Although not quite as unhinged as Estradasphere or some of the more berserk offerings from John Zorn, Jaga Jazzist have been, if nothing else, dependable sentinels of modern jazz. As an ensemble, they’ve fused their laid back (but nonetheless intense) compositions with everything from breakcore glitches to spacey guitar soundscapes to dance floor electronics. But unlike Estradsphere or John Zorn, these stylistic pairings are a means to an end; Jaga Jazzist aren’t interested in bending or subverting genres. They are, at the end of the day, a jazz ensemble: they still favor rhythm over melody, openness over structure, etc. If you’re used to listening to things like The Mars Volta, you might decry something as contemporary as Jaga Jazzist as “too disciplined” but it’s really the other way around. At their worst, The Mars Volta have one rule (“no rules”), which they’re only too quick follow into realms of mindless musical tedium. Jaga Jazzist, by contrast, don’t seem to be concerned with rules. They’re just here to play, thanks.
Such is the vibe one gets from One Armed Bandit, the band’s first album since 2005’s What We Must. They begin things with decidedly little fanfare (The Thing Introduces…, a thirty second garbled trumpet transmission), before launching into the album’s title track. While you might expect the album’s longer songs to outshine the shorter ones (if for no other reason than there’s more room and time for the band to roam around), the songs are pretty consistently intriguing in their depth, regardless of length. That being said, I’d be remiss if I didn’t say that the nine minute Toccata is the best offering here; it’s a great take on the virtuoso model, one that’s surprisingly hypnotic in its minimalism. while we’re on the subject, minimalism isn’t a defining trait of One Armed Bandit; much of what’s here sounds like a free-form Tortoise working with a larger palette. Jaga Jazzist seem to favor that approach (the rhythmic perpetual motion machine) – they’re just working on a much bigger scale with it.
It’s worth stating again that if you’re looking for unabashed instrumental genre-defying weirdness, you should look elsewhere. Jaga Jazzist, even at their most unpredictable, don’t really fly off the handle, so to speak. And that’s what I like most about the band. For someone like me, someone who’s got such an unbelievably, otherworldly affinity for strange music, bands like Jaga Jazzist are kind of like the best of both worlds. They’re adventurous enough to satiate your appetite for the bizarre, and they’re grounded enough to keep you aware of the all the details (of which there are just the right amount). Hmmm. Apparently you can have your cake and eat it, too.
Few bands stabbed adrenaline into the heart of the punk ethos with more homicidal gusto than The Plot To Blow Up The Eiffel Tower. Shakespeare (well, technically Juliet, but whatever) once asked “what’s in a name?” Sometimes, the answer is self-explanatory. It’s kind of remarkable that the band lasted for five years before disbanding, given their propensity for thoroughly abusive live performances. After they disbanded, the members went their separate ways. Some of them wound up in
Though they like working with Birgir Jón from Sigur Rós (A Chorus of Storytellers was mixed at Sundlaugin, the former-swimming-pool-turned-studio maintained by Birgir; past efforts of The Album Leaf have been recorded there, as well), The Album Leaf don’t have that much in common with Sigur Rós. I say this even though the first time I actually heard The Album Leaf was on a Sigur Rós radio
Yesterday, I wrote about Citay; specifically, how I thought the band seemed to be more concerned with our perception of their songs than with the actual songs themselves. This is a tricky thing to pin down – after all, not all artists create albums that live or die with their sincerity. But when you’re tapping the veins of musical courses that have been run repeatedly into the ground over the past several decades, sounding genuine really is important. The harder you strain for this legitimacy, the more we notice it. Regardless, it’s hard to put to into words, save to say that when you hear it, you’ll know. Me? I think Citay were trying too hard. They played like puppets, and I saw their strings. On the other hand, Midlake, with The Courage of Others, get it just right.
You probably wouldn’t know if from reading my blog entries, but I actually do have a rather deep fondness for jam-based music. Now, I know, I know, I’ve 

I guess I should start by saying that the Four Tet album I’m most familiar with is the remix collection he put out in 2006. And seeing as how it’s been five years since his last album proper (2005’s Everything Ecstatic, a wonderfully abstract collection of glitched-out jazzhoptronica – yeah, you read right; I stand by that) I’m not really sure how well I can contextualize There Is Love In You for the uninclined. But I can try. So with that in mind, here we go:
Stephen Merritt doesn’t have anything left to prove to the music community. The Magnetic Fields’ 1999 triple-album 69 Love Songs was an achievement that most artists can only dream of; it wasn’t noteworthy because it actually did contain 69 love songs, but because all the songs were fascinating. As grand as the idea behind the work was, the end result was astounding because of the amount of life Merritt breathed into them. Since 69 Love Songs, the band have gradually been releasing albums that are part of a trilogy, a trilogy defined by absence (of synthesizers, in this case), rather than presence. 2004’s i was the first of these, a first-person pronoun-centric collection of what were surprisingly elegant acoustic arrangements. 2008’s Distortion stood in marked contrast to i; the songs here were absolutely lovely, their Brian Wilson by way of Kevin Shields atmosphere something wonderful to lose yourself in. Now in 2010 we have the final part of the trilogy, Realism. Unfortunately, this album feels like a regression in many ways, taking the most off-putting elements of i and marrying them with what feels like a sarcastic childrens album from Hell.
Back in 2007, Basia Bulat released her first album, Oh, My Darling; it was an uneven record, with a few great songs on it (Snakes and Ladders, In The Night, the latter of which was mysteriously absent on the US version of the album – a shame, given it was easily the best song on the record), and a lot of other songs that simply weren’t all that memorable. I think the biggest thing I took away from Oh, My Darling was that favoring one instrument usually relegated to the sidelines in this type of music (read: the autoharp) does not, on its own, a good album make – you’ve got to use that instrument in songs that stand out, in order for the focus to mean anything. And that was Oh, My Darling’s greatest flaw: it seemed more concerned with fitting in than standing out.