her meanderings. “Construction for Zahra’s smoky warble: sugges- this year. Billed as “unplugged,” on the Street,” the first song on tive and playful, always put across all of the latter’s songs are her debut full-length, documents with a wink and self-sure grin. acoustic, though only half are a day in the postmodern life of Perhaps that’s why, whether new. Apart from “Oursoul” that a 20-something Montrealer. She changes kisses someone; she cries. She past the throes of desire, as she little in the familiar songs, which steals from the market; she throws almost always does, Zahra invari- are mostly acoustic to begin with. up. Eventually she finds herself

singing about being in or just

unplugged

reduction

ably sounds as though she has the Nonetheless, the deluxe mate- “Listening to Pavement and wonupper hand. “You know I’m just a rial highlights Handmade’s better dering where the day went” and little souvenir,” she reprimands in songs, and, between “The Man I striking a real Lisa Loeb-kind of “Fascination,” a kiss-off echoed

Love” and “Ahiawa,” includes new vibe, but only for three minutes. later by “Stand Up,” where she’s installments of the singer at her Cornfield’s moods span a vast not condescending so much as celebrating emancipation, declaring, “My heart belongs to me” amid claps and sympathetic harmonies. In “Set Me Free” she sings about all-consuming passion, casting herself as both victim and authority, alternating “Look what you do to me” with orders to “Let the fire

effortless best. For music so immersed in the pitfalls of passion, there is a rare uplift, control, and play. Making them seem equally alluring, Hindi Zahra doesn’t invert the torch singer paradigm so much as she bends it to her will. #

gamut, but swing with tact. In “If You Don’t Pursue,” the 23-year-old songwriter is scornful but forgiving: She’s not browsing the stalls at street markets on a Saturday afternoon; she’s wearing a taffeta dress on prom night while her date takes off in a limo full of rowdy assholes. And then there are songs like “Arc Blues” and “Gananoque,”

burn in me.”

which are timelessly sorrowful.

She’s in no hurry during “The Man I Love,” a Gershwin stan-

She’s graceful, sometimes. Other

dard and something of a right

times she’s vomiting in public and

of passage for singers of Zahra’s

telling you about this crazy dream

leaning. Billie Holiday, Sarah

she had last night. “Lonely Acorn”

Vaughan, and Ella Fitzgerald all

gallops to an urgent start but ends

recorded it, and Zahra stamps

up a dulcet apex, spaghetti-western

it here with her folksy sway,

horns and harmonies rerouting its

nodding toward Vaughan’s unhurried poise and Holiday’s trill. It’s an

outstanding

performance,

TWO HORSES (self-release) Charlotte Cornfield

course in a different direction. It’s something of an unexpected twist, not exactly one you’d suspect, but

bonus tracks packaged by this

I imagine the colors in Charlotte then again you might also not Cornfield’s allegorical mood ring expect to hear the somber, heavy-

expanded bundle.

to be a miscellany of rainbows and hearted “Port Town” on an album

and perhaps the strongest of the

Really,

Handmade

[Deluxe sludge. The Toronto-bred, Mon- that happily affirms, “I believe in

Edition] is a marriage of the 2010 treal-based songwriter is a wan- magic.”

NEW ALBUM REVIEWS

“All of the Pretty Mistakes” 1996’s Entroducing…. His debut was

“Stay the Course” ignites the

is one of the best songs here, not unanimously acclaimed, a genre- album’ early momentum. Boosted only because it’s catchy and infec-

bending milestone in production. by heady rhymes from East Coast

tious, but because it manages Even the Guinness Book confirms it veterans Talib Kweli and Posdto amalgamate all of Cornfield’s as the first popular record ever com- nuos, its aggravated pulse and extremes—the

jubilant

strolls

prised solely of samples.

zig-zagging harmonica tee Less

The turntablist’s subsequent

You Know up before a lull. The

the heartbroken questions planted studio efforts predictably failed to eclipse the sonic splash he in ears that aren’t listening. originally made. His last statIt does so without sounding ment was 2006’s The Outsider, completely schizophrenic; it’s a which leaned heavilly on the pleasant ditty—endearing, even. of-the-moment hyphy movement, “Of all of the pretty mistakes that ditching Shadow’s eeire instruI have made, you’re the worst one,” mentals for a more hyperactive, she sings, with tapping toes and a abrasive backdrop. Success or no, disposition smiley enough for FM it fell mostly on deaf ears. radio. Now DJ Shadow—real name With Two Horses, Charlotte Josh Davis—ends five years of Cornfield makes misery sound silence, emerging with The Less

next tracks slow the drive, even

through the alleyways of Montreal,

if they form a contrast suited to the record’s overall flow—and certainly

underline

Shadow’s

flexible finesse. But they also help the hard-tilting groove of “I Gotta Rokk” slam like concrete slab into the second half of the set. After that? The appropriately titled “Scale it Back.” The transitions can be abrupt and unseemly, but they force each song to stand on its own. Which often works.

lovely and loveliness sound possi-

You Know, The Better. At 16 tracks For better and worse, ebb ble, even while puking from the and more than 60 minutes, it’s an and flow defines The Less You third floor. Carly Lewis expansive record, as much an appe- Know, The Better. It refuses to tizer platter as it is a rejoinder to register as mere background the purists refusing to relinquish music. But the album’s sequencShadow’s breakthrough sound. On his fourth LP Shadow returns to his patented spectral

ing suggests Davis tossed these tunes

together—even

though

that’s far from likely. DJ Shadow

samples without skimping on the is still inventing within experi-

THE LESS YOU KNOW, THE BETTER Rock-A-Fella DJ Shadow

heavily adrenalized beats. The

mental channels that echo to his

beatsmith showcases his pliable

early days, but with noticeable

technique, melting and dissect-

tweaks. Whether he can reconcile

ing styles. As ever, his impressive

the two into a seamless standout

record

is a question that will have to be

collection—reportedly

60,000—is on display. There’s

piano balladry in “Sad and Lonely,” Alex Butler and horror—check the howls in

When Shadow roared to the fore- “Give Me Back the Nights”—even front of the Bay Area’s hip-hop jazz-fueled funk patterns jabbing scene it was mainly on the merits of through “Run For Your Life”.

left for the next album.

CASIOKIDS

AABENBARINGEN OVER AASKAMMEN Polyvinyl Casiokids Since its inception in Bergen, Norway in 2005, Casiokids has felt like a project about inclusion: a synth-pop band that prizes both riff and groove, and smears them with colorful hues. Considering the group’s ambition to boost its following in the US, and that all of its lyrics are in Norwegian, such an approach might read something

name is homage to the budget-

which in hindsight appears more

line of keyboards). “Kaskaden”

the disruptive party of songs.

begins as a stuttering synth-

“Det haster!” echoes the best

shuffle, but is most thrilling

from that last record, and in its

when overcome by guitar pecks

opening bars are Casiokids at

evocative of the frosty pop

their most engaging, its vertigi-

minted by English trio The xx.

nous

More often, when he does take

challenge to the loping beat. But

the lead, guitarist Fredrik Øgreid

the transition, of which there

Vogsborg invokes bright, crisp

are too few in this record—or at

tones from the sub-Sahara.

least too few that parlay the air

As with any dance pop band

synth-refrain

almost

of jubilation—leaves the initial

worth its salt, Casiokids predom- charge sounding half-lit by its inantly pulls its flavors from the

close. “Elefantenes hemmelige

1970s or early ‘80s. But disco and

gravplass” is polite and dance-

Parliament-inspired funk hardly

able, but slowly suffers from

percolate to the surface here as

uniformity. It also features sing-

loudly as afrobeat: a kalimba rings

ing from the lissome-voiced Ketil

beneath the burbling keyboards

Kinden Endresen. His faint but

Casiokids’ latest album, Aabenbar- in “Dresinen”; “Olympiske leker” ingen over aaskammen, the band’s builds a hearty bed of acoustic

precise falsetto is an effective

second release in the states, and

polyrhythms before segueing to

over the springy arrangements

third overall. It’s a fascinating

electronic drumming; meanwhile

in “London Zoo” and ”Golden

album, full of thickly embroidered

guitar and bass move in quirky

Years.” Endresen’s drowsy vocals

dance grooves that brim with

counterpoint to spur the nimble

are well suited to the buoyancy

zeal rather than frenzy. Unlike

funk of “Selskapets triste avslut- in this record: The melodies

the first two records however,

ning.” The group cites King Tubby

meander more than they used

the dance-throb is less driven by

and Fela Kuti as influences, and

to and the thrust is less kinetic,

Casiokids’ characteristic depth

the evidence is as strong here as

but Casiokids’ stride is still an

of synth-textures. (The group’s

on the second Casiokids album,

ebullient one. #

like strategy. But the quartet’s spry, bouncing pulses rarely sound calculated—and most of its songs are instrumentals anyway. The same can be said for

tool, particularly when lofted

NEW ALBUM REVIEWS

LOO NEY BIN

SESSIONS, LIVE Cal Tjader / Chico Hamilton 1976, Calliope Point of extraction: Aux 33 Tours, 1379 av du Mont-Royal E, Montréal, QC Reason Picked: It’s a classic era, the late-fifties—and liner notes promise “vintage Tjader on vibes.” Sounds Like: Cal’s Side • Live, loose • Glimmering, shimmering vibes shine early, fade late without really steering "Bernie's Tune"—done as a samba—or "Jammin'," where much jamming ensues, but little is actually said Chico’s Side • Fluttering flute and drums (that’s Chico) in “Blue Sands” • Guest singer Georgia Carr’s are condescending lullabies • “The Ghost” is the least polite: harddriving bop—check Fred Katz’s cello-solo You Had Me At: Vince Guaraldi plays piano on Cal’s side (A). Worth Checking: Side One: “The Night We Called It A Day”, Side Two: “The Ghost”

HAVE NO FEAR JOE TURNER IS HERE Joe Turner 1981, Pablo Records Point of extraction: Primitive, 3828 Rue Saint-Denis, Montreal, QC

squeezing aphorisms sound polite... • B.B. minus the bravado • Pianist Lloyd Glenn is a fantastically (and the only) inspired player You Had Me At: “Where the hell could you be goin’ after all I’ve done for you?!”

Reason Picked: I don’t want to live in fear.

Worth Checking: Side One: “Howlin’ Wind”

Sounds Like:

Side Two: “Woman You Must Be Crazy”

• Brass-fed rhythm & blues • Once he finally shakes her and the venom is leaving his blood, he becomes more clearheaded… but slurs even more

• "Woman You Must Be Crazy" makes lemon-

• "Consider Me"'s gasping melisma is a prototype for bottleneck players • That staggered entrance in "I'm Going To Tell God": rhythmic rapture You Had Me At: “I’m gonna to tell God just how you been treating me.” Worth Checking: Side One: “Consider Me” Side Two: “Since The Fire Started”

AMAR CABALLERO Babe Ruth 1974, EMI Point of extraction: Le Fox Troc, 819 av du Mont-Royal E, Montréal, QC Reason Picked: One of the two HASHfounders used to breakdance to Babe Ruth’s “The Mexican”… not naming names. Sounds Like: • As conflicted as you would expect of an English prog band named after a plump, American ballplayer who liked getting his picture taken wearing a crown • A future forecast: "Lady" echoes early Funkadelic and disco, before they broke later

I BELIEVE Mahalia Jackson 1966, Grand Award Point of extraction: Le Fox Troc, 819 av du Mont-Royal E, Montréal, QC

in the decade • Alan Shacklock was one of rock's unjustly snubbed ax-men, see: "Gimme Some Leg" • A bet gone terribly wrong: “Cool Jerk”-cover dovetailing inexplicably with the baroque “We Are Holding On”; its classical guitars do not set

Reason Picked: I don’t need one.

up the sax-driven funk-spunk in “Doctor Love”

Sounds Like:

You Had Me At: “Baby Pride”: Best cut on a

• Biblical blues to start, with a more hymnal second-half

record that should’ve ended after Side A

• "I'm Going To Wait Until My Change Comes"

Worth Checking: Side One: “Baby Pride”

and "Get Away Jordan" are Mahalia at her

Side Two: “Amar Caballero (Sin Ton Ni Son)”

booming best.

LOONEY BIN

AUTUMN

HASH MO KOLOURS

panache surrounding Bermiss’

along. Which in light of the

mellifluous panic. Think Steely

string of similar, devil-may-care

Dan minus the cagey lyrics and

parlor room anthems—look no

The first of three EPs by sing- seedy characters with guns, and ing drummer and producer Mo replace with a laser-sharp focus

further than Foster the People or

Kolours, EP1: Drum Talking (One-

Zeroes—might come off as a bit

“Biddies”

Handed) flows and even sounds like a seamless field recording. In some tracks, that’s actually his springboard; the savvy sampler is

half-Mauritian,

and

ably

on lean melody.

WAIT M83 According to M83 mastermind

wields the influence that tradi- Anthony Gonzalez “Wait” is the tional sega music had upon him. sibling-track to “Splendor,” its Kolours harnesses its favored,

parallel track on the second disc of

breathy style of vocals here,

Hurry Up, We’re Dreaming (naïve).

drawing vocal loops together

But considering it’s mostly a sea

into an unlikely bricolage of

of cries that devolve from actual

woozy, hand-clapped hip-hop.

words into atmospheric blather, “Wait” is really a rare glimpse of

HAPPY ENDING Aabaraki This New York-based soul-pop quartet hardly skimps on the double entendre throughout its self-titled album, which you can hear in full at Aabaraki’s bandcamp. “Happy Ending” is the least brazen thing in the funkinfused fling, a subdued snapshot

Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic calculating. Better leave indicators of a promised full-length album next spring to “(15),” also from this three-song morsel: On its Facebook, where the music is freely available, the band makes the recording of these songs seem tossed together—but this lullaby is majestically mawkish.

BLACK WATER Apparat

something familiar in this enter- When left to his own devices elecprising—and sprawling—double tronic composer Sascha Ring, aka album. It’s also easily the most

blissfully-prolonged elegy in the sixth album by an artist who’s honed the art of the synth-swaddled exhale for the past decade.

(15) Carrousel

Apparat, emerges with something less clinical than the dystopian productions he programs with Modeselektor—as the intermittently extant Moderat. In some of the more sparkling moments in The Devil’s Walk (Mute), Ring teases his patented sonic grids

of the mental cul-de-sac paved

A duo from Tallahassee, FL,

of electro-patter. Expansive and

by a post-breakup bender. “Here

Carrousel does its best to cover

lush, “Black Water” emanates

we go again,” opens keyboard- up a saccharine—but crystal- a different elegance, cottoning ist and lead-man Akie Bermiss. line—sense of melody on this ethereal layers and building over

The chords rise and fall with his

Darling EP. The title track has

a steady current. “Shapes to melt

self-esteem, prodded along by

the two setting their elastic,

into its own,” he opens, as direct

Brian Forbes’ glassy guitar: pure

high coos loose in a ragtag sing-

as he gets during these surreal

stanzas. But you’re hardly likely

Mostly, Dreams Come True (Terri- strangled guitars. It’s a dazed

to decipher them anyway, since

ble Records) revolves within elec- and confused game of cat and

Ring barely rises above a mumble

tronic sketches that flop under

mouse, and when it finally boils

in haze that only grows more

their own inflexibility. But here

over Wilkin’s yowl is piercing a

nebulous.

there’s organic coordination: The

seething squall—white hot and

Grizzly Bear member’s fetching

demanding, “Axl who?

SKETCH 4 Tim Hecker Too short to call an album, this 30-minute EP is meaty, though it sounds anything but; the stark piano sketches trace the skeletons inside Tim Hecker’s Ravedeath, 1972, from earlier in the year. Dropped Pianos EP (Kranky)

falsetto trembles through ambivalent lines about separation and

IN THE BEDROCK (DEMO)

numbness that are well-suited

Willem Maker

to his taste in steely, gaping production. “Why won’t you wait for me?” he pleads, triggering a stealthy crescendo before finally overloading the mix with a depth charge of grinding industrial

derives its name from that album’s

doom.

lead track, a static symphony that

G-

sounded as though a music box

Cut before anything on his radiant masterwork Agapao, this demo from an in-the-works EP echoes the haunted holler in Willem Maker’s first two records. All swaggering backbeat and droning guitar purr, it’s a raw roadmap: stripped and ragged. But as with Junior Kimbrough’s

had been dropped into a vortex

Vanaprasta

of crushing digital atmospherics.

“We can talk in the morning

embryonic moment rings louder

when we feel a little more sober,”

than the most overblown of Little

Vanaprasta

Steven

Water licks. Riffing on eternity

Wilkin breathes down the back

and legacy, the Deep South trou-

of your neck so heavily you can

badour considers the sturdiness

smell the alcohol. On their self-

of the foundations he’s laying

released debut, Healthy Geometry,

for future generations. “In the

the West Coast’s hardest-hitting

bedrock children, dig my spirit

five-piece

way on down,” he begins. Wet

That whirling jet stream is teased into focus on this track, and elsewhere in the EP, but mostly Hecker lets the piano’s cadences ripple in their own density, drifting freely and without structure as neo-nocturnes.

SHE FOUND A WAY OUT CANT

gutbucket blues, sometimes that

frontman

tours

gamut

modern rock’s biggest influenc- with reverb, Maker’s bellow is ers, evoking TV on the Radio one

enveloping and only sharpens

The standout in this debut by

moment, Arcade Fire the next. On

against the angular churn of

Chris Taylor as a soloist is a

“G-,” Vanaprasta’s most explosive

guitar and drums. By the time he

frosty dirge that creeps through

and inspired recording to date,

thunders “I did the best I could”

needling verses before ruptur- they slink through verses lined

there’s little doubt those descen-

ing into synth-swollen hysteria.

dants hear him already.

with menacing bass-scuzz and

AUTUMN HASH

THE

HASH

JOHN LEE HOOKER FOR PRESIDENT Ry Cooder

longer drinks from the memory,

of singles spanning his time

he drinks to it, staring at a deso-

in the McSon Trio, in Seattle—

late horizon.

and you hear West Coast Jazz

Usually the guitarist’s guitarist,

drifting through the blues. The

BLACKPOOL

Ry Cooder gets political on this

legendary singer is more poised,

Roy Harper

(terrific) album for the work-

which transmutes the nature of

Sophisticated Beggar 1966

ingman and puts lyrics first.

his command: less the larynx-

Released late in August, Pull Up

snapping hollers or unpredict-

Some Dust and Sit Down (None-

able cartwheels and more a

such) is an album in which Cooder

slow-bleed, taunting the tempo

rails against bankers, corpora-

with bluesy intuition. Here,

tions and army recruiters, and

though, he’s both, and at his

does so in impudent parodies—

most engaged with the ache in

“Christmas Time This Year” lists

the verses.

fingers are at the reigns on Harp-

just returned home for the holi-

MEMORIES OF YOU AND I

cascades and pinched harmonics

days against a polka; then there’s

Waylon Jennings

distinguish Sophisticated Beggar

the country jig “No Banker Left

The Ramblin’ Man 1974

in a way Harper’s imaginative

the handicaps of maimed soldiers

Behind.”

It’s

superficially

bizarre, slapstick record. Naturally, the 64-year-old’s solution is John Lee righting the ship, and the inflection is flawless: “I’m strictly copastatic, I ain’t Republican or Democratic,” goes the campaign—with scotch, bourbon and beer for every woman and man.

LET ME HEAR YOU CALL MY NAME

Roy Harper’s spindly fingers reached

into

songs

the

successive, and more successful, micro-generation of British nowand-then-folkies—Led Zeppelin, Jethro Tull, Pink Floyd. Those er’s first album: Finger-picked

hollers do Stormcock (1971). The An overlooked gem that precedes Jennings’

five-year

streak

topping the charts as an outlaw, ‘Memories’ is an early page in country’s book about how lonely it is at the top. Draped by shimmering harmonica and weeping steel-pedal, Jennings broods over his beer: “The taste of fame is fire to me no more, the tension and hunger have gone,” he sings with iron-cast stoicism. Years

latter, a truly unsung classic, remains his magnum opus, but Harper’s early work flashes its share of sublime finesse, like “Blackpool,”

instrumental

that tiptoes through pools of Celtic blues.

CANDELA Buena Vista Social Club Buena Vista Social Club, 1997

after leaving love and a comfy

There’s nothing more vibrant in

bed for the tireless grind and

this classic set than “Candela.”

glory bound to the road, Hoss

The Cuban traditional’s clave-

Ray’s roots in stride piano are

is all but spent. Thinking about

heartbeat careens into spellbind-

at their most exposed in this

what could have been, he no

ing abandon, voiced quite liter-

Ray Charles Blues Before Sunset 2009

reissue. Really, it’s a collection

ally by singer Ibrahim Ferrer. But

bossa producer and arranger. The

there’s no shortage of subtlety—

balance is decadent: pure, essen-

notice those whisper-thin guitar

tial bossa, you might say—that’s

streaks Ry Cooder lofts over the what Andrade’s saying, more or

DUKE ELLINGTON’S SOUND OF LOVE Charles Mingus Changes One 1974

crack and rumble of percussion in

less. At least until she launches

the opening bars. Ferrer courses

into the careening scat-solo,

He may have had the ignomini-

a fluid orbit around the groove

firing on hard-bop cylinders and

ous designation as one of the

with his vocals, spouting impro- forcing her band to play catch-

few musicians Duke Ellington

operating beyond the melody

up, which they do, in a break- ever personally fired, but Charles Mingus never shied from salutneck double-time.

he’s searing: rattling, scatting,

ing his idol. Money Jungle, their

visation in blue innuendo. When

his voice flying in contained

UNSUNGSONG

but no less riveting loop-the-

The Herbaliser

with Max Roach—recorded some

loops. The final two minutes are

Something Wicked This Way Comes

ten years after the altercation—

the band playing at fever pitch,

2002

was an all-too-rare realignment.

shouting, “Me quemo, ayi,” or “I burn myself”—a festival of selfimmolation.

ESTAMOS AÍ Leny Andrade Estamos Aí 1965

one-off masterpiece as a trio

“Unsungsong” plows open with burst

starting

vintage-soul sharp

but

brass,

receding

quickly into the murk of bluesy keyboards and cinematic strings. They tug the groove through an unhurried sway, more waltz than

The advent of bossa nova allowed

hip-hop breakbeat. Along with

Leny Andrade a more suitable

“The Hard Stuff,” it’s an instru-

conduit for her bebop-reared

mental standout on an album

brilliance. And that background

that remains one of Herbaliser’s

steals to the front in this early

best realizations of an expanded

hit. Opting for resonance over

roster; the guests are new and old

flash, Andrade begins in her low

compatriots: a familiar polyglot

of oddball rappers and smoky-

with patience. “Que a bossa nova

voiced chanteuses. As Ollie Teeba

cresce / Que a bossa nova vence,”

and Jake Wherry close in on their

she hums, arching upward. The

20th anniversary as a unit, that

lithe accompaniment underneath

fourth studio album continues

is the work of Eumir Deodato, who

to crystallize as the finest in the

would quickly become a vaunted

Herbaliser canon.

Unlike this eulogy however, that 1963 LP was hardly about tribute—rather than rework his own standards Ellington brought a swath of new tunes to those sessions. This twelve-minute tip of the cap was recorded a few months after Ellington’s death, and casts Don Pullen as the Duke and George Adams as Johnny Hodges. Mingus and Adams both solo, but it’s the first bars Adams touches that end up the heart of the ballad.

THE HASH