Led by founding member Alex Chavez and featuring Pete Vale, Daniel Villarreal-Carrillo, Jaime Garza and Nathan Karagianis, the members of Chicago, IL-based Latin music quintet Dos Santos Anti-Beat Orquesta have storied careers in a diversity […]
Category: World Music
New Video: The Mischievous, Genre Mashing Sounds of Orkestra Mendoza
“Caramelos,” featuring Salvador Duran is the first single off the band’s soon-to-be released album ¡Vamos A Guarachar! manages to possess a genre mashing style as you’ll hear the enormous tweeter and woofer rocking beats and synths of electronica, an impressive organ solo, the twangy pedal steel of country and western, a bit of mariachi here, a bit of mambo there, a bit of cumbia, a bit of of this and a bit of that in a playful and stomping song that doesn’t quite sound like anything you would have heard recently, and they do with a mischievous, swaggering, danceable song. It’s the sort of song that much like the work of El Dusty and others, should remind listeners that the music from the American/Mexican border may be some of the most sonically inventive and challenging music you’ll hear in contemporary music.
The recently released video was shot by Josh Harrison at Tuscon’s RBar and features the incredibly dapper dressed band performing the song in the bar behind an incredibly colorful backdrop.
Although they’re known as a mysterious and masked collective hailing from the tiny and extremely remote Northern Swedish village of Korpilombolo, over the past couple of years, the members of GOAT have become an internationally recognized act, as well as JOVM mainstays for an aesthetic, stage presentation and sound that draws from their tiny village’s unusual and lengthy history practicing voodoo, a tradition that according to an old Swedish legend can be traced back unabated to sometime before the Crusades. Now, if you’ve been frequenting this site over the course of the past couple of years, the members of the Swedish collective signed to renowned indie label Sub Pop Records, who released the act’s sophomore full-length effort, Commune and a couple of 7 inches to widespread critical acclaim internationally.
Earlier this year, I wrote about “I Sing In Silence” off the “I Sing In Silence”/”The Snake of Addis Ababa” 7 inch that Sub Pop released a few months ago. That single revealed that the mysterious Swedish collective was relentlessly and continually expanding upon and experimenting with their sound — going completely acoustic as a gorgeous and fluttering flute line is paired with a shuffling and elastic guitar line, gently propulsive drumming and chanted vocals in a song that sounded as though it were indebted to early prog rock — in particular think of Yes’ “Roundabout“– and psych rock as the song possessed a trippy, mind-altering vibe.
Building on the growing attention they’ve received internationally, GOAT will be releasing their highly-anticipated third, full-length effort Requiem on October 7, 2016. And from the album’s first single “Try My Robe,” the band continues on a similar path to the singles they’ve released earlier this year, as the song reveals an acoustic, psych folk sound that at times seems influenced by African and Middle Eastern music — and as a result that particular single possessed a mind-bending and mesmerizingly hypnotic quality. The album’s latest single “Union of Mind and Soul,” is based around a looping flute line, layers of jangling and propulsive bass and guitar chords, a buzzing and trippy guitar solo and howled lyrics focused on opening one’s mind towards greater understanding of themselves and the universe. And while sonically drawing from 60s folk and psych rock, the song may arguably be the most urgent song they’ve released to date.
Inspired by The Cure, Tame Impala and others, Istanbul, Turkey-based quartet The Away Days have developed a reputation in their homeland for being at the forefront of a contemporary and extremely Western-inspired indie music scene — and interestingly enough, the How Did It Start? EP, the Turkish indie rock band was released to critical praise from internationally recognized media outlets including The Guardian, SPIN Magazine,Noisey and received airplay from renowned indie station KEXP. Adding to a growing international profile, the band has toured the UK, made appearances at two consecutive SXSW And with a growing international profile, the quartet went on a tour of the UK and made appearance at two consecutive SXSW Festivals and have opened for the likes of Portishead, Massive Attack, Belle and Sebastian and others.
Over the past couple of years, the Istanbul, Turkey-based quartet have released a batch of singles that have received attention across the blogosphere, including this site; however, the band has been working on the material which, will comprise their highly-anticipated full-length debut effort. Much like the album’s lush and atmospheric first single “Less Is More,” the album’s latest single “World Horizon” is a slow burning, moody and atmospheric ballad consisting of plaintive vocals paired with ethereal and shimmering synths, stuttering, four-on-the-floor drumming and equally shimmering guitars that’s largely inspired by the band members’ own lives in Istanbul, living in “never ending lies . . .” And as a result, the song possesses a mournful air, as the song’s recognizes a loss of innocence and belief in innocence and goodness.
New Video: JOVM Mainstays La Femme Return with a Cinematic and Decidedly French Take on Psych Pop and Art Films
The Parisian collective’s highly-anticipated sophomore effort Mystere will officially drop today and you may recall that I’ve written about two album singles “Sphynx,” a track that manages to evoke a lingering fever dream — while cementing their growing reputation for boldly defying categorization, while the album’s second single “Ou va la mode” was a more stripped down, as though the Parisians were returning to the breezy and decidedly French take on surfer rock of Le Podium #1; but with warped, carnival from hell-sounding organs — and in some way it would force the listener to think that both songs would be heard as part of the soundtrack of a surrealistic French arthouse film. Now the album’s third and latest single “Septembre” continues along the same veins of the preceding single as the band pairs swirling and soaring organ chords, propulsive and steady drumming, whirring background noise and dreamily distracted vocals to craft a song that sounds deeply indebted to 60s psych rock and psych pop; but interestingly enough, just under the surface is a mournful and bittersweet air.
The recently released video was shot on old, grainy Super 8 film and features some of the members of the band broodingly walking on the beach — but spliced and superimposed over old home movies, which further emphasizes the song’s mournful and bittersweet air.
New Audio: JOVM Mainstays GOAT Returns with a Gorgeous and Cinematic, New Single
Now, if you’ve been frequenting this site over the past couple of months you’d likely know that the mysterious Northern Swedish collective’s highly-anticipated, third, full-length effort Requiem is slated for an October 7, 2016 release and the album’s “Try My Robe” continues on a similar vein as “I Sing in Silence,” as the collective has gone for a stripped down, acoustic, psych rock vibe paired with chanted/shouted vocals, shimmering and dexterously looping guitar work, mischievously complex, handclap led percussion and a slow, shuffling bass line that manages to be deceptively propulsive in a song that sounds subtly influenced by African and Middle Eastern music. Requiem’s latest single “Alarms” is a gorgeous track consisting of African and Middle Eastern-like percussion, shimmering and gorgeous guitar lines and an ethereal melody that floats just above the instrumentation. Sonically, the song manages to sound both incredibly cinematic and as though it could have been released in 1966.
New Video: Peruvian Septet Bareto Returns with a Cosmic Take on Traditional Cumbia Paired with Satirical Visuals
The album’s latest single “La Pantalla,” will further cement the Peruvian septet’s reputation for pushing the sonic boundaries of cumbia as a looping guitar line played through gentle amounts of reverb are paired with soaring organ, electronic bleeps and bloops, an infectious hook with call-and-response vocals — and as a result, the song possesses a subtly psychedelic and cosmic feel. And along with that, the band manages to play with a coolly swaggering, self-assuredness.
The recently released music video is a rather satirical take on Peruvian TV shows, featuring shows hosted by grotesque talking heads, violent and absurd situations, spliced with footage of the band performing the show on a shitty late night talk show and footage of dancers splashing, sloshing and getting even filthier in the mud; in fact they get so filthy that they manage to spread their filth on to a nearby child.
Classically trained Havana, Cuba-born and based jazz pianist and composer Harold Lopez-Nussa was born into a very musical family. Not only are his father and uncle are both working musicians, his late mother Mayra Torres was a highly-regarded piano teacher. When Lopez-Nussa turned eight, he began studying at Manuel Saumell Elementary School of Music, then the Amadeo Roldán Conservatory and finally graduating with a degree in classical piano from the Instituto Superior de Artes (ISA). “I studied classical music and that’s all I did until I was 18,” Lopez-Nussa said in press notes. Then came jazz.
“Jazz was scary. Improvisation was scary. That idea of not knowing what you are going to play . . “the Cuban pianist and composer explains. “At school I learned the works of Bach, Mozart and Beethoven and then it was all very clear. That permanent risk in which jazz musicians find themselves in all the time was terrifying—of course, now I find myself in that risk all the time.” And yet interestingly enough, throughout his recording career Lopez-Nussa has found himself moving between classical, jazz and pop music rather easily. He has recorded a rendition of Heitor Villa-Lobos’ “Fourth Piano Concerto” with Cuba’s National Symphony Orchestra back in 2003; has won the First Prize and Audience Price of the Jazz Solo Piano Compeition at the Monterux Jazz Festival in 2005; has collaborated with David Sanchez, Christian Scott and Stefon Harris on Ninety Miles in 2011; has made an appearance on Esencial, an album of compositions by revered Cuban classical guitarist, composer and conductor Leo Brouwer, also in 2011; and as far as more popular projects, he was involved in the Cuba volume of Rhythms del Mundo, which had him recording songs with members of the world-famous Buena Vista Social Club; and he spent three years as part of the Omara Portuondo’s tuouring band — and naturally those experiences have deeply influenced the Cuban pianist and composer’s own personal style and aesthetic.
El Viaje, Lopez-Nussa’s latest full-length effort features the Cuban pianist and composer’s trio, which includes his younger brother Ruy Adrian Lopez-Nussa (drums and percussion) and Senegalese bassist and vocalist Alune Wade, as well as guest appearances from the Lopez-Nussas father Ruy Francisco on drums, Mayquel González on trumpet and flugelhorn, and Dreiser Durruthy and Adel González on percussion. Alune Wade’s collaboration with Lopez-Nussa goes back to when the duo worked together on Havana-Paris-Dakar, and as Lopez-Nussa explains, “Having a non-Cuban musician on this recording speaks to our contact with other cultures. Especially with African culture, which is so far from ours geographically and yet so close. Every time we play, I believe we enter into a journey we are creating.”
Interestingly, the upcoming Stateside release of Lopez-Nussa’s latest effort comes as the US has begun to lift the embargo started during the Kennedy Administration and normalize diplomatic, cultural and trade relations — and in fact, it’ll be the first album by a Cuban-based artist to see a complete international release in more than 50 years. And as a teaser of what you should expect to hear off the album and the Cuban pianist and composer’s Stateside tour, you can check out two singles from the album “Mozambique en Mi B” and “Feria.” And from both tracks, Lopez-Nussa’s compositions possess an understated and elegant simplicity that makes both “Mozambique en Mi B” and “Feria” sound and feel timeless; in some way, they nod at bop era jazz — hinting at the charm and mischievous wit and stunning melodicism of Horace Silver and Thelonious Monk but meshing that with a breezy and danceable tropicalia and Afro-Cuban/Afro-Caribbean polyrhythms. And while mining from somewhat familiar territory, if you’ve listened to as much jazz as I have, the material possesses a vitality that separates it from countless others. Check out how the interplay between Lopez-Nussa’s piano chords and Wade’s bass and vocals seem as though they’re flirtatiously dancing with each other on “Feria,” while “Mozambique en Mi B,” sounds as though it were heavily influenced by samba and includes a deft and gorgeous Lopez-Nussa solo — and it’s in those moments that the Havana-born and based pianist and composer reveals himself as arguably one of the more inventive, contemporary composers you’ll come across.
Tour Dates
Aug 10 / The Opera House at Boothbay Harbor / Boothbay Harbor, ME
Aug 11 / Payomet Performing Arts Center / Truro, MA
Aug 12 / Shalin Liu Performance Center / Rockport, MA
Aug 14 / SFJAZZ Center Miner Auditorium / San Francisco, CA
Aug 14 / San Jose Jazz Summer Fest Jade Leaf Lounge / San Jose, CA
Aug 15 / Kuumbwa Jazz Center / Santa Cruz, CA
Aug 18 / Vail Jazz Festival (Special Guest w. Maraca) / Vail, CO
Aug 19 / Aspen Snowmass Jazz Festival (Special Guest w. Maraca) / Aspen, CO
Aug 30 / Cotton Club / Tokyo, Japan
Sept 2 / Musashino Swing Hall / Musashino (Tokyo), Japan
Sept 3 / NHIC Tokyo JazzFest (Forum Hall A) / Tokyo, Japan
Sept 4 / Detroit Jazz Festival / Detroit, MI
Sept 5 / Detroit Jazz Festival / Detroit, MI
Oct 4 / Gateway City Arts / Holyoke, MA
Oct 5 / Museum of Fine Arts / Boston, MA
Oct 6 – 7 / The Berrie Center (Ramapo College) / Mahwah, NJ
Oct 8 / The John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts (Terrace Club) /Washington, DC
Oct 11 / Dizzy’s Club Coca-Cola (Jazz at Lincoln Center) / New York, NY
Oct 13 / The Side Door / Old Lyme, CT
Oct 14 / BRIC Jazz Festival / Brooklyn, NY
Oct 15 / Chris’ Jazz Cafe / Philadelphia, PA
Oct 18 / Dakota Jazz Club & Restaurant / Minneapolis, MN
Oct 19 / SPACE-Society for the Preservation of Art & Culture Evanston /Evanston (Chicago), IL
Oct 21 / The Dirty Dog Cafe / Detroit (Grosse Point), MI
Oct 22 / The Dirty Dog / Detroit (Grosse Point), MI
Oct 23 / Baur’s Listening Lounge / Denver, CO
Oct 27 / Blue Whale / Los Angeles, CA
May 6 / Rose and Alfred Miniaci Performing Arts Center / Davie, FL
Led by frontwoman and principle songwriter Luz Elena Mendoza, Portland, OR-based alt folk/folk rock/indie rock act Y La Bamba, the critically applauded act can trace its origins to early 2008 when Mendoza wanted to perform under something else other than her name, and began writing and making home recordings of her songs on a one-by-one basis largely drawing from the traditional Mexican folk songs she heard as a child growing up in San Francisco and playing with her cousins in the San Joaquin Valley, the work of Loch Lomond and Devendra Banhardt and others. Around the time she had begun writing her own material, Mendoza had begun regularly hosting an open mic at a sake bar in Northeast Portland, where she met the members of the band’s original line up — Ben Meyercord, Mike Kitson (drums), Sean Flinn (guitar) and Eric Shrapel (accordion).
Over the course of the band’s three albums and several lineup changes of collaborators, friends and musicians, the band’s material has gone through a variety of changes — but it’s the the band’s forth full-length effort Ojos Del Sol that may be arguably be the most radical turn in sonic direction, while returning to familiar themes of searching and personal discovery — themes that have come up a number of times in Mendoza’s own life, whether as the daughter of Mexican immigrants connecting with her ancestry and searching for spiritual meaning that goes much further than organized religion. In fact, as Mendoza explains in press notes, the material on the album thematically is a “cerebration of family and community” — but a community of shared humanity.
Interestingly, the album’s first single “Libre” finds Mendoza and company at their most self-assured but in one of the breeziest and pop-leaning songs as they pair an infectious and anthemic hook with an arrangement that includes what sounds like xylophone, a mischievous and sinuous bass line, a steady backbeat, Mendoza’s gorgeous vocals along three part harmonies in English and Spanish, a rolling, African folk music-like guitar line in a song that evokes a sense of almost childlike wonder and joy, while making a connection both to Mendoza’s ancestral homeland and Africa in a way that subtly channels Paul Simon‘s Graceland.
New Audio: Bareto’s Mischievous and Breezily Futuristic Take on Peruvian Cumbia
Impredecible’s slow-burning yet buoyant new single “El impredecible,” possesses a languorous and looping rhythm, intricate and dexterous guitar lines familiar to Peruvian cumbia; however, the song manages to be simultaneously angular, as the looping rhythms are paired with complex polyrhythms and beats, ethereal electronics, warm blasts of horns coming out of the ether and earnest vocals to craft a sound that feels and sounds simultaneously traditional and futuristic.
Comprised of Paris-based DJs Guido Minisky and Hervé Carvalho, electronic music act and production duo Acid Arab have developed a reputation for a sound that meshes Western electronic music, namely house and acid house, with Arabic arrangements and vocals — and for increasing collaboration with scores of Parisian-based musicians from across both North Africa and the Middle East. And as a result of their crowd-pleasing, genre meshing approach, the duo have been a name for themselves by playing the European major festival and club circuit to support several critically applauded EPs released through French label Versatile Records. Interestingly, as the duo of Minisky and Carvalho increasingly began to collaborate with locally based musicians, the duo four the need to make each song tell a story, which takes place in a world without barriers and domination.
The duo’s highly-anticipated full-length debut Musique de France is slated for an October 20 release through Crammed Disc Records and the album finds the Parison electronic music act collaborating with world renowned artists including Algerian keyboard player Kenzi Bourra, Syrian musician Rizan Said, who’s known for his work with Omar Souleyman, Rachid Taha, raï fusion pioneer, Sofiane Saidi and gnawa musician/singer, Jawad El Garrouge — and a result, the French production and electronic music duo will not only further cement their burgeoning reputation for a globally-based genre mashing sound, it also finds them expanding upon it, as you’ll hear on “Buzq Blues,” the first single off the duo’s forthcoming album. The song has the duo crafting a slick production that features propulsive percussion, tons of kick snare, and skittering drum programming, cascading layers of synth stabs, gently buzzing synths, undulating electronics paired with gorgeous, Arabic instrumentation to craft a a trippy dance floor-friendly song that effortlessly bridges the incredibly modern with the incredibly ancient.
Initially comprised of Dan Klein (vocals), Chuck Patel (organ, piano), Rich Terrana (drums, vocals) and Preet (bass, vocals), along with Norihiro Kikuta (guitar) and Mike Torres (percussion), Queens-based act The Frightnrs have developed a reputation across the city’s DIY and soundsystem scenes for an aesthetic that draws from Jamaican Rocksteady, a revered genre that took over Jamaican airwaves in 1967 and yielding some of the country’s most beloved and popular songs before petering out by the end of 1968, 80s Rub A Dub, punk rock, ska and reggae in a way that’s a subtle redefinition of what a contemporary reggae act can sound like. In fact, the act’s debut effort received airplay from reggae and radio legend David “Ram Jam” Roddigan and Mad Decent’s Diplo, who later released the band’s EP last year.
After the release of their EP, renowned New York-based funk and soul label Daptone Records released the band’s critically acclaimed cover of Etta James‘ “I’d Rather Go Blind” before officially signing the band as their first reggae signing based on two things — the strength of their local reputation and on the fact that they stumbled on to the perfect band to a long desired Rocksteady album, with Victor Axelrod, best known as Ticklah behind the dials and knobs. As the band’s Chuck Patel explains in press notes “Rocksteady was the first style of Jamaican music that Dan [Klein] and me fell in love with, and the idea of making a classic album for a classic label like Daptone was a dream come true.” As soon as the band was officially signed, the members of the band immediately went to work with the understanding that they had to work within Daptone Records’ tight frame and constraints — mainly they had to write only Rocksteady songs, which forced the band to display a singular focus. In fact, as Axelrod adds “The fact that the direction of the album was determined by it being a Daptone record was crucial. We wanted to make a solid and cohesive record and so chose songs that most fit the Daptone aesthetic and the result was the best music that Dan and the Frightnrs had ever made with truly expanded levels of creativity.”
Sadly as the band was recording their full-length debut effort Nothing Left to Say, which is slated for a September 2, 2016 release, the band’s frontman and co-founding member Dan Klein was diagnosed with ALS in last November and although he was able to finish the major work during the recording sessions, Klein tragically died last month making the recorded effort a testament to their friend and founder. As for the album’s first single, album title track “Nothing More To Say,” the track reminds me of the sort of stuff I’d hear during Dahved Levy‘s WBLS radio show. And although the song possesses an upbeat, bouncy riddim, the song is actually a bitter and aching lament from the song’s narrator about being devoted to a fickle and difficult lover, who may not have even loved him anyway — and as you can imagine the song’s narrator quickly recognizes that his relationship with this person was a lie. So he vows to pack up his stuff and go — and go as quickly as possible. Certainly, I’ve been there a couple of times as you have, and the song voices the bitter sense of confusion, heartache, regret and foolishness we’ve all felt at some point or another because of love.
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