Here’s the challenge facing this review: it’s going to concentrate more on the piece than on the recording.
That’s what I get for spending most of my time reviewing Japanese indie rock bands than keeping my four years of classical music training current.
But having not heard Alban Berg’s Lyric Suite before, I have no real point of reference with which to evaluate Kronos’ performance.
So Kronos — you dodged the bullet on this one.
I am, however, familiar with Kronos’ discography, and the ensemble is no stranger to music borne out of personal crisis or ideological unrest. From Dmitri Shostakovich’s angry and mournful Quartet for Strings No. 8 to Franghiz Ali-Zade’s passionate Mugam Sayagi, composers, like other artists, channel their frustrations into their works.
Alban Berg composed his Lyric Suite in a time when structure for the sake of structure started to impose itself on musical expression.
Although the piece was written in 1925, the inspiration for it wasn’t revealed till more than 50 years later, when American composer George Perle came across an annotated copy of the score sent to Berg’s would-be mistress, Hanna Fuchs-Robettin.
Berg wrote the Lyric Suite to memorialize the eight days in which he and Hanna secretly longed for each other. In the piece, he quotes Alexander von Zemlinsky and Richard Wagner, while also musically notating his and Hanna’s initials into the score.
Titling the piece Lyric Suite, Berg implied the work was extracted from an unwritten opera, the theme of which he left listeners to determine for themselves.
If obfuscation was Berg’s intent, he certainly did an excellent job. But conveying the grande passion (as its described in the liner notes) of his not-affair? Less so.
Berg certainly captures the psycholgoical dissonance of longing — Tortured Suite would have been a more journalistic title for the work. And he also symbolizes the relationship numerically throughout the score: 23 to represent him, 10 to represent her. The results aren’t readily apparent to the listener.
But any warmth Berg may have felt for his object of desire gets lost in the analytical methods he uses to express that love. The piece is complex, yes. It’s challenging, yes. It expresses frustration and isolation, oh hell yeah.
But warmth?
That doesn’t mean Berg at any point should have gone tonal on the listener, but George Crumb’s more grotesque, Vietnam War-inspired Black Angels also employs numerology and quotation to express its point — and it’s not missed on the listener.
For this recording, engaging soprano Dawn Upshaw performs a vocal part restored by Perle originally intended to conclude the quartet.
Berg made the right decision to leave the vocal part out. The piece feels like it ends at the fifth movement, and a singer making an appearance in the finale seems forced.
For its part, Kronos handles Berg’s score with its usual hands-on interpretive approach. But it’s tough to inject much emotion into a piece that sets out to be cold.
Kicell will release a new single, titled “Hakobune”, on Dec. 17. The duo worked with electronica producer Mashiko Itsuki, whose credits include Supercar, ASLN and ROVO. The single is expected to contain three tracks. Kicell’s previous single, “Sabaku ni Saita Hana”, is a self-cover of a song the pair wrote for former Judy and Mary singer Yuki.
It’s tough not to be lured by the premise behind Outkast’s Speakerboxxx/The Love Below, even if you’re not a big fan of hip-hop (which I’m not).
A two-member band. Each does a solo album. Both packaged under the band’s moniker. Didn’t the late-Lisa Lopez challenge her bandmates in TLC to do something similar?
Of course, Outkast has been hearlded as one of hip-hop’s boundary-pushing forces, which, to a rap philistine’s ears, means the pair doesn’t sound like Dr. Dre’s latest protogeés.
And thank [insert diety name here] for that.
(Between gangsta rap and rap-rock, hip-hop as a genre doesn’t seem to be evolving much, does it?)
Of the two solo works, Big Boi’s Speakerboxxx is closer to the hip-hop mainstream but not by much. The tempo-shifting antics of “Ghetto Musick” establish the expectations for the rest of the album — that is, pretty damn high.
“Bowtie” evokes Prince at his funkiest, while the electric guitars on “Bust” give it a very faintly industrial feel.
“Bamboo” provides a shocking laugh and cautionary tale about how quickly children manipulate language, while “The Rooster” and “Church” offer some imaginative sonic backdrops.
“The Way You Move”, of course, sounds every bit of the single that it is.
Too, the “Speakerboxxx” bumper that pops up throughout the album is an ear worm of magnum proportions.
Although Big Boi does an incredible job giving listeners a workout, it does little to prepare anyone for the joyride his co-hort Andre 3000 takes on The Love Below.
When the lush “Intro” reminiscent of 101 Strings gives way to the ruptured guitar work of “Love Hater”, it’s obvious Dre isn’t afraid to get just a little bizarre.
Among the themes Dre tackles through his myriad of skits and songs: St. Valentine’s taking on the other holidays on the calendar; a riff on “who’s on first?”; a prayer to God, in which oral sex isn’t considered cheating.
Musically, Dre is all over the map. “Hey Ya” has drawn comparrisons to Prince but, as a member of Metafilter points out, feels more like New Order. “She Lives in My Lap” layers electric guitars, ethereal synthesizers and a reedy Central Asian melody quite comfortably.
Chiming guitars gives “Prototype” its soft hue, while the frantic “Spread” uses a jittery beat that sounds almost drum ‘n’ bass in origin.
Dre seems to lose a little steam as The Love Below progresses, and by the time Norah Jones joins him on the deep blues of “Take Off Your Cool”, listeners may find themselves at a point of exhaustion.
Dre and Big Boi made the right move by not pushing Speakerboxxx/The Love Below as a double album — each work is too distinctive to be considered part of a whole.
Pit against each other, and it’s no contest — Dre is way too far out for Big Boi to catch up. But that shouldn’t diminish Big Boi’ accomplishments.
Speakerboxxx/The Love Below is a win-win endeavor. Two great albums in one convenient package — what could be better?
Most every other music pundit on the planet has already weighed in on Cody ChesnuTT’s expansive The Headphone Masterpiece.
By now, you’ve probably read about how Mr. ChesnuTT has managed to craft a stripped-down epic, an R&B answer to indie rock.
Over the course of 35 songs and 99 minutes, ChesnuTT surveys a wide spectrum of music — R&B, hip-hop, soul, pop. This list is fucking long. And he does so from the comfort of his bedroom, not a glossy, polished studio.
But with that much music, it’s tough to qualify the title of this album — does ambition substitute for quality? How much of a masterpiece is The Headphone Masterpiece?
ChesnuTT has already been compared to Robert Pollard of Guided By Voices, and it’s an easy to see why. The brief songs on The Headphone Masterpiece often start and stop abruptly, many as if they’re just rough drafts.
Of course, there’s one word on which Pollard should meditate: edit. It’s the same lesson ChesnuTT ought to heed now before his output drowns under its own weight.
And while The Headphone Masterpiece may share a lot with Guided By Voices, the album actually shares more spiritually with another ambitious project from the last decade — 69 Love Songs by the Magnetic Fields.
With 69 Love Songs, Magnetic Fields leader Stephin Merritt recorded a three-volume songbook not beholden to the idea of an “album”. The only thread between the discs was the theme; beyond that, everything else was fair game.
The Headphone Masterpiece possesses a similar feel, but it’s not beholden to any theme whatsoever.
ChesnuTT excoriates the materialistic protagonist of “Bitch, I’m Broke”, but later adopts the persona of smooth operator in “The Seed”, covered by The Roots on 2002’s Phrenology.
He calls himself a mama’s boy on “Boylife in America”, then struts his bad self on the vaguely Motown-esque “Look Good in Leather”.
“If We Don’t Disagree” feels like a classic rock throwback, while “War Between the Sexes” sounds like a rough blueprint for every gangsta rap track in existence.
The album is all over the place, and that’s both its charm and liability.
If ChesnuTT took pinking shears to his album’s track listing, The Headphone Masterpiece could be described as modest, but because of its quantity — in both content and execution — it’s larger than that. Much, much larger.
To get the pushing-40 demographic of American listeners interested in anything remotely international, managers and labels seem to see the need to “modernzie” traditional music with synthesizers and orchestral arrangements.
New age dreck, to put it less mildly.
Such dreck, however, doesn’t put much of a crimp on the Yoshida Brothers’ self-titled American debut on Domo Records, the label to which new age heavyweight Kitaro is signed.
Skip past the over-produced tracks on Yoshida Brothers, and you’ll instead find why the brothers’ virtuosic performing got a younger generation of Japanese listeners interested in their parents’ (or grandparents’) music.
“Hyakka Ryooran” is just the brothers picking frantically on their shamisens, and yet it sounds fuller than any of the contemporary tracks on the album. “Storm,” although catchy, seems thin by comparrison. (And the remix by T.M. Revolution doesn’t give the track much more depth.)
If anything, the modern tracks only serve to underscore how incredible the more traditional tracks are. “Moyuru” finds the brothers accompanied by taiko and shakuhachi — a more traditional setting that doesn’t blunt the pair’s fiery performances.
“Tsugaru Jongara Bushi” is an amazing display of technique, while “Labyrinth” demonstrates how eeriely precise the brothers work as a unit.
At the same time, Yoshida Brothers works well with a mix of contemporary and traditional material. To go exclusively with the former would have diluted the brothers’ talents; to go exclusively with the latter would have turned them academic.
The light jazz beats of “Madrugada” are tolerable, while the understated arrangement of “Namonaki Oka” is inoffensive in a latter-day Clannad sense.
Still, Yoshida Brothers is an amazing display of technique, and the tracks which feature the brothers doing their thing more than make up for any attempts to make them sound modern.
Bonnie Pink will release a new single on Jan. 21, 2004. No details about the single were determined, but the track will be produced by Tore Johannsen, who’s worked with Pink most recently on her hit single, “Tonight, the Night”. The new single follows Pink’s most recent success with 2003’s album Present and a live CD/DVD, Pink in Red.
Fukuoka City pop band Nananine will release a live DVD titled dive at stage one a must buy! on Dec. 24. As indiciated by the title, the band filmed a November performance at Stage One in Shibuya. The DVD will retail at 18 yen. Back in October, Nananine released a limited edition single, “a must buy!”, through Tower Records Japan.
Back when Bulgarian women’s choirs were the it thing in world music crossovers, Tuvan throat singing became the hype machine’s heir apparent.
Huun-Huur Tu served as ambassadors of Tuvan throat singing, and if such performances as “Kongerei” on Kronos Quartet’s Night Prayers were any indication, the trio deserved its international reputation.
Albert Kuvezin of Yat-Kha could never be mistaken for a member of Huun-Huur Tu. The bizzare overtones produced from throat singing is imperceptible in Kuvezin’s technique. (Except in one instance, but more on that later.)
That’s not what makes Yat-Kha interesting.
Influenced by the likes of Sonic Youth and Deep Purple, Yat-Kha leader Kuvezin has instead injected an expansive creative freedom into the music indigenous to his region.
Yat-Kha’s music isn’t Eric’s trip, nor is it smoke on the water. Rather, it’s the long drones, the reedy accompaniment and the rumbling chants of Central Asia with electric guitars weaving in and out of the texture.
In other words, it’s rock music in attitude, not sound.
Yenisei Punk became something of a hit in the U.K. a few years back, and Yat-Kha has since become a fixture on the European tour circuit.
Listeners not previously introduced to Tuvan throat singing will find Kuvezin’s vocals difficult to digest. When Yenisei Punk was played over the Waterloo Records in-store system, customer reaction was, charitably put, quizzically hostile.
But there’s something hypnotic in the way Kuvezin integrates electric guitars with the indigenous instruments of Tuva. If anything, the electric guitar loses its identity as a Western instrument altogether.
British writers have already evoked Velvet Underground comparrisons, and nowhere is that more apparent on Yenisei Punk than on “Karangailyg kara hovva (Dyngyldai)”. The guitar solo in the middle amidst all that drone could have come straight off of Velvet Underground & Nico.
Yenisei Punk concludes — not counting the bonus tracks — with “Kargyram”, an a capella showcase of Kuvezin’s throat singing abilities. It’s tough to sit through all 11 minutes of it at first, but it’s worth the effort. Kuvezin may not have Huun-Huur Tu’s finesse, but he’s still a compelling performer.
Seagull Screaming Kiss Her Kiss Her singer Higurashi Aiha is set to release her first solo album on January 7, 2004. Titled Born Beautiful, the album is expected to contain 10 songs, including the pre-release singles “New Life” and “Fantasy”. A self-cover of “the end of shite”, which Higurashi wrote for ex-Judy and Mary singer Yuki, may also be included on the album. Higurashi will then go on tour for the album starting in February. For more information and tour dates, visit Higurashi’s official site.
Yerba Buena doesn’t care if you can’t dance. It doesn’t much matter anyway.
Because to hear the Latin collective’s debut album, President Alien, is to heed the call of the dance floor.
Taking a page from the Ozomatli playbook, Yerba Buena go for a kitchen sink aesthetic, combining African-influenced Latin music with hip-hop, soul and Afrobeat. It’s all blended seamlessly and shows just how much all these different musics have in common.
Which is a pussyfooted way of saying hell if I can pick apart which style is which.
But that kind of analysis is rendered moot. Music this rhythmic has only one message: “Shut up and dance.”
From the catchy opening of “Guajira (I Love You 2 Much)” all the way through to the children’s song quote concluding “Solar”, President Alien is relentless.
African rhythms and chanting vocals propel “Wassamatta Baby” and “Bote Bote Va”, while an arsenal of percussion drives the excessively busy “Definition of a Warrior”.
“Fire” layers a strange Middle Eastern section over a drum ‘n’ bass-styled beat, and “La Gringa” serves as a historical lesson on the origin of disco.
If anything, listening to President Alien can get pretty exhausting. Yerba Buena doesn’t have time to slow down.
Band leader and producer Andres Levin has cultivated a playground atmosphere on this album. He’s also gathered some of the most magnetic talents ever collected.
Xiomara Laugart’s smokey vocals are difficult to ignore. And the rhythm section of bassist Sebastian Steinberg, percussionist Pedro Martinez and session drummers Horacio Hernandez and Terreon Gully cram each song with an avalance of beats.
It can’t get any simpler — Yerba Buena’s President Alien is the perfect party record. It can make anyone get up and move.