Hadley Caliman ‎– Hadley Caliman (1971)

Style: Contemporary Jazz, Post Bop, Hard Bop, Modal
Format: CD, Vinyl
Label: Mainstream Records

Tracklist:
A1.   Cigar Eddie
A2.   Comencio
A3.   Little One
B1.   Blues For L.L.
B2.   Kicking On The Inside
B3.   Longing

Credits:
Bass – Bill Douglas
Drums – Clarence Becton
Guitar – John White Jr.
Piano – Larry Vuckovich
Tenor Saxophone, Flute – Hadley Caliman
Producer – Bobby Shad
Liner Notes – Leonard Feather

Santana sideman, saxophonist/flautist Hadley Caliman is one of the great players of West Coast jazz, despite being a relative unknown. A contemporary of Harold Land and Art Farmer, a denizen of the 1950s Central Avenue scene, he didn't make his debut as a leader until this beautiful album from 1971 was issued. 

At this point Caliman had lost a decade to drugs but rediscovered his muse while he was a member of Gerald Wilson's big band in the latter 60s. He then became an in-demand session player, appearing on recordings by Bobby Hutcherson, Julian Priester and most famously on Santana's hit album Caravanserai.  

His debut LP includes the regular group with whom he played live dates in San Francisco. It features six distinctive and reflective numbers which are the very height of early 70s acoustic jazz. Caliman did not record often but when he did he made it count. This is one of the lost gems!

VA ‎– Between Or Beyond The Iron Curtain (2001)

Style: Jazz-Rock, Jazz-Funk, Fusion
Format: CD, Vinyl
Lavel: Crippled Dick Hot Wax!

Tracklist:
01.   Wojciech Karolak - A Day In The City
02.   Gustav Brom And His Orchestra - Bounty
03.   Adam Makowicz - Drinking Song
04.   Mahagon - Divka's Jablky [Dívka S Jablky]
05.   Novi Singers - Tanczace Orzechy / Dancing Nuts
06.   Jazz Celula - Probuzeni [Probuzení]
07.   Big Band Katowice - Sorcery
08.   Martin Kratochvil's Jazz Q - A Dance [Tanec]
09.   Zbigniew Namyslowski Quartet - Mango Boogie
10.   Grupa Organowa Krzysztofa Sadowskiego - Alfa Centaura
11.   Karel Velebný And His SHQ - The Newcomer [Nový Muž]
12.   Impuls - Sextant
13.   Mahagon - Pisecne Presypy [Písečné Přesypy]
14.   Prague Big Band - Helemese / Gee Whiz [Heleme Se]
15.   Laboratorium - Funki Dla Franki
16.   Hubert Katzenbeier Quintett - Quartet

Credits:
Compiled By [Final Track Selection] – Crippled Dick Hot Wax!, Tøni Schifer
Liner Notes [& Introduction] – Daniel Sprenger
Liner Notes [Translated By] – John C. Constable
Mastered By – Bo Kondren, H. P.
Producer – Crippled Dick Hot Wax!, Daniel Sprenger, Tøni Schifer
Producer [Assistant] – Stephan Steigleder

Pere Ubu ‎– 20 Years In A Montana Missile Silo (2017)

Style: Alternative Rock, Avantgarde, Art Rock
Format: CD, Vinyl
Label: Cherry Red

Tracklist:
01.   Monkey Bizness
02.   Funk 49
03.   Prison Of The Senses
04.   Toe To Toe
05.   The Healer
06.   Swampland
07.   Plan From Frag 9
08.   Howl
09.   Red Eye Blues
10.   Walking Again
11.   I Can Still See
12.   Cold Sweat

Credits:
Bass – Michele Temple
Clarinet – Darryl Boon
Drums – Steve Mehlman
Guitar – Gary Siperko, Keith Moliné
Mastered By – Nick Watson
Steel Guitar – Kristof Hahn
Synth, Theremin – Robert Wheeler
Synth – Gagarin
Vocals – Roshi (tracks: 11)
Vocals, Producer – David Thomas
Written-By – Pere Ubu

The fact that Pere Ubu has been flying under the radar for the majority, if not the entirety, of the band's career is at the same time surprising and somewhat expected. Retaining an excellent balance between the sound that defined the late '70s to mid-'80s, in new wave and post-punk, and at the same time layering that foundation with avant-garde augmentations, Pere Ubu is not a very easy band to follow. Aspects of musique concrete and krautrock notions living beside blues and garage rock is a strange mix, no matter how successful Pere Ubu was in nailing the bizarre cocktail. 

Revolving around main man, vocalist David Thomas, the line-up of the band has constantly been changing, but that is not something that has slowed the band's prolific output. Since its inception back in the mid-'70s, Pere Ubu has remained active and is about to release its 16th full-length in 20 Years in a Montana Missile Silo, following the highly bizarre, even by the band's standards, Carnival of Souls. The band's 2014 album was a tour de force of experimental rock, diving headfirst into the avant-garde depths and unearthing a terrifying gem of a record. Tracks like the mysterious “Doctor Faustus” and the colossal “Brother Ray” are some of the most compelling material the band has ever released. 

In that respect 20 Years in a Montana Missile Silo does not share the same dark, exploratory sense of its predecessor. Still elements of that quality exist, as in “Plan From Flag 9”, which is based on samples and minimal instrumentation accommodating a spoken word-like performance by Thomas. Always retaining this off-kilter essence, alongside an almost sadistic view towards structure, as the track reaches the promise of a crescendo that never arrives, Pere Ubu still display this intricacy when it comes to compositions. The mysterious and mesmerizing tonality of “I Can Still See” is another moment of this hypnotic experimentalism, as it slowly puts you under Pere Ubu's spell and drags you in the band's realm. 

The majority of the record, however, focuses on establishing Pere Ubu's vision of its original influences. The manner in which the record kicks things off with “Monkey Bizness” is an astounding example of the act's surf rock mutation. The tone is vibrant, and there is something electrifying about Pere Ubu when the band explores the standard rock form and interprets it through hooking choruses and bombastic verses, as they appear in “Red Eyes Blues” and the '70s rock-influenced “Swampland”. Similar is the scope of the blues influence, in the garage driven “Funk 49” and the typical blues progression of “Howl” and “Walking Again”. All these moments are reinterpreted by Pere Ubu, crafting a psychedelic driven, experimental take on each genre, where the background is altered by projecting avant-garde notions, through the strange synth sounds. That is particularly effective in the album's “power ballad”, the fantastic “The Healer” which through its surreal context brilliantly exposes both the adventurous spirit and the sentimental underbelly of Pere Ubu. 

20 Years in a Montana Missile Silo displays a side of Pere Ubu that is more familiar than Carnival of Souls. Taking a step back, the band manages to tangle all the aspects that make its music so enticing and driven, may it be surf rock riffs and blues rhythms, or experimental sonic manipulation and avant-garde thinking. The short duration of the tracks, about three minutes on average, and the fantastic guitar performances enhance the experience, enriching the various twists and turns Pere Ubu travels.

Spyros Stasis / popMATTERS

Laika ‎– Good Looking Blues (2000)

Style: Trip Hop, Downtempo
Format: CD, Vinyl
Label: Too Pure

Tracklist:
01.   Black Cat Bone
02.   Moccasin
03.   T. Street
04.   Uneasy
05.   Good Looking Blues
06.   Widow's Weed
07.   Glory Cloud
08.   Go Fish
09.   Badtimes
10.   Knowing Too Little

Credits:
Synthesizer, Electric Piano – Guy Fixsen
Trumpet – Matt Barge
Bass – John Frenett
Clarinet – Pete Whyman
Djembe – Lou Ciccotelli
Flute – Louise Elliott
Guitar – Guy Fixsen, Margaret Murphy Fiedler
Vocals – Margaret Murphy Fiedler
Mastered By – Tony Cousins
Mixed By – Guy Fixsen
Producer – Fixsen, Fiedler
Sampler – Guy Fixsen, Margaret Murphy Fiedler
Turntables – Danny Doyle
Written-By, Engineer, Programmed By – Guy Fixsen

To some-- the hip, the jaded-- Laika's third release is likely to seem a bit of a disappointment. And in a way, I guess it is: after the sonic barrage of their first album, its two successors may seem a bit dry. In fact, by some standards, Laika have gone downhill not just since their first album, but since the first 20 seconds of their first album, which were arguably 20 of the most exciting seconds electronic music produced in the 1990s. Consider, for example, the generally shoddy treatment Stereolab has recieved from hipsters regarding their post-Emperor Tomato Ketchup LPs. 

The thing of it is, see, that the phenomenon known as electronic music-- half music and three halves public relations-- has always set itself up as The Future. The Future, of course, is always one step ahead, and this has led to the development of a freakishly malproportioned set of criteria by which electronic music is to be judged: one which values innovation above all other things. Constantly striving to push the envelope (in order to push the product, naturally), electronic music plunges blindly ahead into what so many fawning reviews refer to as "uncharted territory." This is all fine and good, except for one thing: left behind in the neverending move forward lie vast expanses of half, sorta and barely charted territory. 

Few blues singers are criticized for lack of innovation-- they're instead evaluated on their musicianship, songwriting and knowledge of their craft. Meanwhile, electronic music's mainstream has been largely unable to value itself as a tradition to the extent that artists are allowed to explore the nooks and crannies of their own genre. When an album like Good Looking Blues is released-- one that moves towards accessibility-- the general reaction tends towards dismissals of the "I've heard this before" or "Nothing new here" variety. 

Admittedly, Good Looking Blues doesn't seem like much at first-- pretty run-of-the-mill trip-hoppy shit: some loops here, some scratching there, a dash of hip-hop for flavor, shrinkwrap it and call it a day. Certainly, it's nothing like the grinding and irresistible Silver Apples of the Moon. But as bands like Stereolab have proven, a sheen of accessibility can conceal a wealth of texture, and Good Looking Blues more than makes up for its lack of originality with plenty of detail and craft. 

While generally more song-oriented than previous outings, Good Looking Blues is built on a foundation of acid-jazzy, polyrythmic beats-- the kind that just seem to shuffle along until you pay attention to them, at which point they prove to be more layered than Barthes' S/Z. Organic texture is provided throughout by such unhip instruments as the bass clarinet, the trumpet and the flute. Margaret Fiedler's vocals are much further up in the mix than on past releases. This is a welcome thing for the most part, though at points you may wish you could gloss over the lyrics: the opening "Black Cat Bone" in particular, whose stilted rap is basically Blondie's "Rapture" updated for the new millenium. 

Still, Good Looking Blues shows a Laika that has learned from its past mistakes-- they don't get lost in their own loops like they used to-- and willing to stretch out and explore their surroundings. I'd gladly see electronic music lose its innovation if it meant more music like this album's creepily sublime title track or the quiet Reichian beauty of "A Single Word." Of course, the hipsters would never stand for it.

Zach Hooker / Pitchfork 

Laika ‎– Sounds Of The Satellites (1997)

Style: Downtempo, Experimental
Format: CD, Vinyl
Label: Too Pure

Tracklist:
01.   Prairie Dog
02.   Breather
03.   Out Of Sight And Snowblind
04.   Almost Sleeping
05.   Starry Night
06. Bedbugs
07.   Martinis On The Moon
08.   Poor Gal
09.   Blood+Bones (Moody Mix)
10.   Shut Off/Curl Up
11.   Spooky Rhodes
12.   Dirty Feet+Giggles

Credits: Drums, Piano, Percussion, Backing Vocals – Rob Ellis Vibraphone – Alonso Mendoza Flute – Louise Elliott Percussion – Lou Ciccotelli Sampler, Guitar, Vocals, Bass, Synthesizer, Drums, Trumpet – Guy Fixsen, Margaret Fiedler

The World Trade Center in New York is one of the tallest buildings on earth. Heaving its twin towers over one hundred stories into the sky, its most stunning engineering feature hits you when you step inside: each of the nearly acre-wide floors is wide open from edge to edge with no central means of support.  

Laika construct a similar feat on Sounds of the Satellites, the group's sophomore effort. Repeated listens reveal layer upon layer of sound, but the end result isn't dense; the album floats along, spacious and atmospheric while reaching toward the ionosphere.  

Every teenaged, amber-sunglassed, Tom Rowlands wannabe with a sampler is looping electronic bleeps and hip-hop beats, but only a choice few bands are using new technology intelligently to enhance their music instead of using it as a crutch. Stereolab and Spiritualized are shining examples; Laika is another. 

The core of the group is Margaret Fiedler and Guy Fixsen, musical polymaths who split command of vocals, guitar, bass, minimoog, trumpet and sampling. Former drummer for PJ Harvey Rob Ellis is also on board, along with guest flutists, vibraphonists and percussionists to flesh out the pair's gently orbiting compositions. 

Expertly blending dub and hip-hop technology with live instrumentation that nods to jazz, trip-hop and dreamy pop, the cyborg fusion of smooth organic grooves in a warm electronic bath is subtly addictive. And I do mean warm; most computerized music is sorely lacking in soul, leaving listeners in a cold synthetic wash, but Laika's sound is as endearing as the dog they named themselves after, the first animal to be shot into orbit. It helps that the group writes actual songs, not just repetitive dance tracks.  

"Almost Sleeping" is a gorgeously smooth track, the languid beat, gentle vibes and light modulations in tone emphasizing the lassitude of the lyrics: "lose track of days, whiling away/I don't have strength to get away." The lilting flute that closes out the track is a lovely touch. The odd, Lee Perry-ist machine clunking that opens "Starry Night" is softened by wah-wah guitar and soft moog flourishes, setting the twilight scene: "the air is still / the earth sleeps / we move with the grace of the moon / sweeping through the clouds / one by one the stars break through." This is a cosmonaut's perfect lullaby. 

The album may be mellow in places, but it's not all zero-gravity floating; "Bedbugs" is a funky, Curtis Mayfield-style story of a player with edgy guitar licks, "Poor Gal" a jungle-influenced rave up, and "Shut Off/Curl Up" a dark look into the bruised psyche of an abused woman. A richly textured, deceptively complex album with intriguing sounds and solid songwriting, Sounds of the Satellites is tailor made for those who want to leave the earth for a while - throw on the headphones, stare up into the starry blackness and bliss out. 

Jared O'Connor / Angel Fire (1998) 

Laika ‎– Silver Apples Of The Moon (1994)

Style: Downtempo, Trip Hop, Experimental
Format: CD, Vinyl
Label: Too Pure

Tracklist:
01.   Sugar Daddy
02.   Marimba Song
03.   Let Me Sleep
04.   Itchy
05.   Coming Down Glass
06.   If You Miss
07.   44 Robbers
08.   Red River
09.   Honey In Heat
10.   Thomas
11.   Spider Happy Hour

Credits:
Bass – John Frenett
Drums, Percussion – Lou Ciccotelli
Flute – Louise Elliott
Guitar – Guy Fixsen, Margaret Fiedler
Marimba – Guy Fixsen, Margaret Fiedler
Melodica – Guy Fixsen, Margaret Fiedler
Sampler – Guy Fixsen, Margaret Fiedler
Saxophone – Louise Elliott
Synthesizer [Moog] – Guy Fixsen, Margaret Fiedler
Vibraphone [Vibes] – Guy Fixsen, Margaret Fiedler
Voice – Guy Fixsen, Margaret Fiedler

Coming from the same label that brought us P.J. Harvey and Stereolab, the omens were good for Laika; my expectations were increased by the excellent cover resplendent with a couple of 1962 Albanian postage stamps (an excellent year for them it has to be said) and it’s not every band that can boast a Hot Press Single of the Week among its accolades. I hurled the CD into the machine, my breath well and truly baited. 

And then? What a bummer! Silver Apples Of The Moon ambles along, apparently intent in the knowledge that if the remorseless rhythmic shuffle and airy fairy flute frolics don’t get you, the marimbas surely will. Admittedly listening to this album in the midst of a Dublin winter with the flu breeding down my throat isn’t the most appropriate environment to appreciate the finer points of a record which might just have the potential to be huge along the beaches and in the nightclubs of Rio de Janeiro but you’d need to be on some exotic drug and/or under severe hypnosis to enjoy Silver Apples Of The Moon around these parts.

Nick Kelly / Hot Press

Loma ‎– Loma (2018)

Style: Folk Rock, Indie Rock
Format: CD, Vinyl
Label: Sub Pop

Tracklist:
01.   Who Is Speaking?
02.   Dark Oscillations
03.   Joy
04.   I Don't Want Children
05.   Relay Runner
06.   White Glass
07.   Sundogs
08.   Jornada
09.   Shadow Relief
10.   Black Willow

Credits:
Bass – Matt Schuessler (tracks: 2, 5, 6)
Drums – Josh Halpern (tracks: 10)
Violin – Emily Lee (tracks: 7)
Mastered By – Greg Calbi
Mastered By [With] – Steve Fallone
Performer – Emily Cross, Jonathan Meiburg
Recorded By, Mixed By, Performer – Dan Duszynski

On paper, the creative marriage of Shearwater and Cross Record doesn’t necessarily sound like the most productive union. Shearwater, the indie-rock band led by Jonathan Meiburg over the last two decades, favor big moments and dramatic sweeps where Meiburg’s expressive voice can leap and pirouette from chord to chord. Cross Record prefer subtler execution, letting singer Emily Cross’ voice glide along minimal melodies while multi-instrumentalist Dan Duszynski cooks up an eerie instrumental miasma. But when the two bands toured together in 2016, something clicked. Impressed by the duo’s performances, Meiburg pitched a collaboration, and the three musicians convened as Loma, a joint project that heightens each member’s individual strengths and shows off their surprising musical chemistry. 

Together, Loma play with space and momentum in a way that recalls the glacial patience of slowcore trio Low, only shrouded in Grouper’s earthy grain. Their self-titled debut marks the first time Meiburg has ever written lyrics for a voice other than his own, a practice he’s called a “relief” after spending years in a more traditional singer-songwriter role. And while Cross has usually applied her voice to simple, staggered melodies with Cross Record, here she gets to dance along Meiburg’s dynamic compositions. The lengths they go to meet in the middle, aided by Duszynski’s skillful engineering, lead them up some disarmingly emotional alleys. What could have been just an experiment in form becomes an exercise in getting under another person’s skin: Meiburg pens lyrics he wouldn’t sing himself and Cross adopts a persona slightly divergent from her own. 

Much of the album lingers in a dreamlike, reflective space. Even its most excitable numbers, “Dark Oscillations” and “Relay Runner,” seem to be sung from a liminal place, on the border between one state of being and the next. Over driving percussion, Cross strives to crawl out of stagnation by looking deep into herself, her voice swelling behind her like a chorus of past selves. The album’s chilling centerpiece “I Don’t Want Children,” powered by the kind of melody you’d hear lilting from a music box, looks to future potentials that are just as lost. Cross ruminates on absent figures as powerfully as if they were standing in front of her. She’s “wondering what could be—who could be,” her voice heavy with the kind of melancholy that only surfaces when you’re staring down a path not taken. That song’s slow tension builds throughout the album, rippling through the rich, acoustic tones of “Sundogs” and “Shadow Relief,” only to break with the pummeling closer “Black Willow,” a lurching, gorgeous, and terrifying song that finds Loma at the peak of their powers. Cross’ voice is multi-tracked to the point where it sounds like every possible incarnation of herself is singing at once. It’s overwhelming, that simultaneity, like coming unstuck in time, like understanding the totality of your choices as you’re making them. 

Duszynski and Cross were married when they began making Loma. At some point during the recording process, they decided to divorce. The album isn’t about their breakup (Meiburg wrote all but one song, “Shadow Relief,” before he even knew the couple intended to split), but it can be read in part as a cross-section of the states of mind that might lead to such a schism. Despite the collaboration behind its making, it’s rife with loneliness; Cross tends to sing as though she’s in an infinitely empty room, and Duszynski’s production amplifies the effect. But from that alienation arises a way forward. If she’s alone, she’s not stuck there. She finds a way to move.

 Sasha Geffen / Pitchfork

Massive Attack ‎– Mezzanine (1998)

Style: Trip Hop, Downtempo
Format: CD, Vinyl, Cass.
Label: Circa, Virgin

Tracklist:
01.   Angel
02.   Risingson
03.   Teardrop
04.   Inertia Creeps
05.   Exchange
06.   Dissolved Girl
07.   Man Next Door
08.   Black Milk
09.   Mezzanine
10.   Group Four
11.   (Exchange)

Credits:
Bass – Bob Locke, John Harris, Winston Blissett
Computer [Pro Tools] – Jan Kybert
Drums – Andy Gangadeen
Guitar – Angelo Bruschini
Keyboards  – Dave Jenkins , Michael Timothy
Vocals – Elizabeth Fraser, Grant Marshall, Horace Andy, Robert Del Naja, Sara Jay
Producer, Arranged By, Programmed By, Keyboards, Sampler [Samples] – Massive Attack, Neil Davidge

”Trip-hop” eventually became a ’90s punchline, a music-press shorthand for “overhyped hotel lounge music.” But today, the much-maligned subgenre almost feels like a secret precedent. Listen to any of the canonical Bristol-scene albums of the mid-late ’90s, when the genre was starting to chafe against its boundaries, and you’d think the claustrophobic, anxious 21st century started a few years ahead of schedule. Looked at from the right angle, trip-hop is part of an unbroken chain that runs from the abrasion of ’80s post-punk to the ruminative pop-R&B-dance fusion of the moment. 

The best of it has aged far more gracefully (and forcefully) than anything recorded in the waning days of the record industry’s pre-filesharing monomania has any right to. Tricky rebelled against being attached at the hip to a scene he was already looking to shed and decamped for Jamaica to record a more aggressive, bristling-energy mutation of his style in ’96; the name *Pre-Millennium Tension *is the only obvious thing that tells you it’s two decades old rather than two weeks. And Portishead’s ’97 self-titled saw the stress-fractured voice of Beth Gibbons envisioning romance as codependent, mutually assured destruction while Geoff Barrow sunk into his RZA-noir beats like *The Conversation’*s Gene Hackman ruminating over his surveillance tapes. This was raw-nerved music, too single-minded and intense to carry an obvious timestamp. 

But Massive Attack were the origin point of the trip-hop movement they and their peers were striving to escape the orbit of, and they nearly tore themselves to shreds in the process. Instead— or maybe as a result—they laid down their going-nova genre's definitive paranoia statement with Mezzanine. The band's third album (not counting the Mad Professor-remixed No Protection) completes the last in a sort of de facto Bristol trilogy, where Tricky’s youthful iconoclasm and Portishead’s deep-focus emotional intensity set the scene for Massive Attack’s sense of near-suffocating dread. The album corroded their tendencies to make big-wheel hymnals of interconnected lives where hope and despair trade precedent—on Mezzanine, it’s alienation all the way down. There’s no safety from harm here, nothing you’ve got to be thankful for, nobody to take the force of the blow: what *Mezzanine *provides instead is a succession of parties and relationships and panopticons where the walls won’t stop closing in. 

The lyrics establish this atmosphere all on their own. Sex, in “Inertia Creeps,” is reduced to a meeting of “two undernourished egos, four rotating hips,” the focus of a failing relationship that's left its participants too numbed with their own routine dishonesty to break it off. The voice singing it—Massive Attack's cornerstone co-writer/producer Robert “3D” Del Naja—is raspy from exhaustion. “Dissolved Girl” reiterates this theme from the perspective of guest vocalist Sarah Jay Hawley (“Passion’s overrated anyway”). On “Risingson,” Grant “Daddy G” Marshall nails the boredom and anxiety of being stuck somewhere you can’t stand with someone you’re starting to feel the same way about (“Why you want to take me to this party and breathe/I’m dying to leave/Every time we grind you know we severed lines”). 

But Mezzanine’s defining moments come from guest vocalists who were famous long before Massive Attack even released their first album. Horace Andy was already a legend in reggae circles, but his collaborations with Massive Attack gave him a wider crossover exposure, and all three of his appearances on Mezzanine are homages or nods to songs he'd charted with in his early-’70s come-up. “Angel” is a loose rewrite of his 1973 single “You Are My Angel,” but it’s a fakeout after the first verse—originally a vision of beauty (“Come from way above/To bring me love”), transformed into an Old Testament avenger: “On the dark side/Neutralize every man in sight.” The parenthetically titled, album-closing reprise of “(Exchange)” is a ghostly invocation of Andy’s “See A Man's Face” cleverly disguised as a comedown track. And then there’s “Man Next Door,” the John Holt standard that Andy had previously recorded as “Quiet Place”—on Mezzanine, it sounds less like an overheard argument from the next apartment over and more like a close-quarters reckoning with violence heard through thin walls ready to break. It’s Andy at his emotionally nuanced and evocative best. 

The other outside vocalist was even more of a coup: Liz Fraser, the singer and songwriter of Cocteau Twins, lends her virtuoso soprano to three songs that feel like exorcisms of the personal strife accompanying her band’s breakup. Her voice serves as an ethereal counterpoint to speaker-rattling production around it. “Black Milk” contains the album’s most spiritually unnerving words (“Eat me/In the space/Within my heart/Love you for God/Love you for the Mother”), even as her lead and the elegiac beat make for some of its most beautiful sounds. She provides the wistful counterpoint to the night-shift alienation of “Group Four.” And then there's “Teardrop,” her finest moment on the album. Legend has it the song was briefly considered for Madonna; Andrew “Mushroom” Vowles sent the demo to her, but was overruled by Daddy G and 3D, who both wanted Fraser. Democracy thankfully worked this time around, as Fraser’s performance—recorded in part on the day she discovered that Jeff Buckley, who she’d had an estranged working relationship and friendship with, had drowned in Memphis’ Wolf River—was a heart-rending performance that gave Massive Attack their first (and so far only) UK Top 10 hit. 

Originally set for a late ’97 release, Mezzanine got pushed back four months because Del Naja refused to stop reworking the tracks, tearing them apart and rebuilding them until they’re so polished they gleam. It sure sounds like the product of bloody-knuckled labor, all that empty-space reverb and melted-together multitrack vocals and oppressive low-end. (The first sound you hear on the album, that lead-jointed bassline on “Angel,” is to subwoofers what “Planet Earth” is to high-def television.) But it also groans with the burden of creative conflict, a working process that created rifts between Del Naja and Vowles, who left shortly after *Mezzanine *dropped following nearly 15 years of collaboration. 

Mezzanine began the band’s relationship with producer Neil Davidge, who’d known Vowles dating back to the early ’90s and met the rest of the band after the completion of Protection. He picked a chaotic time to jump in, but Davidge and 3D forged a creative bond working through that pressure. *Mezzanine *was a document of unity, not fragmentation. Despite their rifts, they were a post-genre outfit, one that couldn’t separate dub from punk from hip-hop from R&B because the basslines all worked together and because classifications are for toe tags. All their acknowledged samples—including the joy-buzzer synths from Ultravox’s “Rockwrok” (“Inertia Creeps”), the opulent ache of Isaac Hayes’ celestial-soul take on “Our Day Will Come” (“Exchange”), Robert Smith’s nervous “tick tick tick” from the Cure’s “10:15 Saturday Night,” and the most concrete-crumbling throwdown of the Led Zep “Levee” break ever deployed (the latter two on “Man Next Door”)—were sourced from  1968 and 1978, well-traveled crate-digging territory. But what they build from that is its own beast. 

Their working method never got any faster. The four-year gap between Protection* *and *Mezzanine *became a five-year gap until 2003’s 100th Window, then another seven years between that record and 2010’s Heligoland, plus another seven years and counting with no full-lengths to show for it. Not that they've been slacking: we've gotten a multimedia film/music collaboration with Adam Curtis, the respectable but underrated *Ritual Spirit *EP, and Del Naja’s notoriously rumored side gig as Banksy. (Hey, 3D *does *have a background in graffiti art.) But the ordeal of both recording and touring Mezzanine took its own toll. A late ’98 interview with Del Naja saw him optimistic about its reputation-shedding style: “I always said it was for the greater good of the fucking project because if this album was a bit different from the last two, the next one would be even freer to be whatever it wants to be.” But fatigue and restlessness rarely make for a productive mixture, and that same spark of tension which carried *Mezzanine *over the threshold proved unsustainable, not just for Massive Attack’s creativity but their continued existence. 

Still, it’s hard not to feel the album’s legacy resonating elsewhere—and not just in “Teardrop” becoming the cue for millions of TV viewers to brace themselves for Hugh Laurie’s cranky-genius-doctor schtick. Graft its tense feelings of nervy isolation and late-night melancholy onto two-step, and you’re partway to the blueprint for Plastician and Burial. You can hear flashes of that mournful romantic alienation in James Blake, the graceful, bass-riddled emotional abrasion in FKA twigs, the all-absorbing post-genre rock/soul ambitions in Young Fathers or Algiers. *Mezzanine *stands as an album built around echoes of the ’70s, wrestled through the immediacy of its creators' tumultuous late ’90s, and fearless enough that it still sounds like it belongs in whatever timeframe you're playing it.

Nate Patrin / Pitchfork 

Psyco – Doctor L Presents There Must Be A Revolution Somewhere! (2005)

Style: Jazz, Funk / Soul
Format: CD
Label: Mind Records And Service Corp. ‎

Tracklist:
01.   Na Di Languè
02.   Fire Dance
03.   Danger Danger
04.   Butterfly
05.   Hey Papy It's Too Late
06.   Dropping Bombs
07.   Travels 2
08.   Traficante
09.   Mister President
10.   Rainbow
11.   Motherland
12.   Weya
13.   Experience No Way Out

Sous le pseudo de Psyco se cache Doctor L (Liam Farrell), qui après des débuts en solo sur le défunt label parisien Artefact, a amorcé un virage vers des collaborations musicales moins abstract Hip-Hop et plus Jazz-Fusion.  

En tant que producteur, il a épaulé de façon convaincante Omar Sosa ou Tony Allen (batteur de Fela) et s’est trouvé avec ce dernier de fortes accointances artistiques. Na Di Languè débute l’album par un afro-blues déliquescent porté par la sensuelle voix d’Ayo. La suite procède par touches d’Afro-Beat ou de Soul-Jazz où on sent tout le sens du titre de l’album.  

A l’instar des aspirations militantes des Black Panthers, de l’élaboration du nouveau Jazz avec Ornette Coleman, Albert Ayler ou l’émergence des labels politiquement incorrects comme Black Jazz Records; cet album cherche dans cette histoire une nouvelle inspiration, qui, comme l’a dit 30 ans avant Gil Scott Heron, «The Revolution Will Not Be Televised». Butterfly, sa flûte psychédélique, ses sax et trompettes à l’unisson, sa rythmique funky et la voix inspirée de Senza ressemble à s’y méprendre aux divagations hypnotiques de Fela et c’est bien cette figure tutélaire qui semble être le guide spirituel de tout ce disque très long (plus de 79 minutes!) qui mérite une écoute patiente et attentive pour être réellement apprécié.  

Si les plages peuvent être un tantinet trop longues, c’est pour mieux plonger l’auditeur dans un voyage en Afrique Noire où le commis voyageur se perdrait au hasard de ses rencontres.  

Hey Papy It’s Too Late, son chant plaintif et son orgue Hammond subtil, ou encore le très Gil Scott Heron Mister President, avec ses paroles cyniques et son beat Jazz-Funk, sont de solides compositions qui n’éviteront pas la question suivante : qui achètera ce disque?  

A ce titre, on décernera à There Must Be A Revolution Somewhere la palme du disque le plus invendable du moment... à moins que tous les lecteurs de Foutraque ne s’unissent pour l’acheter!

Poplunaire / foutraque

Cartola ‎– Cartola (1976)

Style: Samba
Format: CD, Vinyl, Cass.
Label: Discos Marcus Pereira

Tracklist:
01.   O Mundo E Um Moinho
02.   Minha
03.   Sala De Recepcao
04.   Não Posso Viver Sem Ela
05.   Preciso Me Encontrar
06.   Peito Vazio
07.   Aconteceu
08.   As Rosas Não Falam
09.   Sei Chorar
10.   Esaboa Mulata
11.   Senhora Tentacao
12.   Cordas De Aço

Credits:
Arranged By – Horondino José Da Silva
Mixed By – Norival Reis
Producer – Juarez Barroso

If your perception of Carioca's samba do morro (samba of the hills) relates to noisy, percussive grooves topped by poor melodies, this release is what you need to discover the real thing. Cartola was one of the most important samba composers of all time. His lyrical "O Mundo é um Moinho" opens the album, delivering its luxurious melodic lines. The progression of the album reveals in each new track some hidden treasures in the rustic sophistication of a poet of the people. The richness and originality of the poetic imagery contained in his lyrics, unfortunately unattainable for non-Portuguese speakers, astounds for its depth as a creation of a humble hill dweller. There are also uptempo sambas, but the forefront is delivered to voice/choir/trombone and the seven-string violão at the counterpoint, with the percussion discretely in the background. The album also contains his biggest hit, the immortal "As Rosas não Falam." A must have.

Alvaro Neder / ALLMUSIC