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- Joy Division "Closer" 1980 (UK)
Review soon. |
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- The B-52's "The B-52's" 1979 (USA)
Review soon. (Wow, I've fallen behind!) |
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- Thin Lizzy "Black Rose: A Rock Legend" 1979 (Ireland/UK/USA)
Review soon. |
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- Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti "Mature Themes" 2012 (USA)
Review soon. |
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- Alice Coltrane "Universal Consciousness" 1971 (USA)
Review soon. |
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- Ice-T "Power" 1988 (USA)
The notorious gangster rapper Ice-T, born Tracy Lauren Marrow, turned 63 years old this week. More review soon. |
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- Curtis Mayfield "Roots" 1971 (USA)
Curtis
Mayfield was a uniquely multitalented musician: he sang in a
distinctive falsetto, played masterful guitar, wrote all the songs for
his classic soul group The Impressions, scored several movies, and
started his own record label (Curtom Records). Arguably Curtis' peak
period was 1970-1972, which comprised his first two solo albums, the
classic Superfly movie soundtrack, and the greatest double-live album of the seventies. Roots was his second record as a solo artist.
In Japanese pop news, Eimi Naruse is "graduating" (retiring) from Dempagumi.inc
this week after a farewell concert in Tokyo to be held on February 16.
The most recent time the group performed was a webstream "virtual
concert" in November, from which they have just released the
performance of their latest single "Positive Story". Eimi wrote the lyrics (English subtitles included in the video), and she is happeeee! |
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- Glenn Branca "The Ascension" 1981 (USA)
Today is Sonic Youth guitarist Lee Ranaldo's
65th birthday (insert joke about Sonic "Youth" being old here). Around
the time Sonic Youth formed, Lee was also playing guitar in Glenn
Branca's band and appeared on Branca's first full-length album which is
our Classic Album this week. After 25 years of Sonic Youth and all
those other "noise guitar"
bands of more recent decades, the sheer
novelty of Branca's music may not be as apparent as it was 40 years
ago. Occasionally during the psychedelic era, guitarists would get
carried away with the extreme sounds you can make with a highly
amplified electric guitar (especially Hendrix),
but Branca arranged dissonance, overtones and feedback into compositions. Other
than the rock-style bass and drum rhythm section, Branca's music is
really more like minimalist modern classical music. But with roaring
guitars! Another artist who mined a similar vein at the same time was Rhys Chatham (whom Sonic Youth also has a connection to), but Chatham's guitar orchestrations are more "kraut-like" than the punkish assault of Branca. |
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- Kimio Mizutani "A Path Through Haze" 1971 (Japan)
If
you were looking for heavy riffs and groovy licks, Kimio Mizutani was
Japan's top session guitarist of the psychedelic era. As far as I know,
he only made one album as a leader, which is our classic album this
week. A mostly instrumental album that exists somewhere between jazz
and rock, also with classical influences, the record that A Path Through Haze is most often compared to is Frank Zappa's seminal Hot Rats
album. Though that comparison only goes so far: Zappa's compositions
were a lot more sophisticated, and his guitar playing sounded like no
one else. As a session musician, Mizutani's goal as a player was to
capture the style he was known for and play qunitessential heavy rock
riffs rather than attempt to be "original", and the result is therefore
an album with a quintessential early seventies heavy rock guitar sound.
We've also got some brand new J-pop releases on the show this week: Haru Nemuri just released her first new song in about a year, DAOKO has a cool new video for one of her older songs (bask in the 5-years-ago nostalgia of her "schoolgirl in blue" era), and Atarashii Gakko!
("New School!") who were the breakout Japanese idol group of last year
(this is their first song that has impressed me: an old school hiphop
groove with melodic rapping). |
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- KISS "Destroyer" 1976 (USA)
WHOAH
YEAH! Paul Stanley is SIXTY-NINE years old today, so let's have a ROCK
AN ROLL PARTAY!! KISS is a polarizing populist group - basically, if
you're not a fan you probably think KISS is stupid. But a KISS fan
would probably retort that rock music is supposed to be about fun, not
being "smart", and besides you're probably missing the joke. This band
literally look like clowns, so don't think they take themselves very
seriously! KISS began as a somewhat underground "masculine glam" hard rock band from NYC, but began to reach a mainstream audience with their 1975 double live album. Destroyer was the follow-up to that breakout album, and reached a much higher sonic standard than their crudely-recorded (but still pretty great)
earlier studio albums. The key change was working with producer Bob
Ezrin, who at the time was responsible for Alice Cooper's increasingly
theatrical albums, and would later helm the ultra-bombastic Pink Floyd
album The Wall.
Ezrin may have added orchestras and child choirs to the KISS sound but
he didn't sacrifice the loud guitars and heavy rock beats (except on the song "Beth" which of course would turn out to be their biggest hit!) |
